Author Archives: Erik von Werlhof

Keep Your Other Half In The Loop

Posted on by
Reply

For those of you who are pursuing success in online business, it is essential that you keep your significant other informed about what you are doing.

The necessity for this came to light recently when my wife made it plainly obvious that she had no clue or idea about what I was up to when it came to my Internet ventures.  When she also made similar mention about knowing what my previous two business experiences consisted of, I decided to lay everything out for her so that she could see what it was I was up to.  Now up until this point, I was of the mindset that anything that did not fall into the realm of a regular, secure, day in and day out job was too risky and frivolous to get involved with.

So during our lengthy conversation that day, I made it known as to what my hopes and aspirations are as an entrepeneur.  I explained the various methods for achieving the desired results and at the end I sensed she appreciated me taking the time to share this information with her.  When everything was all said and done, I felt that she still was not at the same understanding that I consider myself to be but she was respecting my wishes to try out something new and out of the ordinary.

This left me feeling more at ease with myself and relieved that I was able to get all of this out in the open.  I felt a bit silly for not having done this sooner and realized that my anxiety over the whole matter was really unnecessary.   It went along with the adage that fear stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. So as you progress in your quest for online success, don’t be afraid of what gets in your way but rather find away how to overcome the obstacles that present themselves.

Finally, if you are blessed enough to have someone special to share your life with, make sure that you are including what it is that you do as an entrepeneur as well.  This person may very well end up being your best business partner!

Make It Happen!

Enhanced by Zemanta

If you are considering getting a Master's Degree in teaching……………..

Posted on by
Reply

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of 2tor. All opinions are 100% mine.

Why not become a graduate of USC (University of Southern California) as well?  Better yet, you won’t even have to visit the campus!  The USC Rossier School of Education is providing educators and those considering a career in teaching the opportunity of earning a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from a leading university.  This program allows you to incorporate the use of modern information technology so you can enjoy the ability to pursue your degree online.  Face it, this is a huge benefit!  For the modern professional who also has personal commitments,  career advancement can pose a formidable challenge.
This groundbreaking online learning program allows you to enjoy an interactive online learning environment and also offers tuition reimbursement and scholarships.  In addition, you will get to interact with USC faculty that have established themselves as leaders in modern education.  Not only that, you will have access to all the privileges and entitlements that students who are attending campus full time enjoy.  Think about it, who would not want to have a diploma from a leading university like USC hanging on their wall?
So in addition to being in a career field vital to our nation’s future as well as putting online technology to your advantage, you get to top it off with a dash of prestige as well!  Go to the link below to learn more about this leading edge study program for the educators of today and tomorrow.

Visit Sponsor's Site

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Big Apple is asking, "You Want a Piece of Me!!??"

Posted on by
Reply
New York City skyline with Empire State Building
Image by meironke via Flickr

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bid On The City. All opinions are 100% mine.

That’s right!  We are talking NYC as in New York City!!  Here is your chance to own a piece of the pie!  We are talking a chance for you to buy property in the Manhattan and Westchester areas of one of the greatest cities on the planet.  What’s available?  Apartments, condos, co-ops, residential and commercial properties can all be yours and you can start with a bid of just $1!   After reviewing this site I saw myself in the apartment listed at 247 W 46th looking through my spacious window at the view of the hustle and bustle down below.  My guess is that the lucky buyer of that piece of real estate is going to get it at a bargain of $675K and the condo on 513 W 135th is going to get the keys to that little palace for $162K.  As for myself, I would bid $640K and $138K (if I had it) on each but yes, of course I would start the ball rolling with $1.  But there’s more!  Try out your bidding skills and if you guess right on 10 of these properties in a row, $100,000 is yours to keep.  To learn more about the rules, go to www.bidonthecity.com.

The next bidding event is set to take place on December 11, 2010 so there is plenty of time to register and find out all you need to know on these choice properties that can be yours.  Psst, while you are there, take a look to see what might also be out in the Hamptons just in case you are in the mood to expand your horizons.  Good Luck and may the winning bid be yours!

the city

Visit Sponsor's Site

p.s.  If you are not quite ready for making a property purchase and need a good source of info on how to proceed; go to www.blog.doorfly.com to get a great start on learning how to pursue what’s right for you.

Enhanced by Zemanta

It all boils down to this…..

