Want to Start a Blog, but Don’t Know How to “Get the Wheels in Motion?”
Introducing The Net Fool’s “Blogger Stimulus Package!!!”

I believe strongly in lending a helping hand to others who are interested in starting their own online ventures, but just don’t have the “know how” to do it all themselves… at least, not without burning a LOT of time on learning how. Therefore, I am reinstating my previous “Blog Domination” package, but I am UPPING THE ANTE and making the deal even sweeter. Now, not only will I design your blog for you… but I will personally go out and buy you any commercially available “premium” theme that you want… for free!

What you get in the Blogger Stimulus Package:

• FREE Premium Theme from the website of your choosing
  • Try Unique Blog Designs, WP Theme Designer, WooThemes or Elegant Themes to get your hunt started
• FREE Custom Logo designed by me to fit your blog style/niche
  • I’ll whip up a high-quality logo made custom just for you
• FREE Copy of The Net Fool’s Blogging eBook
  • Get your blog off the ground with this easy to understand tutorial!
• FREE Blog Consultation from The Net Fool!
  • I’ll talk you through the process of blog ownership personally to get you on the right track to making money online

Sounds like a great deal, eh? I’ve had many satisfied customers in the past, and I hope that you will be one as well. You may be asking what you need to do at this point to get eligible to enter into this promotion… well there is really only one requirement for you:

REQUIRED: Sign Up For HostGator Webhosting Using This Link!

HostGator is the web’s premier web hosting company, and has literally millions of websites hosted on its servers… including mine! My website loads very fast considering that it is built on almost 100% images, and I have the speedy servers at HostGator.com to thank for that. By signing up for web hosting under my name (do this by using the link above), you will be telling HostGator that I sent you, and it becomes a win-win situation for me to provide you with all of the set up on the front end. There are no hidden “gotcha” costs involved, I act as an affiliate for companies like HostGator that like to see steady business… and heck, you get a new blog designed by a pro!

The Net Fool’s Blogger Stimulus Package: We will be running this offer for a limited time… so be sure to get into it as soon as you can if you are interested. All you have to do is sign up for hosting using this referral link and then shoot me an email (or drop a comment on this post) to let me know that you are in. No gimmicks, No fuss!

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-The Net Fool

Related posts:

1. The Fool’s FREE Blog Domination Package
2. The Net Fool’s Build-A-Blog Workshop is Under Way!
3. The Net Fool’s Hosting Bonanza RESULTS!

But was my excitement premature!?

One of my readers, Rob from myTTOOS.com, pointed out the following:

Rob: “Really cool, but i bet it will be overseen a lot = bad conversion. Let us know if i am right.”

Jim: “Could be true… but then again I am not trying to spam people like typical marketers, haha”

Rob: “at least put the focus on the chalk board, put a few blinking stars around it or something lol”

Though it sounded silly at first, I started thinking about just how right he was! While I was all concerned with making the new opt-in newsletter box look at good as possible… I made it flow TOO WELL! Therefore, I needed a little something to get people to notice it (though I won’t be putting blinking stars on my header anytime soon, haha). So what did I do? I added a big ol’ floating arrow!

Why Are Floating Objects A Smart Idea?

Just as Rob pointed out, you can have the best idea in the world… but if nobody notices it, than it’s worthless. Adding something to the top of your website that is a bit “out there” can really help to emphasize a particular region of your website, while not detracting from your overall “look” or crowding the rest of your text. When it comes to attention-grabbers, I’d much rather have something that just sits on top so I don’t waste any valuable real-estate.

This is very much like building a house: if you are trying to expand and you run out of acreage on your property… you can still make a bigger house by adding another floor!

How To Add Floating Objects to Your Website or Blog

So how do you actually do it yourself? Let’s walk through the steps that it takes to add a flashy layered/floating image to your website or blog.

