Hello everyone. I am scheduling this post to publish around the time I am making my way home to finish up some client projects and begin learning Flash and Flash Builder for AIR development.

When I am building my first flash apps and games, I will need something to work on. The reason I chose Flash for my development environment is that it is the ONLY environment that works across ALL platforms (i.e.; BlackBerry, iOS, Android) and all of the various smartphones and tablets out there. Of course there will be minor code changes for certain in-app purchases or what-not, but that’s not a concern of mine.

What I would like to use this post for would be an invitation for you to tell me what kind of apps would be the most useful to you. The term “there’s an app for that” isn’t necessarily accurate. For instance, I have yet to find a media player on my Kindle Fire that will play WMV format videos. I know of some people that wish there were a backup app that will clone their entire phone content and configuration as if it were a system iso which can be restored per their tastes and apps rather than factory settings. There are lots of potential apps which would be useful, and I invite you to comment below and tell me what you would like to see created for your phone or tablet.

As I sit here with coffee doing it’s thing at 9PM and “Where is my mind?” by the Pixies playing (I LOVE Fight Club!) I thought a tutorial was a good thing to share with you. My inspiration for doing clear and detailed posts like this is the fact that there are many great paid membership sites for learning things. I thought Lynda was the best, but they have been knocked off their platform by LearnVisualStudio.net which I fell in love with. I have been attempting to learn C# and other programming languages for years, but I always got busy with projects that were more important and felt that materials out there weren’t clear enough. That all changed recently, and now I know a LOT about C# and have a great program I am developing for keyword research which I will be putting out initially for free when I’m done.

With that said, I will provide you with a clear (and hopefully inspiring) tutorial on building a niche empire. It really is easy to do, but very time consuming at first. It doesn’t have to take years for it to start netting you some cash…not pocket change but actual cash that can pay your bills.

The first thing you need to do is…

Decide on a Niche!

This may or may not be obvious depending on your experience level, but choosing a niche is the very first step. We don’t normally just roll the dice and say “ok, let’s just go with this”, but that’s how I tend to do things. It saves me time. Many other niche marketers will do lots of heavy handed keyword research. The way that my brain works though is I rely heavily on common sense. I have been told that it’s more like uncommon sense by some people because they claim not everyone is that smart. Who knows if that’s true. If you prefer keyword research, then by all means jump on it. I will even help you right now.

Most blogs like mine will walk you through this process by promoting a software such as Market Samurai or some other keyword research software that ends up costing more than you are willing to put into this business at this point in time. The reason they do this is because they are earning an affiliate commission off of it if you decide to buy that software using their link or coupon code. There’s nothing wrong with that because that’s what we do as affiliate marketers, but I am assuming you are broke and barely connected to the internet right now. Because of my assumption, I will walk you through a process that costs you nothing other than your time (and maybe some of your hair). You can pinch your pennies though.

Google has a handy (and free) tool you can use called the Google Keyword Tool which can be found by clicking here. Notice the following screenshot, I typed in “making a million dollars” and hit search. Once I did that, Google gave me a list of keywords related to what I searched, and a number showing how many people search for that on a monthly basis. The volume is low, so you can call this an easy niche.

I am going with this niche because it is appealing to me. Even if it had a lot more competition, I would go with it because competition is irrelevant. Some people prefer to find something with low competition because it’s easier to get ranked a lot of the time. Just in case, we will check Google listings and find out what some of these keywords bring up.

A search for one of the recommended keywords “make a million dollars” shows 14.9 million results. That’s actually pretty small of a number for me.

If you don’t believe me that this is low competition for me, have a look at the results for a search phrase my blog comes up on. If you search “popular blogging topics” without the quotes, my site shows up on the very top with 56.7 results!

Let’s start promoting!

Head on over to ClickBank at http://www.clickbank.com and login (or register if you haven’t already). Once you are logged in, you can go to the marketplace and start your search for products to promote. For this example, I am in the E-Business and E-Marketing category because I am in that industry as an internet marketer and entrepreneur.

