How to sell Faucets and other products Online – case study Faucetlist.com

EiConnectLink — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 07:06:01 +0000

Quite a bit of time has passed without any new contributions to this poor out of date site. The reason being I have been so busy with my new eCommerce site I have not had a minute to work on this site. Before I get too far ahead of myself I decided I needed to slow down and analyze a bit what has been going on. It’s time to let all you people out there in internet land learn how to do what I do.

Now it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do this – I won’t lie. I have a LOT of experience running eCommerce sites (coming up on 8 years). I finally decided to tackle one entirely on my own. SEO, Programming, Adwords, Marketing, and all that good stuff. The good news is, I am pushing up on $200,000 in sales and there is still 2 months left in the first year! The bad news is there is so goddamn much to do I don’t have a minute to breath.

Perhaps this blog can once again become a way for me to structure my thoughts and move forward with new ideas. I would love to meet other people interested in discussing this kind of stuff.

Marketing strategy includes eBay, Faucetlist.com, and sales made through emails and phone calls generated by internet marketing.

So whether you sell Kitchen Faucets, Bathroom Faucets, Wall Mount Faucets or other weird stuff I think I can help. This site is designed to be a laser targeted eCommerce site. You may read in the world of internet marketing how important it is to have your niche. I’ve experimented with this kind of thing before doing affiliate marketing – specifically through Amazon Affilates but I found I could make more money selling my own products.

I happened to have connections in the Faucet and plumbing fixtures world from my previous employment which is why I started this kind of site. With suppliers and product knowledge you can go quite far with just a touch of internet marketing magic. Haha – what that really means is working a lot for not a lot of money. But it can be done.

I don’t really want this blog to turn into some 4 hour work week type thing about how to live your life but I will point out a few interesting tidbits. I am a U.S. citizen currently living in Beijing, China. I have been learning mandarin and supporting myself with Faucetlist.com selling products to US customers.

You might say, how the hell can you run an ecommerce business all the way from China. Well that’s a good question. Maybe if you stick with me through my sporadic posts I’ll manage to explain more.

Let’s just say step one is you have to have a website that you control. This site as well as Faucetlist – Your home For Faucets and Plumbing Fixtures! are registered through

Bluehost has been awesome to work with and I can’t imagine going anywhere else. Eiconnectlink.com is also hosted with Bluehost. Faucetlist is actually hosted by another eCommerce service platform provide that we will get into next time but the domain is still with Bluehost. CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM I know you won’t regret it.

Ok, that’s it for now, btw, sorry for typos or any shit like that. I am not a great proof-reader and I never claimed to be much of a writer either!

Spreadsheet tips – Data Management for eCommerce application

EiConnectLink — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:45:16 +0000

Ok, well this is going to be a little boring (and seemingly pointless) for some, yet extremely useful for others. I’m writing it down for personal reference. As for me, this is extraordinarily useful stuff. Get ready for an excel / open office lesson. If you want to start an eCommerce business, the most important concept for you to understand is that you must have control of your data. I cannot stress enough the necessity to be able to manipulate your data. Chances are, if you are trying to learn how to start an ecommerce business, the tips outlined in this article (and in the next article on how to use VLookup) will seem confusing and/or pointless. Stick with me as there’s a method to my madness. I didn’t build an 1.2 million/year business from scratch without a few tricks! Follow along as I work on doing it again!

If you are operating a webstore, you will likely have thousands of products. The initial launch for my soon-to-be released site will contain approximately 2000-2500 products. The initial launch will only reflect a small number of the products that will be for sale in the future. Keeping track of everything you’ve got selling is going to be absolutely essential.

You can manually upload one by one, adjusting price one by one, adjusting everything manually one by one. It will work. And when your suppliers raise prices 5% good luck to you. When a collection is discontinued and you have to delete it all by hand, one by one good luck to you. We have computers now. Fucking use them.

Losing control of your data can be a terrible time drain. A prominent developer I used to work with would always say, if it can be automated, automate it. If it’s a repetitive task, automate it. No exceptions.

Ok, excel. And a little of open office. Why? Just because both have some advantages. Obviously most sites call for .csv files – In which case you really have to use excel. Open office is good too. Let’s discuss some common problems for eCommerce merchants.

Problem 1
You have a file full of images. You need those images to be listed in an excel spreadsheet so you can match them up with MSRP, items specifics, UPC, Cost, Sell Price, etc. This is absolutely essential if you hope to upload products to your website in bulk.

I have 2000 images. They are named Product.jpg, Product2.jpg, Product3.jpg and so on. How can I get this list into excel without typing each item individually?

Step one, prepare to dust off those ms dos skills you haven’t used since the 90s.

Go to file, run, and type “cmd” – This will pull up the dos menu.

Type “Dir c:\(your file location) > c:\(your file location)\filelist.txt

This creates a text file for you with a list of all the files in the folder.

Now, look in the (your file location) folder and you will see the filelist.txt file. Open it. Select All, Copy. Them go to Open Office and open a new spreadsheet and Paste in the contents.

