So, how are we going to get ourselves organised and focuses on the tasks at hand? The answer is really simple if I’m honest, and I’m surprised its taken me as long as it has to do it - we write a list. Yup. You read correctly, you are going to sit down and write a list of everything you want to get done in the next 3 months. Why this length of time? Well, it gives you enough time to write down a pretty comprehensive list of things, and isn’t long enough to write ‘unrealitic’ goals, such as buying your own house, going on a dream vacation etc.

I started out by writing out a list of simple things I wanted to get done in the upcoming months - one of which was to sort through all my domains and plan out actions for each of them (and to throw them if they were of no use) - obviously I ended up thinking up ideas for even the most ridicoulous of domains I had, so now have them all, lol - but just this one list item ended up with me creating a whole other list, and actually helped me be pro-active!

So why would a list actually help you, as oposed to just something you can throw away? Well, there are a number of reasons. The first is that it allows you to organise the mess that is currently in your head - you can clearly outline what you need to get done, and by writing it on paper, your psychologically ‘releasing the worry’ from your mind, and committing it down into words. Secondly, it creates a list that you are able to tick off - and with every item you tick off, the closer you come to actually completing the list - again from a psychological standpoint this encouranges you to put that little bit of extra effort in to finish off the list. This is particulary useful, as by the time the list has whittled down, you have probably got rid of the ‘eaisier’ items that wont take you too long, and the difficult ones are left - precisly the ones that you will need the most help with! Last, but not least, it will give you a clear list of goals for you to acheive.

I can openly and happilly say that since creating a list last week, I have been getting so much more done than I had without - I’m hoping that the future will be picking up for me soon because of it. So what are you waiting for? Go write that list, and become more productive than you have before!!

Dan

So on creation of the eBook, I first submitted it to a forum where it seemed everyone was selling their eBooks - digital point forums. Forums are a good way to go when advertising and selling an eBook, but the mistake I made was in the eBooks subject area. You see, the forum itself is more to do with online marketing, and making money online - my book didn’t really venture into either of those niches sadly - so I was let down by the promises held. I am glad I have done it now though, as I have learnt from my mistakes.

So next, I have created a sales page, of which can be seen here. This I plan to advertise using a mixture of free advertising on facebook, and possibly some advertising on google (pay per click). I have already sent an email out to a mailing list I have (of which I created with a ‘free’ eBook some time ago). However, there are only 40 people on this list, as as yet only 2 people have actually visited the site from the email.

Sadly, it isnt going to well for me so far! I haven’t sold a single copy of the eBook, and with my other projects demanding more time, I am more and more seeing this as a loose end. So what else can I try to do in order to boost sales? Well, I could try placing the eBook on eBay, selling it as a ‘buy it now’ at the same price - I could try targeting forums that are more to this niche market, and if all else fails, I could buy a domain name, and sell the website and eBook on sitepoint. I might not make a great deal of money from it, but at least I will be getting something for my time and effort.

So what do you guys think? Anything else that you reckon could help in selling or advertising an eBook? Also, have a look at the sales page and let me know what you think - it isn’t the greatest piece of work in the world, but I think it should do the job - its just a matter of getting the traffic there! I know this post is a bit shorter in depth than usual, but I have been extremely busy as of late…I do however have a good piece to write up which hopefully I will get around to tonight. See you soon racers!

Dan

You see, once the user has sent you paypal payment, you usually have to then send them the eBook manually - which means a lot of waiting on their end if the expected it instantly. So I wanted to set up a system where the user could pay via paypal, and then receive a link to their eBook instantly. Well, searching for one (that was free) took a lot of time, and I almost gave up on finding one before I found this brilliant free tutorial at ngcoders. This gives you a completely free php script that allows you to set this type of transaction. It also contains a way of creating links that are only active for a certain amount of time - so when a user purchases a copy of my book, they receive a link via email and then have 24 hours to download it before the link becomes inactive. Its great, and free, so very worth your time. Unfortunatly the only problem is that you have to direct them to an external link to click on the ‘buy it now’ button…a small issue for when your selling in forums and avenues that do not allow html coding.

I hope that has been of some use to you…I hope to detail in my next post how I have got on with advertising the book, telling you what I have done in order to make sales, and various websites I have listed it on. Catch ya later racers!

