You get up in the morning, punch the keys and it feels meaningless.

That spark that excited you has long been overshadowed by the constant need to crank out content. After all that’s what we’re supposed to do right?

The fact that your backspace key is completely devoid of its identifying features is testimony to your complete lack of faith in your words. Your art. Your commitment.

Could it be you’ve become trapped by the boundaries of your blogging schedule?

Blog Schedule Gone Mad

That self imposed calendar that dictates that we must post 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 times per week, or lord knows we may be exiled to 20th page of Google. God forbid.

In our incessant race to stay on top. To plug our message. Improve our rankings. We forget about what it is that brought us here in the first place.

The love of what we do, and whatever definitions are attached to that for you.

There should be an ease in creating work that matters and brings value to others.
Forcing the issue to adhere to a schedule is completely batshit crazy.

When I look at my history, it’s a wonder readers have stuck with me (thanks guys…I do luv ya)  I’ve flip flopped between posting several times a week, to once a week, to even going for weeks with no posts at all.

Every time beating myself up for not producing, or producing work that doesn’t speak to who I am or who my readers are.

Content for content’s sake serves no one. It’s feigned interest, and diminishes your worth. Despite your best intentions.

Better to produce work that matters, pouring yourself into what you create once per month, than dilute the essence of who you are and the message you convey simply to meet a schedule.

Whose Rules Are You Following

There are plenty of players out there that only post when they have something of value to share. Do you think they’re concerned over how often that happens. No. Absolutely not.

And before you hit me up with the argument about them having well established followings that allow them that luxury…just how do you think they got there?

You can be sure as eggs it wasn’t by pumping out substandard content to feed the mechanisms of whats “expected”.  At some point they threw caution to the wind and said to hell with it.  I’m going to do this my way.

And so should you!

You need to define what allows you to deliver your best work, and I’ll bet its not tied to a schedule. It lies in your thoughts, your genius, your creativity.

Your readers want quality. Whether that comes once a day/week/month or year. And no…they won’t click away if your post surpasses the 386.5 word count either, unless its crap…then of course we deserve it.

I suppose what I’m trying to tell you is to stop following bullshit blogging advice about how often you should be posting. It strips the joy from the creative process that should be defined by you.

You will never find your own success in someone elses design. You have to make it your own.

Take a look at why you do what you do. Who told you it should be so, and why did they tell you that? Are you really doing it your way….really? If not, then why not change it

So I’ll raise my glass in anticipation of your next kick ass post….whenever that shows up
…oh an when it does, come back and link it up in the comments below. I’d love to help you share your awesome work.

I hope you enjoyed this post and would love it if you shared the love…a little tweet, like or plus never hurt anyone now. Thanks
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While this may be true, every new environment usually gives birth new processes or technical applications, which in turn gives rise to new terminology.

Terminology that can be confusing and overwhelming to understand.

So if you’re convinced that cookies are just something you eat, or that spiders are just 8 legged beasties that find their way into your house, then stand by for your quick reference to deciphering online terminology.

Lets kick off with a few terms that you may or may not be familiar with:

Alt Tags

Alt tags alternate text associated with a web page graphic that gets displayed when the Internet user hovers the mouse over the graphic.

Alt tags should convey what the graphic is for or about and contain good relevant keywords. Alt tags also make web pages more accessible to the disabled. For example, a vision-impaired user may have a web browser that reads aloud the text and alt tags on a page. (For those familiar with HTML, “alt” isn’t actually a tag by itself but an attribute to the “img” tag.). Note that the value of Alt tags for SEO have been discounted over time by the search engines to the point that now it is of minimal value

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the actual text part of a link (usually underlined). Used by search engines as an important ranking factor. Google pays particular attention to the text used in a hyperlink and associates the keywords contained in the anchor text to the page being linked to.

Cache

Copies of web pages stored locally on an Internet user’s hard drive or within a search engine’s database. A cache is the reason why web pages load so quickly when a user hits the Back button in their web browser, since the page is not being re-downloaded off of the Internet.

