Archive for the ‘IM’ Category
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
I’ve been down the free software highway for about 2 years (atleast according to the date of the last backup of windows-stuff), and I figured I might share my experiences and what-not with the few people who still pop in here every now and then for a visit 
First of all, I have not been faithful to any single distribution (with the exception of the one I’m using now, which I’ve stuck by for it’s last two releases), but I’ve grown attached to and kept faithful to a couple of applications. I swear by LibreOffice, i refuse to use anything not webkit-based for web browsing (google chrome for regular browsing, luakit for some sites i need to keep open as single applications), and I tend to start looking for alternatives when sites i visit depend on flash.
I’ve found great replacements for most of my old windows software (who weren’t really rocking it in Windows 7 64bit anyways), and in many cases I can still run the windows software in Wine (a project that goes from clarity to clarity with the 1.3.X upgrades), for older software I can most of the time run it better in wine under linux than in windows xp-compatibility-mode in Windows 7.
Developing is a friggin dream when you’re not hogtied to how the manufacturer of your OS wants you to view the world. I have several version of PHP set up for web-development (one that always upgrades when my webhost does, one that keeps up with latest in the 5.X-branch, and a bleeding edge test version to play around with the latest goodies … even though it sometimes goes bang), not to mention several version of Python and fitting GUI-tools for desktop development.
Computing has become so fun again, I’ve even gotten around to playing a bunch of games. I constantly pitch in and get the newest Humble Bundle, but I’ve also been playing some of my favorite old windows games (and some of my favorite old DOS games …. yes … DOS games). Playing the GTA-series as well as Neverwinter Nights, Arcanum and a bunch of others (Like Quarantine and AMOK for DOS) better than they did in native mode is just … Well, computing the way it should be
I had to use a USB-dongle with a 3G-modem in it a while when my internet broke down, and while Windows-users might think they have a sweet deal with the drivers auto loading from the dongle and all, when I popped that dongle in the driver was already loaded. pin-code and BAM we were surfing again.
Computing is fun again! And I’m getting back to developing my own stuff again. Some good things will happen this year.
If any of this has gotten you curious, go check out Linux Mint, Ubuntu, PinguyOS, Fedora and OpenSUSE where you can download a bootable dvd and play around with while you contemplate if you too want to put the fun back into computing
Oh. And Happy Valentine! Celebrate it by doing something awesome with someone you love! I’m thinking of playing videogames with my daughter and sending money to a charity <3
Posted in IM, Personal, Programming, Technical | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
I’m sure you, like me, have received quite a few email promotions lately promoting various ways to build and cash in on the Facebook Fan Page Craze. There is an easy, not to mention free, way to setup fan page(s) on existing WordPress-sites, keeping your site looking like your site, and your fan pages like fan pages.
It installs as a plugin and is really easy to use .. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?
Visit >> fanpage connect << for more info and download.
Posted in IM, Latest Promotions, New Products | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011
It should come as no surprise to anyone even mildly involved in the IM-industry that the US government is starting to crack down on what they consider illegal and unethical practices for anyone selling digital products online. It’s been going on for some time now, and just over a year ago the FTC announced it’s new guidelines that had some marketers go totally bananas. They were upset because suddenly shady tactics became not just shady, but actually illegal. Illegal as in “could cost you your life savings and possibly end your ass up in jail, in deep debt to the government”.
When I started out in the early 2000′s, one of the things that actually struck me with what was considered normal practices in the IM-industry (I’m not talking about the marketing online as a whole, just the marketing of internet marketing materials, otherwise known as the “Make Money Marketing Marketing” industry) was the lack of transparency. When I was involved in offline selling, transparency was the norm – not the exception. If I promised something to a customer, it was because I know it to be true. I never said “some people even experience THIS as a result” just making a new attribute of the goods up. Yet, in the way IM was taught, lying about your products was not only common practice, it was expected. This was especially true when reselling MRR/RR and rebranding PLR-material. The original seller passed along his sales material to you, and you used it. The sales material had outrageous claims about income potential for “fully utilising” whatever the product was about, and you gladly stamped your name on the sales page in effect making you the person who guaranteed results. Most people (myself included) didn’t even read through the crap they were selling, they just stamped their name and whacked up the salespage on a new domain, happily claiming anyone could make six figures within a month, for a one-time investment of $47 (or whatever the price was) with an iron-clad money-back guarantee that was only good in certain circumstances making it “iron-clad” only for the sellers unwillingness to refund.
