5 Bucks a Day

I’ve been playing with ScreenSteps, a product that advertises “a documentation tool for those that don’t like to do documentation”.

To me it’s all of that and a lot more. As soon as I came across this product, I knew I had to have it.

My first playing around yielded this: ==> Earn1KaDay Tutorial produced with ScreenSteps

I showed that to my Earn1KaDay members and one question was how long it took me to become proficient enough to do that. Oh, about 5 or 10 minutes.

Here’s the drill. You decide what you want to talk about. You organize those thoughts into what we call lessons. Then you start typing a lesson. When you get to a point where you want to show an image, you go into screen capture mode. You capture a portion of your screen (you can see all the images I captured in the sample I linked to above). You can highlight things on the screen shots. Then type some more, do another screen shot, until done.

When all the lessons are done, you assemble them into a manual. Then export the manual to either html or PDF (or to a blog post if it’s short enough). In my example, I exported to html, it downloaded to my desktop, I uploaded to my server, and you see it. No fiddling with html or css or anything.

I can see ScreenSteps as being useful in producing eBooks as well, that’s my next plan, to figure out what I want to teach, and use it to do that.

Share This

I’m very happy to have implemented the “Buy Me a Beer” function for the Earn1KaDay membership forum.

I had figured it out at the 5bucksaday forum before, but I wasn’t happy with that implementation. What I did there was steal the MSN instant messaging slot in the database and changed that to a PayPal address, and just used code in the forum software that would display your MSN IM address. I know, not many people have filled in that parameter anyway, but a few have, so I decided I wanted the beer button to be a separate field in the database.

It took longer than I wanted, not because it was complicated coding, but because there a lot of different modules and templates in the phpBB software, and it took a while to find them all. I think I have now.

OK, the purpose, and the implementation.

The implementation is simple, just go to your forum profile and type in your PayPal address.

What this accomplishes is that it allows any registered member of the forum to send you money, just by clicking on the icon in one of your posts, filling in an amount, a reason, and sending the money.

I think that the members of Earn1KaDay are a pretty helpful and friendly bunch, many times I see people going out of their way to help others.  One member wrote an application to do something very special for article marketers recently, and is allowing all our members to use it, from his server, using his bandwidth.

Another example … recently staff member Tim Gorman listed several dozen of his niche topics that are giving him a good return on investment.  He’s creating competition for himself, obviously.

Another example … a member was having a problem because Windows Vista did an automatic update and then Firefox wouldn’t work, even after reinstalling it, so someone offered to help troubleshoot the problem for her.

Even with this history of giving without expectation of reimbursement, I feel that this new feature will encourage more people to do even more.  We all like to be shown that we’re appreciated, after all, and this will enable members to show other members that we do appreciate them, just by sending them a couple bucks here and there for a job well done.

After all, in a regular job, if someone helped us out, we’d buy him or her a beer or a cup of coffee or lunch, right?  The same reasoning applies.

The hacks necessary to get this functionality into phpBB aren’t all that difficult, once the research is done to find all the places that changes need to be made.  It probably took me about 24 working hours all told to do the research, changes, and testing.  At this point, while it’s fresh in my mind, I’m considering writing it all down, and maybe doing a video of parts of the process.  If anyone is interested (the target audience would be anyone who runs a phpBB forum), make a comment, leave your email address with the comment, and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

It won’t be free, but it will be reasonably priced, I assure you.  When I was first looking for this function, I found a script that was selling for $50, and almost pulled the trigger on it, until I read the fine print and found that it really didn’t do a good job at all.

I’m thinking around $27 or $37 for the “how to” manual, but cheaper for Earn1KaDay members.

Share This

I’m excited to announce that the Earn1KaDay IM Summit is finally set.  Actually it was announced a couple weeks ago, but since then I’ve been working on improving what attendees can expect.

You can read on the page linked above about all the speakers, but briefly the featured speakers are Willie Crawford, Tim Gorman, Matt and John Rhodes, Matt Levenhagen, Jaime Mintun, and Brian McElroy.  There are others giving shorter presentations.

Speakers were chosen over a wide range of expertise making this seminar a one stop place to get up to date on some of the key Internet marketing skills and to start 2009 out on the right foot.

Just yesterday I added a bonus for all attendees, which is the Residual Income Formula course, currently being sold for $197.  Every attendee will receive a CD with the full course, plus special additional content which will enable them to set up their first membership site.  The course can be previewed by clicking on the link above.  Beginning November 20th, you can purchase the course separately, but the better deal obviously is to attend the seminar and take it home with you.

One of the highlights of the Earn1KaDay IM Summit will be a Friday evening “meet and greet” session, including an open bar, where attendees and speakers will be able to network with each other, overlooking Disney World in Orlando.  The evening fireworks show will pale in comparison to the explosive opportunities you’ll encounter at the Earn1KaDay seminar.

I’m looking forward to it, and hope to meet you there.  The dates are January 16 to 18, 2009.  Seating is very limited and registration must be made in advance.

Share This

I’m now subscribed to a service that makes finding a great domain name much, much easier.

First off, for those in a hurry and don’t care to read all my reasoning, the service is DomainsForProfits.com

You’ll find a current, ever changing, inventory there of several hundred domain names, culled from the tens of thousands that expire every week, mixed with some new ones that have never been available before.

It’s getting tougher to find good domain names that have never existed before, there is obviously not an infinite number of variations, and every second, more are being registered.  So waiting for good names to expire is what the professionals do.

Have you tried to grab expired names?  Tough, isn’t it?

