I’ll soon be moving to the States and am looking for somebody in Canada who is willing to sell and ship me the 110v version of the latest Vorwerk Thermomix (I think it’s the TM31).

Interested? Just visit my help desk at ProtectorSupport.com. I’ll be in touch…

P.S. — Yes, I know about the European measurements and all that; it’s not a problem. My wife is Polish and knows what it will do.

Through a Facebook notification, I came across a Facebook group entitled "Married For Life". Many of the people who have written on this site credit their longevity to their faith in Jesus Christ and their desire to truly live as he wants them to live.

I think that this is wonderful because this faith provides what is needed to ensure a lasting marriage. If you are committed to living out your faith in God and Jesus, you know that staying married is important. This faith requires that the husband love his wife as Jesus loved the church and demands that the wife submit herself to her husband. Note the counterbalance, though, because this commitment from both the husband and wife are required for this to work! If the husband is truly involved in unconditionally and sacrificially loving his wife the way that Jesus loves us, then the wife has the confidence to completely submit because she knows that her husband will not abuse this trust. Anything else is a recipe for disaster.

Also note that “submission” does not mean becoming some weak-minded person. It’s a military term that simply means that one outranks the other. Back in my military days, it was my duty to tell my superiors what they needed to hear, even when they did not like it (which was often… ). It was not like many imagine the military, where subordinates assume the position of attention, yell, “Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Bags Full!” and run off and do whatever idiocy they are commanded to do. That is NOT subordination, and any man who demands this type of behavior from his wife is full of “it”.

Besides, men, nowhere are you commanded to MAKE your wife submit… You do your job and let her worry about doing hers.

But I want to get back to the Facebook page and talk about a problem I have with it. As I said, I think that two people who are committed to God and each other to the point that they can publicly proclaim their commitment is a great thing. The problem, however, as I see it, is two-fold:

1. It takes a lifetime commitment from both the husband and wife to make this work. It only takes one of them to abandon the marriage and make it fall apart. Of course, once this happens, the other spouse is free to do as they please, whether it be stay with the marriage, seek separation / divorce, move on with their life… Anybody who thinks otherwise — especially those “holier-than-thou” types who tell you that divorce is a sin (it isn’t; yes, the Bible says that God hates divorce, but nowhere is it recorded that God calls it a sin) and that you should stick with an abusive spouse who no longer loves you and has abandoned the marriage is flat-out mangling God’s word and will. Read I Corinthians 7 carefully (trust me, I have, because I went through this); if one spouse abandons the marriage, even if they profess to be a believer, the other is free to do as they please. My apologies for getting sidetracked, but I feel very strongly about this issue because people are condemning others to stay in an abusive marriage when the Bible clearly says that this is NOT God’s will and that you can walk away from such a marriage and still be doing what God wants you to do. And for those who would scream that such thoughts destroy the “sanctity of marriage”… Well, there’s nothing “sacred” about living with an abusive jerk and saying such things makes you an accessory to a disaster. Have the guts to give good advice and quit adding junk to God’s word.
2. The other issue I have with this — and this one is a bit more subtle — is that such a group is an exclusive club. While I am committed to my wife for life, would I be welcome in that group? I’ve been divorced because my former spouse abandoned the marriage and I exercised my God-given choice to leave that marriage and marry again. I wonder (and perhaps “fear” ) that such a group may be sending the wrong message to those who have not yet accepted God’s forgiveness and may be lumping those who are unable to make such a commitment into a group of “second class citizens”. Taking it even farther, I wonder if such a group accurately reflects the true message that God has for us, namely this: It’s not about perfection, it’s all about accepting forgiveness and walking in newness of life.

Please allow me to repeat that last statement:

It’s not about perfection, it’s all about accepting forgiveness and walking in newness of life.

We’re all in the same boat: flawed, imperfect, “sinners”, if I dare use the word… Telling a white lie puts us in the same boat as a murderer in God’s eyes (which, incidentally, is why I have problems with people who want to oppose gay marriage by force of law while supporting legislation to bail out greedy, clueless corporations and banks — is your sin better than my sin? Besides, you are never going to bring about change by forcing it from the outside in…). I’m extremely happy to see people commit to lifelong marriage, but at the same time, I think it may deliver the wrong message to people who truly need Jesus but feel as if they aren’t “good enough” to approach him.

In other words, “Hey, all these people have been married for life, but I’ve been divorced. I’ll never be good enough to be one of these people, so why bother with Jesus?”

Here’s a better message: I’ve been divorced and done a lot of other stuff that lumps me into the category that God calls “sinners”, yet I’ve been forgiven by Jesus and am encouraged to walk in “newness of life” — you know, the whole “Go, and sin no more” bit. I’m not there yet and never will be, but every day, as I let the power of God’s spirit control just a bit more of my life, I get a bit closer… But except for accepting God’s forgiveness, I’m no different — or better — than you. That which I have is also freely available for you to receive.

The people in that group are special. I’m proud of them. But remember: There isn’t going to be a “Facebook” in heaven and nobody is going to care if you were married one time or 100 times — just the fact that you made it there through the forgiveness offered by Jesus puts you in the most special group ever formed — God’s adopted children.

I like to use Notepad when I want to focus solely on typing. Later, when I need to format text, I then copy it into Open Office and do the stuff to make it pretty.

Here are three tricks I use with Notepad to make things a bit easier:

1. Create your own file extension and associate with Notepad. I noticed that the file extension “.nxq” isn’t really used by anybody else, so I started using it for all of my Notepad documents (you can get a pretty thorough list of file extensions that are in use at filext.com).

I then associated that file extension with Notepad. To do that, do this (in Vista — this should also work in XP; if it doesn’t, please leave a comment and I’ll try to figure out what works and update the post):

• Open Notepad.
• Type something in the document.
• Under the “File” menu, select “Save”.
• In the “File Name:” field, enter a file name — but use “.nxq” as the extension instead of “.txt” (i.e. “myfile.nxq” instead of “myfile.txt”.
• In the “Save as type:” field, use the drop-down control to select “All Files (*)” instead of “Text Documents (*.txt). If you skip this step, your file name will end up being something along the lines of “myfile.nxq.txt” and this trick won’t work.
• Click on the “Save” button. Be sure to remember the folder where you saved the document (or just plop it on your Desktop!).
• Close your document.
• Open Windows Explorer or My Computer and navigate to the folder where you saved your file.
• Double-click on your file. Windows will tell you that it cannot open the file and will ask you what you want to do. Select the “Select a program from a list of installed programs” radio button and click “OK”.
• With any luck, “Notepad” will either be in the list of “Recommended Programs” or “Other Programs”. If it is, just click on it once. If it is not, select the “Browse…” button, then click on the “Computer” label (under “Favorite Links”) and navigate to c:\Windows. Scroll down until you see “notepad.exe”, then double-click on it.
• Back at the “Open With” screen, ensure that the “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” check box is filled. If you want, you can enter a brief description for the file (perhaps “Journal Files”), then click the “OK” button. Your file will open in Notepad if all went well.
• From now on, just double-click your file to open it in Notepad; you’ve made the association.

(NOTE FOR YOU WINDOWS PURISTS: Yes, there is a quicker way, but if I can create a procedure that keeps people out of Control Panel, the Registry, and Administrator mode, I’m all for it. This works and keeps people from mucking up the works too terribly much!)

Of course, this leaves the obvious question: WHY would I want to do this if .txt files open in Notepad anyway? Well, on my computer, they don’t… I’ve installed another text editor that opens .txt files (UltraEdit 32). While it’s a far better editor than Notepad, there are times when I want the “quick simplicity” of Notepad, and this trick gives me the choice of using a .txt extension and using UltraEdit 32 — or using the .nxq extension and using Notepad.

2. If you have a file open in Notepad and want to create a date / time stamp (convenient for journals or if you are doing timed work for a client), just put your cursor on a new line and hit the F5 key. You’ll get a line that looks something like this:

1:57 PM 2/11/2010

(I just hit F5 in my Notepad file, then copied and pasted this to my blog.)

3. Would you like for Notepad to automatically add a date / time stamp to a file whenever you open it? All you need to do is to go to the very top of any Notepad document and type the following on a line all by itself:

.LOG

(Be sure to use upper case letters!).

Then save and close your file (I also recommend hitting the “Enter” key a couple of times at the end of your file before you save it so that your date / time stamp ends up on a line all by itself when you next open it). A date / time stamp will be automatically entered at the end of your document the next time you open it with Notepad.

A few neat little Notepad tricks that took me a LOT longer to type than I envisioned…!

Do you know of any neat Notepad tricks? If so, would you take a moment to leave a comment and share it? I’ve heard that you can get line numbers to display in Notepad; if anybody knows how to do this, PLEASE leave a comment and let me know.

A quick and somewhat unusual request for today…

If you have a copy of “Are We Living in the End Times” (by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins) in Polish and would be willing to either give or sell it to me, could you please either leave a comment on this blog post with your contact information (I won’t approve the post, so nobody but me will see it) or contact me via my help desk at ProtectorSupport.com?

I have a copy of the book in English but would like to have a copy of the Polish translation, if it exists. I know that many of their other books have been translated into Polish (I have the Polish version of one of the books from the “Left Behind” series sitting on my desk as I type this) but can’t seem to find this one.

Any help you might be able to give would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve decided to try a new experiment for my blog posts. Normally, I get an idea that I want to write about and I’ll use that idea as the Title of the post. However, as I write, I usually end up editing the title ever so slightly.

As a result, by the time I’m done with the post, I have to go back and change the “permalink” box (between the Title and Body of the post) before I actually Publish the post (I’m talking about WordPress here…).

So this time, I didn’t enter a Title before I started typing but will go back and add one just before I publish. My goal? To see if I have to edit the Permalink if I wait until the end to enter the title.

Right now, I don’t see the title of the post in the Permalink, so I’m going to go back and add it, then type a bit more here and hit “Publish”…

All right. The title has now been entered — and I don’t see the Permalink changing. Ugh.

WordPress, there’s a nice feature to add. Instead of setting the Permalink as soon as somebody starts hacking away at a post, why not wait until the post is published before setting it (or at least the part where the Permalink inserts the title of the blog post — if the person has chosen to use this as part of their Permalink)?

Just an idea… And this post shall not have the Title in the Permalink.

UPDATE: It did work! WordPress did add my Title when I hit the “Publish” button. So there’s a new tactic to add to your arsenal; don’t enter your final post Title until you are actually ready to publish and know what you want it to be. That way, your Title and Permalink will match (unless you want them to NOT match…).

I found another one of those “obfuscated” scripts today while troubleshooting some stuff. Unlike most that just use those “cheap encryptors” that are a dime a dozen and can be found all over the Internet, this one is extremely elegant and complex, and I soon found myself totally immersed in trying to crack the algorithm. Along the way I had ample opportunity to expand my knowledge of scripting.

Pure joy for a closet geek like me!

I’m still not done with the work, but as I was taking a break, I realized something that I’d like to share with you. I wasn’t really motivated to work today before I started working on this little project, but am now decidedly motivated and want to use my time wisely. And that’s when it hit me…

Coding and scripting may not be profitable activities for me because I don’t do commercial quality work yet, but by doing them, I put myself into a mindset that enables me to much better focus on the tasks that are profitable.

I enjoy coding and writing scripts. I love the challenge, the immediate feedback, and the immense satisfaction that comes from taking an idea and turning it into a piece of working code (let’s not talk about efficiency and elegance,though!). In other words, it’s “fun work” for me.

So I’m going to try an experiment. I’m going to start working through my collection of coding and scripting books for about 30 minutes every morning just as soon as I start working. I want to see if it carries over every day into more focused work. I suspect that it will because once I start working, I tend not to stop; it’s just hard to get started some mornings. I’m going to do this every day for 21 days, starting on Monday, January 18, 2010 (they say it takes 21 days to develop a habit; that’s why I chose 21 days).

Why not give it a try? For the next three weeks, start every day doing some type of work that you love to do for just a few minutes, then see if you are more productive for the rest of the day. And by all means, feel free to leave a comment to let me know if you tried it — and the results you got from it (and I’ll try to remember to do a follow-up post a few weeks from now).

And who knows? If I do a bit of coding and scripting every day, perhaps some day my work will be “good enough” to sell…

I recently switched to the Thesis blog theme for all of my blogs. It’s a paid theme, but it’s easy to use, there’s lots of support and help for it, and I like the nice, clean look.

Even though I have the Developer version and am allowed to remove the attribution footer, I choose to leave it there, but edit it slightly. That’s because DIY Themes (the company behind Thesis) has an affiliate program. I changed the link so that if somebody clicks on it and purchases a Thesis license, I get a referral commission. I can also leave that link in many forum posts, write articles with that links, etc.

I received an email today from DIY Themes. They are going to outsource their affiliate program, and as a result, I now have a new affiliate link for Thesis.

Yuck. Or, to be honest, because I do some things differently, “not quite yuck”.

Had I simply used a direct link to the Thesis Theme sales page every time, I would have had to go back to every place where I left the link and replaced it with the new link. Yes, I can do that on blogs and on forums where I can edit my posts, but what about on articles, social networking sites, or any of 1,001 other places where I may have left a link?

