Jude’s Eclectic Resources

I wrote a post a week ago about knowing when to throw in the affiliate towel. If you want to start in the internet marketing field with little money then that is the way to go, but don’t get bogged down with a lot of programs like I did. It’s so easy to join all of these programs, but you need to concentrate on just a few, not millions.

I now have to go through 1,000’s of pages on 5 different sites and remove programs I had through Commission Junction, Searchfeed, Linkshare, and a few others because programs are always deactivating and moving to other companies or they go out of business and to tell the truth I have made very little money using those companies.

My advice would be to stir clear, but that’s going on my experience. I also have made very little money using Amazon. I have heard other people say that it works for them so I’m beginning to doubt my ability to inspire people to click on those types of things and for me it’s more bother than it’s worth so I shall desist and stop using them.

Unless you have a popular blog or website I doubt that you will see much money. It would be better to use Kontera, Chikta or one of those types to accrue income. Many people claim to make huge amounts of money using Yahoo and Google ad’s on their site, but I really don’t think they work the way they did once.

More and more people are becoming blind to those types of ad blocks just as they block out banner ads unless they are newbies online and don’t have a clue what that type of advertising is all about.

In this day and age I really don’t think the average computer user is stupid and they catch on pretty quick. I think making money with Google is on it’s way out. I am going to uncomplicate my life and terminate many programs and restart my experience with online marketing

I spent most of my working hours optimizing my computer today. I thought before that my fan was going out, but it seems I had a lot of programs that have been interacting badly and I was trying to get that mess cleaned up. I downloaded a free program called Optimizer XP and that helped.

I’m seriously looking at PC Pitstop because it found a lot of things wrong that needs to be fixed and I couldn’t fix them, but it cost 30 dollars and I don’t know if I can afford that right now with taxes coming up, so I’m weighing what is most important and what needs to be done first. Well, I know I need my PC in good working condition so I can work on my site so I can make that money to pay taxes.

Windows XP and the new Vista have a personal firewall that is built into the operating system and by default it’s automatically turned on, but most people turn it off and leave themselves vulnerable because they don’t like all of the popup windows.  The Windows firewall default of “on” should be maintained until and unless you find another software or hardware firewall to protect your system.

Like I said before I was using Zone Alarm and everything went crazy on my system. I am now using the original window firewall instead of Zone Alarm and I have stopped several virus programs from running at the same time. I have downloaded too many programs over the years that are simply creating problems with each other.

You  need a good anti-virus program to go after any viruses that may inevitably bypass your firewall. It should be programmed to either quarantine or, preferably, destroy them, which I prefer. You know that it’s essential to always keep your anti-viral and firewall programs up to date with the newest patches and security updates.

Viruses always target your C: drive, so you should always scan it daily. And never, ever open any unsolicited emails or the attachments that come with them, but if you have a good program it will scan automatically and after you get your pc in good shape then you should consider doing a few things with your site.

Like reducing the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

However you feel and whatever any marketing people tell you they do not like music interrupting their surfing or browsing experience unless they choose it. So if you have music on your site make sure it doesn’t load the minute your visitor hits your site. You want to keep them awhile with your content and not annoy them with your choice of music.

Izea had a town hall meeting on Wednesday and the biggest news was they are taking page rank out of the equation. Below are just a few of the questions that were asked of Ted Murphy from the posties and I thought it was pretty cool that he tries to keep everyone informed about the future of Social Spark and PayPerPost. The questions are in random order I didn’t want to post the whole transcript because it had a lot of trivial stuff.

Personally I think Google page rank should totally disappear from the web or they should just hide it from the populace. The only thing it has been used for is a measurement of how much you can charge for advertisements. I believe that most advertisers prefer trafficked blogs that will send them visitors and potential customers over the seo aspect at least that would be my priority over page rank.

skeet: Anything new and amazing for us today, Ted?
Ted Murphy: Nothing to show off today… but we are definitely working hard to deliver socialspark for you soon. banging out problems every day.

Michael White: What’s the future of PayPerPost like with SocialSpark on the horizon?
Ted Murphy: That remains to be seen. We will be making some updates to the ppp system over time, it all depends on how fast socialspark takes off.

brettbum: Has any progress been made with Google or Matt Cutts or did everyone agree to not quite agree?
Ted Murphy: There is still some potential there, but there are definitely some issues we don’t agree on. I want to do right by Google but they need to have a uniform application of policies.

falsedragon: Nice to see you joke about PR when most of us no longer have any and most advertisers still want it. If you truly belive ‘what’s PR’, then when can we expect you to actually do something about it?
Ted Murphy: I can promise you that PR will dissapear in the future. Timing depends on how fast we wrap socialspark, but we will be removing PR from PPP in favor of other data.

