Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

I was searching for something online today (I can’t even remember what) and somehow I came across TrustedGurus.com. I read the (non)sales letter and signed up for their forum (its free, they’re not actually selling anything).

It looks like a great idea. The premise is that the forum members will comment and vote on “trusted gurus” in various industries. The only people allowed to vote are those who have actually purchased a product from a guru, and are thus qualified to properly and impartially review it.

Currently the only gurus that are listed belong to the internet marketing industry.

The reason this site caught my attention was partially because the post I recently wrote about Google Snatch 2.0, and how I was quite disappointed with it, was still quite fresh in my mind. A site that provides a trusted, impartial, third party opinion as to the credibility of these gurus could be quite valuable to those of us who habitually (compulsively? hmm… fodder for a different post) spend thousands each year on info materials.

The site is not selling anything at all, has no affiliate links, and is not out to make a profit in any shape or form. You can read it all on their homepage. Their sole purpose is to bring some credibility to some of these guys out there. I think the more people that get involved with this project, the better it will become.

Are there any “gurus” that you trust implicitly? Meaning you’d buy pretty much anything they came out with, without even reading the sales letter, you just knew it would be that good? How about people you would avoid at all costs? If so, please leave a comment below.

Currently there aren’t that many people active on the forum, but I’m sure it is growing, and I think the idea is a valid one. Why don’t you go check it out?

Well it’s about time for my monthly “I got suckered into it” review. This month we’re talking about Google Snatch 2.0 - a new ebook of ways to sucker punch Google by denying them your credit card. Fair enough, so it is about free traffic, but really, books such as these don’t give Google the shaft so much as encourage the market in general to get on board with Google’s bandwagon. Sure they won’t make the money, but they’re achieving their market / search organization goals. I digress.

So I purchased a copy of Google Snatch 2.0 ($67), and the upsell afterwards ($47). I guess the main reason I caved on it is that it had a good sales letter, and I tend to start paying more attention after about 8 different marketers email me about the same product. I figure there’s gotta be something behind the madness.

Latif claims that he’s making seven figures a year from these tactics. That’s a pretty tall claim, even in this age of nouveau riche. He also claims in the sales letter that he’s been to $10,000 seminars and left feeling like he’d heard it all already from free ebooks. Very likely. Unfortunately, I was thinking the same thing about his product.

The Free Click Formula 3.0 is presented as basically THE answer to getting free traffic. It sounds like a step by step process, ie a formula. Having read through the ebook, I can tell you that for the most part it was a very good overview of the different ways to gain traffic on the net these days. Yes, he doesn’t require you to spend a dime on traffic; however he doesn’t really dig into the nitty gritty or give unique ideas for how to implement the things he talks about.

I was recently on a webinar with Russell Brunson and Stu McLaren. Stu covered a similar batch of topics, but everything he said was just bursting with a unique “gotcha” spin on things; he was using the methods in ways I hadn’t thought of or heard before. Latif unfortunately spends a lot of time just explaining what things are, not how you can really explode your business using them.

What topics are covered? Here’s a sampling: (this is NOT the table of contents, just some of the topics covered).

- Domain names
- Basic SEO
- Directory Submission
- Keyword Research
- Calls to Action
- List Building
- Blogging
- RSS
- Social Media
- Video Marketing
- Audio Marketing

Most of the sections are fairly generic. A lot of time is spent talking about Wordpress, and I’m assuming that you readers probably already know and use Wordpress on your own. Therefore, this whole section is a bit redundant, except for a pretty good list of plugins and resources. However, these are available for free with a couple minutes of searching as well.

The section on RSS, for example, starts of by spending quite a bit of time telling you what it is, then explains things like RSS syndication. There is even one section in there on how to setup your own RSS Aggregator in Microsoft Outlook. I was looking for key marketing intel, and I get an Outlook how-to? That’s a bit offside.

To be fair, there is quite a lot of information in there, and in general I would say it is a good “survey of the kingdom” type of ebook. It talks about many of the different ways that are popularly being used these days to generate traffic for free, but without really delving into how truly powerful many of these are, and the unique ways you can use them against your competitors. I was left feeling like this was a gradeschool handbook, whereas I’m always on the lookout for the Master’s level stuff. Oh well. Misplaced expectations.

So why do I go to the trouble to write all this down, when most people are raving about how great this is and then giving their links for you to purchase from? Well because unless you’re completely new to internet marketing, I honestly think you could do better for your money. As I mentioned earlier, I learned more on a one hour call (did I mention it was free?) with Russell and Stu than in the entire 165 page Free Click Formula 3.0 and they both claimed to cover roughly the same thing.

If you’ve purchased Google Snatch 2 or if you have other comments that are relevant, I’d love to hear them.

I’ve had a really old and really crappy cell phone for just under three years now. Actually, that phone is less than 2 years old as I remember trading in the one before it on warranty to upgrade to the slightly less crappy thing I used until yesterday. Argh - that thing caused grief, shutting down on me, dropping calls, not even getting reception. Until yesterday. Yesterday, I got a Samsung Instinct, the M800. Here are my first impressions.

