Archive for January, 2008
Sadly, I seem to have been stripped of my page rank. It’s no big deal, but it’s a little irritating all the same. I know damn well this page deserves to be a PR3 (which it was) or more, so it’s frustrating to have google take off my PR simply because I’m using a piece of code in the sidebar that sells ads through TNX. PR is a pretty vicious cycle, in that you want a higher pr so your site is worth more and you can charge more for links or advertising, but as soon as Google see you sellings links, your Pagerank gets taken off you. As far as I know, TNX have something that may prevent this happening, so I’ll have to look into that in the hope I get some PR back.
Google had been treating me very well lately, as I’d been getting high rankings for keywords I mentioned in posts. I’m currently still number four result on Google for “digital point forums”, which is pretty funny since the post is titled “Digital Point forums are going down the drain”.
Otherwise TNX has been working pretty well for me. You get more and more credits each day, for doing absolutely nothing, and soon I’ll be able to cash them in, so it’s pretty handy. If you’re gonna sign up, do so using my referral link, or using the banner at the top of this page 
In other news, I’ve finally bought a new hosting account for my proxy, so will be promoting that a little soon. Remember to use 4getSchool.com to get on bebo from school kids 
You may have noticed that I’m posting a little less often on here. That’s due to school work and study getting the better of me lately, so expect posting to be 3-4 times a week rather than 7 days a week like I used to be able to do.
Sellin’ links in my, my sidebar,
I fought the Google and the Google won, I fought the Google and the Google won
I needed money cause I had none
I fought the Google and the Google won, I fought the Google and the Google won
Yeah I’m currently listening to that famous Clash song, so that seemed appropriate. Real lyrics are here, do you all like my clever word change? 
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Posted on 31 January '08 by Mark, under Business. 3 Comments.
I logged in to my Godaddy.com account today to see just how many domains I own. I have one domain elsewhere, and all my others are at Godaddy.
The result was quite surprising.
I own 25 domains! Let’s go through ‘em all shall we?
- 4getschool.com - Proxy site I’ve been running a bit lately, but now need to purchase a new hosting account for, since you can’t host proxies on ordinary servers.
- CleanseAcne.com - A site on which I wanted to have an ebook guide on acne and all that. My reasoning at the time of purchase was that teenagers are probably the biggest internet users, and this is a common problem for teens. I still haven’t done this site.
- ConorMongey.com - This was a Christmas present for a friend, who’s now doing his own blog on there.
- FeckSchool.com - Was a proxy site, but is now doing nothing, shame since it’s a nice domain. Even if I continue doing nothing with this domain, I’ll renew it.
- GetFrontPage.com - That’s right, the site I sold for $1,050. The buyer never accepted the domain, but obviously I couldn’t sell it again or risk him coming back to me giving out. I’ve contacted him about this and never gotten a reply.
- GoingHairless.info - A shitty adsense site I put up back in the day and hoped to sell. I never sold it, still try to the odd time, but never with any conviction!
- GuideToWordpress.com - I was going to do an ebook site on this, but Smemon and myself decided to use it to start a blog guide, helping out with wordpress and also giving away his ebook that he wrote. Smemon basically did all the work, and we were going to continue posting on the site for a while, get a few subscribers and see where that takes us. Just yesterday I talked to him me not having enough time to run my own projects, so working on something substandardly with someone else is not something I’d feel very good about, and I gracefully retired from the project. I don’t deserve any credit not doing any work like! I offered him the domain, but we’re going to wait and see. I think my choice was best for both parties involved.
- ImgSlut.com - Ah, my new image hosting site. I think this could enjoy a little success, since it has a domain name that is more memorable than the average image hosting site. I’m in the process of finding a designer for the header/logo, and will fiddle around with the site after that. For the header I’m hoping for something kind of funny, like an image logo or picture frame wearing fishnet tights and high heels. If you or someone you know could do this for a cheap-ish price, give me a shout.