1. Get a Transparent Image to Use
I made an image located here, that is just a basic arrow with a ton of photoshop effects laid on top to make it stand out. Remember that you CANNOT have your image be a .jpg, .bmp or any other non-transparent image (unless you want it to look “el horible“). Therefore, I would recommend that you use .png (better quality) or .gif (more of a “standard” format) for your image.

2. Put the Correct Coding Into Your Header (or wherever you want)
The coding works by building a reference off of a certain “div” table in your header. It will float the image relative to the div that you select, so be sure that you put a “div” table somewhere near where you want your image to be floating around.

<div id=”floating_region”>
<a href=”#”><img src=”image.jpg” id=”top_image” /></a>
</div>

As you can see by the code, there are 2 areas that we will also need CSS coding. Let’s first talk through the code! You need to first make a div table (as mentioned earlier) in the region of the website where you would like to add a floating image. Don’t worry, you can move the image around from there… but it always references the div as a “starting point” when you tell it to move “50 pixels to the right” (or whatever you choose). I have called that div table “floating_region.” Next, you need to style the image so that it knows it is floating (I called it id=”top_image”), and put it inside of a linking reference so that it works properly.

3. Update Your Theme’s CSS Styling (in wordpress, it’s “style.css”)
Your CSS should look like this:

#floating_region {
position:relative;
width:___px;  }

#top_image {
position:absolute;
top:50px;
right:20px; }

For “floating region,” you simply need to change width to match the width of the div. In my case, the div was a part of the header, and it was the div that contained a cutout splice of my header “hdr_03.jpg” which is 87 pixels wide. Therefore, mine was “width: 87px;“! The “top image” layer is your graphic, and position should be set as “absolute.” Then, you can simply position it around (using top,right,left,bottom) and messing around with the number values to push/pull your image in different directions.

BOTTOM LINE: Thanks to Rob for recommending I don’t “settle” with what I had… because I believe that it is indeed even better now, and people will actually notice the area of my website when there is a giant red arrow with the word “FREE!” in it. Let me know if you are thinking of doing something similar, and if you  are having problems I’ll try to help!

-The Net Fool

Related posts:

1. Happy Thanksgiving! – New Monetization Features Added to The Net Fool
2. Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 12: Customizing Your Blog’s Sidebar
3. The Best Blog Header OF ALL TIME… the Net Fool’s Got It IN THE BAG!!!

While it may be an overstatement to say that theNetFool.com is now sporting the greatest header that has ever been created for a weblog (and I do this simply for a great post topic ), I’ve made some more changes that I am sure you have noticed by now. By adding a clever opt-in newsletter subscription box, and in a very aesthetically pleasing manner, I will be boosting the amount of turnover this blog generates… and we all know that more subscribers = more POWER.

The Inspiration for Change?
My inspiration was actually a video I saw a week ago from one of the most famous MMO bloggers of all time, John Chow. Now, John takes a lot of heat from people who claim that all of his material is either 1) fluffy and unimportant; or 2) wrong or misleading. I feel that most of this is coming from the fact that he is a top dog, and people love to hate the champ. In summary, the video is about how he makes money blogging… and a lot of his success revolved around the fact that he used his blog as a machine to capture email addresses. I noticed that I wasn’t doing this currently, and I have decided to make a change by becoming more newsletter-centric. Check out his post here!

Let’s Talk About the New Header & the History

My old header originally just had the logo and a whole lot of eye candy. About half a year ago, I decided that I should be “USING” that space for something… so I took down the papers and such that I had on the bulletin board in the logo and darkened the color of it so that it would look like a chalk board. Now that my bulletin board could be “drawn” on in “chalk” (yes, I have fun with it!)… I downloaded a font called “Eraser” so that I could put up different versions of my header to promote new happenings on my blog.

The next “phase” of the header was when I decided to monetize it. I thought that this was a great idea, and it turns out that it was a major flop. What I did was add a few programs that I used often to generate money on the right side of my header. The problem here was that the affiliate links simply weren’t being clicked because they were not being seen by people using the blog… and were very transparent and small in the corner of a very large landscape heading.