Size - The phone is physically longer and wider than my previous beast, though slimmer. This was the only thing I didn’t really like about it when I was looking at it in the store. If you compare it to many of the other phones on the market, it really is larger. However, it isn’t that heavy, and I figured I could get used to it. The screen is after all one of the largest around. That has to be worth something.

Screen - The whole point of this phone is the screen, and in my opinion, the Instinct really delivers. The screen is vibrant and clear, and very responsive. I’ve actually been very impressed by the responsiveness of Samsung’s touch screen. The Instinct uses haptic feedback, which means that the phone moves just slightly when you select a key, so it feels like you’ve pressed a button. It actually really helps the experience, and others I’ve let use the phone have been surprised at this feature.

Ease of Use - With a name like “Instinct” this phone had better be easy to use. Turns out, I’ve found it remarkably intuitive to navigate around in. Within minutes I had figured out the basic navigation structure, and so far I haven’t had to look at the manual once, yet I’ve been able to figure out everything I wanted to. It should be noted that I’m not exactly an experienced cell phone user. When in typing mode, you can use the onscreen keyboard in a number of ways. My favorite is to hold the phone sideways and use it in QWERTY format. Typing with my thumbs I can actually punch things out in pretty short order. I’ve found it very accurate; spelling mistakes are the exception and not the rule.

To give you an idea, I just timed myself for one minute and typed away blathering about nothing. Anyways, I was able to type 27 words with two spelling mistakes in that one minute. There is a built in spell checker as well. Words come up in red and underlined if they are deemed to be spelling mistakes. After a period, the keyboard automatically capitalizes, then reverts again, which is a nice feature.

I would say that on average menu use, 19 out of 20 screen touches are accurate, which is pretty good. I’ll probably get more used to the phone as well, as time goes on. There was only one instance, when I was entering all my contacts, when the “Done” button seemed sticky a few times in a row, and I had to hit it a few times to register. Probably an anomaly.

Dialing - Dialing with the Samsung Instinct is a real pleasure. As minor a feature as this is on a complicated little machine, it is after all the heart of every phone. The keypad comes up very large and very clear, and I can dial on that thing so fast it astounds me. It is easier to use than my home phone, or many office phones I have used. The keypad is exceptionally responsive and with such large numbers you can just fly along on it. I’ve shown several other people how well this works and they were all very impressed. Compared with the majority of phones out these days, this is simply one of the largest keypads you’re going to find. This feature alone would make this phone ideal for the “older” audience, people whose eyesight sometimes troubles them. The keypad is so large you won’t need reading glasses to see it at all.

Contacts - Scrolling through the contacts page is pretty easy. You can flick your finger and the list will scroll through and keep momentum after you stop. So you can give it one flick and watch it go through a good portion of your contacts. The info available is pretty standard, name, phone numbers, email addresses, URL, notes, address. I’d like to see more grouping options available. Of course you get to choose if the number is a mobile or home, etc, but I’d like to see additional groupings, like friends, family, work, business, food etc. I’d like to turn on the phone and immediately bring up my favorite restaurants in one list to see whether I wanted to get sushi or pizza, or something else.

Call Clarity - I actually haven’t spent much time talking on the Instinct so I can’t really speak to the clarity of it, but what I’ve experienced so far is fairly average I guess.

Reception - As I mentioned previously, my old phone was no firecracker, so any upgrade in the reception department is enough to please me. I routinely dropped calls in most rooms in my house, so the first thing I did with this one was get on the phone and walk through the house. It didn’t drop the call, so I figured I got an upgrade. That said, I couldn’t tell you how it relates to the rest of the market.

Browsing - The web browser is pretty good. It took me a minute to figure out how to enter in the address you want, and how to change my homepage, but like I mentioned earlier, the Instinct is fairly intuitive, and I was able to figure it out with minimal effort. Compared to most mobile phones, I think the Instinct’s biggest advantage is its huge screen size. You can view pages in either mobile mode, or as they appear normally. I haven’t tried mobile mode yet as so far I’ve been able to get around in normal okay. Pages load fairly quickly. Clicking on links requires a bit of precision fingerwork, as often on the page you’ll see many links right beside each other. For this a stylus (or something else - yesterday at my friend’s place I used the plastic end of a shoelace because I didn’t have a pencil around) would be handy. There is a stylus included in the kit, but there is no way to store it in the phone, which is a little disappointing. Still, if you’re careful you can get by pretty well. Alternatively, you can quickly magnify the screen as well, which would make clicking a lot easier. Scrolling also works fairly well. I like touching the screen and just sliding it around; however the only downside here is you have to be careful you don’t click on a link inadvertently.