- JointVenturesProfits.com - A disgusting domain for what was a disgusting PLR ebook site. I sold the site for $25 ages ago, and the buyer didn’t accept the domain. Just a few weeks ago he mailed me about it again, so I go and push him the domain for the second time, and again he doesn’t fucking accept! The second time he mailed about it, I had already made some bigger sales, so doing this for a smaller sale from ages ago (combined with the fact that this was his fault anyway) was annoying. If he mails me again, he’s getting ignored, and that’s something I never do.
- PhoneGallery.info - Ah, this one warms my heart. There were so many different ideas and sites up on this domain. Eventually I did a mobile phone blog on there and sold it, and of course the buyer never accepted the domain.
- RockFestivalBlog.com - Fairly obvious what my idea was for this, a blog with updates on the rock festivals around the world. I’d still like to actually do this site, but you know me, I’m a lazy bollocks.
- SiteOfTheConchords.com - This is the domain I’m most proud of. I wanted to do a fansite for The Flight of the Conchords, and came up with this domain. Even now when I think about it, I’m proud! This got a PR1 a while ago but then lost it again. Someday, I’ll do this site.
- SlipStreamLCC.com - A domain bought for a poor friend with no credit card.
- Soodie.com/.net/.info - A trilogy of domains I had a plan for. I found the name pretty brandable, so went and bought the .net and .info extensions before realising the idea was too expensive for me at the time.
- UltimateHealthBlog.com - A health blog I made and sold, and I actually didn’t realise until now that the buyer never accepted his domain.
- VXJQ.com - An “investment” I made during the dying seconds of the LLLL.com sale rush. Could prove to be worth more in years to come.
- Walsho.net/com - The website you’re currently on. Recently bought the .com extension to stop anyone holding me ransom.
- WebmasterDiscounts.com - A decent domain and idea, and I ran this fairly well with someone for a while. It’s now kind of abandoned, but has a PR3, and I’ve been meaning to start working on it again!
- XQJV.com- See number 16.
- XVTQ.com - See number 16.
- YourBabies.info - See number 6.
- YourDebs.com - Wanted to do a debs information site with this. I still do, and have been slowly making progress on it.
- YourGphoneblog - Bought this around the time the iPhone came out, and every single iPhone domain was being bought for silly money. So then the rumours of Google bringing out a gPhone started spreading, so I bought this. There has been no more word of a gPhone since. Thanks google, now I look like a fool.
If anyone fancies buying some of these domains off me, give me a shout, as I’m sure you’ve noticed most of them have been abandoned!
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Posted on 30 January '08 by Mark, under Business. 3 Comments.
I mentioned yesterday that there had been some good business news.
Well, it’s the ol’ reliable selling of an ebook site that did the trick yet again. WordpressForProfits.com was an ebook website I made last week. I sold some copies of the ebook and made around $85 dollars in a few days, and since I didn’t have time to promote it anymore, decided to sell the site (with exclusive ebook rights) there and then. The starting bid was set to $100 and the BIN price at $500. Within an hour or two I had received the BIN price, giving me a nice $500 to boost this month’s income which has been fairly shit thus far due to time restraints with school and studying. The transaction was very smooth, I wish the new buyer all the best of luck with the site.
I’m beginning to hate this sort of income though to be honest. The whole selling ebooks and then selling the site is not a long term thing, and is pretty unreliable. If I had more time on my hands I’d try avoid this method and work on more long term income methods, but I simply don’t have time for that, and I have to settle for making quick cash to get by on. The reassuring thing is that I’m still making more money online than I was in my part-time job, which I gave up just before Christmas.
Now for something completely different. I recommend taking a look at William Montanaro’s new wordpress theme, which he actually made himself. Pretty impressive eh?
You may notice this post is coming a little earlier than usual for me, because I wasn’t in school today. I woke up this morning absolutely wrecked and given that I very rarely miss a day in school, decided I can have a break now and again. Had I gone in I seriously doubt I’d have been able pay any attention anyway. Though I must admit I’m worried that I’ll get into a habit of missing school, since today was so amazingly relaxing!
I’m considering putting a strict limit on my daily computer time so I don’t end up wasting too much of my day. Two hours a day sounds reasonable I think.
