Just recorded an interview with Mark Samms from IncomeSociety.com.
Mark covers a lot of areas re my business journey, programming, internet marketing, personal development – have a listen when you have a spare 40 minutes – you should be able to get something out of it for your own journey.
Cheers,
John
Sometimes things can get rough, with what feels like life throwing you curve ball after curve ball.
If you’re ever feeling like this, check out this quote which can help you rise above the crap.
“PLAN while others are playing.
STUDY while others are sleeping.
DECIDE while others are delaying.
PREPARE while others are daydreaming.
BEGIN while others are procrastinating.
WORK while others are wishing.
SAVE while others are wasting.
LISTEN while others are talking.
SMILE while others are frowning.
COMMEND while others are criticizing.
PERSIST while others are quitting.”
William Arthur Ward
Don’t kid yourself. It will happen sometime, and all your best intentions will mean nothing. Sure, it’s only data but it still hurts right?
I built SimpleFileBackup to auto backup files on my VPS.
I heard horror stories about how a VPS can suddenly restart or crash and all your data can be lost due to the virtualization software used to make a VPS.
First thing I did was search for something I could buy, as it is usually a much better use of my time to buy vs build.
Everything I found was just waaay too expensive. I mean, who wants to spend big dollars on boring old backup utility software when I could buy some shiny new software like IMSCommerce to build mobile sites and sell – shameful plug 
A lot of the software I found was over $100 bucks, and the cheaper stuff looked like it had been built in 1983 by some big hairy dude with a soldering iron!
Thought about using Dropbox but this was a pain because I have files and folders all over the place on my VPS and don’t want to have to have multiple copies in a dropbox folder – seemed too painful to deal with.
So the brief was: I just wanted to be able to setup the files and folder once only to backup, push a button to make sure a scheduled task was created, push another button to create the firewall rules to transfer files by FTP, and be done with it.
If you host many websites like me you probably have masses of storage space on hostgator or other web hosts that you’re not using but paying for, so SimpleFileBackup can put backups on web hosts by FTP.
So every morning I now get an email that tells me if the backup worked or not, and I can get warm fuzzies that my files are safe.
Currently sells for $27, as one of the cheapest no fuss backup systems you can get.
Also works for your windows desktop, laptop, dedicated server… but you must have a place for it to FTP the files to, such as a web host (shared web host ok)
Edit: SFB has now been updated to backup files to external drives, Dropbox folders, network locations, as well as to web servers via FTP.
Also, the scheduling has been updated so that you can edit it to be weekly, change the backup time, and so on.
SFB is still as simple as
If you have an idea for some software and want to quickly build it without the hassle of full blown software development, then you should consider using the AutoIT framework.
As a commercial programmer, sometime I just want to create some software very quickly, and I have used AutoIT to just get the job done.
When you don’t want to worry about installers, making sure that users have the latest version of .NET on their systems, creating project solutions, etc.. you can quickly create an AutoIT script to surprisingly create some great software.
You can find out more about AutoIT here.
It’s a totally free scripting language that has great help documentation, and will run on pretty much any Windows environment.
You can create great GUI’s (graphical user interfaces) if you need to (hint: use Koda freeware to generate the code) .
Massive help forum available to help you pretty much do anything you want the software to do.
You do need to understand programming concepts, however if you have the patience to learn, you will be making great software in no time, and totally for free.
Examples of apps that I have coded with AutoIT are:
I really encourage both hard-core programmers and novices to look at AutoIT as a way to very quickly release software that would normally take much longer to produce. Also very good for prototyping.
A mobile commerce website is a more complex system than a standard ‘business card/brochure site’ – and incidently, is worth more $$.
Here is a video explaining a typical layout, and how IMS Commerce does all of the complex stuff for you.
Download FreeMind for free from Download.com
Download the mind map used in the video
Mobile-Commerce-Web-Site.mm (right-click and save-as)
Here’s a short intro to get you started using IMS Commerce – Free Version.
If you don’t already have it you can download for free from http://imscommerce.com/free-software.htm
If you’ve read any of my other articles or watched some of my videos about website traffic strategies, you will realize that I really detest “advice” from so-called gurus, that is not backed up by sound empirical evidence.
Fortunately seoeffect.com organized an experiment to see if using Google +1 had any effect on website rankings.
They found that there was a 20% increase in search rankings on all three of their websites, which increased their traffic.
So we are dealing with some real hard-core results here that you can take advantage of.
You will need to create a Google account if you don’t already have one.
Grab the code for a +1 button from this url
https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/
Google developers have gone overboard with a fully developed API that would make programmers start to dribble, but as marketers this is not really relevant to us. The main point is to install the button on your page and focus on people actually using it.
There are 2 ways that immediately come to mind to improve website traffic with Google +1.
1. Improved search engine ranking
The more +1′s your web pages receive the higher it should be placed on Google’s search results.
You can really notice this effect between Google+ social connections. If one or some of your Google social connections have +1′d a page and you search for keywords relevant to that page, the +1′d page will appear higher on your search results.
The number of +1′s is shown and sometimes the actual names of people in your network who have voted for the site – really increases the visibility of the site.
2. Increase site traffic through Google social connections
Google +1 works the best with large Google social connections in the search results, but also websites that are +1′d are streamed in real-time on Google profiles within your network.
Urge or bribe your connections to +1 your content so that your page will appear on their streams and spread the word.
Now if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then there has got to be scripts or plugins out there that lock content until a reader clicks someone’s Google Plus. I found a wordpress plugin called PlusLocker on the Warrior Forum – link coming soon.
There is no evidence to suggest that Facebook likes or twitter tweets has any effect on site rankings!
This is not to say that you shouldn’t do it as part of a social traffic plan, but don’t kid yourself that the Google Overseer can see all.
What Google can see though are their own +1 updates data, as well as traffic from their other properties such as YouTube.
I like to implement what has a high likelihood of actually working rather than just rely on guru trust – how about you?
Cheers,
John
Website traffic can make or break an internet site.
Whoever said ‘build it and they will come’ is not living in the real internet world – especially after the latest Panda and Penguin Google algorithm updates.
Get 50 pages of powerful web traffic strategies totally free from http://InternetBizFormula.com – No BS real-world traffic advice.
Cheers,
John
I am delighted to report that IMS Commerce v.2.0 now has a Free Version for people that want to create awesome mobile commerce sites.
The free version allows one mobile website per user to be created on http://free.imscommerce.com servers.
Download the free version from http://imscommerce.com/free-software
There are a whole host of videos to help you get started in the free section of the members area.
You will get your own username and password sent to you after you download the software.
Very excited to release Volume 1 of Awesome IM (internet marketing) Tools!
How awesome is http://AwesomeIMTools.com for a domain? Totally awesome hey.
If you can’t be bothered even clicking on the link (not awesome), then I’ll let the cat out of the bag. It’s software to help automate setting up mass amounts of free blogs.
Why would anyone want to do that? Well money of course!!
More specifically:
Frickin Awesome eh!
John has been at the forefront of the commercial web systems industry since 1998. About John
Personal blog mostly about web programming, software development and internet marketing.