Games - I’ve been a sucker for Bejewelled for a few years, so the first thing I downloaded was that game. It looks great on the Instinct’s screen, and it plays quite well too. To make gameplay easier though you really want to have something to use as a stylus.

Facebook - Yes, the Instinct has a fun little Facebook button, so you can login to your account with one click. It works pretty good, and I can see how this could really ramp up the addiction factor.

YouTube - The M800 also has a YouTube button, bringing you right to YouTube.com. Navigation is pretty quick. It takes a few seconds for the videos to load, and they’re not often incredible quality, but you can make them use nearly all of the screen, which is cool. Sound quality is also pretty good.

Media Player - My experience with the media player so far has been somewhat limited, but from what I’ve seen it’s nothing to write home about. It gets the job done, but isn’t mind-shatteringly innovative or anything.

Data Features - The ability to get news headlines, local weather, movie listings etc is nice, but I`m sure it is common to many phones on the market today. Like I said, I`m no expert.

GPS Navigation - I should at least mention that the Samsung Instinct has GPS Navigation, though I`m at this point unwilling to pay the $8 a month to enable it. I`ve got a handheld GPS which works well enough. The cool thing though is that you can enable it for one day, if you want to.

Conclusions - Overall I`m very pleased with the phone so far. Ease of use, clarity of the screen, and responsiveness of the touch interface are all way up there on my happy list. The only negative comments I have at this point are that the power button is the same as the lock button, so a few times when going to lock the phone I`ve inadvertently powered it off, which is a nuisance. The other thing is from what I can tell the built in calendar and scheduling feature could be more robust. I`ll have to keep my eyes peeled though, perhaps I can download a third party app that will help boost this capability.

As a final word, I would probably say that if you`re considering it, just take the plunge. You`ll be happy you did.

If you enjoyed this post, please Digg it, or bookmark it!

As promised, here’s a post exclusively on Traffic Geyser for your enjoyment. (Having said that, I hope you enjoy it!).

For those of you unfamiliar with Traffic Geyser, it is a really cool bit of software that allows you to submit a video clip to over 40 popular video sharing sites. It also strips out the audio and submits that to podcast directories. You can then attach keywords and a description to the video, and the idea is that it very quickly gains top rankings in the search engines, piggy backing on the popularity of the major social networking sites. Ideally, you target low traffic keywords, so you still really need to do your keyword research.

I signed up for Traffic Geyser a few months ago, and here’s my experience with it so far.

I didn’t have a product of my own to promote, so I simply picked an affiliate offer I was promoting to use as a guinea pig. I made a short (1:30 min) video about the product (its a financial product). The video was literally the cheesiest thing you’ve ever seen; I basically went to the their application form online and did a Camtasia screen capture of it while talking the viewer through a few key points. I then told them to go to my website, where I’d setup a special landing page for the video so they could then apply for themselves. It was the same landing page I’ve used in PPC campaigns promoting this product, just tagged with a different SID. At the end of the video I simply put my URL on the screen for a few seconds.

Now, I submitted this video about three months ago. Within a day or two, I already had one or two first page hits. I think DailyMotion.com was the first up. Anyways, just to check on this, to make sure it is current and good info for you, I just typed in my keywords while writing this post, and today, three months later, I own positions number 3, 4, 5, and 9 on the first page for my money making keyword. Interestingly, DailyMotion is no longer on the first page (I didn’t look past page 1) but YouTube is now in #4, and Technorati has scraped the video from YouTube and is #3. Also, some blogger has scraped my YouTube video and posted it on his site, so it is gaining even more exposure. His page is #5. How fun is that? My own page is number 9.

Anyways, Traffic Geyser costs around $100 a month, but I’ve been watching it closely and this short video has pretty much covered my costs for the last three months. In fact last month left me with a few bucks leftover. Now all I need to do is start creating more videos!!! (Don’t ask why I haven’t done that yet, I haven’t figured it out either.)

All that to say that Traffic Geyser is well worth the money, and if you only put a tiny bit of effort into it, you will reap the rewards.

The cool thing is that you really don’t need your own product to benefit from this. It applies just as much to affiliate marketing as it does to marketing your own products online. It is basically a great way to drive targeted, interested traffic to your site, for free.

Oh, I should mention that the biggest drag about using this software is you have to create accounts for yourself for all the video sharing sites. I only created accounts for about half of the sites, the ones I knew best and figured had the most starpower. It took me a couple hours. Alternatively, you can pay to get a complete set of accounts made for you by Traffic Geyser. It’s probably almost worth it. Once your accounts are created though, you can save the profile so you never have to enter that info again.

I’m planning on creating more videos pretty soon, I’ll keep you posted on their success!

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com) and some of the potential I saw in it to get stuff done on the cheap. Well, since that day I’ve been running multiple HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) on the Turk and I’ve been getting some great results.

