eAction

Some friends seem to marvel at my self-discipline as if it is just too hard for them. I confess it is a struggle to stick to my plans and schedules sometimes, but for the most part I see the benefits and know that it is well worth the effort to keep myself in line. Eventually, the inertia of good habitual patterns sweeps one along, making it easier, and much more pleasurable. It gives special great joy when I see that I am getting things done over a period of time.

Don’t you feel great too when you see you have accomplished a goal? It is fantastic when you know that you were your own whip-cracker!

If you have followed the previous training sessions for promoting your site and products, you should be ready now to to try classfied ads.

You need to watch out for bad sites that promise you classified ads, but are really just a trap to get your email so they can dump loads of advertising emails on you. True, if they are sending out the ads that have been submitted, then others are getting your ad in with all this un-requested dump of ads too. But my philosophy is that if I’m not enjoying reading those ads, others will not either.

All that being said, there are some classified sites that have a good reputation for effectiveness without such low down dirty tricks. The key is to find them. But once we start looking for those sites, we also want to have our ads ready to submit, or we are wasting precious time. So let’s focus on writing good ads today, and we’ll look for suitable locations next time.

Now do you remember those descriptions of your site I suggested you write up to go list your site at all those directories? Let’s use that text as our starting point. It is a fairly brief summary of your site, right? You want people to come to the site… however, effective sales people tell us that just a description isn’t going to bring in the droves of visitors. You need to adjust the wording in such a way that readers will think, “That’s just what I want! I must go see that site!”

So let’s re-write our description to read more like a lure to a great benefit to the reader. Let me show you my site descriptions as an example.

…………..DIRECTORY DESCRIPTIONS…………
Ruthe’s Secret Roses - Making Friends Everywhere! Ruth promotes her novel of Christian Spiritual fiction with a site themed around friendship and mentoring especially in Christian living and writing. She has a Sharing Library with articles and book reviews.

This Bouquet of Enterprises - is meant to bring Ruth an income large enough to accomplish her publishing goals, and to be able to give away generously. She longs to be a Giver like God! Along the way, She’s always ready to teach and share what she knows, particularly if you too, are eager to have God involved in Your business ventures, and are willing to live by high ethical standards.
………………………..

Hmm…? My novel site is all about friendship and mentoring and writing, and has lots of articles and reviews, but it doesn’t promise the reader any unique benefit does it? I would like them to find a friend there, in fact, introduce them to my Best Friend. How shall I write my ad to appeal to the lonely who really would love to have such a friend?

I would also like them to buy my novel. I will have to ask them directly to do so, else they won’t know, will they?

Maybe, without further ado and fuss, I should just tell them that they’ll find a good friend here! and they ought to buy this book about friendship.

RSR AD: Come meet my Best Friend! Buy the novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses. It’s about a wonderful friend who gets involved in your life - who really cares and helps you. This book can lift you out of your loneliness! Read sample chapters at Ruthe’s Secret Roses

That’s 43 words. Great. Because some classifieds have a word limit. This will save me having to edit it down if they don’t allow more than 50 words. it can stand some more polishing and refining yet, but I’ll accept that as a first draft.

I could of course, write more ads for the same book, but focus on other benefits in it. But for variety’s sake, let’s try the second one for my business site.

The description talks about my high goals and willingness to teach others. What is in that for someone speed reading through a page of classifieds?

BE AD: Keep God involved in your online business. Learn to maintain high ethical standards by following Ruth, a business woman with great goals and self-discipline, by reading her eAction blog, and her site, where she shares a Bouquet of Enterprise ideas. You will be blessed if you become one of her downline! Bouquet of Enterprises

55 words. Hmm… needs more work. But I trust you now catch on to how you must think and write your ads.

Write as many ads as you can in one sitting. Then set them aside a day or two, and when you can devote some time, bring them to your computer screen again, and pour over them. You may be surprised how many spots you see that you can improve because now your eyes will see short-comings or too many words, or whatever.

