Blog Posts


05. April 2010:

Important Blog Update : Moving Our Content

Regular readers will know that I have been thinking about moving this blog from Nucleus to Wordpress for some time, but the reality is that there is no easy way to do it..

I have been mulling this over and have come to a decision regarding the future of this blog. I have decided that to continue maintaing two sites under this domain is rather pointless and rather than try to go through the longwinded process of changing platforms, which is fraught with potential disasters for the less techy, like myself, the best solution for me is going to be to merge all my content into the one site.

This will be accompanied by a complete overhaul of the design of the existing site at TheCaymanHost.com and the eventual demise of the pages currently residing here at the blog.

This is not going to happen overnight as it is still going to involve a lot of work, but it will probably mean the loss of the bulk of the comments on these posts. However the content, or at least most of it, will still be available. I say most because I am also going to prune some of the older archives and irrelevant or outdated material, of which there is probably a fair amount.

If you currently subscribe to this feed, I apologize and hope that you will head over to thecaymanhost.com and subscribe to the feed there. Obviously once the move is accomplished there will be no new content appearing under the current feed of this blog and I will gradually be moving all the content that I feel is still relevant and useful to the main site. So, if you notice posts disapperaing from here, you will likely find them over there, unless they don't make the cut!

Once I have imported all my posts to the main site, I will implement a permanent redirect to take care of all old links.

I apologize to my readers for this, but the time has come to reorganize TheCaymanHost and make things more manageable and hopefully logical.

My time with Nucleus has been a very educational few years and whilst I have been impressed with the software, it has fallen far behind Wordpress in terms of customization options and SEO to the point where short of paying a lot of money to a designer for a complete overhaul, I cannot improve the look and functionality of the site to how I feel it should be in 2010. The dated appearance and limited number of themes, plugins and other functionality available has certainly played a big part in my decision to move away from the platform.  Despite constant tweaking over the years, the design is simply not appealing and looks dated and irrelevant on the modern day web.

So far it seems that there is no reliable way to import the posts to Wordpress, so this is going to be a long and tedious process. This will probably therefore be the last post I make on this blog and also that a lot more of my archived posts will probably be abandoned to the mists of time than originally planned because it's going to be done manually, post by post!

If you currently subscribe to this feed please consider subscribing to the feed at the CaymanHost either in your RSS reader or via email. I would hate to lose you!

TCH



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caymanhost  Blogging    
29. December 2009:

Free Affiliate Software For Webmasters & Bloggers

For those looking to monetize a site these tools are definitely worth a look, regardless of what niche you are working with.You can also find out more in the free report "7 Simple Ways To monetize your Website or Blog" which you can download as a PDF or simply read online through the aforementioned link.

I've been testing many of the tools available through Skadoogle and although it's too early to say how effective they have been on the sites I'm using some of them on, the signs are encouraging in several areas.

All I would say is that when adding various codes to your sites, check to make sure there are no conflicts arising with other plugins etc. because certain tools did cause a few minor issues on certain sites of mine. Having said that, Skadoogle respond very quickly to support tickets even if you are a free member, so if you want to give them a try you'll have access to fast and easy help.

 


Get the Affiliate Software of the Century - FREE

 

Once inside the members area you will find a lot of useful affiliate tools and it's all pretty simple to use, having said that it's also worth watching the instructional videos to make sure you understand the full range of options available to you.

If your sites are not making you the money you hoped for, try something new - Skadoogle is just one option you may find useful.

If you haven't yet joined the newsletter, you'll now find a convenient opt-in box top right of this page and you'll get a copy of CamStudio if you decide to opt-in - it's not Camtasia but it does a similar job without all the bells and whistles and without the $300 odd price tag.

Happy New year to all my visitors, subscribers and customers see you all in 2010!

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caymanhost  Internet Marketing    
02. December 2009:

Turn Your Photos Into Cash Product Review

Turn Your Photos Into Cash Home Study Course Review

Seller: Dan Feildman

"Turn Your Photos Into Cash" is a home study course about making money online through digital photography. Written for anyone who can use a digital camera, the course focuses on selling digital photography through stock photo sites on the Internet. The text and video formats allow different types of learners to make the most of the course.

Product Details:

"Turn Your Photos Into Cash" - The main course is a 129-page Ebook with the following chapters:

- Introduction

- Jumpstart Your Career

- Before You Begin

- Four Ways to Make Money with Your Digital Photos

- Five Secrets to Making More Money with Your Stock Photos

- Tips and Tricks for Taking Better Photos

- Tips and Tricks for Enhancing Your Photos

The product also comes with the following bonuses:

1. "Offline Opportunities Report" - A 34-page special report about offline ways to make money with digital photography

2. "Slash Your Learning Curve Using These Five Checklists" - Detailed checklists or cheat sheets guide the user through the essential points of the course.