If you’ve got a blog or any kind of website, chances are you’d like for people to be looking at it, right? Well, one great way to do that currently is to promote it on social media websites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Facebook; the list is seemingly endless. You could spend entire days creating accounts at each of these sites, write a small review of your site and post the link, and in the end you would probably see a small gain in traffic. However, what if you could accomplish all that for 50 cents? Without spending any time on it yourself? Would you do it? I sure would. In fact, I did.

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m currently in the process of launching a new webstore selling digital picture frames and as such I’ve been trying my best to find ways to promote it. So I created a HIT on Amazon’s web services (Mechanical Turk) asking people to bookmark my site on their favorite social network. My HIT looked something like the following:

Bookmark the URL http://www.digitalframeguy.com

Using one of the following sites:
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.propeller.com/
http://spurl.net/
http://diigo.com/
http://myjeeves.ask.com/
http://www.connectedy.com/index.php
http://www.myvmarks.com/
http://www.bookmarktracker.com/bt/home
http://www.oyax.com/
http://www.jumptags.com/
http://www.mylinkvault.com/
http://buddymarks.com/
http://linkagogo.com/
http://bibsonomy.org/
http://backflip.com/
http://www.mister-wong.com/
http://blinklist.com/
http://furl.net/

Include in the title or description one of the following terms:
digital picture frame(s)
digital photo frame(s)
digital frame(s)
wireless photo frame(s)

You may use either the singular or plural version of the keyword.
Please provide the URL of the bookmark in comments to receive payment for the HIT.
You can complete this HIT up to 5 times if you use a different bookmarking site each time.

So you can see I tried to make things as easy as possible for the turker to complete. Most of these people already have accounts at one or another of the social networks, so all they have to do is login and link to you. I offered 10 cents for these, only because I wanted a bunch in a hurry. 10 cents is actually a decent price for a HIT such as this. For another site, where I was more patient, I only offered 1 cent per bookmark, and I still got good results, though slower. As such, it is important to decide on your budget. It is worth taking the time to figure out if you only want to spend 25 cents promoting your site, or if you can actually afford a full $2.00. The choice is yours.

So I’ve basically given you a blueprint here for one way to get as many hiqh quality backlinks to your site as you want from the social media sites. If you want, you can specify only Digg links, or whatever you value. The great thing about this is the search engines love social media right now, most of the sites have high PR, and you get a link to your site that typically includes the keyword phrase of your choice. All for a few cents.

What’s not to love about that?

EDIT: I just got some article HITs back from Mechanical Turk and two of them were so good that I wanted to award a bonus to the authors. FYI - here’s how to do it. In the Manage HIT interface, where you see their unique ID number, beside the HIT results, click on that number (it is a hyperlink) and a pop down menu will appear. You can then award a bonus of any amount you wish through that link. I just felt bad paying 50 cents for these two great articles, so I doubled it for them.

I know, I’m a big spender. =)

Lately I’ve seen a couple different product launches, all geared towards taking advantage of eBay. It’s like a whole bunch of people suddenly found a jar of eBay pixie dust and started throwing it around the marketplace. The two I’ve come across are the Four Tier Annihilation method and the eBay Code. Four Tier is your standard $77 ebook with a video upsell. The eBay Code is more like $1497, not sure if there’s an upsell (I didn’t get this one, my pockets aren’t that deep!).

So anyways, being the eternal sucker that I am for a good sales letter, I picked up a copy of Four Tier Annihilation, and read through most of it today. Here’s the basic plot. Guy is broke, living in a friend’s basement, etc. Buys every internet marketing product out there and fails miserably until he stumbles upon eBay by accident one day. One thing leads to another until now he makes tens of thousands per month, and has trained many others to do the same, not to mention you! Strange how many of these stories all sound so familiar… yet I digress.

So cut to the chase, right? Ok, so he advocates a few different ways of selling on eBay. The first that is dealt with is dropshipping. Probably most people have heard about that. Dropshipping is this sweet setup (which I’m trying to get going with my digital frame store) whereby you secure a supplier to ship small quantities of product on demand, directly to your customer. So you make the sale, then the dropshipper fills the order. You never carry inventory. It really is a terrific setup, allowing the seller to automate his business as much as possible. Anyways, probably the best part of the dropshipping segment is where he talks about how he goes about doing his research into which eBay niches to enter. Using the advanced search feature in eBay you can checkout all the closed sales in each category. Find an item that looks decent, and has closed for a good price consistently, then lookup the seller in a tool such as Goofbay. From here you can see how much they’re selling, and judge whether there is profit potential in the niche. Quite fun to find sellers that are doing $10,000 a month in eBay sales. Then he goes into finding suppliers who will dropship for you. This is the part that I’ve personally had the least success with so far. Mind you, at the time the product I was looking for was a bit harder to find. I’m quite interested in taking another stab at it with a more common product.

So moving on from dropshipping to info products. You’ve probably seen the $1 ebook craze on eBay. Well apparently that is going to be changing, as eBay has brought in new terms and conditions disallowing download-able products. Of course this means you just have to outsource CD creation to a company like Kunaki.com and charge more for your product. Still, it will keep a lot of people out. So he talks about how to get ebooks you can legitimately sell as your own, without spending a whole lot, and how to find the good niches. There’s a lot of good information there.

