Just a note to address the video issues going on with this site right now.

Up until today I was paying for a premium video account over at Blip.tv. They have informed me that they have elected to cancel my membership because ”selling through videos is against their policy”.

Strangely enough, as my readers know all too well, I, too am against any selling in my videos, and none of them contain any kind of sales whatsoever.

Further investigation reveals that they have recently cancelled a number of authority sites from the use of their system.

My guess is we were using too much bandwidth, or perhaps Bliv.tv marketing gurus decided that all the exposure we were providing them at no cost was just a bad thing. Maybe they need to get out of the city and get some fresh air, who knows :>)

Needless to say, I strongly advise against the use of Bliv.tv, or any of their services. My staff and I invested about 300 hours in converting and uploading videos to their system, not to mention endorsing them on a massive scale, as well as paying the monthly fees.

So, at this time, as I prepare for the conference next week in Orlando, we are also trying to locate a respectable and professional video service provider to restore the videos on this site and a few others.

As Blip.tv has evidenced that our loyalties to them were ill-placed, I am open to suggestions from eaders on other video service providers capable of multiple format conversions and RSS feeds of video data to iTunes for syndication.

From everything there is something to learn, and in this case I would have to say that we will run a longer trial before committing time and money to future third party service providers.

In the mean time, if you don’t mind putting a note on all of your blogs and sites telling users to avoid using Blip.tv services, I think you will be doing your readers a real service, and they will respect your attempt to protect them

Thank you for your patience as we get this sorted out.

from such unscrupulous service providers.

Cheers!

Ron Davies

I suspect that when Google came up with Google Alerts they knew they had a cool tool that people could use to keep track of subjects they were following and wanted the latest news on those subjects coming to them in their email inbox.

People have used Google Alerts for following things like Nascar, the musician Pink, Soccer, their favorite WWE wrestler, you name it.

But, many people have found other clever uses for it as well, as it is a very powerful tool whe it comes to staying on top of who is saying what about whom and where it was said.

Recently, one of my members shared they way they use Google Alerts with me for this very purpose, and I found it worked so well that I would now like to pass it on to you.

Google Alerts searches the Google archives for any given search term, and if it finds it, sends an email to you with the link to where it found the search term, and a summary of the text where it was found. This is very handy for someone that is either particularly vain, or someone that has a vested interest in what is said about them, or even about their product.

Doing this kind of search manually would be agonizing, as you would always get the same results, and they would not be based on the most current occurences of your keywords.

So, if you go to Google Alerts and

1. type your name  or your product name or even your Twitter username (which looks like @rondavies);
2. for “Type” select “Comprehensive”;
3. for “How Often” select “once a day”; and
4. enter your email address where asked.

You will receive any new occurences of that search term (your full name or product name) as they come into the Google archive system.

This means that if someone says something nice about you on blog XYZ.com, (or heaven forbid, not so nice), and Google spiders thier normal update for that blog and finds your name, you will be notified by email within the day.

Then you can either thank them, or spank them I suppose, depending on the nature of the comment or post where your name or product name were found #;>)

Another very cool, very easy to use tool from my little toolbox.

Have a great day!

iPhone continues to dazzle as Blackberry’s “abacus” leaves much to be desired for the habitual or professional WordPress blogger.

Do you have a WordPress blog that you would like to keep updated while on the train, riding as a passenger in a car, or just sitting on Starbucks warming up with a cafe latte?

If you use iPhone, you are indeed in luck. iPhone continues to reward those that avoided or left the “crackberry” for the real McCoy, at least as far as power, flexibility, ease of use and breadth of applications and speed are concerned

Just click the iTunes icon on your iPhone, hit “Search” and type “WordPress” and you will immediately be rewarded by a whole selection of instantly installable iPhone Apps made just for managing your WordPress blogs.

The onebi am authoring this post on is free, and I look after 6 blogs with it, all without cracking my notebook open.

If you love to “work it” as far as your WordPress blog is concerned, this is the way to go!

You need only go install the (probably free) iPhone App, and log in to your blog ad an Admin, and under “Settings” go to “Writing” and enable the check box for “xmlrpc”.

That’s all there is to it! You are blogging anywhere, any time.

To do this on Blackberry, simply return it to your local cell phone shop, and get an iPhone.

It will be the best thing you do for youself this year!

Cheers!

Here is another great video on the topic of Web 2.0 done by the clever people at CommonCraft.

This video does a very good job of explaining why social networking sites are so popular. We think one reason is because they help to solve a real world problem.

Cheers,

I receive emails daily from vendors soliciting me to promote or at least review their products. Unfortunately, that just goes with the territory when you have a face and more so a web site that is well-known in affiliate marketing, especially as it  relates to Clickbank.

Believe it or not, I have almost 2 dozen vendors that want me to show off their products at the Earn1KaDay IM Summit Conference in Orlando this month. Sorry, guys and gals, that’s just not going to happen. Nothing personal, and this is not intended to discredit or even just “dis” any of the products or vendors, but things simply don’t work that way.

We are all competing for the attentions of those that we feel can help us along, but there is due process in place (hint: fill out the contact form and be sure to send a download link to test the product- wait 48 hours or so, you know…be patient :>)

In any event, once in a while a product title or byline catches my eye, and I simply have to open the email and see what is being promoted.  After all, you never know when you will meet the next Seth Godin in your inbox.

Today’s product is one that claims Google is dead as far as affiliates are concerned, which of course concerns me quite a bit, at least if there is any truth to it.

The product is called “Yahoo Cash For Idiots“, perhaps a little less flattering than I might like this early in the new year, but I had a look at this fellow might be onto something. I have been a long time proponent of avoiding Google Adwords at all costs, even after one of us here attending a few very good workshops on the subject, the most notable being Perry Marshall’s Bootcamp at his place in Chicago 2 years ago, and all sorts or smaller less notable ones since.

Truth is, I am waiting with baited breath for somebody to come up with something better than Adwords- better than Adwords in that it works WITHOUT a dergree from Google on how to make it work profitably.

Conservative estimates put the money losers on Adwords in the 80% to 85% percent range, with about 10% breaking even, and the rest are, well, the Adwords Gods, or maybe just Perry Marshall and Seth Godin :>)

Enough belly-aching, I know. Back to the product – it is based on using Yahoo’s PPC program, which purportedly is much less expensive and easier to use, easier to be competitive in for keywords, and even better – the return on investment is actually a POSITIVE number for the average user. Shocking, I know! #;>)

Now the ad copy on the site is full or biased propaganda, and a few figures that had to have been pulled out of the air more or less, but the product and the premise is sound an logical. This in the face of hugely successful Adwords / Clickbank products like Commission Blueprint, which at very least is one of the most over-delivered products I have ever seen, even if I found the work a little too involved for me.

One of the claims on the Yahoo Cash for Idiots site is:

“Yahoo! Is A HUGE Unexploited Mine Of Gold…With No Competition… Just An Extremely Profitable Untapped Playground”

I guess that is yet to be evidenced, but something I am going to toy with for sure, given the less than Godin like results I have had with Google Adwords to date.

Anyway, if you are like I am in terms of success with, or rather without Google Adwords, this might be worth a look.

Cheers,