The checklists are:

- What You Need to Make Money Online with Your Digital Photos

- The Legalities of Digital Photography

- How to Protect Your Photography

- How to Take Better Photos

- How to Improve Your Image Editing

3. "Five Action Steps Guides" - Step-by-step guide to make money through specific websites. The guides are:

- How to Make Money with iStockphoto

- How to Make Money with Stockxpert

- How to Make Money with CafePress

- How to Find Freelance Projects with Elance

- How to Make Money with Break.com

4. "Turn Your Photos Into Cash Mind Maps" - Excellent for visual learners, the mind maps allow the user to grasp the strategies at a glance. The mind maps offer an excellent overview of the course, and can be used to refresh the lessons in the user's mind. The 8 mind maps are:

- Complete Mind Map

- Introduction

- Jump Start Your Career

- Before You Begin

- Four Ways to Make Money

- Five Secrets to Making More Money

- Tips for Enhancing Photos

- Tips for Taking Better Photos

5. "Turn Your Photos Into Cash" Video - This is the complete home study course in either video or audio-only formats.

Format: The main course and first four bonuses are digital text files in the form of PDF. The videos are in digital Flash format. These can be either viewed online or downloaded into the user's hard drive. The audio version of the course is in mp3 format, which can be loaded into any mp3 player.

"Turn Your Photos Into Cash" was created for anybody who knows how to use a digital camera and has access to a computer with Internet connection. One does not have to be a professional photographer to understand and benefit from the course.

While it briefly discusses the technical issues of digital photography, the course really isn't about how to take digital photographs. It is about how to sell those photographs online and make money.

The course presents these marketing strategies in easy to understand language. Even complete newbies or amateur digital photographers will not be overwhelmed or intimidated. The strategies don't take a lot of time or energy to implement. The bonus cheat sheets, step-by-step guides and mindmaps make it even easier to actually take action and simply jump into making money with digital photography.

The video and audio formats will appeal to visual and auditory learners. That you can load the lessons into your mp3 player and listen to them on the go is a definite plus. Digital photography is a little-known work at home business model, particularly among those who are not professional photographers.

With "Turn Your Photos Into Cash," however, even amateur photographers with a little time and motivation can soon be making money with their photographs.

Where to Learn More: Turn Your Photos Into Cash

TCH



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caymanhost  Earning Money Online    
23. September 2009:

CBProAds One Year On - A Fair Review

Last year I decided to join CBProAds as I wanted to place some advertising on this blog but did not want to use Adsense for various reasons.

At that time, contextual Clickbank ads were not too easy to come by and the programs on offer were often ridiculously priced as far as I was concerned. CBProAds was the one service that seemed reasonably priced and offered a lot of customizable features for their membership fee.

I signed up and was pleased with the simplicity of set up although targeting ads using keywords was sometimes a bit hit and miss. During the course of the year I tweaked a few things as I went along but the click through rate was always rather disappointing.

 

CBProAds

 

In addition to the text ads placed on this site there were plenty of other tools including your own storefront which, as a pro member was reasonably customizable and looked half way decent as well, unlike many more expensive CB stores.

When my renewal came up a month or so ago I decided against paying for another year of CBProAds membership. It's not that it's abad service but now that Clickbank are offering their own contextual ads it seemed less worth the investment than it did a year ago. It means the loss of my storefront and the loss of any future referral commissions but I didn't feel right about continuing to promote something that all Clickbank users can now get for free (at least the contextual text ads aspect).

I will say that the folks at CBProAds were some of the fastest when it came to paying affiliate commissions and never once did I have a problem. My earnings from the affiliate program outweighed the Clickbank sales I made with the system and in terms of ROI it was a real winner, netting me several hundred dollars over the course of the year without too much effort. I just think that with Clickbank's own advertising script now available for publishers, there does not seem much point in continuing with CBProAds, at least not based on the click through rates achieved on this blog and a couple of other sites on which I had it installed.

Overall however, a positive experience and a profitable little venture while it lasted. If you are looking for an easy to use system or really want a clickbank Storefront then they may well be worth a look although only really as an upgraded member and in terms of value, it's looking less attractive than it did 14 months ago.

If all you want are some text ads similar to Google Adsense on your pages you might be better advised to use Clickbank's HopAd Builder from within your membership area. Success rates with this will depend greatly on the content of your blog or website but for niche focused sites they can do reasonably well.

