Thanks Blue! I've been pleased with GotBackup (and if you want to give it a try my affiliate link is all over my website!). It took several weeks for the initial backup to complete since it runs in the background, but getting it set up only took about 2 minutes and it has just run on autopilot. I decided to promote the company because I felt it was a valuable service and just plain simple.

Thanks Kit! I love this quote from permaculture founder Bill Mollison: “Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.” So many ways to enjoy a rich life through partnering with nature and people in mutually helpful ways!

I'm glad that on our separate journeys our paths have intersected!
~Kevin

Yes! It's so simple!
I'm sure, we'll meet again... :-)

Thanks Rae Anne! You mentioned wanting to thank the person whose website you clicked on--try going to your profile and scrolling down, down, down, back in time to your very first day at WA. Someone was the first person to leave you a message--most likely that someone was the one whose link you clicked on!

Onwards and upwards!

Thank you and have a good day

Thank you! I agree that the mix of members really makes this an interesting place. It's kind of like Kyle and Carson took a cross section of people from different cultures, put them in a sandbox together, and set it up in such a way that people actually play together nicely!

I have really enjoyed my occasional student from Thailand, and I certainly love Thai cuisine. I am a bit jealous of you! I live in a small town on the Texas/Mexican border so I certainly get good Mexican and Tex/Mex food, but no Thai food that I am aware of (guess we will save that for when we visit San Antonio).

Maybe you can talk somebody to open up a Thai Restaurant in your neighborhood!? Thai food here is so very different from the US; where I believe has become a "fusion" of the cuisine! Cheers!

Well, that may require someone moving here from Thailand! This is a town of less than 50,000 people. It is not in the middle of nowhere--more like the edge of nowhere :-) I hope to make it to Thailand someday to taste the REAL Thai cuisine!

Put Thailand in your bucket list!! That will be another goal!!

Chris, you are taking on a formidable monster! Cancer is difficult, since there are such a variety of factors that can lead to cells growing uncontrollably. On the one hand I am overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation and what we understand, and on the other hand It is surprising to me how little we understand. Mapping the human genome was, it turns out, just the first small step. We really do not know what most of our genes do. Sometimes we hear of a "cancer gene," but that is mistaken--it is a variant of a normal gene that has some important function. We often do not even understand its normal function, let alone what is different with this particular variation of it--we just call it a cancer gene when we find a correlation between incidence of a particular cancer and the presence of that gene variant. We are a long ways from really being able to communicate with our cells. Then there is the whole mess of environmental factors and all the new chemicals we introduce into the air and into the food stream. . . how these may interact within our bodies and how they may impact our physiology is another big unknown. I believe machine learning, a relatively new area of statistical research, may be instrumental in tackling some of these big questions. I am grateful you are devoting efforts to raising awareness and raising money, and I am happy to give my input where I can (though I am no specialist in this area of biology). I hope for blessings of peace for your dear family!

Hi Kevin, thank you for your carefully considered response. Sadly, I have already seen too much cancer in my lifetime. An ever ageing population, lifestyle choices and lack of exercise will continue to increase the number of patients being seen with cancer in the adult population.That said, the huge amount of funding in the adult cancer world means that progress with various treatments is making a difference. However, much less so in the precious world of little children. We MUST raise awareness and funding. Have a great week Kevin and yes thank you again! Chris

Helen, yes I loved your profile! So interesting that you went from a life in the cold north to mainland Australia. I'll bet Tasmania is a nice in-between of the extremes! Australia has so much permaculture innovation--way ahead of most of us. Your strawbale house is epic! I love the design and look forward to more updates.

We just completed a move to south Texas (Del Rio) and went from endless sand to living on a bed of limestone. It will definitely be above-ground gardening for us, as there seems to be only a couple centimeters of top soil (but trees somehow manage to get established in places).

Our 18-year old loves fantasy and is a voracious reader. I will send her to your website!

Thanks for the comment about looking for your new extra hard drive--backup is important, and though it is not my primary interest I felt GotBackup was offering something simple and important that I could sell. Just in case you are interested I'll send you my affiliate link privately.