One little nugget mentioned is worth gold, in my opinion. He talked about how after successfully selling a bunch of cellphones like crazy on eBay he created a short ebook on how to sell phones like crazy on eBay, including the contact info of some of his suppliers (note: withhold your best supplier for yourself!). Then he would advertise this ebook right beside his cellphone listings, and sell it for $47 or so. Basically, look at me - I’ve got a successful cellphone store on eBay, and I’ll tell you exactly how to do it to! Cool concept. Of course, only 3% of people who buy info products actually act on the information that they contain (according to him - not sure where the stat comes from or the validity of it). So because only 3% will act on it, you’re not even really exposing yourself to much increased competition, plus you’re already established in the marketplace. Sounds like he ended up making more cash off the ebook sales than off the cellphones!

He goes on to talk about flipping websites on eBay, outsourcing the creation of simple turn-key web businesses, etc. Basically there is lots of good content in ebook. I’m not really concerned about giving away all the Four Tier Annihilation secrets in this short post, as the ebook is 175 pages or so. Nothing terribly mind-breaking in there, but definitely more than enough information to make a healthy living on.

If you’re one of the 3%.

I bought a Dell XPS 1530 about three months ago (February ‘08), and I’ve been using it as my main computer since then. I use it basically all day long, in a wide variety of applications, so I thought I would write a bit of a review of my experiences with it so far. Hopefully someone finds this useful. If you’ve got one of these or are thinking of getting one, please leave a comment at the bottom! Cheers.

First off, here are my specs:

Dell XPS 1530

Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz/800MHz FSB, 4MB Cache)
3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms)
High Resolution glossy widescreen 15.4″ LCD (1680×1050) & 2MP Camera
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Windows Vista Premium
250GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
8X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capacity
Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy HD Software Edition
Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card
6 cell primary and 9 cell additional Lithium Ion battery
Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0+EDR)
1 Yr Return to Depot Service, Complete Care, Tech Support with Lojack

First let me say that I received my laptop sooner than I expected - I guess Dell operates by the age-old “keep expectations low, then over deliver” adage. Compared to their timeline I think I got it a week early. Which was good, because we promptly took it to Hawaii.

Traveling

It is fairly easy to travel with the XPS 1530 because it is very slim, and reasonably light. Included in the package was a slim nylon covering for the laptop with a magnetic flap. This helps protect it if you plan on throwing it in a backpack or something. On the plane, the XPS 1530 was great, because it has dual audio outputs, enabling both my wife and I to plug in and listen to movies. I think pretty much any 15″ laptop is going to be somewhat awkward on a plane (unless you fly first class everywhere), but this one fit fairly well on the tray in front of me. A major bonus was the fact that I had ordered both the 6 cell standard battery and a 9 cell backup battery. Using them together, I was able to watch movies for the duration of the 6+ hr flight. Having traveled quite a lot in the past, I can truly say it is a joy to not have to worry about where I’ll find the next electrical outlet and time to charge!

Appearance

The appearance of the Dell XPS 1530 is really quite sweet. I got the Tuxedo black model; you can also get it in blue or crimson. It is a mixture of brushed aluminum (looks like it at least) and black plastic. I don’t think you’ll find too many other laptops that look as good as Dell’s XPS series; they’ve won a few awards for that as well I believe. The hinges on the side are nice, they don’t look weak like some other laptops and they really anchor the screen quite securely from flexing. One complaint I have is that the built-in speakers are hidden under a perforated plastic grille that tends to collect dust and grime, and isn’t easy to clean. The media buttons are kind of cool; they light up when you touch them. I know some people have complained about the placement of the mouse pad (its off-center), however I find it is in just the right place when you’re typing properly. The keyboard itself feels good to the touch, though mine seems to have a slight upward bow in the center. Maybe it is my imagination though because I can’t see it from every angle. The fingerprint reader is a bit of a gimmick I suppose, though it is handy as a faster way to login to windows than typing your password. I’ve been known to use this feature to login while walking down the hallway booting up my laptop…

Display

I have my display set at max resolution (1680 x 1050) and it looks great. Colors are vibrant, everything is sharp and I find it a comfortable size to work at. Additionally, I also have a second monitor that I run off the VGA output, as an extended desktop. This works great, except for the fact that every single time I login to windows or resume from sleep mode I have to reset which side of the computer the monitor is on! (default is to extend to the right, but my monitor is on the left). This is sometimes infuriating, though I expect it is more a shortcoming of Vista / NVidia drivers than the fault of the XPS 1530. I’ve also used the XPS 1530 quite a bit with my projector (using the HDMI output) and it works well. However, another gripe with the drivers - the computer doesn’t always properly detect which secondary display is hooked up, and it screws up my custom video settings. One time after using the projector my laptop display was perpetually bright (60% or so) and every time I changed it, it would pop back a few minutes later!!! ARGH!

