As you can clearly see, there are currently some issues with it, which I’m going to iron out, or have ironed out by someone else over the coming days. I wasn’t going to put the theme up until it was perfect and all that, but that was always going to be difficult considering the only way to find all the problems with something is to thoroughly use it. I love the look of it so far, but obviously can’t enjoy it fully until all the problems with it have been fixed. Even then, I’ll have to have a custom header designed. More work and money, but since I’ve made a good bit online this month it didn’t really bother me. I want to be proud of this site in every aspect, so getting a unique, error free theme was a necessity for this. Let me know your initial thoughts, and please bare with me while I sort out the issues over the next few days. Remember I’m a lazy bastard so doing this sort of work really isn’t my nature.
For those interested, the design cost me $20 and the slicing and coding was $50, though I offered to pay an extra $10 to that provided I got quick delivery and full satisfaction. I know of someone doing a custom header with cartoon character for $70, so I may get that done soon too.
Anyway, happy new year all, hope 2008 brings you all peace, happiness, and most importantly, profits
That’s right, I’m sorry to say that Digital Point forums are really turning to shit. Lately the place is just becoming a haven for cheap bastards with poorly spoken english to gather and “post”. The place is simply full of people selling and reselling the same shit, most of which they probably don’t even have resale rights to (read about my experiences on this in this link).
There just seems to be so little quality material around DP. A friend of mine, William Montanaro, showed me a great example of just how shitty DP has gotten. William’s a great writer, and wrote a 75 page Traffic Superbook ebook that was retailing at $47, which was actually a great price for the wealth of information contained in there. He offered this to the punters on Digital Point as the discount price of $20, and got just one sale on there I think. Now website traffic is the thing everyone should want to improve on, because you need traffic before you can do anything with a site. Get traffic and then start working on profit.
But of course, a long term investment isn’t what DP users want. William then wrote another ebook targetting the DP market, and made himself a decent bit of cash. The ebook this time? A few pages about a little method he found that earns a bit of quick cash if you constantly put work into. Now it was a good book and all, but the fact that this sold more copies than his other traffic ebook showed the interests of Digital Point users.
I’m getting more and more pissed off at people on there speaking awful broken english and even trying to scam people. The place has gotten so full of idiots. Ever wondered why you rarely see the major players in internet marketing on there?
Unfortunately for me, it’s so active, even if a lot of those active users are irritating, so it’s a handy place to see webmaster news and make money here and there. Be careful in looking for work on there though, you’ll be on slave labour rates if you plan on writing or designing for money.
Even worse, the moderators on there lately have really lost the plot. Infractions and bans are being handed out for the stupidest things, if they’re breaking a new rule on a technicality or something. Too often lately I’m seeing failure to use common sense on the part of mods.
Recently a very popular poster on there, Samantha, was banned, which was pretty disgraceful since she was always catching scammers and alerting the mods, and generally doing good work for the forum. See her post about the whole thing here. Guys I strongly recommend checking out her site, you’ll be shocked that the mods banned who must have been the hottest girl on the entire forum. Then have a look at the thread where people asked why she’d been banned, which is here. Cleverly she changed around some images she had linked to during her time on DP, and wrote messages to the mods via those, for example, the images below.
You gotta love that bitchiness.
I myself have gotten infractions for silly things in my time, I even posted about one a while back, have a look here for more info in that.
Overall I’m logging onto DP more out of habit than anything else lately. I sincerely hope I find a new place to spend my time and conduct business, but it’ll be hard to find somewhere quite as active.
It also seems like the ways of making money are quite limited. Everyone just seems to do the same things - Proxies, Flipping Sites, Writing an ebook (then flipping the ebook’s site), and of course, blogs. Not that there’s anything wrong with these methods, but I would love to find a unique idea, that could work long term and bring regular passive income rather than just something to make a quick buck.
I did some good business last night. Nothing too huge in terms of money, but it was clever work, and very good in terms of ROI (return on investment). I spent very little time and made decent profit last night, on two different jobs.