It's lovely to meet you here on WA and to learn from you!

Hope the tornadoes and blizzard are away from you!

We were at the very southwestern edge of the storm. It was surprising to go from a very warm day (shorts and t-shirts weather) to fierce, cold winds arriving very suddenly around midnight. By the next morning we were having snow! Our wind was "only" around 60 mph, which was intense for me. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those experiencing 160 mph winds!

Thanks Dave! I agree that Got Backup is not my forte, but I am excited to see if I can make it work without following their rules of hyping the MLM opportunity. I think the software and backup subscription plan are strong enough to stand on their own, and with the high commissions offered I think I can turn this into something quite profitable with several months of concentrated effort. I want to continue to pursue my other interests, and they will be more important to me personally in the long term, but the Got Backup plan seems so straight forward that I am hoping it will be a good thing to pursue first. Of course, the framework of my learning will be here at WA University!

I will be quite busy in this coming year, but I hope to live each day meaningfully. As for permaculture, I have many mentors to recommend (I have not met any of them personally, but they have all taught me so much!). My first introduction to the ideas of permaculture came via Masanobu Fukuoka (seed balls and the "one straw revolution"). I then learned of Sepp Holzer and his work in the Austrian Alps. Later I became enamored with Paul Stamets and his work with fungi. Then I learned of Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. Geoff offered an online Permaculture Design Certificate course using Mollison's book as a framework. I enrolled in the first cohort and sat entranced through all 80 hours of video instruction--it was the proverbial "drinking from the fire hose." [I should see if there is an affiliate program for referring people to that course--it is not cheap!] I have also benefited greatly from the forums at permies.com (which are free), run by Paul Wheaton. For as much LEARNING as I have done, I wish I could say I had more DOING. I have been implementing the principles more and more, but have so much yet to try. I have been pondering about ways to implement permaculture principles in my business efforts, and will be sure to post blogs as these ideas take shape.

Hi - that's so interesting!!! I only just 'met' you when you commented on Marion's blog about her Udemy course. I have also been interested in permaculture. I was born and brought up in Austria and know of Sepp Holzer - but when I was there a few years ago I spent most of the time in a bookshop reading the story of a woman whose existence he totally ruined with his methods. I wouldn't learn from him! He is like an internet marketer who makes his living selling useless courses to would-be internet marketers rather than one who actually makes money from internet marketing.

Where in the world do you live? You seem to live in a hot place. Not sure if you can read German, but if you can, then this would make interesting reading
http://www.agrarrebell-info.com/upload/4797237-4209782-Gutachten-Burkhardt-Kayser.pdf

Isabella

Isabella, I currently live in one of the hottest, driest places on the planet! But soon I will be leaving Yuma, AZ to a slightly cooler, slightly moister region.

I have only heard good things about Sepp, so it is interesting to hear a contrary account. I wish I could read German! My French is great, my Spanish good, but a baby speaks better German than me. Time to get busy on DuoLingo I guess.

Yes, Mike, our currencies only have value because we all agree that they have value. I guess the same holds for bitcoin as well, with the difference being that no central government can increase the supply of bitcoins or try to manipulate the value. We are still in the early days of digital currencies and I will be curious to see how it all plays out. I believe the technology is here to stay, and it may change society dramatically. For now I am trying to learn about trading between digital currencies--kind of like the forex exchange, but with cryptocoins.

Think again! The governments have nothing to do with our currencies. The Banks "create" the money by lending out what they call money. Really it is Debt that creates money these days. When you borrow money for a 500 000 mortgage the bank "creates 5 000 000 in Credits, they deposit the 500 000 you borrowed into your account and use the rest to lend out again. When you pay back the 500 000 with interest this money disappears out of "circulation". It is a wild chase and there is no "money" involved; just book entries. The Banks control 96% of that supply and the governments only handle the cash in our pockets, about 4% of the total.
You probably have a better chance with the Crypto Currencies to make some "real" money then playing the Forex Market.

