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Don’t you just love it when a project that’s dragged on and on is finally done?

That’s how I feel about my Google-tailored sitemap. I found a free script to use online,and it was suppose to create my sitemap in several formats, one for Google and MSN, and another for Yahoo, and also as RSS feeds, and an html one as well. Thing was, I had to spend considerable hours putting each page into a specially laid out text document. I pulled up each page and looked it over and did some final tweaking, and eventually, with a number of delays, I got 88 pages of my site on this file. I followed instructions and sure enough - I do have all those sitemaps and RSS feed links.

I haven’t quite finished listing them on all those search engines, but hope to be done soon, maybe today or tomorrow. Then I want to shift gears and throw myself as heartily into advertising and promoting my site, as I did into renovating it, and bringing it up to the latest xhtml standards.

Sometimes - when you know you are doing the right thing, then just keep at it, and keep at it. When it’s completed your joy will be sweet!

While noodling around, waiting for an idea for this feature article, I was working on some new information that came from my favourite affiliate program, converting those to text ads. Suddenly it came to me, not everyone knows to do this. Such a simple little thing, but you know how it is with those who save pennies - they turn into fat and full piggy banks.

So - let’s say that you have signed up with some affiliate program. The owner of the program tries regularly to send you an email with helpful tips and encouragement to keep marketing those products. Sometimes they announce new products they are adding to their line. Most of these owners are handy with the advertising copy, or else they hire someone to do that.

When you receive that affiliate manager’s email, take time to read it slowly, (or set it aside until you can). If you decide that yes, you’d like to promote this product, then look for the descriptions of it’s benefits, and what it will do for the buyer. Highlight those paragraphs and switch to a plain text editor, and paste them down. Make sure you bring along, or type in the special coded affiliate URL that you will use to get your commissions.

Now rearrange those sentences and insert your affiliate URL after, or just before, the keywords or the name of the product. (See today’s Action Tip for an example). If you want spaces between the sentences, add some < br />s. Make your sentences sound like direct conversations with someone who is open to your suggestion or recommendation for this product. If you are pre-selling, you don’t need to tell them everything. Just say enough so they’ll think, “Oh, thanks; I’ll go check this out.”

Leave it up to the affiliate manager to have that excellent and high-priced sales copy ready to persuade the visitor to buy the product. You’ve delivered the customer there with your coded affiliate link, so you’ve done all you need to do to earn your commission.

But where to put these coded sentences? Ah-ha! That’s why you have a site, don’t you? You weave them into the body of your content, or if you do as I do, you have extra columns on the sides of your page, where you scatter these as Tips and Solutions, and throw in the odd banner button too. It has been proven that text ads are more effective in taking people to the affiliate link, so even if you do use banners, be sure to have a text file full of these code snippets ready for copy and pasting whenever you create a new web page.

If you are placing classified ads, a lot of these short snippets will work too. Although sometimes you have to revise them a bitt, so there is a catchy subject line on top. You’ll need to adjust according to the rules of that particular classifieds. But once you’ve written such an ad, save them all in one plain text file too, so you can use it again whenever appropriate.

Here’s an extra suggestion; when you have your own domain website, you can make up a separate directory, calling it something like 2/ or at/ and in that directory place “redirect” pages, that will take a visitor to your affiliate link. This is particularly good if your coded affiliate link is a long one with letters and numbers and stuff some folks might just reduce to the basic program.com part. If they do that - you get no commission!

So then, instead of coding your ad snippets with the original affiliate URL you were given, put in your domainsite.com/2/thatprogram.html The visitor will have no way of knowing your affiliate ID, and your URL will be much shorter, and even easy enough to give over the phone if you need to do that.

Happy marketing!

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Once things go smoothly, it is amazing how quickly I forget past troubles. I just came to check what my last blog was about, and realized that I’ve been buzzing along merrily for the past two weeks, and some of that earlier installation saga has already slipped my mind!

