What it takes to Become a Freelancer

So you want to become a Freelancer and earn your living independently?

Of course you do. It must be better than the misery of the regular grind you currently call a job?

Does working for your self sound like a dream come through to you? I’m guessing it does, and it can become a reality for you too.

Do you want to know how I made a ton of money freelancing? I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t easy. I had no idea how to manage this type of business.

In this article I will Continue reading “What it takes to Become a Freelancer”

How to Be a Blogger

Why do you want to be a Blogger? Do you want to be a Blogger for the fame? Do you want to be a Blogger to earn a living or even a side income?

It takes a lot of guts and creative energy to run a Blog.

It takes hard work, discipline, charisma, and pure determination, to run a high income earning Blog.

Are you crazy? If you’re not crazy, maybe you’re a genius, ready to birth the next great Blog.

In any case, why are you Continue reading “How to Be a Blogger”

Restaurant Templates

Would you eat at a restaurant that looked horrible on the outside?

The website of a restaurant is a direct insight into its quality and its experience. Just like the front area of the restaurant itself.

If it looks bad, nobody will want to come in and give the great food a try.

A website that looks good can dramatically improve the initial perception of a restaurant to prospective patrons – again just like the actual front.

To achieve this on a small budget, a restaurant owner should choose from the best restaurant themes made for WordPress.

Other platforms will not subsist because they are not Open Source, or have millions of freelance developers working with it.

And most of all they cannot be extended with tens of thousands of plugins like WordPress.

A modern, attractive, easy to customize template made for WordPress can provide Continue reading “Restaurant Templates”

How to Use Established Standards to Create a Great Website

Ignoring standards in Web Development is like raising a child in the jungle. That child will not perform well in normal society when mature.

When you build anything, it must be adapted to the fundamental features of similar products. At least to some degree.

When I started building websites over 15 years ago, it was mostly by trial and error.

Like many Professional Web Developers who are self-taught, I didn’t know much about conversion optimization, typography, vertical spacing, and the countless other ingredients that make a great website.

These are some of the standards that are critical to the success of a modern site or application.

Design and programming best practices were developed mostly through testing, experimentation, and analytic reviews. This is what gives it strength.

Industry tested approaches and techniques that are proven to work should be fairly reliable, right?

Most big companies didn’t know much about this as well, and many still don’t. Back then there were no major college level programs focusing on website development.

Don’t get me wrong, there Continue reading “How to Use Established Standards to Create a Great Website”

Save your Data and Sanity with an External Drive

One day just like any, you open your favorite browser and the screen goes blank. You press a bunch of buttons hoping it’s just a glitch, but nothing happens.

After several minutes of waiting, you decide to restart the computer. On startup, you get a blue screen displaying an error message. In short, your computer has crashed, taking thousands of family photos, videos, prized music, and even movie collections.

Even worse, your tax, other important documents, business-related data, shortcuts, favorites, bookmarks, applications, and software are all gone.

You can try a data recovery service, but there is no guarantee the files can be retrieved.

You can get Continue reading “Save your Data and Sanity with an External Drive”

5 Best Downloadable Logo Creation Software

Have you ever tried to make a logo, but failed in frustration? It’s surprisingly hard to design a logo, isn’t it?

I’ve spent hours and even days trying to create something I can be happy with. It’s just not an ideal way to get something this critical done.

If you’re just like me – not a graphic designer, you should seriously consider looking through some of the best logo creation software currently selling to help you with the process.

What kind of logo can you Continue reading “5 Best Downloadable Logo Creation Software”

Does Google treat Social Pages Differently?

Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, recently addressed the question of how social network pages are handled by the search engines in a video posted on YouTube. His answer was a bit misleading in my view.

So are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social signals part of Google’s ranking algorithm?

This is a very informative video that addresses several concerns including how social pages are crawled, and if likes, followers and links in posts affect search rankings.

Check it out here

To sum it up, he’s broadly saying social signals have no real impact on search results. What!?