What a mess… Thankfully I decided a long time ago to use a script that shortens and uses redirects for links like that. So in this case, I merely log in to the control panel for my redirect script, change the destination link, and I’m done. Two minutes to solve a problem instead of countless hours.

Now had I used a link shortening / redirect service that I don’t own (perhaps TinyURL.com or something along those lines), chances are pretty good that I would still not be able to change the destination link. It’s always better to have such things under your own control.

The script I use for this is Wilson Mattos’ Easy Redirect Script. He released Version 2 a few months back, and I really like the script (as well as Wil; he’s is extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and unlike some techies, truly does love both his work AND his customers).

With Version 2, Wil has added a lot of capabilities to the script. You can get into a lot of detail about the type of redirect to use (301 vs. 302, etc.) and can even place the links you create into categories. But if you want to keep things simple, simply click on the “Simple Mode” tab and enter your link (you even get to choose what to name it).

One tip I have: If you get Wil’s script, get yourself a four character domain name and then install the script either into the root of the domain (without the “www”) or put it into a one-letter subdomain (as I did, with “r”. I installed my copy of the script on a subdomain because I use the tdbx.com domain for some other stuff as well as for the redirect script). You don’t even have to make it a .com name if you don’t want to; you won’t have to worry about this domain getting ranked in the search engines, after all… If you look at my link for this product, it’s only 17 characters long — not too bad (http://r.tdbx.com/ers/).

You can create short, “cryptic” links (like I did with “ers” in the above link), or make them as descriptive as you want (i.e. as I did with my Thesis link: http://r.tdbx.com/Thesis/).

Wil has a special deal going where you can try the software for free for 14 days before he processes your payment. If you don’t like it, you can simply delete the software and cancel your pending payment. But considering these benefits (especially the ability to change the destination of a previously established link) with all of the other benefits Wil lists in the sales copy and Wil’s great service, I’m pretty sure that you’ll be like me and keep the script.

Again, here’s that link: Wil Mattos’ Easy Redirect Script.

And in case you’re interested in the Thesis theme for your WordPress blog: Thesis By DIY Themes.

NOTE: This posts contains one or more affiliate links. If you click on the link(s) and purchase something, I will receive a referral commission. It will not have any effect on the purchase price of the product. As a general rule, I do not accept free products for review and my decision to promote these products is based on my own satisfaction with the products after purchasing them and my desire to tell you about high quality products while generating revenue for my business. Any exceptions will be clearly noted. Also keep in mind that I am a college graduate, have considerable work, leadership, and management experience, and have been studying and practicing online marketing since 2004. These factors have a positive impact on my results that you will not be able to replicate. Thanks!

If you are not marketing online with video, then you are not really marketing at all.

Ah, I love my Inbox. Thanks to it, I never lack for things to blog about!

First off, let’s blast the above quote out of the water. If my target market is the blind, video marketing is pretty ridiculous. If I reach my customers via printed advertising, video is pretty ridiculous.

If I market to people with the attention span of a gnat (present company included), video marketing is pretty ridiculous. I’m not about to spend 5 minutes to an hour of my valuable time (otherwise known as “life”) watching your silly sales pitch (for the most part; there are exceptions). Give me something I can scan quickly with my eyeballs so that I can decide if you are worth my time.

Yet another “superlative” that doesn’t quite live up to the hype once you stop to think about it. Oops.

Watch out for stuff like this. You’ll see it all the time, and each time you see it, step back a moment and THINK. Chances are pretty good that you, like me, will decide that the statement — and the product they are promoting — are trying to compensate for some deficiency by use of clever language.

If you subscribe to a lot of mailing lists, you might see this email yourself. It’s from another video creation and management product (I think; I didn’t watch the video), and from the “smell” of things (the “Product Launch Formula” type blog, the person who sent me the promotion, etc.), this smells like yet another not low priced monthly subscription service. And since the little I did read talks about how “difficult” it is to do video right (which is absolutely ridiculous; Camtasia gives you the code you need)…

It could be a good service; I’m not saying that it isn’t a valuable service that could be of use to some. I didn’t do the research to find out if it is. What I didn’t like were the elements of another “hyper launched” product, especially the use of a superlative statement that isn’t at all superlative (there’s a reason you should leave copywriting to the copywriters, and this is a great example). The product may be great, but I’ll never know due to the whistles and bells surrounding the launch.

Guess I’m getting grumpy… No, it’s not that, but I think that I know what it is.

Once you start working on becoming an Internet information marketer, you learn all of the marketing “tricks”. And when you see them, you see right through them and get like I do: jaded and cynical. The only affect they have on you is to make you want to write blog posts like this…

So if they aren’t going to work on people like me who have been around the block a few times, then who are they targeting? That’s right: The newcomers to the field. There are more and more of them every day, and while those things won’t work on me, they obviously DO work on those newcomers.

Sadly, it’s the newcomers who really don’t need and, in many cases, can’t really afford these types of services, yet the vultures are out there. They got me when I first started; once I realized what was going on, I didn’t like it, but instead of recouping my losses by doing the same, I decided to do things differently. I’d rather “warn” you about such methods and trust you to show your support by using my affiliate links to purchase things. That way, it doesn’t cost you anything extra but still enables me to continue to blog.

But for now, does a newcomer really need a service like this? Why not just use a free product (like CamStudio) to do your videos until you can afford a professional solution? And a video marketing solution is not the “be all, end all”; it’s NOT the “one thing” that will push you over the top, no matter how good it is. What good is it going to do you to have the best marketing videos in the world if you target market cannot — or will not — even watch them?

Be careful, newcomer…

P.S. — Here’s a link to a blog post on another blog I own where I talk about something that is worth getting excited about (but you have to generate the excitement yourself, sorry…): Dennis Becker’s Learn One Thing A Day Membership Site. I do recommend this for newcomers and advanced marketers because if somebody as advanced as Dennis Becker can learn from this site, I think you can, too (I know I have!).

The opinions expressed in this post are my own. They are based on actual events that happened. Some of what is written is my own, subjective, and personal reaction to those events.

I needed help with a product that I had purchased from Joe Cooper (of 1AffiliateSite.com) some time back. Every contact / support link given for both the product in question and for Joe himself were broken. Kaput. Emails sent to him bounced.

In other words, he was untouchable (and no, I didn’t send a letter to the postal address listed in his emails — so perhaps he wasn’t completely out of reach, but for an online product, don’t you think that having an online method to contact the product owner is reasonable?).

Guess what just popped into my Inbox? Yes, an email from Joe Cooper, and a golden opportunity for me to unsubscribe.

His father wrote a fiction book some time back. I purchased a copy because Joe wanted a good thing; he wanted to give his father a #1 ranking for the book on Amazon.uk. Hey, why not — I thought — I think that Joe was doing a good thing for his Dad, so I bought a copy. Honoring your parents is a good thing and demonstrates the kind of character that I like to see.

That was the last I heard from him until now, when his father has another book that he’s about to launch.

Fool me once, shame on you… Fool me twice, shame on me. No “shame on me” for this one. I’m not buying the book and I’m sure not going to stay subscribed to any of his mailing lists. I suspect that I am not the only person who will respond to this email as I did.

While I think that Joe wants some good things, I am not at all impressed with the way he has hidden himself from potential customer service issues. While I was not happy about not being able to get the support I needed (which caused me to cancel a very interesting project), I was content to unsubscribe from his list, put the incident behind me, and move on. But since he has “suddenly” shown up once again, acting as if everything is just as fine as fine can be, I feel compelled to write about my experiences here in case somebody else should ever have questions about him. To me, this is a perfect example of abusing your customer list and quite frankly, I don’t like it one bit. Or I at least dislike it enough to blog about it.

Another possible explanation might go along the lines of what we far too often see in the Internet Information Marketing arena nowadays: somebody smells the money, releases a lot of products, doesn’t plan for the support issues (all they hear is “build a list of buyers and hammer the dogsnot out of them with offers to buy more stuff”), and then panics and hides because they either can’t — or don’t want to — deal with the support issues and the 1,001 other things that go along with running a successful business.

If this is the case with you (even if you’re not “Joe”), the answer is to face your problem, fulfill your obligations, learn your lesson, set up a support system that doesn’t require your presence 24/7, and factor the cost of support into future products. Don’t try to run and hide — and above all, don’t run and hide, only to show your face again the next time you “need” something from your list (even if that “something” is good, like honoring your parents).

It’s all part of the growth process; we all go through it (at least the successful marketers) and we can learn a lot from it IF we face up to it. I’ve seen a lot of “young gun” marketers do this very thing who, in turn, accept their responsibilities, seek wise counsel, work through their problems, and emerge victorious on the other side. I really like and respect those who take this approach.

Remember, this is just a biased account of my personal experience with Joe. Your experience may be different. My instinct tells me that Joe isn’t a bad person; he just did some things that got out of control and he didn’t know how to respond, so he just ignored them and cut himself off from his customers. Nevertheless, it takes a lot of nerve to send another email, asking for me to once again buy something…

(HINT: Don’t bother looking for the first 26 parts… )

I just received an email from a marketer who said that a reply was mandatory because he needed to know how many comment spots he should reserve on his blog for his next blog post.

Awwwww……

Some kind of new scarcity tactic to get me to read his blog and leave a comment?

Sounds like some kind of junior high school prank to me.

Unsubscribe…

(And please; if I’m way off-base, please leave a comment and let me know your opinion. Unlike some blogs, there are (theoretically) no limits to the number of comments that can be left on my blog — and you most certainly don’t need a reservation…)

Like me, you’ve undoubtedly seen many articles that are attempting to not only label the first decade of the 21st Century (I like “The Oughts” the best) — they are trying to wrap up and summarize the decade.

There’s just one tiny little problem: The decade isn’t over yet. The first decade of the 21 century, like the 21st century itself, started on January 1, 2001 — which means that the first decade ends on December 31, 2010 and the new one begins on January 1, 2011.

Look at it this way: The first A.D. year wasn’t “0000″, it was “0001″. We start counting from one, not zero. So in order to have 10 years, you count from one to ten:

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

Ten years, starting from “one”, not zero.

Same thing applies to a century; you count from 1 to 100 to get your century, so the new century starts in year 1, not year 0.

So we officially have to wait another year, which means, with any luck, I’ll be the only person doing “decade wrap-up” stories at the end of December 2010 and my predictions for the new decade will be the only “fresh” ones available, ensuring massive traffic to my website.

I can’t wait. Or I can wait. Or I HAVE to wait.

Whatever.

Have a great New Year — but remember, you have to wait another year before I can wish you a great New Decade…

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): Internet Marketing is NOT my focus right now. I have another project that I’m deeply involved in that has my focus. But regardless of where I’m focused, I actually enjoy Internet Marketing and running a home-based business and will eventually return to it with the intent of creating an income stream that’s big enough to “fish” in!

Am I keyword stuffing in this post? Using both “Internet Marketing” and “Home Based Business” in the same breath? Yup. GUILTY! — But I want the odds of this post getting “found” to be increased because I’m going to be sharing some stuff that simply isn’t talked about all that much — at least not in the light that I’m going to shine on it… and I’d love to start a conversation about it because I sense that many other home based business people want what I want (keep reading to see what that is, please). And while I deeply appreciate the search engines and the traffic — and customers — they bring my way, I don’t write for them — I write for people.

Moving on…

I’ve studied copywriting; in fact, with a lot of hard work, I’m 100% confident that I could make a very good living as a copywriter. I know many of the techniques, tactics, and “tricks” used in copywriting and product launches. I’ve used a few of them myself in the past.

But as I find myself focusing more on living my life and doing things the way that I think Jesus would do them, I simply don’t think that many of those “tricks” are really all that ethical (one of my life goals, to which I’ve recently re-committed myself, is to live my life the way I think Jesus wants me to live it so that others will want to learn what Jesus is really about. Religion tends to really screw up that message!). Combine that with the disdain that many “normal / average” people have for a lot of Internet Marketers (think “scammer” and you won’t be far off; there’s a reason for the FTC’s recent enactment of new, tougher rules for us marketers) and you have an issue that needs to be worked out, namely:

Are using what I call (fondly!) “Cheap Marketing Tricks” really the best way to do business?

I had started to make a list of some of those “tricks” but I don’t think it’s really necessary. As I have mentioned in the past, there are legitimate reasons for offering “launch” discounts (i.e. if you aren’t yet promoting your product via affiliates then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t deduct those affiliate commissions from the price of the product) and perhaps even reasons for limiting the number of copies of a product sold (support is one good reason) or for cutting off sales after a certain point (time to move on to another project). But how many times have we seen these things abused simply in the name of getting people to buy NOW?

That’s when I call them “cheap marketing tricks”.

Yes, do everything you can to persuade your prospect. Show him how you can deliver overwhelming value if he’ll just pull out his credit card and purchase your masterpiece. But to lead them to the point of the sale, only to use a “cheap marketing trick” to scare or coerce the prospect into buying now? THAT’S where I no longer feel comfortable unless there is a legitimate, TRUE reason for doing so.

