Create an Awesome Home Business » Online Home Business

I’ve Moved Everything to GMail – Here’s Why

Martin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:30:19 +0000

I’ve been using Thunderbird as my email client for ages – years – and I’ve always been very happy with it.

But last weekend a wave of emails containing the JS/Redir virus starting hitting me (and they’re still hitting me now).

AVG spotted the virus (which was good) but couldn’t get rid of it (not so good).

So I ended up spending a good deal of time over the weekend getting rid of this thing manually. It was quite a tortuous process, too.

I won’t bore you with the details, but it involved disabling the Windows restore point function, tracking down the specific file (thanks to AVG), doing a secure (10 repetition) delete on it (thanks to TuneUp Utilities), installing another virus cleaner (PC Tools) and doing repeated scans with PC Tools, Malwarebytes and AVG.

And I finally got the bugger

But since I was getting hit by a wave of emails with this virus, I had to go through that process each time. Which means my weekend was pretty unproductive!

I’ve often worried about having a fall back plan for my email client. I back everything up, of course, but beyond that I never had a real fall back plan.

What can Gmail do for me?

But this incident pushed me into action. In an attempt to keep that nasty little brat off my machine I suddenly thought: what can Gmail do for me?

I’ve had a Gmail account for years and I know a lot of people who swear by it, but I’d never given it much thought.

But, lo and behold, I found there’s quite a lot it can do for me.

I’ve now set it up as my email client.

It accesses and downloads mails from my email servers, it automatically uses the address to which the incoming email was sent as the ‘from’ address for outgoing replies, and it sends outgoing emails through my servers.

So people exchanging emails with me have no idea I’m using Gmail (unless they read this, of course!).

One downside is that there’s a limit to the number of email addresses it will download mail from (currently 5). As I had 7 email addresses I was using for different things, I had to do some rationalisation – which was probably a good thing!

And I know I’m still getting those nasty emails because Gmail keeps telling me it’s left some mails on my server because they contain a virus.

Which is exactly what I was trying to achieve.

So I’m quite impressed.

It will also make roaming much simpler. With Thunderbird I had to change my outgoing SMTP server settings whenever I roamed outside Hong Kong. No need with Gmail because everything’s through-the-browser.

All-in-all then, that virus did me a favour. Which I’m sure was not the intention of whichever scum-bag started sending it out in the first place.

Cheers,

Opportunities All Around, If You Just Look

Martin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:28:13 +0000

A while ago I wrote an article in which I said that you almost certainly know more than you think you do about working online.

And that once you realise that, you’ll suddenly find a whole bunch of business opportunities opening up. I described one in the article.

So this week I saw another example of just how many opportunities there are out there.

I found a website that belongs to the industry leader in its sector here in Hong Kong. A household name company.

No names, not even any hints, to protect the innocent and prevent me from getting sued.

However, this website (which looks great to the viewer, by the way) was constructed entirely of images (without any alt tags) and JavaScript. The only actual text was the copyright notice at the bottom.

So the search engines wouldn’t have the first clue what it was about. (Meaning no natural search traffic. None)

The reason I mention this is because we who are concerned about SEO, site coding and site structure tend to hang around others who care about the same things.

Because everyone in our little online world cares about these things we think that everyone generally cares about them.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is there are thousands of sites out there that are so un-optimised for the search engines the only traffic they’ll be getting is traffic they pay for.

Not all of them will care, of course. But those that do represent a huge business opportunity for anyone who knows even the basics about SEO and site structure.

So do yourself a favour: look at the source code of sites outside the circle of sites you normally visit. Look at sites in different industries (not related to online work) and sites that are not built on platforms like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.

I think you’ll find that a huge proportion of them are poorly coded. And that should make you realise that you know a lot more than a lot of people about building and optimising websites.

Then use that knowledge to create yourself a new stream of income. If you want to, of course.

Cheers,

How to Verify a Site in Google Webmaster Tools

Martin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 05:33:09 +0000

Someone was asking how to verify a website in Google Webmaster Tools in one of the forums yesterday.

This is such a useful tool (I did a video of it here) that I would recommend anyone who's serious about their website to use it.

