There was one recent ebook that spilled the “secret” of one Christmas niche that would be on par with toys like Tickle Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Kids, uh…transformers? – that EVERYONE went crazy buying for Christmas.

You ready?

*drum roll*

It’s electronic cigarettes / e-cigarettes!

I’m sure you’ve probably heard of it from the news and all the controversy around how “unsafe” and “unregulated” it is. I won’t go into that, but what you may be interested in doing is setting up e-cigarette related sites and monetizing it using Adsense.

I don’t recommend you join the affiliate programs of these e-cigarette companies and make money off the commission simply because, these programs are well…unreliable. I have heard from a guy who’s been in this niche that payouts aren’t guaranteed, and on top of it, they’re measly low.

But if you monetize using adsense, you could make a nice chunk of change from people interested in either buying or getting more information about e-cigarettes.

Because either way, cigarettes are not healthy for you – so why wouldn’t people go for an alternative that doesn’t stink, and allows you to smoke indoors? They make great Christmas presents for relatives!

Anyways, this is just one niche.

What about making a killing on Amazon?

I came across a product earlier called Info Product Killer and was completely excited about making $100,000 over Christmas (just like advertised! ha) until I realized it was about promoting Amazon products instead of Clickbank products.

The idea is while everyone’s promoting info products and struggling with all this competition, you swoop in and promote physical products that are sold on Amazon and/or reputable ecommerce sites that have little to no competition.

For example – kind of like the search phrase – Samsung UN46B8000 40″ LCD TV. Think about how EASY it would be to rank for that phrase, or a variation of it.

These people are also motivated buyers and you’re simply helping them find what they want. Of course you are advised to target higher end products like TV’s because you don’t really make much with Amazon’s 4% commission rate.

While I liked Info Product Killer “in theory,” I do not like pushing thousands of dollars in sales and 1) make low low low commission 2) waiting to receive the low low low commission check in the mail. I think they run on either Net60 or Net90, meaning it’ll take you months to actually see that money in your account.

But hey as I said in earlier posts – you do what you enjoy. If you like promoting Amazon products, go ahead and do it – you WILL make money. There’s no doubt about it. Info Product Killer just makes it easier since the guy provides you a complete step-by-step blueprint using videos to showing you how to setup these mini sites and build a profitable system.

Niches are everywhere – if you pay attention

Today I accidentally discovered another niche that is highly unsaturated at the moment. The funny thing is it wasn’t through any keyword research or anything. I was catching up on Facebook posts and found a product that a friend mentioned in another friend’s status. I thought, ohhhhhhh interesting! Then I went to Google Insights to check the trend. Looking good, seems to be going up.

Then I checked for similar keyword searches and surprisingly found 2 words with 16,000+ EXACT searches a month with only 20,000 competition. And the domain with these 2 words with a hyphen is actually available. Double interesting!

The lesson? Niches are everywhere. Just pay attention to what people are saying they want to buy.

To make myself accountable, I hereby state my commitment towards promoting this website every single day. I also promise to stop eating so many desserts and spend more time working. And I also need to join 3 new CPA networks to promote this product, to have several offers to rotate. I will also note my progress here when appropriate.

Heh, I am working on this project on the side because frankly SEO and backlinking is slow as hell and I am impatient as hell. Going to take the next week to learn a newer, and possibly better system from a CPA expert for generating instant leads on semi autopilot. Might just hit my $5k/month sooner than expected.

What I mean by mini niche sites are sites that are focused on a narrow niche like “best coffee makers” that usually have 5-30 posts in them. The idea is by building these mini sites, you can earn a little from each one (say $x/month, and build an income of $xxxx/month. For example, instead of building one gigantic site that brings in $1000/month, you build 100 sites that bring in $10/month.

In theory, the mini sites seems like a good idea. $10/month is feasible, and a lot easier than maintaining $1000/month.

But then a lot of people fail to pay attention to the maintenance aspect of these mini sites.

Wha? I thought mini sites were set and forget!

For the most part they can be, but search engine rankings are fickle and your top position is not guaranteed forever. Once you drop in rankings for whatever reason, your income takes a hit (obviously because most people click on listings higher up – even a drop in ranking can affect your traffic significantly).