Posted on by
Reply

After reading alllllllllllllllllllllllll the blog posts that give marketing advice on alllllllllllllllll those topics, after buying allllllllllllllllll the courses and instructional material, after getting allllllllllllll the software and related what-not available on that promises to help you get more traffic, increase profits or whatever, after alllllllllllll the time spent networking, there are still a few things you need to make sure that you have a chance for success at the world of online marketing. They are providing value to your customers, having something to offer your customers and promoting what it is that you have to offer. Without this, things will be pretty much at a standstill until you do.

Earlier this year I attended a conference in Las Vegas and the featured speaker said something to the effect that you have to throw your plate of noodles up against the wall.   Some of them may stick, the majority may not.   But at least You need to take what it is that you have and put it out to the “universe” in order for a chance to take place that it will be received.   In other words, no one will know what it is that you have until you let them know what you are offering.

Now granted, it is prudent to learn to do things in a fashion that will get you the best results for your effort and you also want to be efficient at what you do.   I have always felt that the more you do something combined with incorporating the learning process in search of ways to do things better will eventually get you the results or outcome that you are looking for.   In one of the networks I belong to, someone submitted a post asking for advice on which of two courses that were mentioned would be better.   Another member responded to the effect that he should stop buying courses and just begin his marketing efforts. Unless there is some implementation (you can call it “taking action”) taking place, there won’t be an outcome.

So after you have spent whatever amount of time on reading, consulting, networking or studying that you feel is necessary to at least get things moving in the right direction, meaning that you have something to offer and you know how to promote it, stop right then and there and start marketing.   If you are currently just starting out from scratch and don’t know where to begin, take a look at my site www.taoofonlinemarketing.com.   I set it up with the intent of illustrating an easy approach to finding out what it needed to get started with Internet marketing.  You will be the final judge to see whether or not it works for you.  Take the time as you progress to evaluate your actions and see what it is you need to differently. If you make any mistakes (I have made plenty!), be sure to learn from them and move to doing things better from that point forward.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

SPOT marks your spot!

Posted on by
Reply

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of SPOT. All opinions are 100% mine.

For those of you on the go, as in go where hardly anyone else goes, The SPOT satellite GPS Messenger is something you don’t want to be without.

The SPOT Satellite GPS messenger provides a vital line of communication with friends and family when you want it, and emergency assistance when you need it.  With the push of a button, you put 100% satellite technology to use for you that practically works anywhere in the world and you won’t have to worry about being able to use your cell phone.  Having the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger is something that all avid campers, hikers, outdoor adventurers, etc. will be able to put to optimum use.
If you buy the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger right now for the holiday season, you receive a bonus adventure kit worth $50.  The kit comes with a 15% off coupon for SPOT Basic Service, a SPOT flotation case, micro LED flashlight, safety tips bandana, lanyard, safety whistle and a carabineer keychain.  SPOT Satellite GPS messenger

Visit Sponsor's Site

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

"Blogging Emergency, Blogging Emergency"!

Posted on by
Reply

Oh my goodness!   Do I have a humdinger of a post for you!  Some of you may say ” Awww, that’s nothin! An easy fix”! But for those who would not have thought of this, you may thank me later.   What happened to me earlier this evening was that I had just finished installing a new blog on one of my domains (www.taoofonlinemarketing.com) and I decided I would log in and start making some modifications and additions.  Well……….the password was not working.   To make matters worse, when I tried to have a reset sent to my email, the email was not picking it up.

What to do? What to do?   So I called GoDaddy.com and they recommended that I try to access the blog database (via PhpMyadmin) and attempt to find the password.   The representative said that he would not be able to show me how to do this and I would have to refer to a WordPress forum.   What I ended up doing was typing “how to access a WordPress password from the database” in Google and came up with a very handy reference page.    This showed me how to access the proper location of the database and then I found out the password itself was encrypted (it was described as an “MD5 hash”) so I had to learn how to transfer a new password into the MD5 hash format but that proved to be very easy.   The following links below will give you access to the pages that I got my guidance from so that I could solve my predicament.

Reset a WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin | Devlounge

Free online md5 hash calculator based on php script

So once I was done making the necessary changes, I tested everything and things were working just fine!   As for why the original confirmation link did not go to my email address, I have no answer.   Hopefully this article will prove of use should you ever come across a situation such as this.   Being as how a blog can be a very necessary part of one’s online business, being able to get the blog restored is of vital importance.


Keep Your Affiliate Links Safe! (well, kinda)

Posted on by
Reply

Something that I have been focusing a lot of attention on lately is how to mask or cloak affiliate links.  I’m sure just about everyone has seen the ads about how people need to safeguard their potential affiliate link commissions from theft.

