A little about Harry Potter, our vacation, and the benefits of an internet business……..

Well, after I started noticing twitter being talked about practically everywhere, I decided to take the plunge.  I knew Twitter had really made the jump from being a fad to being mainstream when it was being talked about on just about every popular television show and news cast - even the non-geeky and non-tech-savvy ones.

You can see my twitter page at http://twitter.com/HillRobertson

Twitter can really be beneficial for some great up to date info.  There are many ways that it can be used for internet marketing for both individuals and businesses.  Please subscribe to my posts (top right side of this page) and over the coming weeks, you will learn how you can benefit from twitter.

Later…….

- Hill

OK.  So you ask, “Hill, you keep talking about making money online but you don’t always give details about how.”

Well, here you go…….  Here is one of many ways of making money online.  The beauty about this method is that you don’t even need a product of your own.  The most common term is “Affiliate Marketing”.  The way it works is as follows….

A merchant has a product they want to sell and they want to get as many interested people as possible to see their product.  They may not know much about marketing or they may not have a good budget for marketing.  Whatever the reason, they decide to let other people become and affiliate to promote their product.  In return, they are willing to give the affiliate a commission (or portion) of the profits for helping them make a sale.  So, it is a good deal for both parties involved.  The merchant makes a sale without having to do much advertising and the affiliate makes money by referring the customer without having to have a product of their own and dealing with the customer.  The affiliate is basically a middleman that get a cut of the action.

So, you can be an affiliate.  Many merchants have affiliate programs.  Sometimes they have different names such as “associates program” or “referral program”, but they generally follow the same idea.  Some merchants have their own programs but many use affiliate networks that make things much easier for both the affiliate and the merchant.  The affiliate network handles the transactions and pays the merchant and the affiliate on a regular basis.  This is convenient for all parties involved.  In addition, as an affiliate, you may decide to promote many different offers within an affiliate network and all of the commissions you make will all be included in your check (so you don’t have to get a bunch of smaller checks.)  Many of the networks have excellent tools for finding offers and tracking your results.

To get started, you need to find some affiliate networks and sign up for them.  You can then browse around their offers and pick the ones you want to promote.  There are thousands and thousands of offers out there so you will probably find something you are interested in.  Typically, they give you a special web link that you can use on your blog, in an email, in a pay-per-click ad, or almost anywhere else you want to put it.  Then, if someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you will get credit for the sale and you will be credited your commission in your affiliate network account.  Isn’t that cool?

Many people have mastered the art of affiliate marketing and make millions of dollars promoting other people’s products.  There are all kinds of techniques for affiliate marketing.  Start doing some Google searches for affiliate networks and affiliate marketing and you just might like what you see and make some money along the way………..

- Hill

With all of these government bailouts (that we the taxpayers are paying for), it makes you wonder - “Where is MY bailout!”  All of these multi-billion dollar banks, insurance companies, auto makers, and everyone else in line all say that they are going to go bankrupt and need someone to give them money to stay afloat.  Well how about you and your family?

Many people are in debt to their eyeballs and don’t see a way of getting out without a bailout of there own.  Are you in this same situation living paycheck to paycheck? Don’t you wish you could ask the government for a bailout to pay off your debts so YOU can stay afloat?  Well, think again.  The government is not about to bail you out too.

However, hope is not lost.  You CAN have a bailout of your very own.  It won’t be a free handout from the government or anyone else; but you can create your own bailout.  There is nothing to keep you from generating your own income in addition to what you are already making.  There are so many opportunities of making money with your own business.  With an internet based business, your costs are so low, there is virtually no risk.

Don’t get caught up in JOB mentality.  Your JOB does not have to be your only source of income.  You don’t have to stay in your normal rut of going to work, putting in your time (probably doing something you really aren’t excited about doing), and coming home to sit on the couch watching the time-robbing television and falling asleep only to wake up and start the process all over again.

You can create a business doing something you love.  It won’t be easy, but you can eventually build it to replace your JOB so that you can work when you want and doing what you want.  It won’t happen unless you start.  Decide what you love to do and think about what product or service you could sell.  It may be the best decision of your life.

It is your choice….  Keep doing what you have always done and you will keep getting what you’ve already got.  Or, step out and choose to take control of your life and create your very own bailout!

If you want to get started with a website of your very own but don’t know where to start, post a comment on this post.  It will be kept private……

- Hill

Labor day originated in 1882 as the Central Labor Union of New York City looked to create a “day off for the working citizens”.  Most “working” people with typical jobs look forward to this day off of work.  Frequently you will hear people with a job excited about a day off.

While taking time off from “work” to spend time with your family is a very good thing to do, wouldn’t you rather work for yourself and be able to take off whenever you want and not have to wait for a national holiday to spend time with your family?

Don’t just settle for trading your time for money at a JOB where you will always be a slave to your employer and many times have to sacrifice important valuable family time to fulfill your employers dreams instead of your own.  If you haven’t already, now is the time to start your own business and start paving the way to your own freedom and financial independence.

You can do it.  One of the best ways is to start an internet based business doing whatever you love to do.  Just set up a blog or some sort of web based tool to get your information out there and build up a list of subscribers to your information.  From that list and the relationships you build, you can create a product or service and start selling it.  It’s not as difficult as you may think.  The toughest part is just getting started.  Maybe labor day is the day for you to start forging your path to success.

Happy Labor Day!

