Purposeinc

Over the past 6 months I have run into this really nice guy by the name of Scott Skinger.

First he was in the poker tournament. Here he is seated between Dan Perry, the guy who won, and some other bald guy wearing sun glasses. He blogs on mountany stuff and also has a site that does computer stuff video training.

Then I ran into him again at the Elite Retreat.

Scott is the one with the red arrow pointing toward his head.

By the way, that was one heck of a dinner with one heck of a group of people. The amount of brilliance at the table that night was amazing.

So anyways, Scott is this really nice guy who I keep bumping into. There are many people like this we all meet. Great guy, but I can’t remember exactly what he does. You remember he is polite, considerate, warm, which are all the basics, but it is not enough to really seal the deal in business.

So what does it take?

It takes Brownies!!

Yesterday I am at my chiropractic office. Usually my chiropractic office and my Internet businesses do not intersect very often. But I am standing at work, right after treating a patient, and one of my staff walks over and goes “Who is Scott Skinger”?? I think for a moment, Scott? Scott? Oh yeh! They nice guy from the poker tournament and the Elite Retreat.

I ask her why?

She says, he sent you brownies!

My ears perk up, and curiosity sets in.

Sitting in front of me is a box of brownies. They had a nice personal note with them thanking me for having dinner with him, and how nice it was to meet me and my wife.

There is no sales pitch in the note. No asking for anything. In fact I had to Google Scott to even see what his sites were.

So my wife and I have eaten two of the brownies, and the rest are in the freezer to be consumed slowly over time.

Scott got my attention. I already knew and liked him, but now with the brownies I will never forget him for the rest of my life.

As a result of Scott being a great guy and getting my attention he got this article written about him.

So what is the lesson in this. Do something nice. Send someone some fricken brownies for gosh sake, knit them a hat, especially someone with a blog, and see what happens? Just ask yourself, unless you are Jeremy, who gets more free crap than anyone else in the universe , how often does someone send you a nice thank you?

You can’t pay for links or you will get busted by Google right? But no one can ever stop you from being nice. All of the cool links I have ever gotten were simply by doing nice stuff for people. I have had cartoons drawn of people, had a poker tournament, brought burritos and chiropractic to firefighters etc. etc. Just do nice stuff for people with websites, and see what happens!

We have been working with Randy Couture’s organization, Xtreme Couture GI Foundation to try to come up with something special for a project coming up. If you don’t know who he is, Randy is the 5 time world champ in mixed martial arts.

In talking to Randy’s son, I found out about the 5K charity run they are having in Vegas weekend after the one coming up.

The money from Randy’s charity goes to help American troops who have suffered massive losses. Examples of this would be guys who lost their arms or legs, and are on their way to becoming homeless.

If you want to mention it on your blog, I am sure Randy will be very appreciative.

Stay tuned to this blog for something exciting to be announced in the next few weeks!

As anyone who knows me knows, I have a special spot in my heart for wordcamp San Francisco, the original!

In fact when it comes to wordpress and Matt Mullenweg I am like a crazed Beatles fan from the 60’s.

This year it has been announced that Wordcamp San Francisco will be on August 16 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.

I am actually going to miss the overheated, no where to sit, no way the bathrooms could stay totally clean, no where to park, gritty feel of the Swedish American Hall.

It should be a blast!

The wordcamp site is not taking signups yet although I check it every week or so.

I will keep snooping around until I figure out where to sign up, then I will post it here.

I highly recommend you go! Where else can you hang out for like a half hour asking Matt Cutts questions because nobody else there knows who he is. This year though, I smell a change in the air…

By the way, while we are waiting for wordcamp 2008 san francisco to begin, start thinking about what the ultimate snack would be to eat while you are listening.

You will start to notice at some point comments showing up on your site, that are quotes from someone else’s site. If you click on them, you will find someone else who linked to you.

The problem is at least initially, that many of these are actually junk, and here is why.

There are websites out there where the owner does not bother to actually create any content on the site. Instead he will just steal your writing and put it on his site. We call these stealers of writing, scrapers. Yes, there is probably something you could do about it, but it is often just not worth the work. The scrapers are usually doing it so they can put ads on their site and make money off of it.

If there is a good link to your site, when you click on the excerpt, it will take you to the page on the other site. The other sites page will then have an original article that might reference your site, and not just be a rip off of your writing. If I link to one of my friends blogs, Taylor and his new bride to be, then it will show up in his comments as a quote from this page. Taylor can then let that excerpt show up in his comments, or he can delete me if he thinks this is spam!

You can usually sort out quickly if it is a scraper site linking to you or a real one, by just looking at the site. If the site is full of other peoples stolen materials, then it is just junk, and I would delete the comment. If it is a link and an excerpt from someone’s real site, then you can either leave it, or delete it. For some of my sites I just delete them so it does not take people off of my site. For this site, I usually leave the comment and the excerpt in my comments.

