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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.
I’ve been walking though my analytics data. That is the Big Brother software I use to know everything about each one of my dear readers. It’s all part of my master plan to rule the world. Muwahaha!
Some of the results are interesting.
The single most-used search term to find this site is “slow carb diet“, which is great, because I really enjoyed writing that post. I’ve been slacking on the diet lately, but I’m still down more than 30 pounds. I’m currently ranked #3 in Google for this term. If I move up 2 more spots, I’ll outrank Tim Ferriss for his own product. If I aggregated all of the “slow carb” variations, this post probably accounts for more than half of my traffic from Google.
Many of you come here by searching for “how to have a perfect life“. I’ll do everything I can to help you achieve that, but it’s going to take work on your part. There are no shortcuts.
“Beat the Check” is another popular search term, but a very bad game to play. It’s almost impossible to win it, since the Check 21 Act of 2004.
It’s interesting that “trained husband” brings a few of you each month. My question: are you shopping, or exploring a new fetish? Don’t be shy.
I’m a bit amazed that “zombie wheels” is something people actually search for, but 140 people hit Google looking for that term every month, and a few of them make it over here.
“How to stretch a meal“, “things you should buy online“, and “unsecured loan advice” are some of the top personal finance terms bringing you all in, though “how to make a bunker” and its variation are popular, too.
“Hoe can you force your wife” is a bit disturbing. Most of the results are naturally for sex. I can’t help but hope that I’ve either really disappointed this visitor, or convinced him that force is a bad idea.
“How much did a pound of gold weigh in 1854?” is a search that makes me giggle. To the best of my knowledge, the troy scale has been used to weigh gold for a lot longer than that.
That was a fun little stroll through my statistics. Hopefully the fact that I used “fetish” and “sex” in a post will draw more crazy search terms.
How did you find me? Inquiring minds want to know, so please tell me in the comments.
When you’re setting up a niche site, you need to monetize it. You need to have a way to make money, or it’s a waste of time.
There are two main ways to do that: AdSense or product promotion. To set up an AdSense site, you write a bunch of articles, post them on a website with some Google ads, and wait for the money to roll in.
I don’t do that.
I don’t own a single AdSense site and have never set one up. This article is not about setting up an Adsense site.
My niches site are all product-promotion sites. I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it.
Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.
The most important part of product selection is that the product has an affiliate program. Without that, there’s no money to be made. There are a lot of places to find affiliate programs. Here are a few:
The first thing you need to do is sign up for whichever program you intend to use.
If you’re not going with Clickbank, feel free to skip ahead to the section on keyword research.
Once you are signed up and logged in, click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of the screen.
From here, it’s just a matter of finding a good product to sell. Here are the niches we’re going to be looking for:
I’m going to look for one or two good products in each niche. When that’s done we’ll narrow it down by consumer demand.
For now, go to advanced search.
Enter your keyword, pick the category and set the advanced search stats. Gravity is the number of affiliates who have made sales in the last month. I don’t like super-high numbers, but I also want to make sure that the item is sellable. Over 10 and under 50 or so seems to be a good balance.
The average sale just ensures that I’ll make a decent amount of money when someone buys the product. I usually aim for $25 or more in commissions per sale. Also, further down, check the affiliate tools box. That means the seller will have some resources for you to use.
This combination will give us 36 products to check out for back pain, unfortunately, none of the results are for back pain products. After unchecking the affiliate tools and setting the gravity to greater than 1, I’ve got 211 results. Sorting by keyword relevance, I see three products, two of which look like something I’d be interested in promoting. One has a 45% commission, the other is 55%. The X-Pain Method has an initial commission of $34 and claims a 5% refund rate. Back Pain, Sciatica, and Bulging Disc Relief pays $16, which will make it a potentially easier sale. I’ll add both to the list for further research.
I’m not going to detail the search for the rest of the niches. That would be repetitive. You can see my selections here:
Now we’re going to go through a few steps for each of these products.
We need to make sure the sales page doesn’t suck. If the site doesn’t work, is hard to read or navigate, has a hard-to-find order button, or just doesn’t look professional, it’s getting cut.
If it has an email subscription form, we’ll need to subscribe, then double-check to make sure our affiliate information isn’t getting dropped in the emails. If it is, the seller is effectively stealing commissions. In the interest of time and laziness, I’m going to eliminate anyone pushing for an email subscription. It’s harder–and time-consuming–to monitor that. On of my niche site had a seller completely drop their product. Instead, they pushed for email subscriptions so they could promote other products as an affiliate. Absolutely unethical.
