Work from Home Archives

WordPress Classroom Exposed

Saturday, December 11th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

A WordPress Classroom Review

I first started using the wordpress classroom back in early 2009 when it was first conceived and when I needed to know how to learn wordpress and I can honestly say that without the knowledge it provided, this and my other wordpress blogs would not exist.

Matt Wolfe, the creator of the WordPress Classroom is one of the nice guys and his expertise in using and teaching wordpress is next to none.
While many say that wordpress is a cinch to use, for novice users it can become extremely frustrating in just not knowing what to do.

You have to know how to learn wordpress!

The WordPress Classroom takes away all that frustration by delivering easy to understand precise walk through FREE wordpress training videos which provide step by step instructions on exactly how and where to start, right through to getting your wordpress blog online and indexed by the major search engines such as Google.

Click here to visit the WordPress Classroom

Advanced users of wordpress can also glean a lot of information from the WordPress Classroom particularly if HTML is not their strong point. Although it was not completely necessary for me to learn HTML, I found that a basic understanding of some html is necessary in creating some links and particularly when creating widgets.

See more about using widgets in the WordPress Classroom here.

Below is a list of the Free Videos found in the WordPress Classroom.

For the Novice

How and where to buy a Domain.
How and where to buy a hosting account.
How to link your domain to your Host.
How to install WordPress using fantastico from your Hosting Control Panel
How to install wordpress manually
How to Install a Free Theme
How to add email to your Blog
How to install plugins such as Google Analytics automatically and manually.
How to manage threaded comments
How to learn wordpress

Intermediate Level.

How to install a Twitter Widget.
How to hide Affilaite Links.
How to install an opt-in box in the side bar.
How to add an Avatar beside your comments.
How to add a contact me form to your blog.
How to make money using the WordPress Classroom

See an Example Free Video Below

While the wordpress training videos above are free, the WordPress Classroom also offers a paid version which includes all of the above plus over seventy additional videos with new monthly instructional videos for advanced users.

It also provides a great members forum where members help each other with all sorts of issues and offer tips on Marketing, html, themes, Traffic exchange, plus several fantastic bonuses many of which are not found anywhere else.

Just a Few Of the Additional WordPress Classroom Pro Videos.

How to edit Permalinks For SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
How to install The “All In One” Seo Plugin.
How to guard your blog against content theft.
How to create a static home page
How to back up your blog
How to remove pages from the menu.
How to add images to your blog and how to add an affiliate link to them.
3 In-depth videos on How to Create a Membership Site for your blog
How to add a forum to your membership site
How to create a full width page eliminating the side bar from your blog.
How to install a multi-site using WordPress 3.0 and above.

The site you are looking at now was created using the WordPress Classroom and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Go here to visit the Free WordPress Classroom Videos and learn more about using WordPress.

The “Don’t Do What I Do, Do What I Say” Scenario

Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 9:20 am

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One of the many things which both confused and annoyed me when I first became interested in Internet marketing, was the “Don’t do what I do, do what I say” scenario used by so many affiliate marketers and guru’s alike.

Lambs to the Slaughter

I think it’s fairly safe to say that all who become interested in making money online, do so because they’d either read or been told that there’s easy money to made on the net. So, the next move is to go looking for a means by which they can become another rich internet millionaire.

Now, the one thing we are all invariably guilty of in our searches, is to sign up to what seems to be promising free news letters or actually subscribe to paid ones?

While there is nothing wrong with that “initially”, in that there is so much great free and paid information available online, one of the first pieces of advice every internet marketing course, affiliate newsletter or subscription regardless of cost will provide you with ….. Is to “unsubscribe from all the other subscriptions you have signed up for”.

The “Delete Your Cookies” suggestion

Many marketers will also tell you to delete your cookies and temporary internet files as well to ensure the security of your computer. But this ploy is really only to ensure that there is less likelihood of you buying the same product they are promoting from another affiliate who’s URL you may have saved or will be in the history of your browser. (This is a sneaky little trick which became popular a couple of years ago but fortunately seems to have lost flavor somewhat in that it lacks ethics, integrity and credibility.)

So once having done what is suggested, the next thing which will happen is that you start to receive the affiliate newsletter you subscribed to, which will usually contain several product links.

Circles within Circles

That’s fine as well because that’s how many affiliates sell the products they are promoting…..but, the links provided when clicked on will almost invariably take you to an auto responder opt in, sign up page. Now since you’ve already signed up to the page your now on, the new sign up will more often than not, subscribe you to one of the subscriptions you were advised to sign out of in the first place??????