Dan

On a similar note, I discovered another one of these ‘tricks’ that can be used to get free champagne if your cocky enough (or have had enough dutch courage). You might be out with your friends, and one of them suggests celebrating a friends birthday…now normally champagne isn’t very cheap…but it is for you! So you stroll on over to the bar, birthday girl on your arm, and greet the bartender in your best James Bond voice (why the voice? No reason, but you’ll feel cool).  You buy whatever drinks you might like, before laying down the champagne challenge. You turn the the bartender and say ‘It’s this lovely girls birthday today, and I’d like to show her something really special - I’d like to show her how to drink from a champagne bottle, while it is still sealed, and without breaking the glass. Do you reckon its possible?’ - the bartender will most likely stare at you, thinking the drinks he just served you were a mistake. ‘Well how does this sound, if I am able to drink from this champagne bottle, without opening it, without breaking the glass, without even damaging the seal, this girl receives a lovely free bottle of champagne courtesy of your bar. However if I fail, I will buy three bottles of your most expensive champagne’, and as you say that you place your card down on the counter. Now some bars do give out courtesy champagne to VIPs, so the chance might be good enough for the bartender to take you up on it. So he brings over a bottle of champagne and looks at you, ready and waiting.

You stare at the bottle for a bit, running your fingers all over it, and then repeat the bet - ‘If I can drink, from this bottle of champagne, it is ours to take for free - agreed?’. You stare at the barman, he stares back at you…you hope he isnt coming on to you. He nods. You grab the champagne bottle, turn it over, pouring your drink into the crevice at the bottom of the champagne bottle. You take a sip of the drink, before grinning like a buffoon - you never said you would drink the champagne inside it, you merely said you would drink from it. The curved bottom of the champange bottles make it very easy to do! Enjoy your champagne, you classy piece of work you.

Dan

Well, its true, you can walk away from today with an extra $10 or more - if your willing to dive in to what I have to offer! Now its not a money making idea that you will profit from in the long term, however it will bring in little bits of cash here and there…and maybe even a few free drinks if you do it right! So what is it? Well, for this, your going to have to go…offline…

I think I can best show you what I’m talking about with an example. What if, I bet you $10 I could tell you exactly where you got your shoes? No messing around, no estimates, I bet I can tell you exactly where you got them. Want to bet? Sure you do, your curious…well ok, I’ll take your $10 bet, and tell you exactly where you got your shoes. You got your shoes…on your feet. Bad grammar wins me a tenner.

Yes I’m talking about the world of bar bets and cons that you can pull on your friends and family! Ok ok, its not the greatest money making scheme in the world ever I admit, but hey, a few free drinks here and there, a couple of quid in hand, it all goes towards the total! So here I wanted to show you one of my favourites that has done well by me in winning me a few free drinks, and that you can use instantly to make yourself $10 out of your victim friend.

So your sitting down with your friend (lets call him Bob), drink beside you, and you offer him a challenge of “do as I do”. The rules are fairly simple, all he has to do is copy your moves 6 times, and he wins $10…if he can’t, well he’ll owe you $10. Of course, anything you can do, Bob thinks he can do better, so he takes you up on the bet. You pick up your glass - Bob picks up his glass. You take a sip from your glass, Bob takes a sip from his. You say ‘Hail to Odin!’, Bob repeats. You again take a sip from your drink, and Bob, again, copies. You hold your glass high in the air, Bob copies, thinking that he is one copy away from a free $10…and that’s when you spit your drink back into your glass. You see, with the last ’sip’ you took, you held some of it back in your mouth, while Bob drank it all, thinking that when you held your glass high in the air, you had already swallowed. It’s impossible that he can copy you on the last move! Time to take your $10 off of Bob, and skip merrily on to your next willing friend!

I hope that you guys liked that little ‘trick’, and get some use out of it in the near future, even if its only for a laugh with friends! I’ll be posting later this week about a potential ‘work form home’ job you can apply for that is 100% legitimate, and earns some people quite a nice amount of money! Until then, be safe racers!

Dan

This is just a short post to let you know I am currently still on my ‘break’, and will be returning back to posting next Monday. I have been working on a couple of new projects, and have got myself quite in ‘over my head’ but they look to be very promising. I’ll be sharing the details of them as they progress, along with giving you valuable information I have learnt along the way. I have some great posts lined up for this coming year, so for those of you lucky enough to know about this blog, be prepared for a very good year!