Google is unusual among search engines in that it allows Internet users to view the cached version of web pages in its index. Simply click on the word “Cache” next to the search result of interest and you will be taken to a copy of the page as Googlebot discovered and indexed it.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

The rate at which people click on a link such as a search engine listing or a banner ad. Studies show that click-through rates are six times higher for search engine listings than banner ads CTR – Click Through Rate
Click Through Rate is a measure of the number of clicks received from the number of ad impressions delivered.

The formula to calculate CTR is: number of clicks / number of ad impressions x 100

Cookie

Information placed on a visitor’s computer by a web server. While the web site is being accessed, data in the visitor’s cookie file can be stored or retrieved. Mostly cookies are used as unique identifiers (i.e. user IDs or session IDs) to isolate a visitor’s movements from others’ during that visit and subsequent visits. Other data that may get stored in a cookie include an order number, email address, referring advertiser, etc.

Geo-Targeting

Advertising that is distributed based on geographic location. Online advertising allows for targeting of countries, states, cities and suburbs (in some markets).

Inbound Links (IBL)

Links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Inbound links are an important asset that will improve your site’s PageRank (PR).

Link Bait

Useful or entertaining web content which compels users to link to it.

Meta Description

A meta tag hidden in the HTML that describes the page’s content. Should be relatively short; around 12 to 20 words is suggested. The meta description provides an opportunity to influence how your Web page is described in the search results, but it will not improve your search rankings. Make sure your meta description reflects the page content or you may be accused of spamming.

PageRank (PR)

Google uses a weighted form of link popularity called PageRank . Not all links are created equal.

Google differentiates a link from an important site (such as CNN.com) as being better than a link from Jim-Bob’s personal home page. The Google Toolbar (which is a free download from http://toolbar.google.com) has a PageRank meter built into it, to see which web pages are considered important by Google and which aren’t.

PageRank scoring ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best. PageRank scores get exponentially harder to achieve the closer to 10 they are. For example, increasing your own homepage’s PageRank from a 2 to 3 is easy with not a lot of additional links, jumping from a 7 to an 8 is very difficult to achieve. The higher the PageRank of the page that’s linking to you, the more your site’s PageRank will benefit. The better your PageRank, the better you’ll do in Google, all else being equal.

Pay-per-click (PPC)

A pay-for-performance pricing model where advertising (such as banners or paid search engine listings) is priced based on number of click throughs rather than impressions or other criteria. Overture is an example of a search engine which charges advertisers on a pay-per-click basis.

Portal

A site that functions as a point of access to information on the web. Portals are either authoritative hubs for a given subject or popular content driven sites.

Spider

Also known as a bot, robot, or crawler. Spiders are programs used by a search engine to explore the World Wide Web in an automated manner and download the HTML content (not including graphics) from web sites, strip out whatever it considers superfluous and redundant out of the HTML, and store the rest in a database (i.e. its index).

Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).

A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit. As it visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, recursively browsing the Web according to a set of policies.

A spider is a robot sent out by search engines to catalog websites on the Internet. When a spider indexes a particular website, this is known as ‘being spidered’.

Trackback

A notification that someone has linked to a document on your site. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles.

URL

Used interchangeably with web address. Acronym stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URLs can specify the location of a web page, an email address, or a file on an FTP server, among other things.

There you have it.  Just a few of the terms that you will run across in your day to day operations of your online business. If you found this post useful, please share it on your favorite network.

The definitions contained in this post are credited to SEO Glossary with over 200 glossary entries in the directory, it’s a great resource worth bookmarking.

 
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With so many people offering their services via coaching, consulting and or mentoring, how do you know which one to choose….do you even need someone at all?

Nobody can magically impart their skill and wisdom to create change in your life or business without your application of the principals being taught.

Each genre has thier style. Make sure you’re getting the right match up for your requirements.