I’m not putting myself on a high horse here, claiming I’ve never done it, because I have. In the learning process of things, whatever I am taught I do at first. I’m never comfortable enough to start changing the “flow” of things until I feel I have a deeper understanding of the work process. When I started programming, I didn’t adapt my own coding style until I felt confident in the style of my mentor. Same goes whenever I learn a new programming language, I use the style my teacher (or book, or video course, you get the general idea) uses until I feel confident I understand the process, then I adapt my own style. I was taught a lot of bullcrap about marketing online when I started out, and I used everything I learned. You name it, chances are I’ve used it. Two years ago when I pulled my last salespage off the net and started looking for other ways to make money online without lying, scamming and creating illusions, I found out that it is very easy to be transparent about your stuff, not lying and deceiving your customers. You still make sales. Sure, a paid-for fake video testimonial with a pretty girl could probably pull in a couple of extra sales, but it would probably also pull in a couple of refund requests. Something we don’t want.
In other industries, a refund-request-rate of 10-15% would be regarded as a disaster, yet in the Internet Marketing, “Make Money Marketing Marketing”-industry, those are considered good, low numbers.
Imagine that. 15% unhappy customers who are so unhappy with their purchase they actually go through the pain of requesting a refund (which more often than not isn’t so different from attempting to ride a uni-cycle when you only have one leg), is considered good. Now, are those good numbers because you know you’re selling crap and was expecting a 90% refund rate, or is it good because you’re just surprised anyone at all was willing to buy?
You can not be an ethical marketer unless you’re willing to be transparent. About everything. Ok, your family’s health status is not something you have to transparent about (especially seeing as how unethical marketers in the past have used that type of information to pull in extra sympathy sales), but when it comes to your business and the product you’re pushing, tell your customers everything there is to know about it. If the contents of your course is only going to make sense and be valuable to 15% of the general population, tell them so on your sales page. Tell them what distinguish those 15%. Don’t try tricking the other 85% into buying it, because it will come back to bite you. If you send out a mail to your old customers trying to convince them to buy a product you’re affiliated with, tell them somewhere in the mail that you get a commission if they buy from your link. Be open about it, and never assume they understand things you think are obvious. Because 1) they aren’t and 2) they won’t.
This year is marking the beginning of a new era for marketing online. Not only are the US government starting to crack down on shady practices, the rest of the world is following. Some shady figures will be put out of business, and in that process a couple of guys who are not at all shady will fall as well, because they haven’t been transparent about how they make money.
Don’t be one of those guys. Be open with what you do.
Wishing you a prosperous, rewarding and great 2011!
/Björn
Posted in Ethical Marketing, IM, products | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
I heard about this a couple of days ago, and find it incredibly awesome …
The Humble Indie Bundle #2, where five independent game developers allow you to purchase 5 cool games at a price of your choice (NYOP = Name Your Own Price), and you also decide who gets your money. The developers, Humble Bundle who takes care of the technical tidbits, or one or both of 2 charities (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Childs Play charity). The games are multiplatform and work on Windows, MacOS X and Linux alike. You also get access to the games through Steam and Desura.
So far, they’ve sold over 170’000 bundles at a total of over $1,2 million. When you visit the site, check out the platform-graph. You know how people used to say “Linux? That’s for cheap-skates who wants stuff for free!”? You’ll notice that the average linux user paid about twice as much as the average Windows user.
The Humble Indie Bundle #2 is available here. Not only do you get 5 cool games (yes, I purchased too) but a chance to study an incredibly cool launch… By studying blog and twitter-promotions on this launch from the last couple of days you might pick up a trick or two. Cool games and a cool launch study
Posted in Latest Promotions | No Comments »
Saturday, December 11th, 2010
I was checking my email and found a mail from Mike Young, well known and respected Internet Lawyer amongst other things. While most mails that arrive are thrown in the spam-jar, a mail from Mike is generally something I want to read. Sure, there’s the occasional promotion-mail (a rare occurance) but mostly they tend to be interesting comments on business, and spot-on reflections about IM. Mikes mail is also posted on his blog, right here: Mike Young – 7 Internet Biz Trends for 2011 you should know about. I suggest you read it. It might open your eyes, and I’m going to add some thoughts of my own in regards to some of the things Mike mentions.