You see lots of ads for software products that show you how to protect your affiliate links from being hijacked or bypassed.  Affiliate link hijacking is when someone takes your link and replaces it with theirs.  People can have their affiliate links bypassed when someone sees the link itself, decides not to click on it and then go to the website directly thereby depriving the person who posted the affiliate links of any potential commissions.

Now there is a major consideration to take into account when deciding to mask or cloak your affiliate links.  When the person arrives at the webpage in question after clicking your links, the original affiliate link will display in the address bar of the browser.  But what masking the affiliate links does for you the marketer is that with the affiliate link being masked, the person who is reviewing the webpage containing your link would still have to click on your link to go to your page.  Now it’s one thing to type in some text such as Click Here! (<– actual link) and insert a link to attach it to the affiliate link URL address or you could do something and cloak the affiliate link with a “cloaking device” Click Here! (<– also an actual link).

Now when you click on each of the links that are connected to my affiliate link (which you are more than welcome to visit !),  you will end up on the same webpage but there is a significant difference involved.  If you “right click” the page that this blog post is on and select “view source”,  a review of the HTML code will show my actual affiliate link that is attached to the first link I inserted on this page.  As you scroll further down, you should notice a bunch of ampersands (& symbols) and numbers that shows reference to the affiliate link but it is converted into unicode.   So the affiliate link whose URL address is converted into unicode will require the person visiting the page containing the affiliate link to click on the link and go to the actual webpage that features the affiliate product.  A product that I came across and I started using is called “Affiliate Link Cloaker” (go to http://www.auratech.com.au/linkcloaker/ to learn more), which is a free download and so far I have enjoyed using it.

Another method that can be used for masking affiliate links is by writing what is known as a redirect script.  Basically this involves doing some HTML editing on your webpage and inserting the URL of the affiliate link that you want your customers to go to.  Again, once your customers have arrived at the “final destination”, the actual URL of the affiliate link will be displayed in the address portion of the browser.  With the redirect script, you basically set up a path using your domain name along with a couple of extra folders attached with it; the final folder being one that contains an index.html file that contains a redirect script.  An example that you may see would be in this format: http://yourdomain.com/likes/name of product.    Here is an example of HTML code involving a redirect script:


After spending many hours with both of the methods mentioned above, my vote goes the the software that converts the link into unicode!  Lots of playing around with FTP programs on the webhost service when using redirect scripts are involved.

I am currently not aware of any methods to have a different URL address show up on the webpage of the affiliate product. Please send me a comment if you have anything you are willing to share on this!

The term “affiliate link hijacking” was referenced earlier in this post.  This is where someone takes someone else’s affiliate link and replaces it with their own affiliate link.  I am currently not aware of how this is done since a person would need to be able to access someone else’s web page editing capabilities.

So in summary, does the effort involved in masking your affiliate link pay off in higher commissions that you would have received otherwise?,  I myself at this time have no first-hand experience to say one way or the other.  All I have seen are testimonials on sites that promote the software that is available to help mask affiliate links.  I figure that if someone does not wish to buy from you, they will either try to bypass the affiliate link when they view the webpage source and if they see that the affiliate link is masked and they can’t determine what it is, they may still decide not to buy from you.  Or, if they go all they way to the final page, see what the link address is on the webpage, they would still have the option to not buy.  So……….if someone is willing to go to all these measures to not buy your product and deprive you of your commission,  perhaps it’s just better to not do business with that type of individual.

How do you know?

Posted on by
Reply

Have you ever been involved with something that you were working on and it just seemed that for the longest time you were not getting anywhere?  Recently, I finally got my son’s computer fixed after numerous attempts at getting it repaired.   I had no previous experience in how to deal with this particular type of situation but what I did have was a pronounced inner feeling that some how, some way I was going to accomplish what I set out to do.

I just got done looking at my credit card balance that I had just shot through the proverbial roof due to numerous purchases and for a micro-second I thought to myself “What the heck am I doing”?  But in the next micro-second I immediately focused on my inner being and regained awareness of the feeling within me that makes me confident of achieving the success that I seek.

You can call it stubborn, pig-headed whatever but I call it resolve.  I have the feeling and the mindset that no matter how long it takes or what it takes I know that I am going to accomplish what I have set out to do.  Slowly but surely I am building a plan and with each passing day, more knowledge is presented to me.  As a matter of fact, an idea came to mind yesterday and I have every intention of acting upon it.  When I am done with that, I will go on to something else!  Implement, implement, implement!

So the next time where you are in a situation where all you have is your faith, feeling and determination to drive you forward, keep going and don’t stop!  So how do you know?  You just know!!