I recently received a voucher for $100 from Google Adwords. At first I thought that I would just toss it, but then I figured ‘What the hey?’ I’ve set up a couple mailing lists using AWeber and what better opportunity to feed a little traffic into one of them. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: AdWords, AWeber, email list, experiment, keywords, traffic
NOTE: Affiliate Classroom is no longer available — the links on this page have been removed. The post has been left for historical purposes (at least for now).
Affiliate Makeovers
Anik Singal and his partners at Lurn Inc. are getting ready to launch Affiliate Classroom V2, the 2nd version of their popular classroom series.
This classroom site is designed to help online entrepreneurs maximize their efforts in affiliate marketing. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Affiliate Classroom, affiliate marketing tips, blogging, opt-in list, review sites
You may have been wondering where the LoneWolf has gone these past few weeks. While I’ve been around, I haven’t had much time or energy to post to my blogs, visit other blogs or have fun on Twitter. I’ve been keeping track of e-mail, comments and Twitter followers and replies. Other than that, my online presence has been minimal — I’ve been lurking.
In case you are curious, here are my reasons. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Blogs, broadband internet, Cookie Crumbles, frustration, golf, Howls, LoneWolf, plans, Ramblings, silence, Twitter
Time is precious. We only have so much of it to use. And yet, there are so many people who feel that they have the right to waste mine! Here are a couple of rants about two of the worst offenders. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: affiliate programs, marketing, rant, wasting time
My first WordPress plugin is now available for public consumption. It’s a small one but I’ve learned a few things about how to extend WordPress and it’s exciting to see that it works.
The plugin is designed to help those of us who don’t like or cannot use the Flash media uploader. Currently, it is always the default when you want to add an image or other media to your site. An extra click to bring up the browser uploader is always necessary.
No longer! Enter FlashFreeze — the plugin that stops WordPress from going to the Flash version and puts you directly into the browser media uploader. Save valuable seconds!
Enjoy!
Tags: Flash media uploader, FlashFreeze, plugin, WordPress
Flashpoint
There has been a very healthy discussion about the choice made by Joel Drapper to do a drastic unfollow on his account. There are many who agree with Gerald Weber who doesn’t think his current follow strategy is good. While I don’t want to open up the discussion of whether or not this was a good plan, I have been thinking about one suggestion that keeps coming up in the conversation. This revolves around the use of TweetDeck (or another 3rd party application that supports groups).
The idea is to use TweetDeck so that you can create groups and use filters. You can set up groups for the people that you wish to follow closely and still get tweets from the others that you follow. You can also set up filters to eliminate tweets that contain certain phrases or links. This will allow you to see the special friends without all the noise, but still allow you to have the tweets from others to scan through once in a while, looking for nuggets.
This makes a lot of sense, until you start to examine the numbers. The numbers it just don’t add up. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: DestroyTwitter, following, friends, groups and filters, numbers, TweetDeck, Twitter, Twitter API
Back in the ’90s Taco Bell had an advertising campaign based around a cute chihuahua (hard to believe, I know). The ads were fresh and fun.
One that I found particularly funny was a tie in with the release of the Godzilla movie. In this ad, the chihuahua had a box balanced on a stick with a string tied to the stick. I’m sure most of us did this as kids, trying to catch a squirrel or rabbit. In his adorable voice, the dog calls “Here leezard, leezard, leezard!”
As we hear Godzilla approaching, the dog looks up and wisely says Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: abundance, blessing, faith, God's greatness, tithing
The Little Green Monster
As some of you may recall, I’ve been hoping to get broadband internet connection in our rural area for some time now. Living with dial up internet has been frustrating at best.
Now, with damper weather of spring, it seems that the connection rate is continually slipping lower. We’re probably going to need a new phone line run soon (it seems that they only last 2 or 3 years for some reason) since there is more static on the line lately. We’ll see how it goes when the ground dries up some.
Well, there is light at the end of the tunnel — I’m just hoping that it isn’t a train coming. On the ridge behind our house there should be access to the wi-fi signal to the south of us. I can see a tower from one location up there and while I don’t know if that is the tower we need to connect to, I’m hoping that it is.
The infrastructure provider will be coming back to do a site assessment up on the ridge to see if there is a chance for a decent signal up there. If there is then we need to build a tower to clear the trees and pull in the signal.
The Green Monster may soon be put out to pasture. Here’s hoping!
UPDATE: December, 6, 2009 — See Finally! for some good news.
Tags: broadband, dial up, Internet Access
I’ve added Google Analytics to all 3 of my blogs now. I’m not sure if this was a mistake or not since now I’ve got more information to overload my beleaguered brain.
I found an interesting statistic when looking at the past few weeks of this blog. I recently posted my thoughts about Twitter in a series of 5 posts and the visits are showing something rather interesting.
The first post received 31 unique visits with more half deciding to move on. While I wish that everyone would stay and read, I understand that a lot of people will choose not to — their loss 8=)
Google Analytics Summary
The second post received 14 visits and the third 10. What I find surprising though, is that the fourth post got 12 visits plus a comment. That means that at least 2 people skipped the third post somehow. I suspect that they jumped back to the Introduction and skipped right to the fourth.
The other surprising stat is that very few people stuck around for the summation. There were only 4 visits there.
I’m not completely sure what all this means, but I like the fact that I’m seeing traffic and that it isn’t all bounces. It is also nice to see that people are spending time reading the posts — very encouraging!
I still need to figure out what % Exits are all about. I suspect that they have to do with what percentage of visitors to that page went to another site.
What intriging things have you seen in the stats for your blogs?
Tags: blogging, Statistics
[This is part of a series of posts — see the Introduction if you haven’t already.]
Let’s not through the wolf cub out with the bathwater!
Despite these things that I find frustrating about Twitter, I do like the service. I will continue to use it but I will have to adapt the way that I use it to make it work for me.
First thing that I plan to do is to make more use of TweetDeck groups. I’m currently experimenting to see how things work if I remove the All Friends panel and just set up groups of people that I want to monitor more closely. This will help me to be able to more closely follow the people that are close to me. The initial test has not been promising though, but I will also experiment with using searches as well as groups to see if it works.
I will continue to use DestroyTwitter for sampling my Twitter stream when I feel like checking out what is happening in the broader scope of things unless I can find a way to limit the number of updates TweetDeck grabs at a time. Perhaps when I finally have a highspeed connection this will become a non-issue and I can just use TweetDeck.
I will continue to follow most of the people who follow me (see my criteria at Follow Me, Follow You), but I will focus mostly on those in the groups that I set up. Those who catch my eye will be added to groups as I see fit.
As for tweeting about my own web sites, I will also continue to work on that. I don’t plan on using artificial methods to grow my following, but I will work on making it larger to hopefully find more people who are interested in what I post about. I may become more aggressive about finding new people to follow. Most likely I’ll look through the followings and followers of my friends and grow from there. I may also search for people tweeting about topics that I cover in my blogs.
I will also need to spend more time looking at other ways of promoting the blogs. I’m looking into StumbleUpon and I still use Delicious a bit.
As I mentioned back in the Introduction, I’m hoping that I can get a system set up that works for me. Many others have faced these same issues and some have given up on Twitter. I don’t plan to do that. Let me know what you’ve done to make things work for you!
Tags: frustrations, game plan, Twitter
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