CURRENT: Now, I have changed focus and totally integrated an opt-in form into my header. Not only this, but I have a very neat dynamic drop-down system that I custom programmed to deliver one of 3 eBooks with a subscription to this blog as a bonus. I don’t know ANY other blog that allows you to choose from multiple “gifts” upon registering to a newsletter… so I think I have a great system in place that will work for me well into the future.

Jim, that is indeed the best header ever… how did you do it!?

Ah, calm down a little bit… I will explain how it works! The first move on my end was to have different products to offer my readers. Many bloggers haven’t been around enough to have their own eBooks and such that they can hand out, so this was a bit of a leg up from the get go. I have a lot of content and much of it gets buried, so this is a great way to get things back on the frontpage that I’ve worked hard on!

In Aweber, I knew that there was a way to give a blog broadcast to people that subscribe with a digital download… but there is no way to do it for multiple items in different scenarios. Therefore, most of the scripting is actually run through the confirmation page when you first hit “submit.” By creating a unique variable for each offering (for example: “gift1″ and “gift1″), you can match that selection to a file name (i.e. “gift1.pdf”) and feed that to the subscriber once they confirm their subscription! It’s a bit more complicated than that… but the jist of it is creating a new variable for the book choice that Aweber (fortunately) let’s you pass on through the system!

The final piece of the puzzle was actually coding it in. I had to tear apart my existing header for this… and splice it into numerous images so that I could place a form on top of it (the thing used to be 1 big image). Then, with some clever CSS implementation for styling (example: the selection boxes highlight when they are active ), away we go!

Now I can capture more leads… and maintain a pretty sweet looking header!
-The Net Fool

What Do YOU Think About The New Header?

Related posts:

1. Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 11: Modifying Your Blog’s Header to Perfection
2. Jazz Up Your Blog With Floating Attention-Grabers! Boost Subscribers With STYLE
3. What Spoof Do You Want to See?

But Why GPT?

There are many reasons why I have chosen this niche to start a new project, but at the very core I would say that the reason is purely passion. When I was growing up, I remember that I wanted nothing more than to score $10-20 for free online… I had a lot of time on my hands and wasn’t eligible to get a job anywhere. Nowadays, many demographics… from teenagers, to work at home moms, to the unemployed looking to re-enter the workforce… are heavily active in this industry. The role of a “get paid to” website is literally to provide a means of profit for people that have a bit of spare time on their hands, and it really works out quite well.

Despite the clamoring of many web-savvy individuals that the niche is “saturated” or even “dead” altogether, I have been able to find affiliates to provide the business with offers thus far… so I beg to differ. Not only this, but because I have been behind the industry for such a long time I know how it works. Many companies deal with an overflow of information at the start, not exactly sure where to go. For me, I have a leg up because I understand the competitive landscape and what I will need to do to get the word out and succeed. Not only that, but the profit margins are quite good!

I’ve personally made multiple thousands of dollars just from being involved on these GPT websites, and I feel that I have something to offer from both a managerial and financial perspective. There is a HUGE turnover ratio in this line of work because people simply cannot understand how to manage the business against loss… I have the financial background to ensure that we remain liquid and cash flow positive at all points in time, and hope to make a splash.

My Strategy for Pirate Cash

All good businesses need a strategy to get them ahead… and in an area where I will be playing a lot of catchup, it’s important that I have it down. First of all, I’d like to point out that all GPT services at their very basic are the same, so it is important to make customers feel that there is a complete advantage for choosing one over the other. It’s essentially my job as the owner to make this a reality.

Here are points I am considering:

1. TRUST
Trust is without a doubt the #1 goal of any GPT, and establishing credibility doesn’t come in a day’s work. Fortunately for me, I feel that Pirate Cash will launch with an initially high balance of trust, as I have been (again) the police in this industry for quite some time… and have been known for having high standards of integrity in the websites that I recommend.

