This article has moved to SEOLab.
Just upped and left… mofo

(that’s gratitude, huh?)

- But Seriously… Makes much more sense over there

Read Online - Evergreen SEO with Rae Hoffman

Read Online - Dear Steve, Thanks For The Dent

I’ve been tweaking my site design a bit lately which involved learning some of the fancy advanced features of the Thesis theme.

In other words, I had to learn how to use hooks and functions.
Sounds kinda scary, huh? Like calculus or trigonometry.

I have to admit, I’ve only just got my head around html and css so I was a bit freaked out by hooks.

But as any diligent autodidact knows…

It’s easy when you know how.
You just need to be brave and use Google to find the good stuff.

In a sec, I’ll give you a few links to the slick resources that helped me out. But I just wanna summarise what you really need to know about customising Thesis.

There are a ton of default settings within the wordpress dashboard so you change the general look and feel of your site. And for most standard sites, this will be enough.

But when you want to optimize your website and get a bit more strategic with your site structure, you really need to delve into the code a bit.

Here’s what you’ll need to edit (from within wordpress):

1. custom.css let’s you add your own css to over-ride any other styling on the site.
2. custom_functions.php let’s you add content and alter the general layout of the site.

Thesis Resources

To help you shortcut some of my googling, here’s a bunch of posts that I found extremely useful:

1. ThesisHooks is the the best place to start. It’s a visual guide that helps you understand what a hook is and what it does. A hook is basically a place where you can add something on your site.

2. Sugarrae wrote the perfect tuturial on how hooks and functions come together. This is the post that made me stick with thesis. Rae includes some useful examples of how hooks syntax works so you can play around and create your own.

There are 2 components – the function and the hook:

• The hook is the position you place something.
• The function describes the thing you put in there.

3. Marko Saric describes an idiot proof way to create a sales page with thesis. With just 10 or so lines of code in the custom.css file and 1 tweak to a page, you can remove anything that don’t want on your sales page. It gives you a totally blank canvas. I used that to create my page for the 1% project.

4. Tech For Luddites is a bit more advanced than Rae’s post but it goes a bit deeper into setting up conditional rules that make your thesis modifications only appear of specific pages. I created a conditional rule to add an optin-form to the bottom of every page, except the 1% Project (where I have a very focused call-to-action).

5. w3 School If you’re totally new to html and css, I’d recommend you get some help from somebody at fiverr or odesk. But if you know your way around and just need to check your shorthand syntax, this will keep you right.

6. The official Thesis blog has a ton of sweet tutorials on there too.

Read Online - How to Customize Thesis Theme for WordPress

It’s not very often that I write a hardware review but I just bought a Yeti USB mic from Blue microphones and it’s definitely worthy of a report.

Why Buy a USB Mic?

My 24 inch iMac already has a built in webcam and microphone  that gets the job done for most purposes. I use it for my everyday skype calls without any problems and I used it for all my recent interviews with Justin Brookes and Sean Mize at Rockstar Listbuilding.

Why did I choose the Yeti?

As always, I like to do a lot of research before I jump in and buy. I’d heard a lot about the Yeti so it was top of the shortlist. I started with my peer group who are already using the mic in the way I plan. Lynn Terry wrote a nice review over at Clicknews and Ed Dale has been raving about the mic during the Challenge 2010.

Paul Colligan also shot this video on how he uses the Yeti with his iPad to create awesome audio content on the fly.

So it’s definitely popular with the bloggerati and podcasters.

But I’ve also heard a lot about the Audio Technica AT2020. Clay Collins used the AT2020 to create the professional videos he used to launch the Presell Formula.

I also considered the blue snowball but quickly decided that I’d prefer the Yeti anyway so it was really a showdown between the Yeti and the AT2020. I checked out a lot of the Amazon reviews and a few more USB mic review sites and there was really very little between them.

The yeti finally won out on features, price and endorsement (isn’t social proof powerful?) and I haven’t looked back. The yeti was a little cheaper. I got if for about £100 (approx $160) on the Amazon UK store although it’s less than $100 in the Amazon US store.

It arrived in Ireland after just 2 days and I set it up right away.

I even took some Unboxing Images. (I always find unboxing videos such a waste of time, but some people seem to love them, for some reason).

Setting up the Yeti Mic

It was incredibly easy to set up and I was recording within a minute of opening the box. I just plugged in the mini USB and hooked it up to my iMac. System preferences opened up and I selected the Yeti for input and output. Boom – up and recording in 30 seconds!

I plugged my headphones into the inbuilt monitor and was taken aback by the warmth of the sound. I remember in 2005 when I first saw HDTV and could only describe the experience as “better than my eyes”. Crazy I know. But that’s how it felt using the yeti to record my voice. There’s no latency whatsoever (lag in the headphones) so the live feedback is insanely rich.

Drawbacks of the Yeti

I’ve been playing a little with the different settings to but I’m still optimizing those and I might provide an update later.

But there’s 1 massive problem that nobody else has mentioned so maybe it’s just my setup but this is important. Every single noise from my desk is being picked up. There’s no shock mount and my IKEA desk is hollow so the mouse noises and keyboard typing is really amplified by the mic. It’s so sensitive, it even picked up the fan noise (which I’ve never heard before). I’m going to try out some type of padding like a mouse mat and I need to play with the gain etc to reduce the background noise and hopefully I’ll be able to reduce the noise.

Final Verdict

Overall, I’m amazed at the quality of the mic and certainly for skype recordings, interviews and podcasts it’s simply stellar. For screencasting, unless I can fix the desktop noise, I think that maybe the AT2020 (with some kind of “anglepoise” style boom and a shock mount might be a better all-rounder.