A “Text Import” windo will pop-up. You will need to look at the “Separated by” section and make sure the “Space” box is check. Also, check the “other” box and add a “.” – This will make sure the .jpg from the filelist will be dropped into a separate column. Last, click the box next to “Merge delimiters” – this will set up the formatting nicely so you will have one column with just the product code.

Now that you have this list, you can combine it with some other powerful features – namely, VLookup. How to use VLookup will be the subject for the next post.

A brief bonus tip. You have a section on a bulk upload file calling for a link to the image location on your ftp. You have uploaded all your products as .jpgs in ftp:\(your location)\product1.jpg…product2.jpg…product3.jpg etc. Now you want a list in the spreadsheet.

Use the & function. In your spreadsheet, build the link. Have column A say: http://www.(your location) Column B will be the part number (or image names list – that we just learned how to extract!) Column C will be “.jpg” (which may or may not be necessary depending on what data you currently have). Last you need Column D for the formula. Type “=ColumnA&ColumnB&ColumnC” That’s it!

One last tip about spreadsheets. If you have created a list with a formula, and then you go to copy and paste it to another spreadsheet, you may lose the data. To circumvent this annoyance, copy and past first into a blank text file, then copy and paste again to the other spreadsheet. This will preserve the order.

AUTOMATION is key. If this doesn’t make sense to you feel free to ask. If you have encountered this sort of problem (like I do all the time), this info. could be quite helpful! I certainly hope it is! Next up, VLookup.

How To Make Firefox Act and Look Like Chrome

EiConnectLink — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 07:30:53 +0000

So here is another brief sub-post to my How To Start an Ecommerce Website Series

Make Firefox 6.01 look and Act like Google Chrome

This is an issue I noticed before but have not wanted to deal with. I was correct in assuming it would be very annoying but there are some great benefits.

Firefox plugins are generally much better than Chrome. As a developer, you may want to use Firebug (the most popular and useful development tool for look/feel design of websites. Firebug only works in Firefox. As an SEO you may want to use SEOquake – and the Firefox Version is much easier to use than the Chrome version. With KeePass for storing passwords, Using the plugin KeeFox works flawless, whereas the Chrome equivalent was very buggy.

This stems from the fact that Firefox is really Open Source. Chrome claims to have some kind of open source functionality through something called Chromium, but in actuality that’s not really how things work.

So the dilemma is this: I prefer Chrome in many ways, but I figured it might be possible to “fix” the issues I have with Firefox, since overall I believe Firefox to be a superior browser.

Fixing the Address Bar to do a Search in Google

This is a bit trickier for me since I am writing from China through a Proxy server. The solution was made easy by Installing the Foobar add-on. This transforms your Address bar into a Google Search similar to Chrome.

Fixing the Layout

Firefox is VERY busy, whereas chrome is sleek and minimal. First I added the Movable Firefox Button. This allowed me to move the bright orange Firefox down from the top left corner, into the position where the Google Wrench is located.

I then Right Clicked the Firefox button, navigated to Options, then Toolbar Layout.

I removed the Google search bar, having replaced that functionality with the address bar. I re-arranged everything to my liking. Moved the Stop/Reload button to the left hand side, set my bookmarks bar to be below the address bar, and moved my plugins into place to the right of my address bar (left of the firefox button).

Next, I added a skin to make the appearance more like Chrome – I found one that slims things down a lot which is my favorite feature of Chrome. Shine Bright Was the best option I could find for this. While it’s not 100% perfect it’s pretty good. Below you can view my screen-shots to view the results side by side:

Now that you see how to make it look basically the same, you need to change a few more things to get the functionality to work the same.

Changing the way Firefox Tabs work to act like Chrome

I have seldom felt like more of a geek for caring about something so silly, but I can’t believe how annoyed I was by how the tab system works in Firefox. I pictured my parents listening to me complain about all the issues I have with tabbed browsing in Firefox, and realized they probably hadn’t even realized there could *possibly* be that many problems with something so simple. They would have just learned to accept the system “as-is” and move on with their lives.

Well not me. And apparently not a LOT of other people. For the last step in the process of converting Firefox into Google Chrome, you will need to join 1 million+ people and download Tab Mix Plus.

This program actually handled all of my issues with Firefox Tabs – but it took a few adjustments to the settings.

First, install the plug-in and pull up the options menu. Then:

(1) Go to “Events – Tab Opening” check “Open tabs next to current one” (Check it in both places). Under the second, put a check next to “Change opening order.” Also check “Open duplicated tabs next to original.

(2) Go to “Display – Tab Bar” Set “New tab button” to “After Last tab.” Set position to “Top (Above Content).” Set “When tabs don’t fit width” to “scrollable, with buttons on right side.”

The way tabs scroll is ridiculously bothersome to me. As you can see in the image above, I normally have a LOT of tabs open. The Firefox, Scrollable tab bar is so annoying since it only shows a very small number of tabs. Scrolling is annoying!

To fix this, next navigate to the “Tab” tab under “Display.” There you can set the “Tab width.” Make it 30-250 and you will achieve the same functionality as Chrome, where tabs just keep getting smaller and smaller as you add more.

