I was just checking my emails and saw that Make Your Site Sell 2002 is now available for free. It’s never been expensive, especially for the information it offers, but free works too!

Is it still current enough to be worth downloading, even for free? Yes! While some things have changed, the basic principles have not. This ebook is the foundation for how Site Build It encourages you to build your websites. If you aren’t familiar with Site Build It, this is a great chance to see one recommended way of building an online income.

Download it. Check it out right away. If you don’t like it, delete it. But if the information makes you think about how you should be running your online business, then it will have been worthwhile.

Have you looked at Amazon’s associate program lately?

While it’s not the best of programs, with a short cookie and payout that is nothing special, Amazon does offer the advantage that you can sell a huge range of products.

One of their newer developments is the aStore. This allows you to offer products from Amazon right on your site, but with functionality you didn’t have before. But it had it’s problems, such as you could only have one store (troublesome for affiliates with multiple sites), only allowed 9 products per page and a fairly limited layout. It just didn’t work for every site.

Hopefully by the end of November Amazon will have a lot of that fixed. I got an email on their latest plans. Their new release, scheduled for late November will: Read the rest of this entry »

In some ways a home business can be easy to start. Most require much less capital to get started than a business outside the home. This makes it easy to skip the business plan, worries about funding, setting regular business hours and so forth. But how good of an idea is this?

According to Inc, most businesses are started with the owner’s own money and no business plan. Starting with your own money is good in a lot of ways, so long as you keep things under control and don’t drive yourself too deep into debt while trying to get things going.

There is nothing wrong with taking money out to start a business. It can actually help you get things going sooner. Not having enough money to start can kill your business. Be realistic about what your business will need to get going, even if you are starting out at home.

Starting without a business plan can be more of a risk than you might expect. I’m not talking about the kind of business plan you’d present to a bank to get a business loan. I’m talking about the kind of plan you make so that you know what you want your business to do, how you will earn money, what you expect to achieve the first few months, the first year and even the first five years. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurry up! If you want a lifetime membership to Article Marketer for just $299, you’d better order fast. They’re raising the price tomorrow. As of tomorrow, it’s going to be $499.

Do I have this membership. Oh, yes! I had been an iSnare fan until I discovered Article Marketer and made the switch. They submit to some sites I had been doing manually because iSnare didn’t cover them. Not to mention the fact that over time the lifetime membership will save me some pretty good money.

Article Marketer does make you do some work if there’s a problem with your article. I’ve had to fix the quotes on articles because some sites can’t handle anything other than the basics, and they make sure little issues like that aren’t going to keep you from getting published.

Article marketing is a vital part of building your online presence. You may as well make your article submission as efficient and effective as possible. Join Article Marketer now to save money.

Let’s face it, most of us could use some help optimizing our websites. It’s a lot of work, but when you succeed the effort can really pay off.

I found a wonderful summary of tips from Matt Cutt’s blog. If you aren’t reading that blog… well, it’s a great choice to see what someone who works for Google is willing to share about what you should and should not do to optimize your website.

The summary is on SEO Egghead. He lists the basic idea and a link to each relevant post for 21 tips.

I love seeing how different people market products. People online really get creative in their marketing. I’m not one to buy a lot of things, but every here and there I decide to check something out, such as my recent, wonderful find with Instant Site Comments.

Just one of those days today where I decided to go for something I normally wouldn’t. Call it a whim, if you will, and I’m going to offer you a chance at the same product. Or you can just ignore it… up to you.

I picked up PortalPak2. The rules are standard for dime sales… price goes up by a dime every time someone makes a purchase. As of this writing it’s still pretty cheap; under $9.00.

Now, it’s too soon to tell if this really works, and by the time I know that answer the sale will probably be over. But every here and there I think about taking a walk on the dark side with a site or so, just to see what the fuss is about.

Wondering what Instant Site Comments looks like on this site? Here it is! Or any other article page that isn’t a part of the blog or newsletter, said blog and newsletter being run on WordPress.

Have I mentioned how delighted I am? Repeatedly?

This is amazingly easy to add to a site if you’re comfortable with creating a database, which with cPanel is very, very easy. Then just figure out where in the page you want your comments, put it in and you’re good to go.

For me, the most work was in working with my page templates so that I could have layouts with and without comments. I don’t feel a need to put comments on pages that list the articles available, but I definitely want comments on the article pages. Since they often used the same template in the past I had to create a new one, but that was no big deal.

Now, of course, I have to get used to checking regularly for new comments on my site.

I hope this new functionality is something my visitors will enjoy. I also hope that any of you wondering whether or not to add this to your site decide to go ahead and try Instant Site Comments. User feedback is a wonderful thing.

Robert has been such a wonderful help! The problems I had took some time and he was just marvelous about helping me get started.

Now I just have to get Instant Site Comments up on the rest of my pages. I have to tweak the templates on this site and over at Home with the Kids, then think if any of my other sites could use it. It’s just up on test pages at the moment, but sometime today I expect to get things running on both sites.

I’m going to tell your right now that if you’ve been thinking about buying Instant Site Comments, do so. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s worth it. They’re very prompt about answering any problems with your installation, although the update should take care of most of them. The problem I had relates to how some servers are configured, not to the initial quality of the product. I’ve always had this tendency to be the one to break programs - my oldest sister is a computer programmer and she used me to test her programs when she was in college because breaking them came so naturally to me. Guess I still have that touch.