Several months ago, I bought a wireless optical mouse in the US that is branded under the name Wenger. Wenger also happen to be the makers of the genuine Swiss Army knife known throughout the world for its good design, quality, precision and fine craftsmanship.

I mention design, quality and precision in particular, as these have some bearing on what happened after I started using this wireless mouse named "The Daytona."

Even the name “Daytona” suggests speed and endurance after the famous NASCAR Daytona 500 car race.

But this wireless computer mouse did not live up to it’s Daytona name for endurance, since after only 3 weeks when it was used very little, it required 2 new batteries.

OK, I thought, perhaps the batteries that came with the product were not at there best, so I popped in two more batteries, but this time wrote the date on them to be sure I was not imagining things.

Sure enough after about another 3 weeks the same problem, the mouse starts flashing a little red optical light telling me the batteries are low.

Ah ha I think to myself this wireless mouse must be faulty because no one would produce a computer mouse that eats batteries at the rate of almost one a week.

It was not as if the mouse was being asked to do much work, just for maybe two hours a day and the rest of the time it was allowed to sleep. By sleep I mean it switched itself off after not being in use for maybe 5 minutes or less.

Since I bought the wireless computer mouse during a trip to the US, taking it back to the shop for a replacement was out of the question.

Instead I contacted the company licensed to distribute the mouse under the Wenger name – AvenuesUSA.com.

The first gem of wisdom I was offered from their support desk was and I quote

“To preserve battery power, place the receiver into the cavity on the bottom of the mouse when it is not in use.”

So users of this wireless usb mouse are expected to fumble around at the back of their PC to unplug the usb receiver every time the mouse is not being used – does that sound like a user friendly design to you.

After further moronic replies from their technical support desk and a week of emails, they finally agreed to send me a replacement mouse. In fact they sent me two, a new Daytona wireless optical mouse and “The Diablo” an enhanced precision mouse.

Unfortunately the replacement Daytona mouse had no more endurance than the last one and the Diablo was far from being precise. In fact it was the worst example of a precision computer mouse I have ever seen. The mouse pointer jumped and jerked all over the screen like a thing possessed.

Not to be deterred, I decided to overcomes the mouse’s (or should I say mice) appetite for batteries my giving my mouse a tail.

The tail connects it to its very own power supply, so no longer would I have to change batteries every 3 weeks.

The only reason I bought this mouse was for my wife’s PC. She was using an old style roller ball mouse on a mouse mat that constantly needed degreasing.

The optical mouse solves this problem since it does not have a roller ball and does not need to have contact with a mouse mat.

I have to report that during the extensive and lengthy surgery performed on the mouse to connect a tail, one of them died and I was unable to revive it.

However the surviving mouse is doing well, as you can see in this post-op picture.

Perhaps I should no longer call it wireless optical usb mouse since it has a wire (tail).

Maybe I could call it a ‘Withwire Optical USB Mouse’ or a ‘Wiremore Computer Mouse,’ or perhaps a ‘Batteryless Optical Mouse.’

One thing I know for sure, I would strongly suggest you don’t buy one.

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

It may come as a shock to some people, but building a successful business online has very little to do with creating or putting up the actual web site, in fact in some cases you don’t even need a website.

It Doesn't Sell Well
There are very few people online who will actually tell you what’s really involved and how much work and resources it actually takes, because that’s not what most newcomers to the web want to hear – it does not sell well !

By the time a newcomer is set on the idea of putting up a business web site he or she has already read a ton of stuff on how easy it all is and all you need is to buy this ebook or that piece of software or find the holy grail – the Secret to Online Success.

What is more, so many people now believe they can do all this for free.

Let’s face it, if most newcomers to the web knew the real truth, most of them could save themselves a lot of time and money. That is by not downloading free stuff or buying products on the web that feed their dream to make riches and sit on the beach all day. Apart that is from the 1 or 2 hours they need to work to keep the money rolling in from their business web site or sites that run on auto-pilot.

In fact if you read the true life stories behind the big names on the web, in virtually every case you will find they spent years struggling to make ends meet and in many case they went 10’s and in some cases 100’s of thousands of dollars into debt to follow their dream.

Instant success did not happen for them and more than likely will not happen for you.

If you choose not to believe me, I won’t lose any sleep over it, but you may one day when you look back in a few years and say, gee I wish I’d paid more attention to some guy I read something about on a blog once, but I can’t remember where.

I also mention his link management script because it features in the story I am about to share with you regarding one of Duncan’s current projects. You see, Duncan is one of the very few people, in fact only the second one I know in the past five years, to offer to share how he goes about building a web business in real time.

The first person I know who tried this over the shoulder approach was David Vallieres, but he was charging a monthly fee and closed the project down after only a few months.

Now I don’t mean how Duncan creates or puts up a business web site, that’s easy, but how he markets and promotes it on the web, how he gets the site top rankings in the search engines, how he builds links, creates the product to sell, builds a mailing list, tests and tracks his marketing efforts to see what works and what doesn’t.

If you want to follow along and see what Duncan does on this project and how he does it then you should visit the blog he has set up for it, a link to which you will find at the end of this blog.

For my part I am following the reports on his progress with keen interest and I shall be offering my insight into what he is doing and how he is doing it in future posts on this blog.

What is clear to me so far is that Duncan is not trying to hide anything. For a time I thought he was not telling the entire story like so many other gurus on the web. It’s often not what they tell you, but what they don’t tell you that really matters.

You see I knew about Duncan’s secret weapon for getting thousands of links to any site he chooses so I suspected he was using it on this project to boost his site’s rankings, something most people don’t have the resources to do.

In fact I didn’t just suspect he was using his LMA script, I knew he was, but more of that in a later blog. The point is that eventually Duncan did say that’s what he was doing in one of his later project reports – so full marks to Duncan for telling the whole story.

