So now and then, even though I don’t condone any sort of nasty ‘net activity, I do think about security and how easy it is to undermine things on the internet. The latest scandal with upstartblogger having his twitter account suspended for trademark infringement and the events leading up to that have got me thinking a bit more about twitter. I’ve just noticed that once again upstartblogger has been suspended from twitter this time with his new account. Funny thing really, twitter makes no money but has funding, upstartblogger releases an affiliate product on how to get twitter followers, makes a truckload of cash off the system and gets suspended. Hmmmm.

I’ve been playing around on twitter for a bit….it is fun, but ultimately, I think, it will slowly fade away as more and more marketers take to it and it becomes another site you go to now and then to play with. From an seo perspective twitter just doesn’t really help the old backlinks too much. I’m sure google is indexing it, but the nature of using short url services kind of defeats the object of getting targeted backlinks The interface is slick and they have the sheer numbers on their side, but I think other microblogging platforms have more to offer in the long run. What twitter has done, though is release their API to all and sundry. I’ve had a play around and I’m developing some scripts of my own to do various bits and pieces – mostly to satisfy my curiosity. They are taking a while to develop though, because, well, work has been insane recently. I’ve been working like a crack whore with an overzealous pimp.
That’s why my blog has been so neglected recently.
Anyway, on looking into creating little applets that interface with twitter, and with the recent suspension of anything that resembles a genesis rocket thing, I started to think of how easy it is to undermine someone’s account. Here is one of my brilliant but nefarious ideas that I’m pointing out as a “could happen to you kids so be careful”. I expect there are already people out there doing bad things and trying to take advantage of the hordes of people trying to get something for free, but here’s my take on what could easily happen. This is something like my way of stealing amazon affiliate sales with free software, except this one steals a twitter account……and gets it suspended. Perhaps even using it to generate some affiliate sales first.

Now if you think people are above this sort of thing. Think again. There is a world of bad out there who are happy to sell their own grandmother to make a buck, and the anonymity of the internet makes it even easier for those whose cogs of conscience have already been ground down by too many gear changes without sticking the car in neutral first.

So, you decide you are a bad person. There are a ton of accounts on twitter you don’t like. Maybe no specific account, but just in general, you don’t like people on twitter. so you look around and decide that what people want on twitter is a way to make money. How to do this? well takes your pick – affiliate products seem to be de jour so people are using those. Now how are they marketing those puppies on twitter? Well, usually they will want to DM their followers with offers and such….or maybe they want to be able to bulk delete their twitter direct messages. Naa auto DM their new followers that is much better….over and above their usual tweeting. Auto DM anyone who follows me? Hmmmm I could write a script to do that. So you do. And you make it good. It works well. It auto DMs. It has a little auto DM spinner built in so messages can rotate. You offer this service for free to all and sundry. People sign up. People have to give your their twitter id and password so you can auto DM on their behalf. If you are savvy and have read my blog…..you know not to sign up with such a service. But many people are greedy. The almighty dollar makes them see green and they eagerly hand over their ID and password for their twitter account to some service from a company or individual that they have never seen, heard of or even done some basic background checks on…..all because the service is free and allows them to make some short term cash by auto DMing people their affiliate links.

Now, run this puppy for a little while, but make it good – slick interface, good web 2.0 looks. You know the kind of thing. Build up a good user base. Get people tweeting about it. Pretty soon you have a large collection of twitter accounts under your control. Now the nefarious business, though I’m sure if you’ve gotten this far you are already thinking of a few nasty things you could do. Anyway, once you’ve got a nice big user base, you can start to monitor people’s downtime – the time that they aren’t on twitter – people are creatures of habit and probably use twitter at set times through their day. Decide on your Armageddon day and for each account start a good old spam campaign using their twitter account details that you have harvested ostensibly to offer some cool service. Spam DMs and Tweets. Spam away during each account’s downtime so they don’t notice it for a good long time. Then get a few friends to start reporting these accounts to twitter. Pretty soon, suspensions start to happen.

And that’s just the start.

Once again, folks, be careful what you sign up for online – and be sure you use different passwords for everything. It is all too easy to fall foul of evil doers among us.

Hopefully I’ve made you think a bit. And hopefully you’ve left this post a touch more suspicious and cautious than when you started reading it.

Ashley Morgan is sharing his view of the music industry again……I bet they wish he wasn’t so out of tune with their little agenda. Hahaha out of tune. Getit?