What ends up happening is, you need to spend time building backlinks to ALL these sites to continue to earn $x/month. Sounds like a lot of work.

And maybe backlinking is your thing, but I absolutely HATE backlinking. It’s just tedious. Of course I could always outsource or use a linking service that costs a fixed amount per month, but that is an added expense.

In the end, I believe, it all comes down to what you enjoy doing. Last night before I drifted off to sleep I had a revelation. I’ve had the same one before, but it made even more sense now than it did before.

That is…. it doesn’t matter what method you follow, because all paths lead to money. If it’s $1000/month you want to start off with, almost any method will take you there. Whether it’s Craigslist marketing, forum marketing, video marketing, article marketing, PPC, whatever.

It’s hard to accept that because people are always looking for the next “new” money making method, thinking that they need something unique to make money online. It doesn’t matter what “avenue” you take, because as long as you are giving what people want/need (or convincing them they need it!), you’ll make money plain and simple.

So if you keep that in mind, you are free to pick the path you choose and want. Hate backlinking? Well, go do PPC then. Hate Craigslist? Okay, try Ebay!

There is enough money to go around, and any method will take you there.

So the short answer to “should you build mini niche websites or large authority sites” is – what do you like doing?

Seriously. There are drawbacks to building niche sites, but that’s based on my own preference. I don’t like building mini sites because it feels like I’m always starting from the bottom. I like building “assets” that grow in value overtime. I like authority sites. I like leveraging traffic.

Instead of starting from scratch every time and building backlinks and getting a trickle of traffic, I rather spend my time on building a large site with a lot of traffic and then testing to see what converts well, and THEN building a mini site around that topic.

Then when that authority site does well, I can branch off and start another authority site and basically circulate traffic between my network of sites – so visitors stay within my network.

Anyways, that is my current approach and really, both approaches are okay and can be profitable. It comes down to preference.

Whether it’s Clickbank, CPA, instant paying affiliate programs, or affiliate programs, it doesn’t matter – money can be made in all of them.

Choose one, focus on it, and PROSPER!

Should I write exclusively about what I’ve learned in internet marketing, or do I blog about personal things that interest me – fitness gadgets, detox, law of attraction, tricks to getting free stuff, luxury hotels I wanna visit, lofts and islands I want to buy, web developers I have a huge crush on?

Pros for blogging about internet marketing

- build “reputation” and network with other people in the affiliate marketing industry
- go up in search engine rankings since I’d SEO my posts good (unlike this one that I’m clearly too lazy to optimize for any keyword)

Cons:
- I’ll end up blogging more than taking action (this is important; I procrastinate a lot)

Pros for blogging about personal things

- I’ll actually enjoy it (I love writing about random things that catch my attention)
- I’ll have a place where I can store all my online activity – photos, stories, hopes, dreams etc. (this would keep me motivated on my goals)
- my friends will know what I’m up (especially the ones I catch up with once every few months)
- I can be very very very very honest and not really care

Cons:
- I’ll end up talking too much about my life and I’ll attract stalkers (for some odd reason, most of my online stalkers are girls, and most of my offline stalkers are guys. hm, interesting)

Or blog about BOTH?!

I could write about everything – internet marketing and personal bits. I guess the question is – am I writing for my friends, or other fellow entrepreneurs?

What is my ultimate goal for this site?

I don’t really care so much about monetizing this blog, since I make money from other sites. I also know I like to write, and need a place to write about completely random things that might help others. In the future, I want to setup a monthly fund (say $100) that I’d give away to someone who really needs it. Of course there are strings attached. They’d have to blog about me! *evil grin* Just kidding, maybe.

Jokes aside – I have had a friend help me out when I was DESPERATELY broke. I mean, I was almost down to my last dollar. With their small loan (it was only $100), I invested the money in my projects, and made 10x with it. So I know how important it is to have at least some money to work with, and it sucks when you’re broke. So as I make more money, I plan to give more of it away (you get what you give out at least tenfold – it always works out like that for me). I give away $30, and I always get back $300 or more in some form. I believe in donating at least 10% of your earnings, and there are sites that I like donating to which I want to talk about.

Anyways, I digress.