There is a dropdown menu that is defaulted to “Popularity”, but I actually check the “Gravity” which means it tends to stick better. People not only buy the product but they don’t return it for a refund as often. This way, you get to keep more of your commissions. If you relied on popularity, you may end up getting a bunch of sales, but also a bunch of refunds so you will never see the commission.

I chose Millionaire Society as the product to promote. When choosing a product, I like to go to the actual product’s page and see if they have affiliate marketing materials. If they don’t have much to work with such as banners, emails, and other codes to use already, then they aren’t that serious. I would rather work with a company that put in some of their actual time into it rather than rush to put out a product and get sales. See the screenshot below of their affiliate center.

As you can see, they seem serious about their product by offering affiliates like me with codes I can easily copy and paste into whatever promotion I am using. I like to use banners for my sites, as well as some articles.

Notice the following screenshot that shows a banner kit this company provides. It has lots of variety and size differences to fit whatever kind of site you have.

I can place some of these bad-boys right here on my blog with confidence because they fall in line with what I recommend to my readers. I can open up my OIOPublisher plugin and create a banner slot for it. First, I will add a Ninja Link using ninja affiliate (you don’t have to do this if you don’t have this premium plugin). I like to create short-links which is why I use this plugin.

Now my long ugly affiliate ClickBank url is shortened to http://www.brandonconnell.com/goto/millionairesociety and it’s much more likely to get clicked on.

Now I will add the banner to my blog using a cool (but premium) plugin called OIOPublisher. I like this plugin despite the fact that it costs because I can use it not only as a WordPress plugin, but also a standalone script which can be used on a plain old static html website. You can basically reuse this script for every site you create and build up your empire with an automated system of advertising. I can also automate the direct ad sales process with OIOPublisher so I can focus on building great content.

After I add it, you can see it on my blog (see below).

See how sexy that looks?

Setting up niche sites

Not everyone is a website designer like me, however you will quickly become a code junkie if you are affiliate marketing. That’s because you will always want to create some new niche sites, add features, or some other task that will come up and force you to learn some basic html and css coding. With that in mind, what better time to start learning than right now!

You can actually do this without any coding by signing up for a cheap $15 a month unlimited Hostgator account. You can use coupon code bconnell994 for $9.94 off of your first month! Hostgator allows you to install a script such as WordPress with the click of a button, and you can set that WordPress blog up as an affiliate site, thus not coding anything yourself. You can also easily login and start putting in content using an administration. Very easy stuff. If you would rather do things the harder way, you can use free html templates that you can find easily with a quick Google search.

Whether you are using WordPress or the html templates, you need to add content to the site along with the banners and other promotional materials. It’s not smart or wise to copy someone else’ content. You should actually spend your own valuable time on creating content, or hiring a writer on Fiverr to create original content for you. Run it through Copyscape and make sure it truly is unique content. By providing free content along with your ads, you are making an actual contribution to the world wide web.

If you took my advice and decided on WordPress, there are some basic setup items that need to be taken care of. The first one is permalinks which are the URLs that are used when you post an article, page, or other content on the blog. When I setup permalinks, I set them up for /%postname%/ which tells WordPress that you want the URL after your .com/ to be the title of the article. This eliminates the dynamic aspect of your website and allows for easier indexing by search engine spiders.

Another important setup item is a good spam catcher. I use Akismet on most of my sites, but there are alternatives that others prefer more. You can find some free plugins for this on the WordPress Codex. I also use a simple captcha plugin for my forms. Anything that prevents automated spam bots from taking up your valuable time will be beneficial.

Stay tuned for part two, where I give you more details on setting up niche sites and marketing them.…

I recently came across a problem while upgrading a WordPress blog of a client. Actually, I ran into this problem a couple times in the past on this very blog, so I already knew what the issue was and how to fix it.

So here’s the situation. You have numerous plugins that are out of date, and WordPress notifies you of a core update. You decide to update, and then when the site or the admin dashboard loads, it shows nothing but a white screen. This might happen because you didn’t upgrade the plugins first. If the plugins are REALLY out of date and no longer supported by the current version of WordPress, then it will cause problems for you like the one I just mentioned.