I’ve gotta go study for a french oral exam anyway, I’ve gotta learn enough to fill twelve minutes of conversation, which is a lot tougher than it sounds! A bientot!
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Posted on 28 January '08 by Mark, under Business. 1 Comment.
Saw this great band last night in Tripod, Dublin, and it really was an amazing gig.
There were issues beforehand on finding someone to drag along. Most of my mates were going to a party, and I didn’t fancy bringing someone who’d only be there to help me out.
So I decided, fuck it, I’ll be a loner and go by myself! This obviously meant having a few beers beforehand so I wouldn’t give a shit how weird I looked, but in truth I wasn’t actually that bothered by going alone. When I got there I saw a guy looking for a ticket, and offered my spare ticket (cost me €19) to him at whatever price he was willing to pay. Little did I know a good few people were looking for tickets. This, combined with my alcohol induced generosity meant I was more than happy when he told me he’d give me what I paid for it. So I made a €2 profit on my ticket, but was pretty pissed off when I realised how I’d missed out on a bigger profit. I soon got asked by someone else if I had any more tickets. I told him I only had mine, and jokingly said he could have it for a thousand euro. He then offered me €50, and then €100. I was pretty tempted to accept that offer (would have been over €80 profit!) but I’d been waiting to see the band for quite a while, and they won’t be coming back to Ireland any time soon.
So I missed out on some handy cash, but my moral profits are through the roof
I hate ticket touts who go ripping people off and such, so I’m glad I didn’t lower myself to that kind of level. And hopefully I made that one fan pretty happy by giving him a ticket at face value rather than squeezing any extra cash I could. Perhaps some day I’ll have similar luck if I’m stuck in a situation like that!
The gig itself was a seriously good show. It’s completely instrumental, with just drums, two guitars and bass. The bassist switched between bass and guitar at times though too. There was a really nice crowd too, all very like-minded people, and surprisingly I quite enjoyed being on my own at it.
Afterwards I got a call with directions to that party that everyone else was at, so I wasn’t a complete loner for the entire evening! Anyway, I can’t recommend this band enough. I left a link to their myspace in the post before this, so I strongly suggest you check them out.
There’s some good news on the business side of things too, which I’ll be posting about tomorrow. It’s nothing major, but do check back tomorrow to see why this month hasn’t been a complete disaster in terms of online income
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Posted on 27 January '08 by Mark, under Listening. 2 Comments.
I’m off to see Explosions in the Sky tonight in Tripod, Dublin. They’re one of my favourite bands, and I’m pretty damn excited, since I’ve never been to a gig quite like this before. They’re a different sort of genre to any of the other bands I’ve been to see, and supposedly they’re an amazing live act. Check out their myspace here, and have a listen to a few of their songs, you’ll like ‘em. I’ll let y’all know how it goes anyway.
Sorry for the short post, but I just don’t have time for much else!
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Posted on 26 January '08 by Mark, under Listening. No Comments.
Firstly apologies about two reviews on here over the past two days, but well, a bloggah’ gotta eat, bro.
I’ve decided that while procrastinating on working on actual projects and stuff, I’m gonna build a shitload of websites in the meantime. Simple websites, and nothing I’m gonna devote too much time to unless they start growing in some big way. Image uploading, various blogs, forums are some of the ideas I have, along with starting up a couple of proxies again. Stick up some adsense, do a little promotion, and hope for the best! Worst case scenario they earn nothing or very little and I have a big website portfolio which I could sell off for a tiny profit on the basis that the domains have a little age. I’ve a lot of sites I want to work on for potential long term profits, but I’m always in need of quick money to get by.
That’s what the new ebook was for, and it’s done fairly well. Not quite as well as I would have hoped, but I’m still working on getting more sales. I even bought some advertising for it yesterday, on an SEO blog. The advertising was going pretty cheap and I thought it could be a good way to test out if it’d be worth it to pay a lot more for an ad on some of the biggers blogs.
That’s all I’ve got for today really, since studying and homework are really getting to me and I’m trying to keep everything in balance. I’ll hopefully reveal more on my website portfolio plans soon, so stay tuned. Not sure if I said this already, but those Maths and Physics exams I mentioned last week? Got an A in both, so being a nerd is kind of paying off!