Coaches tend to work on teaching or training in specific skills while providing support and keeping you moving forward by guiding you with action steps to reach your goals.

Consultants on the other hand provide professional advice or expertise in a specific area. While they may provide influence in the decision making processes, they have no direct authority to enact change. They are simply advisers.

A Mentor is someone that has qualities that you admire. Someone who has “been there and done that” someone who’s style or work you would like to emulate. In the simplest of terms think of a Mentor this way… “when I grow up I want to be just like xxx” and mentors most always give their time freely. They have a genuine desire to help others grow.

It’s likely that you will admire different people for different traits, you do not have to put all your eggs in one basket. In fact you shouldn’t. Nobody is an expert in every field.

I love this video from Jack Welch. It’s less than 2 minutes but full of wisdom.

Selecting someone to help you make changes in your life and business requires you to have a questioning mind. Jack sums it up nicely with his take on having a nose for knowledge.

• What will this person be able to help you with
• Do they have the relevant skills for the problems you face
• Will you mesh on a personal level
• Can you take criticism
• Can you follow directions

Having a coach, consultant or mentor is not the golden ticket in itself, but it can help you to find your own way to your golden ticket.

The right people will help you to flourish for sure. But do your due diligence and make sure they fit the bill.

On that note I’ll leave you with a some golden nuggets of wisdom, a little fun on recognising tell tale signs of bad mentors. Enjoy

Have you ever worked with coaches, consultants or mentors? How do you select the right people to work with?  Share your experiences below, I know this will be super helpful for those looking for some help in this area.

 
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Some sales attempts I see on the Internet make me both cry and laugh. And I’m also amazed at the same time, because apparently, the techniques are working to some degree…otherwise no one would be using them.

Of course, it all depends on your definition of “working” … if it’s “I’m pissing 98% of people off, but the remaining 2% are making me rich” then OK – it is working. But is it really how real business should be done?

Take this situation for instance.

I don’t buy something whenever I go to the Apple store. But even if I leave with my hands empty I’m not mad at the store and everyone who works there, I’m just not in a buying mood.

In the real world doing your best at trying to sell something and not pissing anyone off at the same time is not uncommon. I’d even say that it’s the normal way of doing business.

So please, can all those “clever online selling rules” that make everybody mad just die already?

And don’t get me wrong. There are many truly valid and valuable online selling rules, but lying, deception, and being fake aren’t on the list.

Let me give you a set of lame online selling practices, just so you can recognize them when you stumble upon anything suspicious.

Lame “as seen on” blocks

Let’s take it from the top by looking at lame “as seen on” badges or blocks. This is an element in which the marketer tries to create some social proof by showing different places that have featured or mentioned the product they’re promoting.

Everything is fine when they use some real media outlets like TV stations or popular sites, but saying something like “as seen on Google” is just massively lame.

(Some time ago I wrote a post focusing solely on this one aspect. Feel free to hop over to it: How to Design an Uber-Lame “As Seen On” Block.)

Crackhead pop-ups

Then there are auto pop-ups appearing when you try to leave a sales page. What’s usually displayed on the pop-up is information that you’ve just been rewarded a discount … for some reason.

This is the most lame, crackhead method possible!

Picture this. You’re walking down the street, and you get approached by a crackhead who has just stolen a watch from someone and now tries to sell it to you for $100. You say no. And the crackhead says: OK, $50. You say: no, leave me alone. And the crackhead says: OK, $20. And so on…

The biggest problem with this technique is that you don’t let anyone leave the site in peace. Constantly hitting them with additional sales messages because, who knows, maybe something will eventually do the job, is BS. The fact that those people will NEVER come back isn’t taken into account by marketers who do this.

Sometimes you see the pop-up multiple times, so you have to click “cancel” constantly until you can eventually leave. This is a prime example of the crackhead approach.

Videos that “won’t be around for long”

The third “smart marketing practice” concerns videos. Tell me, how many times have you heard something like “this video won’t be online for long” only to come back to the site 2 months later and the video is still there?!

