Our mascot, Molly the Magnifying Glass, is taking trips around the world. If you order a Micro Niche Finder USB, you may be lucky and receive one of these in the mail.

 Email jjones2024@gmail.com with a picture of Molly to win a FREE and AWESOME gift (we can’t give it away, but we’ve worked on this for a long time).

No picture = no prize.

A picture = a prize!

There are instructions included in the package, but ultimately any picture that has Molly the Magnifying Glass in it will qualify and win the prize! Thanks

Creating a successful website is dependent on many things, not the least of which is web design. A well planned, aesthetically pleasing website attracts people surfing the internet, keeps them on your website, and aids in their decision to make a purchase from your website.

We have all encountered brilliant websites that use designs or special fonts to stand apart from the rest. Some websites have fonts so distinctive that people instantly associate that font with the website (the entire cheezburger network instantly comes to mind), and finding your own unique font to help create your brand identity can be an important aspect of finding success with e-businesses. There is a handy website called www.dafont.com (disclaimer: we are NOT an affiliate or associated with them in any capacity – we just like their services) that makes it easy to find the right font for your next project. The best part is that most of the fonts are free, and it’s so simple to use that you don’t need to hire someone to create a special font just for you!

Once you are on the website, there are many categories of fonts for you to peruse. Each font gives a small sample of what it looks like, and to the far right you will see a download button that looks like this:

Click on the “Download” button and save the zip file. Once it has completed downloading, go to the folder where it is saved, double-click on the zip to open it, then click on “Extract all files” to unzip the file.

You will then copy these files and paste them into your fonts folder. For all Windows versions this can be achieved by going to the Start Menu > Control Panel > Appearance and Themes > Fonts. Copy the files into this folder and you will be able to use them right away.

The way to download a font for Mac computers depends on the operating system:

For Mac OS X 10.3 or above (including the FontBook) , double-click the font file > “Install font” button at the bottom of the preview.

For Under any version of Mac OS X, put the files into /Library/Fonts (for all users),
or into /Users/Your_username/Library/Fonts (for you only).

For Under Mac OS 9 or earlier, you need to do an extra step since the old Mac fonts are not supported anymore at dafont. First, you have to convert the font files (.ttf or .otf) you have downloaded. Then drag the fonts suitcases into the System folder. The system will propose you to add them to the Fonts folder.

As we mentioned earlier, most of the fonts on this website are free. Even though a font may be labeled freeware, shareware, demo versions or public domain, it never hurts to double check. When you download the font file there is usually a readme.txt file (or something to that extent) included in the download, which explicitly states how you can use the font.

Below are a few random fonts that we found to be eyecatching; for example, the “Green Fuz” one in particular would be great to use with a Halloween affiliate website, and Amadeus would be great for music themed websites. Have a look around and see if this website helps to get your creative juices flowing. Each font spells the font name, so you can search these fonts by entering these names into dafont’s search bar.

And of course, if you know of another unique font website that is primarily free to use, please share! We love discovering new websites

Amazon and Overstock.com have pulled their Affiliate Programs out of several states due to sales tax issues.  Here are some other options:

1) Register an LLC out of state.  Will cost you a couple hundred bucks.  Be sure to check with a CPA in your state and consider any additional tax obligations.

2) Sign up as an affiliate with Walmart or Target.  They have many of the same items as Amazon.

or

3) Monitize with Adsense or go through cj.com to find a specific merchant.

or

4) Go ahead and set up Amazon sites, get traffic to them and flip them.

or

5) Partner with someone in a different state.

or

6) Do something other then niche affiliate sites such as selling ebooks on Kindle, writing niche specific articles and selling them as PLR, consulting to offline businesses.

Or…

7)  __________ (you fill in the blank — click comments and let us hear your ideas)

James

You may have noticed an increase in websites that end in .ly . The .ly domain is the top-level domain for the country Libya. For years the company in charge of handling Libyan registrations floundered, but relatively recently Libya’s General Post and Telecommunications Company took control of website registrations. The result is that .ly domains are available to everyone in the world, which is great for people who like unconventional top-level domains (sometimes known as “domain name hacks” or “domain hacks”). Two very popular .ly domain hacks include ad.ly and sound.ly, which both have heavy associations with twitter. This type of domain is definitely not for everyone, but for people with a very clear purpose it could serve their business or personal endeavors well.