So if you want to gain some first hand experience on how to build a business web site as it happens, but more importantly promote it then I recommend you follow this blog and the one Duncan has created for this project at: http://www.onlinemarketingtoday.com/worm-farming/

This niche project began in late February 2007 so you have some catching up to do by reading Duncan's blog entries if you want to follow along.

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

The fact that your subscribers may not get your email because the SPAM filters ate it pails into being totally insignificant when you yourself can not access your web site through your browser, or by ftp or even recover email for days or even weeks at a time.

Don’t think it can’t happen to you, it has happened to me several times. The first time I experienced the problem it occurred at random lasting for periods up to a week and eventually caused me to move to another web host.

More recently I was unable to access one of my web sites for 12 hours, all because of the measures a web host was forced to take to combat a Distributed Denial of Service attack a.k.a. DDOS attack.

To prevent the Internet from becoming a hostage to Trojan Viruses installed on 100’s of thousands of Home PC’s around the world then clearly we all have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to stop it happening.

The solution is simple, install some good anti-virus software on your PC that includes a firewall and keep it regularly updated. Keeping the anti-virus software updated is crucial if you are to remain protected from the 100’s of new viruses and self replicating mutations that come onto the Internet every day.

Downloading free anti-virus software is a start, but it needs to be kept up to date every day. I know of only one way to keep anti-virus up to date and that’s to pay for a subscription that provides automatic daily updates.

Not all anti-virus software is up to the task. I have tried quite a few of them over the years, including the well known ones like McAfee and Norton – Symantec, Trend Micro and many others less known.

The one that I have used now for 2 years and in my opinion has no equal is from pandasoftware.com.

But what ever anti-virus software you decide upon, make the decision to install it today and keep the Internet free from those who would want to control it.

If you come back to this site at a later date and can't load the pages then the site could well be under attack from a Trojan Virus controller who didn't like what I wrote or who wants to prove a point - so be warned.

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

The Internet a.k.a. the World Wide Web is rapidly becoming the Wild Wild West whose access is controlled by a plague of viruses residing on the PC’s of Home Users.

Whilst most Home PC users have heard of computer viruses, the majority think that if their PC becomes infected by one, they will know about it, because the virus will start to play havoc with their computer.

Whilst that is certainly true of many viruses, an ever growing breed of viruses, more commonly known as Trojan viruses can reside quite happily on a PC without the user ever being aware it has installed and replicated itself.

An innocent question might arise, well if this sort of Trojan virus does not affect a Home PC users enjoyment of his/her PC should they care.

Let’s assume the Home PC user is not aware that the Trojan virus sits quietly mailing spam email to those people in his/her email address book. Well we have all come to live with receiving SPAM - it’s an irritation to many people and a major headache for some.

But what if the Home PC user has the sort of Trojan virus installed on their PC that sits quietly receiving commands whilst the user is connected to the Internet that instruct a virus to launch attacks on other users computers.

If you are reading this and think this is fiction, unfortunately it’s not and it’s an ever increasing problem on the Internet. The computers so frequently the subject of attack by Trojan viruses are those that host the very fabric of the Internet itself.

I am talking about the computers used by web hosts that provide the home for all the web sites we visit. These web hosts often have to devote significant resources to combat what they call DDOS attacks or Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

So what exactly is a DDOS attack and should the average Home PC user care about them anyway ?

After all it’s not the Home PC use’s machine that’s under attack by the virus.

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

A DDOS attack generally starts when the controller of the Trojan virus that could be sitting quietly on 10’s or 100’s of thousands of Home PC’s around the world, decides to make it active.

The fact that the DOS attack comes from PC’s located all over the world makes this a distributed attack or a DDOS.

The Trojan controller may decide that he/she wants to deny service to one or more web sites. Denying service means that you or I will not be able to get any pages from that site loaded into our browser. That is when we click a link or type the www of that web site into our browser.

The Trojan controller can stop us from accessing any web site they choose simply by bombarding the web site and the web host with thousands of requests in short succession to supply pages.

It’s like turning a fire hose onto a target, it just gets swamped and bogus requests for pages stop legitimate users like you or I, from viewing the pages we have requested using our web browser.

The web site is just overwhelmed and stops responding or becomes very slow to requests for web pages to be sent to web browsers.

Well is all this anything more than just an inconvenience ?

Should we care if some web sites become unreachable ?

Well I would argue that we should all care. What if your favourite web sites become unreachable at any time for weeks or even months.

Can it happen - Does it happen ? ………… Yes it does.

What if you can no longer access the web site at which you do your online-banking.

What if you run a web business and can not access your own web site.

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating how serious this situation can be or could become. Perhaps you think web hosts have measures in place to combat such attacks and restore normal service, so we don’t have to worry.

It’s true, web hosts do have measures to combat such attacks, but these measures create there own problems. I don’t propose to go into the exact details of everything they do, because that would be another topic altogether.

But one of the measures they use to combat DDOS attacks is to identify where these attacks are coming from by the IP address.

An IP address is the Internet equivalent of your physical mailing address. When any of us connect to the Internet we have an IP address.

To stop the DDOS attack on a web site one measure used is to block requests for web pages from a range of IP addresses where the repeated high number of page requests are coming from.

Without getting into the details of IP addresses, let’s assume an IP address ranged from 1 to 1000. If a DDOS attack is coming from IP addresses in the range 100 to 200 then the web host could block any requests from people with PC’s connected to the Internet using IP addresses 100 to 200.

That means if you are a legitimate user trying to access a web site with this web host and your IP address happens to be in the 100 to 200 range you will not be able to reach that web site.

How long these DDOS attacks can last depends on the Trojan virus controller and the extent of the resources ( other peoples Home PC’s ) that they control.