Disclosure – this post is utterly littered with Amazon affiliate links so I might get paid if you click through and buy something from Amazon. Just keeping us honest – hope you don’t mind

Read Online - Blue Yeti Review – Ultimate USB Mic or White Elephant?

Why you need you own url shortener

Links feed the web and short links make it a bit more pallatable, but why host your own?
Here are my reasons:

1. I like to own my information and I want control. This is my business after all
2. I want a simple control centre to host all my links
3. I like to track my links and clicks to measure engagement and interaction
4. I like to play around with things. I can’t code but I like playing with the end result (and I wanted to learn to use plesk too)
5. I like the congruence it offers to my brand (and I’m vain)

Choosing the right url shortener

I’ve used a handful of different tools to manage redirections. They’re all decent and they all have drawback. For a while I’ve been using the wordpress redirection plugin to create sexy branded links to hide long ugly urls and affiliate links on my blogs. But each wordpress installation has it’s own install so I have multiple links for different domains. Then there are the links I have at bit.ly and TET. It’s a sprawing mess and I really need something more sophisti-ma-cated with better stats and an on-the-fly bookmarklet to do the wizardy stuff.

I tried a few options. TEtoolbox is probably the most powerful. You can use your own domain with some CNAME tweakery and a quick FTP but the most powerful tool is the ability to tag a short link (called a tracker) to track the specific traffic source. You can create a link to your site and append a tag like /twitter or /anythingyoulike to identify where the visitors are coming from. The only drawbacks are the inability to add a custom slug to replace the number it generates and having to login to the site to create new links. TEtoolbox is insanely good which is no surprise because Tim is a pretty shit-hot developer. But it’s a crying shame that it’s branded just for traffic exchange tracking. I’d love to see a white label version or an alternative front end to open up the market beyond the traffic exchange community.

…That and the slug thing.

Besides bit.ly, I tried Austin Hallock’s white label shortener. It has basic tracking and stats. Just load it onto your domain and get it working in about a minute. It’s a handy way to get started but still not 100% what I need. Then I discovered lessn (as used by Mailchimp = solid endorsement) and the updated lessnmore version but just couldn’t get it to work on my server. (probably my clumsy technical ineptitude).

So after reading around a bit, I settled on YOURLS. It’s open source, has a brilliant interface with a java bookmarklet to create custom links on-the-fly and it even has a wordpress plugin for the ultimate in branding and workflow simplicity. The only drawback is the lack of tagging which is a requested feature on the developers site so it might well happen.

How to get set up your own url shortener

Skillz – intermediate | Time – about 30 minutes

1. Buy a short domain name (optional – but nice)

I love domainr for hacking domain names. Just enter a word and it’ll generate cool url suggestions. I managed to secure shvl.me at Namecheap which links perfectly with the Silicon Shovel brand. If you’re really techy, you can even use symbols in your domain name but that was just one step too far for a novice like me.

2. Set up your hosting – just point your DNS settings in Namecheap to your nameservers provided by your hosting account. For example, bluehost use ns1.bnluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com.

3. Upload a simple index.html file into the root of your hosting account so you can see when the site is ready to roll.

4. Download the YOURLS script and install it. Of course, there are gazillions of Youtube tutorials on how to do it. I followed this one to the letter and had no problems. The guy talks pretty fast so use the pause button. (He also pronounces the word “admin” as “atom” but he’s a smart kid so I’ll forgive him). The most important part I found was to make the changes to the config.php file (from sample-config.php) with database details and create login details before you upload it to the server.

Here’s the order:
create database *→ modify config.php → FTP to server

[*Bonus step – If you need help creating the MySQL database, watch this video for cPanel or this video for Plesk)

5. Go to http://yoursi.te/admin/install.php using the username and password you created in the datebase. If you see a prompt to create your own .htaccess file it’s nothing to worry about. Just create a text file in the same directory as the script files and enter the details from the developers wiki then raname it to .htaccess (no file extension). The leading period makes the file invisible so make sure you have the FTP setting to “show invisibles”.

6. Do the linky thing. Login at http://yoursi.te/admin using the username and password you created in the datebase and start creating your shortened links.

7. Setup your bookmarklet – In your admin panel goto ‘tools’ and drag the Advanced Bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and you can create links whenever you like (without visiting your admin panel).

Booyah – now to hook up WordPress

If you wanna get really fancy, you can install the YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter plugin on your wordpress blog.

8. Install the plugin as usual (here’s a video from Matt but I doubt you’re new to this). Activate it and go to Settings > YOURLS.

9. Fix the plugin the settings – the instructions are super-simple and they’d just be redundant here. You’ll need to create a new twitter app. If you’ve never done this, you won’t believe how simple it is and there even a help page inside the wordpress settings page showing you what details to enter. Then you just copy and paste some details from your twitter app page to the plugin in wordpress.

10. Close the loop, you can set the plugin to post a tweet (with your own shortlink) for every post you make in wordpress and it will show your blog name as the source of the tweet for extra branding mojo.

That’s all there is to it. It’s all copy and paste stuff so don’t be afraid to try it. And if you make a mistake, what’s the worst that can happen?

And all in 10 nice easy steps.

Read Online - Host Your Own URL shortener (Tutorial)

The medical industry is campaigning for “plain English” to cure obesity. The idea is that GPs should tell patient they are “Fat” instead of “Obese“. Medical language creates an excuse to mask the truth but let’s get honest about this. We’re greedy and we know that to lose weight, we need to move more and eat less. It’s a simple equation that also applies to our insatiable appetite for more stuff and more information. Yet we continue to ignore what we know so deeply.

Our curiosity has evolved such that we consume everything we can but it often feels like the web is actually consuming us. We use the “Information overload myth” to deflect our greed for never-ending consumption and our lack of control over what we read, watch, listen to, talk about, and even think.