(3) Another benefit to Tab Mix Plus is you can now click on a tab, and open a new tab right next to it. In Chrome I used this feature all the time. In Firefox for some reason all new tabs would always open at the end. With the adjustment we did at the beginning you should have fixed this problem. However you will want to make sure Under the “Menu” button, “Tab Context Menu” you have a check next to “new tab.”

This will allow you to right click an open tab in Firefox and add a new tab immediately to the right.

There are loads of other options in Tabs Mix Plus and loads of other add-ons to Firefox. If you know anything good, leave me a comment.

How to use KeePass to change all your existing passwords

EiConnectLink — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:02:28 +0000

A 3 Part sub-post has found it’s way into my “How to start an eCommerce Website” Series.

Post 1: KeePass, KeeFox plugin, Importing your current saved browser passwords.
Post 2: KeePass, Integration with Dropbox.
Post 3: Changing All your existing Passwords to more secure, randomly generated KeePass passwords.

Well, like you, I was hoping this feature could be automated. After extensive searching, I have found no way to do this with complete automation. Simply because you must actually interact with each website and change the password.

This is also an opportunity to organize your passwords. Create folders and sub-folders to make it easy to find what you are looking for. If you have multiple accounts with the same site, group them together. Group like items together – like social media sites, email accounts, personal accounts, etc.

Here’s the fastest way to do this:
1. Using KeeFox, Load each site on your list with your current, browser-saved password.
2. Find the Account Setting and Password Change
3. Under Tools, go to Generate Password. Next click Preview.
4. Copy and Paste the 1st Password, reset your password on whateverwebsite.com, and then modify your listing in KeePass and Copy Paste the same Password. Save.
5. Repeat.

This might take about 1 hour per 60 accounts so if you go fast it won’t be too painful. Once you are done, all new passwords you create will be handled with KeeFox and KeePass with ease!

With a program like KeePass and a little organization, you will save yourself hours of time fumbling through notepads of passwords, trying to remember what you used for what. If you simply reuse the same password to simplify things, you might be in for something worse. If someone hacks your password on some obscure site you forgot you signed up for, then tries that password in your facebook, gmail, BANK ACCOUNT … and it WORKS? Do yourself a favor. Get organized, be safe, and actually improve your productivity for LIFE. Set this shit up.

How to Use Dropbox Syncing ability with KeePass Password storage

EiConnectLink — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:01:16 +0000

A 3 Part sub-post has found it’s way into my “How to start an eCommerce Website” Series.

So, You’ve read How to Manage all your online Passwords with KeePass Right? Now it’s time to learn about a cool way to sync your passwords on multiple computers with Dropbox.

If you are unfamiliar with Dropbox, check it out – there are a lot of these syncing programs available and dropbox is one of the best. It’s a great way to share larger files across un-networked computers. Videos especially!

This will allow you to access your saved passwords securely from any computer (of course you need dropbox to be installed first). If your primary computer ever crashes or is stolen, this is an absolute MUST! But it’s also useful for home and office computers – desk and laptop computers – tablet and whatever etc. Dropbox is super cool for many reasons including 2 free gigs of cloud storage – but make sure to check out some of it’s surprise abilities – one of which is How to sync with KeePass!

Now all you have to do is Move your database file to your dropbox folder. The file will have a name you assigned with a .kdbx ending – ex: Database.kdbx You can also go to file, save-as, and point the file path to dropbox.

Now you can open KeePass on your other computers and have all your stored passwords at your fingertips! Just remember the one MASTER password and you are good to go.

A quick note, KeePass will not update passwords while open. You will need to close and re-open it in order for the sync to take place. This may affect you if you forget to close and re-open KeePass after adding new Passwords. One computer may be missing certain passwords. It could be annoying if you are not aware so keep that in mind.

Next we’ll talk a little about organization of KeePass Passwords and how to go about resetting all of your existing passwords which you already Imported to KeePass from your Web Browser.

KeePass: How to manage all your online passwords securely

EiConnectLink — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:30:58 +0000

What is KeePass?

A 3 Part sub-post has found it’s way into my Starting an eCommerce Website Series.

KeePass is an open-source way to manage all your passwords securely. With my plans to launch a new website, it became clear that my old system to keep track of passwords was outdated and slow. Yes this is a social media marketing blog and yes i will talk more about social media marketing tactics as this new website comes together. One thing you might find when you get into marketing an eBusiness is you will require a LOT of accounts and a LOT of passwords.

KeePass is a program, locked securely with 1 master password, that can interact with your web browser to input and remember all your passwords.

It doesn’t stop there however. KeePass (is it just me or does anyone else notice it looks like Keep Ass? Maybe not my favorite choice for a URL), will create a randomly generated, 20ish character, unique password for every site and store this password for you securely, so you don’t have to remember it.

Gone are the days of using the same password over and over on multiple sites, running a daily security risk of identity theft or worse. With the Master Password, KeePass will take care of the rest.

Download the Firefox Keefox plugin and you will be set. You can load passwords into KeePass as you go, randomly generating new, unbreakable passwords. The plugin will auto-fill the information when you load a website that has a stored password. A quick aside, there is a chrome plugin that is supposed to do the same but it didn’t work for me.