So I’m at an impasse right now (and thankfully my current project affords me the luxury to be at one!). Can you be an Internet Marketer and only use those “cheap marketing tricks” when there’s a legitimate reason — which means that they are neither “cheap” or “tricks”, but merely legitimate “marketing”? I would love to find out, and if my current project bears the fruit that I think it will, then I’ll be in a position to experiment with it.

Will I lose sales? More than likely — which brings up another point. Is it always necessary to convert another 0.1% of visitors to your sales letter if it means doing something that doesn’t have a legitimate reason? “Only 100 77 copies left — order now or risk getting left out!” — How many times have you and I seen that on a sales letter? But if it works, why not do it? I can think of a great reason not to…

Maybe you don’t do this, but I like to go back to those same sales letters a few weeks — and even months — later, to see if it still says “77 copies left”. Far too often, it does… But in my book, that makes the marketer a “liar” (unless there have been zero sales of the product). Perhaps that’s a harsh word, but why try to sugar-coat it? If you keep that “77 copies left” on your sales page after even one person purchases, then it’s lying, plain and simple.

I’ve finally decided that I’d rather lose sales than compromise my personal integrity. Perhaps nobody will ever know, but I will — and so will God. There will be consequences for lying on a sales page. I’d rather not face them. I’d rather face decreased sales.

My goal? To publish reasonably priced, high quality, and authoritative information products that will make a huge difference in the lives of the people that choose to own it. I’m more about “helping people” than “making money” (thankfully “making money” is not a problem for me, thanks to the professional skills that I possess — for which I am eternally grateful). I also believe, as Zig Ziglar says, that you can get what you want when you help enough other people get what they want, and if I spend the rest of the time allotted to me on this planet trying to prove him wrong, I think it will have been time well spent (or “invested” is a better word).

So once I get things going well with my current project, I just might try to be a “marketer” that isn’t preceded by “cheap” and followed by “tricks”. I have no idea if it will work — but something inside me (the same “something” that I’ve learned to rely on for success in life; I also call it “God’s Guidance”) tells me that it will work. I even think that I’ll end up making more money in the long run than I would with “cheap tricks” because I’ll build relationships with my customers, which will lead to what every marketer and sales person wants: customer loyalty. But loyalty will never come until I can prove consistently that my customers can rely on me to take care of them first.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. Would you take a moment to leave a comment and let me hear yours?

I’ve been a member of Dennis Becker’s "Earn 1K A Day" Membership Site for some time now. Even though almost all of my work is currently focused on something other than the kind of online business that Dennis teaches, I have remained a member and have no plans of quitting. And something he did today (which I’ll discuss in a moment) reminded me of one of the reasons I like to do business with him.

First, 1KAD (and yes, that is an affiliate link, and if you click and join, I make money every month you remain a member. I like the place and think it’s worth promoting!). Dennis Becker got his start by teaching people how to make five bucks a day. While that may not sound like much, his plan was to focus on a project that won’t take longer than one week to finish that will make you, on average, five bucks a day with little to no maintenance. Then the next week you take on another five buck project, then another…

It’s a snowball effect, and it can work IF you are willing to follow the system and basically work your tail off (no “magic buttons” here, sorry; it’s a real business you’ll be building, as you are taught by somebody who himself runs a successful business). But Dennis wasn’t content to stop at 5 bucks a day…

He also created the ongoing 1K A Day membership site. The goal here is to earn $1,000 in a single day (I’ve done it myself). But far more than just that, it’s become a community of people who help each other out in a lot of ways. If you are interested in starting your own business, please take a moment to click on that first link, read the sales letter, and join for a month at no risk to you. Dennis will refund your initial payment if you cancel within the first 60 days, and if you sign up via my link and have problems getting a refund, just leave a comment with details and I’ll help you get your money back. I can say this with 100% confidence because I know that Dennis will keep his word. And since he uses ClickBank for his subscriptions, you, not Dennis, are in control and can easily cancel at any time.

(Here’s another little tip; you can get the “lite” version of 5 Bucks A Day (called 5 Bucks A Day, Jr.) inside the members’ area of 1K A Day; it’s one of hundreds of downloads that are there for all members to download and learn from. 5 Bucks A Day Jr. contains the guide, but not the bonuses — but the system works fine without the bonuses and you can ask questions about the book inside the 1K A Day members area. So instead of buying 5 Bucks A Day, just join the 1k A Day membership site and grab it from the Downloads area of the forum. As I write this post, one month’s membership in 1K A Day cost less than 5 Bucks A Day, so trying the membership for a month is a better deal than just purchasing 5 Bucks A Day outright. And as I mentioned above, you can get a refund if it’s not for you, but if it is, you get 5 Bucks A Day Jr. — plus a LOT more.)

And speaking of keeping his word, Dennis purchased a monthly membership site from some other business people a while back. That site came with content pre-loaded through the end of 2009 (which ends in less than a week). Now if you’ve been hanging around the home business / Internet marketing scene much lately, you know how much that crowd just LOVES their membership sites, primarily because they get a consistent stream of income from their customers. Once you get one started and get it going well, most people tend to keep it going at all costs because of that monthly revenue stream.

Dennis has decided that, while he wants to keep this membership site going, he doesn’t want to work to provide content daily, as the previous owners did. So he sent out an email to his members today (I received a copy), telling us that we should cancel our memberships if we’ve already paid for December because he’s not going to be putting up much new content after the first of the year.

That’s right; Dennis just cut himself off from a nice monthly revenue stream by telling all of his members to cancel their subscriptions (let me reiterate: this is NOT his 1K A Day membership site, it’s a different one). Others might decide to “string out” the members, adding just enough inferior content to the site to keep the members there (Cognitive Dissonance is a wonderful marketing tool — “Hey, you’ve paid a lot; you don’t want to lose access to all that stuff, do you? — but isn’t very ethical, in my opinion). Not Dennis. He’s run out of content, doesn’t want to stress out over having to find more, so he’s telling us all to cancel our subscriptions.

Not only that, he has also promised to send, via a DVD in the mail, a copy of everything on the site so that we’ll have access to it in the future. So much for cognitive dissonance, eh?

Dennis is a good guy. He likes to make money (and is quite good at doing it, by all counts) but is also obsessed with delivering great value. But making money isn’t the only consideration; he’s one of those people who quietly tries to always do the right thing and treat his customers right. So between his business experience, ethics and integrity, and the hard work he puts into 1K A Day to make it work well, I’m happy to promote — and make money off of — Dennis Becker’s products. I truly believe that you can learn a lot from him about an online business and recommend that you give his Earn 1K A Day Membership Site a try if you are at all interested in learning how to start your own home-based business (and aren’t afraid to work and do things ethically…).

NOTE: This posts contains affiliate link(s). If you click on the link(s) and purchase something, I will receive a referral commission. It will not have any effect on the purchase price of the product. As a general rule, I do not accept free products for review and my decision to promote these products is based on my own satisfaction with the products after purchasing them and my desire to tell you about high quality products while generating revenue for my business. Any exceptions will be clearly noted. Also keep in mind that I am a college graduate, have considerable work, leadership, and management experience, and have been studying and practicing online marketing since 2004. These factors have a positive impact on my results that you will not be able to replicate. Thanks!

I mentioned recently that I had dumped FoxIt Reader and was switching to Sumatra PDF because I was tired of having the admin prompt come up every time I wanted to open a PDF document (when using Vista). That’s not a good thing, and if a person doesn’t have the admin password, then how do they open a PDF document?

Well, it turns out that Sumatra PDF didn’t meet my needs, either. While trying to print a 105 page PDF document this morning, it locked up my computer. Twice.

Bye-Bye, Sumatra! It was(n’t) nice knowing you.

Next one to test: Evince PDF reader. It’s advertised as “Simply a document viewer”. It didn’t last long, either. I installed it, logged out of my Vista computer’s admin account, logged in to my user account, opened the 105 page PDF document — only to discover that the “Print” function was grayed out.

Sorry, no time to troubleshoot. Bye-Bye, Evince. You’ve manage to con-vince me quite rapidly that you’re not the reader for me.

The next one I decided to try is called MuPDF. Uh, NO. All it does is read PDF documents. I didn’t even get a menu from which to select a print option! The good news was that this one didn’t install; a simple deletion should take care of it.

Next!

Okular. It’s part of the “KDE on Windows Project” (KDE is a desktop system for the Linux operating system). Let’s try that.

To do this, you need the KDE Installer. Install it, crank it up, find the application you want to install. Select it. Agree to install the dependencies (the programs that Okular needs in order to properly run — there are “only” 42 of them!). Let them download and install.

Go eat dinner…

Come back. Finish install. Can’t find Start Menu item. OOPS! Didn’t install it in the usual place. Double-click on PDF document, browse to Okular executable…

And nothing. Except that Windows Task Manager says that Okular is running.

Geesh. All I want to do is read a PDF document using a reader that both works AND isn’t bloatware!

OK, bye-bye Okular… And back to the drawing board.

(For the observant reader: Yes, there are no links to these products. There’s a reason for that; I don’t want to make it easy for people to download a product that I don’t like. At least not in this case…).

One last try for today (actually, it was yesterday; today is Christmas and there’s absolutely no way I’m going to spend Christmas Day testing PDF software!)… Sorax PDF Reader.

I think I saw somewhere on the website where it said that “no installation is required”. It does require installation.

So I installed it, opened a PDF document… Great. There are menus. There is a print option. So far, so good! So I set it to print in booklet mode on my printer…

And it prints in regular, “use a lot of ink” mode. *SIGH*

But I’m not yet ready to blame it on Sorax because it also wouldn’t print properly from my netbook, which is running Windows XP (I’m still using Foxit on that one). So it’s probably my printer (did I ever mention that Hewlitt Packard products are starting to drive me absolutely nuts? Why, oh WHY, HP, do you need to open a friggin’ ballon tip every time my printer does something? Don’t you think I’m perfectly capable of remembering that I didn’t turn on my printer and that it’s not available? Or how about selling a new PC that’s not filled with tons of absolute GARBAGE that I’ll never, EVER use — and if I do decide that I want to use it, I’ll go out and buy a copy just so you won’t profit from it. Yeah, I’m *THAT* kind of person, at least when it comes to companies that think that they know what’s best for me and never listen to their customers. But I digress…).

So while I’m not going to “can” Sorax just yet, neither am I going to recommend it.

But I’m starting to understand why people like Apple and Macs so much…

And if you know of (or have written) a PDF reader that prints properly, isn’t bloatware, doesn’t have “unadvertised features” (and I do run Wireshark to see if new apps are “phoning home” without my knowledge and consent), and doesn’t ask for an admin password when I try to use it on Windows Vista, please, Please, PLEASE leave a comment! At this point, I’m even willing to pay a fair price — as long as it includes an unconditional refund period (since this whole thing has turned me into a skeptic…).

Hello, Internet Marketers! How many of you have heard this before:

• Find a “hot” niche market where people are buying stuff.
• Spend a few hours doing research and collecting information.
• Label yourself an “expert” because you now know more than 98% of the population.
• Start creating the products for your product funnel, from your giveaway PDF to your high priced coaching program.
• Cash the checks.
• Realize you are in over your head and sell the business to somebody who knows the market and the topic.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.

OK, the line in italics isn’t usually part of the formula, but I added it anyway. Truth is, a lot of people are told to sell the business to get their profits out of it, then move on. That’s what they’re told. My subjective, unproven truth is that most of these people who sell let out a huge sigh of relief once they do so because they realized that they aren’t experts, that they aren’t fooling anybody, and they no longer have to worry about “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Wikipedia it if you don’t know what that means).

This type of marketing is borderline fraud, in my opinion, because you end up selling high priced garbage to the public that you have no business selling. You aren’t an expert by following this system; you’re a beginner who has done a bit more research than most will do, and passing yourself off as an instant expert just isn’t right.

Take my field: computer security. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years and hold a whole bunch of certifications, including the CISSP, GCIA, and Security+. I think I know garbage in my field when I see it.

Once I picked up the private label rights (PLR) to an ebook on home computer security. I set out to re-write it so that I could use it in my business. There was just one problem: The thing was such a putrid pile of garbage that I couldn’t use it. The writer obviously didn’t know a worm from a trojan horse but was trying to pawn this sucker off on unsuspecting people who were following the “instant expert” formula. Sadly, people were undoubtedly selling this book to unsuspecting consumers, many of whom thought that they were safe after doing what the book said to do. Very sad.

It takes a long time to become an expert at most things; if it didn’t, everybody would be an expert and there would be no premium price on your products and services. As I learned from Brian Tracy, your ability to get paid for your skill depends on the demand for that skill, how well you do it, and how difficult it would be to replace you. That’s why cleaning tables at the local mall food court doesn’t pay as well as the job I hold — and that’s why you aren’t an expert after spending a few hours surfing the Internet, researching a topic (unless that topic is “How To Clean Tables At Your Local Mall’s Food Court” — and even then you’d probably get parts of it wrong or leave out important things…). If you got to where you are after only a few hours of dubious research, it won’t be hard to replace you.