 



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caymanhost  Clickbank    
08. August 2009:

Goodbye To DoFollow

I have come to the decision after over two years to remove the "dofollow" status for comments on this blog.

I think I have been more than patient and asked repeatedly that people not abuse the dofollow status of my blogs but it would seem that, as so often in life, a large percentage of idiots have to ruin things for legitimate visitors and those who genuinely have something useful to add and wish to enter into discussion.

I can no longer keep up with deleting the number of stupid spam comments from so many people who are either using posting software or misguidedly paying for comments to be posted on their behalf in an attempt to gain backlinks. I have a life and better things to do.

As soon as I get around to it this blog will revert to nofollow on all comments with no exceptions. The people who try to game the system once again triumph in destroying a good thing for good people.

It's goodbye to DoFollow and that's a real shame. To those who continue to abuse the idea, all you will eventually achieve is the total disappearance of all dofollow sites, effectively destroying everything you have done. Clever or stupid? You decide.

TCH



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14. July 2009:

A DDOS Attack Takes Down The Site

I apologize to anyone who had trouble accessing any areas of the site recently but at the tail end of last week I suffered a severe DDOS attack on this domain which brought the server to its knees and took some time to nail down.

The hosting directory was the target and the Wordpress site was down all over the weekend while frantic messages travelled between myself and my host. Finally this morning we got most areas up and running again but there was some damage done in the process and I'm still trying to restore some areas of functionality to various sites.

Why we were targeted in this way I have no idea, but the attack was swift and came with no warning whatsoever. I wasted a lot of time thinking that it was something to do with my Wordpress installation and to be honest the tech support guys were rather slow off the mark. 

I was completely baffled and only after downloading and checking my raw access logs did I see what was causing my domain to crash the server the minute it was enabled. Thousands upon thousands of calls every second from thousands of different IP addresses. Even after notifying my host of what I had found they seemed very slow to respond or even take any notice of what I was telling them, stubbornly sticking to the belief that it was a script on my site causing the heavy server load. 

This is the first time I have had cause to be disappointed in the response from their support system. Not only were they rather slow but they didn't seem to be very knowledgable either. Eventually my message obviously got through and someone considered the possibility that it was indeed an outside attack on the server and they looked at the box and confirmed what I had been asking them to check for. This was a full on and nasty DDOS attack that found a vulnerability somewhere and caused a lot of downtime for my domain.

Finally this morning my index file was unlocked and so far, things have been OK. However, I continue to find areas of my site that seem to have been affected by the whole thing and I'm not sure how or why.

A whole day has been spent checking and reactivating WP plugins and having a good spring clean. Many of the widgets have had to be re-installed and the site is slowly returning to the way it was before the attack. For some reason there were also some strange effects on this blog but hopefully I have now resolved them. If you do notice any strange behavior or non functioning areas please let me know.

As a result of this however, I did do some housekeeping and cleared up a lot of obsolete junk lying around in various places. I have also installed Bad Behavior on both the WP site and this blog. I made sure that every password was changed and beefed up in all admin areas just as a precaution.

My understanding is that there is little that can be done to prevent such attacks but I am sure my host will be looking at ways to prevent this from happening at their end and I will be having a conference with them tomorrow online to see what can be learned from the experience.

I always believed that such attacks were reserved for high profile and high traffic sites, but have learned the hard way that it can and does happen to anyone. What can you do as a site owner to prevent it? Well, it seems you cannot protect yourself completely but  I will say this - the security on my WP installation is probably far more comprehensive than the majority of blogs out there and it made no difference. Whether Bad Behavior would have stopped the attack I don't know but it certainly persuaded me to give the plugin a try, something I have always deemed unnecessary until now. I recommend you consider using it too, if you don't already. Anything you do to make things harder from these internet vandals has got to be a good thing.

It's been a four day nightmare that I can only hope is now behind me.

TCH



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21. June 2009:

Internet Marketing Lies and Stupidity

I have a bee in my bonnet today, and it was caused by an email I received on one of the lists I am subscribed to.

If you are or have been involved in internet marketing for any length of time, or even if you haven't, you've probably at least seen examples of what I'm going to write about today.

I'm going to cover several points in this post

1) Marketers who speak with forked tongues

2) Marketers who patronize their so called "valued" subscribers

3) Marketers who forget that credibiilty is easily shattered

4) Marketers who believe that to mislead or outright lie in pursuit of a dollar is the acceptable norm and is actually fiendishly clever.