It may also help to go browsing some classifieds sites just to learn from others.

When you have a list of classified ads written, and you are satisfied that they are as good as you are likely to get them… then it is time to set up go posting them on the better sites that allow submissions of classifieds. We’ll talk about that in two weeks.

I’m happy to report that my downline for MyPowerMall is increasing almost daily! It now stands at 27, and I just need one more to have a front-line of 10. This is the first time I’ve had such great ease in growing a downline. It almost happens by itself!

The challenge appears to be to train people to shop through the mall. However, there is the danger of applying pressure - which I don’t want to do. Maybe the best plan will be to set a good example and make sure my downline hears about my positive experiences.

Have you ever considered the influence you can have by the example you set? It is the method a shepherd uses to move sheep. He just walks ahead, and they follow.

The weekend of September 9-10, just a week after Labour Day, was a tense time over a kernel panic. Actually, I believe my primary hard drive crashed and died. But that’s in retrospect.

So I’ve decided to interrupt my series of lessons to share my experience, because there are some key lessons there for you if you are new to a Linux computer environment.

On Saturday, between doing cleaning chores inside and out of the house, I usually do a backup and update my computer. Those take time, so they can do their thing while I’m doing other stuff. This time I did my upgrade first and noticed it was delivering a new kernel. There was a note to reboot, but I was busy so I put it off all day. Forgot about it in fact, until Sunday morning when I tried to open my computer for my prayer journalling.

What?! Not able to login? What’s this screen full of error messages?

I didn’t have time to deal with all that, so I shut the computer down and hurried off to church. Later, about 5 PM I decided to find out what was up.

I was able to get to a login screen, but only got into my older SUSE 9.3 operating system which is on the second hard drive. I dug in for some hours of research on those error messages. The SUSE 10.1 edition I had installed last fall was just locked to me. Finally, about 11 PM I went to bed, when I realized I was too sleepy to make good decisions. Because I’ve lost files in the past because of hasty decisions, I was trying to be patient and deliberate in the things I tried.

Monday I went back at it right after breakfast. I tried various things I had learned the night before, including repairs from the installation DVD. When I found myself going in circles, I logged back into the older working system, Suse 9.3, and did more research. I even brought my meals to the computer to break this deadlock the sooner.

Well, I took time to go out to welcome the gift of a used garden shed when it arrived. But then I was back at this computer.

About mid-evening I came to the conclusion that the computer wouldn’t let me fix anything on the older primary hard drive. When this computer was given to me several years ago, the owner told me the hard drive (10 GB) might go on me. I had no problems with it. It was bigger and faster than the 6.2 GB drive that came with the computer I bought in 1999, and which started my online adventures. But a few years ago when high speed came to my small town, and I realized that this computer had the required ethernet card I decided to transfer the 40 GB drive I had bought for the older computer to this one, and make this my main computer. Up to now I’ve had no problem running at least two operating systems on here, (and now I’m VERY glad I did!)

My solution in the end, was to re-install SUSE 10.1 again, but make sure all of it, especially the bootloader, were on the bigger newer drive. (The installation process would NOT let me touch the old hard drive).

My BIOS doesn’t show that 40 GB drive. I guess the old one is old toast now, and I should get help to switch the larger one to the Primary position. But whew, at about 12:30 am I knew that things were going to work, and I went to bed rejoicing that I was able to keep my personal files untouched for both systems through all this. The following morning I just had to find time to change font sizes in all areas back to what I like.

During the install i ended up entering my user profile twice and once as a ‘guest.’ This ended up being a hassle because now I was suppose to switch users all the time at login and shutdown. It took me another couple of days to discover where to change the settings so that my old user profile logged in automatically, and the others were deleted.

Well, except for the ‘guest’ user. I keep that one in place so that if ever I’m showing someone else how my SUSE 10.1 system works, I can log in there, and they never get to see my personal files. It just provides me a bit of security for private stuff.