Since my lifestyle revolves around internet marketing, I’ll be writing about that and the ups and downs. In between, I’ll write about random things about my life. What products I want to buy. How lazy I really am.

Okay, off to find a nice Wordpress theme !

Oh?

Yes, I’m going to talk about…wait for it…people being SCAMMED out of their hard earned money by make money online opportunities like Cash1234.

Here’s what happened. I was just doing my research on Adtrackz Gold because I was looking for a software that would track my PPC campaigns, since I’m still on the fence with Prosper202 (I hear it’s a major resource hog and would kill my shared hosting in a flash).

While searching today, I actually noticed an ad on the side that looks like this:

Huh? Why is the headline Adtrackz Gold? It has nothing to do with Adtrackz Gold! I clicked on it, and fell on a sales page that was actually pretty convincing. It seemed to be targeted towards the newbie entrepreneur who wanted to make easy money (yeah what’s new?).

Surprisingly, it was only $12! Hmmm….*lightbulb*…time to Google “Cash1234.”

The review I came across and that I was actually planning on leaving a comment was Reviewopedia’s review page on Cash1234. Go ahead – click on it and read the reviews from actual customers. I bet the keyword density for the word “scam” is probably up at 50%.

Reading those comments got my blood really boiling, because it’s so prevalent. It’s always the same thing. People falling for these “systems,” and losing their hard earned money, just to be left with nothing but a glimmer of hope of making their life more comfortable for their family.

Google is my friend, really?!

Now some people are really stupid. Ever heard of….GOOGLE? How about using it to find out reviews on it BEFORE buying? It really amazes me how many people DON’T. And then when they get scammed, they end up on review sites and posting their experience about how they got scammed.

Here’s a novel idea – finding these review sites FIRST before buying!

Okay, I’ll stop yelling.

What you can learn about Cash 1234 without buying it

No, I didn’t buy it, and have no plans to buy it. But I will tell you, the person behind it is very clever and that’s something you should take note. He (assuming it’s a he) is bidding on product names related to internet marketing. I found it odd that I’ve seen Cash1234 quite frequently in my searches, but I never really thought much of it, until today when it was the only ad that showed up for Adtrackz Gold.

Instead of buying his $12 product (which is obviously crap!), just copy what he does.

Yes – that’s how you make money online (or at least one of the ways). Not by buying any “system” or “ebook” but by replicating what these scammers are doing. I know this is so insightful it’s killing you, but hang on there’s more. You don’t have to outright scam people, but you can study how to 1) write a compelling ad on Google that gets people to click 2) bid on keywords NOBODY is bidding so you get really cheap clicks & profit 3) write a REALLY good sales page.

All this information is online for FREE. What?? How?? By studying how people are selling. Chances are, if they compelled you to check out their product, there’s something special they’re doing. Just study what it is that lured you into checking them out and buying.

Forget “make money online” systems…

Virtually nothing I’ve come across on the internet – ebooks or systems – is worth any money. Everything I have learned and applied has been free. Of course with the exception of some gurus that I personally like – Gauher Chaudry & Matt Trainer. Gauher Chaudry teaches quality stuff and I always learn a lot from him, and Matt Trainer has a very laidback simple unique style to making money online. I feel like punching him whenever I watch his videos because he always looks like he just woke up and/or is too drunk/stoned and doesn’t know where he is, but other than that, I like the guy.

Anyways, my point is, you don’t really need to buy any system. You can just study how people make money off you. For example, if some guy is advertising ringtones on Youtube music vids (you know those, Click Here To Get This Song On Ringtone), there’s good reason for that – they’re not just doing it out of the goodness of their heart (sorry to burst your bubble).

When you put in your phone # to receive ringtones, they get $12+ (depending on the ringtone offer). There’s a system right there you can replicate.

Let’s dissect the Youtube money making method a little…

Ok, where did the guy advertise? Youtube.

How did he promote the ringtone? He put up a music video, and put his website in the annotations and/or description.

Who are they targeting? People who are looking for songs, and probably want ringtones of their favorite songs.

What does he need to do to get money? He would try to get up popular music videos that a lot of people would watch, so they would be exposed to his ringtones link. When they visit the link (because who doesn’t want ringtones?!) and enter their mobile #, they get money.