Oh, I was hoping to run into other people interested in permaculture! Like on this site, I feel like there is a lot that I know a little about, but very little for which I am an expert. The community is really the most interesting thing for me at WA, or the fact that they have put together a system that really creates a community around a service. They have really done a great job with that aspect. The training is good too, but without the community I would not want to pay the premium price.

I agree with you about the WA community and the price of joining. The WA community was a huge selling point for me. If it wasn't for the community I would not have signed up for premium. The community here is fantastic. As for permaculture, I practice it somewhat, very crudely, but am in a drought area, so I endeavor to learn more.

No worries Mike. Your experience in direct sales gives you a wealth of knowledge and tips I know I could benefit from. I look forward to seeing how you put WA to work for you.

If there is anything I can help you with just ask.

Bob, GotBackup is a company run by Joel Therien and his GVO parent company. The idea is simple--the $15/month family plan gives you unlimited online backup for 5 different devices (desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, whatever you decide), or $8/month for 1 device. If I sell this to someone, I get the full 1st month as a commission, plus 50% of their monthly payment as a commission each month after. I figured that if on average people are paying $10/month then I would be getting a very sweet $5K/mo if I could get 1,000 customers. Also, if someone who signed up under me started selling, I would get half of what they are making month to month (so if you were in my downline I would get $2.50 and you $5 for each $10 subscription). I have paid for the $15/month plan myself, but have not yet signed up as a reseller because I am concerned that their business model is to pressure every customer into becoming a reseller (for $20/mo). If their primary income source is not from subscriptions but from reseller fees then that changes the dynamics of everything. I want to be certain that I understand what I would be selling, and I want to be certain that I fully support the product and company. I will keep you informed for what I decide.

This sounds like something that I could use for ny 2nd site. When I speak to people about back-ups many look at me as if to say It won't happen to me. I have seen at first hand the problems of not doing regular backups so I am really in favour of getting a regime going.
Personally I like to use a big company with lots of resilience in terms of servers.
My backups use Updraft and Dropbox so the case would have to be made why Is should use GotBackup. And I would have to test restore regularly. But as a reseller to to people who like a fire and forget solution I can see the attraction.
I am going to file this away to look at when my 2nd site is up and running.

Bob, your words are encouraging. The main advantage of GotBackup over Dropbox (and maybe Updraft--I don't know that product) is that for $15/month you get to back up EVERYTHING on five different devices, so it is a lot simpler than selecting which files are most important and being diligent about backing those up. So, simplicity and capacity are the selling points.

I just published a blog post where I outlined my current thoughts and concerns about GotBackup. I am THIS CLOSE to committing to fully give it a try but hope to get a bit more input from the community since I sometimes jump too quickly into things. I am inclined to do it in part so others can see how it goes for me and decide whether or not it is something they would also like to try. As always, I would be documenting my failures and successes, my time, my costs, and my profits.

Ken, I am very grateful to join your network and to have access to your websites, blogs, etc. I was impressed with your profile and all that you have to offer through your experiences with relationship marketing. I am interested in direct sales, but do NOT want to be a "salesman" due to all the negative associations with that. I look forward to learning from you and with you!

Kevin, we will grow together and
learn from each other I am sure.
I look forward to the journey.

Thanks Betcha! I enjoyed your profile and am happy to see what you are doing.

My pleasure, Kevin. Well, I'm glad you came on board. Keep moving on with what you have already started here @ Wealthy Affiliate and make your dreams come true. The Dream That Is Meant to be Lived All the best,
Betcha

Just like me. I waited until the last hour to go premium. I'm such a skeptic.

Well, you're such a wise man (or at least a wiseguy) that I decided to join too!

Excellent.

My first online business was in 2004. I'm not what you might say am a newbie.

What I learned since being here is WA has filled in the gaps in my knowledge. I'm not the smartest guy on the planet but I learned it was money well spent.

Had I known the information presented here when I started then what took me years to accomplish I could have done in months.

No, this is not a promotion for WA, LOL.

If nothing else then you will only be out one month's member subscription expense if you discover I'm just pulling your leg.

No, you will discover very soon just how valuable WA really is.

I have enjoyed our exchange back and forth today. I sense a sort of kinship and in another life I suspect we would be great friends.