But yes, I lost some time over one full day and a bit more, but now I’m back into my old busy work routines again, and wiser for the experience.

Main lessons to learn here;
Patience, patience! Don’t rush or you may lose important data
A dual boot computer with more than one system on it can be a huge blessing for problem solving.
Faithfully, regularly do back-ups. You never know when you may have to-reinstall your system, and though that is not too hard, your personally created files are NOT on the installation disk.

Oh, another thing; during the re-install, I was very careful not to set any partitions for reformatting that had my files on them, even though I did resize some to make room for the /root and bootloader. That proved to be extremely wise in not losing them. Not everyone may realize that if you are new to installing Linux.

I’ve got several friends who’ve been waiting patiently for me to get some info together for them, so they can start to promote their sites in earnest. My first article in this series got onto the eAction blog last November, (Setting Up Filing for Promo Work) It is on how to set up your filing system for this kind of promotional campaign. One that will stream-line your work.

I trust this will be especially helpful to you. Something practical today.

All right. I’m going to assume you have followed the instructions in that first article. Next we need to prepare the information we are going to list at all those places where we will list or promote our web site. Since I have a number of sites, I start a page like this for each one. I’ll be using my BE (BouquetofEnterprises.biz) site as an example here. Replace that info with what applies to your site.

At the top of this BE-Submissions.txt file, I prepare my answers for the forms I will encounter;

________________________________________
NEW PROMO OF BOUQUETOFENTERPRISES.BIZ

My information is as follows;
URL: http://bouquetofenterprises.biz
Title - Bouquet of Enterprises
email - [left out here to protect my address]
Address: 903 23rd St. West.
Saskatoon, SK. S7L 0A5 Canada
Phone: 306-956-7785

Description - Small business ideas with imagination, creativity and God’s blessing. Also offering economical hosting and web design with blogs that giveencouragement and show action steps for your online ventures, remembering to keep God involved.

Keywords - small business ideas, imagination, creativity, publishing goals, giver, God involved in business ventures, high ethical standards,

______________________________________________

Below that I have a section where I paste the URL of the sites I’ve just listed at. This gives me a quick-at-a-glance place to see how many I’ve done and exactly which ones.

______________________________________
Sites I’ve listed at:
http://www.botcw.com/add_your_site.html
http://4hurtingchristians.com/links_directory/index.php
http://www.christiansunite.com/addsite.shtml
http://directory.crosswalk.com/join/
______________________________________
______________________________________|

Below that list I keep a record of every place where I have entered info about my site. I copy paste from the above prepared info at the top of the page, and while each line is still in my computer’s clipboard memory, I paste it down here too.

___________________________________
11/30/06 http://directory.crosswalk.com/join/
Contact: Ruth Marlene Friesen
Company name: Bouquet of Enterprises
Phone: 306-225-2138
Address: Box 208, Hague, SK. S0K 1X0 Canada
site URL: http://bouquetofenterprises.biz/
site Title: Bouquet of Enterprises
email: [removed from eg. to protect my email]
Category: Web Services and Computers/ Christian WWW Services
Web Services and Computers/Web logs - Blogs

Description: Small business ideas with imagination, creativity and God’s blessing, offering economical hosting and web design, with blogs that give encouragement and show action steps for your Christian online ventures.

reciprocal links; (did both already on R/Networking.shtml)
HTML CODE:
Crosswalk Directory:
Over 18,000 wholesome, family friendly, Christian websites.

BUTTON:
1. Right click on the image below
2. Select “Save picture as” and/or save the image to your computer
3. Place the image on your website and have it link to http://crosswalkdirectory.com

____________________________________

Notice that in this case I was also asked to choose a category for my site. I recorded that in case I ever have to go back and edit or re-do this listing. (Sometimes you have to hunt around their site a bit to find the best category for your listing, and sometimes you are allowed more than one category).