One way to avoid this problem is to upgrade all of your plugins before you upgrade WordPress itself. This way, you ensure that you’re using the most recent versions which have a higher chance of compatibility with the latest WordPress. If you upgrade all plugins and still have a blank white page after upgrading WordPress, then you obviously have a plugin that is simply not compatible anymore.

If you are still having issues, then you need to rename the plugins folder. I like to name it BAKplugins, and then create a new plugin folder (which will be empty). After you do this, simply load up your dashboard again and it will deactivate all of your plugins because it will no longer detect them. After it does this, delete your empty plugins folder, then rename BAKplugins to plugins. Now go to your plugins options in your dashboard and you will see all of them inactive. Go through one-by-one and activate them. Each time, reload your blog URL to verify it’s loading alright. Eventually you will come across a plugin that causes the issue again. When that happens, simply delete that plugin through your FTP program and reload your dashboard. You just found the bad plugin.

If all of this sounded foreign to you, I am more than willing to assist you with fixing your WordPress blog. My price is $55 for the blank white screen issue. I can assist with other issues you may have as well, for another price. Just contact me in either case and I will be happy to help you out.

They’re selling us out. Just weeks after Internet users from across the globe came together to to beat SOPA, the major ISPs are cutting a deal with Big Content to restrict web access for users who are accused of piracy.

It’ll do much of the dirty work we were able to prevent when we took down SOPA, this time by restricting certain Americans’ access to the WHOLE Internet.

The details are fuzzy, but the head of the Recording Industry Association of America’s bragged this week that ISPs will start policing copyright by July of this year.

Will you urge the ISPs to back down from this plan? Just click here:

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/backdoor_sopa/?referring_akid=a5270908.317329.GmbFp9&source=auto-taf

Here’s RT’s take:

Some of the biggest Internet service providers in America plan to adopt policies that will punish customers for copyright infringement, and one of the top trade groups in the music biz announced this week that it could begin as soon as this summer….

RIAA CEO Cary Sherman was one of the guest speakers among a New York panel this week and he confirmed that, at this rate, some of the most powerful Internet providers in America should have their new policies on the books by July 12, 2012.

The ISPs are poised to start treating their customers like criminals, restricting their access to the Internet. And they’re cutting us off at the knees just as we’ve begun to force a new conversation about Internet freedom and copyright law.

Please sign on to Demand Progress’s open letter demanding they back down:

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/backdoor_sopa/?referring_akid=a5270908.317329.GmbFp9&source=auto-taf

Thanks!

P.S. – If you don’t know enough about SOPA and PIPA and how they can come back, as well as how the above example is a serious threat, you can also read the book “The SOPA & PIPA Conspiracy“.

There is one thing that I have always hated about e-commerce websites. I use scripts like cre loaded or oscommerce, and they are plain Jane. I have to install the script after creating a database, then I have to design it before I can even get to the actual commerce. It’s horrible. Today, I came across a cool website that eliminates that problem, and it’s something a business partner and I will most likely be doing next week. That site is http://www.madefreshly.com which is an online store service.

The cool thing is that it is ready for anyone. The beginner, the pro, whoever. Anyone that has known me since forever knows I am crazy when it comes to productivity. Having to setup an ecommerce website from scratch can easily kill productivity and ambition as well. I like the idea of “easy setup” when it comes to the ecom business. I can focus on actually putting in the products, marketing the site, and managing the orders.

Does anyone have any experience with ecommerce websites that go beyond frustration?

Is your lead generation website optimized for mini browsers too? When I do local search marketing, I have to really dig down and find every possible gateway to traffic for my clients. That’s why I understand that many of their customers will find them through a cell phone or tablet like the Kindle Fire, BlackBerry Playbook or iPad.

With this in mind, I like to ensure that I create a website specifically for mobile devices. There is a good service for a mobile website builder called MOBDIS, which will create something professional and bug-free.