The Gullible Newbie

Like so many newbies, I couldn’t understand the logic of this until I realized that by re-subscribing, I was actually doing so under the affiliate link of the person’s newsletter I had recently subscribed to and if I actually purchased anything from my new sign up, the affiliate I had just signed up under would receive commissions for that sale.

The problem is however, for newbies, they find ourselves in the exactly the same sinking boat they started in, with the same confusing glut of information overload they were advised to avoid in the first place.

The Catch 22

It’s all a bit like the dog chasing his tail in one direction and then turning around and doing it in the other. Poor old Fido doesn’t realize that the solution to his problem is to simply sit on the damn thing to keep it still and he can bite it and it’s fleas all he likes.

Internet marketing has it’s similarities in that if you find a method that you can sit on which will help you achieve success, don’t go spinning off in another direction.

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Fishing for Guest Blog Posts

Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 10:35 am

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A few days ago I received an offer from a list owner to write a guest blog post on my blog.

While guest blog posts are hardly a new idea for getting traffic to your site, it was the first time someone had actually suggested it to me so it sparked my interest.

Granted that the invitation came from a list I’d previously signed up to, I did have some faith in the sender because he had shown remarkable results from his twitter account and was also a member of a private forum of which I’m also a member.

In the guest blog post invitation, he’s taken steps to make it easy for anyone to contact him if they indeed wanted him to submit a guest post so I did!

He’s made a point of explaining the benefits of guest blog posts to both the blog owner and himself and also requested an outline of which topic the blog owner would like him to write a guest post on. He also mentioned that the email was being sent to 10,000 subscribers so I’d need to be fast!

Seeing this as a good opportunity to have a well known “twitterer” guest post on my blog, I wrote a detailed email back to him providing all the information he said he required to write the guest blog post and the following is some of what I wrote:

“I’ve been on your list for only a couple of months and joined because I was impressed with some of your posts in the marketing with Alex forum of which I’m also a member.
If you look at my blog you’ll see that I’m a baby boomer hopefully targeting other boomers with the intention of inspiring them to jump on the internet marketing wagon to ensure a regular income for their retirement.
I think the vast majority of people in their 60’s don’t have the skills to operate a computer to the degree where they can set up an internet business, and it’s those skills or the lack of them, I would like your guest blog post to target, in creating an interest in learning them.
The other thing which comes to mind is Australia’s notorious reputation for slow internet connections and how to develop an internet marketing business with that restriction”.

The following day I received the following email from him and my reply:
Hi Sean,

Thanks for the email, but… can you tell me what you want a guest blog post on?

David
“Hi David.

Sorry you didn’t get the gist of what I wanted. I thought I’d mapped it out within the 2 sentences below this message. (now above) If you could write a post on baby boomers entering the Internet marketing field………..with the usual complications and restrictions of not having previously had any formal computer training at school etc.

I realise it’s a broad field to write about but if you can write anything at all which is relevant to the topics it will have the effect you want in providing exposure to yourself and also provide me with a guest blog post etc.”

His reply indicated to me that the whole exercise was a waste of time in that it seemed that he wasn’t interested in carrying out any research on any other topic other than the ones he was familiar with in order to write a guest blog post for anyone.
What he wrote back to me was the following:
Hi Sean,

Seeing as I am not a baby boomer myself, you would be far more qualified to write a post on that topic than me……

Do you have another suggestion for me?

David
I did have another suggestion for him but I think would be inappropriate to include it here.
Now I may be wrong but I think I made the topic of the guest blog post I wanted fairly clear in my first email to him and that realistically, even if only 10% of the people he sent the original email out to wanted him to write a guest post he would be writing 1000 guest blog posts which would keep him busy for quite a long time.
So….I guess it just reinforces what I’ve come to firmly believe and advise. Pay particular attention to whose lists you sign up to and restrict them to only those you completely trust.

I’m now off his list!

Comments Please

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A Guru’s ATM!

Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 12:07 pm

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Are you a Guru’s ATM?

Some time ago when I first became interested in internet marketing, I recall doing what most of us do when getting started in that I watched countless videos and signed up to numerous free and paid courses and news letters which had my inbox groaning under the weight.

I remember when online videos first took off as a marketing tool and I still recall my feelings of exuberance when I watched my first one, fully believing at the time that I’d found my future in the product it was promoting.

