Moon Movie

Sod Star Trek. That’s what I say. Who wants that prozaic super CGI’d boring old predictable space movie? Even if it has Sylar as Spok. Moon – now that looks like a good old space movie. Lookit – here’s a trailer:

Damn cool. This is space from my childhood. Big chunky machines. Lots of squares and giant industrial like blocks and chunks. That’s what space exploration is all about – utility, not fancy nokia flip phones with cool gloss sheen finishes. Those things wouldn’t last a tick in real space. You need something big. Built from titanium. Utilitarian. That’s what you want. None of that scrawny sleek modern ipod looking junk you find in Star Trek.

Sam Rockwell’s Moon looks like something you might have imagined exploring while playing Moon Patrol. If you’ve never played Moon Patrol, then you’re probably too young to be reading my blog. I gots adult language on here and stuff.

Posterous a new email blogging platform

So, I thought I would play around with posterous. For those of you who are woefully behind the times, Posterous is a new blogging platform. Well sort of a mix between blogging and microblogging….but really with an emphasis on blogging from your email client.
Posterous is pretty smart, just write it an email, attach images, music, videos….whatever you want, and it figures out what to do with it all. I like it. Check it out on my new blog How to make money online with posterous.

Why do I like it? Well, it lets you create blog posts quickly, without bells and whistles it’s true, but still, sometimes speed is of the essence. Now posterous currently doesn’t have a lot of front end features. There’s only one template that I can see. Which in a way is pretty good, because you spend your time worrying about the content rather than what your blog looks like. See, I think too many bloggers out there on wordpress get swamped by the plethora of free wordpress themes and spend so much time faffing about with the look and feel of their blog, that they forget to put any words down whatsoever. Another reason I like posterous is because it is kind of perfect for creating backlinks to your site. If you are the kind of online marketer that runs multiple sites, and if you are trying to make money blogging, then you probably do, logging in and out of accounts all the time gets tedious. Blogging by email though, that’s pretty cool. See for every site you set up, you can post to a different address to create your blog post, so, for example, I’ve set up a second posterous blog underdogblog.posterous.com. Now to post to my first blog, how to make money online with posterous, I just email post@posterous.com from my email account, to post to the second blog, the underdog blog at posterous, I use a different send to email address post@underdogblog.posterous.com.

So now, I can see you thinking – hey that’s neat. One email address, multiple blogs, I can update my entire farm from one email account. Hey. That is neat. Check it out.

What your grandma doesn’t know about internet list building

(or where I tell you how I like to sign up to free “spam free” ebooks everyone offers to build their list)

Yearg – I forgot to add my aside into my post about having food in my fridge yesterday that turned out to be more about a fable than anything else.  Bad me.  I won’t do it again.

Oh well.  Never ye mind.

So you know how every blog and his dog has a little “sign up to our newsletter” or “give us your email and get a free ebook” type of thing?  They always say “don’t worry, 100% spam free”.  But you just know they will email you with “special offer” after “special offer” jiminy-jam packed with affiliate links.  Well, here’s what your grandma doesn’t know about THE LIST……They are all completely automated.  I bet most so called web-entreupreneurs who are faking it till the make it never even look through their list to see who has signed up.  I bet most of them just leave it on autopilot.  You know what I like to do?  I lke to sign up with strange names.  I like to see if anyone checks and weeds me out.  On blogs I really don’t like, I’ll put in something mildly offensive – just because I can be an asshole sometimes.  On blogs that I feel ambivalent towards, I’ll use something like Detective Van Halen,  or Humpty Dumpty.  Sometimes I like to put my name in as “just another sucker waiting for your marketing crap”, but that gets scuppered now and then when people put a limit on the length of your name.  On blogs I actually like to read, I don’t usually sign up

Obviously I’m using a spam email addy for all this.  But I check it now and then for fun.  I’m still waiting for the savvy marketer to look through his sign ups, notice me and send a humourous email back signed with an equally crazy name.  See, if that happened, then I would know 2 things:

1. That dude/lady has a sense of humour
2. They actually check their list from time to time

The presence of 1 means I might actually like the person and that they might not be full of shit like most make money bloggers trying to build a “money is in the list” list out there.  The presence of 2 means they might actually try to personalise something towards their readers.  You know what though?  I’m still waiting.  So far, nadda, nothing, zip…….If you find me in your list – send me an email.  I ain’t gonna buy your snake oil, but what the heck, maybe you’ll make a friend.  A cynical friend……but hey I’ve been know to give backlinks to my friends

Now, you know what, I think we need a series of “What your nan doesn’t know about the internet“.

Anchor text is the most important thing

(or where I tell you how to get more hits for keywords by using it in your anchor text)

It’s no secret that I think organic search results are the way to go for making money online.  The social web is great, and fun, but I don’t think social traffic converts well.  I mean, you guys are reading this right?  Most of you browse here from other blogs that I’ve left a comment on.  How many of you feel like throwing me a little affiliate bone and buying some cool web hosting?  yeah…..none of you?  Hmmm that’s my point entirely.  See now if I ranked really well for the search phrase “where can I buy cool web hosting”, then I bet I would make a lot more money, even if my traffic halved.  Why?  Because people browsing this page would already want to buy something.  They would be looking for a product.  You lot are just looking.  Buncha of tire kickers, the lot of you (but I still love you all, please leave a nice comment….I will bribe you if I have to….what do you want? ).

Yeah, so how to get all important organic search traffic?  Backlinks.  That’s the way you get up in the ranks of the old backrub search engine….erm I mean google.  You know, I offered a link to someone a while ago, asked them what anchor text they wanted.  Their reply was “I don’t care what anchor text you use”.  Really?  I mean really?  you don’t care?  You should care!  you should care a lot!!!  What if I link to you with the phrase “cunty the sardine”?  You going be happy with that?  Is that what you want the big G to associate your site with?  Really?  That’s an anchor text you want?  Man, sometimes I wonder…….tell you what, someone offers me a backlink with my choice of anchor text, I thank them profusely and consider carefully what I want to rank for.  That’s what I do.

With that in mind, it’s always interesting to see what organic search phrases you are ranking for.  Take them, analyse them a little and decide which ones you want to rank better for.  I mean, might as well capitalise on traffic right?  So, what have people searched on to get to me?  Well, some phrase are just bizzare.  I mean someone actually found me with the phrase pavlov vodka. lol…..have to chuckle at that one. Another reader hit me from using wealthiest adsense. Wow. That one I wouldn’t mind more of. That one and a few related searches could bring in a tidy profit if handled correctly. How about wordpress theme. Woooooosh……that could bring a rush of traffic. Might not be profitable given the vast expanse of free wordpress themes out there, but still. My favourite so far: the best and worst way to make money online. That’s the money baby! Give me that one. Then I paste up a thin affiliate site with a bunch of reviews of some cool products….give a few “editors picks” and hey presto.  That would really turn this puppy into a cash blog.

Pay attention to you anchor text. If someone offers you a choice…..grab it with both hands!