But – What about all your existing saved passwords. I have literally hundreds, used with all kinds of accounts from email, blog platforms, analytics, seo tools, social media sites, etc. etc.

Exporting your current Passwords

Get started by exporting your current passwords into KeePass.

How to export your browser saved passwords into KeePass

(1) Download Web Browser Passview and run WebBrowserPassView.exe. This will pull up all your saved passwords from chrome, firefox, internet explorer, and opera.

(2) When the window with all your passwords pops up, select all the items and save as a .csv file (don’t choose the save for KeePass.csv file because there are some tech problems with the new version of KeePass).

(3) Open KeePass and create a new database. Next, go to file, import, and for format select “Generic CSV Importer.” Navigate to the location you saved your .csv file and click ok.

(4) You must then re-arrange the field order to match the output provided by WebBrowswerPassView. The correct order is:

URL, (Ignore), User Name, Password, Title, Notes, Custom 1, Custom 2, Custom 3, (Ignore), (Ignore)

(5) Click the refresh button and everything should now line up correctly with the KeePass fields.

(6) Click Import! When finished, you will see one odd entry. This entry will have the User Name of “User Name”, a Password of “Password” and a URL of “URL”. Locate this entry and delete it. This is a header from the .csv file that is unimportant to us.

(7) Permanently delete (hold shift and press delete) on the .csv file you created at the beginning.

You can now let KeePass and KeeFox take over and autosave all your passwords securely!

Next, Check out hoow to combine KeePass with Drop-box to sync all your passwords from any computer. And Finally, Changing All your existing Passwords to more secure, randomly generated KeePass passwords.

How to start a web business – (reprise)

EiConnectLink — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:14:13 +0000

This blog has been silent for several months now. Not because I haven’t been working – more so because I just having been writing anything down. Things have been a whirlwind and I write this while sitting in my new apartment, back in Beijing.

I began eiconnectlink in Helsinki, took a 5 week trip around europe, stopped back home in los angeles, and now have returned to china to continue my Chinese studies.

You might ask, how can you do all this? how can you support yourself? what are you going to do when the fun is over and it’s time to re-enter the “default” world and get back to work. Admittedly I’m having a bit of a quarter-life crisis, but while i’ve been doing what I want the past 3 years, i have not been sitting idly by.

Nor was I idle the previous 5 years when I started and successfully ran my previous web business.

I know i’m not alone in the dream of becoming “location free” in my life. I just read 4-hour work week and it seems like it was written specifically for me. Or at least about me.

I have managed to get myself into a life predicament. I want to keep studying chinese, i want to be free to travel, i want to have a flexible schedule, but i also need money.

Most of my efforts the past year fizzled out unspectacular when amazon yanked its affiliate program in california (where my permanent billing address is). With the end of the affiliate program, they also yanked my account, along with 10,000 others.

I decided the real money wasn’t going to be made as an affiliate anyways – rather it would be easier to make money selling my own products.

Let me re-iterate. I’ve done it before. I started a web business from scratch in 2002 and ran it successfully until 2009 when the world called. I probably could have figured out how to work remote, use skype and whatnot but instead i just bailed.

Now i realize perhaps i can restart my business. I can use all that i’ve learned the past year working as an affiliate marketer, researching social media like crazy, consuming more information then one person can possibly hope to process, and putting all that to work – restarting a new, leaner, meaner, and more portable web business.

A web business that allows me the freedom to be wherever the fuck i want, and work whenever i want. By the way, local time in Beijing while I write this is 5am (and no i’m not a morning person).

So those of you who are still with me, or new folks who want to bear witness to the steps needed to start a successful web business, start checking in. This blog is going to shift purpose and act as documentation to the process.

Now, I’ll leave you with step 1 for now. You need something to sell. Read about internet marketing all you want, but if you’re not SELLING something, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make any money. For a few months that didn’t compute for me. I was doing “research” and working on “learning.” Bullshit – you need to start doing.

How cliche and trite and blah it sounds but it’s true. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re doing something just because you read some great SEOmoz article today. I could talk to you about social media til the cows come home but can i use it to make me money?

When i ran my previous business there was no social media. Maybe there was friendster and myspace but those were not really viable marketing tools in my eyes at the time. eBay and google adwords were what delivered results. My business was build on those two marketing tools alone. The rest was a knack for closing sales on the phone.

So a product. To start a successful e-business you need a product. Digital or whatever works. For me, it’s selling stuff. This complicates things a bit but it’s what i understand. Stuff has inherent, built in demand. I need to convince you to purchase my Stuff and not someone else’s. I don’t need to generate demand around a product no one knows exists. I’m not techie enough to make some kind of program people want to buy. I like stuff. Most people like stuff. Amazon sells a whole lot of stuff and they seem to be doing alright.

Next entry we’ll discuss what stuff i’m going to sell.

No related posts.