I suspect that some of my Internet Marketing colleagues aren’t going to like this post too terribly much, but I’m making it anyway. There’s a huge difference between knowing more than most people and being an expert. Yes, you can help people with what you do know (and there’s nothing wrong with earning a living from doing this), even if you are not an expert, but trying to pawn yourself off as an expert just hours after discovering that a topic exists is unethical.

And here’s a tip for you, FTC: Start cracking down on these self-proclaimed “instant experts”. In my opinion, doing this will help you clean up the Internet a lot faster and better than trying to enforce your new affiliate and testimonial rules.

I see a lot of people who are just starting out in the Internet marketing field that are faced with a choice. On one side lies the “Do What Works” school of thought. Most people end up here, and why not? After all, the stuff works, and our goal is to make money, right?

Not so fast! Our goal SHOULD be to make money AND provide a valuable service to people. Remember, we are making money from people; we’re not just plucking it from some magical “work from home” tree that’s growing out there somewhere on the Internet. It’s easy to forget the “People” when you sit in your home office all day as you work from home, yet if it weren’t for “People” clicking on links and buying stuff from you, you would not have a business.

And since taking care of people comes long before we can begin to make money, there is another school of thought that we have to consider: Do What’s Right, or Take Care of People. Or as it was stated about 2,000 years ago:

…However you want people to treat you, so treat them… — Matthew 7:12a, NASB

Some things are clearly wrong. It would be wrong to take your money and not deliver a purchased product, for example — that’s pretty obvious. Other areas are not quite so clear, though. Should you use a lead generation service for your marketing email (I don’t think it’s right because people don’t like to receive unsolicited email, regardless of what the Terms of Service say on the web site where they gave up their email. Besides, how many of those opt-in forms even have a link to the web site’s Terms of Service anyway?). And what about pop-up windows (for the record, God and the Bible are silent on the subject… )? People don’t like them, but marketers claim that they increase sales, so should we use them (for the record, Tom is also silent on the subject but reserves the right to judiciously use them in the future…)?

Of course, these aren’t the only issues. What about taking advantage of search engine loopholes to make a quick buck? Quickly creating and selling products to take advantage of a news event or natural disaster? Forced continuity? Just for the record, while I won’t comment on the first two, I most emphatically do NOT recommend Forced Continuity EVER, under ANY circumstances!. And if you do, I hope that each and every one of your subscribers complains to the FTC about your actions. And I hope that link makes it easier to do so!

Thankfully there are a few things we can do to help strike a healthy balance between What Works and What’s Right:

• There’s a large intersection between Doing What Works and Doing What’s Right. In other words, many marketing tactics fall into both areas. These are the techniques that you should be foucsing on.
• If you’re not sure, find yourself a good group of ethical marketers where you can ask. I don’t think you’ll find this on a “free” forum; instead, you should join a paid membership site, like Dennis Becker’s Earn 1K A Day Membership Site (aff.). Even there, you’ll run into people at both ends of the spectrum, but “both ends” will politely and intelligently discuss the issue, and if you’re like me, you’ll see things from a different perspective when it’s all said and done.
• Oftentimes you know what’s right and what’s wrong without asking anybody but are looking for somebody to tell you that “what’s wrong is OK”. Instead of taking responsibility for your actions, you’re looking for an excuse to take the “easy wrong” instead of the “hard right”. Don’t fall into this temptation! Do what’s right, regardless of the cost, because you will eventually pay the price for doing what is wrong (and will reap the rewards for doing what is right).

Let me encourage you to do What Works, but only if it also falls into the What’s Right category. I think it’s the only way to truly build a lasting business.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin. — James 4:13-17, NASB

Boasting is arrogant and evil, which means it’s not the right thing to do. If you know the right thing to do (i.e. not boast arrogantly about the future) and don’t do it, it’s sin.

From my perspective, any sales letter for any product (especially work at home and Internet marketing products) that claim that you can make a certain amount of money from a system is wrong.

Based on this, saying, “I made $279 in four days with this system” is OK as long as you tell all of the factors involved. If you did it with a mailing list of 1,000 people, and I don’t have a list, then I’m not going to be able to duplicate your system, am I? Including all pertinent facts will help people make intelligent choices.

I started thinking about this when the new FTC rules were announced, and when I read this passage yesterday, it really hit home. I don’t even know how much money I’ll make today from my Internet marketing business today (although I have an idea), much less next week, next month, or next year. If I don’t know, then nobody else does, either do they? We can guess, we can project earnings, we can do a lot of stuff — but nobody really knows what the future holds, and anybody who claims that they do is practicing something that God considers evil.

There’s nothing wrong with planning, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with putting your plans in writing and even telling others about them. Saying something like, “I plan on using System XYZ to help me reach my income goal of $2.97 for the year” is great. The above passage talks about “if the Lord wills”, and I think that this is a great practical application of this principle. But saying that I WILL make $2.97 with System XYZ starts to cross the line from planning over to evil.

I therefore recommend that you stay away from this Internet marketing / work from home “evil” of future income claims and simply ignore any product that claims you can use it to earn a specific amount of money. Telling you how much was made with the system in the past is OK as long as all factors are spelled out (and they often aren’t), but making a future claim, according to this passage of scripture, is “evil”. And you don’t really want to base your business on evil, do you? You will never build a business based on integrity if you learn from unscrupulous sources. It’s taken me five years to come to this conclusion; hopefully I can save you some of the trouble that I encountered.

Scarcity. It’s a common tool used in Internet Marketing circles.

• “I’m only selling 500 copies of this ebook before I pull it off the market FOREVER!”
• “The price goes up to a bazillion dollars next week!”
• “I can’t let too many people get their hands on this tactic or it will spoil it for everybody!”

And so forth and so on.

Did you notice the overuse of exclamation points? My copywriting mentors would be horrified by it — but most would not worry about the scarcity tactics. Personally, I think it’s a “cheap marketing trick” that does nothing to build credibility and customer relationships because some marketers really don’t know how to properly use it. As a result, its misuse makes the marketer appear arrogant, unapproachable, and uncaring — when it’s done wrong and without a really good reason (and I don’t think that “increasing conversions” is a good enough reason). Is that what you want for your business?

The bottom line is that the only limitation on a digital product is available hard drive space on which to store the downloaded file. Having said that, I can think of a few instances where scarcity might have a legitimate use:

1. When first launching a product IF there will be an affiliate program. I see no problems with launching at a reduced price that reflects the lack of an affiliate commission. After the brief launch period (say 1-2 weeks or whatever you want to have), open the affiliate program and raise the price.
2. A “special offer” at certain marketing forums, like the Warrior Forum, where the offer has to be one that’s not generally available to the public. You could simply run your “no affiliate commission” offer on these forums. And since these forums are full of marketers looking for good products to promote, if your product is solid, you stand a good chance of recruiting some affiliates for your regular price launch using this method.
3. If the product involves some type of active support or interaction (such as a coaching site), then you may need to limit the number sold so that you can properly give support to your customers. This is actually a very good reason to limit the sale of something, in my opinion.
4. Resale rights for a product. It makes sense to limit the number of licenses sold in this instance so as to not dilute the value for your purchasers. Along the same lines, the price should reflect the limited number of licenses. NOTE: This does not necessarily extend to Private Label Rights (PLR) products! Most people either do nothing with them anyway or try to simply sell them as they receive them, in which case they get what’s coming to them (which is “nothing”). Smart people don’t care about how many copies of PLR are sold because they’ll re-write them anyway before trying to sell them.
5. A “live” class or teleseminar that begins on a certain date and runs for a set period of time. Even in this case, there’s a good chance that the sessions will be recorded and sold later anyway, so don’t feel too bad about passing up the scarcity-based offer.
6. A physical product where only “X” number of copies are available. Even with this, given the relatively high profit margins associated with physical products, it’s not all that difficult to create more copies (but if the market is just about saturated with the product, then it doesn’t make any sense to commission another run of thousands of copies, in which case the scarcity is more than warranted).

I may come back later and add some other examples as I think of them.

I have two points that I want to make here. First, there has to be a legitimate reason for the scarcity. I don’t buy the “tactic dilution” excuse; if the tactic is THAT fragile, then why are you giving it out in the first place? Either that or it’s a search engine “loophole” that will work until the next time Google updates its algorithm, in which case you’re chasing a money-maker instead of building a true business.

Second, wait until you truly need a product before you buy it, even if you miss out on the introductory price. Sure, you might be able to get it for $27 today and may end up paying much more later (let’s use $97 as an example), but if your investment of $97 is quickly returned, putting you into profit, then it is worth it — regardless of the price. So wait until you need it — and can profitably use it — before you buy it. Heck, in some cases, by the time you get around to buying it, the price may be further reduced — or free.

I’m a firm advocate of not buying stuff until you need it. Had I followed that advice myself as I was learning the business, I’d have saved myself a LOT of cash!

So think carefully before you fall for the “Scarcity” tactic (and that’s what it is in many cases — a tactic).

One last thought: You can copyright the EXPRESSION of an idea, but not the idea itself. You can rest assured that even if a product is pulled off the market, somebody else will “re-express” the idea later.. and probably at a cheaper price (or at least enough of the “idea” for you to learn what you need to learn). Products may disappear, but good ideas never die. Besides, I’m also of the opinion that many of these “don’t share this with anybody” ideas are either gimmicks that will go away the next time the search engines update their algorithms or are just being used as another “cheap marketing trick” to convince you to buy. In reality, it’s easy to obtain and learn the methods needed to build a successful business — regardless of whether it’s on the Internet or on Main Street.

Besides, nobody is going to share a truly profitable secret with you when you first walk in off the street… Trust me on this one.

I welcome discussion on this post and welcome your point of view. As I mentioned, this post is merely some “random ramblings” on the topic and it’s quite possible that I’ve overlooked something important that could change my current outlook. But do keep in mind that I care about people, especially my customers, and my philosophy is that I’ll prosper when I help enough other people — and not when I “trick” them into giving me their money — so don’t bother telling me that I’m a (whatever) for doing things this way. Cheap Marketing Tricks are not something that I’m interested in, so if all you care about is squeezing the maximum amount of dollars from your marketing efforts, then please don’t bother. This blog probably isn’t for you…

Once, a long time ago, when I actually listened to my bosses…

When I was young and impressionable…!

I worked for a major (whose name I’ve forgotten) who showed me a system for taking every task you have and putting them in order of priority. It doesn’t matter how many tasks you have, you can figure out with certainty — and quite easily, I might add — which one you should do first, which one should be second, etc.

A few years after that I was getting involved in so many activities that I wasn’t really enjoying any of them. So I used this system to help me figure out which ones I really wanted to do. I simply made a list of my leisure time activities (there were about 20 things that I wanted to do, as I recall), made a commitment to eliminate the bottom 50% before I started the exercise, then completed the exercise. And I kept my promise.

What I discovered was that I didn’t miss doing the activities that I had dropped. Not one bit. On the contrary, I found that the time I saved by eliminating those activities left me more time to do the things I really enjoyed doing.

Here’s how the system works (and if anybody knows the name of this system, PLEASE leave a comment and let me know! Thanks…):

First, take a look at this graphic. It shows the system in action. I’ll explain as we go along…

1. I made a list of all of the things I want to get done and assigned each one an arbitrary number.

2. Next, I created the little matrix in the center of the diagram. I put the numbers down the left side and on top of the columns.

3. I then looked at each intersection and compared the two tasks that are represented by the numbers. Where the two intersecting numbers are the same, I put an “X”. Otherwise, I put the number of the task that I’d like to get done first in the intersection.

As an example, look where the numbers 1 and 2 intersect. In this case, I took Task 1 (Blog more often) and Task 2 (Learn how to code in PHP). Since blogging is more important than learning PHP, I put the number “1″ in that block. I continued this until all of the squares in the matrix were filled.

4. Next, I counted the number of times that I put each number in the matrix.

5. The number that appeared the most is my highest priority task, the second most popular number is my second priority, etc.

You can see my final prioritized task list at the bottom of the graphic.

Go ahead and try this. If you do this honestly, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results and discover that they really do represent a prioritized task list.

I recently re-did this exercise and discovered that marketing information products (what some call “Internet Marketing”) isn’t my highest priority task. In fact, while it’s somewhere in the Top 10, it’s not really all that close to the top. As a result, I am going to work on backing out of my Internet Marketing position — somewhat — and focus on what’s really important to me in 2010, which, surprisingly enough, is blogging and… Something else I’m not going to talk about here.

The reason I’m not totally quitting Internet Marketing is because I’ve made some great contacts over the years and don’t want to sever them, plus I do want to come back to it sometime during the next 12-18 months and develop it as a second income stream — AFTER I complete my current project and get it going well.

Why not try prioritizing your to-do list? Make a list of the things you want to do, commit to doing “x” number of them (and either dropping the rest or resolving to add them, one at a time, as you finish higher priority tasks), then do the exercise? As I did many years ago, you may find that focusing on the tasks you really want to do brings you greater satisfaction than trying to do everything and never accomplishing anything.

I’ll be moving back to the States next year from Germany (hopefully), and as a part of that, I’ll be losing some of the incentives I get paid for living and working overseas. I was wondering what kind of effect this would have on my take home pay.