Notice too, that this directory site, asked for a recriprocal link. I always stop to ask myself, do I really want to offer a link from my site to this one? If yes, then I record the info they provide for the link, so that if I lose it from my web page, I can come back to find it here.

It’s perfectly permissible to make extra notes on your listing. No matter how great your memory is, with lots and lots of submissions they will begin to run together in your head, and as you age, in a year or two, you’ll be very glad of your notes!

But when you’ve entered everything you can for one directory or reciprocal listing, draw a line, and start your next one.

So you’re eager to know where to find all these sites that allow you to list your site for free?

Okay. I’ll give you a starter list, but be aware that some of these sites disappear sometimes, or they change the URL at which you are to list your data, so you may have to hunt around for it a bit. Look for small links to “Add a URL” or “Suggest a site” or “submit site.” Things like that. Be sure to highlight, copy and paste the exact URL on which you do your listing, so that you’ll find it again next time. You’ll be grateful one day!

Here’s my Places2List file;

_______________________________
Here are lists of directories and Search engines to list at. I recommend you only list at those which offer a free service. Save the paid ones for when you have exhausted all the free ones and know how to get the best milage out of that paid listing.

While we seek out the best sites to list at, eventually we end up listing at some that have no integrity, and our email address will be mis-used. So prepare a separate email addres that you will use ONLY for submitting to directories and SEs. This is crucial! But sometimes sites will not list you until you respond to their confirmation email, so it is important to go check for those you have to respond to. Don’t totally ignore that email address.

It’s always a good idea to check out their directories in the categories where you think you’ll list. It may turn out they have a better category for your site. When you’ve found that, list from that page.

www.dmoz.org/add.html
www.lii.org/
www.jayde.com/
www.mavicanet.com/
google.com of course, (but they’ll give you a better rating if you’re listed on other sites first).

Christian Directories:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Suggested directories to list at:
www.ourchurch.com/
directory.crosswalk.com/
christianportals.com/
www.crosssearch.com/
www.searchenginecolossus.com/Christian.html
www.christpages.net/
711.net/
www.agapesearch.com/
www.cbd-search.com/
www.lightlinks2000.com/litelink.htm
http://www.praize.com/
on this page Praize has a directory of 74 Christian Directories! Explore them!

http://www.praize.com/engine/Internet_Gateways/Directories/index.html

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
These are links I saved after listing books on them. They might be changed, but you could check them out. In this case, you ought to write up a set of answers as I’ve done in the example for the site, but focus the answers on details about your e-book. Then make entries specifically for that book at sites like these below. Or use as springboards to hunt for the right category for your site or products.

Don’t forget to do online searches yourself for sites that have “submit site” or “suggest URL” Build up your own database of places to list at.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ http://www.booksxyz.com/nonsale.php?a=1&book=
http://www.religiousresources.org/directory/submit.php?cat_id=64
http://www.missionaries.org/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.fni.com/xstart/newsite.html
http://links.conline.net/cgi-bin/add.cgi?
http://www.christianitytoday.com/search/index.taf?_UserReference=079827BB0484FC433D89F288&_function=add
http://www.christianlife.com/cgi-bin/add_url.cgi
http://www.ichristianweb.com/posting.php?category_id=13
http://www.ccunetwork.net/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.chritech.com/cgi-bin/search/add_url.cgi?Category=Publishing%3ABooks
http://www.zuzu.com/sub-st.htm
http://www.scrubtheweb.com/addurl.html
http://www.homewithgod.com/cgi-homewithgod/links/add.cgi
http://www.praize.com/engine/index.html
http://www.xenite.org/internet_authors/announcebooks.html
http://actschristian.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.christianlinks.com/AddURL.asp
http://www.crosscanadasearch.com/cgi/links/add.cgi
http://search.711.net/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.tbcl.com/cgi-bin/search/add_url.cgi
http://actschristian.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.missionaries.org/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://search.711.net/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.robslinks.com/addok.shtml