This is simply a lie.

I personally leave every sales page that mentions this … immediately. So the second the speaker says this magic phrase, I’m gone. But that’s just me.

Anyway, the principle behind this technique is scarcity. Lame marketer tries to create some scarcity by saying that they will remove the video at once and, now the best part, “it might be even offline when you refresh the page,” so you have to act fast.

Oh puh-lease, if you present some real scarcity then you can surely convince me to take action. But simply talking about some fake stuff isn’t enough.

I don’t care about you or your launch techniques, your launch schedule, or your video going down. I care about me. Just try to have a little dignity and ethics.  If you say that the video won’t be there when I refresh the page, make sure that it indeed isn’t there when I do so!

Since we’re talking scarcity, there’s more to it than just non-disappearing videos.

Not enough copies of digital products

Have you ever stumbled upon anyone saying that they only have 3 copies left of a purely digital product?

Did you just run out of PDFs, Mr. Marketer, or what?

Now, there is a big difference between saying: “I’m closing the door after 300 downloads because I feel like it” and “We only have 300 copies of the file left.” The former implies that it’s purely the marketer’s decision. The latter implies that the supply itself is very low due to some external factors, like lack of materials or something.

Fake Testimonials

It’s not always that easy to recognize those, but some minor details indicate it. First of all, every testimonial without a person’s first and last name, and a picture seems fake.

Then there’s the thing with pictures themselves. The Internet has been around for a while. Nowadays people can recognize a stock photo when they see one, OK? And it’s really hard to believe that every testimonial of yours has been submitted by someone possessing stock pictures of themselves.

Testimonials are among the most effective sales elements, but they have to be real and, hopefully, verifiable.

Fake publication dates

There’s one more fake element on some sales pages that’s highly annoying. And that is the fake date at the top or the bottom of the page.

That ought to be the date when the page was published, but in many cases it’s automatically set to today or yesterday. What’s the point? I truly don’t know. Do you want to tell me what day it is today, Mr. Marketer?

OK, let me be honest … I know the point behind this. It’s a lame technique to make the message seem new and relevant, so you’re more likely to take action.

No one’s interested in last year’s craze, I agree. But if that’s the only thing you have to convince people that your product is still up-to-date, then this is just the type of thinking that qualifies you as a lame marketer.

These are just some marketing techniques that should die right now, I’m sure there’s more, so if you know of any feel free to speak up and leave a comment.

If you feel offended, then … well, that was the point because the only people likely to feel offended are ones using such lame techniques. In such a case, you are the one to blame for using them, not me for calling you out.

About the author: Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a 20-something year old writer, a web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland, and a grad student at the Silesian University of Technology. He shares his thoughts at newInternetOrder.com. Tune in to get his advice on starting an online business.
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“Approve my comment…otherwise I’m gonna hack your blog”

Far from being the shy retiring type, my immediate thoughts were, “WTF…who the hell are you…you jumped up little twerp”

I know, I know…very misguided of me. After all the “little twerp” is probably spamming this message across hundreds of sites as we speak.

But it was enough to pull me up and address my complacency on blog security.

Hacking Monkeys (as I like to call them) have always been around, and I don’t know if they’re on the increase, but they’re certainly getting Naaahssty!

In the last few months I’ve heard and read of a number of people not only being hacked and having their websites officially screwed over, but there have even been cases of domains being transferred out from under the owner.

How would you feel if your bread and butter domain suddenly no longer belonged to you?….SCARY STUFF.

Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m a high priority target for hackers with an agenda, but there’s a lot of indiscriminate hacking going on….just for fun.

You would think if you had these kinda mad skills you could find a better use for them other than just creating havoc…. I’ll stop there before I digress into a lengthy tirade *sigh*

So as I said, it did get me thinking about my blog security. I suppose the main reason why I hadn’t done anything about it, was simply lack of knowledge.