Have you tried to come up with a good name, either for your own purposes, or to flip for a higher price successfully?  Tough to profit, isn’t it?

Now it’s not such a bother, head over to that site and see some of the great names currently available (and changing just about every day).  I grabbed a fabulous one the other day and I already have the perfect content for it, about 700 pages worth.  I don’t know whether I’ll just keep it for long term income, or flip it for several thousand dollars profit, but you can bet the right domain name will make it worth more.
http://www.domainsforprofits.com

Share This

I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that Tim Gorman has joined Earn1KaDay in the capacity of what I’m calling “staff expert”.  He joins Steven Resell and Gregg Gillies who also came on board in that capacity in June 2008.

When I started Earn1KaDay.com in May 2008, I never expected the response I’ve gotten.  In the beginning I figured that I could support maybe 600 to 800 members at most before I had to shut down accepting new members.

However, as time has gone by, it became clear that there was a huge need for the types of information that we were providing, and my original plans were constantly evolving.  Originally there were just a few business models that we focused on, including one, Mini Money Sites, that used proprietary software that I had developed for my own use.

Now there are 11 business models.  Now members have free access to not only Earn1KaDay, but also Instant Cash Generators, Super Simple Marketing, the VRE Coaching Course, and Sell Your Writing Online.  In our members download area are over 200 reports, software tools, audios, and videos, including some produced specifically for our site, not available anywhere else.

With the addition of Tim Gorman, I feel that our staffing is complete for the foreseeable future.  Tim is not only an article marketing expert (he’s listed in the top 20 of Ezinearticles expert authors), but also has expertise in many other areas, and will be producing content for Earn1KaDay specifically, as well as mentoring our user base.

For readers that are current members of the site, I hope you’re as excited as I am, for others, now may be the time to join us before the price increases again.

Share This

OK, where have I been?  Yep, time flies, especially in the summer.  Vacation, the new launch of Earn1KaDay 2.0 and unfortunately some incidents that took my focus off this blog.

The most serious of which, I hate to admit, could mostly have been avoided.  About 3 weeks ago, I went into the office in the morning and turned on my monitor (I leave my PC on all the time, because sometimes I connect to it remotely to transfer files to my home or laptop PC’s), and the monitor stayed black.

So I figured something happened, power went out overnight or something, and I rebooted.  Clang, clang, clang.  I said to myself “now that can’t be good at all”, and eventually I received a message that it couldn’t find a hard disk on my computer.  Now that really can’t be good.

After trying a few more times, and hearing the clang, clang, clang where there should have been a whirr, I got out the phone book and started looking for hard disk recovery specialists.  I called one in ($225 an hour), he did try a few things, but got nowhere.

So there I was without my main computer, and my most recent full backup onto my external HD was about 11 months before that.

Yep, I should have known better.  I did know better.  I’ve been using PC’s for over 20 years and that was the first data loss ever, so when I heard horror stories, I said “it can’t happen to me”. I guess I was wrong.

Long story short, I’m going through recovery mode still.  Some files could be recreated.  Some were on my external HD, if they didn’t change since I got them, most of my bigger files were there.  Some files were on another PC because I liked the important ones to be in multiple locations anyway.  And a few things were gone.  I think nothing absolutely critical.

Some of my forum members recommended that I look at various backup solutions, and the one I like, and am using on my 3 computers now, is Carbonite.  It transfers your data to the Carbonite servers, so if you have a melt down, or a fire, or a flood, where even your external backup is lost, or if you have no backup, you’re safe.

The nice thing is you don’t have to remember to do a backup.  That’s perfect for me.  It transfers everything to their server when you first join, and it does take a while (you have to maintain an Internet connection, preferably high speed), while you’re off line.  I never notice any degraded performance because the software watches for inactivity, I guess.

After the initial transfer, things go much faster because it just transfers the changed files as they get updated.

For less than $5 a month, I sure sleep better now.  It works on Windows XP and Vista, and I guess they’re working on a Mac version.  My lost PC was Windows 2000, so it wouldn’t have helped me there anyway, but now I’m a Carbonite lover.

Here’s the thing.  Since I posted my troubles on the Earn1KaDay forum, 3 other members in the last two weeks have reported losing their disks as well.  So it’s not all that uncommon.  Maybe it’s the heat or humidity in August, but you really should invest in some offsite backup service, if not this one.

Share This

Within the next few days, the price of entry to Earn1KaDay.com will be increasing. I’ve mentioned this to those on my email lists, and the time has come.

The reason for the increase is that I’ve added 2 new staff members, Steven Resell and Gregg Gillies, who have brought to our site their own membership site, Super Simple Marketing, as well as a terrific coaching course, called the VRE Coaching Course.

Additionally, Gregg and Steven are helping me to give personal assistance to members, enabling us to give better service to all, which also means that the planned cap on the membership limit will be temporarily (but not permanently) postponed.

If you’ve been on the fence about joining, now might be the time before the price increase, which will probably be sometime on or around July 24th.

The next project that I’m committed to is development of a series of structured courses, that will make it easier for any Internet marketer of any experience level to come in and immediately start learning what it takes to succeed with any IM skill or business model.

The information has pretty much always been available in our site, but not in an organized fashion, and since we’ve grown tremendously in the last 13 months, it’s time to get it organized for easy access.

Once that project has been completed, there will need to be another price adjustment, possibly a higher monthly fee, but possibly instead of that, a higher fee for the first month’s access only.

As always, those who join at a lower rate never see an increase.

Share This