I found an old, retired harddrive the other day. It’s not broken or anything, it’s just old. I retired the drive in 2006, and I’ve scribbled “IM stuff” on it. There’s 120gb or something worth of IM material (books, courses, software, scripts, you name it) purchased and collected between 2000 and 2006 on it. If I were to connect it and go through the stuff on it, how much would you be willing to bet that a lot of the things I bought back then that was considered good practice in IM, would be frowned upon today and in some cases might even be considered illegal in some countries?
Would you bet against me if I said that some of the stuff from back then is being re-used (if somewhat reworded) in products released over the last 1-2 years?
Forcing people to sign up for a mailing list before allowing them to download a product they’ve just purchased and paid in full, stuffing their browsers with 3rd part cookies on the sales page, putting up popups that are virtually unclosable if a signup form is not filled in, hidden continuity, forced continuity, content scrapers and spinners, hiding adsense behind menus to get the click, ads that are placed on top of content … We all know that all of the things I mentioned are not just shady, they’re down right unethical. Yet it is what was being taught as solid IM tactics. And in some cases, still is.
How long do you think a brick and mortar company would stay open if they employed these tactics in the offline world? How long do you think some reputable online companies such as Amazon, eBay, Buy.com would stay in business if they employed these same tactics?
But in the IM business, since everybody’s a marketer selling to other marketers, these were and in some cases still are, acceptable methods of doing business.
Now, back to Mikes post … Mike lists among others, the following points as the important internet business trends for 2011 (I’m only listing the bullets I wish to add my own thoughts to):
1. The live seminar trend has seen its peak, and they are becoming increasingly unprofitable. 2011 will see this trend die.
Thankfully. I’m not saying seminars are bullshit, seminars can be kick-ass too, but I don’t see how they are relevant in the IM business. I’ve been to seminars on various different subjects that have interested me, on everything from advertising, new technology and programming, to “talking to cats”, “the spirit world” and horticulture. Some have been free (when it’s free, you know you’re going to be pitched) and some I’ve had to pay for (everything from $10 to $250).
IM seminars, however, are a completely different beast. You pay $2000 (sometimes more, seldom less) to listen to some jack-off pitching his new $5000 membership, and afterwards you get to mingle with 200 IM-nerds all trying to pitch their own stuff.
No, thank you. I will not go. Happy to see this trend go, I hope Mike is right.
2. People are finding out that a large follower list on Twitter and thousands of friends on facebook isn’t pulling in the cash on autopilot as previously promised.
I agree. The first facebook-related product I purchased promised a fortune if following the steps. All it really showed you was how to set up an account, and then vaguely explaining that you could advertise your crap with facebook social ads. Oh. Really?
During 2010 I’ve seen a lot of products pushing really unethical methods of making money on Facebook with CPA advertising programs, forcing people to complete various surveys, downloading spyware, sending obtrusive facebook mail and invites, to see what you have on the fanpage. Some products actually recommended that you did not put up any content, but instead put your energy on making more of these scam fan-pages.
All of the twitter-products I’ve seen have been total bullcrap as well. “Build a large follower-list and push your affiliate offers or products to your followers”. Oh yeah? Really? How do I build the list then? “Buy this software that automatically adds 10000 followers per day, on autopilot!”. What you end up with, is an account you never log in to, that sends out automatic messages to 10’000 other marketers, who never log in and see what you’re tweeting. So basically, you don’t see their promotions, they don’t see your promotions. In the off-chance that you actually have a real person following you, by the 4th promo-tweet in 1 hour, that real person is no longer following you.
Get real, people. Get social. Stop pushing the magic button, all it does is flush.
4. Governments crack down on unethical, immoral and illegal practices
Mike argues that US government agencies will get increasingly active during 2011 and start cracking down on businesses acting questionable. I friggin hope so! Have you noticed how over the last few months a couple of gurus who not only used unethical methods and practices but also encouraged others to do so, suddenly did a complete 180 and started preaching ethics? Some one who once promoted a course teaching how to fraud people by using hidden, forced continuity with low price front end offers, suddenly tells everyone that it’s unethical and bad business practice … Hmmm .. Did the FTC knock on your door, you-know-who-I-mean?