These excerpts and links by the way are called trackbacks.

Here is a list of all the wordpress beginner blogger posts
How to Blog for Absolute Beginners - #1 Start
Absolute Begining Blogging #2 - Catagories
Absolute Beginner Blogging #3 Leaving a Comment
Absolute Beginner Blogging #4 Handling Comments
Absolute Beginner Blogging #5 - Modifying a Published Post
Absolute Beginner Blogging #6 - Generating Viewers
Absolute Beginner Blogging #7 - Links
Absolute Beginner Blogging #8 - Those Funny Links called Trackbacks

I don’t know exactly what to call this group, other than the folks in the internet marketing world that have befriended and helped me.

You guys have been most excellent!

Thank you all for sending me the info I asked for.

Thank you all for caring enough to bother and not dumping my request in the spam bin!

It is a hell of thing to get that many responses from so many people that I think so highly of, and respect so much!

I’ve got a couple of things  brewing, and I will be asking for more information shortly to deliver you exactly what you want!

For the moment, just a big thank you for what was one of the more enlightening, and fun days of my life!

If you don’t know what I am talking about, then make sure to come to the poker tournament this year, and get on the list, and then you will be in the loop!

Much, Much, Much, love,

dk

This post comes after much discussion with myself!

On a weekly basis or so, I come up with an idea that to me is such a great idea that I am sure if I fully developed it, it would have the ability to make a million bucks, or at least waste a few months of my time and crank out enough money for Sushi for 10 people.

After watching one of my Internet hero’s up close, and seeing that he appears to experiment quite a bit, but only take on one really huge project per year, and also watching how long it takes me to fully implement a good idea (The above graphic took me around 4 hours), I realized I don’t stand a rats chance in hell to get even 10 percent of these ideas done.

So the deal is from now on I will hang on to one or two of the best ideas of the year, and the other ones are going to be fessed up on this site. I will start my million dollar ideas with the above graphic.

If you happen to implement one of them, then keep me posted that you are going to try it, and keep me posted on how it goes. If you feel really generous, then if it flies you can always paypal me a percentage. The ideas though are totally open source, steal em, change em, run with them! You are on your own, no promises, no guarantees, you will probably crash and burn and fail in flames, but then again who knows?

So here is the first Million Dollar Idea. It is about the many blogs on Make Money Online!

If you read the blogs, many of them say the same thing which is write about making money online and post ads where your readers can click and sign up to host the same ads on their site. Each time they click on the ad you make some money. A dollar here, a quarter there and it can add up! The person who clicked on your ad can then put the same ad on their site, and when someone wants to learn how to make money online, they can click that ad, and then they make a buck, and you might make a few cents yourself.

For this to work, one needs to have thousands of readers for it to ad up to anything appreciable. I have actually been shocked when I see what some of these sites sell for when someone gets rid of them. The prices seem so shockingly low compared to the readership, and the amount of time put into making the site that it often shocks me.

THE MILLION DOLLAR IDEA?

Do something on your site! Actually sell a real thing, or a real service, or a sell a real thing or a real service for someone else.

My main site, bodyabcs.com has made money since the day I set it up. It is not because people click on ads, it is because we actually have a really cool product and we use the site to tell people about it. People want to buy real stuff, like orchids or Harley’s.

Google’s Matt Cutts has repeated to me over and over every time I have heard him, and repeats to everyone else that you should have quality useful content for your users such as this post of Matts on the parts of URL’s.

In an earlier post I wrote about how in an hour we got a local Pizza place to rank number one for their major keyword which will make Kevin many thousands of dollars a year, if not every month, more than he would have without it.

Find a really cool thing that you believe in, and that is something as opposed to just the concept of making money online, and develop it. Develop a site on something like pizza, or rabbits feet, or poppy seeds, and there will end up being real value to some of the billion or so people online.

Not creative enough to come up with a real thing that people will want?

Then just stick around I will be sharing my ideas here from now on.

By the way, I have set up dozens of businesses over the last few decades, some of them turned out better and others worse, but every one made at least a little profit, some of them with a handful of zeros.
So stick around here, and I will share my ideas. Use them at your own risk!

Much Love,

dk

The internet lets you create a link from some words on your page, to another page on your site, or a page on another site. When someone clicks on the link, they are taken to another page. If you have made it to the point where you are reading this, you have probably already done a lot of clicking on links.

Before I teach you how to link, you should learn a couple of rules. These are not laws, they are not even based on politeness or courtesy, they are rules set by Google to follow if you want to show up in the search engine called Google.