And just like eating a balanced diet, we need to moderate the information too. The net has increased the rate at which we can access information like nothing ever before and we desperately need to quench our appetite and harness its power for good.

Take Radical Action

If you’re serious about this, I challenge you to take radical action. It’s the only way to make a big difference. Sure small changes alone are good but to reclaim the mind-space you need to focus on the things that will make your life better, you need the compound effect of combining all of the small changes to make an impact. Besides, life’s just too short for small stuff.

I know that this is going to freak a lot of people out – I was talking to some of my mates at work about it this week but they were just bemused by it all and they looked at me like I was some kind of freak. So bear with me and give it a shot. Like anything, the technical bit is crazy simple and you’ll be amazed at how much you can tame your digital life using these tools.

You in?

Let’s do it…

The Information Diet

The web as just a vast series of channels each streaming information into the ether. It’s always on and always available but if you feel like there’s too much to handle there is only 1 solution – TURN IT OFF.

Your job is to find which channels you NEED and filter out the rest. Here’s how….

Step 1. Set up Gmail (5 minutes)

If you’re not using gmail yet, get an account right away – you’ll need it to use the other powerful google services and it’s simply better than anything else for managing your email and your digital life.

Try to get yourname@gmail.com or yourbusinessname@gmail.com. You’ll use this google account to run your online world and create your brand. This is not the time to use your pets name.

Step 2. Clear Your Inbox (1 hour)

There’s something ultimately rewarding about the zen of inbox zero and if you just set up your gmail account in step 1 then you’re already there. You have a fresh start, like your first day at school when you get your new exercise books. Feels good right?

If you feel a bit uneasy about the mess you’ve left behind I suggest you just walk away from it for at least 2 weeks. Then if you find that you need some valuable emails like passwords and receipts, then you can salvage them later. Be brave and delete the rest – this action alone is a step towards exerting your power over the very noise your going to eliminate and it’s a comforting feeling.

Never keep something “just in case” – you need to be decisive. Be Proactive not Reactive.

Now that you have a clean break, you need to find a way to manage the streams that are flowing your way before they turn into a torrent that overwhelms you again. Charley Gilkey talks about his STAR system in his Email Triage program which I recommend for managing the new influx.

Step 3. Unsubscribe from email (10 minutes)

Go through your inbox and see what lists you are subscribed to. Count them and write that number down. I like to measure things like this because it helps to quantify your achievement.

I try to follow only 2 or 3 emails newsletters because I can focus on those 100% and not be distracted. And I want you to do the same. Go through your email subscriptions and unsubscribe from them all. If there are 2 or 3 that you really enjoy and that you can USE, then you can keep them.

If that means you have to unsubscribe to my emails to focus on something else, then go for it.

Most marketers will never have to balls to tell you that, but I’m right behind you. I respect your decisiveness and I’d love to see you focus and make the changes that will put you in control. You know where to find me. It also helps me build a stronger bond with subscribers who actively decide to stick with me and we all benefit. I can focus on delivering the mojo to those who want it without distracting those who don’t.

We’re programmed to be hooked on numbers but I’d much rather have 500 subscribers who care about what I have to say than 5000 email addresses who forgot to unsubscribe after picking up a free report that they dumped on their hard drive and never even read. Subscribers should be part of a community – who interact and respond to emails, who comment on blog posts, and share advice. Not just because that’s good for me, but because it’s good for you. If you’ve ever seen the film 300, you’ll understand the power of a small congruent tribe working together.

Back to the task… How many email subscriptions have you eliminated?

Awesome. Feels good doesn’t it?

Step 4. Create your own magazine with RSS (2 minutes)

I don’t want you to go live under a rock but there’s also no genuine reason for you to tune into mainstream news and media. RSS finds the news that affects you and aggregates it in a single page. You no longer have to watch 20 minutes of TV news (plus 10 minutes of ads) to find out how your team did in the game or how many points your apple stock gained today.

And stop kidding yourself that you’re smarter than you are by trying to gain general knowledge. Unless you are a pub quiz champion, general knowledge is useless in the age of wikipedia. Go narrow and go deep – immerse your mind what you care about and become a genius in your field.

This is about regaining mastery of our information streams so you only consume stuff you care about.

But it’s not all just entertainment – there are some feeds that you absolutely need to manage your online presence. I wrote how to using google alerts to manage your online reputation (this is where you need your gmail account details from step 1). It’s an incredible way to see who’s talking about your brand and your clients will love it.

And if you’re gonna do this – do it right. I use RSS to manage my scientific journals, blog subscriptions and various news feeds – all catagorized by topic. So if I’m at school and I can read about the latest trends in the biotech world, without reading about eating staplers.

Whilst Google reader provides the engine to aggregate your rss feeds but as with most google products, it doesn’t look great. It does allow you to use Googles powerful search within your feeds and you can share your interests to build your social mojo. But to create your sexy magazine interface, you’ll need to use feedly and you’ll have a slick clean environment to catch up with your personalized news.

Remember though, that reading isn’t really work – even if it’s educational. So don’t think that just because you’re on the web you’re being productive. The whole purpose of your information detox is to free your mind from the whirlpool of data so you can focus on the stuff that’s important to you.

Don’t screw it up now.

Read Online - The Information Overload Myth

I had a few subscribers asking how I’m getting others to build my mailing list, so I put together a White Paper on using Ad-swaps to leverage the mojo of your competitors and allies. This is a sample chapter from that report.

What is an Ad-swap?

An Ad-swap is a mini JV where you find somebody with a similar (or complimentary) business within your niche and agree to share your subscribers. But you don’t just give away your database of subscribers because besides being illegal, it just isn’t cool. And email marketing is all about being cool and respecting your community. Instead, you both agree to send an email to your community promoting each others site.