These Trojan virus controllers can weld great power and are capable of shutting down and putting out of business companies operating on the Internet …. and they have done.

If you surf the Internet, have a web site or operate a web business you will be affected by this problem at some time, even if you don’t know this is what the problem is.

How often have you clicked on a link or typed a web site address into your web browser only to find the web page never loads ?

You stare at a white screen the page loading indicator makes slow progress, but still the page never appears, you give up and move on. Perhaps you think the web site is down, or it’s busy, or your Internet connection is slow.

How often do you think the problem is the web host is under attack and your IP address has a block put on it ?

To Be Continued in Part 2 !

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

The product is being sold in various forms, with and without resale rights formats and re-branding rights. So, you might find it being marketed by different people under different names at anything from $7 to, well you name it.

I should however warn you, if you are expecting a script like an Adsense Tracker that runs on your web site you will be sadly disappointed. The "software," if you can describe it as that, is quite simple.

The software installs on your PC and you provide it with two sets of Google Adsense Code for the Ad formats you want to test. Let’s say you want to test one Ad with black text and another Ad with grey text.

You copy and paste the two different Adsense Code blocks into the "software" and it adds a simple javascript function to the page code. Once added to your web page the javascript rotates one block of Adsense code for the other each time the page is loaded.

I will save you buying Easy Adsense Splitter, here is the javascript code it adds to your normal Google Adsense code, it’s a simple random rotation function.

Here’s the javascript:

<script type="text/javascript">
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
//your first ad unit code goes here
} else {
//your second ad unit code goes here
}</script>

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

To track the results of this you also need to setup different "channels" within your Google Adsense control panel for each Ad.

Also with this product is a pdf document called "Three Little Tricks" that gives tips on boosting your Adsense income by using different Ad placement techniques.

To anyone well versed in Google Ad placement on web pages there are no new revelations – so I suggest you save your money.

So is Easy Ad Splitter - "software ?" – well you judge for yourself.

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

The ebook niche member’s site is run by Robert Blackstone & Adam Maywald and requires a monthly membership fee.

During my membership I downloaded and evaluated 12 ebook packages, covering a wide range of topics from Boat Safety, to Modelling, Home Schooling, Anxiety, Dog Training and UK Debt.

Each package has one ebook in pdf and word format, 20 PLR articles, an email course with a sales letter and graphics, provided in case you want to try and sell the ebook.

In the ebook niche package you also get a short list of 3 or 4 niche product affiliates and the results of the keyword research that I assume went into choosing the ebook subject in the first place.
 

So, what can you do with this ebook niche package ?

Well, you could try and sell the ebook, or give it away, or use the content for your own ebook or web pages.

Ebook niches make the claim that these are quality ebooks. Well, they are better than some I have read, but are they of such quality that you could, or would want to sell them ?

Personally I would not try to sell them. Many of them are not particularly well written and come from the ghost writer factory. The only possible use for the material that I would recommend is content for your own web pages.

However, whilst you are free to use the ebook and articles as you please, I would caution you against using the material as provided.
 

Secondly, the content is not particularly good and I generally found I could get no more than 1 or 2 pages of quality web content from the ebook and articles.

Out of 20 articles I could usually only piece together one article that I would consider good enough to publish.

So, don't expect not to do any work.
 

eBook Niche Keyword Research
On the subject of work I would also suggest you don't rely upon the keyword research data that is provided with each ebook niche package. Firstly, I would seriously challenge whether many of these topics are actually in a niche at all.

As I have found from other product evaluations I have done on niche offerings - like Niche Monthly, Niche a Day and Article Underground, the keyword research that is the basis for these products is in many cases, extremely flawed.

It is clear to me from the keyword research provided with all these types of products that it can not be relied upon. For this reason I always do my own keyword research.

What I usually find is that the keyword phrases that have been chosen are either not in a niche, or if they are, not in one that you could get a high ranking for with a search engine any time soon.

The cost of membership to ebook niches was $47 per month, but quickly rose to $97 a month. Is it worth $47 or $97 per month, well not to me.

Tony
Making Your Website Work for You

I recently returned from a 3 week absence to find I had received almost 4,000 emails from the 50 or more email accounts that I have. Of those emails 70% were SPAM which from what I have read seems fairly typical.

There would probably be more if not for the spam filter service I use on each web hosting account. This 2nd line of defense does its best to act as an email spam blocker before the mail reaches me.

My 3rd line of defense, which is the most effective, is Mailwasher an email spam blocker software that I run that whilst it doesn't stop spam email, at least stops me from having to download it before I find out that it's a SPAM email.

My 4th line of defense is my email client (browser) on which I have set up some basic filters.

In case you're wondering what my 1st line of defense is to stop spam email, it's trying not to let my email addresses be captured by spam bots and email brokers. I know in the latter case I need to do better.

Of course it would be nice to be able to stop spam email before it ever gets to my mail box. It would also help if the whole system of email we currently all endure were redesigned. The email system we have today was created at a time when SPAM emails were largely unheard of.

As such the email system we all use is easily abused. For example many web hosts operate capture all email accounts. This means it doesn't matter what someone uses to send you an email.

Say they use wyscz@yourdomain.com, the web hosts email server at yourdomain.com will deliver it to you even though you have no such email address as wyscz. What the web host has done is shift the problem from them to you.

Have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year

Tony
Making Your Website Work for You

Then you have the fact that someone can spoof your email address and use it to send email that looks as though it comes from one of your email addresses at your domain. That has happened to one of my domains.

If that's not bad enough if the recipients email address is blocked or they use a spam filter service, you get all the delivery failed email messages returned to your inbox. After all they think the email came from your email address when in fact it didn't.

So you could end up getting your domain blacklisted as a source for spam email when you are completely innocent.