EDIT - Writing this post actually caused me to burn my dinner, but thankfully I’ve now discovered that a blackened margherita pizza isn’t actually that bad when it’s well done!
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Posted on 24 January '08 by Mark, under Business. No Comments.
Yoggie have launched a new method of Wireless Security which as we all know is very important today, with hacking and internet fraud a very common occurence these days. They’ve got a range of products to ensure your online information is protected and secure. Most of these are aimed at wireless internet laptop users, but they also offer server management products among other devices. A good video review can be found here, but I’ll give a brief overview of the product for those of you too lazy to click that link
The main product of theirs is the Pico Personal, which seems at first to be simply a usb key, but it is infact a full computer system running Linux. You plug the product into your computer and after a few seconds it runs thirteen security processes to protect your computer, without affecting performance. Benefits of it are that you can set download limits, or simply ban certain websites or IP addresses, and it will warn you before downloading potentially harmful files, while also stopping spam and phishing. It will at most use up 15% of your CPU. This is a huge benefit as most security programs tend to slow down your system and you end up uninstalling them.
To learn more and keep up to date with news from Yoggie, check out the Yoggie CEO Blog, better safe than sorry!
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Posted on 23 January '08 by Mark, under Computing, Reviews. 1 Comment.
At poor ol’ Jason (The University Kid), the die hard Arsenal fan, whose team lost 5-1 to their local rivals Spurs last night in a night of humiliation. Jason’s reaction? I quote this from his blog :
“fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. 5-1 and I’m off to kill myself”
At least he’s taking it well.
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Posted on 23 January '08 by Mark, under Life etc.. 2 Comments.
Today every man and his dog are starting their own hosting companies, and it’s difficult to filter out the good ones. I myself have struggled to find decent hosting, and found the only solution to be to stop going for the cheapest looking plans and get a reliable service. This post is about a new Web Design and Hosting company called Anaheim Web Design.
The unique aspect of their company is that they offer you hosting and other online service all from one place. A breakdown of some of the service they provide is as follows :
That’s a decent list, covering pretty much all the basic aspects involved in creating a new website. Their services appear to be pretty affordable too, with hosting plans priced around the $9.95 a month mark, and they claim that no job is too small or too big for their team, which is always good to know.
Were I a part of the Anaheim team, I would consider a new header for the site, and perhaps more info about their pricing on the site.
However there is easy to find contact information on the site which could be used to ask the staff anything you need, and they do seem more than willing to accommodate to your needs. I’m also liking the simple but effective navigation on the site, makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for.
I’d advise anyone looking for some online jobs to be done to head on over to Anaheim and check out what they have to offer, what’s there to lose?
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Posted on 22 January '08 by Mark, under Reviews. 1 Comment.
The “Popular Posts” plugin is a very handy one. When new readers visit the blog this plugin shows them your work that has gone down well, and when they see your best material, it just might convince them to subscribe to your RSS feed.
Now I was actually surprised about how easy this was to set up.
Firstly, download the Popularity Contest plugin from this page. From there most users will know what to do, but here’s my guide on how I set up the Popular Posts plugin on the sidebar of this blog.
After you download the plugin, upload it to your plugins directory, and then activate it from the Wordpress admin panel. Then, since I wanted to implement my plugin in the sidebar, I edited the sidebar.php file, and firstly added a new heading by putting in :
<h2>Popular Posts</h2>
After this heading simply throw in the following code :
<ul><?php akpc_most_popular(); ?></ul>
That’s all I had to do, so I’m presuming that’s all you’ll have to do!
It’s actually quite interesting to see which posts get onto the most popular list. The method of calculating the popular ones is described as follows on the website : “Views, comments, etc. are tracked and given configurable point values to determine popularity.”
I’d like more info as to how exactly it works, but what ya gonna do?
Remember to purchase my excellent new ebook to learn how to profit from wordpress.
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Posted on 21 January '08 by Mark, under Business. 1 Comment.