What should I be looking for in a blog security plugin?  How would I know If I’d been Hacked?  How would I fix it? Its enough to make you stick your head in the sand!

But ignorance won’t make the problem go away.  So let’s not do that!

There are really three main entry points for hackers. Via your hosting, your computer and /or your website. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll walk away with a little more knowledge and a few tools to improve your blog security.

Host Hacking

On the host side of things you really can’t do a lot from your end, other than ensure that you are choosing a reliable and secure hosting company. I have been with Hostgator from day dot with all my sites and they have been brilliant on security, service provision and support.

If you do get hacked its probably a good idea to report it to your host, just in case it is a problem their end.  Plus they can probably assist you in removing your site temporarily so you can fix your issues. You don’t want a hacked site to stay live for too long, Google may list it as an unsafe site.

Computer Hacking

Your computer can also be a source of vulnerability. Injected malware can steal passwords from your FTP program for example, then your blog security for all your sites goes out the window.

Make sure you are keeping your computer clean by running virus protection.

On a side note, please bear this in mind if you have outsourced work to others that have access to your websites, it might pay to confirm that they are protecting their systems also. Better to be safe than sorry.

Website Hacking

We’re all familiar with passwords we use them everywhere….that’s part of the problem. With so many of them its easy to get complacent and pick something easy to remember or use the same password on multiple sites. But we know we shouldn’t do that, right?

So do yourself a favor and go and change your passwords. Use a password generator to strengthen your blog security, and if you have problems remembering them, for gods sake invest in a password manager, it will save your brain cells.

I use Roboform which allows me to store all my logins/passwords and is accessible no matter what device I’m using.  I currently have 176 passwords stored.   Do you think I’d stand a hope in hell of remembering all those?….Not a chance!

WordPress Security

No platform is without bugs, holes or glitches which tend to rear their ugly heads on updates.

Now updates are primarily to improve on the platform by adding new features and/or to fix bugs from previous versions. So its always a must to keep your WordPress version current.

By current I wouldn’t suggest you jump in and upgrade immediately on release day. Leave it a few days…but only a few days, not weeks. This will allow for any new bugs to be ironed out, and never update without backing up your site first…more on that in a little while.

Login security is another issue which you should address. Not only should you have a strong password, but you should also stop using the default ‘admin’ as a login. You are just playing into the hands of hacking monkeys that try to use brute strength to discover your password. By using ‘admin’, you’ve already provided them half of the puzzle.

If you are hacked, do check that new user logins haven’t been created in the user menu of WordPress. Make sure not only to check the users listed, but see that the the total number of users shown agrees with your list count. This post from Makeuseof was very interesting and helpful in that regard.

If you’re like me, I’m assuming that you don’t want to be playing around in the code of your site too much, or changing file permissions.  It’s enough that we have to deal with these issues due to outside influences, the last thing we want is to break our site by tinkering with things we’re not familiar with.

As added protection against login hacks, I’ve installed a plugin called Limit Login Attempts, which I’d read good things about.

Now who would of thought it, but its only been installed for five days at the time of writing this and already blocked 10 login attempts on my site…I was freakin amazed, and would never have known it.

Don’t laugh… one of those attempts was me!   Believe me, completely unintentional.
The program that I use for writing my posts submits directly into WordPress, and I had neglected to change the password so it was trying to login and triggered the lockout…ooops.

So do be aware that if you use applications that login to your site make sure their passwords are kept up to date. There’s nothing more frustrating than being locked out when you have work to do.

Backups

I was unaware in the early days that WordPress consists of two components, the database and the files.   Both of which need to be backed up.

I was using a plugin called WP DB backup which I later discovered was only good for backing up the database.  All the other files like the WordPress installation, plugins, themes, images, scripts etc were not being looked after. Not good.  Time to find an new solution.