Then you have the fact that some web masters use website forms that without their knowledge get hijacked and used by spammers to send email that does come from their domain. This can quickly get your domain hosting account shut down.

It's also a fact that despite some web sites declaring that they never use a subscribers email address for rent or sale, some of them do exactly that, sell your email address to an email broker. A very high percentage of my spam comes from sources using my real email addresses that I have only ever given to legitimate web sites.

I am sure some of the people using email lists from brokers feel they are sending email to opt-in subscribers. Many of my spam emails include things like only sent to opt-in subscribers. Of course if you decide to opt-out you could be doing no more than telling them their mail has been delivered.

All too often the opt-out function doesn't work anyway. Does all this sound familiar ?

Then you have the bots that trawl the web for places to dump more spam, like leaving comments on blogs that serve no purpose other than waste your time deleting them and deleting the email notices you receive that a comment has been made.

If anyone has found a more effective email spam blocker or spam filter service that will stop spam email they could share it by leaving a useful comment. Please don't just leave a comment with a URL in the vain hope of getting a link to your site. It only wastes my time deleting them and wastes your time in writing them.

Perhaps during this Christmas holiday I can get more spam on my dinner plate and less in my email - surely there is a better way!

One of the world’s largest Internet payment processors has over 100 million accounts in 103 countries recently caused a charity website’s payment pages to appear to its English customers in the German language.

It was not until someone from Ethiopia wanted to make a donation did the problem come to light. The person wanting to make the donation could not because they couldn’t understand the German payment page being presented to them.

The switch to presenting the sites payment pages in German had probably been like that for about 3 weeks. That was as far as I could tell from another website affected by the same problem.

The payment processors first response to the problem was to suggest that the fault was with the charity website using the wrong code on the sites webpage’s.

This ignored the fact that the pages reverted to being shown in German rather than English when no changes had been made to the sites payment pages. The pages were in English when they were first created.

The next response to the issue was to suggest that the problem was caused by the fact that the charity sites account is based in Switzerland and therefore any payment pages created will be shown in German.

If that were true, why did they choose German, since Switzerland has three main national languages, German, French and Italian and each is the main language in different parts of Switzerland. Millions of people in Switzerland don’t understand German because their language is either French or Italian.

According to the payment processors logic let’s suppose you were running a business in China and wanted to accept payments from English speaking countries. Because your account is based in China your customer’s initial payment page rather than being presented to them in English would be presented to them by default in Chinese.

The suggested solutions to the problem were many and varied, but the end result was that the charity site had no other choice but to replace all the payment code on every affected webpage.

The problem affected not just the charity website but other websites as well.

When the payment processor was asked if they would like to donate something to one of two children’s charities by way of compensation or to show good faith for the problems they caused their response was that they do not offer compensation for their errors.

Further more I was advised that I should re-create the button code and make a clear text button and add the following line of code to the generated code:

<input type="hidden" name="lc" value="EN">

They then told me that since I have an encrypted button that I would not be able to add that line of code to it.

This in effect meant that I could no longer use encrypted PayPal code on my webpage’s which in itself would have security implications for other websites.

For those of you not familiar with PayPal’s Merchant Tools section where button code for payments is generated they have an option to select the “Buyers Country” but this is optional.

In other words if you don’t choose the "Buyers Country" the buyer can select it when they make a payment.

What PayPal technical support were telling me was that because I have a Swiss account this is no longer an optional selection, I must choose to set the Buyers Country to US or UK or any country that speaks English.

No where in any of the PayPal publicly available documentation does it state this anomaly.

In fact in nine PayPal documents on integrating and using PayPal payments selecting language options is only mentioned in three sections and at no time does it say what technical support were stating.

Another strange thing about this issue was that a subscription button created using the same Swiss PayPal account was not affected by the problem and its payment pages were still being presented to customers in English and not German.

PayPal offered no explanation as to why this should be so.

The PayPal Swiss support desk suggested it was because I created the buttons when my language profile was set to German and that has caused the problem. Sounds reasonable enough except for the fact the account profile has always been in English.

I pointed out to PayPal that to correct this problem meant having to recreate all the payment buttons again on all the websites that are affected and that would probably be a day’s work.

PayPal were asked if they would offer some compensation for the problems and extra work they have caused by making a donation to one of two fund raising causes :

SOS Children's Village donate at
http://www.artincolors.com/sos-childrens-village-donations.php

And help Feed a Child donate at :
http://www.artincolors.com/feed-the-child.php

PayPal’s response to making a donation to help these children in need was that they do not compensate for coding errors on their part.

Al I can say is shame on you PayPal !

Article Announcer Review - Testing Product Claims and Google's Duplicate Internet Content Filter in Action

Despite this many webmasters still believe it’s an effective way to add pages to their web sites by using other people’s article content. With the web growing at an ever increasing rate it seems clear that search engines needed to find ways to cut out duplicate content.

If you think about it, why would search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN want to keep spending money adding computer resources to index and store all this duplicate content.

If a search engine has a page indexed for an article, why would they want to index and store 400 more pages exactly like it ?

Of course, in reality they don’t and it’s one reason why Google in particular is so keen to remove as much duplicate content as they can, or at least get it down to a more manageable amount.

To try and side step the search engine’s duplicate content filters web content publishers have resorted to various methods to modify articles to make them slightly different from the 400 others using the same article.

It was being suggested one should aim to have at least 20% original or changed content in an article to avoid the duplicate content filters. The problem with all this is that it’s only a matter of time before the search engines learn how to detect even this sort of content.

If the changes following Google’s Big Daddy update are anything to go by it would seem Google has taken another step forward in detecting and removing this sort of content. Many webmasters have reported entire sites being dropped from Google’s index and Adsense revenue completely drying up as a result.