- Hill Robertson

This is a video that shows how to be a little bit more secure using Microsoft Windows based web development tools by using them on a Mac (using OSX Leopard) which is much more secure than Windows. Windows has many more vulnerabilities than UNIX based operating systems such as Apple’s OS X and Linux. The security level of Linux and OSX is far superior to Windows and we can add a layer of security by running the Windows OS within VMware.

The Windows based web development tools can still be used (such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, etc.) to build the website files but then instead of transmitting the files using the less secure Windows (and possibly having key logger malware spying on every key that is typed in the Windows environment such as user logins and passwords), we can drag and drop the files from the virtual machine (using VMware Tools) directly to the Mac.

You may get some other ideas as well after watching this video. On another note, you should notice the quality of these videos getting better as I figure out better ways to encode them.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for announcements on this blog to be notified by email when I post updates. I even occasionally post private password protected posts that only subscribers will get. It is absolutely free to subscribe and I will never give your info to anyone. I hate spam myself. So please sign up at the top right of this page.

Enjoy!!!!!

- Hill Robertson

Yahoo launched the ymail.com and rocketmail.com domains for email accounts.  Yahoo is one of the largest email account providers in the world with both free account and pay accounts.  The free accounts have an ajax based web portal for reading and writing emails.  For years, Yahoo has used the yahoo.com domain for email addresses.  It is very simple to sign up for a new account.  Just go to ymail.com and sign up.  You can even chat with your friends within Yahoo mail.

Since these new domains just opened up, you may have a chance at getting your real name before someone else takes it.  I had some friends of mine get their first name (like name@ymail.com).  As long as it is more than four letters, you might have a shot.  But don’t wait too long or you may miss your chance and end up with something like name1234@ymail.com.  It is just not the same.

If you do sign up for a free account.  Be sure to login to it regularly or you may lose your account.  Or, you can purchase the “plus” package to add more features, more disk space, more spam filters, pop3 access, and much more.

So, go sign up for an account at ymail.com or rocketmail.com.

- Hill Robertson

Mozilla launched Firefox 3, one of the most popular internet browsers.  The highly anticipated launch and attempted download record clogged internet servers hosting the open source package which is available on all major platforms.  Users trying to download firefox 3 were greeted with timeouts and other “server too busy” type messages as they attempted to set a record for most downloads in a day.

After the initial hours of the launch, things seemed to settle down a bit and users could download Mozilla’s firefox browser without issue.  I downloaded the Mac OSX version and installed it.  I recorded a video as I downloaded and installed it.  There are many nice new features and it does seem to be a bit more snappy than prefious firefox versions.  I don’t get into too many details in the video but thought I would post one so you could get a little idea about the process.

Keep in mind that if you install the newest version and you already have a lot of plugins (or add-ons) that you use in your current version of firefox, they plugins may not work if the developer has not yet released a version for firefox 3.  You may want to wait a bit or at least keep a copy of your older version so you can continue using your plugins.

Enjoy……

- Hill Robertson

I hope everyone had a great Father’s day. I sure did. I always enjoy spending time with my family. My family is the primary reason I build my internet businesses. It gives me the freedom to control my own success. A job will not allow you to control your own success (or freedom). A job will keep you enslaved to your employer. Your employer will dictate how much money you make, when you have to work, and how long you have to work. If you think about it in a different way, you employer tells you how little money you make (just enough to get by - if even that much). They tell you when you can’t be spending time with your family and they tell you how much time you can spend with your family. On top of that, they can lay you off at any moment regardless of your situation.

I recently had some friends of mine told that they were no longer needed at their place of employment. They had worked hard (and did an excellent job) for many years and made the business what it was for their employer. They made many sacrifices along the way for the sake of their jobs and in the end, they were just let go. This seems to happen more and more these days.

The best way to be successful and in control of your own freedom is to have a business of your own that you control. An internet business is an ideal way to accomplish these goals. All you need to do is find out what people want and are willing to pay for, create the product, and sell it. It’s really pretty simple. It may not be easy, but it is a simple formula.

What are you interested in? Do you have a hobby? What do you know a lot about? You are an expert about something. If you know more about something than a majority of other people, you are an expert to them. They will want to know what you know. Just think about how many times someone asked you advice about something. You were an expert to them about whatever they were asking about. There are MANY more people that would ask you the same type of questions if they knew you could help them and a percentage of those people will pay you for your information.

So, get started and set up a blog or some other internet presence about yourself and your “expertise” and let people know about you. This is just the beginning of a successful business that can help you can gain financial freedom and success.

- Hill Robertson

Here we go with the geeky info……I uploaded my first video to YouTube so it may not be perfect but it is a start. The video gives a little bit of information about virtual machines.I boot up a Windows XP virtual machine using VMware fusion on my Mac Pro and show you how to run Internet Explorer on a Mac (sort of).

This is one of the tools I use to do my website development for my internet businesses. It allows me to test my websites on multiple configurations with different operating systems and in different browsers. By using the VMware virtual machine software, I can do all of my testing on my Mac Pro system without having to physically have several different computers to test with.I can run multiple versions of Windows (XP, Vista, etc.) and I can run multiple versions of Linux while running on my host Mac OSX system. It gives me the best of all worlds and a lot of flexibility.

VMware can be run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. It is a valuable tool in many ways for many people. You can find it at http://vmware.com .

- Hill Robertson