Frank’s Corner

This was at the time intended to be the first of possibly 8 or 9 posts on monetorizing our web site through means other than our core business, however life in the form of medical problems intervened and its taken this long just to get back to really feeling alert enough to attempt catching up with most of what I left undone for a month and a half.

AFFILIATES
Posted by frank at 9:29 pm, October 10th 2007.

First things first – Why Affiliate? Of course the obvious answer is “to make money!”, why else would I put my time and effort into it? To overly simplify it, the principle which allows us to make money by becoming affiliates is real easy; when someone else sells something to someone else, or gets the information they want from someone else we get paid. The principle really is that simple and that is why there so many people out there clamoring to get in the business of “monetizing” their internet space through affiliates. Of course, it’s also why there are about a zillion other people out there telling us all how easy it is and how they or their service can just do it all for us, sadly its this last group of unknown person (s) making the majority of the money, mostly from selling their products to the rest of us.
We, as affiliates, must make the hard decisions for ourselves; If we already have a site of our own and have been researching and studying how to get people (Traffic) to come to our site one of the things many experts are telling us is that we should become affiliates in order to capitalize on the links they’ll give us to other sites.
If we don’t already have a site, but want to make money on the internet those same experts tell us we should – you guessed it – become affiliates, because that’s how to make money without ever having to have or touch a product.
And then, if we’ve become affiliates to make money on the internet what do those same experts tell us to do – guessed it again – get your own web site (which of course they will design and/or host for us ,at a small fee.).
Now mind you, most of these experts are trying to do what? SELL YOU a package to either set you up with affiliates or build you a web site, which they pretty much guarantee well be in the first page of the search engines. Either way they are GIVING you the information that you can make money on the internet (the carrot) but that you need a product like theirs, because it’s the best, in order to make that money (the stick being you must pay them for it).
Why do “we” get taken , after all we’re all smart enough, at least deep down,to understand if it were really that easy these experts would be making those millions themselves and not be giving away all the secrets. Right? Well yes, but its only $20, $30, $50 or even $100 and if it works I can make 100 times that back in a day and then just think how much good I can accomplish. Never mind that the original outlay is only the start – you need to teach yourself or pay someone to
1. Get you a domain (the name can be very important, as can whether it is or isn’t a top level domain)
2. Find some place to host your web site, unless you have your own servers and plan on leaving them on 24/7, you’ll be paying monthly for this.
3. A program if free you usually must acknowledge whose software you’re using on your page, in other words advertise for them. Or you buy a program. Or learn HTML just to building a simple page. Or you’ll be paying someone to a good deal of money to build your site. This will be an on going expense unless you learn FTP and how to properly write your updates and anchor your copy.
Once you have your site its still not all sunshine and roses, you now have to be concerned about where your site ranks with the search engines, which leads to a whole new experience learning SEO (search engine optimization) which leads right back to among other things affiliates, key words, meta tags, keyword density, and many other such goodies.
Please, before you jump into anything, do your homework. When it comes to being successful making money “on line” its no different then any other endeavor; the more quality time and effort you put into the project, the better you plan it and the harder you work that plan the luckier you’ll get which increases the probability you’ll reach your goal.
Next time maybe something on that old traffic problem, the paradox of in order to get traffic, you need traffic.
Frank

Having reread this posting I believe if I were to have written it today the second question I would have asked is how would I measure the success of this blog? Would it be in terms of traffic to our web site, monetary gain, personal satisfaction, or bluntly EGO?

Can you tell if your blog is successful?
Posted by frank at 9:52 pm, October 3rd 2007.