A website company called Wix has developed a simple and (mostly) intuitive way for users to build flash websites and widgets for FREE. This company is a few years old and not yet as well known as it should be, but the potential for this website becoming an important resource for bloggers and internet marketers alike is tremendous.

Some marketers and bloggers have no need or desire to use Flash and that’s perfectly fine. Yet there are many other who wish they could utilize the effects Flash can provide but either don’t know how to go about writing the codes OR don’t want to pay the money to someone else who does know how to write flash codes. Wix allows its users to be their own flash designer for free (although you can always upgrade to more premium accounts, which obviously offers more benefits). You can use Wix to create not only websites, but also MySpace Layouts (admittedly, not many people use MySpace anymore – but for musicians with music on their MySpace page this could be a fantastic way to add pizzazz), widgets, blogs, newsletters, banners, flyers…the list goes on and on.

Wix is initially slightly overwhelming – although it is to a large degree intuitive it does take a bit of playing around with it to fully appreciate all the effects and options at your disposal. There are thousands of free customizable templates for you to use, and once you pick the theme or template you desire you are automatically taken to a wix editor.

This wix editor is impressive and offers a myriad of features you can add to customize your page. For instance, you can add pictures, videos, and music in addition to adding various widgets including RSS, paypal, Google Maps, comments, and contact forms. You can add shapes, give your webpage animations, and introduce visual effects for user behavior. Naturally you can change colors and texts (and there is a wide variety of unique fonts – I happen to like the “pez” font). You can modify or eliminate menus and headliners, and for particular objects on a page you can rotate, resize, and rearrange to your hearts content.

There is so much more you can do using wix – I’ve barely scratched the tip of the iceberg. The best way to learn more about wix and all of its incredible features is to explore it yourself.

Wix is also very important for another reason -Wix websites are fully compatible with search engines! Traditional Flash is not SEO compatible, but because Wix has developed a new way to create content (a hybrid of HTML and Flash – even though the Wix editor relies on Flash, there’s no need to create codes) you’ll be able to use Wix-created websites or widgets for effective promotions and optimizations. For websites this is a HUMONGOUS development, but for widget purposes (such as Facebook widgets) the SEO benefit is not relevant.

I was playing around with the Wix features and decided to post my results into a quickie website (this took maybe ten minutes to make). I’m not great at creating flash codes so if I had to do this the traditional way this would have taken me FOREVER.

Okay, forever is perhaps a slight exaggeration, but the fact that this little website only took ten minutes to make (and that’s including ‘mess around’ time to figure out the features) really shows how easy it is to make a professional-looking website or widget quickly. My “mess-around” website with its minimal effects is only the bare bones of a potential website…and with more time and focus it is absolutely possible to make a stunning and SEO compatible website!

I will explore Wix further (and perhaps you will too) and as I discover more about Wix I will share the findings in future posts.

It’s been brought to our attention that the various time-zone differences can be confusing for people not living in EST (that’s short for North America Eastern Standard Time). Since we are doing an increasing amount of live webinars, we thought that this simple post showing how to calculate time zone differences would be helpful.

First and foremost, while we are well aware of GMT, we are also painfully aware that not everyone else understands the concept of GMT. GMT, also known as UT, is the “Universal Time”. Every time zone in the world is based off its relation to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). So for example, if I was in Ahmedabad, India, I would be GMT + 5:30 (five and a half hours ahead of GMT); if I was in Chicago, USA I would be GMT – 6:00 (six hours behind GMT). While UT (Universal Time) is the more politically and scientifically correct way to designate the time, many people still say GMT or disregard GMT/UT altogether.

For the record, we are in the North American Eastern Standard Time zone (EST) and North American Eastern Daylight Time zone (EDT). We are EST during the autumn and winter, so during these seasons we are GMT – 5:00 (five hours behind GMT). The reason we have two time zone names is because Daylight Savings time changes our relation to GMT and in the spring and summer we become only four hours behind GMT (GMT – 4:00).

If you want to just figure out the time differences between our time zone and your time zone, there is an easy website to use called The World Clock Time Zone Converter. This is handy because it also takes into account Daylight Savings Time (not everywhere follows this) and calculates day differences (ex: it may be Thursday the 4^th in our time zone but Friday the 5^th in another).

Once you click on the website, you will see a little form you can fill out. Please enter the correct information for the Month, Day, Year and Hour.