2. ENTERTAINMENT
Anyone can complete offers, but businesses thrive on volume in the GPT industry. What does that mean? Well the more surveys a user completes, the better your margins get. On a very dull website, people will complete an offer or two and then get tired and bored with the repetitive process. While I don’t have the capacity to code something really cool into the website, I DO have the ability to jazz things up with very fresh images and fun cartoon characters. I’m sure that after I gain enough profit, I will be reinvesting in a system that is even more individualized and a bit more “friendly” for the people working on the website… for now, having eye candy will definitely keep users around longer.

3. EARNINGS POTENTIAL
Naturally, the final key to a successful GPT website is the amount (and quality) of offers that are supported. With strong relationships from the marketing agencies… and enough evidence of responsibility to sway them toward approving my accounts… I should have a leg up on the competition in getting better offers for people to make better money for their time spent completing offers.

This website should be done in a week or two, and I am using my time now to shore things up and make sure that everything is good to go. If you would like to help out and are interested in being one of the earlier members, drop a comment below and I’ll be sure to get you on the same page!

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-The Net Fool

Related posts:

1. Making Money Online with Get Paid To (GPT) Programs – A Profit Machine!
2. GPT Reviews: Treasure Trooper
3. How do I know I will be paid?

Now, as I have developed my own method for gaining followers, and thus status & power on Twitter, I have seen my account even more preoccupied with Twitter-based profit schemes. It seems that the more affiliate followers I pick up, the more Twitter promoters I am seeing! These programs don’t work, are overpriced, and need to be stopped.

I am so frustrated with the millions of promoters for hundreds of Twitter “miracle systems” out on the internet. :devil: Because of this, I’ve developed a method that works just as well… and is almost fully automated… that you can get without downloading anything, without signing up to any newsletter and without paying!

Why am I doing this for free?
Well, because I’m so darn foolish!

The Method

Let’s start with the basics: getting big on twitter is simply a function of having a lot of people follow you. A great way to get people to follow you? Follow Them! Therefore, you could get a pretty hefty Twitter account simply by following a lot of people and having them follow you back, right?

But what’s the use of having a Twitter account if the people following you simply don’t care? We need to also find a way to track along with people that have similar interests. Since Twitter only allows you to have a certain Follow/Following ratio… you also can’t just follow everyone in a massive push, and then wait for a few thousand to follow back.

With the set of restrictions in place, here’s what I do that works exactly the same way as any program that you can buy for $100 online, and it’s free!

Step One: Register for Twitter
Obviously, to do this method you will need your own Twitter account.

Step Two: Click This Link to Follow My Twitter Account!
Not actually necessary, but definitely would appreciate you doing this if you enjoyed the post.

Step Three: Download “Reload Every” for Mozilla Firefox
Assuming that you use FireFox for your web-browsing, download the above plugin for your browser that will allow you to refresh a certain tab automatically for a set time interval. We’ll explain why in a bit!

Step Four: Use “TwitterMatch” to Follow People with Similar Interests
Okay, this is where it gets a tad confusing. TwitterMatch is actually the demo of a script that TwitterScripts.net wants you to buy. With a fully-functioning demo, there is really no need! Navigate to the website, log-in, and search out a keyword phrase that matches your blogging niche. Then, once the page loads, Right-Click on the page to enable “ReloadEvery” in Firefox to automatically refresh the page ever 5 or 10 seconds. This will run their script again, adding a new list of Twitter accounts to your “following” list! Let it run for as long as you want for each keyword that you want, and then you can even load a new keyword and do it all again.

Step Five: Wait for People to Start Following you Back
It will usually take 3-5 days before everyone who was planning on returning the follow does so. You can continue to repeat Step 4 in the meantime until you reach your initial 2,000 limit… eventually you will break by this limit when you have enough people follow you back. There are also daily limits to deal with, but no paid service would be able to get around it regardless.