2cents from me:

Recording reasonable quality music in your garage is so cheap these days – I remember 15 years ago when my band recorded a couple of tunes it was a huge investment for us. Nowadays, a computer and soundcard simply slash the price of getting music down. That alone means you can pretty much give away the music.

Give it away, get listeners. Listeners = demand. Demand means you can be sure your gigs will be packed. Go play gigs. Sell T-shirts. Sell live recordings of the gig immediately afterwards. Auction off the bloody guitar you played the gig on. The money is there. I’m pretty sure I read the bit about selling live recordings in Wired, but I’m gonna claim the auctioning off of the guitar as my own idea.

What people are really scared of is that the file sharing gives immediate feedback on how good or bad your music really is. Write a good tune and it will go everywhere. Write a crap tune and no-one will download it.

And that brings into question why you are playing music in the first place. Is it to live large? Do you want the super star Robbie Williams lifestyle? Or do you want to play your music?

There’s an old joke about two guitarist chatting – you know the ones – the guys for whom integrity is everything – playing music from the soul sticking it to the man -
Guitar Dude1: “hey why aren’t you woodshedding”
Guitar Dude2: “meh….it’s such a slippery slope – you practice, you get better. you get better you get more fans. you get more fans, you get a record contract. you get a record contract and they tell you what to play. then you’re the man”
Guitar Dude1: “It’s a slippery slope”

Swine Flu? Want to check your symptoms? hmmm…

Pah….old news eh? Themes are GPL. Won’t make the slightest bit of difference though, because designers can still copyright their css and graphics so they will just charge for that. If anything, probably they will just focus on design now rather than pumping out cool new add ons and php features.

Cynical? Me? Never!

Glastonbury. TV. Live. Ting Tings. Are. Shit.

(a little meander through some random thoughts on blogging)

So, back when I started the underdogblog, I was going to explore ways of making money online for free. Sadly, in my exploration into the lucrative world of moonlight blogging for moolah, I got disheartened by the number of scams and MLM crap being sold out there. It’s pretty sad that even supposed honest reviews online are mostly crap put up to try and drive traffic to some sort of money making scam. I don’t like scams. I don’t really like a lot of accepted internet marketing. But that’s just me, the marketers aren’t going away and the only thing left to do is to align my own efforts with my own unique set of ethics.

Let’s start off with the simplest of things. Everyone who is anyone in the royalty of the blogsphere will tell you the first thing you need is a domain name and some hosting to kick off your super cash generating blog. Now the catch. Everyone who is anyone will then proceed to link you up to some of the best hosting and domain registration packages they have ever seen in their lives. Personal reviews are the best aren’t they? Heck, here’s a blogger you don’t know from adam claiming to be making a nice chunk of passive income every month just by writing a blog, and he finds that company x provides great hosting solutions. Go check them out, go get some hosting, start your blog, you’ll have extra money in no time.

(oh by the way did you notice his link to the hosting is an affiliate link? nope? hmmmmm, interesting). Yup, very few people actually admit that they are making money from your dream of blogging for bucks. There are a handful who do admit it. Ashley Morgan at Upstartblogger makes no bones about the fact that you are generating his money by signing up to AN Hosting through his affiliate links. Griz at his various blogs also makes no bones about it, though with Griz’s site you are less likely to read the content and more likely to just click an advert .

The interesting thing is that these two are almost at the opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to blogging. Ashley is a firm believer in wordpress and such like. Griz likes his blogs free, from blogger. Both seem to do well. I also like my blogs free. But I admit to having a few domains of my own. The biggest problem I have with the whole self hosting route and wordpress is wordpress. It has such frequent upgrade cycles that it’s a pain to keep on top of. Also, even though it seems to be the blog platform of choice, I think it’s gotten a little too big. Too many features. Too many plugins. I like my software simple. I like 1 function and if you think about what you really need in a blog platform it’s the ability to post entries and schedule entries. Nothing more. You don’t need fancy plugins to suck up RSS feeds, you don’t need fancy contact forms (because you can simply use the comment feature for that) and you don’t need the whole plethora of fancy Categories, Tags, Excerpts etc etc etc…..

How is this not going to simply make car retailers put their prices up by 2 grand?

(or where I get some caffeine)

My coffee tastes better than yours because I can draw pretty patterns on it when I pour my milk…..

Latte Art

of course, my coffee machine probably costs more than your entire kitchen’s worth of appliances…..