So here's a quick video on how to add a site and verify it using the 'upload an HTML file' method. This is ideal for verifying WordPress sites:

If you have any questions by all means get in touch - I'd be delighted to help.

Cheers,

To Quit or Not To Quit

Martin — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:30:38 +0000

Seth Godin’s book The Dip has some inspiring lessons for people at all stages in their career or business.

Its message is quite simple: all new projects and businesses will hit a dip – that point in time when reality sets in and the excitement of the new project has worn off.

Suddenly it all seems too hard, and you wonder whether it’s really worth it.

Many people quit at this point. According to some statistics, 97% of people who start an online business do.

The trick, though, is to identify whether it’s a dip or a dead-end. And the difference is whether your project or business has genuine potential, or just seemed like a great idea at the time.

It’s not just the dip that causes such a high percentage of people starting out online to quit. Having the wrong expectations is a huge driver of those who drop out – I wrote more on that here, as long ago as 2007.

But even if your expectations are right, you’ve done your research, and you’ve taught yourself the new skills you need to learn, you’re still going to hit a dip.

Which happened recently to two projects I worked on.

So the first and most important question (in both cases) was: is this a sound project? Is it something that can succeed, or does it lack the potential we thought it had?

As long as it’s a sound project, then the second question to ask is whether you have the right skills and tools to make it succeed.

If the answers to both those questions is ‘yes’ then you need to question what you’re actually doing – your tactics – to see how they can be changed to improve the results.

This is where the hard graft (pushing through the dip) starts – you need to put your head down, develop and test new tactics and keep going until you get it right.

If the answer to the second question (tools and skills) is ‘no’ you can still do something about it, by acquiring the tools and skills you need. As long as you have the time and budget to do so.

But if the answer to the first question is negative, then it’s time to quit – before you waste too much money.

And there’s nothing wrong with quitting.

It’s a far smarter choice when you’ve determined the project has no legs than grimly holding on until you’re broke.

So how to deal with the dip? Answer those two questions I set out above with brutal honesty and either make the corrections that you identify or quit.

Just don’t hang in there out of a mis-guided determination to succeed against the odds.

Cheers,

One of My Sites Was Hacked

Martin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:49:09 +0000

Seems like the hackers are after me at the moment: 2 weeks ago my Twitter account was hacked and last week one of my static web sites was hacked.

Last week’s hack was particularly embarrassing.

I’d sent someone the link to my Web Services site. On the web design page there are some links to sample sites and the hackers had installed a Trojan on one of those.

So when my prospect clicked on the link to the affected site they were greeted with one of those big, shout-at-you messages warning them that my site was trying to install a Trojan on their PC.

Not a good way to get new business.

Fixing the site was easy – and done in less than 10 minutes. All I did was to delete every file on the server and re-upload the entire site.

As soon as the clean site was up I changed my FTP and hosting provider passwords and, so far, no further problems.

So the next question was: how did they get in?

I raised the question with my hosting provider, but they were not that helpful. However, they did suggest that one of the scripts on my site might have been the entry point.

The only scripts on that site are for the contact form and the statistics. The contact forms are done using scripts, so I downloaded the latest version of my contact form builder and re-did the contact forms on all of my sites. That took me most of Saturday – a lot longer than fixing up my hacked site did!

There’s nothing I can do about the scripts for my statistics – they haven’t produced any upgrades.

This particular site is for a JV business venture that I’m doing with someone else and, therefore, it wasn’t hosted at Hostgator, along with my other sites.

However, the hosting provider it’s hosted with doesn’t support SFTP so, for the moment, I’ve moved it onto my Hostgator account.

With the growing sophistication of hackers, and the increase in online crime, it’s difficult to understand why a hosting provider would not support SFTP. In fact I think it’s both negligent and irresponsible on their part.

Needless to say, I will not be renewing that contract when it comes up.

Cheers,

My Twitter Account Was Hacked

Martin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:33:11 +0000

My Twitter account was hacked yesterday. It started sending out the ‘This You..??’ Direct Message to people I’m following.

The DM has a link and, out of curiosity (and with bated breath), I decided to see where it went.

I closed everything else down so I could invoke AVG quickly and get rid of nasties if I needed to, clicked the link and …

… ended up on a completely blank page.