With this service, you can:

• Build great looking mobile sites with no coding
• Easily add rich media content like product galleries, store locators & videos
• Add business features like Forms and Coupons to increase customers
• For Developers, extend and customize with JavaScript and jQuery Mobile

…There is also flexibility in pricing plans and hosting options.

With the competition growing daily in the local search marketing market, I like to have the advantage over my competitors. Understand that more and more people are going mobile, and that isn’t likely to change in the future.

Something I have dedicated my time to for the past many months has been writing eBooks and publishing them on the Amazon Kindle Store. At this point, I would like to say that I’m an expert on the subject and I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. The great thing about kindle books is that the market is perfect for the weekend author. You can do this as a hobby to get started, and then you will begin to see that actual money is coming in. Not pennies, but hundreds of dollars that can help you pay your utility bills.

As an author, you probably envision writing a best-selling novel and blowing up like Harry Potter. The problem is that most people don’t have the time to go at a perfect novel in the beginning. They work endless hours at their day job, and it’s just to hard juggling writing with work and family. If you do things the “other” way, then you will be able to free up your time and possibly quit your job.

Casting aside the idea to create a best-seller, you should focus on the smaller books that provide real value to someone looking for the information. You read the part where I said “real value” right? You can’t just throw crap out the window and hope dollars rain in. You can make money writing and selling 20-30 page eBooks for 99 cents a piece, as long as those books are filled with useable information and not fluff or filler.

I found that you can find a freelancer that will write a book for you on the cheap, and you can get your e-cover designed on the cheap as well. The good thing is that I do all of these things myself, so I save money. It takes a few minutes to design the cover in Photoshop. The writing doesn’t take very long; I just make sure the topics are well researched and the eBook is nicely edited and formatted.

If you publish books for more than 99 cents, they sell much less. One of my 99 cent books made over $1,000 in a single month on it’s own through sales and borrows (in the KDP Select program). Many authors have a problem joining KDP Select. I don’t because my books are 99 cents already. On that royalty scale, I only make 35 cents per sale. Borrows have turned out to pay around $1.80 per borrow. See the difference there?

The trick to making money with Amazon Kindle Store is to play a numbers game. If you write quality informational books, or even short story novels, you will get sales. It’s that simple. If you don’t take the time to make a perfect book, even if it’s small, it will not sell.

Once you do have your eBook and cover ready, you need to ensure you have a good description. The more information you provide about what your book contains, the higher the chances of it selling.

I would keep writing, but instead I found out today that my friend Steve Scott already wrote an excellent article on making money with Amazon Kindle. Check out that article How to Make Money with Amazon Kindle Books.

This means war. By this, I mean the total disregard by companies for BlackBerry users. I am, and always will be a BlackBerry loyalist. I love my Torch 9800 with a touchscreen and slide-out full size qwerty keyboard. The suicide inducing Apple devices will never be obtained with my money.

I know…who cares right? Well, you will pretty soon. First, let me tell you why I have a huge beef with Apple and Android phones. I actually like Android, because I am a daily user of the Kindle Fire. Unfortunately, they just got into my cross-hairs by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The final straw came just an hour ago, when I got off of a chat with Richard from USBSwiper.com. If you aren’t aware of their product, they provide a credit card swiping machine that is integrated to use PayPal to accept payments. I was doing a bunch of internet research looking for a smartphone based POS system. The problem is, none of them use BlackBerry. The Square device uses iPhone and Android, with no plans to support RIM devices. I found a press release by USBSwiper from a year ago that said they were in the process of creating a mobile POS system and BlackBerry was listed. The problem is, their website had the same list of devices, but they left out BlackBerry. That’s what made me proceed to contact them through their live chat on the website. I was told that only 3% of all customer requests were for BlackBerry devices, so they decided to drop it altogether and only develop for Apple and Android junk phones. That was the last straw… The reason why it was the last straw is because there are many other companies over the past year that I have wanted to use their service, but they simply didn’t support or plan on supporting BlackBerry.

This Means WAR!

So here it is… Unfortunately, consumers are the cause of this problem, so they are going to be the first ones to be hit with my wrath. Unless consumers change their ways and demand that companies develop for RIM too, then they will be punished.