So if you’re going through troubles and looking for answers, I need to reassure you that better days are coming. Just patiently work at resolving your immediate problems and eventually you’ll be well installed, and enjoying the many benefits of your SUSE or Linux Operating system.

Let’s see, my Part II told of a nearly perfect install, but that I’d made a mistake in the partitioning, and had no room left for updates. So I did it again on October 7th, the Saturday of our Thanksgiving weekend.

Once more I had trouble with my computer not recognizing the Add-on CD when it wanted to make a catalogue of all it was going to install. I was able to back up, and when I could change CDs, I put in the DVD that wouldn’t boot, and lo, it was able to do the full installation from there.

Mind you, when it came to the partitioning, I had a bit of a scare. I was trying to delete the first hard drive of 10 GB, and somehow it cleared away everything on the second one (40GB) where I had put my Suse 9.3 back. Whoa!! I really hoped my backups were all good, ’cause I had not meant to do that. However, I was still able to trace back my steps and nothing had changed on my hard drives yet.

But several efforts to clear that messed up first HD got nowhere. Two partitions with 0 bytes seem to be the problem. Then it occurred to me that SUSE might just have isolated them because they had some bad infection or whatever on them. I should just leave them alone and work with the partitions I had. I was able to rename the one I had the previous time designated as / (root) and also the one designated ‘usr’. Now / had 3 GB and usr had 6GB. I set all the partitions I wanted to use for SUSE 10.1 to be reformatted, but left alone the ones where I had installed SUSE 9.3. Okay! Then I let the formating and installation begin.

My how industriously and fast the computer hummed.

When it came to doing the online update, it would not - it simply would not. However, I’d read on the OpenSuse.org site that this is a problem with this version of SUSE 10.1 so I moved on, and tried to do that when I got done and logged in. It wouldn’t right away on the first couple of tries, but when I had rebooted the next night, and come in, and tried again, from in YaST - then I got the updates.

That little Zen icon is orange all the time, but when I click it for an update, it seems to worry about writing over some file, and refuses. So now I ignore it and make a point of doing the updates manually from inside YaST on Saturday mornings when I do my weekly backups.

It took a few days to get all my settings just right for me, but in no time I was working away as I had all this past year in Suse 9.3

I had, during installation decided to accept the default screen resolution. It makes the fonts too small for me, so I spent considerable time adjusting them larger wherever I could. I noticed however, that most web sites showed up as just a portion of my screen even with larger fonts. Suddenly I had enough of this. I went into YaST then SAX2 and changed that resolution back to 800 x 600, which works very comfortably for me, and all my sites look like I designed them.

I suppose in a year or so someone might convince me that I need to upgrade again, but hey, if this works, why not just leave it and enjoy it and get my work done? Time to focus on productivity now!

Have you’ve got off track from your business efforts?

You can start over! Stop, evaluate, make more practical plans and schedule in a fresh hour or two to get at. Then begin all over!

God is a God of second chances. You do NOT have to stay where you are right now - isn’t that wonderful news?

Last weekend a cousin wrote asking my advice about an email she’d received that told of someone dying in a third-world country and wanting help to get their large sum of money out. I recognized it instantly for the classic “Nigerian Scam” email. In fact, I was surprised that this was the first time she’d run into that. Naturally, I wrote urging her to DELETE and to avoid those sob stories at all costs.

She wrote back that I need to warn people. Well, I’ve been aware of these and have deleted many of those emails over the last seven + years, but maybe I’m assuming too lightly that since I know about them, everyone else does too. So I’m posting a warning today!

As authentic as they may sound, and no matter what nationality they are, or whether they write that they are Christians, and are appealing to you as a Christian to help, please do not fall for that! The names they use in their emails are made up, no matter how original they seem.

