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Use Niche Secrets to boost your online earnings

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I was sent an eBook the other day. It’s called Niche Secrets, and you know what? I do believe I’ve learned a few things from this 29 page eBook.

Niche Secrets is a very well written and easy to understand booklet. It describes exactly what a Niche is, how to discover your own Niche and then how to begin writing articles, websites or eBooks about that particular Niche.

I actually learned a fair amount about Niches, marketing a niche product and how to write great articles and make money by creating product for a niche that I have a passion for, and I plan to use some of this information right away.

I’m excited about this. I’ve already got some niche blogs and since they’re already established it should be even easier for me to apply what I’ve learned from Niche Secrets and begin seeing results and having success quickly. I really believe that I could begin writing a Niche article this evening and see results by Monday – it really seems easy once you know how to do it.

I knew some of this information prior to reading the eBook, but you know how it is – you read some good information on one site, and something else on another and you try to remember all these good tips that you can apply to your own sites or to your writing techniques, but since these tips you’ve found are scattered across the internet and you’ve found them over time you never fully apply the techniques as you should right from the beginning.

That’s what’s great about this eBook and eBooks in general. You get all the information you need in one place and you can begin applying the tips and techniques right away.

If you want to learn more about making money by writing about and promoting Niche topics visit Niche Research and get a copy of Niche Secrets. This eBook is only $7 until July 31st so get your copy now.




I had to change web hosts!

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Well you probably noticed that my sites went down for a few days if you’ve become a regular visitor of The Web Files or any of my other sites.


I ended up changing web hosts after my former web host attempted to change my shared hosting account over to a TWO year Virtual Private Hosting account and charged me $642 in the process. A move and charge that I hadn’t authorized.

I’d been apparently having CPU resource issues on my former host – Lunarpages, and I worked for close to a month to resolve any CPU resource overuse issues by going over everything in my directories with a fine toothed comb, updating all of the programs that I use to run my various sites and any addons or plugins that I used with those sites and still they kept telling me that I had CPU resource over use issues.

They suspended my account on Saturday stating that my account had almost caused a server to crash so I reluctantly agreed to change my account over to VPS for one month. One single month. It took me almost 24 hours to communicate that desire to support since they are very slow to answer support email and do not have telephone support over the weekend.

Once they apparently understood that I was willing to switch over to VPS for one month they told me that it would cost $75 per hour to transfer my account, but if I wanted I could do it myself once the VPS account was set up. At that point I said No way to the $75 charge and in fact said no to the whole deal until they sent me more info about VPS, Plesk and how I might move my account on my own.

Instead of sending me information they went ahead and set up the VPS account and instead of creating a monthly account they charged me for two years of VPS service.

Right … for CPU resource issues that may or may not exist.

I say may or may not exist because after the stunt they pulled charging me for a two year VPS account I’m not all that certain that I ever had CPU resource issues.

So I spent early Monday morning creating a new hosting account at HostGator and worked on moving my domains and sites.

So far things are going well with HostGator and they’ve yet to mention a thing about CPU resource over use. Still – I think I’m going to continue going over my sites and try to lighten their load on the servers. Some of my sites are getting more and more popular so if my traffic is increasing so will my resource usage too.

“I need a new design” contest – Enter Now

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Are you tired of the look of your web site? Ready for a change?

Why not enter the “I need a new design” contest that’s being held by lifeBLUE Media.

LifeBLUE specializes in web design, graphic design, SEO, Internet marketing, application development, and web hosting. Visit the site and take a look at their portfolio. They are featuring some very nice web designs that they’ve done for past clients. You’ll be in good hands if you win the contest.

It’s easy to enter the I need a new design contest. Simply visit the LifeBlUE.com website and fill out the contest entry form. Unfortunately this contest is only open to US residents. Otherwise I’d probably enter this plain Jane site myself.

Once you enter the contest you can tell your friends, family and site visitors about the contest and ask them to vote for your site. As you’ll see by visiting the contest link above the site that’s in the lead is shown as a larger image in the collage of sites that have entered.

designcontest.jpg

The contest began and July 9th and submissions and votes will be collected until August 8th, 2007. There’s still plenty of time to take the lead and win a professionally designed web design.

The winner will receive a custom design that will be in both graphical format as well as html format. The design will be created by LifeBLUE’s experienced design team.

The winner will of course have the ability to provide feedback on the design and information about the goal and direction of the site so that the team will be able to create a suitable design that will take your site well into the future.

There are actually two ways to win this contest as two winners will be selected.

One way is to simply submit your site as described above and then to garner votes. The person who has the most votes, and likely the worst current design as determined by their voting friends, family and site visitors will win a free web design.

The second way to enter this contest is to enter the random draw. Write up a blog post and use the following anchor text to link to the main index page of LifeBLUE Media:

Link url – http://www.lifeblue.com/web_design_contest/

Text: web design, web designers, website design, web design company

I presume that the people at LifeBLUE will be keeping track of incoming links with any of those link phrases and that they will add those sites to the random draw.

Why are you still here?

Get going! Enter the contest! A free web design would be fantastic wouldn’t it?

