Are You Being Helpful? Or Trying to Get Points?

Wealthy Affiliate has this thing called "ambassadorship", you've heard of it surely. I'll be honest, it motivates me to remain active, say howdy to newbies and look through the occasional unanswered posts. However, there is a downside to this, noise. What I've noticed is that many people will leave comments on blogs that have nothing to do with the blogs themselves. They are general "great post!", "good points!", drive by praises that show they didn't read it at all. Sometimes the comments are

Being Productive

I recently found a tool called "RescueTime" and I've been using it to measure how much time I spend being productive. I will be putting it to use this weekend because I've unfortunately fallen behind on some work. In writing for two websites and blogging on Wealthy Affiliate, I've discovered that I don't know as much calculus as I think I know. (I'm a Computer Science major in college.) So, all day today will be spent on Khan Academy. (At least until 6 when the library closes, and I no lon

My Unique Social Strategy and Why

Some of you have had the pleasure of coming across my (maybe) odd and (probably) confusing social networking strategy. I wrote a blog not too long ago that said I will be deleting all of my social network accounts to include Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I will be keeping Google+ for authorship, but I won't really be active there. The only purpose for G+ now is posting new articles and getting that picture of mine in the search results. I also wrote a blog on alternatives to article directo

Slider Alternatives

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog here called "Put Down the Slider, Step Away From the Carousel". It mentions why you should not use sliders or carousels on your site. They hurt conversions, they hurt SEO, they're annoying, confusing, distracting, and totally ignored by the average reader. However, I didn't provide any alternatives. So I wrote up a lengthy post on the various alternatives here, but I want to give WA members a quicker list that you might look through. I know you already know

"Highly Notable" Websites Now Get Extra Info On Google Results

Maybe I'm a little late on this, but I came across this blog talking about some sites getting a tiny little feature that will show extra information for them if they are considered to be "recognized as notable online". So I did a few tests: Wealthy Affiliate - NOT notable Lifehacker - Notable Art of Manliness - NOT Notable Etsy - Notable As I did more tests I got an idea of what is being added so far. Generally it is websites that have come to be household names. The very common stuff everyone

Put Down the Slider, Step Away From the Carousel

There have been a lot of websites popping up, especially news sites and designers sites that use what are called "sliders". They might also be known as "carousels". Designers love them because they look pretty. But what they may not know is that they are terrible for SEO and terrible for the reader. You might look at a site like this and think it looks pretty good. But what are the real facts about the effects of using sliders on your site?The Facts It is actually very well known that only 1%

Some Quotes From My Latest Side Blog

Redundancy is actually not a form of backup at all. You can of course store files on your computer, or you can use free WP plugins like WordPress Backup to Dropbox ... to back your site up to the cloud automatically and regularly. ...a plugin recommended by security experts called "Wordfence Security" that automatically runs periodic scans of my website to make sure nothing has been tampered with and that there is nothing wrong with any installed plugins and themes. The cost of this? $0. Wha

Deleting My Social Networks (And Some Questions)

Blasphemy! Social networking is a huge part of SEO! Granted. However, I don't enjoy social networks such as Facebook and G+ anymore and I never "got" Twitter to begin with. These networks are slowly losing popularity anyways. You know what they say, when your mom starts using it, it's no longer cool. I think in time Facebook, G+, Twitter and Pinterest will all go the way of MySpace. What will replace them? Highly targeted networks that aren't all about posting things to "walls" but rather creat

9 Lessons in Entrepreneurship From Shark Tank

This recent post from Art of Manliness gives some great tips on building and growing a business learned from the show Shark Tank. I'll post the 9 Lessons below, but I recommend reading the entire post. Learn how to pitch. Hustle is necessary, but not sufficient. Don't be blinded by passion. Just because your friends and family love your idea, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Know your business. Concentrate on your core competency. The best businesses solve real problems. If you're not making mone

Ignore CJ and CB

I know many people go to affiliate programs like Comission Junction, ClickBank and Amazon Affiliates. If you can make money from these, that's fine. But I've taken a different approach. As I discover new products that I personally like, or things that are advertised to me through Google's amazingly efficient algorithms, I always check if that product has an affiliate or referral program. The result is I've built up a large list of sponsors for my sites, too much to handle if I'm being perfectly