Finally, we’re going to visit the checkout page. You need to do this from every links in the newsletter and the links on the sales page, just to make sure you’ll get your money.
The way to tell who’s being credited is to look at the bottom of the order page, under the payment information. It should say [affiliate = xxx] where xxxis your ClickBank ID. Anything else, and the product gets cut from the list.
When you are checking these, don’t click on every possible link at once. That confuses the cookies. Do one at a time. I tried to do it in one batch for this post and lost half of the cookies. If it weren’t for the fact that I already own one of the products and bought it through my own link and got credited, I would have been talking undeserved trash about thieving companies.
Sometimes, when you’re examining a product, it just doesn’t feel right. When that happens, drop it. There are millions of other products you can promote. In this case, I’m dropping the anger management program because, in my experience, angry people don’t think they are the problem. Here’s a life tip: If everyone else is a jerk, the problem probably isn’t everyone else.
Now we’re down to 10 products in 6 niches. At this point, we’re comfortable with the sales pages and we know that they are crediting commissions. As it stands right now, all of the products are worth promoting.
We’ll make the final determination after doing some heavy keyword research in the next installment. That’s where we’ll find out how hard it is to compete.
Any questions?
Welcome to the Best of Money Carnival #87, the Gold Rush Edition.
On January 24th, 1848, gold was discovered in Coloma, California by construction overseer James W. Marshall. The following year, one hundred thousand people moved to California to either strike it rich, or profit from those who were trying to strike it rich. The gold rush began 163 years ago today.
10. N.W. Journey presents Business use of Home Deduction posted at Networth Journey and says, “How to deduct your business home expenses.”
Some people recommend stockpiling gold so you’ll have something of value to spend after society as we know it collapses. Does anyone know how to make change from a gold bar for a loaf of bread?
9. Darwin presents Present Value of Money Explained – MBA Monday posted at Darwin’s Money and says, “One of the most important financial concepts is also one of the most misunderstood. Make sure you understand the Present value of Money – with these real life examples. It will save you thousands!”
In 1854, a 195 pound gold nugget was found at Carson Hill in California. It was valued at $43,534. That would be worth $3,160,357.20 today.
8. RJ Weiss presents What Your Optimal Income? posted at Gen Y Wealth and says, “An exercise to find your optimal income level.”
Q: Which weighs more: a pound of feathers, or a pound of gold? A: A pound of feathers. Gold is weighed using Troy Weight, which only has 12 ounces per pound.
7. BWL presents How To Select A Financial Advisor posted at Christian Personal Finance and says, “Find out how to select the best financial adviser for you.”
Until the onset of modern electronics, which use gold because it doesn’t corrode or tarnish, gold had no practical value of its own. Its entire value resided in the fact that it was pretty and relatively scarce.
6. Miss T presents 10 Ways to $ave Energy Comfortably | Prairie EcoThrifter.com posted at Prairie Eco-Thrifter and says, “How great is it to save money and the planet at the same time?!”
Q: Which weighs more: a ounce of feathers, or a ounce of gold? A: A ounce of gold. Troy Weight has fewer ounces that avoirdupois, but each ounce weighs more. There are 31.1 grams in a Troy ounce, but only 28.4 grams in a standard ounce.
5. Craig Ford presents Employers Look at Credit Reports | Ludicrous or Smart Business? posted at Money Help For Christians and says, “Should employers be able to see your credit report?”
Outside of collectible or government-issued coins, gold is priced according to it’s spot price, which fluctuates constantly. Dealers will generally pay a percentage under spot when buying gold, then sell for a percentage over spot. Always know the spot price of gold before you agree to buy or sell any.
4. MoneyNing presents Tax Time: Do I Have to Report that Income? posted at Money Ning and says, “Did you receive any income last year? Do you really have to report everything?”
Gold is the 58th most rare natural element, out of 92.
3. Silicon Valley Blogger presents I Just Lost My Job! How I’m Downsizing My Household Expenses posted at The Digerati Life and says, “I share my story of job loss and what ideas I have for paring down my expenses in order to cope with this loss of income. In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to find a new job!”
Only 20% of the gold from the Gold Rush deposits has been reclaimed. The rest is still out there.