E61 Group Head

gotta love a shiny E61 group head.

(or Why do I miss all the fun)

You know, you take a week off from the internet and you miss all the fun. But I’ll report on it anyway, because I have nothing better to do today and some more content for my site here is good!

What do you suppose the best way to make money online in the make money online niche is? Start a website about making money online? start blogging about how to make money online? start a blog chronicalling your escapades in the make money online niche? Well, no, not really. See, this is what most of us noobs do. Me included…..this blog is proof of that. I started it with the nieve thought that an MMO blog would bring in cash. But, it doesn’t. Well, not like they all say it will. Of course my blog is tinged with cynicism and sarcasm so nyanyanyanyanya. The best way to make money online in the make money online niche is to sell a product. Not just any product, but a product that promises to make people money online . Of course, you don’t really want to stop there, because your product isn’t going to teach them to make a nice passive income online with adsense or anything. No no no no, what you really do is make a very attractive affiliate scheme with your product. You put the usual bullshit in the e-book or web-building product as everyone else. You know – the super duper five point action plan to wealth and riches online…..get a domain name, get some hosting, install a blogging platform (wordpress obviously), write about your passion, put adverts up and hey presto. That won’t work in and of itself, but your product is crafty, you get people to help sell your make money online product. How? Well you get ‘em all hyped up…you give them a biiiiiig affiliate incentive and basically people start writing reviews about your product and linking back to you. Once you get a critical mass, you win, because you have managed what you should have told them in the first place – good anchored backlinks from a whole host of different subnets. Brilliant! Plus, you don’t have to slog out the marketing. No sir. Now you got a bunch of people all pimping you out and you sit back and watch the dough roll in. Do your underlings make money? Well, some make a bit from the affiliate links. Some make nothing. But it doesn’t matter, because they are all invested in your product so they won’t start writing crap reviews about it because that wouldn’t get them any cash, now would it? I mean how about a review that said “hey, ho, this product is shit, but buy it through my aff link anyway cause I need the money”. Aint going to work is it? Nope. Even better if you can get people to sign up for a recurring fee based product. Now that’s they way you do it – money for nothing.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve seen the kind of thing I’m talking about…..sign up for only 300 bucks a year and you get access to a whole host of things….tools…..hosting……blog…..domain….bla bla bla.

Thing is, in a way, people are happy to pay if you take complexity away from them. And many of these all in one packages do that. It’s always cheaper to buy your own domain for 5 dollahs! and a some hosting for almost nothing per year, but then you have to worry about DNS entries and setting up wordpress and updating wordpress and all sorts of things. Nope, people will pay good money if they don’t have to think. And fair enough.

In my rambling way, I’m getting around to the point of the post….don’t worry.

Yeah. the point. See it is hard to find honest reviews of products that promise to make you money from your website. Well, it is hard to find honest reviews of products really. Even radio air time is bought – and I’m not talking about adverts….the actual songs you listen to on the radio – that air time is bought and paid for by A&R companies……so imagine how difficult it is to find an honest review of a product. There are some floating around though.

Go read this post on Griz’s site about Site Build It Don’t Buy It. And then read the post that started it off Site Build It Scam Reviews. Now there’s some controversy for you.

I like to read Griz now and then, because he makes a lot of (ad)sense. he he he. And if you are prepared to read his stuff and navigate his god-awful website, there are some gems hidden there. So Griz, in the great irony that is the internet, despite not really caring for social networking, has a fairly social blog. His posts easily generate 100s of comments…..and even though he preaches backlinks backlinks backlinks, his site has really morphed into a nice central meeting point for a fair number of online marketeers who practice the time honoured method of getting natural seo traffic from good anchored backlinks. Griz put out a small call to action to get some honest Site Build It Reviews out there on the internet and got a lot of shit from a lot of people about it. Actually, I’ve noticed he has been getting a fair amount of shit online recently whenever he opens his mouth and tries to tell people a thing or two about seo. Which is crap really, because if Griz takes a liking to your site and then say “but you know shit about seo”, there’s a perfect opportunity to learn something in my opinion. In fact, if the guy uses your site as a case study on his site, you are probably going to get a nice boost in traffic, and probably some decent anchored backlinks to set you on your way…..so really just say thanks for the links and can I have some more please?

Meh, anyway, so you should go read about site build it.