My own personal experience of some of these PLR articles is that they are of very poor quality, written by ghost writers, who it’s clear, frequently know very little about the subject they are writing about.

I don’t blame the ghost writers, after all, when they are being paid just a few dollars per article, what can you expect.

Webmasters just want pages to put on their websites that firstly get indexed and secondly ranked by the search engines. They then hope to get some traffic and make money from Adsense or other advertising.

One of the more enlightened sources of web publishing content using articles that I have been looking at over the past few months is Article Underground.

I should make it clear I don't use Article Underground and this blog entry is not in any way promoting it.

Mike Liebner who runs Article Underground has produced some excellent videos that walk you through the steps you need to take when publishing articles, not just his, but any article.

Of course, the videos are a promotional platform for Article Underground but that’s to be expected. In the video’s you see how he chooses article subjects to have his ghost writers create articles about using keyword research.

I have stressed the importance of Keyword Research many times on my site but it’s still a mystery to many newbie webmasters who simply just don’t understand it, or worse still think they do.

As someone who has been perfecting keyword research and discovery for many years I can say that Mike Liebner has a good system. I don’t fully agree with some of his assumptions and it’s clear he doesn’t fully understand some of the issues himself, but none the less it’s a good process.

Whilst he admits the results are modest ones, he is being realistic about the earnings from his example site and for that I give him credit. He does show some spreadsheet predictions of revenue, but for me there are some very big but’s and if’s in his forecasts.

The expectation of any webmaster joining Article Underground is clearly to be able to use some of the 400 articles per month they get and to publish them as web content. This they can do, using the processes that come with Article Underground membership.

The assumption in all this is that a member can achieve the same sort of results or better, than Mike shows in his video. However, I feel there is one big flaw in this argument and that is Mike is not using articles that the membership uses.

If you’re wondering why, not using the same articles as Article Underground members matters, I’ll explain.

As a member getting your copy of an article indexed and ranked by a search engine you are competing against other members using the same article.

Mike on the other hand is not competing against anyone since he uses articles that no one else is using. He makes it clear he does not use articles from the membership.

Mike Liebner does make it clear that there’s a lot more to publishing web content with articles than just putting up a web page and he’s right, there is a lot more to it.

So is it still effective to publish web content with PLR articles ?

Yes for the time being, but how long it will last very much depends on the search engines. How much you will earn from it with the likes of Adsense is a completely different topic on which you will find a blog entry called Adsense Videos from Michael Cheney.

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

I have written before about what is and what isn't a Niche and these daily examples from Niche A Day are yet more examples of what I consider not to be a niche.

The daily email comes courtesy of NicheADay.com run by Scott Standke, who also runs Keywordavalanche.com.

In the email Scot provides a keyword or phrase which by his definition represents a niche market based on the estimated monthly traffic from Overture and a PPC bid price which is the other piece of information supplied.

Here is a list of the Niche a day supplied in each daily email for the past 3 weeks.

They look really exciting with these high levels of traffic. But the real question is what chance is there of getting any of that traffic if you built a website around one of these “niches” ?

To answer that question you need to look at what information is not supplied by NicheADay and that’s the level of competition.

Or, put another way, how many other web pages are competing for this traffic by using the exact same keyword phrases ?

Todays NicheADay niche is: spyware
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 448,799

Todays NicheADay niche is: digital photography
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 52293

Todays NicheADay niche is: consulting
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 179117

Todays NicheADay niche is: bahamas
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 121890

Todays NicheADay niche is: bankruptcy
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 278932

Todays NicheADay niche is: diabetes
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 425020

Todays NicheADay niche is: landscaping
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 140988

Todays NicheADay niche is: adoption
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 190355

Todays NicheADay niche is: car insurance
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 1740644

Todays NicheADay niche is: hot tub
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 196195

Todays NicheADay niche is: office furniture
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 208618

Todays NicheADay niche is: tax attorney
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 180207

Todays NicheADay niche is: teeth whitening
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 78842

Todays NicheADay niche is: wedding
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 494127

Todays NicheADay niche is: airfare
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 804608

Todays NicheADay niche is: architect
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 110468

Todays NicheADay niche is: dating
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 3067977

Todays NicheADay niche is: gardening
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 224923

Todays NicheADay niche is: headphones
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 32553

Todays NicheADay niche is: home gym
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 101429

Todays NicheADay niche is: long distance
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 219359

Here’s the same list again but I have added the number of other web pages being reported by Overture ( this information was not supplied by NicheADay )

Competing Web Pages
spyware 222,000,000
digital photography 74,800,000
consulting 695,000,000
bahamas 245,000,000
bankruptcy 141,000,000
diabetes 197,000,000
landscaping 55,200,000
adoption 316,000,000
car insurance 77,900,000
hot tub 21,400,000
office furniture 437,00,000
tax attorney 3,040,000
teeth whitening 4,380,000
wedding 304,000,000
airfare 60,500,000
architect 220,000,000
dating 437,000,000
gardening 122,000,000
headphones 68,400,000
home gym 4,260,000
long distance 109,000,000

With this level of other web pages using the exact same keywords, I would like to know how anyone would consider these to be in a Niche.

Perhaps Scot Standke could supply his definition of a niche ?

Then it would all make perfect sense how we can quickly get free traffic to a website built around one of these keywords.

As Scot says in his NicheADay email “Now it's up to you to take this information and actually do something with it.”

Here’s my suggestion, put it in the bin, what’s your suggestion ?

Tony Simpson
Web Page Add Ons
Making Your Website Work for You

Since Niche Products Monthly is new, I decided to give them a fair chance and wait to see if the 2nd month’s product offerings were better Niche Products. The 3 products for February were on Bass Fishing, eBay Power Selling and an Insiders Guide to Real Estate.