Because the traffic comes from a personal recommendation, I’ve seen optin rates as high as 83.4% on some of my pages. It’s the perfect way to leverage somebody else’s Mojo and step into the place where your target audience is already hanging out.

The beauty of ad-swaps is that you don’t need your own product and you can use a simple 3 page website to get started. In fact if you just use single optin, you can get away with just 2 pages.

How Can I Find Ad-Swap Partners?

If you’re in a specific niche like golf or weight-loss, the best way to find partners is by contacting product owners directly. (email, facebook, twitter, forums, telephone, skype).

But if you are in the IM space, there are several awesome resources to get started:

My favourite is Safe-swaps because it’s totally automated and it’s super simple to learn how the process works and to find partners to swap with. The only drawback is the slight lag time between accepting the swap and getting it set up, but if you batch process your swaps a week in advance, you should be able to get it all done in a couple of 15 minute sessions each week.

Dimitry has recently been adding some awesome new features to the site to keep improving it. I love to see a developer listen to his customers and continue to tweak the site as it grows – it shows a real commitment to providing an awesome solution. And caring.

2. I also use a private skype group which is invite only. It’s perfect for chatting too so you get to work the mojo a bit more. And it’s very good for quick last-minute swaps if you have some empty slots. To get involved in the group, you need to be invited but if you drop me a line, I should be able to get you in. My skype name is published in my member profile at Safe-swaps.

3. Talk to people. If you find somebody who you like to swap with, ask them to recommend other people who they’ve swapped with before. Ask at offline events.

15 Ways to  Swap like a Pro

The get the most out of this stuff and make the best use of your time, follow these simple steps.

1. Have a slick, smooth and well-oiled optin process (optin-confirm-thankyou) and make sure you include a paid offer in the funnel.

2. Make an awesome & original offer. Too many people use the same PLR or affiliate offer so you have to stand out. I find that software has a really high value and helps you stand out. If you do decide to use PLR products, customise them to make them original – change the graphics, add some bonuses etc.

3. Only promote a site that you love. Never recommend a poor resource just to increase the size of your list. But sending your subscribers to an Awesome resource will actually build YOUR credibility and trust.

4. Track your clicks. It’s important that you monitor how many clicks you give AND receive. An easy way to do it is with the tracker links available inside TE toolbox (although TE toolbox is designed for traffic exchange users – the “tracker” function is perfect for monitoring email ads and you can even use it to track conversions through the sales process right to the thankyou page).

5. If you use Safe-swaps tracking clicks is part of the automation so you can check the clicks right inside your dashboard.

6. Keep it simple – use a plain looking site that simply states the offer and includes an optin form. Avoid tacky graphics with dollar bills flying out of computer screens. Those sites have never been cool and it’s such a hype-driven metaphor. Stay classy. Here’s an example of one of my funnels.

7. Be organised. Write 2 or 3 sample emails that your partner can choose from and be sure to include the unique tracking link for each new adswap.

8. Be courteous – never even expect a response from somebody, let alone a positive one. We are all busy and there is a chance that if they don’t respond, they didn’t even see your message. (That’s why I like Safe-swaps and Skype).

9. Keep a diary. Take notes of who you swapped with, how successful it was and any other notes that will help you improve. Record which ads were most effective, who you’d like to swap with again and why, in addition to those that didn’t work out so well. Use the Pareto principle to repeat the stuff that works and gives the greatest results. Ditch the stuff that’s not worth the effort.

10. Make it easy for your swap partner and give them a reason to mail for you. Make the process simple and fast by providing as much as you can upfront to avoid emails back and forth.

11. When organizing an ad-swap, include a link to your offer.

12. Include a direct link to your download page so they can check your product

13. Include your sample emails so they can go ahead and get set up without having to contact you again (make sure you include the right tracking link).

14. If you have an affiliate program, offer commissions – that’s an added incentive and if the offer converts, they will mail again and again as an affiliate, without expecting another email in return.

15. Be cool. Sometimes you’ll have problems. Somebody might forget to mail out or could have a problem with their autoreponder. Sometimes you’ll make mistakes and forget to mail, things break and people can get things wrong. Just don’t get freaked out by it. People can easily get annoyed instead of trying to fix the problem. Remember to always be courteous and fair. And always do the right thing.

WARNING – Before you start…

I’ve been using ad-swaps for a while but I just had to stop because I simply couldn’t stand the state of the industry. I mean, marketers were screwing it up left, right and centre. There’s a Dark Side of Email advertising and you need to learn how to overcome it before you start.

Read how to avoid the mistakes that 99% of marketers are making with swaps and solo ads.

Read Online - Ad-Swap White Paper

Aweber already has some pretty sweet web form templates but they’re still a bit too stylized for my liking.

I wanted a simple horizontal form to fit with the style here at Silicon Shovel so I created this CSS optin form for Aweber. I had a couple of people ask how I did it, so I’ve created an html file containing the optin form source code so you can give it a spin yourself.

Why Just Collect an Email Address?
I’m only collecting emails (no names) because I want to increase the signup rate and I really don’t need your name to send you cool stuff.

In fact, I was recently looking through my subscriber database and found that over 10% of names were either entered incorrectly, plain nonsense or just plain profanity so using them in emails just looks wrong. Besides, most of my blog readers know all about auto-responders anyway so using names in emails doesn’t really impress anybody anymore.

Styling The Optin Form

It’s styled using inline css so if you’re a code-ninja, knock yourself out and tweak it as you want. But if you know just enough code to be able to break it, I’d just run with it. Why bother screwing around with it when I’ve gone and done it all for you?

You can always change the button text if you want though. And to make it work you MUST ENTER YOUR OWN aweber LIST NAME and FORM CODE that you can get from your Aweber account (It’s the 10 digit number).