The email I recieved was one in a familiar vein, that went something like this:

"If you missed the launch of product blah blah....."

"It sold out in fifteen minutes so don't bother visiting the link because they've all been disabled...."

"BUT, I am going to do you a huge favor! I'm going to give you a copy entirely free, all you have to do is...."

Marketers Lie TooOK, at this point I'm going to say that this kind of ridiculous pop psychology approach to marketing really annoys me although I concede that it probably works on a proportion of the people out there or they wouldn't do it.

Sold out? Really? A digital video information product that is sold out?  So they have no more copies of these videos, they destroyed the files themselves or did someone break into their homes and steal their hard drives, raid their hosting company and carry of the servers in the dead of night?

Maybe that is what happened but surely they could contact one of the mugs, sorry, customers, who bought it and ask them for a copy, or am I being naive here? Where is my free copy going to come from? It's all very worrying.

OK, so they've taken down the links on the salespage temporarily. Let's be honest here folks, we all know it will be back up and running in the near future, if it's such a great seller why would you stop selling it? It's not a membership site or a software product, it's just a bunch of videos.

So, I think we can say that heroic email marketer is guilty of sins one through four above already, but not satisfied with this he makes it worse with his special offer to me, his "valued subscriber".

Now remember, although it is sold out, he is going to give me a copy for free. Lucky me, I can't wait, it's too much excitement for a hot and muggy Sunday afternoon in the Caribbean. He tells me that ALL I have to do is take a trial of another Clickbank product for just $4.95. As it's a product I'm very familiar with, I already know that after taking that trial period I will have to hand over a monthly membership fee of $67.00 should I want to keep using it. I also know that the product in question pays a healthy recurring monthly commission to affiliates.

Now, lest we forget, he is doing me a favor, not the other way around, so of course the email neglects to mention any of these pertinent facts.

This is marketing at its lowest level. I don't care what labels the promoter might put on it - bonuses, deals, never to be repeated, you'll thank me forever etc. etc. The truth of the matter is that it is good old fashioned bullshit designed to trick the unwary or inexperienced. The product he is trying to sell, in order for you to get something for "free", is not for the inexperienced either, something I also know for a fact. It's not a bad product, but as usual the sales copy skims over a lot of the facts with a lot of these $$$$$$$! Besides, doesn't something stop being free the moment you hand over money?

My point is this - if you are new to the whole internet marketing hooplah, don't be taken in by people like this who are the reason that marketing online is so damned hard a lot of the time, and please, whatever you do, don't think these kinds of tactics are the only way to succeed and are something you should be emulating.

Find some decent and helpful people to learn from and help others by passing on your knowledge and experience.

For this subscriber, it was a very quick bye bye to that list and I hope I'm not the only one either. Why build a list and completely destroy your credibility with emails like this? (For information on how to use email marketing in an ethical and non-scummy way I recommend you read the New Age Email Marketing Report)

If you genuinely feel that life is too short to live it honestly and don't believe that there is more to life than easy money on the internet, or anywhere else, then you won't care what I think. The "nice guys finish last" philosophy might help people like this guy sleep at night, but do you really want someone like that to get their grubby hands on your hard earned money?

Think about it. That's all I'm saying.

PHOTO CREDIT: ATENCION



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24. May 2009:

Marketing And Twitter Revisited

Twitter marketing, it's all the rage and since my last post on Tooting Your Twitter Horn I've come up with a bit more to add to my previous thoughts. Some of this has come from experience and some of it from the thoughts and observations of others.

No, I'm not going to retract what I have said previously, I still believe Twitter is a kind of love/hate thing for me, but I have learned a lot more since last writing and much of it is worth sharing. This is not a "do it my way" "do it this or that way" type of offering, just a few more things to share and disseminate to those struggling to find their Twitter comfort zone.

So many people are talking about Twitter that it is fairly easy to find answers to most of the questions you may have, and it seems there is always something new to learn.

My use of Twitter on a daily basis has seen my network grow steadily and there have been no real secrets to this happening. If you participate and seeek out like minded people it is almost inevitable. Yes, there are ways to accelerate the size of your network and I've tried a few of them. Like most new users my choices were not always wise when I first started out, but I have since discovered some very useful and powerful tools.

Hint, many of the scripts that require you to Tweet a message advertising the service are not well received by many but it's up to you regarding the use of individual programs.

However' learning as you go has always been my preferred method online and it will be the same for most new Tweeters. So, let's get onto a few gripes first...mostly everyday things on Twitter.

(These things irritate a lot of people but if you think they are things that will work for you I'm not going to stop you - the Twitterverse is a land of free speech to my mind).