The first, was buying two wordpress themes off Digital Point forums. They were fully unique and ready to be used. I’d say the usual rate a theme sells for is around $50 on there, but I got two great ones for a total of $70, in this thread. I was surprised I got them so cheap, since they were both good themes, but I think the $70 price threw people off, and they didn’t really stop to think that essentially this was $35 each theme. So I put up one of these themes on a demo site, and then started a thread elsewhere sellling the links in the footer. This meant that four people could “sponsor” the theme, and each get their link at the bottom of the page. I then submit the theme to a list of different sites (that I listed in the thread) and then the public can download the theme for free. People start using the theme, and the sponsors get links back to their site. I sold my links at a cheaper price than the usual rate, and within a few minutes of starting my thread, someone bought all four links at the special price of $100. So that’s $65 profit for very little time and effort on my part. I have another one to do the same job on, so will hopefully make a good profit on that one too.
Next, was an idea I was very proud of. There was a guy on Digital Point forums selling his website that was making around $4-5 a day. Selling such a website on these forums is not a good idea, as these forums are for cheap bastards. And yes I see the irony of me saying that yet constantly mentioning that I was on the site. I was considering buying, since the current bid was just $700, and his Buy It Now (BIN) price was $1300. Then I decided that I simply didn’t want to risk that amount of money just yet. But then I had a decent idea. I messaged the seller, asking if he had tried selling elsewhere, to which he replied that he hadn’t. I then offered to broker the site for him, and take 50% of whatever amount over $1,000 I got. For him this was a good deal, since his current sale effort didn’t seem to be going over $700. He accepted my offer.
So off I went to Sitepoint, where the big buyers and sellers hang out, and paid $20 to start an auction for the website. Within a few hours I had two people offer the BIN price of $1,300 (using mai 1337 sale skillz), and this spured one of them to up his offer to $1,500, with the extra $200 coming in a month’s time, provided the website has lived up to expectations. So I accept, and handle initial details and then refer the buyer to the real seller.
Netted myself an inital $150, with another $100 coming next month, and the only cost was $20 and a little brains. Time to become a professional website sale broker?
It’s great to have bonus money makers like this pop up the odd time, and I was particularly pleased at spotting the opportunity for easy money for brokering the guy’s website. The best part is that he was more than happy with the sale too (if we get that $200 next month then he’s getting a total of $1,250 for himself, which is almost his original BIN price). And those Wordpress themes, they’re an easy way of making quick money. I recommend to any budding web entrepreneur to try get in on this.
I’ve also bought a new design for this website, I just need to hire someone to code it, so if anyone reading this can code Wordpress themes from a PSD file, or if you know someone who can, give me a shout
When a new webmaster enters the world of online income they usually soon realise that Google is a lot more than everyone’s favourite search engine. Google Adsense and Adwords are the most popular advertising methods for both Advertisers and Ad Publishers. The ads are a simple way for people to advertise their sites/products, and an easy way for website owners to earn a little cash from publishing the ads. Google take an easy cut (thought to be 50% of what the advertiser pays) and they’re laughing. This is just an example of one of the ways they make their huge profits.
Google is becoming one of the biggest global companies, they already virtually control the internet. They just do so many things, and have so much power. For example, a great site, Feedburner (which is used on this blog for the RSS count) was the leading site of it’s type, so Google just go and buy it for $100 Million. It was an odd purchase, but it sort of showed how powerful Google are. It was them throwing their weight around a bit too, and the purchase got a bit of a mixed reaction in the webmaster world.
Google Reader, Google Mail, Google Earth, Google Images, Google Analytics, Google News alerts, Google Pagerank, to name a few of the different services they provide
. Google’s motto was originally “Do no evil”, but it seems lately they’re more concerned with dominating the internet that providing a helpful service to users. Their Pagerank system has now lost credibility since they started taking personal vendettas out on certain people, namely Mr. Chow.
They’ve got satellites and all that, and I’ve even heard something about them looking into space exploration. One has to wonder, where will it end for Google? Will they draw a line or continue to spread until we’re just renamed Planet Google?
It’s always a little unnerving when you’re reading a personal email on GMail and notice all the Google Ads down the side are directly relevant to what you’re talking about, isn’t it? I saw a video recently about this sort of thing, and though it seems overly paranoid, it’s an interesting watch all the same. Have a look at it below, but do take it with a pince of salt, it’s a bit dramatic.
Christmas day’s here then. Hope you’ve all enjoyed yourselves
Let’s get to the important thing here - presents.
Decent haul this year, allow me to go through some of the gifts I received.