Why on earth would someone go to the trouble of hacking an account and spamming DM’s with a link, only to send people to a completely blank page?

Maybe they were being altruistic. Giving me a gentle nudge, and telling me it was time to change my passwords.

Maybe.

So anyway, I clearly need to sort things out but I’m not an expert on Twitter. If someone hacks any of my WordPress or static sites I can be back up and running in a flash.

But Twitter – hmmm.

Luckily @jchronowski47, who kindly let me know that I was spamming all these DMs, also gave me some guidance on what to do and where to look.

So here (with @jchronowski47′s guidance) is what I did:

Changed my Twitter password. (I’m ashamed to say it’s the first time I’ve changed it since I set up my Twitter account, so being hacked probably served me right)
Went to my Settings > Connections screen in Twitter and revoked the access rights of all the applications that accessed my account. (There were 5 of them)
Went to each of those applications, logged in and removed the links to Twitter. In some I had to delete the Twitter reference, in others I could simply deactivate the link.
After removing the links to Twitter I changed the passwords on each of those sites and logged out.
After changing those passwords I logged back into Twitter
After logging back into Twitter, I then logged back into 3 of the applications in turn (using the new password) and reactivated/re-authorised the link to Twitter. The other two applications I no longer use so I didn’t reactivate them.

Since then I’ve kept a close watch on my outgoing DMs and, so far so good.

I’ve no idea how the hackers got hold of my password. But, as I’ve written in articles on WordPress security, there are any number of ways.

So, following the principles I wrote about here I ran Malwarebytes and AVG to check for any nasties on my machine and then changed the passwords of my other important sites (my online banking and so forth).

So hopefully I’m now clean again – but I’m keeping a close eye out

Cheers,

Freeloaders and Avoiding Responsibility

Martin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:30:50 +0000

Another excellent article from Nathan Hangen this week, with which I totally empathized.

It continues the theme I referred to here with the point that there’s a ‘freeloading’ mindset today.

Along with ‘freeloading’ I would add ‘responsibility avoidance’. And it’s not healthy.

I see it reflected in so many ways.

It’s the kind of mindset that the British Airways union leaders demonstrated before Christmas when they tried to organize a 12 day strike over the holiday period.

Had that strike gone ahead it could have done irreparable harm to BA’s financial health, quite possibly resulting in its going into liquidation.

Apparently the thought of their employer going into liquidation didn’t weigh too heavily on their minds – presumably because they had the safety net of social security.

No, the unions were concerned with their rights and making sure their members didn’t have to work too hard. ‘It isn’t right, Guvnor’. ‘We have our rights’.

What about the company’s responsibility to make a profit, provide a return for shareholders and financial income for its employees? What about the employees’ (and unions’) responsibilities in that scenario? And what about the employees’ responsibility to provide for their families?

Talk about getting priorities wrong!

Another example affected me directly a couple of years ago.

I was part of one of those direct sales business opportunities (that I’ve since learned to steer well clear of) and someone signed up through my link.

I did actually make money from that business, but I didn’t like the way things were done. Way too much hype and a focus on the wrong things, so I got out of it.

But it was possible to make money from it.

Anyway, this person signed up. They did it while I was asleep one night. They did it purely on the basis of reading my landing page and making a decision to get involved with the business.

It was entirely their decision, without any persuasion from me (I was asleep) or anyone else (as far as I’m aware).

And it didn’t work out for them.

So they processed a request through their bank that resulted in SafePay (another thing I steer well clear of) refunding their initial investment and all the subsequent monthly payments.

And they did this by simply removing that money from my account without any prior notification to me.

I was totally floored.

I was floored by the fact that SafePay were legally able to do something like that without prior notification to me, and I was floored by the person in question refusing to accept responsibility for their own decision.

I’ve always lived by the principle that if I make a decision it’s my decision, and I own responsibility for it.

Including if it turns out to be wrong.

Making a decision, for me, includes assessing the downside and deciding whether I’m prepared to accept that if it doesn’t work.

It does not involve me saying ‘it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work – someone else will pick up the tab’.