It has been a fun exchange for me too, and I anticipate our paths may continue to crisscross in interesting ways. With so many people who are knowledgeable in such a diverse body of knowledge, I feel kind of like I am in a unique university where I pay a cheap tuition and am allowed to enter in any classroom and learn as much as I like. This is perfect for me, because I love learning and I love teaching. Affiliate marketing and building websites is a far cry from doing mark-recapture on horned lizards, but both are data-driven activities. I really like that I have a number of metrics available to me to measure my successes and my failures from different angles. This is going to be a blast!

Update 8 hours later. I decided I was ready NOW to get maximum value from this website and to be a FULL participant in the community. I am a new Premium Member and will try to jump in with both feet.

If you are wondering about the training then use the green button on the left of your screen to begin your education.

Use the black button if you want to focus on promoting WA.

Either are full of great information.

I always recommend setting up a practice website so you can try out the concepts on a test site until your are ready to set up your real website.

You have 50 websites you can set up as part of your premium membership at no extra cost to you. You get 25 subdomain websites and 25 top level domain websites.

Who in their right mind would set up 50 websites is beyond me. I have my hand full operating a half dozen sites.

One of the perks of WA is that you can ask questions when you get stuck. Folks here really do want to help and ask nothing in return.

I'm not sure if another community exists on the Net like this one.

Have a question? Then type your question in the big white box at the top of this screen to access the database of trainings, tutorials, and other resources to find your answer.

Couldn't find what you want? Then post that answer using the white box.

Still stuck? Doubtful but if you are then shoot of a private message to someone like myself.

I'm sure I can mess things up for you as easily as any other member. Just kidding.

Awesome! I'm sure this will come in handy!

GrampaMike, you are a funny guy. For your website, do you get revenue just for people entering sweepstakes? Or are you getting revenue by pointing your subscribers to WA?

I'm running an experiment with the sweepstakes site.

First, I wanted to know if I could develop a site where people return daily to do whatever they do on my site.

Next, I wanted to learn what sort of affiliate links those people would click on so I'm experimenting with different banner ads and different genres to get a measure of my audience.

Next, I am experimenting with SEO (search engine optimization) to see if I can influence how Google looks at me compared to my competitors.

I'm playing with different presentations of my content to see how people respond to my "call to action" in my sweepstakes descriptions.

Yes, I did manage to sneak in a WA banner just for kicks although my WA promotions are on a different website.

Woah, I decided to check my WA stats and see what the click through rate is with my WA referrals. This month for raw clicks has been my best month to date.
YTD - 464
Previous high month raw clicks - 68
This month's raw clicks - 88 as of today.

Pleasant surprise. I added a WA banner on my sweepstakes site earlier this month and my raw clicks jumped. Hmmm, I might be on to something here.

Finally, no I do not get revenue from people entering the sweepstakes I list in my directory. This is truly a free service.

This is just my site where I'm experimenting with banner ads.

Another one of my sites is strictly tutorial in nature. I am experimenting with text affiliate links on that site.

Another site is my forum for offering eBooks that I will author to see what the market is like for eBooks. I like to write so authoring eBooks is right up my alley.

Another site is a single product site to see if I can promote a singe product line well. Lots of tips and tricks about the product including my own personal experiences with the product. That should be fun.

When all is said and done then I will know what affiliate marketing technique works best and what doesn't.

My hypothesis, I'm not as dumb as I look, LOL.

Jack, I appreciate your website and decided I would follow your advice and sign up here at WA. I always like to squeeze maximum value out of "free" and commit time before money, so I will probably not be signing up for the Premium membership in the first seven days. I will sign up if/when I reach the point at which I can see there are things I simply cannot do on my own.

That's great Kevin! I am sure you will get lots of value even with the starter membership. Remember that the starter membership does not only consist of the Course 1 (Green button) and the Affiliate Bootcamp (Black button), there are many contents that the WA members have created. Whenever you have a question, just type on the search bar located at the top of the page. (Some pages are meant for premium members only while most are for starter members as well.

Looking forward to work with you. Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers!
Jack