The Sopranos Season 1 DVD
Which I’ve been watching for the past few hours on my new portable dvd player
I’ve also got a biography set called “The Real Godfathers” which talks about the lives of 8 of the biggest gangsters throughout history, such as Al Capone etc. I enjoy my gangster stuff if you haven’t guessed already. Also got Grand Theft Auto : Vice City for the PC, since I want a decent game to play on my laptop, but am not really willing to get a new one since I tend to abandon games after a short while. So trusty GTA should o the job.
Also got a new book by one of my favourite authors, Roddy Doyle, called The Deportees.
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Not to forget my calendar for the new year, which is of The Clash, one of my favourite bands.
There’s also been clothes, aftershave, money, and all that general stuff you expect. Overall, gift-wise, it’s been a good Christmas, and I’ve a few things to keep me occupied over the holidays.
Now, for the sad news, to totally bring down the good vibe of the post!
Unfortunately last night, Christmas Eve, we got a phone call to tell us that my grandmother, who had been ill for some time, had passed away. Now I was worried it’d be a little inappropriate to mention that on here, but I’m sure you’ll all now understand why I may not post on Thursday or Friday, what with ceremonies to be attending and all that.
Anyway ,y’all be careful not to overindulge too much, and that’s just reminded me that my sister’s boyfriend got me a six pack of beer for Christmas. Now there’s somebody who knows what a guy like me wants
A Christmas message from us all here at Walsho.net, which is just me, wishing you all a Happy Christmas and Happy New Year. I didn’t want to capitalise the first letter of each of those greetings there, but it didn’t look right otherwise. Happy Holidays to any non-Christians out there
Anyway, as for my Christmas, it probably won’t be anything special, there’s no big plans really, just chill out, eat, drink, and unfortunately do schoolwork. Given that I’m in an exam year, I have a ton of homework and study to do over the holidays. I haven’t been feeling very ‘Christmassy’ this year compared to other years, maybe I’m getting to old to get excited about Christmas. I know all my presents too, since I picked them out myself I’ll post on here tomorrow about any gifts I receive, and if I could find my camera charger I’d take a few snaps of the things
I’m not religious at all, but am forced to go to mass on Christmas day, which bores the hell out of me, but I guess it has to be done. Then there’ll probably have to be a bit of family visiting tomorrow, which I’m not very fond of to be honest. I know that sounds really bad, but I don’t really know many of my relatives too well, so big family gatherings were never my thing. Then again, maybe now I’m older I’ll be able to appreciate it all a bit more.
I’ve a few things to get done over the holidays, namely to give my pigsty of a bedroom a clean up, along with all the aforementioned study. But I’ll have a few dvd’s to watch and things, so there should be plenty of things to pass the time with away from studying. I think I’d do well to make a plan of how to spend the time over the holidays, to avoid me spending everyday like I spent today and yesterday (on the laptop most of the day, browsing around, with the most productive thing I did each day being a trip to Tesco).
I imagine online business will be pretty slow over the Christmad period, with people taking a break from their computers and all that. I should still be able keep an eye on things, and post almost everyday on here, but no promises
I’m off to watch The Untouchables movie anyway. Enjoy the Christmas break everyone!
I posted last month about buying tickets to The Redneck Manifesto concert. It was on this Thursday in Whelan’s, Dublin city. I attended with Warren, and friend of mine, and it was a great gig. The band are Irish themselves, but have toured abroad a few times, despite having a relatively small fanbase. Since they’re an instrumental band, there’s no real frontman, but their bassist is the one who takes centre stage and certainly gets most of the attention, since he dances so weirdly on stage, making these great facial expressions too. They were amazing live, and there was a fairly decent atmosphere. The band really are all about the music, nailing their songs live, while enjoying themselves at the same time. I’d say myself and Warren were two of the youngest folk there, especially since legally I shouldn’t even have gotten in
Check out this video for one of their latest songs :
No, actually check it out and listen to the full thing, and realise that you regret not being at that gig. I think everyone could enjoy this music, it’s pretty chilled funky sorta stuff most of the time, but gets heavy in parts, so everyone should be happy. I recommend having a look at their myspace, to hear some more songs, and see a few more videos. Check it out at this link.
Afterward we went to a rock pub in town, Fibber’s, where we met a few friends and enjoyed the €3 a drink special they have on every Thursday. The good times were had.
While we’re on this sort of topic, I thought I’d mention a funny story from last night. While browsing the interweb, I noticed that John Cow, a popular blog, was down, seemingly due to some coding error, as shown.