I set about to figure out all of my deductions: IRS publications, state tax sites… All of it was made simpler when I found this website:

http://www.paycheckcity.com/NetPayCalc/netpaycalculator.asp

You just plug in a few details and it will tell you how much federal, social security, Medicare, and state tax will be deducted from your pay. It’s only an estimate, of course, but it’s pretty close to what I got after almost an hour of manual calculations and “seems reasonable”.

I can get the cost of my other deductions (401(k), medical insurance, etc.) directly from my pay statement and subtract that off the figure that web page gave me.

Since I’ve been talking a bit about money lately I thought I’d talk about this handy tool and include a link to it. I can’t vouch totally for the site (I’ve only looked at it briefly) but it looks to be a fairly decent one.

Not only can you use this if you are moving from one state to another with the same company, but if you want to change jobs, this should give you a good idea of how much money you’ll actually be taking home if you change jobs.

Enjoy!

I’ve been promoting Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula ever since Version 1 came out. I’ve been an owner ever since Version 1. I learned a lot from it and might have even profited from it — but given the new FTC rules about testimonials and the like, I’m not about to tell you how I did with it.

But since I’m still talking about it, that should give you SOME indication of what I think…

Jeff has always made several honest-to-goodness case studies available for Product Launch Formula. In these case studies, his customers talk about how Jeff’s product helped them successfully launch a product and increase their profits. In some cases, the increase has been tremendous. All of the are quite encouraging and show what is possible with a lot of hard work, Jeff Walker’s system, and perhaps just a bit of luck (which you can really create for yourself, in my opinion).

Sadly, Jeff has decided that he doesn’t want to risk being a “case study” for the FTC. He fears that his case studies might be misconstrued as testimonials, and under the new FTC rulings, if you are going to use testimonials where people tell their actual monetary results, you have to tell what the average person will achieve. Jeff claims to not know that (I do; the average person will LOSE the purchase price of the product because they’ll never do anything with it), so he’s decided to pull the case studies on December 1 to help ensure that he stays under the FTC’s radar.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that it’s November 23 today, and if you read this before December 1, you can still get access to Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula case studies. Jeff will ask you for an email address (he’s not a spammer at all; he makes a pretty good living helping other people with their product launches and doesn’t need to send you an email twice a day with an affiliate link in it) and will probably send you a few emails with links to case studies. I also suspect that he’ll make one last offer of Product Launch Formula before December 1, and if you sign up for the case studies using my link and then purchase Product Launch Formula, I will receive an affiliate commission on your sale (and I thank you for using my link; it doesn’t cost you anything extra and is a great way to show your support for my efforts).

But even if you don’t buy, you can watch the case studies, take notes, and learn a LOT that will help you the next time you go to launch a product. And since I suspect that Jeff will be offering Product Launch Formula one more time before December 1, watching him — and saving his emails — will give you another valuable resource the next time you plan a product launch.

In fact, this blog post is an important part of Jeff’s system, and I’ll spell it out for you: He recruits affiliates and joint venture (JV) partners to help him spread the word, and he does so long before the actual product launch. Jeff’s launch may look casual, and Jeff seems like a pretty laid back guy, but trust me: He knows EXACTLY what he is doing, and watching his every move over the next week or so could teach you a lot, even if you don’t purchase the full-blown course. Of course, watching the sequence and seeing everything he does just might convince you that investing your cash in Jeff’s course (and Jeff is considered by many to be THE best when it comes to product launches) could be one of the best things you ever did for your business. I’m extremely happy with my decision to buy “way back when”!

Again, here’s the link:

http://tdbx.com/plf.

P.S. — If you sign up for the case studies and go on to purchase the full product, please send me a copy of your receipt (you can submit it at my Help Desk, ProtectorSupport.com). I’ll reply with my “good” email address and will be more than happy to help answer any questions that Jeff can’t answer (as if there will be any!). I also have some other goodies lying about my hard drive and will be happy to give you a copy (if the license allows for it) if you need something along the lines of PLR or the like.

In my last blog post, I wrote the following:

I’m still waiting for that tax bill to show up (and it will… eventually… somebody WILL pay that price — somebody like me who handles money responsibly and hates the fact that government can legally reach into MY pocket to pay for the irresponsibility of others.

Please allow me to clarify.

Government is good. If you think otherwise, I invite you to move to a place like, say, Somalia, where the people have been suffering for years in large part due to the lack of government. I think you’ll be happy to return to almost any nation with a stable government.

Government pays for police officers, fire fighters, good roads, and stuff like that. In fact, government pays me personally a lot of money. A large portion of my income is derived from a government contract where they pay me to help protect their computer networks. You benefit from that (unless you an enemy of the United States) because it frees up others to do their job of defending our country.

So government, for the most part, does a lot of good.

It just burns me up when companies can get greedy, give mortgages and credit cards to people who shouldn’t have them (and trick the people into lying on applications so they can get the money in the first place), then go running to the government when the whole thing blows up in their face, claiming that The World and Democracy As We Know It will come to a screeching halt if Government doesn’t pay for their mistakes.

There’s just one problem: “Government”, in this case, means Anybody and Everybody Who Pays Taxes. Somebody has to pay the bill, and if a government gets its money by levying taxes, then it’s the taxpayer who will ultimately get the bill.

And of course, in order to pay taxes, you have to have money, so government naturally has to go after those who invest more in themselves and take more risks so they can get more money.

In other words, people like me work hard, take risks, get educated, get rewarded for it — and then are expected to bail out people who did dumb stuff. While your opinion may be different, I didn’t work hard to get to where I am so that I can help the government bail out clueless corporations. I did what I did so that I can reach my goals, and every time taxes are increased because of another bailout or handout, it’s people like me who get shorted.

No, this isn’t a rant about welfare or anything like that. People sometimes fall on hard times through no fault of their own and it’s good that they can get TEMPORARY help (but if you a 5th generation welfare recipient, I have just three words for you: GET A JOB! CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY! OK, that’s more than three, but you get the idea). But welfare was meant to be temporary help, not a career choice, for crying out loud!

In the case of the current crisis, these financial institutions knew EXACTLY what they were doing and were cramming people into mortgages that were way higher than what they could afford on houses that were WAY overpriced and WAY overvalued — and now the government has decided to bail the financial institutions out, leaving people like me who act responsibly to foot the bill. We won’t even talk about the thousands of lives that have been destroyed by people who were coerced and tricked into taking out loans they never should have received… I hope you sleep well at night, Mr. Banker.

But THAT’S what I don’t like about taxes — paying for somebody else’s greed. But pay it I will when the bill arrives (what other choice do I have? I don’t look good in orange!).

Capitalism was “designed” so that only the best companies would survive. If a company suddenly started making bad decisions and were to go bankrupt, Capitalism demands that they go out of business so that another healthier company can step in and take its place, ensuring that everything continues to run as smoothly as possible. While such bankruptcies touch many, why keep these companies in business? If nobody wants to buy a General Motors vehicle, what makes you think that they are going to want to buy one after a bailout? It’s still the same company! Do you think that I’m going to RUNNING to Capital One Bank to open an account after hearing of their plans to charge some people 40% interest on their credit cards? (The answer is “NO”, just in case you can’t follow the rhetoric…).

I’ll be the first to admit that I would not be in the position I am today without the help of the government. I got my skills while I was in the Army. The GI Bill helped pay my way through college. I am grateful for those things, but in return, I have always tried to deliver value in return. I obtained those skills while serving 20 years, 5 months, and 27 days (give or take a few minutes) in the Army. Getting a college degree made me eligible for a promotion at work and assignment to a position that pays much better than I ever dreamed I would have (it also means that I pay more in taxes, but that’s why there’s a GI Bill; it’s an investment, of sorts, for the government). But it was an agreement, we used each other; the goverment invested in me, and I was happy to keep up my end of the agreement.

So I ask this question, Oh Great Government: What value is being returned to our country by the bailout of companies whose corporate motto is either Greed or Incompetence? Answer that question and I’ll feel better about paying for my share of the bailout.

P.S. — While I’m on a roll… The answer to healthcare in the US is to control costs, not mandate insurance! Once you mandate insurance, medical companies can then raise costs, knowing that Americans MUST pay for the increases by law… You’ve just given the medical industry the legal right to reach into our pockets. That’s why I’m against the current health care legislation. If you are going to pass legislation to control the paying side, then pass legislation to control the supplying side, too. Or would that not go over too well with the lobbyists? It’s “We, The People”, not “We, The Lobbyists”!

Gads, I hate it when I start “monologuing”…

My blog isn’t about to turn into a blog about how to live frugally or save money. While living frugally, in general, is a good idea, especially if you live on a limited income (as I have done in the past — and done quite well), I’m at a stage in my life where I’ve decided to live a bit more, shall we say, “largely” — and I don’t want to come across as a hypocrite. I like to spend money!

I’m also having a house built in the western United States that is going to cost just a bit less than what most United States Presidents make in base salary in a year, and while I am certain that I’ll enjoy the house, I don’t think it quite qualifies as “frugal living” (I honestly tried to just buy the lot and put up a double-wide but the local home owners’ association said it had to be gold-plated and building the house was cheaper…). My goal is to help others through this blog, and having me write posts about clipping coupons while living in a house that cost that much wouldn’t be congruent, would it?

So I’ll leave the frugal living part to bloggers like The Frugal Dollar (Hi, Trent!) and Get Rich Slowly (Hi, JD!), both of which I read, enjoy, and think about (and keep in mind that there are many similar blogs; these are just two of my favorites. Also remember that I don’t necessarily agree with everything they write about, but do have a look at them and decide for yourself. These guys really can help you and are worth considering.). While I am going to thoroughly enjoy my new house, I’m still the kind of guy who will buy a 10 pack of apple juice when it’s on sale for $2 and put it in a cooler for car trips. In other words, I see no point in spending money when you don’t really need to, but I also don’t hesitate to spend money when I WANT to.

I see money as a tool. It’s simply something you use to get something else that you want or need for life. And just like a tool, money is made to be USED. I have a nice tool collection (just like I have a decent “money collection”), but those tools aren’t there for looks; I use them to make my life better. In much the same way, you should use your money as a means to attain other goals. Simply collecting money for the sake of collecting money is, in my opinion, greed. And we’ll talk about greed in just a moment (of course, I’ll be focusing on somebody else’s greed!).

And just like I won’t drag out my power screwdriver — or even worse, find the screwdriver bits for my drill — if two twists of a regular old screwdriver will solve the problem, why pay more for something I want or need than I have to? So if $2 will buy my apple juice but I need President Obama’s annual salary to get the house I want, then so be it (and feel free to send it to me, Mr. President… Thanks! ). At least those $2 apple juice sales will leave me LOTS of cash to help pay for the house.

And why do I “need” that much house? I don’t. Even the house is nothing more than a tool that leads me to other goals. I want it because it will give my family a lot of other things we want and need, primarily the lifestyle we seek. I’ll also be using it as a home office (actually TWO home offices; my wife wants one, too), plus we’ll be running a mini-hotel via the basement guest room (OK, we’re moving to Colorado Springs, and from what everybody tells me, you’ll have friends you didn’t even knew existed wanting to come and stay with you for a week or three if you live there… So be it! And “no”, you’re not invited… yet…). We also carefully chose a builder who shares our “prosper while helping” philosophy, so the profit they make on our home will help them to continue to provide valuable homes and help others.So there’s lots that we will demand from our house; it’s a LOT more than just a place to sleep…

I say all this to ensure that I meet my needs for a long, rambling, post that strays from the topic at least a bit (but hopefully it’s better than my last post, which took some REALLY weird twists and turns as I wrote it. I didn’t expect it to end up where it did but decided to leave it “as it was” for some reason. Don’t ask me why!).

So getting back to the topic at hand (which was, I think, the absolutely ridiculous 40% interest rate that Capital One Bank is going to charge some customers, just in time for Merry Christmas, ho-ho-ho! OOPS! I gave you the punchline too soon; I was talking about how I wanted to talk about saving money — no, make that “not letting greedy institutions get YOUR money” — but I didn’t want this to turn into a “Frugal Noodle” type blog… Oh, well, if you’ve been reading this blog lately, you’re used to more plot twists than a Tom Clancy novel…)…

And along those lines (and if you figure out exactly WHAT those lines are, could you leave me a comment so that I’ll know? Thanks…), there is something that I’m going to learn to deal with, and that’s the greed that many banks appear to be practicing. I’m fortunate to be a member of USAA, which, in a way, is a non-profit bank (they return a portion of their profits to their members every year), and if you qualify for membership, I advise you to join (they recently changed their rules; if you have ever served in the US military, you can now join). They, just like other banks, have employees and operating expenses that they must pay, and paying REASONABLE fees is, well, reasonable. I like their services and want them to stay in business for a long time, and I certainly don’t mind paying for good service. However, there are far too many banks that are just, in my opinion, “mean” when it comes to fees and the like.

Take, for instance, this article I read today in the UK’s “Daily Mail” website. This article reports that Capital One has plans to raise some consumers’ credit card rates to 40% — just in time for Christmas. Rumor has it that other banks may follow suit. (Keep in mind that this is a UK website and that it is writing about conditions in the UK. Things may be different in your country, but greed is still greed…).