How much does it cost to get this setup? Only $10 to get the domain name – e.g. Ringtones.com. You don’t even need a website because you can forward the domain to the affiliate link.

Where do you get the affiliate link? You get it from joining CPA networks. Gauher Chaudry has a REALLY good and FREE ebook on what CPA networks are all about. Click Here To Download. It kind of scrapes the surface, but it’s really quality information that costs nothing and it’s an excellent introduction.

Going back to Cash1234…

Since the product is $12, if you simply followed the Youtube method above, you’d be out $10 but you’re more than likely to make at least ONE lead, thus making a profit easily in a day. Whereas with Cash1234, you’re down $12, and you’re left with information that doesn’t get you anywhere and won’t actually make you money.

I recall it’s related to signing up with casinos, so you have to actually put money in it, and you can’t withdraw it until you hit a certain threshold. Can you hear the sucking sound? That’s your cash going down the hole.

Back to Youtube. So that’s only ONE method out of millions. Go to Craigslist, and you’ll see that there are a ton of people making money there. Study them!

I think you see where I’m going with this…

Most of the time you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can just make it better. If you discover someone promoting something, 99% of the time they are making something from it.

Figure out what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it, and replicate it. Again, chances are if you were tempted to check it out and enter your information or buy something, that is a good indication that it could be really profitable.

There’s more to it of course, but this is a better starting point than jumping in and purchasing any system out there that looks like it’ll offer you special, exclusive, mind-blowing information that will help you make $xxxx/week. Bullshit.

Stop being lazy and just see what other people are doing. When you start making money from it, twist it so it’s more unique so you can make even more money.

Ok end of rant.
P.S. – I apologize for the wacky formatting of this post. Wordpress seems to add spaces and omit lines where I don’t want it to. I’m thinking of revamping this blog soon so it’s not so hard to navigate. As usual, stay tuned

A little story time before we get into the technical details.

I have an old unused Facebook account that I was actively on for the past 2 years. But I stopped using it at a point because there was too much group spam in my Facebook inbox. You know those annoying groups that send you messages once per day, multiply that by X number of groups you have, then multiply it by about 10%, and you get an inbox full of crap you don’t really care about – daily.

I was busy at the time, and I was simply too lazy to delete my groups manually. So I abandoned the profile, opened a new one, and added back people I wanted to keep in touch with.

Fast forward to today. I now know how to use imacros for automating a lot of my tasks! Armed with this new knowledge, I created a simple imacros script, looped it about 200 times, walked away to get some snacks, came back…Done!

All 200 something Facebook Groups are gone from my profile! Okay with the exception of 3 groups that I created myself. Those are still there. But my profile is now spic and span.

It is so damn cool I cannot express it in words. You really just need to try it yourself.

I repeated the same thing with deleting wall posts – this was a little more buggy, but I still managed to get it to work. It messes up at some point and shows “failures” but that’s alright. Better than deleting all of them manually one by one. You’d get carpel tunnel in no time from that.

Download Imacros

If you don’t know what imacros is, you might want to read up on it here. It looks a bit intimidating at first, but imacros is seriously the easiest automation software/plugin to use.

I recommend imacros for Firefox. You can install the plugin here.

To open up imacros in the sidebar, press F8. Once you’ve got imacros on your Firefox, do a mock record – meaning, go to Play > Record > Then click Stop right away. Then click Save. Enter a descriptive name for it like “delete Facebook groups .” You should now see it in the left sidebar. Right click on the .iim file and go to “edit macro.”

The Imacros Script (Delete All Facebook groups)

Paste in:

VERSION BUILD=6111228 RECORDER=FX <– note that this line will be different if you have a different version of imacros
TAB T=1
SET !ERRORIGNORE YES
SET !LOADCHECK NO
SET !TIMEOUT 100
SET !DIALOGMANAGER NO
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Leave<SP>Group
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=NAME:remove&&VALUE:Remove
WAIT SECONDS=2

Now you should be already on the Facebook Groups page itself BEFORE running this macro. When I ran it, there was one instance of a timeout, but that didn’t stop the script itself, so just click “close” on the timeout notice when you see it and it’ll be fine.