As with the previous months niche products these three come with a ready made easy to upload website, 50 Private Label Articles, an ebook, Ready made PPC Ads for Google and Overture and Autoresponder course and around 1000 keyword phrases all related to each niche.

I was not alone in voicing my concerns about this, as was evident from other comments on the Niche Monthly Forum. However in the 2nd months batch of products the keywords still come with no competitive data.

Just as before I have to seriously question why this should be, since these keywords are supposed to be collected using the widely accepted Wordtracker service used by many for keyword research. Wordtracker does not supply keywords without competitive data, so why would Niche Products Monthly not supply this data ?

Could it be that if they did supply competitive data that it would be quickly obvious to everyone that these products being offered are not in a Niche.

So there's certainly a market for fishing products and it could be argued that Bass fishing is a Niche market within the larger market of fishing.

But if we relate marketing to fishing, there is no point in having a large pond of hungry prospects (fish) if you don't have the means to reach them.

Simply putting up a ready made web site does not mean it will ever be seen by your prospects (fish). The point about having a Niche Market and a Niche Product is that you need to fish in a small pond, that has enough hungry prospects (fish) willing and having the money to buy your product and they are in a pond you can reach.

For the exact search phrase " bass fishing " there were over 22,000 searches/month on Overture. So there are lots of fish, even if Overture over estimates them, but that's another story. However there are over 4.2 million others trying to catch the same fish, as shown by the number of other web pages targeting this exact phrase.

If we dig deeper to a niche within a niche (sub niche) then we come up with " largemouth bass " which is in fact mentioned in the ebook that's part of this Niche Products Monthly offering. Whilst there are still over 4,400 searches for " large mouth bass " there are still too many other anglers looking to fish in the same pond, namely over 984,000.

Slightly better is " large mouth bass " with over 1,100 fish but still 147,000 other anglers.

" small mouth bass " doesn't fair any better with over 727,000 other anglers and 1,700 fish.

A niche pond that does look reachable is " bass fishing lure " 1,800 fish; 26,800 other anglers or " bass fishing tips " over 1,700 fish and only 80,600 other anglers.

The product ebook supplied is too general to appeal to someone looking for specifics about bass fishing lures so perhaps we are left with bass fishing tips. Yes the ebook does cover some tips but even I can tell (and I'm not into fishing) that it's very beginner's stuff in the ebook.

Let's face it these types of ebooks are written by ghost writers hired from elance.com or the like and the author probably knows nothing about fishing let alone bass fishing. So will anyone buy such a general ebook from an unknown author, or are they more likely to buy from an author who has actually done some fishing.

I mentioned that each niche product comes with ready made ads for Google and Overture so just in case you can't get the ready made web site high enough in the natural search engine listings you can start using PPC to get traffic to your web site.

I did a quick check to find how many sites existed were using last months niche products. Whilst the most I managed to find was 35, only 2 of those appeared in Google's search results and that clearly shows how effective Google now is in filtering out duplicate content.

Getting traffic through PPC for a $27 ebook is very much border line in being cost effective. If the site conversion rate is 1 in 100 (typical) you will only earn any money if the CPC is less than $0.27.

I won't waste my time or yours giving you a similar breakdown on the other two Niche Monthly Products for February but it seems clear at least to me that Niche Products Monthly - Still has no Niche or at least not one anyone can reach that cost effective.

If anyone using these products would like to leave a comment on this blog that they have done well with them I would be happy to be able to report it.

Until then

Tony Simpson
Web Page Addons
Making Your Website Work for You

At the time of witing the item I was in the process of testing yet another backup software, the 3rd in recent months, called SyncBack.

My final comments at the time of writing the last blog entry on this subject were that I was hoping this would be 3rd time lucky or else in a few weeks or months I would have a new name for this backup software, maybe calling it … SickBag or ……… SinkBuck.

Well I can now confirm SyncBack was in deed a SickPup, that like the three other Windows backup software's I had tested before it, developed problems after several weeks of use. In SyncBacks case it just decided at random not to run some of the scheduled backups.

The developer's explanation for the problem was to blame it on the Windows Scheduler which SyncBack made use of. They maintained it must be because my Windows scheduler was failing to launch.

However they failed to explain why SyncBack worked for some scheduled events only minutes apart but would decide not to run for others.

Having decided not to Sync a Buck into SyncBack I was by now somewhat desperate after several months of testing to find a windows 2000 backup software that actually would do what it said - Backup !

I am happy to report that one backup software solution passed the months testing I subjected it to and is now my windows backup software for scheduled nightly file backups. The software is called Handy Backup and is available from www.handybackup.com

Tony Simpson
Webpage Addons
Making Your Website Work for You

There was so much hard selling that some affiliates clearly decided the competition was too hot and used a form of reverse psychology in not promoting it.

What I do know about Butterfly Marketing is it's a home study course that sells for just under $1000 and comes from Mike Filsaime.

I first came across Mike Filsaime about 18 month ago and I must say the first time I saw a photo of him he looked like a typical used car salesman. In fact my first thought was - would you buy a used car from this man ?

Ironically, I learned quite recently that Mike Filsaime was indeed a former car salesman.

The first to tell me about Butterfly Marketing a full 30 days before the launch date, was Brian Edmondson. Brian was quick to tell me he was a preferred partner with Mike on this project. Also, he and Mike would be offering special bonuses to anyone who purchased through his affiliate link. He also told me he had pre-ordered his own copy.

Do you really think a preferred partner would be expected to order a copy ?
I would expect it for free and certainly expect to have studied it before deciding to promote it, but of course most affiliates skip that part.

21 days before launch I'm told about Butterfly Marketing by Jeremy Gislason but with no strong promotion.