But he did mention that some types of social network pages are crawled and ranked. This we already knew. The real issue he addressed was about links on those public social pages.

He claims this does not affect rankings of the social pages or the linked page. I’m not so sure if I heard that correctly.

I’m not sure what Matt is talking about. I find it hard to believe that social signals are not factors in their algorithm.

I can believe however, their of lack of access, privacy concerns, and I can understand their limitations in this area as a result.

What do you think? Is it smoke screens or the real deal?

How to Increase Your Website Traffic by 2000%

179,000 plus impressions in Google Search and barely 500 clicks! That’s the worst I’ve seen.

It’s like tending a Gold Mine and coming up empty every day. This is the slow strangulation happening to a site I recently did some work on. I’m so unhappy about this, I decided to write this post to help other site owners avoid this problem.

Low CRT Serp Listings

At site launch, these basics must be addressed

Do you know how to access your Webmaster Tools Account (WMT)? Do you even have an account?

A standard inclusion on any new website that I develop is WMT setup, XML sitemap creation, sitemap submission to WMT and ongoing site monitoring through the platform.

These simple set of tasks can Continue reading “How to Increase Your Website Traffic by 2000%”

A Basic yet Essential Tutorial on Web Hosting

Web Hosting is a term for the service of storing and serving up the files of a website. The service provider is referred to as a Web Host. Godaddy, Blue Host, and Hostgator are examples of website hosting service providers.

So how exactly does web hosting work?

Well it’s very simple. A website is a collection of files. These files need to be stored on a computer’s hard drive.

Not only does it store the files, it must process and present the files after a request for those files has been made. In other words, they’re Continue reading “A Basic yet Essential Tutorial on Web Hosting”

Features of the Best Web Hosting Companies Reviewed

Would you build a house on land that was unstable? I’m guessing the answer is no.

This same principle applies when reviewing services and looking for the best web hosting company for your website business.

Think for a moment if a server has a hiccup and the entire website is wiped out. Will the host be able to help?

A few years ago websites went down constantly whenever they were promoted on Digg. This happened because of the sudden spike in traffic that came from this site.

How will the host handle a similar problem if it was your website?

These are just two common problems. But don’t underestimate them. Having an established site crash while money is being made and customers are using the site is the worst case scenario. And this alone can drive a person crazy.

So it’s critical that you choose the right host from the start. Because Continue reading “Features of the Best Web Hosting Companies Reviewed”

10 Best Quality Webcams for Live Streaming

Buying a webcam is like buying yourself a used car. It can end up being a lemon or your “old reliable”.

Even if you bought a used cam, my list of the best webcams will not include any lemons.

In the last decade, video chatting, and video publishing has skyrocketed in popularity.

There is the problem where most videos are progressively downloaded. Nevertheless live streaming videos are also very popular.

I needed the best cam for streaming and decided to research some of the top cams on the market today.

My interested was not in Camcorders or professional video cameras. I was looking specifically for cameras made for live broadcasting.

So here they are, and in no particular order:

Continue reading “10 Best Quality Webcams for Live Streaming”

How to Growth Hack with Published Content

When the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed, it powered the migration of thousands of people and the growth of countless towns and cities.

If you want to increase the traffic volumes your website is getting then consider these early railroads.

If there is a faster and easier way to get to a destination, people will use it. Even though they might not have thought to go there before. And if it cost nothing, the choice is almost a no-brainer.

These early migrants were already in America. Similarly, the pageviews you desire will be created by your site’s current user base, or your extended community.

More pageviews = more opportunities to convert sales.

There are lots of easy ways to improve a website’s pageviews. I will tell you what they are. These tips are not blackhat or unethical. These are simple solutions that are also force multipliers. They call this Growth Hacking today.

With the expense and time involved in driving new visitors to your site, you need one time fixes and updates that allow your site to capitalize on it’s current user base over time.