*** IMPORTANT *** Remember to click Play(loop) when running this macro and specify however many groups you have. This will loop the script, so it’ll run X amount of times.

You may be wondering… well, what if I don’t want to delete ALL my groups? Well, then it will be a bit tricky. What I’d do is, open these groups in a new tab, so when you’ve wiped out all the groups, you can add them back easily.

The Imacros Script (Delete All Facebook wall posts)

Repeat the same thing. Go to Play > Record > Then click Stop right away. Click save, enter a name, and then edit the .iim file.

Then paste in:

VERSION BUILD=6111228 RECORDER=FX
TAB T=1
SET !ERRORIGNORE YES
SET !LOADCHECK NO
SET !TIMEOUT 100
SET !DIALOGMANAGER NO
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=TXT:Remove
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=NAME:delete_story&&VALUE:Delete
WAIT SECONDS=3
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=TXT:Remove
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=NAME:delete_story&&VALUE:Delete
WAIT SECONDS=3
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=TXT:Remove
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=NAME:delete_story&&VALUE:Delete
WAIT SECONDS=3
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=TXT:Remove
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=NAME:delete_story&&VALUE:Delete
WAIT SECONDS=3
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=TXT:Remove
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=NAME:delete_story&&VALUE:Delete
WAIT SECONDS=3
REFRESH

You may get multiple errors when running this, that’s why I add in “refresh” at the end of the script so it’ll refresh the page. It’s very likely that you have to make some edits or changes. You may need to click “older posts” on your Facebook wall, especially closer to the end of your wall posts. This script is easy to modify and should be easy to understand. I’m assuming you have at least some basic knowledge of it.

Any questions, just leave them in the comments and I’ll try to help you out when I have time!

If this post helped you, feel free to donate a few bucks and keep my webhosting account happy! Thank you!

Say you want to fill in some of the fields, and get back to the form later. But many government PDF files won’t let you save the filled in texts; only the form itself.

A friend asked me for a solution yesterday, and I knew it was possible although it really came down to which program to use to manipulate the PDF file. Well, I’ve found a dead easy solution.

1. Download Cabaret Stage 4.0.7 here. I went with the version without JRE.
2. A form will come up in German. Just fill in the fields (they’re easy to guess) and click “Ich stemme zu”
3. Once downloaded, install the exe file
4. Open Cabaret Stage
5. Open the PDF file you want to save
6. Fill out the fields
7. Go file > save as. Save it as another file.
8. Open up this new PDF file and be prepared to be amazed!

I came across a blog post on 8 Awesome Tools to Create and Manage All Your Passwords, and it got me thinking about the current system I use for storing passwords. Friends always ask me about my system because I’ve signed up to at least 500 websites and have a profile on almost every major social network. Today I’d like to share how I create ones that I can write down openly on scrap paper by using word associations.

I don’t know anyone else who does it, but it’s very effective and adds an extra layer of security to your password, in the event that someone DOES find out about it. 

For example, let’s make a password – 525bungee222

Normally you can’t write that down because if someone sees it they’ll copy it and do unspeakable things to your account. And if you happen to get your PDA stolen, they could crack it. 

What to do? 

Create strong word associations that only YOU know about. Here’s how I would go about it. 

1. 525 could be my first ex’s birthday. I would then represent it by the first letter of his name – T for Tim. 

2. bungee could be represented by “activity” or whatever word association I make with the word “bungee.” 

3. 222 could be represented by my best friend’s birthday, and it could also be represented by the first letter of her name – S for Sandra. 

4. What you end up with is: TactivityS

You can write that down anywhere on paper, and you will always remember what it is. The key is picking representations that are strong, and memorable.

Say you met someone in Morocco, and they have a strange name – Dufisa (okay, I can’t think of any names, but you get the point). You could incorporate that into your password by representing it as “morocco.” 

The above example could be TmoroccoS, which translates to your real password – 525dufisa222. 

Other word associations 

Default – Pick one default combination and never change it. 

Pet – This word can represent the name of one of your pets that you had 10 years ago

Teacher – This word can represent your favorite teacher

Pie – Your favorite pie flavor

Once you have these password associations created, you will never worry about anyone finding out your password, because even if they see TactivityS written down, they won’t know it’s not actually your password. Be sure to make associations that most people – even your friends – don’t know about. That makes it even more secure.