Mike mentions that a couple of people who are currently under investigation might lose their businesses in 2011. I hope so.
I also hope that all marketers affiliated with the disgusting boiler rooms get a pitchfork up their asses! (this links to the Salty Droid, if you are not a fan, please don’t click it, otherwise you will learn who uses these thieves)
While Internet Marketing (not “marketing on the internet”, but the “make money online”-niche) has always been somewhat shady, over the last 2-3 years it has become down right filthy. Let’s hope 2011 will mark a new beginning!
Posted in IM, Personal | No Comments »
Friday, December 3rd, 2010
I’ve setup a database at the old scripttricks.com-domain and wrote a small plugin that, when activated, grabs and displays a famous quote on all of your posts.
Demo: check the bottom of the posts on this blog
Here’s the code:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: myQuotesWP
Version: 0.5
Plugin URI: http://www.scripttricks.com
Description: Adds a famous quote to the end of all blog posts
Author: Bjorn
Author URI:
*/
function file_get_contents_curl($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
function fetch_quote($content) {
if(! is_feed() && ! is_page()) { // dont want it showing on anything but posts
$content .= file_get_contents_curl(“http://www.scripttricks.com/qu1/getquote.php”);
}
return $content;
}
add_filter(‘the_content’, ‘fetch_quote’);
?>
Save the code as “myQuotesWP.php”, copy it into your plugins-folder, activate and you’re ready to go. If you make any improvements on it or tweak, don’t hesitate to let me know, I enjoy seeing what others do with my code
You can also download it right here:
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download: myQuotesWP (532B)
added: 03/12/2010
description: Grabs a famous quote from scripttricks.com and adds it to the end of your posts. Unzip into your wp-content/plugins-folder, activate and you're set.
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Posted in New Products, Personal, PHP, Programming, web | 2 Comments »
Friday, December 3rd, 2010
If you’re doing any development, you need a set of tools that helps you finish the task at hand. For a webcoder, a syntax-highlighting editor is a must. If indentation is built in and configurable as well, that helps too.
I’ve myself used jEdit (http://www.jedit.org) for years and years and years, because not only does it do everything i want it to, there’s also an almost perverse number of plugins that does everything, from chatting on irc, playing tic-tac-toe and everything else you can think of. Plus it’s free and multi-platform.
Last few months it’s felt like jEdit has gotten a bit slow on my machine, so i figured I would try out some other applications. I’ve tried about 9 or 10 or perhaps even eleven, but I only have two editors left on the system (besides jEdit).
First up is intype. Intype is ridiculously fast on my machine not to mention the fact that it looks real good. It also has an awesome feature called “Bundles” which basically means you start typing the first part of your block, hit the tab and intype finishes the block and you fill in the details. I haven’t gotten used to it yet, but in the long run I think it’s going to save a lot of time … intype is free for the time being, but the developers have been open about it having a price when it leaves the beta stage.
After intype, i found an awesome little program called “Bend”. There has been ridiculous rumors floating around that this is a product from Microsoft, but that’s not true. Below is an image of the settings screen, which animates into view when invoked.
The editor itself is quite minimalistic, loads decently fast and is a total pleasure to work with. The system for keeping track of open tabs could be better, but in the grand general scheme of everything, it rocks.
Bend has sadly disappeared of the face of the planet, website deleted and noone saved down the source, so we’re all anxiously waiting to hear from the original author. I’ve managed to find a zipped install though, that i’ll share with you.
Visit intype HERE and download intype HERE
Download Bend HERE
Posted in Personal, Product Creation, Programming | No Comments »
Friday, October 8th, 2010
A thought and a quick Poll for you today
As I’ve mentioned, I’m not doing any IM-related marketing anylonger, and in fact my main focus is duplicating working ideas. Now, I was thinking that maybe I should take you through what jumps around in my head when I look for ideas to swipe and creating something of my own from it. I’m not talking a 5 dvd-course with “studymaterial” (read: transcipts) available for the low price of $5.000 plus your shirt, I was rather thinking simply publishing these step-by-step instruction right here on the blog, texts, images and videos if necessary, with commentfields being open for your questions and comments.