These are the rest of the bits you can / should customize

They’re marked up in the attached html file that you can just load up to your server.
<!–1–> 10 Digit Aweber Number (ESSENTIAL)

<!–2–> This is your list address (eg.YOURLIST@aweber.com) (ESSENTIAL)
<!–3–> You can also change the confirmation page URL although I like the aweber video option that’s already there
<!–4–> You can add an optional tracking code here to monitor optins using this exact form
<!–5–> Change the submit button text

Get the source code here or preview the html file

Let me know how you get on and if you have any questions, just add them below. And don’t forget to click all the shiny social buttons to spread the mojo on digg and twitter and stuff.

Read Online - Sexy CSS Horizontal Aweber Form

How much do you love what you do?
How far will you go to get what you want?
Do you really care?

An oven built by hand, tile by tile. Four pizzas on the menu, with no fancy-pants toppings. Anthony Mangieri does one thing at Una Pizza Napoletana.

Sure, this might be obsessive. But isn’t that how every business should look?

Read Online - How Passionate Are You?

If you’re gonna crush it, you need to know whats going on in your game. You gotta be all over it.

That means keeping track of the conversation that are going on all over the web. Here’s how to do it with 2 free google tools….

Are you on top of your game? Do you know what your competitors are talking about – what they’re saying? and how they’re saying it?

Read Online - 2 Free Google Tools To Crushit

I recently posted my blog disclosure policy so the FTC police don’t abseil through my bedroom window at dawn-break and put me in prison to keep in-line with the recent FTC regulations recently enacted upon bloggers. Since I’m based in Ireland, I guess I didn’t really need to do it but I saw it as a perfect opportunity to help build trust (that sounds a bit weird doesn’t it? like I have something to hide – I don’t).

Most of my customers are based in the US anyway and just like the can-spam laws, it’s probably best to consider the FTC rulings as universal. Legally, not essential – just good ethical business.

If you’re looking for some more erudite information on the subject, check out what I’ve been reading to bring myself up to speed:

1. Most importantly, you should really read the official FTC press release regarding the rulings on affiliate disclosure and testimonials.

2. It’s pretty interesting (and entertaining) to read Frank Kern’s account of how he almost lost his shirt when his honest affiliate program backfired and his business was dragged through the mud by the FTC.

3. If you prefer to listen to an audio, Jim Edwards also conducted this interview with Rich Cleland, a FTC honcho.

4. Amongst the big bloggers, Brian Clark wrote a pertinent piece on leveraging your disclosure to build trust with your audience. David Risley published a similar piece on the opportunity presented by the ruling for those who are prepared to go further than simply towing the line. Yaro Starak created a simple 8-point checklist to ensure that your sites meet the laws laid down.

5. Tim Ferriss published a catch-all statement to disclose his affiliations and even provided a bunch of images that you can use if you choose and John Jonas translated the FTC ruling into simple-speak aimed specifically at bloggers.

6. Paul Colligan siezed the opportunity to relaunch his PaulRecommends.com blog specifically for promoting his affiliate marketing links with full disclosure and transparency. A smart move that I’m sure will become ever more prevalent amongst affiliate aiming to market through a strong customer relationship.

7. Finally, if you want to spend a little cash on learning about the FTC decisions and display a trust badge attesting to your sites’ compliance, Attorney Kevin Houchin has released a product explaining how to make your business FTC compliant . Obviously that link there is hardcoded with my affiliate ID so I’ll get a kickback if you buy it. To be honest, I haven’t even tried it myself so I’m not in a position to offer any advice that might influence your decision to buy.  But James Holmes grilled Kevin in a brilliant podcast interview to explain how it can help clear up some of the finer points of the FTC statement.

Read Online - How to Make your blog FTC compliant – Blogger Responses

Whilst thousands of marketers are scampering away in fear of the FTC’s December 2009 decisions, I genuinely welcome the changes because it simply spurred me on to write this long-overdue post on disclosure.

I am a true believer in full disclosure because transparency always wins out in the long run.

Affiliations – Brass tacks

As well as promoting my own sites, I sometimes suggest products as an affiliate and I might make some cash when you buy using my links. If you are unsure or I haven’t stated any affiliation, just assume that every link is an affiliate link and you can’t go wrong. If that makes you uncomfortable, fair enough, just please don’t buy through my link. That being said, I’d like to disclose how I select products to review / promote…..

Primarily, I write about products that I have tried out myself and found that they solved my problems. The product comes first and if it has an affiliate program, then that’s gravy. Faced with a choice of two programs that are equal but where one would give me more of an affiliate commission, the greedy (human) part of me might make me sway towards the cash. My more ethical side would say that I’d present a neutral stance, focus on value, and leave the decision to you but that’s subjective anyway.

I will always try to present the most objective point of view I can but we are all human and our perception of value can differ. Be responsible for your own decisions. At the end of the day, I want to recommend the right products for you because if  I don’t help solve your problems, I have failed.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a little trickier. Subjective, opinion-based feedback is 100% acceptable to the FTC but fact-based quantitative feedback isn’t. It is no longer acceptable to present an image of a 12-stone man holding out the waistband of a massive pair of jeans and disclaim “results not typical”.  Instead, you must state the actual typical results that the average person should expect. This exacting level of reporting is near impossible (in fact there are probably data-protection laws that prohibit the use of such info).

The easiest thing to do is to avoid results-based testimonials altogether. However, based on the Pareto principle, it is safe to say the the average result approximates to zero. Most people who purchase a product will never implement it and will never see any results. Ergo – zero output.

Where do I stand? – exceptional results take an exceptional people. That’s why we’re not all brain-surgeons and nuclear physicists. But if you want to succeed at anything, you have to be better than average.