Network / Wireless

I don’t like Vista’s wireless admin tool. I think it sucks. They took too much control away. XP was better. That said, I use my wireless card all the time, and I haven’t noticed any slowdown as a result of my connection speed. I’m often downloading things and I often get in excess of 500kb/s download speeds. The range also seems very good (must have a very good antenna in the monitor) and my laptop far outperforms two other wireless computers I have in the house (a desktop and a Compaq laptop), both in terms of connection strength, range, and speed. Once again though, Vista sucks at handling network connections (IMHO).

I recently bought an AirPort Express, which is capable of 802.11n (draft) and the two are working beautifully together. I frequently get wireless download speeds around the 600kb/s mark. Now I just need to upgrade the other wireless cards on the network.

Audio

I got the upgraded audio option - the Sound Blaster Audigy. I notice there is a “Software Edition” tagged on the end of the line item - I’m not sure exactly what this means, but I can tell you I’m not super impressed. I’ve done some audio recording on my XPS 1530 and so far it hasn’t been able to compare to my previous desktop. Sometimes during playback (I often play music while I’m working) the sound cracks up - almost like it’s losing reception! Typically, this happens under periods of heavier stress on the CPU; using Photoshop or something of the like, but unnervingly, it also happens reasonably frequently when I am doing nothing more than scrolling my mouse! It makes me wonder if there is an IRQ conflict or something (I haven’t had to deal with with those in 10 years!!). So I’m not sure if this is a Vista configuration issue, or if it is actually a hardware problem. Nevertheless, I’m underwhelmed with the audio capabilites. The two audio outputs, as I mentioned previously, work great while traveling; when in use as a desktop the laptop automatically uses both connections so you can run a 5.1 system, which is cool. The only problem is that the connections are in front, which is annoying this time as now I’ve always got a pair of nice white speaker cables going to the front of the laptop.

Another problem related to recording is I’ve been unable to run any of my higher-end software applications like Cakewalk Sonar, due to hardware problems. I know most people probably don’t run that on a laptop, but it would sure be nice for what I’m doing. Also, I haven’t been able to monitor what I’m recording, without playing it back. That really sucks, as it is far better to monitor a live audio stream than have to play it back every 2 seconds to isolate a problem!

Miscellaneous

Dell ships a cool little remote control in the ExpressCard slot. This works great from across a room to control the laptop for music or movies. The range isn’t great, but props to Dell for including this inexpensive perk with the XPS 1530. Many times my friends have commented on the cool factor of this little remote.

Ability to run OS-X Leopard

When I was looking into what laptop to buy I seriously considered getting a Mac. The tipping factor was price. For about $1000 less at the time I was able to get a machine that was spec’d out almost EXACTLY the same as the MacBook Pro. The other thing was that I have several little programs that are only made for Windows, so even if I got used to running in OSX I’d still have to use Windows on occassion, which kind of defeats the purpose. Plus I like games.

So I looked into it, and realized that the Dell XPS 1530 had pretty much exactly the same hardware as the MacBook Pro. Right down to many of the model numbers. So I looked into it, and after spending an often frustrating Saturday afternoon on the issue I got OSX “running” on my XPS 1530, dual booted with Vista. Unfortunately, the sound doesn’t work, likewise the network drivers. I managed to get video drivers off the net, and probably by now someone has done the audio and network. I suppose if these issues could be resolved, there would be serious potential to kill the entire Vista installation and go straight from OSX Leopard, perhaps with XP as the Windows option inside of Leopard. For now though, I’m sticking with Vista. Leopard sure looks pretty on my Dell though.

Other Issues

I think most of the other issues I’ve had with the laptop are Vista related. Unfortunately Vista is an incredible memory hog, even with my 3GB of RAM managing to go quite slowly quite frequently. I’ve got tons of programs installed, but I’ve had to shutdown most of the background processes to keep the thing running ok. When will Microsoft come out with a slimmer OS? LOL.

Lately, I’ve also been getting several Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) - something I haven’t had to deal with since the early days of XP or Me. I’d almost forgotten about these. I think this is again related to the IRQ issue and I’ve been meaning to contact Dell regarding them. I hope my hardward isn’t screwed. This brings up another issue - warranty. Lucky me, I live in Canada so I paid more for my unit than I would have in the States (I priced it out) and I only got 1 year, depot service, while the US offer was 3 years onsite!! Argh. I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt me. I heard though that transferring warranties or getting them serviced cross-border is an absolute nightmare so I shied away from that option.

Conclusion
The only real beef I have with the XPS 1530 is the low quality sound card. It would likely be more than adequate for your typical user, but for the things I want to be able to do with it (recording) it is inadequate. I might have to look into some external solution. All in all though, I’ve really enjoyed the Dell XPS 1530, and I think that without the nastiness of Vista, I would recommend it to anyone.