How does one measure blogging success? I wish I knew. I do know if we Google “blog” we come up with about 1,470,000,000 pages, if we Google “blogger” it drops to 175,000,000 pages and if we Google “blogging” it drops to a mere 114,000,000 pages all of which tells me there are a lot of us spending a great deal of time and energy trying to put words on the internet that many other some ones out there will, for one reason or another want to, or at least be willing to, read. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? So why do we do it.
I cannot and will not try to answer for anyone else, but for myself it’s really twofold;
1. I never could resist a “soap Box” and I can think of none with the possibility of reaching anywhere as many people.
2. Just about everything I’ve read about good web site design and attracting traffic (viewers) to the site includes a great big statement to the effect “give them something for nothing, or at least something which doesn’t really cost you much” like a news letter, coupons, or a blog you can get them to subscribe to with an RSS feed so they’ll keep coming back. (That RSS feed will be coming soon, as soon as I figure out how that is.)
Well in the bluntest of honesty I’m looking to grow our family business CLENCHPICS LLC. We are videographers who specialize in multicamera videoing of any legal event, taking those images and editing them to produce a pleasing video of the event and authoring a DVD of the event. We further duplicate and supply as many copies of the DVD as our client requires in as simple a form as paper sleeves or as slick as DVD case complete with cover and insert. We can edit your video of an event or vacation for you and produce an authored DVD or we can duplicate your DVD. We also design and host web sites.
What I propose to give you in return for viewing our site and hopefully reading this blog is really very simple;
The solutions we find for overcoming problems we run into in our business.
Interesting, at least to us, anecdotes we acquire or have happen in the course of doing business.
Tips, tricks or short cuts which we find or learn about that may be useful.
Things we find we can or cannot do with our equipment and why they do or don’t work, including our opinion why.
Lastly and mostly for myself, thoughts on family and possibly some insight on why I’ve made or make the decisions I do.

I’m thinking my next posting will have to do with questions of using affiliates as way of increasing traffic and hopefully income.

Thanks for stopping by,
frank

Originally published 9/24/07 using Serif’s WebPlus10 and their server resources. This was actually the second post I attempted, but as you’ll read I lost the whole fist blog when I went to upload this. I’m posting the three entries from the old blog here mostly because I want to have as complete a record as possible. - Thanks for your patience.

Publishing Headaches
Posted by frank at 6:38 pm, September 24th 2007.

Now I really show my ignorance. In trying to get this just right with the Serif program I somehow managed to delete the whole blog as I was putting this entry up. My complete first entry is gone unless someone out there can tell me a way finding a residual copy somewhere to repost and the original posting date for the first paragraph of this entry was 20 September 2007

It all started Monday morning when I decided to up date our churches web site to announce the 30th anniversary assembly of our school (BABYLON CHRISTIAN SCHOOL) on Friday, 21 September 2007, which I had just found out about because I had just hung up the phone after they called and asked if we could video and author a DVD of the assembly for them, as Senator Johnson will be among the honored guests who will be there. (YUP, that’s right we’ve got a paying shoot for Friday, business looks good.) I had just powered up my computer and entered my web writing application (Serif WebPlus 10) and opened the site for church and the sites for the school and the Worship Summit we’re hosting as I had some work to do on those also and I link both the school and Summit through the church site .

Continued September 24, 2007
I really do apologize for leaving in the middle of a thought and not getting back to finish it for days, it was that kind of a week and I’m sure we’ve all had our share of them, without further interruption here’s the rest of my tale of woe–
I just get everything open and am ready to make my up-dates when we seem to have a power spike, the lights flicker, the computer I’m using hic-ups and our internet connection goes dead, along with any number of appliances and clocks in the house. I get this computer running again only to find I can no longer open the Serif Web program, because I only get a message “Document failed to open” and the program proceeds to shut itself down. I’m a slow learner so I have to try this 5 or 6 times before I understand I really have a problem. Well I leave this to go take care of the rest of the house - you know re-set clocks, turn back on those appliances which should be on. Last on my list is getting the internet connection to work again, of course this is the area always handled by my partner and number 2 son who just happened to have enlisted in the Army, has only finished basic in August and isn’t far enough along in AIT to be able to have his computers with him to fix our problems even if I did call him. I gingerly enter that area of the basement we’ve been carefully avoiding for the last few months and start looking around for familiar lights on various pieces of equipment - DSL modem? anyway the connection to Verizon its on but only blinking and I know the lights should be solid, so lets pick it up turn it over and around till - yep there it is the re-set, press and hold, let go , watch the lights come back on and YES they are all solid now. Next, where are the routers? Let’s see one wired and one wireless the wireless needs to be re-set, OK done, the wired one is on and about a zillion lights are all blinking at me, but it’s on. I know it’s hooked up to the server? I think that’s the computer under the DSL thing, well it used to be running but now its not , so lets turn it on, now the room sounds better, because now I hear all those fans going. Still the lights on the wired router are all blinking, I follow the wire that’s different from the rest to oh yeah this computer’s supposed to be on too. Now the lights start going solid, I hope its a good thing. Go check, yes the internet is once again accessible.
Now for that Serif program maybe its got something to do with not having registered it when I installed after Army dude left and I found now I had to do our web sites and didn’t remember enough HTML or have any clue as to how our resident genius made the various sites work with the combination of the programming languages he seemed to haphazardly put together. Anyway it was easier to buy the program and then reverse engineer the Html for the things it would not let me do the way I wanted. Of course feeling it was enough I had paid them for the program and they had no need to know how I was using it I not only didn’t register it, but I also try to remove their mete-tag from the HTML pages when I remember. OK, on the opening screen, here’s the phone number, and only a phone number to register. It’s now about 4:30 pm I call the number and of course get a computer telling me “the office is closed, please call back during business hours…” So much for Monday.