How to use Google Analytics correctly

EiConnectLink — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:03:20 +0000

Using Google Analytics is an important skill for any webmaster. Using Google Analytics is a little tricky, but very helpful for determining what is working and what is not. Most of my Google Analytics experience is from an eCommerce perspective. We used Analytics to drill down on Keywords we were bidding on in PPC (Pay Per Click) ad campaigns. We actually focused on Micro-targeted keywords. In fact, with many products we were selling we were bidding on exact product descriptions and sending searchers directly from the ad to the product they searched for. This was helpful for conversion rates as eliminating clicks someone has to make before making a purchase is important in any eCommerce strategy. We actually did very little by way of SEO so I didn’t spend much time analyzing organic traffic. I’ve been learning more about using Google Analytics to drill down on issues like where your traffic is coming from, what keywords they are searching, looking at bounce rate based on which page they land on, and seeing which pages are top performers. You can do all sorts of things like comparing date ranges, bounce rate, set goals and track your performance.

(image from Tampere, Finland – these locks are put on this fence by couples in love)

The amount of data provided by Google Analytics is pretty staggering and it can be confusing. Observing trends and capitalizing on what is working should be the goal of any website. You may be getting traffic for Keywords you weren’t even targeting. Those people, you might find, are actually spending more time on your site than the people who enter using the keywords you thought were most relevant. If this is the case, it is time to adjust your strategy. Give the people what they want!

This post is not going to be very long since I think the videos below are really going to be more helpful then I could ever be trying to explain in words. Google actually shares LOTs and lots of information on how to use Google Analytics. If you are unfamiliar entirely, start with the first video. Then move on to the more advanced videos. Take some time to familiarize yourself with this powerful tool Google has to offer. Data is becoming more and more crucial in making business decisions, so make sure you understand how to use yours. There is SO much data available, learn how to interpret it properly, as it’s very easy to waste time looking at data and not getting anything useful out of your time.

This is a good look at the overall interface of Google Analytics:

Here’s a pretty easy look at basic interpretation of your Google Analytics account:

Here’s some tips on using Google Analytics for more advanced users:

Here’s a VERY in-depth look at Web Analytics – this is more general, and showcased by Google analytics, but not necessarily only applicable to Google Analytics – it’s over 1 hour but I recommend taking a look as it’s full of great information:

One more interesting video about internal site analysis:

If you have any good resources to share about analytics, or have any tips you use, please COMMENT!

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Avoid getting stabbed in Morroco: Purchase an Amazon Kindle – Like to drink? Purchase the case too

EiConnectLink — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:45:02 +0000

Amazon Kindle book reader, my thoughts (and yours?)

This post will talk about my new Amazon Kindle, and will include my thoughts/experiences so far.

I will outline in this post some reasons I wanted one but never ordered it, and what made me finally decide to purchase a Kindle. My tangent to this story may surprise you!

We’ll talk about how to get free books – there are literally thousands out there – and no I don’t mean from piratebay (this is great even for non-Kindle owners/wanters so make sure to keep reading!). These books are 100% FREE and legal to download.

I will also talk about a few really useful sites that can integrate with your Kindle eReader, which gave me some great new perspective on the full functionality of the Kindle (Instapaper is a great bookmarking site that integrates with your Kindle and Kindlefeeder is great for setting up RSS/atom feeds) – These sites alone might make you consider if a Kindle would be a good addition to your tool chest of gadgets.

I will also talk about the Kindle Case I purchased and why I’m happy I did (read more if you want the story of how on the first day I almost destroyed my new Kindle).

________________________________________________________________________________________________
Like many other people this past holiday season, I got a wonderful brand New Kindle 3G Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 3G Works Globally, Graphite, 6″ Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology If you haven’t checked the new Kindle out, Click the preceding link! It’s got a ton of great features and the price has gone down significantly since the Kindle was first released. I waited a long time before finally breaking down and ordering one. It’s a bit of a shame too because I’ve been traveling a LOT in the last 2 years and it would have been really useful. A story (see below) immediately comes to mind. Also, with the amount of time I spend staring at a computer screen burning out my retinas, I could have been looking at the easy-on-the-eyes Kindle eInk.

So I’ll start off with a story and a photo! In July of 2009 I went on a trip with a friend to Spain and Morocco.

(Me with the Moroccan city Fez in the background, one of the most interesting and also scary/exciting places I have ever been)

________________________________________________________________________________________________
Warning*** if you want to just learn about Kindles then skip this section – but you might find it interesting anyways My friend and I (both avid readers) set off for a 3 week trip to Spain and Morocco. We collectively were carrying about 10 books. Over the course of the trip with finished all of our books and read each others books as well. A Kindle would have really saved my back and shoulders as after lugging those books all over the place, I wish I had just had to carry the 8.7 ounces a Kindle weighs. I actually read one of my favorite books in the city in the picture An Artist of the Floating World. This book really impacted my life and I have a LOT to say about it, however for the sake of brevity and staying (as much as possible) on topic, I’ll let you check it out on your own.