15 days before launch I'm told by Joe Cooper, who was keen to mention his unbelievable bonuses for ordering through him.

9 days before launch comes Gary Ambrose telling me he's one of the guys that Mike asked to help him create the course itself and he's "offering an absolutely insane bonus package" to use his words.

On the same day, Joe Cooper is once again telling me about how he is one of the few lucky people to pre-order the Butterfly Marketing package and couldn't see how anyone can get the package and not succeed.

"the people he has spoken to about the package have ALREADY decided they are going to be getting it when it is released WHATEVER the price!"

5 days to countdown and Jeremy Gislason returns to tell me quote:

"Don't buy Butterfly Marketing until you have seen our Mind Blowing Shock and Awe Bonus offer that will be revealed on the 30th/31st."

The same day comes Dr Mani with a repeat visit from Gary Ambrose. Gary tells me he's a "Butterfly" Marketer and hopes that I'm willing to open my mind to this with proof on video from his bank account records.

These receipts he maintains he achieved by quote "releasing his "Butterflies into the Market."

4 days to go and it's the turn of Russell Brunson with a video that I should quote "go and watch before Mike finds out and asks him to take it down."

Well I guess Mike Filsaime didn't find out because on Feb 2nd the video is still there.

3 days before the big day and Joe Cooper can't resist yet another reminder quote:

He also suggests "if I want to find out first hand about whether all this 'hype' is justified or not I should visit......" another web page - I didn't.

On the same day I get more emails about Butterfly Marketing from Dr Mani, Shawn Casey, Michael Rasmussen and yes Joe Cooper again!

The next day it's Jeremy Gislason, Gary Ambrose, Shawn Casey and Dr Mani.

On launch day it's yet more emails from Jeremy Gislason, Michael Rasmussen, Joe Cooper, Henry Gold and Shawn Casey who is going to give me a $10,000 bonus if I buy "Butterfly Marketing".

Following launch day after all these affiliates telling me why I absolutely can't live without Butterfly Marketing I get two emails telling me not to buy it. One email was from Alan Reece, the other from David Vallieres. Of course they both make good arguments for not buying it, but recommend another product instead.

Even as of writing this the affiliate wars are still going on as Gary Ambrose and Joe Cooper battle it over who is offering the best bonus to buy through them and even that their bonus is better than Butterfly Marketing itself.

It's like watching a feeding frenzy of a large group of sharks.

To quote a line from Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Marketing Sales Page:

"Are you tired that every single freaking day you open your inbox, and the "New Amazing Super Wizard In A Box" has just been revealed. STOP The BS!! "

I can not help but think yes Mike you got that right and what's more is the "New Amazing Super Wizard in A Box" actually Mike Filsaime himself.

"Can we cut it out already with the downlines, and MLM?
The only people that make serious money are the owners and the top .01% and we all know it."

Hmmmm and I wonder whose going to make the most money from Butterfly Marketing - Mike and his Partner Affiliates without any doubt.

Now I say partner affiliates because that's what makes this promotion so insidious, all the hard hitting affiliates who have contacted me are also directly involved in this project providing a case study - testimonial or an audio interview that's part of the product.

Many of them have contributed to the product and feature as part of it - Gary Ambrose (Interview)

I'm sure you recognise the same names who have been so keen to convince me to buy Butterfly Marketing.

Are all these affiliates noses like Pinocchio's going to get longer for not telling the truth - No because we don't live in a Fairy Tale.

Like Moths to a Flame these affiliates and partners have been fighting to reach the flame - that shiny glow that attracts - that pot of Gold that awaits them - the affiliate check.

So, perhaps some people and Moths do live in a Fairy Tale !

Yes, let's not forget the Moths who buy Butterfly Marketing drawn by the promise of a promise for their pot of Gold.

For all you Moths who bought Butterfly Marketing let me re-quote what Mike Filsaime say's himself:

"The only people that make serious money are the owners and the top .01% and we all know it."

So like Moths, before hitting the flame, think about that quote before you buy and get burned.

For those of you still undecided as to whether to wing your way to buy Butterfly Marketing let me tell you the short version of what you get in the package.

Basically what you get is a Manuscript and 9 CD's the contents of which you could probably get on one CD or DVD. But then it looks so much better value to pay $997 for 9 of them.

The Manuscript is said to be originally a separate project on how to make money with membership sites. So I guess that's what it's still about.

What you also get is his Plug-N-Play Viral Website Making Software that could easily sell for $2997.00.

So why not sell it for that if it's so easy !

Let's not forget the 9 CD's, what's on those ? Well the software must be one.

Then there are two DVD's of Mike Filsaime Teaching Butterfly Marketing On Stage in two different seminar locations.

So I guess you get to see almost the very same thing twice.

Then there are 5 CD's with 5 separate recorded interviews with 5 different marketers.

Last but not least is the CD that allows you to access the member's area and learn about the course.

And all this for only $997 !

Delivered to your door with an extra $38 Shipping and Handling.

As if they can't afford to include the shipping in the $997 price.

A 30 days guarantee from receipt of your package, you review the entire course, and if you feel this Package does not do all that they said it would do for you and more, simply return it for a refund. It's that simple.

So, you have all of an entire 30 days to prove if Butterfly Marketing Works for You - so I hope you can work really fast !

P.s If you want to return the product, don't forget you have to pay your own $38 or more, for shipping.

I wonder if they still have one of the 1500 copies left for me ?

Until the next time

Tony Simpson
Web Page Addons
Making Your Website Work for You

The stated aim of Niche Products Monthly is to provide its members with 3 Professionally produced Private Label Products per month targeted at a Niche Market.

It received heavy promotion from many well known names on the Internet, like John Delavera, David Vallieres, Keith Baxter and David Zohar to name but a few.

