So following up on my first article, I received another email from the guy that I bought the first system from. If you remember, that system automated the submission of articles to various article services and was suppose to be automatic – a push button system that would generate tons of targeted traffic which it did not. Well the new system that my guy was now selling was twice as good as the first one and would definitely make me all kinds of money if I simply followed the instructions contained in the system. And of course this new improved system was marked down from $ 249.00 US to an incredibly low $ 49.00 US. Well I had to take one for the team here and I bought this new improved system. It used the same methodology as the first purchase – it tried to up sell me by adding in more components, in this case training videos, for an additional $ 169.00. Needless to say I didn’t opt in.

After reading through the information that I was sold, I found out what this system was suppose to do. It was to show you how to use the Pay per View methodology to buy traffic for your web site. It supplied a list of well known PPV suppliers and recommend a couple of them which I’m quite sure the author was an affiliate for. In other words, if you used those particular PPV networks, the author was compensated for what you spent. So here again, I think you can see that this author capitalized on all the FREE information that is available about using a PPV advertising network. As I have found out, sometimes the hard way, all of these so called gurus really don’t know anything more than what you can find out for FREE if you do your homework. The fact of the matter regarding this package was that the information was fundamentally correct, the author simple got the costs and the time frame wrong. The information he supplied to indicate the success of his methods were either fabricated or were in fact a listing of his Clickbank account where he was selling his system.

Conned again you might say. Well not really because if you are reading this then you now have the information you need to avoid these types of offers. And believe me there are hundreds if not thousands of them out there. I think I’m on at least 15 or twenty mailing lists now. I get on the average 6 to 10 emails a day from these people and they all purport to have the next big system that will make me thousands of dollars if I only buy their system. The humorous part to this is that I will get two or sometimes even three of them all selling the same thing, but swearing that it’s their unique offer that no one else has – you can only get this offer from me – kind of thing. Now I’m not saying that everyone out there that is selling or in some cases giving away information about how to make money on the internet is a fraud. But it’s getting tougher and tougher to figure out who’s not, that’s for sure. If you want my list of those to avoid then contact me through my website and I’ll send you my list.

Now I want to let you in on one particularly funny promotion that being sent out by a number of these marketing gurus. It starts like this – A financially broke guy spent his last cent on a trip to Vegas. He ‘accidentally’ bumps into an internet marketing GURU there and buys him ‘endless’ rounds of drinks. While desperately searching for answers to success… he gets the guru TOTALLY drunk to reveal his secret weapon. A secret weapon that has NEVER been spoken about before … until NOW!

Now if you think about this, how in the heck can a “financially broke” individual who has just spent his last cent afford to buy all these drinks in the first place. Secondly, talk about coincidence! You just happen to meet an “internet marketing” GURU! Wow! And finally, how did this poor soul know what questions to even ask? If you’ve seen this, I honestly hope you didn’t buy into this guy’s crap. It’s just another give me your money and I’ll tell you how to get tons of traffic to your web site fraud. It just won’t work and you’ll be out your money. But remember, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

So I hope you got my point. You have to be extremely caution when some one tells you they can show you how to make tons of money on the internet. If it were as easy as these guys claim, then we’d all be millionaires and that’s just not the case. Unfortunately, I have to say, in the majority of cases that I’ve seen, it’s simply buyer beware! So don’t get sucked in, keep your wits about you and remember, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is and you should pass it up! So until next time …..

Back in October of 2009, I received an email that said in part “this is the real secret of driving masses of traffic, whilst spending little or nothing in advertising!”. And in November of 2009, I got this gem that said “must-watch video if you want to make money online, a new software system could make this your reality. In fact, this is a truly NEW way to make mon.ey online: You Don’t Need To Wait Days To See Profits Roll In; You Don’t Need Any Experience to Get Started and You Don’t Need Any Website or Experience. And most importantly, this does NOT involve Google, SEO, PPV. Instead, you’re about to exploit a reservoir of untapped FR.EE traffic..”. Now both these emails came from different people (I’m not quite sure how I got on both their lists); both individuals claimed they were the only one marketing this product and both said “But be aware – there’s only 300 copies of this available!”. Oh and just so you know, both were selling a product called the “Ultimate Mass Traffic”. This product was also listed on Clickbank, so anyone that was registered with Clickbank could have sold it too!