Google’s representatives have stated in a nutshell that they don’t want you to link to bad neighborhoods. These are sites where there are naked peoples, sites where you can gamble, or to sites that are extra sneaky.

Google helps people find the sites they are looking for in a given category. The strength, and the weakness of Google is that it will rank you higher if you have lots of links going to your site. The main way Google measures the importance of your site is by how many, links are going to your site, and how important the sites are that are linking to you. How does Google measure the importance of a site? That is right, by the number and quality of links going to it, and so on, and so on!

So when you start, don’t take links if someone offers to exchange links, and don’t link to sites that are involved with anything sneaky, illegal or naked! (If you want to do good in Google.)

To create a link to another page is simple. My freind Jeremy put a picture of my wife Jo on his main page. The red arrow was not on his site, but points to her picture. It is kind of a big deal, because like 100,000 people can read one of his posts.

You can see the actual picture on this page, click here.

So how did I create the link?

I went to the page I wanted to link to.

Then I selected the address in the top of the browser of that page. That is the part that says, http://www.blahblahblah

Then I clicked at the top of the screen on Edit.

Then I clicked on Copy.

Then I went back into my wordpress blog where I was already logged in.

I then selected the text (In this case it was the words, “click here”)

Then I clicked on the little button in wordpress directly above my writing that looks like handcuffs.

I then clicked in the box by Link URL.

Then I clicked at the top of my screen on Edit.

Then i clicked on Paste.

(This then pasted the http://www.blah part from Jeremy’s site)

For now you can just leave the target and title blank.

Then click on Insert.

You won’t see the link now until you publish the blog, except that the words of the link will be blue and underlined.

A good place to start is to link from one part of your blog to another part.

You can also practice by linking to this page so others can learn how to link!

Here is a list of all the wordpress beginner blogger posts
How to Blog for Absolute Beginners - #1 Start
Absolute Begining Blogging #2 - Catagories
Absolute Beginner Blogging #3 Leaving a Comment
Absolute Beginner Blogging #4 Handling Comments
Absolute Beginner Blogging #5 - Modifying a Published Post
Absolute Beginner Blogging #6 - Generating Viewers
Absolute Beginner Blogging #7 - Links
Absolute Beginner Blogging #8 - Those Funny Links called Trackbacks

The Internet is a conversation, or at least it can be. One person makes a statement, and someone else speaks back. This conversation can easily take place on a blog, or back and forth between two blogs.

One of the easiest ways to get viewers of your blog is to converse with others with similar, or just interesting blogs.

Find a blog you like. If you don’t know of any go to Google’s blog search. Enter in the topic or topics related to your blog, and look for other blogs that seem to relate. Read one of their posts on their blog. If it is interesting, you can click around and read many of their posts on their blog. When you find a post about which you have something clever, or helpful, or funny to say, then leave a comment below it.

Comments on newer posts are more likely to be read. On my blogs, I usually notice comments even on my older posts.

When someone reads your comments, whether it is the owner of the blog or their readers, they may click on your name and follow you over to your blog. Then if your blog has something interesting to say, they may come back. Feel free to ask questions in the comments of someones blog. These are all ways to get the conversation started.

At all costs, I highly recommend that you avoid anything that sounds like an advertisement in your comments. Most of us do not enjoy anything that sounds self promoting in comments.

Stay tuned for more!

Here is a list of all the wordpress beginner blogger posts
How to Blog for Absolute Beginners - #1 Start
Absolute Begining Blogging #2 - Catagories
Absolute Beginner Blogging #3 Leaving a Comment
Absolute Beginner Blogging #4 Handling Comments
Absolute Beginner Blogging #5 - Modifying a Published Post
Absolute Beginner Blogging #6 - Generating Viewers
Absolute Beginner Blogging #7 - Links
Absolute Beginner Blogging #8 - Those Funny Links called Trackbacks

Lets say you just published a post, and now realized you misspelled something, forgot the category, or just messed up on your writing.

Go ahead and log in to your site.

Click on Manage.

Click on Posts. This will show all of the posts you have posted, with the new one on top.

Click on the title of the post you want to change.

Now you can make any change you want to the title or content.

You can change the category.

You can even change the date by clicking on the word edit, that is right by the date.

Then click save.

Easy, Peasy!

Here is a list of all the wordpress beginner blogger posts
How to Blog for Absolute Beginners - #1 Start
Absolute Begining Blogging #2 - Catagories
Absolute Beginner Blogging #3 Leaving a Comment
Absolute Beginner Blogging #4 Handling Comments
Absolute Beginner Blogging #5 - Modifying a Published Post
Absolute Beginner Blogging #6 - Generating Viewers
Absolute Beginner Blogging #7 - Links
Absolute Beginner Blogging #8 - Those Funny Links called Trackbacks