Another bank (which shall soon lose my account) likes to charge $10 per overdraft. Unlike USAA, which seems to have figured out the fact that I get paid every two weeks and will sometimes hold a debit for a day or three if it’s close to payday, this bank just LOVES to charge $10 per overdraft, plus they like to loan me the money — at interest. Thieves…! But I digress — again (or is it “still”?).

Banks, I propose a different solution: Instead of charging 40% interest, don’t give out credit cards if the recipient is high risk. Or would that cut into your profit margins too much? Why are you loaning money to people who are a high risk to repay? Because you can? Didn’t you learn your lessons from the mortgage lending crisis? DON’T YOU REALIZE THAT YOU ARE NEXT AND CAN DO SOMETHING *NOW* TO HEAD OFF DISASTER BY NOT ALLOWING HIGH RISK INDIVIDUALS TO HAVE CREDIT CARDS?

Oh, silly me! Why worry about eliminating risky credit card accounts that can destroy your bank when the government will bail you out again when the credit card industry crashes like the mortgage industry did? That’s the true lesson that financial institutions all over the world learned from the mortgage crisis! I’m still waiting for that tax bill to show up (and it will… eventually… somebody WILL pay that price — somebody like me who handles money responsibly and hates the fact that government can legally reach into MY pocket to pay for the irresponsibility of others. So banks aren’t really stupid, are they — just “clever”? Although they’d probably prefer that I think of them as stupid… Nice try!).

Solutions? I’ll blog about them here as they come to mind, but for starters…

1. There isn’t a 100% bullet-proof solution. No matter what you do as an individual, financial collapses will still affect you in some way. Higher taxes, fewer choices due to business failures, reduced services… Even if you have zero debt and put all your money into gold, you’ll still feel, at the very least, some secondary effects of this mess. After all, the government can only tax people who make money (hmmm… maybe I’m the “stupid” one?).
2. Read those blogs I linked to earlier in this post, especially if you have a lot of debt. Live frugally. Get out of debt. Pay the price now so that you can live well later (and the “price” really isn’t all that bad if you decide to fully engage yourself and change your thinking).
3. Stop using those credit cards that rip you off. I got tired of the way that the DiscoverCard people kept slapping me with fees and told them where they could put my card and account. Treat me right (like USAA does) and you’ll get my business and make some money off of me. Treat me like dirt and just start slapping fees onto my account while showing zero concern for me and you’ll lose my business. I suggest you follow my lead.
4. Simplify. Get rid of all but one or two credit cards (I currently only have one credit card). Get rid of one at a time. Pay it off, then move to the next. Start with the one where you get the worst treatment (see bullet #2). It’s much easier to manage (and remember to pay) one or two cards per month than it is to manage several.
5. Set up automatic payments so you don’t miss a payment, which would only give the jerks an excuse to legally jack up your interest rate. If you get paid every two weeks, pay a little bit every two weeks, if possible. TIP: If you can, pay at least the minimum on all of your credit cards every two weeks, when you get paid. This will pay them off a LOT faster.
6. If possible and feasable, dump your bank and join a credit union. In general, they are member owned, and while they do have a duty to protect the assets of other members, you’ll generally get better treatment and lower fees than you’d get at a bank. Of course, some banks are “good”, so do your homework before switching (I’m not going to do it for you and you, not I, are responsible for your actions. I’m just a “stuipd” blogger, remember?).
7. Get a mattress you can store your money under. OK, keeping all your cash under a matress probably isn’t a good idea nowadays, but it’s better than running up credit card debt!
8. Look for other ways to not only save money, but to make your money work for you. I’m currently looking for ways to keep at least some of cash liquid (easy to get at) while still getting a better return than the 1% or so that most banks seem to offer nowadays. Ever wonder why you only get 1% interest on your savings when the banks are charging 40% interest? Yeah, me, too!
9. Find other ways to generate income, like a home-based business. I’ve been known to talk about that now and again… In all seriousness, though, do NOT run out and buy a bunch of JUNK that’s not going to teach you anything while running up your credit card debt. Keep reading my blog and I’ll do my best to show you how I’m doing it myself.
10. Finally, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS. Instead of blaming everybody else for your problems, make the decision to claim them as your own. Once you realize that you, and you alone, are responsible for the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, you’ll also realize that you, and you alone, can get you out of the mess. Stop pinning the blame on others and stop waiting for somebody else to bail you out. It ain’t gonna happen, no way, no way… Just assume responsibility and take action to eliminate the problems.

OK, maybe not REAL helpful, but you get the idea. Take responsibility for your life. Stop rewarding companies that see you as nothing more than a way to increase their profits. Don’t let the rich get richer at your expense (but by all means take advantage of them if they can deliver value). Get out of debt. Make Mattress Discounters happy (I wonder if they sell a hollow “Money Mattress”?) Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

Why am I writing about this? I’d like to see all of those greedy banks shrivel up and die because people no longer have debt and no longer need their ripoff services. This blog post could be the start of a revolution — but ONLY if YOU decide to take action on what I’ve written here. And did I mention that you should go to those other blogs I linked to earlier in this post, read what they have to say, and start doing it? Do what they say, get rid of your debt, cut off those greedy banks’ lifeline, and tell others about this blog post so they can tighten the stranglehold just a bit more (and I could use the viral marketing “boost” — and appreciate it… ). If everybody in the world with bad credit were to read this blog post and take action, WE COULD CHANGE THE WORLD! I’d also have to upgrade to a bigger server that could handle the traffic, but that’s the easy part…

I do wish you both peace AND prosperity (which are actually two sides of the same coin).

P.S. — I hope that everything I deliver to you gives you more value than what you give me in return. I want my prosperity to come only because I help YOU prosper.

Copywriter Bob Bly made an interesting and insightful post on his blog regarding what he will — and won’t — do for free (thanks to Terry Dean for pointing it out).

For the most part, I think he makes some great points in this post, the main one being that “time is money”. As I progress further into the development of my online business, I increasingly realize that I have to guard the precious time I have to work on my online business. Time literally is money, and if I want to eventually have a successful online business that will support my lifestyle, I need to guard that time carefully and ensure that every last second of it is used in activities that will produce income.

On the other hand, we (at least “I”) live in a society where people who are constantly doing stuff only if there’s something in it for them is not generally accepted. In particular, the comment about not going out to lunch with people struck me as being a bit wrong. Giving up an hour of billable time for a grilled cheese sandwich? When you eat lunch alone, to whom do you bill that hour? The answer: You Don’t. If you want to earn money during lunch you either skip it or sit at your desk and try to type with greasy fingers as you eat your grilled cheese sandwich. Of course, it’s probably more of a “Lunch 15 Minutes” if you do it this way…

At any rate, the so-called “working lunch” usually isn’t. If you eat at your desk, at best you’re usually surfing the Internet or reading some educational material (couldn’t resist the opportunity to plug one of Randy Cassingham’s sites…). Or if you’re in a meeting, you at least stop working and discussing when you’re eating. This is based on my own experience, but I suspect that it’s pretty common.

My point is that you can do things to minimize your meal time but you really can’t totally eliminate it (OK, perhaps if you have absolute control over your body and can fast for several years at a time?), and when you are eating, you aren’t earning money. So all this talk about not going out to lunch without paying a consulting fee is ludicrous.

For a lot of busy people, eating alone in a nice, quiet place, doing some activity that pleases you, is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, I encourage it. It can be a great way to wind down a bit and relieve a bit of stress. We all need time alone. But to never go out to lunch with somebody else, using the excuse of “billable time”, is a bit silly in my eyes. When I read something like that, it sounds more like an excuse to simply avoid people. If that’s what it is, then let’s be honest and just tell people, “No, I’m not going out to lunch with you because I don’t want to.” No point in getting melodramatic and coming up with excuses like that. Besides, what do you do if the person pulls out their checkbook?

Of course, many others don’t agree with my perspective (which is a good thing; the world would be pretty darn boring if everybody were like me!), and perhaps some day I, too, will likewise guard my time, using mechanisms like this to put up barriers. But after I thought it through, I came up with another reason why some people may be doing this… Let me explain.

Another person I know of who openly admits that they won’t let you take them to lunch is Perry Marshall. While I totally respect Perry and what he has done (and am currently giving him money every month), that does not mean that I agree with everything he does — and this “no consulting fee, no meal” attitude at first came across as rude. And while I don’t know Perry (I did seem him from a distance once at a live event; he didn’t charge me any extra for staring… ) and can’t really tell you his motivation, I did think up a reason why he, and others, might have this attitude.

If Perry (and the others) were to allow me to take him out to lunch without paying a consulting fee, I wouldn’t pound him with business questions (in fact, I’d probably want to know more about the things he does as a follower of Jesus, to be perfectly honest. I get enough of his “business stuff” from other sources). While it might come up in the conversation, to expect him to solve my business problems over pizza and beer just doesn’t sit right with me. I certainly understand his (and others’) desire to protect their source of income and suspect that, just every once in a while, he likes talking about something OTHER than AdSense. There’s nothing wrong with this (and Perry, you do *NOT* strike me as being the greedy kind. I suspect that you probably enjoy a meal talking about everything EXCEPT business every once in a while and are using this to protect your life, not your income… And Bob, you may be the same way?).

So I do agree that the “free lunch” bit to get a free consultation is a bit rude, just as putting up the $720 barrier to a meal with somebody comes across as rude. If this were to happen to me, while I might be happy to answer general questions, I would never “give” somebody a free consultation anyway simply due to the cost and risk involved. Giving actionable advice over spaghetti carbonara (forget grilled cheese!) in my chosen field is ridiculous. However, I love going out with others, just for the opportunity to get to know them a bit better. Then, when the opportunity is right, I can do business with them.

But to simply say “no” unless somebody is willing to pay a consulting fee is really, REALLY rude, if you ask me. Life awaits, and if all you do is sit in your office for 8-12 hours every day, is it really life?

So here’s my policy. For now. I’d love to meet with you for lunch, breakfast, whatever… But only to get to know you, the person, better. Meals are a break for me; I don’t want to “work” during them.

Either that or I’ll have to start charging my wife and kids three times a day…

And on the flip side of things: If you really, REALLY want a consultation, pay for it and get a true hour of advice. Don’t come across as a freeloader by trying to get the same advice at the cost of a meal. The one exception: Some people have local meet-ups and “take a millionaire to lunch” programs where such activity is not only acceptable, it’s expected. It’s OK to do it in this context, but to expect advice from an expert for the price of a meal (which is what many people will suggest that you do) makes you look like a rank amateur instead of a serious business person.

This one goes a little bit against my normal blog post rules because:

1. It is a time sensitive offer.
2. While I own the product, I just now purchased it and have not had time to thoroughly review it.

Having said that, I do know the source — Bishop Anders — and think that this is a good deal.

I’ve been a member of Bishop’s “A” list for some time now. He told his list some time ago that he is shifting his business focus.

Today I received an email from David Vallieres (one of those “best friend I never met” types; I think I’d like him if I met him in person). He told me about Bishop selling off his software business. I went right away and purchased it (yes, Dave, the stuff you outlined in “You Can!” six years ago still works… At least on me… ).

And because I “know and trust” both David and Bishop, I’ve decided to bend my own rules a bit (given the short time that this product will be available in its current form). Since this offer is only good until November 22, 2009, I decided to go ahead and make a blog post about it. Be forewarned that this post contains an affiliate link to the sales page and I’ll earn a commission if you purchase using that link (thanks for your support).

Bishop has written some good software with the goal of getting traffic, and this package contains the compiled version of all 40 programs, along with the source code. There’s also an upsell that I recommend you purchase if you purchase the basic package because it gives you the right to use his sales materials, which will save you a lot of time.

I even recommend that you purchase the package for your own use, if nothing else. I purchased several of the programs in the past (with personal rights only) and found them to be very unique and ingenious. And I paid a lot more than the current asking price for the whole package, which leads me to believe that this is a good deal.

There are a few things to consider before you buy them. I did, and decided that it was still worth the purchase price:

• Some of these programs need to be updated, which means you’ll either have to hire a programmer or do it yourself — not something that most people can do. Eric Holmlund (who did the sales video and is one of the nicest Internet Marketing guys you’ll ever have pleasure of meeting) said that it looks like they were written in C#, if that helps.
• If you sell the programs, you’ll have to offer some type of support.
• Offering support for software can be maddening!
• There is no technical support from the seller for this package. You’re on your own.
• Some of these programs may border on what some consider to be “black hat” tactics. If you are vehemently opposed to Black Hat SEO tactics, then don’t get this package. I personally don’t think I’ll have any problem using them but will ensure that they don’t break the letter — or intent — of the targeted website’s terms first.
• I think that most people would be best off just using them for their own purposes. If that’s going to be the case for you, then don’t get the one time offer / upsell.
• I haven’t used the products I did purchase for some time now and have no idea if they still work. Since you also get the source code and can fix things that don’t work (assuming you either know how to program or can hire somebody who does), I think it’s worth the risk (plus they are selling via ClickBank, and their 56 day refund policy applies).