Step Six: Clean Out the People Not Following You Back
You don’t want people hanging around in your “following” list not helping you out, so you can selectively delete anyone not reciprocating the love by using a tool called Twitter Karma every week or so.

That’s it! Repeat the following/unfollowing process every now and then, run our helpful automated following script every now and then, and within a month you will be doing as well (if not better!) than any other program out there. I started at less than 300 followers at the beginning of this week, and now that I have developed this method I am up to 700 people following me in just 3 days!

Our next Twitter feature will talk about how you can freshen up your Twitter account to improve your odds of being reciprocal-followed by people that you recruit with this method. Finally, we will round out a three-part series on Twitter domination with a series on programs that can help you earn cash with Twitter. Hope you enjoyed “The Net Fool Twitter Method!”

-The Net Fool

Related posts:

1. How to Use and Exploit Twitter for Targeted Traffic & Increased Subscribers
2. Marketing With Twitter – A Powerful Tool to Network and Increase Your Traffic
3. FOR SALE: BullishBankers.com (Finance, Stocks) – $9k/yr Profit, 38k/mo. Uniques

We’ve got a special today, a sale of one of the websites I am part-owner of!

BullishBankers.com is an established and popular financial research community with a strong subscriber base and pull in the industry. Recently, we had ceased to operate the site as of May 2009… so there has been a period of about 6 months where there has been nothing done to the site. HOWEVER, we believe that despite the recent activity, it will be very easy to revitalize the website and should make for an attractive buying point for any interested buyer.

There are many reasons to consider the website, including (but not limited to):

• Fully customized website, based on WordPress, that has integrated features and custom coding for a financial audience
• vBulletin-based forum, including license, that is custom-skinned to match
• Twitter account (@bullishbankers) with almost 4,000 followers
• Average 37,500 uniques/month (during normal operations, July ‘08-May ‘09)
• Averaged $700/month, with a peak monthly earnings close to $1,200/month
• Quality partnerships, including theStreet.com, Seeking Alpha and Morningstar
• RSS feed with over 1,750 daily readers
• Aweber newsletter with almost 1,500 subscribers

In addition, we have maintained great Google keyword rankings!

Here are some examples:

• “investing ideas” – #2
• “bullish” – #6
• “stock market ideas” – #8
• “bullish bankers” – #1
• “top stock trends” – #1 (BING)
• “top stock trends” – #9
• “investing ideas” – #4 (BING)
• “top stock market trends 2009″ – #1
• “stock market analysis 2009″ – #1
• “top ten stock” – #8
• “investing in ideas” – #2
• “top stock market” – #3
  *All rankings are from Google (unless otherwise mentioned)

This website is being listed for sale on Flippa.com, which is the merged version of SitePoint.com’s old marketplace. Feel free to check out the listing, and see how we are doing in the first site that I’ve ever sold through an auction service like this one.

Bullish Bankers For Sale on Flippa.com

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-The Net Fool

Related posts:

1. The Dawn of a Dot Com Empire – Bullish Bankers dot com Launch Party!
2. Making a Killer Link Bait Page – How To Boost Your SERPs and RSS Subscribers
3. EXCLUSIVE Report: “The Best Stocks of 2009″ – Make $$$ Investing in the Markets

Over the course of the past several years, the internet as we know it has been evolving. As someone who interacts with marketers, small business owners and news sources on a daily basis, I can tell you that there is one clear trend: MOBILE!

As more and more individuals pick up smartphones (20% annual growth rates have been downright common from the major providers according to Gartner Research) the web will naturally evolve to a state where users are checking websites on the go at all times. As you can see from the image above… my readers here at TheNetFool.com have grown to almost 2% of all views (which is hundreds of users each week!). This may not seem like a lot, but at the start of the year this number was almost zero. The way I see it, this mobile trend is real and you need to climb on the bandwagon!