The name, Nigerian Scam, comes from the fact that these used to first come from there. Now it just refers to any scam that uses this modus operandi. It is usually the wife of some important government official or doctor in a third world country. Her husband has been killed for all he knew or did (sometimes good and sometimes bad), and now that she’s dying, without heirs, she wants to get this “wealth” out of that country and give it to people who will use it wisely. She needs your bank account number (WARNING!!) to transfer it to you.

If you respond with your account info, they have all they need to break into it, and clean you out of all your savings!

This is run by a very organized crime syndicate that uses carefully honed stories, some with deliberate misspellings to look like they come from a truly desperate third-world country. The Canadian RCMP have done some thorough investigations, and find that these people move their base of operations often, so that just when they have about traced them to a location, the scoundrels have moved to another city. The advent of the internet means they can operate from Montreal or Amsterdam or Rome, or Timbuctu, and any place in between. Any place they can connect to the net is good enough. If the police don’t seem to be aware of them, so much the better for them.

Apparently they love to work with people from my province, Saskatchewan, because we have a reputation for being tenderhearted and helpful. From time to time we get RCMP warnings on the radio, to refuse to give out our bank account information to strangers. They have really SAD stories of people in our province who have tried to help these strangers, and been robbed of all their life’s savings.

Just stop and think - why would someone like that write to you, not knowing or using your real name, and offer to entrust their illgotten wealth into your bank account? Doesn’t that smell the least bit foul to you? Terribly foolish, at least, right?

And how do you get on their mailing list then? If you have put your email address on a web page, or in a guestbook on someone’s site, or in a forum, or countless other places, they have robots that roam around day-and-night to harvest those email addresses and add them to their database. Besides that, they have robots that can scramble and present millions of combinations for usernames for common email hosts, such as hotmail, yahoo, aol, etc. They don’t mind sending out millions of emails in the hopes that just one or two will match someone’s real username. One sucker who gives them their bank info can help them more than cover their costs. Many times over!

So what can you do? If you have nothing else to do, you could forward all such emails to the nearest police department, after you determine whether they are still collecting clues, or have given up. If you’re busy, learn to recognize the pattern to their emails, and delete them as soon as you see the subject line. Don’t even bother to read the sob story.

If you know someone who is just starting on the internet and hasn’t seen or heard of the Nigerian Scam yet, inform them.

You can also do your own more thorough research by entering “Nigerian scam” into Google or some other search engine. You will will get quite an eye-opener! I just did that and from four pages learned a lot more than I already knew!

If you’ve held off on the SiteSell e-books because you thought you couldn’t afford them, I have news for you! Just this week two of the best have become F R EE downloads! That’s right, the “Make Your Site SELL” which started the SiteSell empire business, and was updated and revised in 2002, is now my gift to you. All you have to do is go to this page; Make Your SITE Sell and click one of the several download links for it. (That’s how this gift passes into your hands).

I tell you, I did buy this book once I could afford it, and most of what I know and apply on my web sites, I learned from it, and the weekly 5 Pillar Reports for Affiliates. If you can’t afford the $300 SiteBuildIt yet, the least you should do for your success, is download and study this e-book. In fact, it’s three large reference and guide books zipped into one package. You would be wise to set aside an hour a day for a few weeks, to get it read.

Fortunately, Ken’s writing style is light and clever, and the graphics will make you smile, so it will not be a hard chore to read it.

The other e-book, Make Your CONTENT Pre-Sell, although smaller, is even more vital in Ken’s eyes. (Yes, I bought that one too). Your web site might be camped on a free hosting spot, but if you understand how to make your content - your words, articles, copy - on your site pre-sell tactfully, you can link to much better sites, and make large commissions. No need to be a ruthless advertiser. Just write good, simple content that pre-sells so your visitors go to the big site with an open mind and you can build a quiet, steady stream of income.

I’m authorized to give you this Gift too! Make Your CONTENT Pre-Sell It could just turn things around for you!