Tuesday. First things first, take number one son, and course one of my other two partners, to the train station at 7:10 am. He has a “real” job in the city, happily he not only likes his job but it’s even within the broad field he went to school for and wants to be in. As I get home I get to say good-bye to my life and other business partner, the “better half”, have breakfast, check email and usual web sites, now it’s time to call Serif. No, not registering should not have caused anything like the problem you’re describing, but let’s go ahead and register the program anyway. Done. And of course they were correct it solved nothing, back to the drawing board. I try not once, but several times and ways to access and open the program; from the desktop icon, from the desktop “my Computer” to get to the files and use the executable file, from Windows explorer both the name and the executable file. With a flash of brilliance I decide to get out the Cd I originally installed the program from and to simply try reinstalling or repairing it, only now it not only will not auto start but not even let me get to the file system. All this gets me past lunch and well into afternoon. I go to the Serif web site start looking for help nothing in the FAQ or any of the other material on the site, which just leaves me with the contact us. Serif’s contact us does not list any phone numbers and the only way to use it is to email them the problem, which of course they will not let you submit without first exhausting the FAQ area and then feeding this back to you as possible answers to the problem as they see it and telling you if this does not work they will possibly get an answer to you within 48 hours. Just what I need, I’ve already lost 2 days and now I’m looking at possibly 2 more.

Wednesday, same morning routine and hey here’s an email from Serif, wait it’s just an acknowledgment of receiving my problem and there’s even those pesky FAQ again – they’ll get back to me. A lightning bolt hits me, the one way I haven’t tried getting to the file system on the Cd is by using the Windows explorer to open the file on my Cd drive. Well, this actually works. I locate setup, hit enter and wait, it works! And I even have a choice to repair rather then have to completely install, which I know would lose all my material (Which of course I haven’t copied or backed because I didn’t want to spend the time and anyway nothing could go wrong.) Hey, let’s open this and get on with my life.
Only one small problem, remember those three sites I had opened to begin with – well two of them did not manage to get saved when the power dropped Monday so I spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday morning trying to rebuild them before getting to up-dated this. Well the last bit I had written was the moral if any of my story was you should always, always, always backup all of your material because you never know when it would save a series of days like mine had been and to the effect that while I hoped you‘d had a better week then I had so far, I still considered this a great week because we’ve gotten 2 real paying jobs for the business.

I was now finished with my second blog entry and ready to post it I hit save – And then my day went ugly, instead of updating the blog I got this lovely message “your connection has timed out” and lost everything I had just typed. As you could see I did start over. But I got a phone call and life just happened and the first real chance I’ve had to sit down with a clear head was this morning.
I do promise to be get better at this and make sure I write here regularly, hopefully every third or forth day, as so much I could write about has happened in only the last five days.
Thanks for dropping by,
frank

Much has happened since my last entry to Frank’s Corner, but the move from using the old software to WordPress will probably be the most obvious to anyone who actually looked at the original entries. Before  getting into new posts I’m going to see about reposting  those from the old site here and then work on why I haven’t gotten a post up anywhere in a month and a half and why I’ve switched over to WordPress.