So, I’m asking you – there on the other side of screen reading this – would that be something that suited you? Whaddya think? Should I?
If Bjorn makes short guides on practical sites that bring revenue, would you read it?
- If Bjorn makes the effort on creating, I'll make the effort on reading. (50%, 1 Votes)
- I'd much rather pay you to build them for me :O (50%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 2
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Affiliate Sidekick – in need of beta testers
Work on the affiliate sidekick is going underway, i’m focusing on getting the output from the script to follow standards, and as that gets ready beta-testing will start to happen. If you want to be on the beta-team (you’ll be giving med feedback on everything from hiccups, plain errors, crashes to how you think the UI should look), tell me in the comments here or send me a mail: bjornstannek (aT) gmail (DOT) com. You need to have access to a server running PHP5, and mysql5. Using local servers (whether separate machines or server software in your windows) works just as well. Being a listowner is a plus, but not a must.
The affiliate Sidekick will be released for free under a forgiving license, and the beta-team will have the advantage of knowing it in and out the day it goes for release.
Posted in Latest Promotions | No Comments »
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
If you were a user of myAffiliateLinks, look at the bottom.
There will be no more testings of products aimed at people looking for “PushButtonWealth” . For the full time I haven’t been around, I haven’t purchased a single one of those. The “Making Internet Moolah Formula” has nothing to do with marketing crappy, outdated free information at a high price to a clueless individual who uptil recently believed Al Gore invented “teh interwebz”.
When people buy the stuff for $2000 they quicklig realise they need a $4000 seminar to teach them how to use their $2000-system. When at the seminar they meet people who wants to pitch them $1000-$1500 to superaccelerate the earnings from their $2000-system they’re on a $4000 seminar to learn how to use. And it goes on … And on …
And on. Until the they get back home, filled with the knowledge of “The Secret” and the “Law of attraction”. They set up the funnel and wait for their attitude and moneygrabbing state of mind to do the work for them. But it doesn’. Not a dime. Except that payment that got wrong.
They call up the designated call-center for the guru and are told “You are not utilising the power fully, there’s a disturbance in your chakras. If you want, I can set you up with a personal meeting with Guru Goorooh and he’ll help you work through it! only $10 000 for the first half hour”.
Read all above and then ask yourself, do you understand how Guru Gooroh becomes rich? Buy selling dreams, and chanting mumbo-jumbo and referencing to two of the most riddiculed cultural items in our history.
My marketing enedavours target smaller markets. No need to sell snake-oil or lie about obvious things. I get in there, hang around for a while, check out what they need and want, and go on an excursion to find it. Some times i tip people off using affiliate links, sometimes just the regular links. Sometimes (has happend more frequently last few months) i happen to have a fitting product or information in my collection, and I share it, Sometimes for a charge and sometimes for free. People like that. I like that.
If someone were to promote an infoproduct to me that seems to cater to my way or have insights on my markets, I’ll buy and review. Most of the stuff I push now is old plr-material (some dating back to ’06) that i add or subtract and rewrite to fit my needs better.
Every one doing business or hunting stats or whatever freaky combination you can think of – needs a linkmanager/tracker. 4 years ago I used a linktool of my own, called myAffiliateLinks, that filled all my needs at the time. I introduced it on a forum and some other places and people wanted to know how much i should charge. After pondering on it (and from some advice of the mentor) I said “nothing. you can have it for free, just give me your emailaddress and name). That crazy little script brought in a good list. I went in to business with an online-friend and we went on to other projects. For a lot of different reasons, some being mine, some being his and some being on completely other people, our cooperation faded out. We still talk from time to time. A good thing came from it though, I got to keep ScriptTricks.com for myself, and I intend to release my FREE stuff there.
So, myAffiliateLinks. Is no more. It’s place as my fav and only linkmanager will be taken over by faster, better and easier to use cousin AffiliateSidekick. Screeshots will be coming up as work progresses. AS will handle on-the-fly-campaign creation, detailed charts and statistics on your in<>out traffic, it will feature automatically created campaign-names and it turned out to be a mean, green, pizzamachine. Pizzamachine may be taken out without prior notice.
Posted in New Products, Personal | No Comments »