Spammy comments and comment abuse?

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I run the do follow blogroll and lately I’ve seen a few trends going on. Over perhaps the last two weeks I’ve noticed more and more people leaving comments and using website urls when they sign the comment.

I do realize that not everyone has a blog, but prior to this, the majority of people that have left comments on my many blogs were bloggers and they would sign their comments with either their own name or the name of their blog and use their blog url when leaving their comment.

I’m suspicious since there’s been a steady increase in the amount of people leaving not just business related website urls, but they sign their comments with what could only be called a SEO term. I must suspect that they are doing this so that the links they leave will give them higher standing on the search engines.

For the most part the comments that are being left by these people are relevant to the post – but some are a little empty or seem to copy what someone before them said. Then these comments are signed with “cashmere sweaters” and a clothing business website url. That’s not a real example of what’s been left – but you know what I mean, who signs an url with a product name? Only someone practicing search engine optimization techniques.

I’m sorry, but this makes me feel a little used. That might not be the commenters intention but that’s the way I feel.

Considering that my husband and I have oh lets see 9 blogs on the do follow list and that I tend to approve all of the comments I see trends.

I see people signing their comments with different names and different deep pages within their site, people adding extra links into their comments, people using tiny url within their comments, and people that say pretty much the same thing on all of our websites that they visit.

When someone says pretty much the same thing on all of our sites I feel that the abuse is confirmed. Sure, they might actually comment on the post but then they’ll say something like “I’ve been following your site and visit it daily” on all the sites. Surely you didn’t become a fan overnight when I’ve never seen you here before?

For the most part the people on the do follow list are not abusing the list members although a few newbies need a talking to I think.

Unfortunately getting a link on a do follow blog seems to have gained popularity and people are copying the lists on to other sites and none do follow list members are going around commenting on all the sites.

Not all of these people are abusing our kindness but some are and few people abusing sites that are giving links away for free kind of spoils it for the rest.

I love getting comments on all of my sites. Especially if the comment is true feedback on my post. I just don’t like feeling used by those who are only commenting for a link. I’d prefer that people only comment if they truly got something out of my posts.

Oh yes, another thing making me suspicious of the comments I’ve been receiving lately is the fact that there’s a new company where an advertiser can hire this company to write comments on blogs to get their link out there. You can read the article that was posted on Problogger about comment spam to learn more. If I suspect that someone has left a paid comment I’ll be deleting the comment. Apparently they’ll be targeting bloggers who’s links follow.

Now that’s something to think about isn’t it?

CPU resource overuse problems continue! Any ideas?

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Well I’m still trying to figure out my web hosting CPU resource over usage problems. I’ve got a lot of great suggestions from people on forums and via comments on my sites.

One person asked if I’m using WP-Cache on my wordpress blogs and the answer is yes. I’ve been using it since last Friday and I’ve still been getting messages from my web host saying that my cpu resource usage is too high.

This is depressing!

If I ever figure out what caused the problem I’ll be sure to write about it on my sites so that others might be able to get themselves out of this mess a little quicker than I’ve managed.

Well, I’m not out of the mess yet.

I’ve finished updating everything I can think of including a joomla installation that runs one of my other sites. I think the Joomla CMS might be one of the causes of the problem. I guess I’ll find out later today when I hear from my web host. I hope that the resources are back to normal.

I wrote out more details of how I’m using the servers on my other tech blog WebStyle if you’d care to read that post. Perhaps those of you that have been through this before or know a little something about this kind of problem could read that post and offer a few suggestions? I’d really appreciate it if you would.

Also, just in case I do end up having to move to a Virtual Private Server … how difficult is that to work with? I’m pretty good about figuring out stuff but I’d like to know if I’m going to end up with a VPS headache before I make my decision to move off shared hosting.

Overuse of CPU on my web host – Help!

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I got a note yesterday evening from my webhost stating that my sites were using too much of their resources. Most of our sites are fairly well visited but I don’t believe they are so well visited that they would begin causing CPU problems on my web host just yet.


So, I’ve been going over all our sites for the last few hours turning off any plugins that aren’t vital and ones that I think might use CPU. For example I had viewcounter and postrater activated on two of our sites and since they store info in the database I thought that they might be using the hosts CPU so it was worth turning them off.

I’ve also downloaded a copy of WP-Cache that I’m going to be installing in a few minutes. This caches a page when it’s first viewed and then presents the cached copy the next time it’s viewed and doesn’t create a new cache copy of the page until data on the page changes or I think until a certain amount of time has passed. If this works properly it should cut down on the amount of resources that my sites are using.

I’m also going to update my Google Sitemaps plugin as the latest Beta version has been optimized to use fewer CPU resources.

I’m crossing my fingers that this works.

In the meantime my host has moved my sites to a different server on their network. I’m not sure the move went well because once I got to this blog I noticed that when I tried to click on the titles of the posts I got an error message. I hope they didn’t mess up my database!

That’s one reason why I’m writing a post now. I’m hoping the new post will update my database and fix whatever’s going on with the rest of the posts. I sure hope it does, and I also hope that this posts when I publish it!