Disclaimer

I am not a lawyer and have not sought the advice of a lawyer on this subject – to me it’s just common sense. Don’t sue me.

PS. If you think that’s fair, unclear or totally misleading please let me know in the comments below. And if you think I’m simply digging a hole for myself, please chime in and save my ass.

Read Online - Disclosure – Affiliations and Testimonials

TED is like YouTube for smart people. Smart people who think and act big and make their mark in their world. The videos are usually less than 18 minutes long and cover just about every subject you can imagine from the greatest thinkers in the known universe.

If you really need some motivation to get your big ideas off the ground stop what you’re doing, go watch some TED videos and return to your work. It’s guaranteed to make you think bigger.

Here I handpicked 5 of my recent favorites to get you started. I promise you’ll find something amazing.

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

How forward thinking turned a simple mouse into a go-anywhere minority report. Then gives it away.

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

Hilariously entertaining. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

David Logan on tribal leadership

At TEDxUSC, David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form — in schools, workplaces, even the driver’s license bureau. By understanding our shared tribal tendencies, we can help lead each other to become better individuals.

Michael Pritchard’s water filter turns filthy water drinkable

Too much of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Engineer Michael Pritchard did something about it — inventing the portable Lifesaver filter, which can make the most revolting water drinkable in seconds. An amazing demo from TEDGlobal 2009.

Robert Lang folds way-new origami

Robert Lang is a pioneer of the newest kind of origami — using math and engineering principles to fold mind-blowingly intricate designs that are beautiful and, sometimes, very useful.

Read Online - Think Bigger and Smarter in 18 Minutes

Entrepreneurs are naturally creative and ideas can quickly explode. Allow these seeds to grow too far too fast and a project becomes massive and nothing will ever happen. The best providers can drill down to the most potent part of a business and strip it back to its core function. It’s far simpler to sell a single idea than a sprawling mass of ideas, no matter how good they are. The best material survives the cull and the remainder can be repurposed for either future versions or separate products.

Feature creep can be one of the biggest killers of simple projects so if you get the chance, go back and review your websites, businesses and blog posts and strip them back to the core.

Just look at twitter – back in the early days, it was pretty unstable and had a very limited set of features. Nobody really knew how it was going to turn out, who would use it and how. But twitter didn’t launch saying “look at us, we’re bigger and better than anyone else” – instead it started simply with the open messaging posting function and left it to the users to interpret and shape the future. The users chose how it was utilized and even invented new languages (twords) and syntax (like hashtags) to fulfill those needs.

The API enabled third party clients to spring up to help manage the stream, categorize tweets and organize the noise. Again this development was all offsite without the intervention of twitter. Entirely in the hands of the users. Pure democracy.

Twitter is now in a position to rollout it’s new features which have been introduced in the past 8 or 9 months and new additions are drip fed to the community… Slowly. And that’s the key – by allowing the functions to evolve outside of the main site, when changes are finally implemented, they are should be 100% functional and respond to the consumer. All the dross is selected out and the fittest survives. Nothing is superfluous, everything is dictated by the audience and nothing is wasted. Absolute simplicity.

It’s a great lesson to learn and apply to your business. Keep it simple and allow the user to lead the way.

Read Online - Natural Selection in Social Media – Lessons from Twitter

“Books are souvenirs. There is nothing that can be found in a book that can’t be found on the internet”

Information is instant and the only reason for buying a book is as a trophy. Seth talks about his outlaw distribution methods to put his 10 books in front of millions of readers. Not to make money from books, but to play with the flow of information in the silicon age.

“The enemy of the author is not piracy, but obscurity”

Godin doesn’t write books to compete with hundreds of thousands of other authors on the bookshelf. Instead he gives away the content for free and starts a conversation based on the permission of his audience. This allows him to use free channels to reach the people that want to be reached and then leaves the rest up to human nature.

And of course, tribalism helps.

Read Online - Seth Godin – Books Are Just Souvenirs

How much Does Aweber Cost?

Aweber added a new pricing structure around a year ago so you to get started for less than $20 a month. You get all the advanced tracking data and the cost grows with your list.

There’s also a 1-month test drive so you can try it out for only $1. This is a really cute bit of marketing because once you start using your autoresponders, you’re unlikely to want to switch – especially when you see how cool it is. Even if you do decide you want to leave Aweber, most other services will let you bring your list with you.

Aweber Discount Coupons

Aweber is a premium service so they do not offer any discount coupons. The standard monthly price is only $19 though so everyone can afford it. But I recommend that you save 20% by taking the annual subscription option (currently $194.80).

Disclaimer

Of course I’d like you to buy Aweber here because that way I’ll make some money. Woohoo. But that’s not why I wrote this. I pick affiliate products very carefully so I can stand by them with pride and integrity. Aweber is just a great service that I use every day. But if you are looking for a fair comparison, I haven’t tried any other autoresponder so I couldn’t possibly comment on those. But the fact that I haven’t needed to use another service speaks for itself.

Read Online - Aweber Discount Coupons

Why You Need an Autoresponder

Your email follow up system is the first part of your business that you should automate. You need to be able to engage with your leads and customers long after they have left your website. Your autoresponder is like your personal assistant who works 24-7 and never calls in sick.

If you don’t yet have an autoresponder, you’ll never know why you need a service like Aweber until you try it.

Choosing the Best Autoresponder

Now that you’ve decided to use an autoresponder, you have a decision to make and there are dozens of providers to choose from. Aweber, Get Response, iContact, Constant Contact and Mail Chimp are all decent options. There are a few more but these are probably the most popular and I’m only really going to write about Aweber.