Now a quick story. Fez is a VERY old city with something like 9000 winding streets running through the old town area (which you see in the picture). Read more in Lonely Planet Morocco (Country Guide).
I use the term streets liberally since they are more like glorified alleyways. We had taken a train from Tangiers and on the train, many Moroccan people wanted to chat with us. We met a guy who told us he knew a great place to stay in Fez, and we needed to go there and ask for Abdul (his friend). Abdul was a guide, and I cannot stress enough how important having a guide is in Fez since the city is absolutely the most confusing place I have ever visited. If you don’t know the way the streets are connected, you could easily find yourself hopelessly lost in a maze. Well we arrived, and sure enough, Abdul himself was at the hotel our fellow train-rider had mentioned and he quickly agreed for a reasonable price to be our guide for the next day. In the morning, he arrived with his son and began discussing all the great stuff we could see (and all the great stores we could visit). We indicated we would not be interesting in purchasing any souvenirs since our bags were already overloaded with books (like how I tied that in! haha). Due to the fact that Abdul was a bit of an affiliate marketer himself, and we were not likely customers, he left us with his son (around age 17 or so). We spent the day wandering the city – much of which was extremely interesting.

When we got back to our hotel, we met an Australia couple who were quite flustered. They said Abdul had been guiding them (I guess instead of us!) and that he had suddenly disappeared. They were lost in the city, and didn’t have any cash. In Morocco, a great way to get somewhere you don’t know is to take out a map, and wait for a bunch of “friendly” people who want to “help” you to swarm around. They will usually start leading you somewhere without establishing a price, only to demand a ridiculous payout upon arrival at your destination. If you refuse to pay, this often turns into a shouting match, you handing the person a fair sum, and everyone leaving angry (such is the way a good compromise works right?) Well, without cash, and not knowing where an ATM was located, this Australian couple had a hell of a time getting out of the Old town area and back to the hotel. They were quite mad at Abdul and we didn’t know what happened.

We had some Moroccan Mint tea and sat around and exchanged some travel stories, just chatting, when Abdul shows up! He was clutching a blood-soaked cloth to his chest and ran in to say he was sorry to the Australians, but he now had to leave to go to the hospital. Apparently he had a dispute with somebody and the person had pulled a knife on him and slashed him across the chest. We were all stunned. The idea that this guy who was supposed to be taking care of us in the city would end up stabbed didn’t bode well for our chances of making it on our own. We opted to spend the rest of the night in the hotel and left the next day.

So keep this kind of thing in mind! If you are every in a city as confusing as Fez, slightly scared from seeing a man with a knife wound, and decide to stay in for the evening, it might be a good idea to have something to read – Moroccan television is not so good
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How-to get FREE eBooks for your Kindle!

So after more traveling, and more carrying heavy books, I moved to China for a year. I did very little reading since it was so difficult/expensive to get English books. I then learned about how many books you can get for the Kindle entirely for FREE. Many of these books I have actually purchased and when I added up the total I could have saved, I EASILY could have purchased a Kindle and probably an ipad, netbook, etc. etc. (I own a lot of books).

Many books are available for free because their copy write has expired. If you like reading classics, there are tons of great novels available, in their entirety, entirely free. I’m a big fan of Russian literature like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. You can get just about everything they’ve written for free. Here are a few sites:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.free-ebooks.net/

http://manybooks.net/

http://www.feedbooks.com/publicdomain

http://www.mobileread.com/

The hardest thing is to decide what to read – I’m guessing you could stay busy for the rest of your life with these sites alone – so start thinking about it – would a Kindle be a smart investment?

I mean think about any time you have ever moved in your life. I helped two friends move this week and it sucks. A kindle takes all the books you own and drops their size down to 8.2 ounces!! Purchasing a Kindle is SMART!

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VERY useful websites that work great with an Amazon Kindle

Well, so now you have a bunch of free books, but if you’re like me, you still read lots of things online. A Kindle can be a great way to organize everything you want to read for the day and it will also allow you to take a break from staring a monitor (you’re eyes will thank me).

First Check out Instapaper: http://www.instapaper.com The greatest feature about Instapaper, as opposed to any other bookmarking service, is you can send your bookmarks to your KINDLE! While browsing the web, I’m sure you find loads of interesting articles. You may not have time to read them all right then and there, but you can organize links, and have them sent to your Kindle to read later. There is a nice bookmarklet that sits at the top of my browser. All I have to do is click it and articles are added to instapaper. They are also formated to be read on a Kindle which is extra nice.

Next, Check out Kindlefeeder: http://www.kindlefeeder.com/ This is a similar service “that lets you aggregate your favorite feeds and have them delivered to your Kindle in a convenient, easy-to-navigate format. Kindlefeeder also lets you save individual webpages and have them delivered to your Kindle along with your feeds.” Another great way to read through all your favorite blogs etc. without having to spend countless hours staring at a computer screen.

By the way, Reading on a Kindle has really shocked me. The screen has no backlight and it reads as easily and naturally as a book. Flipping pages forward and back is super easy and the whole experience is quite pleasurable.