Catch you soon racers! Hope you have all had a great holiday.

Dan

Now it seems that these tools do a lot of things, yet there has never been an ‘all-in-one’ tool that is able to do everything that you would like. So I would like to put the question to you all - if you could have a blogging tool, what would you like to see in it? What should it be able to do for you?  What types of things haven’t been addressed in the blogging world? Let me know in a comment, and I will get to work on seeing what I can develop for you guys, and how realistic a program like this might be!

I also would like to know what types of posts you would like to see, what you would like to see addressed, what you would like to know more about, and anything I can do/try out for you - whatever you want! I’m willing to consider anything!

Merry Christmas, to one and all!

Dan

Tell Me How! Or I’ll Come Find You…

I went to check my google analytics account yesterday, and decided Id see what search engine traffic I have got. Google analytics shows you exact search terms that led the user to your site, allowing you to see exactly how someone may have discovered your ‘trove of wonders’. It was there that I saw a strange search term, which had led the user to my site:

“[make money online]” “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment” -”no comments” -”nofollow”

I realised it as a rather ‘crude’ form of ‘google hacking’; there are certain commands and parenthesis you can enter into google, and it will make google behave a bit differently. For example, if I wanted to find every link on google for this site, I could do a search for inURL:”raceforamillion.co.uk” and it would return every single page that had raceforamillion.co.uk in the URL. This is a similar method - so lets break it down.

What Does It All Mean?! Speak Anglais!

We can see that everything contained in “” is so that google will search for those exact phrases only, and not a combination of them. This means it will look for every page that has ‘make money online’ in it, and well as ‘powered by wordpress’ and ‘leave a comment’. This will return all wordpress powered blogs, that are to do with making money online, and that allow you to leave comments. The final two phrases have minus signs next to them. This means to exclude all results that contain ‘no comments’ and all results that have ‘nofollow’ on them. If you want to find blogs that DO have comments on them already, then you can use the + sign instead of the - sign.

Can I Steal Use It?

You might want to try ‘tweaking’ it for your exact purposes, changing ‘make money online’ to whatever your niche is for example, but this will return a good amount of blogs that should not have ‘nofollow’. I have only performed a search with it myself, but this is something I believe I will be looking a bit deeper into. If I can find anything more about this, I will let you guys know. Until then, I hope it proves of some use to you!

Dan

To view the plugin (and its output), head to the settings part of your wordpress admin panel, and choose ‘FTLO Commentators’.

Hope you guys get some use out of this, and let me know what improvements you might like to see!

Dan

Stop Yammering On - What Is It?

Well, basically its a plugin which allows you to see all of the people who have commented on your blog so far, along with how many times the individual has posted and the different names (or ‘aliases’) they have used when commenting on your site. I developed it because I was finding it hard to keep track of who had posted a comment on my blog, and when I wanted to visit those sites to say thank-you (or just check on what others had written), I had to look around to find them. This plugin allows you to display them in a (somewhat) tidy fashion in your actual admin console.

Hang On, You Said Something About It Being Basic?!

Wow you really pay attention! Well the version I’m giving you guys is the basic version I have literally just finished - I haven’t started work on the more advanced version yet. However, the more advanced version will allow you to exclude the websites of people you may not want to visit anymore, along with being able to take a date range - so if someone hasn’t commentated on your blog within the last month, they won’t show up (if your that way inclined). There is also the possibility to extend this and have a list of just blogs you specify, along with grabbing their latest post - more towards the plugin idea I shared with you last time (although I found parsing the rss a wee bit difficult depending on what version of php your hosting provider has - something for me to look into).

Enough Talk - Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie!

So if you’d like to use the plugin, or just simply check it out, you can download it here:

For The Love Of Commentators

To access the page, simply upload the script to your plugins directory, activate the plugin, and then visit “Settings -> FTLO Commentators”.  I hope you get some use out of it - I know I will! If you can think of anything extra you would like to see in the plugin that I haven’t already mentioned, let me know and I’ll see what I can do! I’m off now to rush away from work as fast as my tired little legs will carry me!

EDIT: The prior issue has now been resolved, so download away!! (Have removed issue for formatting and ‘less rambling’ sake!)

Dan