You need to choose an autoresponder that fits with your business needs and how you plan to use it. Ask yourself how often you intend to mail out and how many customers you want to reach. There are really 2 main options to decide on:

1. Web based autoresponder or self hosted?

For most small businesses, charities and entrepreneurs, an web-based service is the best. Online autoresponders usually have a monthly subscription based on the size of your mailing list and level of use. You don’t need to worry about installing software updates or lack of support. Delivery rates can be higher because online email services like Aweber work with ISPs to build their reputation and avoid spam complaints. This allows you to leverage the reputation of the service provider so your email reaches your customer and not their trash.

Hosting your own email autoresponder on your server is possible but you need to know what you’re doing because you don’t have the support or training of a web-based service. I wouldn’t recommend this option unless you really need it and you have your own in-house tech support.

2. How Much do Autoresponders Cost?

There are autoresponder packages are aimed at every budget from free (but limited) services to $499 plus for Infusionsoft. You get what you pay for and I’d never recommend cutting corners here. Remember, this will be a central pillar in your business.

Do your research.

Why I Chose Aweber

My research started with recommendations – I didn’t look for opinions, I looked for facts. Than meant checking my inbox to see what autoresponders the pros were using. I looked at all the newsletters I was subscribed to and amazingly over 80% of subscriptions were handled by Aweber. You can’t argue with social proof like that.

In fact as I write this post, Justin Brooke*, Yaro Starak, Alex Jeffreys, Jeff Johnson, Liz Tomey, Soren Jordansen, Ryan Deiss* and Yanik Silver are all using Aweber – far more than all the rest of the professional autoresponders added together. That’s good enough for me.

[*Update - Justin and Ryan have recently moved their lists over to iContact to take advantage of the more advanced functions and avoid some of the limitations of Aweber that can have an impact when you have a very large mailing list].

I’d already read a some ebooks recommending Aweber and after checking a few reviews by Yaro and Darren Rowse, my mind was made up. Aweber is undoubtedly the best autoresponder to start out with and if you find that you do need an alternative solution like iContact, it’s far easier to export your contacts from aweber than it is to import them, so switching is easy.

Jump to my full Aweber Review or learn how to get a discount.

Read Online - Choosing the Best Autoresponder

Beatboxing has evolved a hell of a lot since its roots in the 80′s and there is a particularly killer scene in the UK. This is the next level, layering flutes, harmonicas and oral gymnastics to weave a harmonic fabric that wraps around your ears and warms your soul.

But what does Beatboxing have to do with Your Business?

First – it doesn’t matter. It’s just really cool so just enjoy it for what it is.

Second – beatboxing is no longer groundbreaking. It takes leaps like these to move things forward and innovate.

You’ll be surprised but there are a lot of parallels between the evolution of the internet and beatboxing. Here are a few that you can apply to your world.

1. Find new Synergies

Combining old technologies is the perfect way to create new flavours – who ever thought of putting a harmonica and a beatboxer together? Can you create some new synergies from the status quo?

Yuri Lane Plays Harmonica Beatbox

2. Find your Flute

Now everyone can beatbox – but I bet you can’t play the flute at the same time. Find your flute.

Nathan (Flutebox) Lee and Beardyman rock Google

3. Widen your Channel

It’s no longer good enough to reach your audience through the old channels. That’s what everyone else is doing and no-one is listening. Try beatboxing at a corporate event to touch new people in new ways, when they least expect it. Widen your channel.

4. Find a New Approach

Most people don’t expect female beatboxers to be able to hit the low end vocals. But the sound comes from the mouth, not the vocal chords so these girls can blast beats with the best of them. Try approaching your customers from a different angle to surprise and amaze them.

Fati, Cheryl, Squeak and Steffe la Chef live in Berlin

5. Create new Worlds

Beatboxing is no longer just a hip hop thing. You can apply the same skills to explore sub genres and create entirely new scenes.

Dub FX Layers up “Love Someone” in Bristol

6. Blow Someone’s Mind

Beatboxers don’t sell shit – they just make music that blows your mind. That’s the hook that gets your attention. What’s yours?

Can you beatbox? Can you blow someone’s mind? I’d love to read your comments below.

Read Online - 6 Things Beatboxers Can Teach You About Business

My Experiences of Aweber

After 2 years, I can honestly say that Aweber rocks. In fact I have integrated Aweber to manage all my mail campaigns for my traffic exchange membership site. I’ve never had any problems with deliverability or service and there are more advanced features that I’m growing into.

But first of all, let me mention some drawbacks of Aweber so you have a balanced opinion.

1. You cannot import your old contacts very easily

If you want to add your existing subscribers to Aweber, you’ll need to get them to subscribe again so you may lose some members in the move. This has never been a problem for me and it actually helps to maintain the quality of the service and stops spammers from importing purchased lists and loading them up.

If you do need to move your list, planning it carefully and keeping your members informed in advance will help you stay in contact. There’s no harm in losing a few subscribers anyway – it can be good to consolidate your list and only your most active and responsive members will follow you. Sweet.

2. Aweber doesn’t endorse advertising in traffic exchanges

This only really applies if you’re an affiliate. Aweber claim that traffic exchanges don’t target the right audience and don’t like wasting their bandwidth !? This is a crazy blanket policy because traffic exchange members are often fledgeling marketers – just the demographic who will soon be signing up. This doesn’t really matter if you advertise wisely and promote Aweber through other channels like your email list. Aweber have no problem with using their web forms in traffic exchanges to find new subscribers so there really is no problem.

3. Browser requirements

Oddly, there’s no support for Safari although I never really have any problems using it. I have seen the admin panel go a bit weird in Firefox when I’m typing but it’s very rare and the data is always backed up so I’ve never lost my message.