2. The Financial Blogger presents 5 Reasons Why You Need A Partner In Your Business posted at The Financial Blogger and says, “A post outlining the benefits of a business partner.”
As of the end of 2009, more than 160,000 tons of gold have been mined, most of which was done in the latter half of the 20th century.
And the winner is…
1. Amanda L Grossman presents Frugal Lessons from People Who Survived the Great Depression posted at Frugal Confessions – Frugal Living and says, “Have you ever met someone who was alive during the Great Depression? They are changed people. The Great Depression left a great impression on their thoughts, their styles, and their habits. I am fascinated by this time period, and researched the question of what frugal habits these people developed to survive.”
I’d like to thank everyone who participated. Next week’s host is PT Money, so don’t forget to submit your entry!
If you’re like millions of people who saw Miley Cyrus’s performance at the MTV Video Music Awards recently, you’ve probably wondered what the effect of massive success on the music and acting star. Cyrus seems to be
doing everything possible to remake her image in the exact opposite of her squeaky clean mold that Disney and other companies have created for her over the last several years. (A rumor has it that Disney even created a contractual obligation for Cyrus to maintain a certain haircut during her “Hannah Montana” television show.) There’s a sense of someone taking on their first sense of independence, and running with it — the star seemed to be sending the message to the audience that she was not going to live according to the expectations of others anymore, and from the look of it, they got that message loud and clear.
The fact that Cyrus is barely into her 20s should tell you something about how much time she has to develop her career. She has enough to retire at an age when most people are just starting their first real job. And that is a tough position to be in. If she is hoping to push her singing and acting career well into adulthood — as most artists would like to — it may be that she is trying to make her mark now. Think of it a bit like Bob Dylan in 1964, releasing electric music for the first time, when before that point he was primarily known as a folk singer making gentle acoustic music.
Dylan’s idea may have been a bit like what Cyrus’ is. That is to say, maybe Miley Cyrus is trying to avoid becoming a has-been, a relic of the 2000’s who burned out playing inoffensive pop music. If this is the case, Cyrus may be able to shift her career into a different mode by showing herself to be an uncompromising artist. Remember that even the greats of the past — Frank Sinatra for example — were once viewed as essentially music for teenagers, and not serious artists. Sinatra even suffered career failure in his 20’s when his audience grew up and moved on to other things. But he came back to record success when he began allowing his music to mature and his ideas to gain focus. If Cyrus can pull such a move, she may not be remembered as a teeny-bopper, but as a serious artist.
Skip to the bottom if you’re familiar with PRISM and don’t want to hear any political talk and rampant violations of our Constitutional rights, but still want to protect your privacy.
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, the PRISM program is an NSA program to monitor electronic activity.
Lots of electronic activity.
The companies identified to be working with the NSA in this grand overreach include AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube. For most people, that is the definition of “the internet”. If you’re doing it online, the NSA is–or could be, at their leisure–watching.
This isn’t a crazy conspiracy theory. This is happening, and the government has admitted it. In fact, when this broke, the executive branch’s response was along the lines of, “Don’t worry, we’ll find the guy who leaked this information.”
On top of that, the government has been demanding phone records from at least Verizon on a daily basis.
In addition, the Justice Department was just busted wiretapping Associated Press phones.
Seriously, if you put this in fiction, nobody would buy it, because it’s ridiculous in the land of the free.
As far as the people who say I’ve got nothing to worry about if I’m not doing anything wrong: shut up. You can speak again when you give me your email passwords, bank records, and let me install a toilet cam in your house. What are you trying to hide?
Seriously, there is such a mess of non-legislative administrative regulations that are considered felonies that the best estimate is that most people commit three felonies a day, without realizing it.
When we live in a system with so many rules that have never been voted on and our legal system refuses to consider legitimate ignorance of the law to be a defense and we have a collection of secret laws that are a felony to disclose or violate, government spying gets far more dangerous.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978(FISA) is the law the NSA is using to justify all of these data requests. The law, that we all must obey, is being overseen by a small subcommittee in Congress, and the FISA courts are just a small subset of the judges. The judges are signing warrants allowing the wiretaps and massive surveillance, but that is clearly unconstitutional and, hence, illegal.
The text of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the supreme law of the United States is: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Any warrant that cannot name a place to be searched is illegal.
Any warrant that cannot describe the person to be monitored is illegal.
Any warrant that is not backed by probable cause is illegal.