If you want to make it extra, extra, ridiculously secure – use words in a different language, or your own native language. Those ones are much harder to crack. Of course you could use words that are more complex rather than “bungee” or “strawberry” or “ninja turtles” but as long as you understand how the technique works, you can modify it to your own liking.

Hope that didn’t leave you confused. If it did, leave a comment and I’ll be happy to clarify. 

P.S. – No my ex’s name is not Tim, and my favorite activity is not bungee jumping, so don’t even attempt it

After using Twitter, I started noticing people using strange looking urls that began with bit.ly, is.gd, ow.ly, cli.gs. Of course, the list doesn’t end there. There are OVER 90+ url shortening services out there.

With so many out there, how do you pick the best one? Or two to use? This question got me thinking of the best, or what the most ideal url shortener would be like.

Here are some characteristics:

• Free
• Short, memorable 4 letter domain (like is.gd, tr.im)
• Private stats
• Somewhat popular so it doesn’t disappear overnight, or have downtimes like UrlTea (the last time I checked, it said the site was temporarily unavailable. Are you sure you want your urls to be “down”?)
• Customizable alias
• Search engine benefits
• Long lifespan (or forever)

Url shortener services that piss me off

For some, this list might include “makes you money” like with Adjix, which has the option to append an ad at the top of the page that you link to. <VENT> I find this method of making money very off-putting and it downright annoys me. The only scenario that I would find it acceptable is for a non-profit organization to be using it while promoting a cause. I’ve only seen one social media expert with about 4000 Facebook friends, and 5000 Twitter followers do it (not with Adjix, but another similar service I forgot).

She posted a link in her Facebook status update, I clicked, and I saw an ad at the top. It left a really bad taste, and I tried to remove it and get to the ORIGINAL url so I could pass it on. It was actually an interesting, relevant news article my friends would like. But I couldn’t find ANY way to find the original url. I tried to copy the link of other articles on the site, and paste it into my browser. Still couldn’t get rid of the ad at the top, or the url shortening domain. I ended up searching for the title in google to get to the original url. Lesson learned: please don’t piss off your readers.</VENT>

Analysis of some popular url shorteners

I went through some of the 11 best url shorteners that Lee Odden mentions in his blog, and analyzed them against my list.

is.gd - Free, short memorable url, but no stats tracking.
bit.ly – Free, integrated with Tweetdeck, tracks conversations, saves copy of a page that you link to, import to Google spreadsheets.
cli.gs – Most popular, free, somewhat memorable, customizable alias, impressive stats that include number of hits, visitors by country, and most importantly, social media mentions in Twitter, FriendFeed, blogs, and Yahoo. Also the ability to use geo-location redirection. Say if your visitors are from a specific country, you can redirect them to a different destination url.
zi.ma – Also free, not as memorable, public stats showing hits, location, IP. It’s also probably built on a $60 PHP script. I think this limits support, and potential for additional features and integration with other services in the future.
budurl - Long url, public stats viewable, not free if you want detailed stats, uses 307 redirect.
tr.im - Free, short memorable url, customizable alias, 301 redirects, stats tracking by hits and geography, automatically tweet it to Twitter, useful bookmarklets.

Conclusion

Even though Tr.im is not the most popular, or even second most popular url shortening service, it is actually the closest service that matches the characteristics list. Cli.gs comes close in second if you want more detailed stats on where the link was mentioned on social networks, and referrer information. If you know where your link will be posted, then tr.im is more than adequate, but if you’re posting to multiple places, then cli.gs is your best tool.

I tend to stick with 1 or 2 services once they satisfy most of my needs. It also helps organize everything in a central location. There are also ones that you should check out just to see what popular links are traveling through word of mouth, like Snipurl. You can also subscribe to their RSS feed of interesting snips.

This post is a long overdue review of YouAre.com, a micro-blogging service that’s in private beta, which combines Twitter + Linkedin + Tumblr + Delicious + Flickr. I love testing new and upcoming web tools, and exploring how they can add value to people’s lives, so this was a gem.