Why Aweber Rocks

It’s just really simple and works as I’d expect it to. Adding a new autoresponder and creating a new list is super simple. The step-by-step wizard that guides you through the process and you can set up a new autoresponder in under 2 minutes.

But the real stuff I love are the advanced features that go beyond the simple autoresponder to really power up your email campaigns and list management. Sure, some of these features are available elsewhere but Aweber blazed the trail -

RSS, twitter and Blog Integration

Your emails can automatically be converted to RSS and archived on the web for indexing.

You can aggregate your blog rss feed and automatically send out scheduled broadcasts to your subscribers.

You can even post to twitter each time you broadcast an email to get extra distribution of all your content and reach more customers

Training Resources

Learn how to set up an autoresponder using Aweber’s massive free library of screencasts and pdfs. There are even live training webcasts every few days so you can get a thorough introduction to using autoresponders and email marketing.

Email Parsing in Aweber

Awebers advanced Email parsing allows you to capture email details from various web forms and third party sites. For example, if a customer makes a purchase on your site using a payment processor like Paypal, Aweber can extract the email address and automagically add it to your list.

List Segmentation

Segmenting your list is a powerful way to target specific groups of customers based on the actions they take. If a customer makes a purchase, they can automatically be added to a different list so you can market another product and they no longer receive emails pitching a product they just bought.

Tracking and Split Testing your Email Campaigns

Tracking is critical for your business so you can see what ideas really work well so you can deploy your resources effectively. With Aweber, you can track avery aspect of your email – from the delivery rate, bounces, number of users who open your email and what links they clicked on. You can even split-test different messages, to see which subjects headers work best. It’s a good idea to test things like personalisation, link placement and html v plain text.

How much Does Aweber Cost?

Aweber added a new pricing structure around a year ago so you to get started for less than $20 a month. You get all the advanced tracking data and the cost grows with your list.

There’s also a 1-month test drive so you can try it out for only $1. This is a really cute bit of marketing because once you start using your autoresponders, you’re unlikely to want to switch – especially when you see how cool it is. Even if you do decide you want to leave Aweber, most other services will let you bring your list with you.

Learn why I use Aweber or get an Aweber discount coupon.

Read Online - Aweber Autoresponder Review

Here’s a brilliant video filled with clearcut actionable tactics for improving your blog, so if you have a spare hour go grab a coffee, sit back and take some notes. Even if you don’t have a blog (you should have) it applies equally to any other website. Learn -

1. How to monitor on-site reader activity
2. How to implement and test tweaks for a big impact
3. How to use twitter to improve your blog
4. The importance of honing your ‘voice’
5. How to edit and optimize your posts

The take home message
Make small changes – track the results – work with what works.
And “Take fun Seriously”

If you found the video useful or if you thought it was a waste of time, you know what to do in the comments below…

Read Online - Blog Review and Optimization by Tim Ferriss

At the end of June I went to the Insider Festival in Aviemore, Scotland. It was pretty special because it was organized by a few of my best mates and it was the first ever Insider. I just discovered this video on Youtube and it brought the good times flooding back, so I thought I’d share it with you. Look closely and you can see me bouncing around in there somewhere.

It’s a class tune with some really inspiring lyrics and if that’s not enough, the woman on the left near the very end is almost 80 and she had just returned from a trip cycling across North America. She even had to stop half way to have a pacemaker fitted!

Enjoy…..

And remember – “You have to do it while you can”

Read Online - You Have to Do It While You Can

Remember that amazing feeling you used to get as a 7 year-old, returning to school after the summer break and writing the first line in a brand new exercise book. Remember how is was all clean and perfect and your first page was always going to be immaculately written, a sign of things to come….

Well here it is, my first post – no pressure.

Let’s start at the beginning
I spend my days working as an academic researcher investigating the immunology of gene and cell therapies. At the end of it, I’ll get a PhD. I have to admit it sounds pretty impressive at dinner parties. But it’s not very rock n roll.

The second part of my double life, I run a membership site providing free website promotion tools that focuses on helping internet marketers drive traffic through their marketing funnel. Silicon Shovel is another channel to engage with the world, and cover topics that don’t quite fit into the traffic exchange world.

I like to keep things simple and I’ll do anything for an easy life. I love trying new approaches to solving old problems and anything that makes my life simpler is probably worth sharing. I like cool things that make me smarter, faster, sexier and richer. So as well as discussing some tools that can help you grow your business, there’ll be a healthy dose of lifestyle stuff too and hopefully you can also learn a thing or two about social networking, outsourcing, managing yourself, software and anything else that pops into my head.

Silicon Shovel will serve as my repository for betterment – stuff that makes life simpler and more enjoyable. A kind of virtual scrapbook of all the things I like and do. And If there’s something that’s useful to me, you can bet it will be useful to you too.

So if it makes the cut, I’ll share my experiences of products, tools and systems that I am using to grow my online businesses and help you fast-track through some of the stickier parts of your learning curve. Of course, I never proclaim that I’m some sort of sage or guru – I know enough to realize that I’m far from being a maven. But I do know that there are others trying to make an honest buck online and who are maybe just a few steps behind (or ahead of) me. If that resonates with you, then I want to get to know you.

But remember, this is a 2-way street – If you have something to say, then say it. If you know something useful, you can guarantee that there will be someone who doesn’t. Sharing your information freely gives you a little bit of power and that can come in pretty handy down the line. We’re always learning and adding your bit can only help make Silicon Shovel a more valuable community.

There’s power in numbers and if we can stick together, we have a far better chance of reaching our destination. There’s a great African saying that I was reminded of recently (watching Al Gore’s TED talk).

“If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”

Let’s go together…
Silicon Shovel is now open.

Don’t forget to add your comment below (and some link love would be nice…)

Read Online - Welcome to Silicon Shovel