Ok, you say, where are you going with this? The point I’m trying to make here is that 99.9% of products like this do not live up to their claims; are usually just a regurgitation of generally known internet marketing principals and will, under no circumstances, make you any money at all, let alone the amounts they state. The money that they do make is the money that people like you and I pay to the people selling this stuff. The software “Ultimate Mass Traffic” sold for $249.00 US, but had been marked down to $167.00 US, but the offer I got was for $49.00 US. The software automated the submission of articles to article directories that you had to write , and used the principal of article marketing to generate traffic to your web site. They didn’t tell you this until after you had made your purchase though. And yes, I did pay the $49.00 to see what the product was all about, so I know of what I speak. It was not a push button method for generating traffic because I had to write the articles first. I should tell you that after I paid the first $49.00, the marketer tried to get another $169.00 from me by selling me an enhancement to the program – canned articles. I didn’t opt in.

Now I’ve been doing article marketing for the past year or so on a hit or miss basis. What I mean by that is when the mood strikes me and I write an article that I think might interest someone else, I submit it to about 8 different article directories. I do it mannually because most of the sites now use a Captcha to prevent computers from submitting articles on mass. It usually takes me about an hours to accomplish this task. If you are unfamiliar with what a Captcha is, you can check out the web site “The Official CAPTCHA Site” [http://www.captcha.net/] for more information. The program, “Ultimate Mass Traffic” got around this problem by selling you a monthly service called DeCaptcha. It was another $10.00 US per month. If you didn’t use this service then you would have to run the program and decode the Captcha’s from each site manually. I check out this service and registered but didn’t sign up for a plan. About a month or so ago I received an email from them saying they were having DNS problems. I don’t know if this service works or not, nor do I know if they are even around, but I do know that the whole point of having a Captcha is to stop exactly what the DeCaptcha people are trying to do, so I doubt they will be around too much longer anyway.

The bottom line here is the only person that made any money was the guy that sold me the program. The information about using articles to market your web site as been around for years, and no, you will not generate mass amounts of traffic submitting just one article. Article marketing takes some work on your part, and does not immediately yield traffic. If you have the persistance to keep it up, then over time you will find that if people are interested in what you have to say, you will get traffic to your web site. Oh, by the way, you have to have a web site for this to work. No web site, then where are you going to sent this mass amount of traffic. So like all things that are “just too good to be true”, here’s another one. And there are literally tens of outfits like the one I bought my program from and they all work the same way – convince you that their software will make you tons of money and you don’t have to know anything to make it work. Oh, and it will take no time at all either.

It just ain’t so, so don’t get fooled. Making money on the internet is just like making money anywhere else – it takes work and knowledge. And you need both, cause as I said up front, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Then the light bulb came on. There has to be a number of web sites that you could make your logo on and not get charged an arm nor a leg. So where was the list? I googled the subject and got a bzillion responses. I knew I would have to wade through the garbage to find the good stuff so that is what I did and here is the list. This list is not in any way, shape or form a comprehensive list. There have to be more sites than I found, but these are the sites that I liked, claimed to offer a free service, although I did not check out everyone’s claim and seemed to do what they advertised. Oh, and the order does not mean anything. The comments were taken from the promotional information about the site.

CoolText Cool Text is a free graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work. Simply choose what kind of image you would like then fill out a form and you’ll have your own custom image created on the fly. Cool Text is the world’s most popular graphics generator online since 1998, and has rendered over 300 million free images.