The first months niche products were:
A Beginner's Guide to Yoga
Quick and Easy Guide to Baby Showers
Wedding Savings Revealed

The Wikipedia Encyclopedia defines Niche marketing as the process of finding small but potentially profitable market segments and designing custom-made products or services for them.

I'll illustrate this with an example
Let's say I think there's a market for a Beginners Guide to playing a Guitar.

Do you think its been done already ? You bet it has and in a big way.

Then I decide to dig deeper and look at Guitar Picks (Google 5.4 million results), those small pieces of plastic or bone, that are used to pluck the strings, but it's still not targeted enough.

What about Custom Guitar Picks (1.3 million results on Google) or Handcrafted Guitar Picks (Google 63,500 results).

A quick check on Yahoo/Overture indicates a healthy number of searches on words related to guitar picks and with a few selected search variations I could easily assume more than 2,000 searches per month.

So Handcrafted Guitar Picks would be a niche product. It's in a highly targeted market that's small enough to be reachable with a website that does not have too much competition (63,500).

The results for Yahoo are similar with 57,800 search listings. It also has 4 Google Adwords Ads which shows there's a healthy market, but not too many Ads that would make it too competitive.

Depending on how you search on Google or Yahoo for a Beginner's Guide to Yoga there are between 670,000 to 920,000 search results and on MSN 45,000.

Searching for a Guide to Baby Showers tops the scales at 3.6 million on Google, 7.9 million on Yahoo and a mere 270,000 on MSN. This is a lot of potential competition.

Keyword research on Overture shows the closest search phrase to be Yoga for Beginner which has around 4,000 searches per month, but over 2.2 million other competing web pages. So clearly it has way too much competition and would be virtually impossible to reach with a new website.

The Niche Products Monthly - A Beginner's Guide to Yoga is therefore not a product in a small Niche Market which is reachable with a new website.

The phrase 'baby shower guide' on Yahoo/Overture turns up over 3.1 million other competing pages and only 43 searches per month. Other related terms all have more than a million competing results and searches in double figures.
So once again this does not look very promising as a niche product.

The third product offering from Niche Products Monthly is Wedding Savings Revealed. Once again just a quick keyword research revealed terms related to saving money on a wedding all had high levels of competition (over 9 million) and low search demand (less than 170 searches per month).
Another product not really in a Niche.

Niche Products Monthly also supplies ready made websites for each one of these products that are aimed at selling the product ebook as well as having loads of pages of articles on related search terms. The idea behind this is to build Adsense earning websites.

The problem with this idea is that up to 750 other members of Niche Products Monthly could be putting up the same product websites using the same Duplicate Content. Google in particular has recently become very good at filtering out and de-indexing sites built using these types of automated programs.

And how well are they likely to rank for search terms to be able to get enough traffic ?

These and many other questions will perhaps come to light in the member's forum, assuming of course they publish these sort of observations and comments. It's often the case that negative comments on these product forums are never published.

An update on Niche Products Monthly can be found at Niche Products Monthly - Still No Niche ?

Tony Simpson
Webpage Addons
Making Your Website Work for You

In the past 10 years I have used at least 10 antivirus programs and probably trialled twice as many looking for a decent one that’s effective and doesn’t cause me grief.

Antivirus programs were once just there to give your computer networks and PC’s protection from malicious computer viruses. But in the past two years many of the big names like McAfee, Norton and Trend Micro have begun offering Antivirus with integrated Firewall solutions.

Some people may see these integrated solutions as a bonus since it’s like getting two functions for the price of one (well almost). You don’t have to install a separate Firewall, it comes with the Antivirus program.

The problem I have with this is that it removes my freedom of choice and that’s something I do care about. You see most of these combined antivirus and firewall solutions, don’t give you a choice.

If you have another firewall installed the antivirus software will ask you to remove the other firewall. If you don’t uninstall your firewall, you can’t install the antivirus software.

This smacks of Microsoft and the attempt to force Windows customers to use Internet Explorer as the only Internet Browser or to use Windows Media Player as your only video and audio player.

We all know what happened to the battle that Microsoft had with that strategy, it was seen as anti-competitive, ant-customer and anti-freedom of choice.

Yet Antivirus software companies are quietly doing exactly the same thing and getting away with it.

My first experience of the problem was with Trend Micro, who about 2 years ago introduced the first offering of a firewall with their antivirus. At first it was optional, you could choose to install it or not. Later that changed to you not having a choice. If you didn’t uninstall any existing firewall you could not install their antivirus software.

My solution to the problem was to look else where for another antivirus software. But the choice is becoming more limited as they all progress toward offering integrated antivirus and firewall solutions.

I have used the same software firewall for many years and never had any cause or reason to change it. The firewall is Zone Alarm Pro and it has many features which simply cannot be matched by integrated antivirus solutions.

The antivirus software I have used for the past 18 months is Panda Titanium 2005 and 2006. It’s one of the best antivirus software’s I have ever seen and also incorporates anti-spyware and auto-dialler detection. As well as recognising over 100,000 known viruses, it also detects viruses in the wild without needing an updated pattern file.

They also have an excellent email virus warning system and one that advises about security vulnerabilities in other vendor’s software and hardware. This service is almost worth the price of the software.

It also has an integrated firewall, which for now is optional, but how long will it be before they too remove the freedom of choice ?

If they decide to remove my freedom to chose my own firewall, or anything else for that matter, I for one, will be looking yet again for another antivirus software.

My advice to antivirus software vendors is stick to what you do best and stop trying to be all things to all people and in the process removing the customer’s freedom of choice.

If a customer wants to use your firewall they can, if they don’t want to use it stop trying to force them. Its anti-customer and these days customers have a choice as well as a voice. It's called the Internet and Blogging.

Tony Simpson
Webpage Addons
Making Your Website Work for You