It was a new system unlike anything ever done before. It thoroughly trashed every other single method of making money online such as affiliate marketing, list building, email marketing, blogging, forum marketing, article marketing and every other system previously developed. It even went so far as to give eBay a blasting when at the time eBay was probably the most successful form of making money online there was!

It went on to show proof of how “Their System” had made this person 20K in as many days and yadda yadda yadda……

All you needed to do was to go to a certain web page where you submitted all your details including your phone number and they would be in touch within a few days to tell you how you would become rich almost overnight.

Sure enough a few days later when answering the phone in my home on the North East Coast of Northern Australia, I was greeted by a very friendly and heavily accented American voice that proceed to tell me how, by investing around 15K I could easily make around 5K in no time at all.

Now I’m no mathematical whiz kid but that idea didn’t seem to be what I had in mind when laboring through the initial video and filling in the form with all the little boxes which simply had to be filled in so precisely.

When at the end he finally asked me to sign up and I declined, he abused me for wasting his time at which time I simply hung up. I couldn’t believe it when the phone rang a couple of minutes later to have him call me back to berate me a little more, not once but 3 times after I kept hanging up. Obviously after the third time I just unplugged the phone.

I later found out that the person who called me was actually representing one of the biggest and most well known internet marketing gurus there is.

Another one was the guy who was making 250K per year with Adsense. He only wanted $297 to reveal his brand new never seen before cutting edge system.

Adsense????? Who was he kidding?

The above are just a couple of examples of how these so called gurus want you to be their own personal ATM’s and over the next few posts I’m going to attempt to outline how to avoid becoming a slave to these sharks even though you may only be a tadpole in their midst.

A clue: How to Stay focused!

Related Blogs

Making eBay a Home Based Business.

Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 11:28 am

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It almost goes without saying that one of the most popular ways to make money online is with eBay; However there really aren’t that many people who make a lot of money by selling on eBay. While there are several reasons for that, the one which stands out is that most people just don’t know how to become rich using eBay.

These videos are free. Can’t wait? Just click here to have a look.

In the past I’ve actually made money on eBay but really it was quite by accident that I did! On 2 occasions that I can remember, I bought something on eBay, only to find out when it arrived that it wasn’t what I wanted. The first item was a spray gun because I was painting a car but by the time it arrived I’d finished the job. And the second was a book which upon reading I found I didn’t like.So, I re-submitted the items and put the original starting bid price on them, plus a little bit more to cover the shipping costs I had already paid.

What happened next in both cases was that someone bought the items for more than I had paid for them and so turning me an accidental profit I didn’t expect. Of course that was just a small example of how to use eBay and I probably made about $5 on each of the 2 deals but if I was to repeat that 100 times obviously I would be making some good money.

In my case however, it’s just not practical because I live in a region of Australia where the nearest post office or shipping facility is too far away to warrant the expense of the time and travel. And of course there’s always the risk that the items bought to sell, either don’t sell or sell for less than I paid for them.

However, in having said that there are people who have been able to make a veritable fortune from eBay simply because they DO know what they are doing. My mentor Alex Jeffreys made very good money on eBay by firstly buying Motor bikes from Japan and selling them in England and then by selling CDs.

Another person who springs to mind is Francis Ochoco who was the first ever eBay Entrepreneur of the year. Francis has become instrumental in creating a series of eBay tutorial videos unbridled in detail in how to become rich from eBay. Below is a little of what he says about the Videos. Read the rest of this entry

Introduction to Internet Marketing for Baby Boomers.

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 12:09 pm

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I created this site as an on going journal and personal record of my travels down the highways of the budding baby boomer entrepreneur internet marketer.

Apart from that being one hell of a mouthful, firstly it’s important for me to remember that one of the first things I learned is that although there is much hype about it being easy to break into this field……It’s not.

I’ve read that the cold hard facts are that 90% of people who try to make money through internet marketing….fail.

But, among the other things I’ve learned, is that if you are willing to work hard and adhere to a set plan, there is every possibility that you can make a good living as a baby boomer internet marketer.

I found that the main problem I faced (and I believe is faced by most of us baby boomers), is a lack of education in computer use and indeed the Internet and its burgeoning Internet Marketing industry.

The vast majority of us had no formal internet or computer related education at school or university simply because the technology was so new that those who did have the opportunity to learn were indeed the developers of the same technology.

My Introduction to Internet Marketing for Baby Boomers

I remember when I was about 16 years old, walking down a street in Newcastle NSW where I grew up…. with my older brother and a couple of friends who were also brothers to each other…. when we walked past a building where a couple of attractive young girls were standing out the front handing out Read the rest of this entry