Three WordPress Plugins to Get Your Blog Into the Mobile Age

I buckled down and bought a Blackberry the other week, so I have had the chance to try out all of the best mobile plugins for WordPress to see how they look in real life on a smart phone. You should note that all three of these plugins are fantastic, with only marginal benefits/disadvantages, and installing these will not impact the normal view of your blog… so it is a quick benefit to your readers with only 5 minutes of your time to install it!

1. WordPress Mobile Edition (TNF RECOMMENDED!)
WordPress Mobile Edition puts a great spin on your phone, and supports slightly different views for every phone that I have ever heard of (and then some!). It comes with the mobile “Carrington” theme which works great on phones and will probably load faster than your existing blogs. Everything is clear to see, and installation is easy to figure out. It even works with WP Super Cache and other popular plugins!

2. WPTouch: Mobile Plugin
The “WPTouch” plugin is definitely the best looking of the bunch, and it is even optimized to run faster than ever. This plugin is geared toward mobile users that are looking at your website on the iPhone (or another touch-screen phone). If you and your users are using touch-screen phones, I would recommend that you use this one over “WordPress Mobile Edition”… but I favor comparability a bit too much.

3. “MobilePress” WordPress Plugin
MobilePress is another top-notch browser that will identify what phone you are using and pair the browser to meet your preferences. This one is slightly lower on the totem pole than the other two, but the theme that MobilePress uses is quite sleek and if you like it… you should use it! Go ahead and cruise over to their website and check it out.

Bottom Line: All of these plugins will launch your blog into a mobile-friendly state, which will benefit anywhere from 1-5% of your readers right now… and potentially up to 15-20% of them a year down the road! For a five minute installation, it’s not a whole lot of work to bring your blog into the 21st century.

-The Net Fool

UPDATE: One of our readers, James Pearce from Tripleodeon.com, suggested the “WordPress Mobile Pack” as an alternative solution. This one also combines an administration feature for your phones! Though I recommend simply downloading a supplementary smartphone application, I like this idea a lot so check it out!

Related posts:

1. Day 21: Installing and Adding Plugins to your WordPress Blog
2. Day 22: Installing and Adding Plugins to Your WordPress Blog
3. WordPress Plugins: Monetize Your Blog With The Best Plugins Around

I’ve been working on a brand new method to net you $75-$200 (depending on how often you use it) repeatedly with absolutely no potential for loss and no risk. This is something that I have done personally with great success, and I am 100% confident that any one of you can exploit this trick that I have developed over the years and trust completely.

What’s The Catch?!
Well normally, I would sell this book to hundreds of people and then sell my website for another quick collection… but this time I am going to give the book away to my readers FOR FREE! Why? Well, I haven’t been so active lately, so I want the only term for this offer to be that you must be a registered subscriber of our newsletter to get the book.

Keep in mind that you will never see a deal like this, and I know people that are charging you upwards of $100 for books like this that reveal less powerful secrets. I can personally guarantee that anyone who reads this book will be able to make in instant $75… or I will pay YOU $75!

I WILL be moving this offer to a paid promotional the week after I release it here… I’d be a fool not to! However, be advised that anyone who is subscribed via the newsletter (link below) will be on the list to get it for free.

eBook Being Released NEXT SATURDAY
I have the book I am preparing staged to launch next Saturday… and it will only be available for my subscribers. All you need to do to qualify is sign up to the Aweber Newsletter that I have set up. You will receive absolutely no spam, and will get a few updates every now and then from what is happening at TheNetFool.com. It’s completely free too, so you have nothing to lose! Let’s call it my Christmas gift to all of you.

Remember to check back next Saturday to receive your free book… and we will certainly be emailing a unique link to everyone on our email list to let you know where you can go to download the book. We don’t mess around with spammy offers here at The Net Fool, and you can be sure that a simple click on the “Submit” button above will get you a free book with no questions asked and no strings attached.

Have a great weekend… and a happy new year!
-The Net Fool

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