Then today on Digital Point, I found a guy talking about how he “brought John Cow to it’s need with a typo”. See this thread. The guy basically did a plugin for the Cow, and there was a typo in there that soon fucked up site. The hilarious thing? “John” was out at the time, and had told the guy that we was going to “get very very drunk”. What a hero. Then check this quote from his lastest blog :
“We’re busy getting ready for a party tonight right here at the barn and we expect to get absolutely shitfaced in order to celebrate Christmas with a few friends.”
That’s what I want to see more of on the popular blogs! Though this guy’s also living in Dublin at the moment, so is there any surprise there? There’s even a sort of “morning after” post up today, which I love. I’d love to see John Chow and Tyler Cruz and the likes talk about how completely wasted they were the night before. Am I only one who’d like this or do the rest of you want to read about famous blogger’s debauchery?
Well since everyone had talked about Entrecard, I might as well discuss my experiences. I mention thissite in a post a while ago actually. Graham Langdon created this new site which is popping up all over the blogosphere.
Basically, you sign up and display the entrecard widget on your page, and other passing members can “drop” their card on you. Everytime someone drops a crad on you, you get a credit, and everytime you drop your card on someone else, you get a credit. Dropping your card means very little really, it just means your card appears in the other person’s entrecard inbox.
However, the whole point of this system is the free advertising you can get from it. A 125×125 card ad is displayed in the widget, and you buy an ad on someone else’s blog using the credits that you gather. Each time you buy an ad on someone else’s page, the ad is displayed in their widget for 24 hours. I’ve had a lot of requests from obscure irrelevant blogs looking to advertise on here, which is irritating, but you can simply reject them.
Sounds rather complicated, but once you set up your own account you get the hang of it very easily.
The blogs are categorised, and at the moment, as you’d expect, the most popular blog category is “Make Money Online” which yours truly is in. I started a little later than most, but started creeping up the ranks fairly well, until yesterday when my hosting went down, and I’ve slipped back down again. Up at the top are the usual suspects, John Chow, Problogger etc, but there’s a complete newcomer up there too. Toni Turner bypassed John Chow for the top spot last week, and though Chow’s taken the top spot again, Toni’s holding strong in second position. I had a look at her blog and picked up a paid private ad for $5. Her price for private ads has now risen to $10, which is still quite cheap, but I’m glad I managed to get in there at such a low price, since I knew she was bound to be mentioned on a few sites as the stranger who overtook John Chow.
There’s the top of the Make Money Online category, where you can see Toni’s a good 54 credits clear of Problogger in third place. Fair play to her.
I’m currently saving up my credits to get an ad on John Chow for a day. Most folk have reported a traffic increase because of Entrecard, but there is a flaw with this. A lot of the traffic you get from Entrecard will simply be people coming on, dropping their card, and leaving, which is useless. I’ll keep an eye on my stats and update soon regarding traffic changes from this. At the end of the day, it’s a free method of getting advertising, and a free method of finding other great blogs out there, and a kickass idea from Graham Langdom.
Any bloggers out there who haven’t signed up with Entrecard, do so immediately and realise the brilliance of it.
Everyone wants to try make money online these days. Unfortunately the majority of those people don’t want to take the risk of spending their own money, for fear of not being successful, and thus wasting their money. Well I was recently shown a site (click here) that offers a free method to try earn online. The site also completely clarifies copyright laws, which is something I’ve had trouble understanding, what with people stealing my ebook content in recent months. The main site discusses methods of money making using the vast amounts of unprotected material out there, so check that out in this article. Be sure to give the site a look if you’re looking for some concise information on profiting from free public domain material.
Oh the Spears family just keep feeding us entertainment don’t they? This isn’t the kind of post I usually make, but it’s such an irresistible story!
We all know Britney Spears, the girl who came on the scene at 16 and shocked us with her sexy schoolgirl act. Then after singing a few songs or something, her life went down the drain, as she married some low-life guy that nobody liked, got herself knocked up (twice), got divorced, and shaved her head somewhere along that timeline of calmaties.
Well today a friend of mine informed me that Britney’s sister, who’s just 16, is now pregnant. Apparently her mother was on the verge of releasing a parenting book too! It’s unforunate for the girl, assuming she wasn’t planning on this, but it’s honestly too funny a story. Three cheers for the Spears family, you couldn’t write this stuff.
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Happy Holidays to any non-Christians out there