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Now we’ll talk about why you need the Kindle Case

This case is fucking expensive. I almost didn’t buy it. But then I did. I decided I wanted to be able to hold my Kindle like a book while I read it and I have to say this case makes the experience very pleasurable. The little light is powered by the Kindle’s battery and just pulls out making it very convenient if you are in a poorly lit place. The cover is a comfortable leather which is easy to hold whether you are laying in bed, riding a train, standing on a crowded subway or bus, or just sitting in a comfortable chair. It gives the Kindle a more “real” book reading experience. It also protects your Kindle.

Warning***Here comes another story so if you love reading about Kindle’s so much just skip it. We had a few people over at our house for some drinks. I actually had recently brewed some beer from scratch at a beer club I’ve joined and after over a month of waiting, it was time to try the finished product. This time, it was an American style wheat beer that came out quite nice if I do say so myself. Well my Kindle was sitting on a small table minding it’s own business surrounded by a group of after work on Friday, lets get drunk kind of crowd. The evening progressed and people started to get excited. In the middle of a particular rousing story, which required a lot of hand gestures to properly tell, my friend accidentally hit my glass out of my hand. It tipped over and broke right on top of my Kindle. This is where the case comes in. I noticed right away and grabbed the Kindle, and immediately dried it off. The glass breaking did no damage to the screen and the case prevented what was left of my beer from getting into the keypad and damaging the interior electronics. I was very happy I had sprung for the case since I anticipate my due to my carelessness, I may someday require the case’s protection services once again. That’s just me. By the way, don’t try this at home – I may have just been lucky!

I do plan on travelling again soon, so having a protected cover for my Kindle seems like a no-brainer. I am convinced it is safe even if I bang my bag against something while rushing through an airport it will still be safe. Protect your investment and spring for the case. It’s really not that much money.
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This review is a little unorthodox I suppose, but there you have it. Do yourself a favor. Purchase a Kindle. You won’t regret it. Purchase it now so you can start saving your eyes from staring at a computer screen all day. Purchase it now, and load it up with books so you’re ready to go the second someone suggests lets check out Morocco. Purchase it now and start enjoying!

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Here’s the slightly less expensive non-3G Kindle and the case without a light

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Now, if you made it to the bottom of this post, Please TWEET or SHARE it! TWEET and SHARE it if you’re really feeling nice. I would really appreciate it! Thanks for reading! Nick

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4 WordPress Plugins, a bonus Firefox plugin, and a rant on SPCAM

EiConnectLink — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:39:06 +0000

I’m going to jump off the topic of Backlinks for a minute, but I will be back on that subject in the next entry as I have some more information to share. For example, info. about paying for backlinks, and also on backlink stacking (VERY important stuff!! – I promise to follow up on these topics ASAP). In this blog we’ll talk about a few great WordPress plugins and one Firefox plugin I think you should know. By the way, WARNING -the next paragraph is a small (large) rant.

Let me acknowledge for a minute that my brain is literally (figuratively) exploding from all the new information I’m soaking in. My monetization strategy is not in effect yet but the plan is shaping up. I will tell you this, currently I don’t have plans to monetize this blog because I really don’t want to be a blogger/internet marketer marketing to other bloggers/internet marketers, selling blogger/internet marketer useless products to stupid bloggers/internet marketers, who can then pass that trash along to the next person. I’m beginning to see that most tools that exist to help you with SEO and internet marketing are FREE. Most of the systems I see being rammed down people’s throats are just some creative compilation of FREE tools. Starting a blog of this nature (about Social Media Marketing, SEO, Blog Marketing, Facebook Marketing etc.) is almost a trap. Because you are researching all the tools that come with this industry, you will inevitably run into all the internet marketing SPCAM (this is a term I’m coining for Scam Spam – don’t ask how to pronounce it because I don’t know) products. You think, oh, I have readers also interested in blog/internet marketing, maybe I could start to sell this trash and make a profit. These products in my mind are basically the same thing as any Get rich quick, lose weight fast, enlarge certain parts of your body, blah blah blah scheme. They target people sitting at home thinking they could make thousands of dollars a day while watching daytime Soaps and sucking down cheezwhiz straight out of the can. For $47 this, for $27 that – don’t buy into it. If these plans were so great, why share them? Why not just hire staff and rake in millions upon millions? Logic people. There might actually be some useful tools out there, but in all honesty, the more I search, the more I find that if you want to pay for the convenience of someone organizing all your tools in one place, it may be worth it. Be VERY selective. The point of this blog is to share and document the process and along the way, and hopefully also to meet some like-minded people. I am looking for real, helpful tools, and most importantly, GOOD information. Many of these SPCAMmers also keyword target “is product X is a scam?” – where product X is their product. They also target, “product X reviews” – so they can give themselves their own reviews. My advice is to do a lot of research before actually spending money on something – especially if you’re currently not earning any money through online marketing. If you have so much money, earning interest so fast, that it’s impossible to get rid of it unless you throw it at a bunch of internet marketing jackals then go ahead I suppose. Or give it to charity.