Simwebsol Web 2.0 Free Logo Generator lets the user create their own unique logo using the easy to use form, and with several free images to incorporate to your desired logo.

GRSites Text Logo Maker GRSites Logo is a free online logo generator created by Gabriel Ross. GRSites allows user to create a unique logo even with sound effects. You can customize the background textures, with hundreds of beautiful fonts to choose from.

Logo Factory Logo Factory is an intuitive and simple design interface that allows you to create your own free business logo designs in a snap.

Txt2JPG TXT2JPG offers over 200 fancy font types and that you can use to create your logo, with lots of background, color and shadings to choose to from.

Logomaker Online logomaker offers a custom built design tool designed for the busy entrepreneur. With just three simple steps you can create the logo you desired.

Logo Ease Logoease offers a 100% free intuitive and simple design interface that allows you to create your own world class logo design in few minutes. There are over a hundred of images to manipulate and fantastic fonts to choose from. The variations of design layout, font and color provide an infinite number of logo design possibilities.

The Free Logo Maker The free logo makers have been providing free logo maker services online since 2003. They offer free logo design services through their online logo creator using thousands of logo elements designed by their logo experts.

Instalogo Instalogo allows the user to create a logo for their website or business in the three easy steps. But it’s not for free; you’ll have to pay $39.00 for the logo you’ve created.

Logoyes LogoYes is the leading provider of do-it-yourself logos and other premium design products to small businesses around the world. LogoYes provides affordable design
products that equip small business to compete with big ones. All the LogoYes products and services help build a company’s brand value by providing a strong, unified image.

So there’s my list. Now I would really appreciate it, and so would my readers, that if you try out one of these sites, that you let us know what your experience was like – good or bad. Also, if there is another site that you think should be on this list, then let me know. Having choices is what the web is all about! So until next time …..

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in their documentation, does define many different types of HTML – XHTML. In fact at the time I wrote this, there were 21 different DOCTYPE declarations listed on the W3C’s Valid DTD list page. And I’m quite sure that you could probable find as many more if you looked hard enough, but the one’s listed on the W3C’s web page are the most common ones currently in use. Now just to refresh your memory, a Document Type Definition (DOCTYPE) establishes what elements and attributes your document will use and what rules you plan to follow in building your page. By using the right DOCTYPE you will ensure that your document will be rendered correctly by a standards compliant web browsers.

But what if you don’t include a DOCTYPE statement in your document or your DOCTYPE statement is incomplete or incorrect? Well those same standards compliant web browsers will drop into “Quirks” mode and assume that your HTML or XHTML and CSS is non-compliant. Suffice it to say, you won’t get what you thought you should get and your page may not even be readable. This is obviously not what you want to happen, so using a DOCTYPE statement, and the correct DOCTYPE statement is really important. Now before we proceed, a word about standards compliant web browsers. Just because a browser claims to be standards compliant doesn’t mean it is. There are different versions of standards compliant, so some browsers are more compliant than others. Hopefully, some day all browsers will behave the same, but for the time being that is not true and it is sometimes necessary to include code specifically for one browser so that browser will behave as the other’s do. These little differences have come to be know as hacks and for most programmers are just pains were a pill won’t reach.

Ok, you say, what DOCTYPE should I use. Well as I am writing this, a new standard is emerging: HTML5. Can I get a few oooo’s and ah’s. Now depending on who you talk to, HTML5 is either the best thing to happen to the web or the worst. And unfortunately, at this time, it’s is not fully support by any browser. Some are getting close, but there is a ways to go. So it’s not something to get overly excited about, but since HTML5 does have some compatibility with HTML4 and XHTML 1, it does mean that we can use the HTML5 DOCTYPE statement, but basically code in HTML4 or XHTML 1. All this means, by the way, is that as more HTML5 things become available, you won’t have to mess around with changing your DOCTYPE statement. Ok, ok, you say, I get it, so what does the DOCTYPE statement look like? Ok, are you ready? Here it is:

[!DOCTYPE html]

That’s it. It’s that simple! (the [ replaces the < and the ], for the > for the purposes of not screwing up some article directories). The whole idea is to stop making things so complicated. So if you take the versioning out of the DOCTYPE statement, then it should be easier to be backward compatible. We will have to wait on that, but in the meantime, this sure save a lot of typing. No for those of you that are not convinced, here is the DOCTYPE I normally used until I switched to the HTML5 DOCTYPE:

[!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"]

This is the DOCTYPE for XHTML 1.0 – Transitional, and for the most part was the DOCTYPE of choice for most web pages. It was either this one or the HTML 4.01 – Transitional DOCTYPE, shown below:

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"]

Now it’s interesting to note that the DOCTYPE for HTML5 is listed on the W3C’s Valid DTD List page, but it is also noted that it is NOT a standard yet. Ok, but should you start using the HTML5 DOCTYPE now? The short answer is yes, but it really depends on your site. But here’s something you might want to consider, Google uses the HTML5 DOCTYPE on their main search page. So even if you don’t take advantage of all the new features currently available for HTML5, at least you’ll be ready when it takes hold.

In my next article, I will begin to discuss METATAGS and how they should be used in your document’s creation, so until next time ….

Well I was wrong as I found out. According to my associate, you really don’t need to know because there are tools out there that you can use to build your web pages and never worry about what the markup looks like. I countered with the argument that if you didn’t know what was on the inside then how could you fix a problem, or make a complex design concept work. Well in her mind that was never a problem because the tool did it all – everything that you could want – well almost everything and if you really got stuck then you just need to find someone who did know (X)HTML and CSS and get them to fix it for you. So having an understanding of (X)HTML and CSS did have some benefit, but not that much that she wanted to run out and buy a book and learn. Maybe next month, you know when I’ve got some spare time. Ya right, like that was going to happen.

So what I was left with was the understanding that most of you out there aren’t really interested in knowing how to “hand” code your own pages. But I do think you should have a basic understanding of how a document is structurally laid out. So with that in mind, I going to begin to examine the sections of an (X)HTML document, and the components that you would use to build those pieces. So lets get started!

Every (X)HTML document begins with a document type declaration (DTD), better know as a “DOCTYPE”. In fact it must be the first thing that appears in your source file. There are a number of different types of (X)HTML and all of these types are defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) . There is a specification available for each type which tells you how that type will behave. So every (X)HTML document needs a DOCTYPE statement or declaration so that the browser that will be used to view your page has some idea about how to “render” or display the page to your visitor. It also makes it possible to use validation tools to check your syntax. So what does a DOCTYPE declaration look like. Well here are a couple of examples:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>

<!DOCTYPE html>

I want to point out here that document type declarations must be exact. That means you have to spell everything correctly and they are case sensitive. If the statement reads “html” then “HTML” is not the same. So typing these into a document can be quite a chore. Fortunately the W3C maintains a web page (located here) that list out all the recommend DOCTYPE declarations so all you have to do is choose the one you want, copy it and paste it directly into your document. Makes it really easy to get started and you don’t have to worry that you might have type something in incorrectly. Once we have the DOCTYPE, we can now begin to insert the (X)HTML code that is required into our document. But before we do that, lets talk a little bit about “tags”.

You create a web page or document using a language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), also known as (X)HTML Code. For our purposes there really isn’t any difference between the two just as long as you use the right DOCTYPE declaration to indicate which one you are using. We usually refer to (X)HTML Code as (X)HTML tags because that’s what they are. For example, let’s say you want to format a word as bold. You would write “<strong>word</strong>”. And the “word” would appear as bold in your document. So as you can see most (X)HTML Code is made up of a starting tag and an ending tag. The element “strong” is the command that tells the browser to make whatever is contained by the tags bold. That’s all tags are. And most of them are really self-explanatory, so don’t get overly concerned at this point in time. Most of them will become clear as we move forward.