Here’s the links again;
- Make Your SITE Sell 2002
- Make Your CONTENT Pre-sell

[First an apology; Week before last when the next issue was due here, I had company and was too tied up to open the computer].

As you see by my previous post, I had quite a weekend with my SUSE 10.1 install. I was busy the next weekend, but last Saturday I had another go at it, and will tell you what I learned here.

This time I had done some research in the areas where I was weak in knowledge the other time, and I knew what I should choose for network connections, and so on. The man at PCTech101.com from whom I had ordered the DVD, graciously sent me the 6 CD set when I wrote him of my trials. I did my backups, and then settled down for a new installation process. I really hoped it would NOT be like that other weekend, when I gave up three days to try over and over.

I had not changed my boot order in BIOS back to the hard drive yet, so starting was easy. I inserted the first CD in the drive, and rebooted the computer. Things went along nicely until YaST (the installer program) asked if I had any other sources to add to the catalog. I indicated yes, and it asked me to insert that media. I put in the Add-ons, or 6th CD, and it refused to recognize it as a valid CD. It kept asking me to put in the CD.

When I tried to back up and take it out so I could put in the first one again, the drive wouldn’t give it up! Ho-boy! Now what?

But after clicking “back” a couple of screens, I tried again, and the drive opened, so I could put the first CD back in. Then I proceeded right past that point, and didn’t offer another source any more. I figured I’d just be stuck installing those programs later.

When I got to the partitioning stage I carefully set each of the partitions I had reserved the previous time to be mounted, except for the ones at the end of the second hard drive where I had installed SUSE 9.3. I wanted to keep that for emergencies! I did make some changes in naming some of the partitions, but I guessed at a couple, as to which to put where. (Later I discovered what I’d done wrong here).

From that point on, the whole installation proceed very well. YaST indicated at first that it was going to take 6 hours for the install, but as it hummed along, it kept correcting the time estimated, and over lunch I had to come back to switch to the next CD on a fairly frequent basis.

It showed CD 6 as a source in the list it was working through, so I hoped it would turn out okay there.

It did too. Although the installation seemed to stall sometimes for whole moments. I convinced myself, that YaST was adding to the catalog the programs it had not listed at the beginning.

The next snag came when it was suppose to go online to do the update. I’d read that SUSE 10.1 has a flaw here, and doesn’t always do this. You have to try more than once. Usually the second time it will go do the update. I tried several times, and gave it about 15 minutes before I gave up doing it here. The error message was: curl 28 failed. I checked to skip the update for now, and went on.

Before long I was logged into the system! That took me 4 hours and 26 minutes.

I went into SAX2 and adjusted the monitor resolution. I’m used to choosing 800 x 600 in the install stage, but this was so small in the center of my screen that I knew the default 1024 x 600 would be better. (That means I’ll have to set all my fonts to be larger so I can read them).

Then I went into YaST and clicked on YOU to do my updates, and saw almost right away, why it wouldn’t do it. In the lower left corner was a graph showing how much of my computer’s resources were full. The /usr partition where programs are put and updates go, was 98% full, and the bar graph was very red! My other partitions looked fine, and in a moment or so I realized that I’d made a mistake in the partitioning.

I had assigned the 3 GB partition to be the /usr and the 6 GB partition to be for the root, or / . If I had reversed those I probably would have been fine. Even better would have been to delete everything on the first drive (10GB) and just set a Swap area, and the rest all for / (root), and then a large 20 GB section for /home on the second drive which is much larger. Then root and /usr could adjust themselves as they needed to share that first drive.

Yes, as long as I live, and keep making mistakes, I’ll keep learning.

Obviously, there was no point in trying to do updates, or even set up all my “look and feel” to the SUSE 10.1 as the only answer I could see, was to wait until this coming Saturday, and go through the whole process again! This time I expect to get the partitions right, and if everything else goes as well as last time, I should be settling into my new SUSE Castle next week.!

Will there be a part III to this saga? We’ll see