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In three days I have nearly quadrupled my inbound links (110 to 482 on Yahoo), and it all came from 30 minutes of easy work. More to the point, all of these links are linked to my homepage with the keyword phrase “Affiliate Marketing Tips.” Wanna know how I did it? I used a remarkably fresh new method by Michelle MacPhearson, called “30 Minute Backlinks.”

So now you’re wondering what kind of black-hat stuff I’ve managed to dig myself into right? SEO is grueling, hard work right? Nobody gets quick results with a puny amount of work, right? Well I can tell you the whole thing is completely legitimate. The basic idea is to take advantage of web directories that have high PR, yet are virtually unknown to the majority of webmasters! How can this be you ask? They are software directories!

Software directories… I can hear you laughing already. Like what is a software directory going to do for me? Well what if I told you that Michelle lays out no less than 5 different ways you can create your own customized, branded, software in less than 30 minutes? The beauty of this system is it doesn’t even really matter too much if nobody ever uses your software… though it would be nice of course. The trick here is that you’re getting your software placed in the directories with the keywords you choose as the linking term, coming back directly to your site. These are all one way links coming from good PR sites!

I’ve only used one of the five examples that Michelle discusses - so far I’ve made myself a toolbar for FireFox and Internet Explorer. You can check it out here if you want - it’s got some cool tools on it for affiliate marketers. The best part was, I didn’t need to know a single line of code to produce this toolbar. If you can spell your name and type in your internet address, you can be a programmer!! Well, not quite, but you get the point.

So basically she lays out five different ways to make a cool bit of software, targeted to your niche, which you can then upload to hundreds of sites around the internet - sites that want your listing- even crave your listings! You see these guys want to have the biggest, hugest link directories out there because that is their reason for existence.

The best part is, it is completely free and takes very little time to implement. (The video series itself costs a bit, but it is very reasonable). Anyways, I don’t want to make this too “salesy” - really I’m just kind of stoked that I managed to triple my backlinks with so little effort, and I wanted to share that tip with you. Check it out, and let me know how it works for you!

(UPDATE) As of today (April 9) this domain is up to 631 inbound on Yahoo. I’ve done nothing additional since this posting aside from leaving 3-5 comments on some other blogs.

(UPDATE) April 10 - Yahoo now shows 785 inbound. This is the gift that keeps on giving!

(UPDATE) April 19 - My backlink tool appears to be dead, I now have 0 inbound from each of the big 3! Can anyone recommend a better link checking tool? Argh.

I read this e-book recently called Project Quick Cash. The basic premise was why bother with all this “build your marketing empire” nonsense when you can reliably make a few hundred bucks from 10 minutes of work? Well, he’s got a decent point I guess; it is at least worth considering.

So one of the methods talked about is a way of capitalizing on a tool called Google Hot Trends. The purpose of this tool is to flag any terms that are skyrocketing above their average search volume. For instance, if national TV suddenly runs another expose on Britney Spears, even though her name is normally searched quite a lot on Google, the sudden increase in traffic due to greater interest at that moment causes Google to register a spike in traffic and call it a hot trend. This list contains the top 100 and is updated hourly.

So as marketers how can we capitalize on this laser targeted interest? Well in theory it should be easy: find a product that people consider relevant to the hot trend and put it in front of them! This can be accomplished in a couple of ways. The most obvious is to find an affiliate program selling exactly the thing people are searching for. For example, often times the hot trends include specific models of a product. I’ll open Hot Trends and see what is up right now to illustrate (click on the graphic to see it fullsize):

The above pic is a screen capture from today, and several items are immediately obvious as specific products. Checkout #19 and #27. These are two keyword versions of the same product, a Kodak v1003 digital camera. So now that you know there are lots of people looking for this particular item right now. The trick is, you’re not sure why people are looking for this item - perhaps it was just featured a “Worst 10 Products of All Time list!” Then again, more likely it was featured as a great product on some review program. If possible, it helps to figure out why it is hot before you promote it, but use your judgement.

So now you have a product idea; now you need to find a site selling it that has an affiliate program. Amazon and Ebay are two obvious choices, though there are many others. Try searching for your keyword and “affiliate program.” Another good idea is to search for exactly the terms shown, find the top site or two and see if they have an affiliate program. Sign up, and setup a Google Adwords campaign using the keywords provided by Google and turn it loose!

A word to the wise: pay as little as possible for your keywords! Using this strategy you WILL get hundreds of clicks in pretty short order; you need to make sure you aren’t paying through the nose for a lot of lookey-loo traffic.

My Experience

So I’ve tried this tactic myself a couple times so far, because the principle of it really clicked with me. It’s like selling umbrellas when it’s raining, and sun lotion when it’s hot, which just makes good business sense.