I think something’s wrong when a society has built in so many protections for people that they no longer accept responsibility for their own decisions.

And one of the fundamentals of succeeding in business is a willingess to make decisions and take full responsibility for them. However, they turn out.

OK – rant over!

I Hate These People

Martin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:51:35 +0000

It’s such a shame that people like this can’t channel their skills into something worthwhile, instead of screwing up other people’s PC’s.

A friend called me on Saturday morning because his PC had caught a Virus. Could I help him sort it out, he wanted to know.

We met up just after lunch and I switched on his PC to be met by a typical warning sign in big red letters, telling me that his PC was infected and we had to download a specialist anti-spyware application.

No surprise there.

Then one of those Windows nag balloons opened up at the bottom right of his screen. It told me that Windows had discovered the PC was infected with the Worm.Win32.Netsky virus and it was going to download and install the latest anti-spyware application to clean it.

It was very well done, that one. Made me read it a second time. But, of course, Windows doesn’t have its own anti-spyware application.

Then a warning popped up telling me that the Windows Firewall had been disabled. That was a genuine warning – it had been.

So I tried to switch it back on and got a message telling me the application had been infected and, therefore, disabled.

Hmm – the first alarm bell sounded.

It got worse. I tried to access the Internet so I could install Malwarebytes – no luck. All network connections disabled.

So I ran a full scan of his PC with his antivirus application. It ran at roughly half the speed it normally does and found nothing.

Next I decided to grab the Malwarebytes set-up file off my PC (had to run home and get it) and install it on Robert’s PC from a USB Memory stick.

No luck there, either. A message popped up telling me I had to format the disk (which was rubbish because I’d been using it for months) and, when I tried to format it, got the application disabled message again.

My next thought was to get Malwarebytes onto his PC via Bluetooth – and you can probably guess the result.

So I went online with my PC and looked up the Worm.Win32.Netsky virus and pulled up an article on how to remove it manually.

Only to discover that there were no relevant files on Robert’s PC. It wasn’t Worm.Win32.Netsky at all, they’d sent us on a wild goose chase.

So the only thing left was to get the data off the PC and reformat the disk. A pain in the butt but it worked.

As much as I hate these people (and I do), I have to respect the thoroughness of the job they did. But what a shame they couldn’t channel their skills into something worthwhile.

And, in case you’re interested, Robert’s PC was infected by one of the UPS spam emails that have been floating around for a while. He’s recently ordered some stuff from the UK and was expecting delivery, so when he saw the UPS email he opened it.

And got zapped.

Moral of the story: install one of the top Internet Security applications (not just anti-virus), install Malwarebytes (that’s a brilliant application) and, if you’re going to open an email from someone you’ve not corresponded with before, check the email headers.

Make sure the ‘From’ and ‘Reply to’ email addresses look genuine when compared with the ‘From’ display name.

Why Do You Blog?

Martin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:04:25 +0000

Interesting article on Nathan Hangen’s blog this week: There’s More to Life Than Blogging.

In it he asks why you blog and suggests you should know the answer before you start.

It reminded me of the number of times I’ve seen this question (or something like it) on Twitter:

“I just started a new blog – what do you think I should blog about?”

I guarantee that people asking that question will not be blogging 3 months from now.

If you’re going to start a blog you need to know why you’re starting it. If you don’t, it won’t be a blog – it’ll be a passing fad.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s for fun, your personal enjoyment or for business. Make sure you know what it’s for.

Here’s my reason for blogging

I started this blog specifically to enable me to attract visitors from the widest range of sources possible, so that I could introduce products and services that I market.

To date it’s doing its job, which is good, but as I’ve become busier I’ve started to wrestle with another problem that Nathan touched on: scalability.

I have a limited amount of time each day that I can devote to earning money: 24 hours, less some time for sleeping, eating and all the other bits and bobs. Let’s call it 8.

And blogging is not a very efficient activity if I look at it purely in terms of the amount of time I’m hunched over the keyboard versus the money it brings in.

My consulting gigs, which are one of the streams of revenue that my blog brings me, are not efficient either, because all I’m doing is hiring myself out for an hourly rate.

It’s a 1:1 ratio, whereas what I really need is something that’s a 1:many ratio.