Now the basic sections in any (X)HTML document or page are as follows: you start with an <html> tag. This tag marks the beginning of your document. The first section that you need to create is the “head” section, which will start with the beginning tag: <head>. Within the “head” section you can include many different tags which usually have to do with information about the document. You must, however, define a title tag as <title>The Title of Your Document</title> and include this tag in the “head” section of your document. You can now close your “head” section with the closing “head” tag: </head>. You would now create the starting tag for the contents of your document, the body section, using the tag: <body>. The contents of your page goes between the starting body tag and the ending body tag: </body>. You would then end your document with the ending “html” tag: </html>. So if we look at what your document currently looks like, we should see the following:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>The Title of Your Document</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

This framework, as you see above, is the basic framework for all (X)HTML documents. If you go to your favorite web site and use your browser’s capability to view the page’s source code, you will find that all web pages contain this basic framework without exception. And really, if you think about it, this is really not that difficult to understand. Your “html” document contains two sections: the “head” section where you will put information about the document you are creating, and the “body” section where you will put the information that you want your viewers to see.

In my next article, I will begin to look at what information you might want to put into your document’s “head” section, and what information you should put into your “head” section. So until next time ….

So I sat down with pen and paper and created the following list:
1) The site needed to be two columns
2) Since most of the monitors sold today are the extra wide ones, the site could be at least 1024 pixels wide.
3) The site had to support widgets in the sidebar.
4) The site had to support WordPress menu system (no more hand coded menus).
5) And if it could be done in CSS, then that’s the way I would do it (thinking of things like rounded corners).

Then the process of coding began. As I got into it, I realized that I could also break up some of the template files using the “get_template_part” function which made the process of creating additional pages rather simple because the basics of the page only had to be done once. When I was finished, my template consisted of eleven files and did everything it was suppose to. And if you’re reading this post right now, then you’re reading it on my new template, which I have chosen to call “Simple Site“.

Now to make Simple Site do everything I want it to do, I’ve added the following plugins:

a) All in One SEO Pack from Semper Fi. I use the free version, and make a donation. You can find this plugin here.

b) cbnet Different Posts Per Page from Chip Bennett. This plugin is located here.

c) Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachhold, located here.

d) Simple Social Sharing located here and developed by Andrew Norcross.

And I’ve kept the installation down to a minimum also. Use the upload theme feature built into the WordPress Admin menus. Once you’ve uploaded it, then activate it. Then, using the Menus option in the Appearance tab, create a menu using the menu name of “The Main Menu”. You should see that in the This Theme Supports drop down box at the top left of the Menu screen. Add the items you want to your menu and your good to go. And of course, if you are having a problem, then visit my site at www.daveneedham.ca and drop me a note using the contact page, or email me at dave@daveneedham.ca and I’ll be glad to help you out. Oh and you can get the template by going here. Complete the form and I will email you the zip file (it’s not that big!)

So now that I have my template working the way I want it to, I’m planning to create a couple of plugins to improve some of the functionality.The first one will be a “collect email address” widget for list building, but unlike the many widgets that are currently available, mine will email the information to you so that you can store the information any place you choose to, rather than being locked into a database system (that will probably cost you money) right away. As soon as I get Simple Site posted to the WordPress Template directory, I’ll start working on that. It shouldn’t take that long, and you’ll be able to download that one for free from here also.

So that’s all for now. Hope you enjoy using Simple Site, and I would really appreciate any comments you have that I might use to improve it’s functionality.

Before I continue, I would like to digress a little here and say that to-day, writing is not the only way you can present content on the internet. Video makes up an extremely large part of the content presented on the web today. There are literally hundreds of different tools that you can purchase to help you produce your video, and video does carry a high impact value. All you have to do is look at YouTube to see just how important video is becoming. But unlike writing an article, producing a video can carry with it a cost. You will have to purchase some video editing software, perhaps a camera and some other products before you can begin to produce your video. But if you are simply going to write an article, all you really need is a good idea, some paper and a pencil or pen. And perhaps, most importantly, the desire to do it.