If you want to learn more about the package or order it, you can do so by clicking the following link:

Click here to learn more about Bishop Anders’ “Getting Out Of The Software Business” farewell sale (my title, not his!).

If you do use that link to order, please submit a ticket with your ClickBank receipt number at my help desk (ProtectorSupport.com). I’m not promising any bonus, but I’ll at least send you an email and we can talk about your purchase (and I’ll try to help you for a month or two if I’m able to do it. Keep in mind that I have a beginner’s knowledge of programming and have never looked at C#. At least you know what you’ll be getting from me!).

For a long time, I was a big fan of Foxit Software’s PDF Reader. I changed my mind once I got my new computer with Windows Vista.

The reason is because Foxit Reader requires you to enter an administrator password whenever you open a PDF document in Windows Vista (I’m running the 64 bit version). This is an issue that Foxit has known about since at least April 2009 and their developers are supposed to be working on a solution (click here for details).

First, this is extremely dangerous (I posted to the thread to point this out) because running Foxit with administrator rights results in an administrative level compromise should a vulnerability in Foxit be discovered and exploited (note that I am not aware of any such vulnerabilities). Therefore I do not recommend that you use any of the work-arounds listed in that thread, nor do I recommend that you disable User Access Controls (UAC) in Vista. Yes, UAC is extremely annoying, but it does offer some protection provided you don’t just allow every program to run as administrator.

So since I’m tired of entering a password every time I open a PDF document — and I’m still not willing to install Adobe’s bloated reader software on my computer! — I’ve switched to Sumatra PDF Viewer for now. It’s portable (I actually use it on my Portable Apps thumb drive) and it has not yet asked me for an admin password to open a PDF document.

I do hope that Foxit can address and fix this issue soon, but until then, I cannot think of any reason to recommend an end-user software product that needs to be run in administrator mode, especially when alternatives are available.

While doing some WordPress research, I visited the WordPress.com website. On the front page, a post was featured that basically said that naming a holiday after Christopher Columbus didn’t really make much sense. I agree with the author’s arguments.

I also don’t think it’s a good idea to just “complain”, so I’d like to propose that we give the holiday a new name: Iveta Day, in honor of my wife.

My wife’s birthday was yesterday (October 11). She did have a party, but instead of asking guests to bring her a present, she asked them to bring cash that she could donate to Operation Smile, a children’s charity treating facial deformities such as cleft lips and cleft palates all around the world. She got more than enough cash to help pay for one child to have the surgery (according to their web site, you can finance surgery for a child for as little as $240).

So let’s name it Iveta Day and celebrate it by giving to your favorite charity. If you don’t have cash, no problem; just find a local charity and volunteer your time. Instead of a holiday “honoring” the desire of greedy nobility to conquer new worlds, enslave their native people, and strip their lands of their wealth and natural resources, we would have the perfect opportunity to help those who truly need the help.

Plus we still get a day off.

And I’ll never have to buy another birthday present…?

If your Colorado Springs area company has need of an experienced certified computer security professional with both technical (SANS/GIAC GCIA) and managerial (CISSP, ITIL V3 Foundations) certifications, I’d like to talk to you informally when I’m in Colorado Springs next week. While almost all of my experience is in government work, I do understand that businesses need to make money and serve customers and would like to talk to you to see if there’s some way I can help you profitably meet your computer security goals.

I have experience in running a security program, desktop security, incident detection and response, and other areas.

If you’d like to talk to me, please leave a comment below. I won’t approve the comment but will contact you next week (29 Sep – 5 Oct 2009) if you leave a comment with contact info.

Thanks!

An interesting thought occurred to me today and I’d like to share it with you. I am convinced that tithing — giving 10% of your income to promote the gospel (and not blindly giving to some denomination — and there’s much more to the gospel than being forgiven!) — is a good thing to do. But is there more to it than just that? I think there is.

There are 168 hours in a week. If you take 10% of the time you have in a week — which would be a tithe of your time — you would have 16.8 hours. That’s about the amount of time that an average person is awake every day (that leaves 7 hours and 12 minutes for sleep, which is close to what I personally do every night).

And doesn’t God want us to set aside one day a week to rest and worship? A Sabbath, a Holy Day? Call it what you want to call it, but it seems to me that observing a Sabbath every week is like tithing your time to God. And just like any other giving, God will bless you when you give this time to Him.

In my case, God almost “demands” that time once a week (it doesn’t always happen on Sunday for me due to my work schedule). The reward, though, is worth it, because I feel as if I accomplish more the other six days than I would if I worked seven straight days.

So how about it? Why not try giving a tithe of your time — a Sabbath, a Holy Day, whatever you want to call it — and see what God gives you in return? And if you try it and receive abundant blessings, would you please leave a comment and share your experience with others? Thanks!

Why does Hewlitt Packard insist on showing balloon tips on my computer monitor every time my printer burps? Does it think that I don’t know when I’ve turned off my printer and it’s not available? Do they think that I don’t know that ink needs to dry when I’m printing something on both sides?

HP, give me the option of turning off balloon tips for my HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One Printer. Please. It’s a nice printer, but I don’t need idiotic balloon tips.

And your “Contact Tech Support” form? I don’t remember when I bought the thing and I’m not about to spend five minutes twisting and turning the printer just to get the serial number. You have created an effective barrier between yourself and your customers with your contact form.

So you deserve this negative blog post for not making it easy for your customers to contact you with things they’d like to see fixed.

But trust me: This is something that a lot of people would like to see fixed. And if you don’t trust me, just search Google for “hp printer disable balloon tips” while keeping in mind that not many people have the luxury of being able to post their frustrations on their blog… Thanks.

I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.
–II Timothy 4:7, NASB

If you have been a regular reader of this blog, I apologize for the missing posts. I’ve decided to once again commit "blogicide" because I want to start over and take this blog — as well as my business — in a new direction. Please take a moment to read this post and understand why I did what I did. If you don’t like it, I certainly understand, and wish you every success as you move forward in life.

I guess I’ve always wanted my own business. I had a paper route as a child and remember selling candy to neighbor children with some of my friends (plus the occasional pack of fireworks that one of my friend’s father would bring back from his trips to the southern United States, where fireworks are legal… Sure hope the statue of limitations has expired! ). I got into a very well-known multi level marketing (MLM) business for a while back in the 80s. I even quit a good job as a computer security geek, moved halfway around the world, and took a job selling used cars to improve my sales ability (that bombed quite noisily; I was told many times that I was too honest with my customers — or at least the few that I did have!).

It was just before the used car salesman part of my life that I first discovered online business. Perhaps it was desperation, perhaps it was not knowing any better, but I tried lots of stuff that, looking back, never did sit right with me. I’m not saying that I did anything illegal (besides, I’m positive that THAT statue of limitations has NOT expired! ), but some of the things really did bother me:

• Hype testimonials.
• Writing blog posts and articles about stuff without revealing affiliate relationships.
• Trying stuff I wouldn’t tell my mother about because “everybody else was doing it”.

On that last point, I can still hear my mother saying, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off, too?” Bless her heart…

NO, I WOULD NOT!

I’ve also come to realize that the answers to how I want to run my business and my life can be found in the Bible, God’s inspired word to us.

I’m not religious. I do consider myself to be spiritual, however, and while I think that lots of the Bible’s origins are questionable and I really do wonder if all of it is “inspired”, I’ve decided to leave those doubts behind. I’ve decided to accept it as containing God’s inspired word that can help me navigate my way through this life and prepare me for the life to come:

…seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us His own glory and excellence.
–II Peter 1:3, NASB

In my opinion, “everything pertaining to life” talks about our time on this planet, and “every pertaining to godliness” talks about our life after we transition through death. Doing my best to follow God is not only important for this life; it will also prepare me for life after death.

This has been extremely liberating for me. It provides the framework and guidance I need to be successful, yet at the same time provides for a tremendous amount of freedom (especially when you decide that you are NOT religious and can “fire” a teacher at any time who wants to take away my God-given freedom and try to enslave me to some religious system. I am responsible and accountable for everything I do — and don’t do — not some pastor, priest, or religious guy).

But back to that verse at the top… “Fighting a good fight”. That’s talking about fighting a fair fight and applies to whatever you do. Fight hard, take advantage of every opportunity given to you, but make it a fair fight. Don’t cheat. Don’t do stuff you wouldn’t want to tell your mother (or your God) about. Obey the law, even when you don’t like it. If the government wants you to reveal affiliate relationships and not make up income or performance claims, then listen to them. That sort of thing.

Be ethical. Do the right thing. Respect intellectual property laws. Pay for stuff when it will help you (and request a refund when it’s junk. EVERY TIME!). Don’t promote stuff simply because some big name guru made it. Truly help people. Put others first. Find ways to help them. Give, and test the natural law of giving and see how God gives back to you.

So this blog is gone, and a couple of others aren’t far behind. I did leave a few posts because I recently linked to them and/or I like them and wanted them to stay.

If you want some of my other blogs…

My Raw Foods Blog
Business Action Steps (my main business blog)
The Business Protector (business protection and continuity)
Simple Security Tips (general security tips for everybody)
Parenting 25 (my sadly neglected parenting experience blog)

And one that will come soon that I’m going to be devoting to stuff that I’ve found useful through the years that doesn’t really fit anywhere else:

Ahead Together

Fight good.

I just got a “thank you” note from Dr. Mani regarding the blog post I made for his book launch. He won’t know exactly how much money was raised until Amazon pays him his share of the profits, but it looks like the launch will pay for at least two surgeries for children in need.

Thanks to everybody who took a moment to look at the book, and a special “thanks” if you purchased a copy. Of course, it’s not too late to purchase the book (the link is in the post a couple down from this one).

I asked you to consider praying for my friend Barb in a recent post. I just wanted to post a short update to thank those of you who did pray for her and would like to encourage you to continue praying for her (or ask you to start praying for her if you have not yet started).

She is starting to respond and make some progress. She is now in a regular hospital room and was able to walk a bit yesterday with the help of a walker. She also got some time with her children and is starting to talk more and even read a bit. Although she still gets tired easily, she is showing measurable improvement every day.

Of course, she’s not “out of the woods” yet; there’s a long way to go, and eventually her cancer will get the better of her. My personal prayer is that she’ll “be there” for her children and husband for a long time to come and that she’ll have a high quality of life. So please continue to pray for Barbie. Thanks.

In closing, I’d like to share with you a message direct from Barb, which Dan sent to his Twitter followers. When Dan asked her what she would like to share via Twitter, here is what she had to say:

I never have been so honored to be prayed for by so many people across the world.

It shouldn’t surprise you, Barb; you’ve been planting the seed for this harvest for many years.

Two quick requests in this blog post, and I hope you’ll consider doing both of them. One is to pray for a sick friend and her family; the other is to consider buying an inexpensive book that’s written by a friend of mine in India who has been directly involved in saving the lives of 47 children (and your purchase can help him save the lives of even more children).

First, the prayer. Barb and Dan are good friends of mine. They were youth pastors at a church I attended several years ago, back when my older daughters were teenagers. I can’t speak highly enough of them, not only for their faith (and not their religion), but also for the friendship, support, and love they showed to me through a period of tremendous transition and change. I honestly don’t know how I would have handled being a single parent without their influence and encouragement.

Barbie has a very bad cancer — glioblastoma multifore. It’s terminal; there’s no other way to really say it. The only real question is how long she’ll survive and what quality of life she’ll have while she’s still with us. I’m praying for a LONG time before she departs and for a very good quality of life. Dan and Barb have two small children, and considering everything that Barb has given to hundreds of people through the years, I want her to be around to give to her children. And I’ve never seen anybody who loves his wife as much as Dan loves Barb, and I want that example to shine on this planet for a long time to come. It’s that simple.

So please take a moment to pray for Barb after you take a moment to consider HOW you should pray for Barb. Pray as the Spirit leads you. Healing? That’s fine. Survival for several years? That’s fine, too. And while you’re at it, please pray for Dan; he’s the one who has to work with the children, take care of Barb, and minister to a bunch of soldiers and airmen in Anchorage, Alaska. And the children are also facing tremendous challenges, so a prayer for them would also be great (my two small children are praying for them daily; perhaps your children would pray for their children?).

Now the next matter: Dr. Mani (I’d spell his last name but would get it wrong if I didn’t look it up). Dr. Mani is a heart surgeon in Chennai, India. He’s also an Internet marketer and has written a book about how to build a successful online business. You can learn more about it here:

http://ezinemarketingcenter.com/book/twr/launch.htm

I want you to buy that book for two reasons: First, for yourself. You might learn something in that book that could help you make a few extra dollars a month and take some of the strain off your budget. Dr. Mani doesn’t sell “hype”; he’s one of the most down to earth people I’ve encountered in this business. What he has learned (and put into this book) has the possibility to really make a difference in your life. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I don’t say such words lightly.

The other reason I want you to buy this book (which costs less than $20) is because all the money he makes from this book will be given to his charitable foundation, which performs open heart surgery for children who could not otherwise afford it. Dr. Mani works tirelessly to arrange these operations and to have them performed with donated labor and materials. He’s done wonders in this area, but it still takes about $2,500 to perform surgery on one child.