What usually stimulates multiple page views is Continue reading “How to Growth Hack with Published Content”

The cost of ignoring On-page SEO

Cost of No SEOThere are only so many things we can control. Algorithmic updates is not one of them. But what about ON PAGE SEO?

There are people who work very hard to solidify standards that even the Search Engines must adhere to.

Of course standards may only be enforced if there is true habituation by the masses.

So what’s costing you thousands of dollars every year?

Missing Sitemap

Your Website might have many pages with plenty of text content. If you’re still not receiving significant traffic, then perhaps your site is not properly indexed by Search Engines.

This could be caused by bad site navigation structure, lack of a Continue reading “The cost of ignoring On-page SEO”

5 legitimate home based business ideas

work areaWe all know there are countless work at home scams shamelessly being pedaled online and even offline. A legitimate home based business can seem like a pipe dream to someone who has never ran one before. Often seeding these ideas require a lot of connections, capital and ground work. But I can propose some options that don’t require a big network, large amounts of money or years of ground work.

I”ll share with you three jobs I’ve tried my self. And two others I firmly stand behind. They require little to no money to start. But please take note, they do require a little bit of skills and training. So if you decide to try any of these, expect to put in at least one month of training. Also, try to have Continue reading “5 legitimate home based business ideas”

How to Create a WordPress Template in 5 Minutes

To create a WordPress template (theme) in 5 minuets you will not start from scratch. There is no need for that when you want to quickly develop themes. The purpose of this article is to outline the fast track to theme creation (Not theme design, that is a different thing).

The benefit is a new theme ready for styling within minuets. It’s a jump start for designers and folks with low tech skills or interests. In other words, if you don’t want to deal with complex code. And you just want to spend time designing or making minor changes.

In many cases you are the developer for someone else, and a client wants something original. Or you want to sell templates to make some cash. This should be Continue reading “How to Create a WordPress Template in 5 Minutes”

How to use Gimp to Create Logos

logo example

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what do you think a good logo is worth?

And if it’s worth anything, you can bet it will cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to create a logo.

This is a relatively small investment for something that may help catapult your business to success. But you don’t have to spend anything to make a good looking logo for your website.

Gimp is the freeway to a professional looking logo. You can do it yourself and it will cost nothing but your time.

If you’re interested in creating logos using Gimp, let me first introduce you to this program, then I will walk you through the basic steps.

Gimp is a free image editing software that runs on almost any computer and operating system.

This software can be used to retouch photos. It can be used to crop, re-size, or optimize images for use on the web.

Best of all it can be used to create custom text or graphic art.

I’ve used it for a number of edits on my own, and client projects.

It’s very effective in providing the features now considered standard for Graphic Software. If you don’t want to pay an outside person or company to do your logo, you will find this software very useful for creating professional looking artwork.

What kind of logo can you create?

In this guide I will show you how to create simple text logos using Gimp. You’ll learn how to Continue reading “How to use Gimp to Create Logos”

HTML5 Audio Tag Tutorial

Two SpeakersHTML5 is here and so is the long awaited Audio Tag. They said it would take a decade or more, but it’s quickly being adopted by popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Although it’s not a W3C recommendation yet (at the time of this writing), there is enough support to start experimenting and developing websites and applications with the new elements. I’ll cover the HTML5 Audio Tag specifically in this article.

The plain Audio Tag looks like this: Continue reading “HTML5 Audio Tag Tutorial”

How to Track Views on Craigs List Ads

UPDATE: This article is no longer useful. Craigslist has disallowed embedded images in their posts and this tracking method is obsolete.

I’ve made thousands of dollars from leads generated by CraigsList Ads. At first I didn’t care how much views my ads received. I only cared about who called me or clicked on my website’s link because I can easily monitor that.

With a bad economy, it became harder to generate the same amount of leads.

This is the point where conversion optimization becomes important. I knew the leads were still coming from classified ads. But I needed a way to Continue reading “How to Track Views on Craigs List Ads”