If you are just looking to mutually share good information on internet related topics, feel free to contact me as I hope this blog will serve as a way for me to make some real connections, with real people. Ok, after the picture we’re on to business…
(This is an image of a chandelier taken from inside a Church – Tampere, Finland)

4 (More) Great WordPress Plugins to consider:

So I’ve been tinkering a bit with the layout of this blog and adding some new WordPress plugins. If you missed my first post about 4 essential plugins for a WordPress.org blog make sure to check it out. Thought I would also share a few more as I think they are also quite useful. I’ll talk about WP-supercache, YARPP, WP-dbmanager, and Commentluv. I have so far been only trying to work with free plugins and themes for WordPress, but I have to say, I am considering paying for a WordPress theme. Currently I am running the Suffusion theme, and while it’s starting to come along and look more like what I wanted, it hasn’t been easy. Since I don’t know how to actually modify the code I am limited to the options they provide for customization (which is not everything). If anyone reading this has any experience with WordPress themes, please shoot me a comment or email with what you recommend.

WP-Supercache

From the plugin site (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/), they state “This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.”

What you need to know in practice, is this will make your site load faster. I found my site was loading relatively slow due to the large size images I have been using. I added this plug-in and also changed the format in my theme so it would start only showing a few full length blog entries – the rest show up as just excerpts where you have to click to read more. Previously I had been showing 10 full length blog entries on my homepage. Because I have a really fast internet connection I didn’t really notice how bad it was until I tested the site on a slower connection.

Implementing WP-supercache is a good idea for any site because there is really no downside. Additionally, if you plan on expanding your site and getting more visitors, you should definitely be prepared in advance. If you have just a basic hosting package, a surge in visitors could drastically slow your site.

YARPP – Yet Another Related Post Plugin

You can find the website to download this plugin at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/. YARPP is a great plugin for automatically displaying related posts. After a reader gets to the end of your post, they will see other posts, ranked in order of relevance to the post they just finished reading. You can also add the related posts to your RSS feed which is a good way to get people off their reader, and back to your website.

Since my site is relatively new and I don’t have very many total posts, I set the “Match Threshold” to 1. This means YARPP will pull almost any article, even one that has very minimal relevance. If you have a lot of content, you can get pretty specific about what posts YARPP will show. For example you can disallow certain categories or disallow certain tags. You can opt to only show recent posts (like those from within the past 12 months). You can decide how many posts to show, and whether or not to show their relevance score.

All in all this is a very easy tool to get started with and hopefully it will immediately improve your number of pageviews.

WP-Database Manager

You can find this plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager/ After the even small amount of work I have put into Eiconnectlink blog, I started to realize if anything happened, I had no back-ups of my posts and other files. I did manual back-ups through wordpress, and backed up my files on an external hard drive. However, it still would take some work to get everything back up and running.

This plugin is really all you need to take care of everything (unless you’re very paranoid like me!) It “Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.”

Never hurts to be prepared.

CommentLuv

So if you read my last post about 7 ways to Build Backlinks and increase search engine rank you will notice that one of the tips is to leave comments on other blogs. Commentluv is a way to encourage people to leave comments on your blog!

“This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve a selection of their last blog posts, tweets or digg submissions which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.” Meaning you can actually comment on this website, right now, and leave yourself a nice fat link to your latest blog post (or if you register at Commentluv you can choose one of your last 10). Pretty cool huh?

This is a tactic I have decided to try as I think it will be a good way to get people talking. I see in the analytics this blog has a decent amount of readers, but there’s not too much comment action. I don’t know if it’s because these posts are so long, but whatever. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, I just want to discuss internet marketing issues. I see a million blogs out there where people post a bunch about how much money they are making etc. etc., establishing themselves as an authority. I’m pretty sure most of them are full of shit, but suddenly they have a huge following of desperate wanna-be internet SPCAMmers filling up their comment walls. I can tell you I probably made way more money when I worked running a legitimate ecommerce business – so I also know a thing or two about the internet. I’m just not really here to sell – I’m here to learn. I am happy to pass along some link juice if you leave a comment – but I’m more interested in what YOU actually have to say (Sorry got a bit ranty again there for a minute).

Try out commentluv on your site and you may find an improvement in the comment activity.
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Now, I just want to briefly mention a great SEO tool. It’s called SEO Quake and you can download the plugin for Firefox at Seoquake.com Oh, by the way, I also tried this tool out for Chrome but I found it didn’t work nearly as well in Chrome – I don’t think all the bugs are worked out yet as even their homepage claims that it’s still “new.” This tool is FREE! Don’t pay for other SEO tools until you have tried this one first. If you are a beginner, this tool has more than enough functionality for you. As you get more advanced, you may want to consider paying for other tools, but for now start with this!

Download this plugin for Firefox as it has a LOT of really great features for analyzing websites. You can check a site’s PR, alexa rank, number of links from social sites, number of links to a page (L), number of links to the entire domain (LD), number of pages indexed, keyword density, and a lot more customizable options. This is a great way to look into what your competitors are up to. Where they are getting backlinks, how strong are their backlinks, what keywords are they targeting, etc. This is the sort of information you will need to know if you want to outrank them in the SERPs.
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OK, that’s a long post! If you made it through leave me a comment, tweet, share, you know the drill! Thanks Nick

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