For many of us, that’s not much. $20 is even less, and when you buy his book, it helps move one child (and that child’s parents) all that much closer to life-giving surgery.

Will you do it? Will you at least consider buying it?

Thanks.

Click here to get started (the link will take you to Dr. Mani’s website, where you can learn more about the book, Dr. Mani’s work, and order the book from Amazon):

http://ezinemarketingcenter.com/book/twr/launch.htm

Thanks for your help. It is greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, Clickcha, which I mentioned in my last blog post, wasn’t working quite like I expected it to. Since I installed it, there’s been no slowdown in the amount of spam going into my Akismet queue (over 300 spam messages have hit my queue). Sure, it’s going into my Akismet queue — no problems there — but I have to ask “Why”? After doing a bit of research, I don’t think it’s Clickcha’s fault, so I’ll make a few adjustments and continue to test.

I still think that Clickcha is a great, unobtrusive system for reducing spam comments — much better than trying to read some distorted CAPTCHA image! I did get one weird comment that made it to my moderation queue, but I guess you’ll always have those people who will waste their time actually visiting blogs and entering weird / generic comments in hopes that they’ll get a link back to their website. Doesn’t work here, boys and girls… Only relevant, “intelligent” comments get approved.

But getting back to that Akismet queue…

I did all sorts of things, to include allowing my computer security geek side to play with the Clickcha system while capturing packet data with Wireshark. Without getting into a detailed discussion, it’s a pretty sophisticated system that, in my opinion, seems to be difficult to beat by a machine or bot; I think it would require a human to defeat it. You only get one chance to answer a particular puzzle / challenge; if you get that one wrong, you are given a different challenge that has a different answer. And from looking at the data being passed between the web server, the Clickcha server, and the user’s web browser, I think they’re doing a pretty good job of keeping things unique (I’ll leave it at that; I’m not going to spoon feed the script kiddies by telling them what’s going on. Besides, I have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes at the Clickcha server anyway, so my knowledge of the system is incomplete, regardless of how deeply I analyze packet data).

Lots of comment spam comes from various automated software programs and “bots”. I’m pretty sure that some of them will present any CAPTCHA images encountered to the human at the other end of the ‘bot so that the human can enter the correct answer. Have they already made adjustments for Clickcha? Perhaps. Has somebody already come up with an automated way to defeat the Clickcha system? While that’s always a possibility, between my common sense and what I know about how Clickcha works, I don’t think that this is the case. Instead, I simply think that Clickcha isn’t a factor for these ‘bots. I tried to find some ‘bot software to look at it, but the people who are using it are, for the most part, clever enough to know how to keep those sales pages out of the search engine listings, so I didn’t have any success.

In the final analysis, I think it’s automated comments from ‘bots that are causing the problem and Clickcha is not designed to stand in their way (which is not a defect or “fault” of the plugin). To test my theory, I’m going to install the WP Spam-Free Anti-Spam Plugin, which promises to block automated comment spam. By doing this, I’ll get the answer to the Clickcha question, which I’m pretty sure will be the answer I’m looking for: Clickcha works just fine for “live” comments, but you need a bit more to prevent those pesky ‘bots.

Let’s see what happens.

A belated “thank you” goes out to Frank Haywood for posting about Clickcha. Frank runs a great blog, makes some great products that are actually useful, etc. Take a moment to check out his blog — after you’re done here, of course (and don’t forget to post your comments, questions, and opinions before you leave!).

UPDATE: The creators of WP-SpamFree recommend that you disable any other plugins, so I’ve temporarily disabled Clickcha… They also claim that Akismet isn’t needed, so what the heck; I’m also going to disable it for 24 hours to see what happens! If I don’t post for a few days, it may be due to the need to delete a few hundred spam comments…

I constantly seem to have problems connecting to the Warrior Forum. In my opinion, it is one of the top websites and forums for Internet Marketers to hang out, learn, contribute, and even make money online. And I want to be there.

The problem is that I constantly receive “server too busy” errors — or even worse, I get redirected to Google.

I’ve heard all of the people who say, “You have spyware on your computer.” That doesn’t apply here. I’m a certified computer security professional and know how to detect and deal with all types of malware and viruses. In short, my computer is clean, so that is not the problem.

So I decided to handle the issue in a different way. I used my computer security knowledge and a tool called Wireshark to analyze the issue. Among other things, Wireshark will capture all traffic crossing a network interface on your computer. I can then use my skillset to analyze the traffic and (hopefully) come up with some answers.

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a Warrior Forum “bash”. Like any place on the Internet, it has its good points and its bad points. I do get frustrated with the place at times — even when I can connect… — but I’m one of the people who thinks that the good far outweighs the bad. I want to participate and contribute, but I can’t — and neither can I find answers to the issue on the Internet. I created this blog post in hopes of helping others who experience the same issue.

In fact, as I write this, I haven’t even captured that data yet to analyze. I really have no idea what I’ll find when I analyze it. I’m simply trying to troubleshoot a problem using the professional tools I have at my disposal.

‘Nuff said. Let’s proceed…

Here’s what I’m going to do:

• Go to the home page.
• Log in.
• Click on notifications, then go to verify a friend request.
• Look up one of the posts that the person made to refresh my memory (I don’t recognize the name).

The first time I did the last step, I got a blank page; the second time, I got redirected to Google. So I’m going to fire up Wireshark, put it in Capture mode, then enter the URL a few times to see what happens. I’ll then analyze the output and report my findings, if any.

I also looked up the true IP address for the Warrior Forum (so that I could pick out that IP in the captured data; Wireshark captures EVERYTHING and you need to be able to pick out what you really want from the rest of the junk crossing your network), then ran a few more tests. While some things jumped out at me, I’m not going to mention them because it would be pure speculation on my part since I’m not familiar with how things are really set up (but it did raise additional questions — questions I’ll be happy to discuss with Mr. Says, the owner of the site — if he so desires).

NOTE: If you want to play with Wireshark at home, you’ll need to run it as an administrator or you won’t be able to control you network interfaces — and won’t be able to capture packets.

See you in a few minutes!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

OK, all went well until I clicked to view the “Friend Request” link. At that point, I was sent to the “Server is too busy” page. I refreshed and got the proper page the second time.

When I clicked on the link to view the requestor’s profile, I got a blank page the first time. Refreshing the page again got me the result I wanted (or “didn’t” want) — a redirect to Google. I then turned off the capture and started analyzing, looking for the proverbial “smoking gun”…

But before we get to that, I’d like to add that, for whatever reason, my web browser thought that the TCP (transmission control protocol) session was complete and that all expected data had been received from the server when I got the blank page. This means that the server intentionally served me the blank page. Had the TCP connection timed out (i.e ran out of time to receive all of the data that was supposed to be on the page), I would have seen a different error message. In other words, what I saw in my web browser was sent to it, by design, from the Warrior Forum server. It never served me the proper page in the first place.

Again, “why”?

Getting back to the “smoking gun” — I found this in the captured data (and I have the packet data / PCAP file to prove this). When I attempted to get the profile a second time, I was redirected to Google via a 302 (temporarily moved) redirect. Here is the captured network traffic:

———————————————————-

GET /members/membername.html HTTP/1.1 < == Actual member name obfuscated for privacy
Accept: */*
Referer: http://www.warriorforum.com/profile.php?do=buddylist
Accept-Language: en-us
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: www.warriorforum.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: redacted

HTTP/1.1 302 Found < === A 302 (Temporary) redirect.
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:34:36 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) PHP/5.2.6 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.6
Cache-Control: private
Pragma: private
X-UA-Compatible: IE=7
Location: http://www.google.com < === This is the destination for the redirect
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

———————————————————-

So this behavior is coded into the Warrior Forum’s web site.

The question, of course, is, “Why”?

But wait: It gets even more bizzare. I thought that I’d simply delete the cookie from my Internet Explorer hash, thus killing the session. I haven’t noticed these problems when I’m not logged in and wanted to test my theory.

However, there is no cookie to delete! In fact, nothing from my Warrior Forum session has been cached (except for the “favicon.ico” file), yet many of the responses from the server for page requests indicate that the files are cached (because I got “Not Changed” messages when I went to pages that re-used graphics and scripts).

Very interesting behavior. I have no idea why this happened (I used IE8 for this test so that I could “snoop” into the cache — but it didn’t work, and I’m not about to spend time figuring out why. If anybody knows the reason, could you please leave a comment? Thanks…).

So the bottom line is that the redirects are coming from the Warrior Forum server and appear to be by design.

Quite disappointing.

Everything I have said in here comes from my analysis of actual network traffic that I captured on my own computer and were the results of my own analysis. I am certified in intrusion detection (the GIAC GCIA, a certification that is “heavy” on network traffic inspection and analysis, analyst number 4444).

I do confess to having a bit of bias coming into this analysis because I was hoping to find a “smoking gun” (and appear to have found one). Then again, I normally do not look into things that don’t have a problem, so everything I investigate has a reason behind it. Nevertheless, I stand by my conclusion that there is a mechanism on the Warrior Forum site that temporarily redirects people to Google under conditions unknown to me. I do not know if this is intentional or if the server has been modified in an unauthorized manner to do this (in other words, it may have been hacked or a disgruntled insider may have sabotaged something. Again, pure speculation that only a proper forensic analysis of the server could even begin to resolve).

The packets don’t lie, and I hope that anybody who works with the Warrior Forum database and code (and would therefore know exactly what’s going on) might be able (permission-wise) and willing to leave definitive comments about the issue (and I’m more than willing to work with you, Mr. Says, to try to fix the problem. You can contact me via my profile page at the Warrior Forum — if it loads for you… ).

In closing, I want to mention that I encourage discussion and comments on this — but please stick to facts. I say this because I won’t approve any “Warrior Forum Bashing” comments (frustration is probably OK as long as it doesn’t get personal. Heck, I’m frustrated, which is why I wrote this post!). Go whine somewhere else.

I like the Warrior Forum and love the people that make it happen, from the owner to the moderators to the people who make the server too busy for me to use the site (hopefully this includes YOU if you have any type of online business presence at all). It’s a great place with great people, and if you want to bash the place, I recommend that you just forget about them and find some other constructive place to hang out. Hatred only destroys your ability to create and improve your lot in life because you spend your time thinking about that instead of thinking about creating and building. My motivation is simply to be able to access the Warrior Forum so that I can contribute and grow and help — and “create and improve my lot in life”.

Thanks,
Tom

As you may know, I keep a blog about my efforts to transform my lifestyle to one of nothing but low fat raw foods. It hasn’t been easy. I made it to the five month mark last year but reverted. I’m slowly working my way back to it now and hope to be well on my way soon.

As a part of that effort, I’m an avid consumer of information, just like you (I hope you don’t read this blog for the bad jokes and corny puns!). A recent research session led me to a site about Natural Health. The site’s editor has an article there about The 7 Principles of Mindful Wealth and it really hit home (that’s a direct link; nothing "affiliate" about it).

I think I agree with 99% of what he says there. Combine that with some recent things I’ve heard from Perry Marshall about how trying to build a business that targets the work at home and Internet Marketing market is a sucker’s game and might even be one degree short of being a pyramid scheme, that particular essay hit home.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how I want my business to look like recently. I’ve fallen into some bad habits that I need to get rid of and have followed some advice that, looking back, may not have been the best advice to follow. Yes, it’s business, but does it have to be cut throat? Sure, my competitors are doing it, but if I don’t do it, can I figure out a way to make my business survive until my customers figure out that I’m different?

I hope so.

So once again I go back to square one (OK, maybe square two; I have learned some good things from some good people and it would be silly, if not impossible, to completely ignore what I’ve learned). But that’s OK; between Perry Marshall and the 7 Principles, I think I’m going to really like what comes out the other end. Hopefully you will, too.

So pardon me if random blog posts start disappearing… again… But some of them reflect a legacy that’s not really in line with who I am and who I want to be. Thanks for understanding, as always. There’s no reason why you can’t grow personally as your business grows. In my case, I’m heading back closer to who I really am anyway.

And I’d love to hear your comments.

My old blog is gone.

There’s a reason for that. But first, the “what”; I’ve committed Blogicide. I’ve completely killed my old blog.

If you want to do the same to your own WordPress blog, simply go into your cPanel, select “MySQL Databases”, click on the “PHP MyAdmin” link at the bottom of that page, select the database that contains your WordPress blog, then click on the “Empty” icon (second one from the right) in the “Actions” section. Do this for the “wp_comments” and “wp_posts” tables. Do so at your own risk, however; after all, this is blogicide and you’ll never see your posts again (PHP MyAdmin is a powerful tool).

And now, the “why”. Some things have been happening this past week or two and I decided that I didn’t like the direction this blog has been going. Turns out the reason I didn’t like the direction that this blog was going was because I didn’t like the direction that I was taking my business.

But some things have happened over the past week or so — good things. I know where I want to go for the next several months and have discovered something that has been under my nose for two years, yet I never really appreciated it. I do now and plan on using it to the max.

And it has something to do with the number 32 and a badge (the other 31 will know what I am talking about).

So…

“The Blog Is Dead — Long Live The Blog!”

Isn’t blogicide wonderful?