SEARCH ENGINES (found in W.E.B. 1/25/06)
There’s a new search engine to submit to. (If you submit more than one domain, force a reload in order to view the new security graphic letters.) http://navisso.com/add

Last September, Yahoo launched Site Explorer, allowing you to enter an URL and get information about it, including number of pages in that domain, and links to that page:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Learn how to optimize your website and increase visitors: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php
_____________________________

There! That will keep you busy for a while. I’ll try next time to have some more suggestions for you.

I’m getting more convinced MyPowerMall has power to become a good income stream. The founder, Ginny Dye seems to have a good head on her shoulders, and the one out of many fine tips she shares in her emails is the idea of creating business cards and small flyers to give away to people whenever you meet them. If you have a colour printer that works, it is really not that hard to design your own business cards and cut them up. (I can get 10 to a sheet). Put them in your purse or a handy large pocket. (I make little folder pouches too out of upholstery samples, to protect them from getting dirty and dog-eared).

Then the trick is to get in the habit of giving these out whenever you meet people. Tell yourself ahead of time that if anyone mentions certain trigger words, related to your site, you will pull out a business card to give them. Eventually word will get around, and people will even tell their friends about you, and give your URL or name out over the phone.

When I switched to Linux I learned a lot from the mistakes I made. Old habits from Windows were my downfall in several instances. For example, when I ran into a problem and things seemed frozen, I hit Alt-Ctl-Del keys to simply sigh and re-boot like I was used to doing in my Windows 98. Wrong thing to do! Or, when I forgot how to shut down, I just turned off the computer. Wrong again!

Linux systems have their own process for shutting down. You may have set up your system at installation to allow you to simply click an item on your KDE menu and then “Shut down” and it all happens for you. But if you want to see the process, you must be in a terminal, switch to root user with the “su” command, and then give it the proper shut down command:

shutdown -h now

At least, that’s if you are the only user of the computer, meaning you are not on a network, and you don’t have a dual boot (with another operating system on this computer).

Your computer will give you a message like this: Linux is going for system halt NOW Then it will show you every step of the process as it closes down all the functioning programs. Mind you, it is a good idea to close all the programs yourself before you give this shutdown command. Still, it has various technical duties, and since Linux is transparent, you will see lines zip by in your terminal showing what your system is checking and shutting down. When it is finished it will give you another message such as; System halted or Power down.

There. Now you can press the power OFF button. No sooner.

I remember one time when I had just pressed the power off button as I was at a loss to know what to do next. When I tried to power up again the computer kept asking me for commands to fix things, and since I didn’t know what they should be, I couldn’t get back into my system! I was locked out for days! I had to use a different computer to go online and cry for help.

If you only want to reboot the computer, give this command instead; shutdown -r now

However, believe me, you won’t need to reboot nearly as often as you did in Windows!

If you are connected to a network of computers you can do damage to the other computer on the network if you give the above commands. So you can plan a certain time to shut them all down at once with this command: shutdown -h 20:01

That will turn everything off at 8:01 pm. Or if you only need to everyone five minutes notice, try this one; shutdown -h +5

Let’s say you have two or more users on your computer. You do not have to shut down or reboot to switch to the other user’s system. In fact, you could run programs in several user modes. I just read that you can use the Alt+F2 keys to pull up a window that allows you to do that. Hmm.. . I didn’t know that. I have switched to root whenever I open a program and it requires me to log in a root before I can proceed. No problem. I haven’t really had a need to switch to another user, but I think I saw a place where I could click on something to do that. I’m sure there’s more than one way to do this. Just rest assured that other operating systems don’t allow this, but Linux does. If you need to, the Alt+F2 is an easy one to remember.

Next time we’ll look at some text editors. We’ve got a smorg to choose from!