Time Zone Converter

Next, you are going to fill in OUR time zone. You can do this two ways:

1.) Find a location near to us – although we are not based there, choosing the “U.S.A North Carolina – Raleigh” is a good option.

Our "location" method

2.) Or you can click on the tab that says “Time Zone”

Time Zones Method

If you click on the “Time Zone” tab, find the option that says “EST – Eastern Standard Time (North America)” if it’s during our autumn or winter. Then click on “New York (winter)”. If it is during our spring or summer, find “EDT – Eastern Daylight Time (North America)”.

The field will fill in automatically:

Time Zones Method - EST or EDT New York

Next, fill in YOUR time zone by selecting a city that is near your location. For this example, I’ll pretend that I live in Auckland, New Zealand.

Your Time Zone/Location

Once everything is filled in I will hit the bottom button that says “Convert Time”.

I will then see a screen that tells me what time 7:00 pm in Raleigh (or New York time, depending on which above method you used) is in Auckland, New Zealand. I now know that if there was a webinar starting at Wednesday 7:00 pm EST I would have to be at my computer by Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 1:00 pm to listen to it in its entirety.

Time Zone Conversion Complete

Time zones are tricky measurements, but with this website you’ll always be able to convert times accurately and quickly!

Amazon’s Kindle is one way (albeit a great way) to make profits from eBooks you have the rights to. It’s free to upload, easy to do, and is a great example of “set and forget” profits.

In addition to the reasons listed above, there is now another motive to put your eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle. Amazon just announced that ALL of its eBooks that were previously only available on the Kindle will now also be available to download on Blackberrys!

Millions of people in America own a Blackberry (sorry international users; Kindle for Blackberry is only available in America for now) so this means the amount of people that now have access to your eBooks has increased dramatically. It’s a rather simple equation: as more and more people have access to Kindle’s books, there can be more potential profits for you!

The types of Blackberrys that can support the Kindle Application are as follows:

-Bold 9000
-Bold 9700
-Curve 8520
-Curve 8900
-Storm 9530
-Storm 9550
-Tour 9630

If you already have a Kindle, you can synch your Blackberry to your Kindle via Whispersync. This is practical and necessary; for example: if you were reading a book on Kindle and bookmarked your last page, but are now somewhere without your Kindle you can start reading exactly where you left off on your Blackberry – how convenient!

There are future improvements coming to the Kindle on Blackberry – highlighting, creating notes, and search capabilities namely – but the Kindle on Blackberry is still decent enough in its initial form to encourage Blackberry users to immediately start buying eBooks.

In short, publish your eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle as soon as possible! Not only will those that have a Kindle be able to buy your eBooks, but so will people that only have Blackberrys (and of course, those that have both devices). The profits are yours to make, good luck!

Originally a social-networking site that started in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook’s popularity spread throughout universities and colleges throughout North America. Whereas it was originally available only to college students, Facebook became so popular that it eventually allowed non-college students to join. As of writing this blog post, there are approximately 400 million people in the world that have a Facebook account – and the numbers keep growing (225 million of those 400 million are from last year alone). The astounding, nay, meteoric rise of Facebook has interesting implications for internet marketers.

An increasing amount of people now peruse the internet based either on their friend’s recommendations or their friends recent activities, ushering in a new way of social media optimization called “friend-casting”. The principles behind friend-casting are simple and to explain the process I will use a recent and personal example.

I was on facebook perhaps two weeks ago when a friend whom I know and trust recommended checking out a website with the tagline “putting this in the nursery” (she’s having a baby soon). It was a link to a website that sold wall stickers – adorable ones for children, might I add – and since I have a family member who recently announced that she’s pregnant (good thing they don’t live by each other or I’d have to question the drinking water) and I had a flash of inspiration. Voila! I have found the perfect gift for the inevitable baby shower! This website made a sale (I bought ’Woodland Animals’ wall stickers, in case you were wondering) because my friend posted a link on facebook.

Friend + Link + Facebook = Social Media Optimization (via “friend-casting”)

Think of your own facebook experiences. How often have you clicked on links your friends recommended? How many times have you posted a link, photo, or a video and had someone “like” it, let alone comment on it? How frequently have you commented or “liked” something one of your friends posted? This is friend-casting, and it’s powerful. Friend-casting is the e-version equivalent of “word of mouth” advertising! So important is friend-casting on Facebook that it is considered the premier way to achieve great social media optimization.