So my plan, for a while now, has been to develop and launch a membership site off the back of this blog.

The membership site has an enormous amount going for it as an online business model:

You get a regular monthly income from member’s subscriptions. Preferable (in my eyes) to the stop-start revenue streams you get from a product-launch model
The bigger it gets the more you’ll be able to get keen, enthusiastic members to help with things like moderation and content development. Plus experienced members will help new members – it happens in all membership sites, and when it does you’re starting to develop scalability
It’s a business you can constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of your members which, to me, is highly satisfying.

Blogging (as I’ve said before) is hard work. But having that end goal in mind is the reason why I push through the times when I just don’t feel like it.

It gives me the motivation and the kick up the butt I need to keep at it, when all I really want to do is go out and play.

So if you’re blogging for business what’s your end goal?

You need one, and you need to be sure it’s something that’s more scalable than simply blogging.

Let us know in a comment

Why Should Expertise Be Free Just Because It’s Online?

Martin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:27:49 +0000

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.

I’m continually making resolutions to improve the way I do things, so what’s so different about January 1st?

But two articles recently caught my interest and, since it is January, they’ve provoked the closest thing I’ve come to a New Year’s resolution.

It’s about being paid for my expertise.

This article on Men With Pens and this article on CopyBlogger both question the ‘tradition’ and wisdom of free information online.

And, although I heartily agree with the sentiments of both articles, we who work online only have ourselves to blame.

We’ve created a rod for our own backs and it’s not going to be lifted any time soon.

The problem is that blogging started as a personal diary (free to set up and free to read) and steadily moved towards commercialism.

When people started monetising their blogs it produced quite a backlash. From what I’ve read, that is, because I wasn’t blogging at the time.

Then came social media – which was an even easier way for people to create online diaries and, in addition, to hook up with friends. And that was free too.

Bloggers and Internet Marketers soon cottoned on to the potential of promoting their products or services through the social media – but that produced an even more violent backlash (I was around for that one).

People were banned from Digg, not allowed to advertise on Stumbleupon and had their pages suspended from HubPages.

All those (and more) happened to me.

By the time Twitter came along marketers had cottoned on to the need to be super low key with any promotional activities they tried.

My own approach has been to monitor questions people are asking about WordPress. To write blog articles when I find a common question and direct people towards the articles when the question is repeated.

My blog articles are not promotional. They are all aimed at providing useful information to people.

But I’ve been slagged off a number of times on Twitter for doing exactly that (providing useful information) because they saw it as me promoting my article.

Somebody asked a while ago whether anyone knew any sources of educational WordPress themes.

Although I didn’t know specifically of educational themes, I do have an article on here with links to nearly 2,000 themes on different theme sites.

So I sent in a reply that said exactly that: No educational themes that I can point to directly, but there are links on here to nearly 2,000 themes and you may find something you like among them.

I received a barrage of abuse in reply. Telling me that I knew there were no educational themes in that article (err – yes, that’s what I said at the outset), that what I did was out of order and that I was just trying to get links to my page.

I wasn’t – but so what if I was?

What’s wrong with trying to let people know about my work? If they don’t like it they can leave at the click of a mouse.

This blog takes a lot of work, all of which I do myself. I enjoy it, so I’m not complaining about the work.

But the result of my work is to provide information that will help other people to improve their lives.

Just as I’m trying to improve mine.

The fact is, though, we’ve created this monster: the culture that everything online is free and anyone who dares to promote their work or charge for it is a charlatan.

So what can we do?

There are several things that I’ve resolved to do as part of this almost-resolution:

I’m going to continue to provide as much value as I can (for free) wherever I am online, be that the social networks or on this blog
I’m going to stop under-valuing the knowledge and expertise I’ve built up. Yes, I’ll provide as much value as I can, but after a certain point it will become chargeable
I will ignore the howls of protest when I point people to articles that contain useful information
I will set up a more regular routine of promoting good sources of information on my various sites. Yes – I will attempt to get more links to my pages

You see, we can’t beat this monster. We have to work round it.

That means that we have to continue to provide good quality, valuable information for free.

But we have to learn where to draw the line between free and chargeable.