I first found out about it from a blog post on the Inquisitor when I was searching for Twitter 2.0. I’ve been testing YouAre out for about two weeks, and my impression is – I doubt YouAre.com would become a threatening rival to Twitter simply because of the massive amount of third-party services that are available for Twitter, and that really enhance Twitter’s experience (of course I could be wrong, and this could change). Where YouAre.com does have an advantage is in the professional realm. Twitter is used both for personal and professional purposes, however, YouAre.com distinctly has more of a professional tone to it in terms of design and features. Skip to reason #5 if you want to take a look at the professional section of a YouAre profile.

Here’s a list of why I think YouAre rocks

1. You can filter the content of people you follow and put them into categories when you add them (friends, online friends, acquaintances, co-workers, colleagues and family members, whether you’ve met them before, or whether they are a crush, sweetheart).

2. When you browse through your followers list, you can view the person’s location and bio snippet as well. Makes it very useful for remembering who’s who.

3. It’s way ahead of its time by including a QR code for each post, which can be scanned by a mobile phone.

4. Automatic URL shortening using micurl.com that doesn’t detract from the number of characters.

5. It’s Linkedin + Twitter combined. I see this as the professional microblogging tool of 2009 and beyond. Something that this recessionary economy needs for people who are jobhunting. It allows you to include your professional and educational history. You can specify whether you want everyone to see it, or just the people you’re following in privacy settings.

6. Easy to remember url: http://www.youare.com/username

7. You can post text, video, and images - and easily post in their own tabs. I like how they don’t display thumbnails like Pownce or Rejaw do. Makes it less cluttered and easy to scan.

8. You can import contacts from Gmail and Twitter. So if you want to know if someone from Twitter is also on YouAre, simply type in your username, and it will automatically show who’s on YouAre.com. You can then click on “follow updates”.

9. The design is aesthetically pleasing, with the option of changing the background color, text color.

10. Like Twitter, you can favorite a post, and find them easily in the menu bar where it says “Favorites.”

11. Import your content from Del.icio.us, Youtube, and Flickr. They are working on development of the API and features such as allowing the content you publish on YouAre to also appear on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.

12. Email notifications when someone starts following your updates, receive a private message, or receive a reply. Uses the same @ concept as Twitter.

13. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of someone’s updates the same way you can with Twitter.

14. Other advantages from their blog: http://blog.youare.com/2008/09/08/youare-little-details/

The current downside is that they are still in private beta and profiles aren’t publicly viewable. But I will keep my eye on them, and update you when they open it up to the general public.

Want an invite?

Good news! I have invites available to send out. Leave a comment or email me if you want me to send you one to try it out. Otherwise, you can signup the traditional way and wait for them to send you an invite.

Who to follow?

Once you’re in, follow José Luis Antúnez (the founder), and Gabriel Sebugra (head sysadmin / web developer). And browse who posted new updates.

You may also be interested in reading Is YouAre Poised to Become the Next Twitter?

Here are some random tips that aren’t in any particular order. I will add more when I come up with new ones.

– You should protect your site as soon as possible by adding lines to your .htaccess file, which sits in your root directory. This is the htaccess thread on the forum that you need to read to make your changes. The explanations are also very helpful. 

–  If you need to know only one link, it’s the TuFat osDate Forum. osDate has a very supportive, helpful community. You can read about many problems and solutions in the forum. If you can’t find an answer to your problem, post a topic and you’ll get a response within a day or 2. I suggest you do a “search” for your problem first; it’s very likely someone has had the same one in the past and had it solved already.

– If you want to change the text on your osDate website, 95% of it should be in the language file: language/lang_english/lang_main.php

– You should also create a blank index.html file and place it in your templates_c folder. You should also delete the files in there regularly, otherwise you may not see certain changes you’ve made on your site. Same goes for the cache folder.

– You need to also process your city/county/state and load zipcode files in Admin. They’re all under the “localities” heading. 

– In Admin, click on “optimize tables” (near the end of the navigation menu) to improve the performance of your database.

* This concludes the osDate 7 part blog series. Hope you found it useful, and if you have any questions, shoot me an email or comment. If there are any spelling errors, and anything that should be revised, let me know. I wrote this all in one afternoon with a few fruit breaks in between. Now it’s done and I can relax! Good luck.