If anyone has been put on notice by their webhost that their site is overusing CPU resources how did you resolve the problem? Any suggestions?

Create a second WP blog in a directory or Subdomain

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Want to create another blog on the same domain? Here’s how:

It’s actually very easy to create a new blog as a directory, or as a sub-domain.

My advice to you would be to actually create your new blog as a sub domain if you think there’s any chance that you might use it for pa1d blogging services, or that you might want to monetize it in some other way.

Some affiliate sites only accept new sites that are on their own domain which means blog.mydomain.com and mydomain.com are acceptable, but mydomain.com/blog is not. So, prior to setting up a new blog on a domain that already has a website or blog on it – think about how you will use the site in the future.

So it’s up to you, but if I was doing it all over again I’d create sub-domains. I have a number of blogs on my Feverishthoughts.com domain. I’ve actually purchased new domains that I plan to move the current /blog blogs over to once the new domains have aged and gained some page rank.

So I’ll tell you how to make a blog as a directory, as in mydomain.com/blog first:

Let’s assume that your webhost has c-panel and that you’ll be using C-panel to work with your domain and installations.

So … assuming you have C-panel

1. Log into your web host and get to your C-panel

2. In C-panel you’ll see an icon for Fantatico

3. Click on Fantastico and on the right hand side you’ll see a list of different types of programs that you can automatically install onto your domain.

4. Look for blogs and select WordPress

5. If you have a current installation that you installed through Fantastico that will be listed on the right hand side, just above that you’ll see a link that says new Installation and it will look something like this:

New Installation (2.1.3)
Disk space required: 3.73 MB
Disk space available: 248167.5 MB

6. Click on the new installation link and you’ll be taken to the first of three WP installation pages

7. If you have more than one domain on your account you might see a drop down list – if you have this select which domain you’d like to install a new WordPress blog on. (** if you’ve made a sub-domain for your new blog it will be in this list **)

8. Install in directory

– Leave empty to install in the root directory of the domain (access example: http://domain/).

– Enter only the directory name to install in a directory (for http://domain/name/ enter name only). This directory SHOULD NOT exist, it will be automatically created!

9. Once you’ve selected the domain or sub-domain that you want to install your new blog on you’ll see an empty box beside the words Install Directory – if you want your blog to be in the root of the domain (like your current blog- but you can’t do that with this new one because you have a blog there already!) you’d leave it blank.

Start thinking about the search engines and how the spiders will see your site NOW. Don’t name your new blog’s directory – blog or blog2. Please think of a name for the directory that describes what your site is about. For example for my directory blogs I’ve named the directories Garden for my gardening blog, Celebrity for my celeb blog and so on. Now the search engines know immediately what the posts on the blog will be able because the main keyword for the site will be in every single url.

10. Follow the rest of the directions adding an email address, admin name and password to complete the installation. within minutes you’ll be finished.

Earlier I was suggesting that it might be better to put your new blog on a sub-domain instead of a /directory.

For this you would go into C-panel – assuming that you have C-panel and click on the icon that says Subdomain.

Once you get into the subdomain area you’ll see

_________________ your domain or drop down list of domains ADD

Fill in the blank box with the name of you want to use for your subdomain.

Then select your domain. If you only have one domain you’ll only see mydomain.com in the next box

After that all you have to do is click on the word ADD and you’ll create a subdomain that might be called:

myblog.mydomain.com

Once you’ve created your subdomain go back to the main C-panel page, click on Fantastico and follow the directions that I gave you above but in step 8 you would select your subdomain from the drop-down list and leave the directory name box blank if you want to install into the root directory of your new subdomain so that your blog will work simply as myblog.mydomain.com

Once you get started with this I’m sure you’ll find that it’s all very easy. Especially now that you have some instructions to use.

Google Gears allows internet users to take web based aps offline

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I’m looking forward to Google Gears. It’s a new product that will be coming out shortly that’s been developed by Google that will allow internet users to take there normally web only applications offline.

This will be wonderful for those who are still using dial up connections to connect to the internet and perhaps their blogging platform.

Personally, I’ve been quite frustrated at times when I’ve been trying to work on one of my blogs and my server has gone down or my internet connection (cable) is out or acting up. It’s very hard to write posts or write draft articles on WordPress when you can’t connect to your WP dashboard!

Hopefully Google Gears will work with WP and other blogging platforms too.

Htaccess to add www to all pages of a site

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I’ve been trying to work on my htaccess file for one of my other domains feverishthoughts.com for a few weeks. What I’d like is for the main website on feverishthoughts to have www in the url but ever new htaccess code that I’ve tried seems to fail and worse often ends up messing up how my site works.

I’m so frustrated I could start throwing folding chairs, and other things around!

I mentioned my problem in a forum and wrote a post about it on my main blog and some people have been very nice and offered up codes to try but nothing is working.

If anyone reading this post has an htaccess code for me to try that will put www in all the urls for my main blog even if they came to the site using a link without the www I’d appreciate it.

I wonder if part of the problem is that this domain thewebfiles.com is the main domain on my server?

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