After a lot of research looking at the free plugins & paid options available, decided that whatever I chose needed to meet the following criteria.
1. Easy to use. Not just to backup, but for Restore too… if god forbid I should need to.
2. Must back up both files and database.
3. Must have auto scheduling.
4. Ability to easily store offsite.

While there are free plugins that will back up the complete package, some of the restore procedures seemed a little complex, and that’s the part that matters when you need it.

Storage for most is onsite (ie within your wordpress installation) with backups emailed, which can become a problem when files get hefty, and could lead to other issues if for some reason you cannot gain access to your wordpress files to access your backups.

So I looked at the paid options and decided to go with Backupbuddy.
This one seemed to cover all the bases for my requirements and it also allows me to migrate sites easily between domains. Pretty handy dandy when you’re creating an web empire *cough* okay…a few websites at least

It was pretty easy to set up and configure everything including offsite storage. Plus as an added bonus it included Sucuri’s Malware scanner, which will alert you to any blog security issues. Which I was relieved to find my site was squeaky clean….yay!

I actually ran a test to see how easy it was to backup the site and dump it on another domain. Verdict = piece of cake.

I did download Backupbuddy’s free “getting started with Backupbuddy” as a reference, but to be honest its pretty intuitive.  You just need to make sure you have the relevant database names and user information at hand, but it was a done deal in less than 10 minutes.

Not bad at all!

If you can’t afford to shell out on the paid option, I’ve included links below to a couple of the more popular free plugin solutions for you to check out.

How Much Protection

Can you could go overboard on blog security downloading plugins and the like? I’d probably say yes.   And unless you know what all the functions of the plugins are, they  may be duplicating processes or working at cross purposes.

There’s a number of blog security plugins to chose from, some of which can totally bamboozle you with tech speak.  As I’ve said before, I have no desire to become a coding genius, I just want to make sure I’ve got sufficient protection, without being detrimental to the overall function of the site.

You have to be cognisant of how many plugins you’re running, as they put a load on your site delivery time.  Something which I’m feeling a little at the moment, but that’s another post.

So which do you chose?

Go for something that’s been recommended by people that know their shit from clay…That’s my advice.

Do your research.  Ask peers. Put out feelers on the social networks. People are very helpful if you just ask.

I’d come across recommendations for a plugin called Antivirus on a few well known blogs, so have decided to take that one for a spin. It runs quietly in the background, but lets me know if I have a problem. No complicated settings, nice and simple…just how I like it.

So we’ll see how it goes. Only time will tell.

I’ve also bookmarked Sucuri, should I ever find myself in strife. They will clean up malware on your site, and provide monitoring for you. They have been recommended by a number of people,  its a good one to keep in your back pocket.

So there you have it. My adventures in blog security.

In short the key elements you need:

• Have a damned reliable backup in place first and foremost. If worse comes to worst you can delete the whole sheebang and and just restore your backup, good as new.
• Keep your computer system protected with the antivirus poison of your choice.
• Strengthen and or update your passwords, and add protection to your login.
• Chose one blog security plugin that you think offers the best protection.

Hacking Monkeys get cleverer by the minute and there is no assurance that even having these measures will protect you….but you can at least make it damned difficult for them.

But DO make it a priority. Take a couple of hours and get all these things sorted out, because in todays world its probably not a case of if you get hacked, but more a case of when.

Summary Recommendations & Resources

The following is list of recommendations and resources referred to in this post (some of which are affiliate links), I hope you find them useful.

Hostgator (Paid) Website Hosting
Roboform (Paid) Password and Login Manager
Free Password Generator (Free) Generate passwords
Limit Login Attempts (Free) Plugin for Login Security
Back up WordPress (Free) Backup Plugin
BackWPup (Free) Backup Plugin
BackupBuddy (Paid) WP backup, restore, migration plugin
Sucuri (Paid) Removal of Malware &Website Monitoring
Sucuri Site Check (Free) Malware Scanner
Antivirus (Free) Malware Plugin

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends.  You can also get on the mailing list for more great info, tips and resources…just sign up below.
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