I have come to agree with the overriding philosophy that Twitter is first and foremost about getting involved and interracting with your network. I have struck up some really cool conversations and met a lot of people by participating actively so as far as I'm concerned it was time well spent. By the same token, the mistakes that so many make, seem so blatant and obvious (and we're talking strictly marketing here).

An experienced eye can soon tell the people using services like TweetLater that queue messages and post them on a schedule set by the user who will doubtless be off doing other things with no intention of ever spending time on "social" Tweeting. For them it's just an advertising medium. The fact that their Tweets are monotonously uniformly spaced and are always the same sales messages every day is, I would suggest, guaranteed to turn people off. It's the good old scattergun approach, probably delivering the same old carnage in terms of results.

It's a sloppy tactic and it's probably doomed to failure.

Then we have the "liars". Yes there are lots of them, so let's be frank shall we? There are many examples of this type flowing through the stream of Twitter.

Affiliate links blatantly posted with accompanying false claims "I'm making XYZ a week with this crap and you can too...."usually followed by a hoplink. Alternatively, "I've suffered from XYZ infirmity for years but this cured me....(another hoplink).

Now, if you want people to trust you and buy something on your recommendation, lying is not a good start. Speaking in the first person when it is obvious you have never done anything more than troll your way through the Clickbank marketplace and grab a hoplink is marketing ineptitude at full throttle. And let's face it people, who believes someone who has made a fortune last month, reversed his balding, lost 500 pounds, given up smoking and perfected his golf swing all at once? That's some dude.

Then we have those promoting Twitter tools to explode your following. If you have only a small following yourself how do you think this looks? Be very careful with your reputation, because online, it's often all you have.  I know people are looking for simpler ways to build their accounts, but if you behave naturally and talk to others, your following will grow "organically". Be patient or spend lots of money on a pro tool like Hummingbird (see resources below).

Along the same lines are those who brag about success but forget that it is easy for someone to do five minutes of research and blow them out of the water. Prime example was a young lad (if his avatar is to be believed) pushing several sites promising marketing riches and the like. On inspection, each site was an early 90's cookie cutter template with a few PPC ads slapped on and content written by someone probably more accustomed to eating Farley's Rusks and peeing in their Huggies. What's more, the sites were receiving zero traffic, or as close to zero as you can get.

More disturbing however was the individual's fawning and retweeting of a so called "guru" by whom he has obviously been conned into parting with money probably better spent on a college fund, for information worth absolutely nothing. Said guru/marketer was also busy making claims for another of his devotees sites regarding levels of success, totally debunked by looking at the site's statistics.

Now, as I've said before, far be it from anyone to tell anyone that there is a correct way to behave on Twitter, that annoys me just as much, but there are right and wrong ways to behave in life and those should really carry through to what you do on the internet. Yeah, some hope I know but it's worth saying.

On the upside, I have also met some cool people on Twitter and have found some great uses for it. It can be fun, if time consuming, and from a marketing perspective it is certainly worth incorporating into your efforts.

Yesterday I posted a tweet that was picked up by SEO master AndyBeard and the resulting response by way of sales was quite remarkable. Not many high profile users will give you the time of day like Andy, but, if someone with a large and relevant following knows you and decides to press the right buttons, the benefits can be delivered very quickly on Twitter.

I've posted some interesting but by no means extensive, resource links below for further reading. Ultimately Twitter is rising in my list of priorities and I'm now suggesting that maybe it should in yours too.

Oh, and don't forget to follow me @Caymanhost and get to meet some other cool marketing Tweople

Useful Twitter Links

Creating Multiple Twitter Accounts With One Email Address

Learning Twitter (Hashtags, Whales etc)

HummingBird Pro Twitter Tool (expensive but powerful) Best For Those Wanting To Build Networks Fast

Brute Force Twitter - Another network building tool (untested)

Twitter Salvation - Twitter For Small Business Users

Tweeting Too Hard - Tweets and Tweople Lampooned 

Qwitter - Monitoring Twitter Unfollowers On Your Behalf

Exit Tweet Generator (For Webmasters Wishing To Promote A Specific Site)

MrTweet - recommend your friends to others

Twitter Business Cards

File Twitter - Easily Share Files With Twitter Friends and Followers

Twitter Grader - Find Out How You and Others Rank

Tweet Backup - If You Really Want To Backup Your Twittering

Twitter Graphics - Excellent Selection Of Free Twitter Buttons and Badges

Keeping Up With All Your Friends & Followers Try Seesmic Desktop or TweetDeck



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