What can I do you ask?

The way to make changes in the world is to create a demand for something, and keep it from people. That’s what oil companies have been doing for years, and it’s working. With that in mind, I am about to go on a development rampage, and create the next addicting viral games and apps, and I will ONLY release them on the BlackBerry platform.

You don’t care you say? Well you are saying that right now. But honestly, you have to be smarter than that. The fact is, you want things just as bad as I wanted a credit card swiper that’s compatible with PayPal for my BlackBerry. I wanted it so bad that I am willing to spend my time and money to go on a revenge spree because I don’t have it.

If Facebook didn’t provide an app for iPhone, you people that have them would be pissed off right? Well, I guarantee that you will be hearing the word-of-mouth about this great new game or app from your friends that are smart enough to have a BlackBerry, and you will want to try it. Eventually, you will get pissed that it’s not available to your device.

When this demand is created, I will be asked by millions of angry consumers why the game and apps are not supported on your device. I am not against making them available to you. But there will be a catch… In order for me to give a shit about your opinion, I will require consumers to complain to every company that has apps but none for BlackBerry. There are major companies out there such as Mint.com for example, that don’t support BlackBerry. When 20 big companies catch on and start to develop for the BlackBerry, I will make my app available on a single other device. When 40 more companies get on the ball, then I will make it available to another device.

Consumers need to stop messing it up for others… Stay tuned. I always keep my promises.

If you own a business that relies on local customers or local clients, then you must know how vital it is that potential customers are able to find you. That’s where local seo (search engine optimization) comes in.

What would happen if you doubled your business within 3-months time? What would that mean to you? Would it be a game changer?

If I were to tell you that you can own the first page of Google in not just one, but MULTIPLE positions, would you jump on it? My company Leads2LocalSearch does just that! The problem is, we only represent one company in a given industry for their local regional area. That means if you were a criminal attorney in Chicago and you were our client, then you would be the only criminal attorney that we have as a client for Chicago. That’s an important part of our strategy because our job is to give you more than one position on Google’s first page.

What if I were to tell you that your competition is reading this too? Would you pass up this opportunity and let them take control of the search results?

Let me tell you some things about Google local seo and how it works…

Google has different areas for which your website(s) can show up. One of them is the sponsored listings. These are the results at the very top of the page, and along the right side of the page when you do a search. You can control that area. In addition, the listings underneath the sponsored results are natural search listings. We get your website on the very top of those listings in not just one, but many spots. How you ask? We get your actual business website on top with up to 2 possible listings. We also setup various social media profiles and other business listings, and we get them to show up on top of the organic search results as well.

What else? With local seo, no campaign would be complete without optimizing the local listings. Those are generally showing for local searches between the sponsored and natural results. They often show phone numbers and physical street addresses of your business for that search area.

Let’s break it down…

What if your business showed up in the sponsored listings, the local listings with your phone number + address + URL, and multiple spots in the natural serps? A major increase in business is what happens!

Are you convinced that you AT LEAST need to request a no-obligation quote? Yes? Go to http://www.leads2localsearch.com and fill out the quick form. It really is that simple to double your business or more!

My research into money making has brought me to some interesting websites. I have found many weird ways to make money. One such way was with a few lotto subscriptions. I know, it sounds bogus, but stick with me for a second. On the Illinois lottery website, I can get a mega millions subscription for $26. I got 5 of them. Week after week, I would win small amounts that added up to much more than my initial investment. You don’t have to hit the jackpot to recoup your money.

Another weird way to make money is by offering a space in your drive-way for rental parking. This tends to work in City areas that are prone to not having street parking because they are so packed with cars. You can actually rent someone your space for a couple hundred bucks as long as you have room for your car too.

One other way I have made some money was to get some stuff around the house that’s in the way, and offer it for a price on Craigslist. The difference between Craigslist and eBay is the fact that you won’t end up paying a fee to post on Craigslist. On top of that, you are more likely to sell something there too. The traffic is much different, and your item will stick out better.

I will keep an eye out for more weird ways to make money and keep you posted.