Tell me how “I want to watch what everyone is saying on Facebook and seize all of the data” meets any of those criteria.
Bueller?
Wiretapping the AP is a serious violation of the First Amendment, too. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Monitoring the press in case somebody breaks a story the government doesn’t want broken is crap.
How can we petition the government for redress of grievances that they call a felony if the company discloses the violation to us? It’s self-serving circular crap.
When you throw the IRS harassing charities working for the “wrong” politics, you start to pine for the good old days of Nixon-level fair play and integrity.
To be fair, FISA got nasty with the Patriot Act, which was an abomination enacted by a different political party. Hey, Washington, next time try to remember that your laws will someday be administered by your political enemies, k? (NSA: I trust you’ll pass the message for me?)
There are four main pieces to discuss, based on the scandalous Constitutional violations reported recently.
1. Social media monitoring. There’s nothing to this. If you post things on Facebook, the government sees it and knows it’s you. Don’t post anything you don’t want broadcast to the police, your grandmother, and your priest.
2. Internet browsing. There is very little that is secure on the internet. The government can subpoena your ISP and get any records they keep. Unless you go anonymous and encrypted. Welcome to TOR. The Onion Router is a system that encrypts your internet traffic and bounces it all over the world. Once you enter TOR, nothing you do can be tracked, until your internet request leave the TOR system. The system is not centrally owned or controlled, so nobody in the system can track what you are doing.
For example, if I use the TOR browser to search Wikipedia, a snoopy NSA goon could tell I’m using it, and they could tell there was a request from the TOR system to Wikipedia, but they can’t tie one request to the other. If I’m dumb and log into Facebook, I lose that anonymous shield.
That’s solid protection from anyone watching your internet traffic.
How do you use it?
Easy. Just install the Tor Bundle. When you want the NSA to stop snooping over your shoulder because you want to do a search on erectile dysfunction, you launch TOR and the TOR browser and search without having to share your embarrassing secrets.
3. Email. Email is easily the least secure means you can communicate. When you send an email, that message is in plain text, and it bounces from server to server until it reaches the recipient. Any of the involved servers can keep a log of the traffic and read your email.
Never, ever, ever, ever put anything incriminating or important in an email. Don’t send credit card numbers, your social security number, or the address of your meth lab.
But what if you want to have a dirty conversation with your spouse without letting the sick voyeurs at the NSA listen to you ask your wife what she’s wearing and how would she like it torn off?
Use PGP. OpenPGP is a free software encryption program that is basically impossible to decrypt. It’s known as public-key encryption, which means that anybody can encrypt a message to you that only you can read.
It’s like magic.
To use PGP, the easy way(for Windows users) is to get Gpg4win. Install that, then open Kleopatra. This will let you generate your encryption key. You do that by:
You now have a set of PGP keys. To get your public key that others can use to send you messages, right-click your certificate and select “Export certificates”. Pick a path to save the certificate, then do so. You can open this file with notepad to get your public key, or you can email the file out. There is no need to worry about security with this file.
You will end up with something that looks like my public key here:
—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (MingW32)mQENBFGyPPkBCAC8zc5B7srG/ZyRMpokP3KyIMd9GA4n94wT89sP/yWFylbTKXDM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=fHba
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
To get your private key, that you can use with any number of plugins for your email client, right-click on your certificate and select “Export secret keys.”
You can either use PGP as a plugin for your email client, or you can use Kleopatra’s feature “Sign/encrypt files”. To do that, write your message in a file, then select the feature inside Kleopatra. You’ll end up with an encrypted file you can attach to your email that snoopy government man can’t read.
4. Phone calls. This would appear to be harder, since your phone is largely out of your control. There’s nothing practical you do about a landline, except to avoid saying anything sensitive. On your cell phone, you have options, assuming you use a smartphone.
For Android users, it’s free an easy. Install Redphone. If you place a call with Redphone, it checks to see if the caller also uses Redphone. If he does, it places an encrypted call over your data plan to the other phone. Nobody can listen in to an encrypted call. The same company also makes a program for texting.
For iPhone users, you’re stuck with Silent Circle for $10/month, which may be a better option, since there is support for more devices, including Android. It was designed by the guy who designed PGP and handles texting and email, too.
There you are, the whats, whys, and hows of modern, hassle-light, private communications. Doing what we can to foil bad government programs is our patriotic duty.