So what actually makes up a good article? Well if your articles does not entertain people as well as provide good information and help for their needs, then your article will not be well received. Articles should be written well with correct spelling and good grammar. If you want people to trust you, make your work good and well thought out. Writing an article doesn’t just mean putting down thoughts into words then typing and writing it. You have to capture the interest of your readers and get them to keep on reading. To get your message across you have to get the attention of the reader.

The best way to get started writing, by the way, is to write about something you have an interest in. If you’re writing about something you know, then you will not have a hard time because, well, you already know what it is and what it is about. And once you get the hang of it, you’ll find that writing articles can be fun. Once you reach that point, you might also find that article writing may also be profitable too. But don’t start out with the idea that you’re going to make money writing articles, because if you do, you will surely loose interest , or much worst, fail. If you don’t come across to you readers as an expert, or someone knowledgable in the field that your writing about, most people will simple dismiss you and that will be the end of it. And believe me when I say that there is nothing more frustrating that spending a couple of hours writing out your thoughts on a particular subject only to discouver that no one read what you wrote. But here you have to push through that feeling and keep on writing, because as you get better, more people will want to read what you have to say.

So now you’re going to write your first article. You’ve chosen the topic, done your research and you’re just about to put pen to paper. Here are some things you need to consider: start by making sure you are keeping your readers in mind. Write for them, not the search engines. Make sure that your article address the topic you have chosen and that you have passed on the information your reader’s need.

So now you have generated your first article; you’ve check the spelling and grammer, and you’re ready to publish. If you’re like me, you have your own web site that you publish to, but once you’ve done that is there anything else you can do. The answer to that question is yes. I’m talking about article syndication websites for writers. Syndication benefits both the author providing the information and the websites displaying it. For the receiving site, content syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to its pages, making it more attractive to users. For the author, syndication drives exposure across numerous online platforms. This generates new traffic for the author’s site — making syndication a free and easy form of advertisement.

By submitting your article to a number of article syndication sites, you can increase the exposure of your article. The bottom line is more people see your work, and if your work is good, then the more people will visit your web site. Here is a sort list of some of the article directories I use: Article Alley, Article Cube, Article Rich, Article Cat, Article Dashboard, Idea Marketers, Article Nexus and Ezine Articles. Each one of these is a free site, that is it does not cost anything to post your article. You can find many more sites by simply googling either article syndication or article directories. One thing you should look for specifically is a syndication site that caters to people who are interested in what you are writing about if you can find one which is not always possible.

Now my last point is the key to everything else that I have said. Do not expect hordes of people rushing to your web site after you publish your first article. It just doesn’t work that way no matter what anyone says. And article marketing is not the only technique you should use to drive traffic to your site. It’s not a magic bullet, so don’t get caught up with those people that will tell you they have a formula. Getting traffic to your web site is a continuous process, and article marketing can play a big role in that strategy, but you can not overlook other areas of promoting your site like back linking and good SEO. Driving traffic to your site is a combination of all these things and more.

So now you know a little bit about article marketing and how you can use it to help get people to your web site. I hope this information has been helpful and I would appreciate your comments, and remember, don’t stop doing just because it doesn’t look like it’s working.