Bob: So pr will be gone from PPP and social spark even though its in the video?

Ted Murphy: Yes. gone. bye bye. so sad.

Ted Murphy: I think I hit on this already. pr is gone in SS and will go away in PPP.

Bob: When will social spark beta testing begin?
Ted Murphy: I have a meeting about that Friday morning. I hope to know more then.

dragonfly183: Is there a concrete launch date for social spark yet
Ted Murphy: Not yet. we are focused on doing it the right way, the blogosphere isn’t too forgiving for us.

Tim @ Bloggerista: What is the advertisers’ feedback to nofollow in socialspark?
Ted Murphy: Some good, some bad. the seo’s don’t like it much, but the regular advertiser have no problem with it. My guess is that 98%+ of all online ads have no-follow, most advertisers aren’t looking for seo, they are looking for clicks and sales.

Michael White: Are more advertisers coming on board with the use of Izearank?
Ted Murphy: There are more advertisers coming on board, though we don’t have any data yet as far as the impact of IZEARanks. We have yet to put out an official press release. That should go out next week.

dragonfly183: Do you think we will continue to have problems with Google even after were all using no follow?
Ted Murphy: I can’t see why… but then again I can’t see why Google does a lot of things.

Colleen: What’s been your biggest disappointment with PayPerPost / Izea so far?
Ted Murphy: hmmm. That is an interesting question. I’m not really one to dwell on the past. Life is full of challenges and I feel pretty good about the way we have dealt with ours. sometimes things don’t go as planned but through it all we have kept our heads held high.

Tax time is upon us and if your like me it’s a dreaded time of year. Last year I used Turbo Tax online and it didn’t cost me a cent and it was very easy to use and I received my refund via direct deposit within a couple weeks. They actually found deductions I didn’t know I could take.

I can never understand why so many people have to have their money right now and are so willing to pay 100 dollars to get it this second. If you need it now, wont you still need it in 2 weeks? I personally would prefer to wait 2 weeks and get the whole amount. Although this year refunds could take a little longer.

I was reading the IRS site the other night and saw that if you are self employed you actually have to pay double social security in because when you work for someone else the company is actually paying a portion of your social security. I didn’t realize that, but I do now. I did know that they paid unemployment taxes on you, but I didn’t know the other.

This year I worked for myself so I am waiting for my 1099’s so I can pay my taxes. Bill will be able to claim me on his taxes because I made less than 3,000 this year, but since I was self employed I also have to pay social security and possibly state and local, but I’m not sure because I didn’t collect sales tax on anything. Lots of things I will need to learn about this year.

So this year I wont receive a rebate  and I probably wont be included in the rebate from the Government either. I did notice that it said for people that worked and made 3,000 or less and received a check and for those that didn’t make enough that they had to pay taxes. From what I understood they would be rewarded with 300 dollars and people with children would receive more per child. I may have that wrong so don’t quote me.

I guess I’ll have to talk to Bill’s tax lady this year and make sure I file all the necessary forms. I have my doubts about the proposed rebate helping our economy, but hey who am I to complain if the government has decided to go deeper in debt and it seems if the Senate approves, the first checks will start going out in May. I don’t think I qualify, but Bill will.

The really good thing about this year is property taxes are going to go down here, thanks in part to gambling. Now that is definitely something we can all benefit from here in PA and be happy about and I’m sure even those that opposed the casinos will be happy.

At the end of the month I will be removing the banner for the free tools from Isoregister located in the sidebar. I really liked the program and for the money I paid monthly it had a lot of great tools for advertising, but since I’m not doing much advertising anymore it seems to be a waste of my money.

Originally I thought I would make money with them by getting referrals, but that hasn’t happened so after 2 years and several 100 dollars I will end this program. I really liked the CEO of this company and have to say he has been one of the most open and honest marketers I have run across.

When people first try marketing online they eventually find out that being an affiliate marketer is the easiest way to get started, but takes a lot of time to get things rolling. It works for some, but others like myself who really aren’t experts find that they make little or no money with affiliate marketing.

I like to learn new things though so I gave it a shot, but for me there was just too many things to learn to actually be a high earner. There are many marketers online that will tell you they make a good living and I don’t doubt that, but I don’t believe every claim I hear.

I guess since being online and trying my hand at it I realize how much dedication and ambition really needs to go into this type of thing and even though I would like to hit on something that I can really get behind someday, it will have to be simple because my ambition is slowly dwindling with age.

When I start a new program I always give it enough time to see if it will work for me and this one hasn’t so it’s time to cut my losses and move on. When I first started online I got involved in too many things that I couldn’t keep track of and burnt myself out for awhile. I still find the idea of making money online attractive so I will keep at it.