Consider this: According to web measurement firm Compete Inc., for the first time ever Facebook directs more traffic to major websites (on caliber with yahoo and msn) than Google. More traffic than Google! I’ll let that sink in…and for other types of websites, Facebook is among the top sources for directing traffic, with Google still being in the lead. Google is still king – no question about it – but ignore Facebook at your own peril. In the same vein, Search Engine Optimization is definitely still important, but Social Media Optimization is too effective to disregard.

Furthermore, a large portion of a person’s web session is dedicated to their destination, with only a small amount of time actually dedicated to the search (statistically speaking – which may or may not be true for you). The amount of time people spend on Facebook has grown too, which effectively means more people are spending more time on the internet with Facebook as their destination.

From an internet marketing point of view, the immediate implications for this development is to start advertising on Facebook in order to reach a wider demographic and drive traffic to your business. For smaller-scale enterprises, this could mean simply sharing links in your status updates or posting the occasional note. It can also mean utilizing a mix of features, such as advertising on facebook, starting a group or a fanpage (ahem…have you joined ours yet?), linking your notes to your blog, linking your twitter and facebook accounts, updating your status with information relevant to your business, and the list goes on!

Remember my friend that told me about the wall stickers I mentioned a few paragraphs above? Well, she is woefully ignorant about affiliate marketing – but you’re not! To toe the FTC line you would have to mention you are an affiliate near the link, but you can absolutely tout your affiliate website or product on facebook via status updates, a note, etc. Your friends will see it on their Facebook feed and by the sheer virtue of being friends on facebook your suggestions will resonate with them and be influential, which could translate into increased traffic and sales!

Social Media Optimization, primarily through Facebook, is one of the new internet marketing 2.0 strategies (“interwebz” marketing if you REALLY want to be 2.0 about it). It’s a constantly evolving field, but if recent developments are any indication, Social Media Optimization will be a vital component of internet marketing for a long time to come.

“Cracking the Code” to online success has always been the toughest obstacle for any “newbie” just starting out. If you’re looking for simple, easy to apply strategies and a step-by-step plan to become successful online in as little as 30 days, join James Jones and Bill White on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 7:00PM EST for The Absolute Newbie Success Webinar. It’s a straight forward, tell-all hour of pure content you won’t want to miss. 

• Discover the “secret” 3 step formula that thousands of other successful use every day to generate profits on autopilot
• Learn a 30 day plan to put it into action.
• And much more advice for internet marketing success, given to you straight and without meaningless “fluff” in this 60 minute LIVE webinar!

The details for this important webinar are as follows:

Date: Wednesday Feb 17th, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Sign Up Page:  http://www.snip2.com/re/answ-bg
System Requirements: For PC-based attendees: Windows® 2000, XP
Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista.
For Macintosh®-based attendees: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer.

Space is limited, but you can reserve your place in a matter of seconds. The formula IS simple, it DOES work, and you DON’T want to miss it!

With the influx of PLR related articles and ebooks, it’s important to use images to help distinguish your product (be it article, website, or ebook) from the rest. For instance, a well chosen cover image can boost your Kindle sales tremendously. While many people realize images are curcial for their sales, not everyone acquires and uses images legally. This of course can lead to BIG legal problems – and we don’t want you to ever, EVER fall into that predicament.

Much like articles can be copyrighted and trademarked, so can images, and much like using articles you don’t own the rights to, you can be sued by the person or company who does own the rights to the image(s) and be forced to pay a lot of money for copyright and trademark infringement. Doing a Google Image search is absolutely NOT a good way to find images. Most of the images are copyrighted and unless you know how to determine if an image is royalty free or not – risky business, may we add – you are better off not even looking for images in this way.

To avoid the humongous hassle of being sued, you want to look for and use images that say “Royalty Free”. Royalty Free images are akin to PLR articles – you don’t have to pay royalties, you can modify them, and you can publish them as your own. Royalty Free images are by far the safest way to add valuable images to your website or product without having to worry about repercussions.

We use this awesome website to find our royalty free images: http://www.sxc.hu/ It’s free to register and loaded with Royalty Free images. Even if there isn’t a picture directly related to your subject, the odds are good that with a little creative thinking you could find an image that will work well (and hey, it’s better than illegally using what you perceive to be the perfect image). SXC also sells really high-quality images for $1.00 (sometimes even less). It’s a very affordable way to legally use professional images.

To prove our point, here’s a royalty free image for your enjoyment:

"Oh Hi!" Panda - a royalty free image