Ok, I know that this is beginning to sound like a Jeremy Shoemoney lovefest, but it’s not. Over the past week, I have received five different offers that guarantee me that if I buy their system I will surely make a fortune from the internet. The emails contains phrases like “this is going to be different from anything you’ve seen before“, “And that’s EXACTLY why it makes us so much money, we have literally NO competition!“, “Something that generates results in as little as 90 seconds” or “You Don’t Need To Wait Days To See Profits Roll In“. It just goes on and on. Well not so long ago, I got an email about one such product that promised to show me how to generate as much traffic as I wanted. Oh, and the product was only $169.00. So given that I was busy re-doing my website template and a couple of other small projects, I thought what the heck and I bought the product. When I received the product and started to review what I’d been sent, I realized that the information was just a re-hash of something I’d seen in a FREE Jeremy Shoemaker video. Talk about feeling like a complete dummy. I mean I’m suppose to be the intelligent, technically savvy individual and I’d just been taken advantage of. Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, I think I’d told you all about me taking Jeremy’s free course some time ago. So I went back and reviewed what Jeremy had sent me. No big surprise. The guy that I bought the system from had done exactly what Jeremy had shown me how to do in making a sale, but this time it had been done to me. I guess I should have paid more attention. What the whole episode did though was show me that I really have to pay more attention to what people are saying. I did not, by the way, try to get a refund from the guy, although I guess I should have tried, but something told me I’d be wasting my time. I still get emails from him, but now he’s promoting a new system that’s even better than the system he sold me so I should buy the new system.

I think you can see where all this is going. Most of the people out there selling “money making systems” really don’t care if you’re successful or not. They simply want your money and once they have it they’re gone. Or the new system that they are now hawking is so much better than the system they sold you, you should scrap the old system and buy their new one because, well because you are being tried as a money machine by them. All they want you to do is to keep paying them for systems that, quite frankly, will never work the way they promise, because they are build on false premises.

I guess I’ve ranted on enough, and I should get back to why I started this post in the first place. I don’t know if I’m going to get into trouble for posting the URL I’m about to post, but I was so interested in what was being said that I just have to share it with you guys. Here is the video of Jeremy Shoemaker talking about how to make money with a blog. This is the link. This is the kind of information that Jeremy has been sharing with me for over a year now. And If I’d paid more attention, I probably would not have spend the $169.00 on the junk that I did. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did.

Until next time, may the force be with you.

First, a little about myself. I’ve been involved in the computer industry for the past 35 years. I’ll let you do the math regarding my age. Anyway, when I started there were no PC, no cell phones and the internet was just being thought of. We had computers that filled rooms and IBM ruled the world. I started by writing programs in languages called RPG, COBOL or FORTRAN. You would write your code on a number of sheets, and then punch the code onto punch cards. The punch cards would be submitted to the system administrator who would run your program in the order they were received and your output came on green and white continuous feed computer paper. If you made a mistake then you repeated the process until you got it right. Sounds like fun, eh? Well that’s how it started.

Over the years I have made a very comfortable living writing code for other people, and I can’t complain. In fact I’m still doing it today and out of those 35 years, I’ve only taken a 7 year break – 4 years to run another business and 3 years at attempted retirement. The retirement thing just didn’t work for me. Any to who, I now write in C++, PHP, C sharp, some html & css. And it’s still fun.

About a year ago when I was thinking about converting my web site to WordPress, I saw an advertisement for a free course on How to Make Money on the Internet, and I thought, what the heck and signed up for it. The course was made up of ten articles, which you received one per week. Each article discussed a specific topic and then gave you some homework. All in all it was pretty good, although I did come to the conclusion that I knew most of the stuff, I’d just never thought about it from my point of view before. I got the course from a guy named Jeremy Shoemaker.

Since then I’ve been getting regular emails from Jeremy and I’ve found a few others who offer the same sort of program. Each of these individuals has a different slant on the question – How Do I Make Money On The Internet? But of all the different people I have watched over the last year, Jeremy still impress me in many ways. I have, in fact, actually taken Jeremy’s advice and started an affiliate marketing program with Rockable Press. I buy these guy’s books anyway so I might as well sell them too. So now getting back to the original question – Why You Should Consider Buying The Shoemoney System?

I think that if you are really serious about making money on the internet you need to consider the following points:

1) If you are going to make money on the internet then you need to know how to buy a domain and create a web site. It impossible to make money on the internet without a web site, I don’t care what anybody says. Sure you can pay someone like me to create a site for you, but that’s going to cost money – potentially money you don’t have. With Jeremy’s program, he shows you how to get started; where to find the site builder programs that you can use to build a site with and all the other tools you’ll need to get going.