I noticed that a weight loss book was featured on Hot Trends one day, so I got an affiliate link setup through Amazon and setup a Google campaign. My results:

Clicks: 675             Cost: $80.29             CPC: $0.12
Total Amazon Sales: $351.56                Amazon Commission: $20.67
Net Profit/Loss: ($20.67-$80.29-) = -$59.62

On a different occasion I found a Panasonic digital camera trend, and again used Amazon:

Clicks: 196             Cost: $23.69             CPC: $0.12
Total Amazon Sales: $32.14                  Amazon Commission: $1.29
Net Profit/Loss: ($1.29-$23.69) = -$22.40

As you can see, I kind of missed the profit boat on these experiments, losing nearly $80 altogether.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes \
that can be made in a very narrow field.”
-Neils Bohr 

Experience rarely comes free: I’ll chalk this up as part of my tuition. Another quote:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over
and expecting different results”
- Albert Einstein

Burning $80 just to pass time does no good unless you can learn something from the experience. Here are a few lessons I learned:

Lesson 1: Don’t Pay Whatever The Heck Google Wants You To Pay

Google is now infamous for the “Google Slap” part of which means they can just arbitrarily make your minimum bid whatever they want to. Some keywords are okay at 5 cents, and others Google mandates you need to spend 25 cents, or even several dollars. Presumably, this all relates to their epic quest for relevancy; however often it is hard in practice to see how. Anyways, on the weight loss experiment, I was a cocky little newbie and bid way higher than I should have. I actually accepted some of Google’s minimums (20-35 cents) because I wanted active keywords (the alternative is your keywords don’t run). This led to a much higher campaign cost than I should have had. One thing I noticed though: I had incredibly high click through rates (in excess of 20-30%) and as I checked back in every few hours, Google would let me slide my bids downwards a bit because they recognized the high relevancy. Over time I cut out the high-cost keywords, and my overall CPC came down a bit.

On the camera experiment, I didn’t cave to Google unless their minimum was only a few cents higher than I was willing to pay (I was aiming for 10 cents or less; they offered 12-15 cents for some keywords). However, I still ended up with a 12 cent CPC overall.

I suggest aiming for 5 cent keywords and little else, unless you know you have a real winner of a sales page/product combo.

Lesson 2: Amazon’s Commission Structure Sucks for PPC

When you are making in the 4% range, it is difficult to make pay per click work with Amazon. The interesting thing was that I only sold a half dozen weight loss books and all the rest of the revenue came from items like Brita water filters, camera tripods and DVDs. So I was able to take advantage of additional revenue, because my cookie was on record as the referral. This is a benefit of using Amazon versus a more targeted site; however I suspect a more targeted site would perform FAR better on the promoted item.

I suggest finding a more direct affiliate program where you’re actually able to make a good return on each sale.

Lesson 3: Pick a Good Sales / Landing Page

On the weight loss example, I was too eager to get going because the trend was volcanic hot and it was my first one, and I just KNEW there was money to be made ;). So I looked on Amazon, and they were sold out of the exact book that was listed, except for a couple of used copies, and they didn’t have a real good sales page for it. (Many products they have a good product page, but this one didn’t for some reason). So I linked to the page displaying the Amazon search results for that term. My book was top of the list, but there were a lot of other related items on there too. Mistake. I suspect this caused a number of dropped clicks right there, as people really wanted THAT product, and probably went back to Google to find it.

I suggest picking a good landing page that clearly displays exactly what people are searching for. Make it easy for them to buy! This is PPC 101.

Conclusion: Does it Work?

Although I haven’t made any money on this strategy so far, it makes so much logical sense that I find myself wanting to try it again. I think I’ve learned a few lessons, and I think with tweaking (and the right products) there is good money to be made. One serious advantage of this strategy is the sheer lack of time required to get setup. If you’re familiar with PPC, and have the necessary accounts setup already (Google and a relevant affiliate program) you can have one of these setup in less than 10 minutes.

Project Quick Cash has additional tips to making this strategy successful, but I don’t really have time to get into them here. There are also about five other low-cost strategies to turning a quick buck in the book; perhaps I will experiment with them as well and then share my results here later.

I got started in affiliate marketing in May of 2004, and it was all due to an ebook I bought called GoogleCash. The book had just recently come out and it was a great resource and introduction to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing using Google Adwords. Since that first edition the book has been updated a couple of times, and is now on its third edition; as Google has changed their own tactics over time the ebook has evolved as well. This book is probably one of the best introductory resources to PPC you will find on the internet. It is the one that got me started and I can truthfully say the techniques I learned from it have earned me thousands of dollars. 

GoogleCash is written for beginners and starts at square one, making it a perfect introduction, answering all the questions that someone who has never done this before would have. It walks you through the steps in finding an affiliate product to market, then how to create advertising for that product using Google Adwords, and then some good methods for creating well-performing ads and maintaining a successful ad campaign. Along the way the reader gets a complete introduction to the world of pay-per-click.

Simply put, GoogleCash3 is Pay-Per-Click Advertising 101 for any aspiring internet marketer.