2) You need to have a product to sell. Seriously, you can’t make money on the internet without some sort of product. Now perhaps you have your own product or maybe you know someone who has a product you could sell. Or, if you’re like most people, you don’t have a clue where to find products that you could sell. Jeremy’s program shows you how to find products to sell, what products sell the best and how to pick a product that you might like to sell. He also shows you how to sell – which surprisingly enough even I learned some things about this topic.

3) So you’ve got a web site and you have a product. Now comes the tricky part. How do you get people to come to your site, and more importantly, how do you get them to buy your product. Here’s where I think the Shoemoney System really shines. Jeremy’s made arrangement with companies like Google, Facebook and Godaddy for either coupons or discounts that lets you learn how to use tools like Adwords from Google without spending your own money. The program spends a lot of time developing this topic because without traffic, well you might as well pack it in. The value of the coupons and discounts definitely more than pays for the system.

4) Now here, for me, is the most important part of the Shoemoney System without a doubt because this is where the majority of people fail – encouragement. The Personal Coaching part of the Shoemoney System can help you get over the bumps that you will encounter building an internet business. The Shoemoney System is, as Jeremy puts it “a comprehensive coaching step by step training program to teach you how to make money online.” Just think of it this way; you’re trying to get some part of the Facebook advertising system to work for you but it’s just not going your way. How much is it worth to you to be able to contact someone who knows how to make it work; can look at what you’re doing and tell you how to fix your problem – at no additional cost to you. Well let me tell you, I get $85.00 per hour to fix other peoples web site problems and most of the time I have to spend at least 4 hours correcting mistakes. Not bad for a part time job.

5) Now I’m down to my last point – and although I said that point 4 was the most important, point 5 is neck and neck with point 4. So what is point 5 – it’s the 60 day money back guarantee. That’s right, if you don’t like the System or whatever, you can get your money back, period. Jeremy is quite adamant about that. He just doesn’t want any unsatisfied clients. There really isn’t anything else I can say about this other than no one else offers a guarantee like this.

So now we are back to the question: Why You Should Consider Buying The Shoemoney System? If you are serious about making money on the internet and to be perfectly honest, most people aren’t then I suggest that you at least look at the Shoemoney System as a way of giving yourself a leg up or a better chance of being successful. Not everyone is going to make a million dollars, but I know for a fact that you could be earning an addition 2 to 3 thousand dollars a month if you wanted to. It’s really up to you ….

The book draws from the insights and experiences of 16 top-notch app developers, and survey responses from over 1000 iPhone users. As David says, “The iTunes® App StoreSM launched on July 10th, 2008 to much fanfare and drama. Opening up a marketplace for software developers to target the iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad™, it has rocketed to success over the past two years. At the time of writing this, over three billion applications have been downloaded. The potential for success has proven to be phenomenal. Developers have the ability to easily reach millions of users through a central marketplace, and many are leveraging that opportunity to make thousands of dollars every day.

Unfortunately, despite the occasional success story, the fact remains that becoming an overnight App Store phenomenon is difficult. Many developers struggle to achieve great success with their application, and it’s a tough market to succeed in. If you’re wanting to strike it big as an app entrepreneur, it isn’t enough just to have a decent idea and some programming knowledge.

This book won’t give you a killer idea, nor will it teach you the ins and outs of programming for the iPhone. What it will do is provide you with all the knowledge and technique you need to spot a great opportunity, get the most from the App Store, make smart decisions about development, craft a stunning interface, and promote your app successfully.

Drawing on survey responses from over 1,000 iPhone users, and in-depth insight from a handful of incredibly talented iPhone developers, this guide will equip you with everything you need to successfully become an iPhone app entrepreneur.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the journey!”