(or how to make money from firefox plugins for the self-hating internet marketer)

(or in fact, what your grandma doesn’t know about internet marketing part II)

You have become a self-hating internet marketer and to alleviate the oppressive guilt, you need a way to get yourself banned from your affiliate program don’t you? Well, you’ve come to the right place. This one is in the key of Gm. Watch me for the chord changes, and try to keep up.

I know what you’re thinking you big-shot successful internet marketer. You’re thinking

Brrrrrrrr It’s cold out there and I’m feeling guilty about all those people I eagerly directed into buying a diet product that I know nothing about, have not used and indeed do not need. How can I pay back some of the karmic debt I have incurred upon my wretched soul?

Fear not my child, for I offer absolution. A way in which you can and will eventually get banned from your affiliate program. “Only if they find out”, you cry as you continue on your quest to make money with little traffic. But I know you want to get caught. All criminal do. Once you have this up and running you will inevitably use one of your other internet identities to report yourself in a bizarre Tyler-Durden-like-you-hit-me-in-the-ear twist. And so I say, pull up your rosary beads and write yourself a firefox plugin. What the software does “front of house” is irrelevant.  All that you really need is for it to be downloaded. A Lot (yes it is two words!!). So maybe you do a page 3 girl of the day thumbnail that would sit in the top corner of firefox instead of the little whirly circle that tells you when you are loading a page. Now listen closely. Here is the devil in your ear. You code up that plugin so that every time someone visits amazon or other affiliate of your choice using the now infected firefox, you stuff their cookie* with your affiliate code, or rewrite the url dynamically to use your aff code.  (I’ve not looked into writing firefox extensions, but I imagine you could do this – someone correct me if I’m wrong?)

The evil plan unfolds as all those horny little desk jockeys who think they are bucking the system and shoving it to the man by looking at page 3 girls embedded in their browser’s skin while they are at work now earn you a tidy piece of pie when they order from amazon. And they are bound to order from amazon at some point. O yes they are. But you won’t stop there will you? You are an evil internet marketing whore and you want more.

more.

more.

You have no scruples. You are the kind of marketer who would sell your own grandma’s cookies if you could only get her to bloody well bake them up, the lazy cow. So you infiltrate your family and friends’ computers with this nasty little piece of code under the guise of

“oh, I’m a computer geek, why don’t I tune your computer for you….you know give it a defrag, speed up your browsing, fix the old flux capacitor.”
“Nonono don’t worry, I love doing it…….(mwahahaha f’ing simpletons)……”
“Eh? Wassat you say? O, no nothing, Um I said I would love a cup of tea, ta very much. Hey…..have you seen amazon’s new christmas home page?”.

The evil is more insidious because the first time you walk the path of no-scruples, it erodes the little scrupulous cogs in your mind that would act as a brake just a little. Every time you perpetuate a little online wrong doing, the cogs get ground down a little more until they no longer touch and cannot brake the evil internet marketing monkey in your head who can spin his wheels as fast as he likes. And spin he does. As fast as his monkey legs can pedal. The voices come so fast now, you almost can’t type the ideas down fast enough.  So you buy a bunch of usb keys on the cheap and you make a custom firefox install which you autorun on the usb keys. Then one day, while you are out shopping, you just happen to drop a bunch of them in the parking lot by accident. O what tired and weary christmas shopper can resist the lure of free storage as they sneakily pretend to tie their yowling snot faced younger-one’s shoelace and pocket the scattered treasure? And how many of them have disabled autorun?

The moral of the story is……be careful what plugins you install.

* Let us teach grandma about affiliate codes.  An affiliate is simply someone who earns commission for recommending a product. A middle man if you like. How do they do this? Well say you click a link on my website that takes you to amazon. That link has information stored in it. One of those pieces of information is an affiliate id which is the tracking code which will tell amazon that I referred you to them. If you purchase something from amazon through my link, I get a percentage of the sale.

Wow you say. My nan never knew that!

It gets more interesting because most affiliate links include a time period so anytime you purchase anything from amazon for x days after you’ve clicked my link, I still get commission.

Wow you say, My nan definitely never knew that! How do they do it?

Most affiliate programs use cookies to store an affiliate’s id on your computer. So say you click on my link because you really need some website hosting, a cookie is stored on your computer by said hosting company. This cookie is timed and includes my affiliate id. If you go back to the hosting company (through my link or directly, it doesn’t matter) any time within a specific period, my affiliate id is still there and if you chose to sign up with them, I will still get commission. The cookie expires eventually though, so I don’t get commission indefinitely.

So now the moral of this story is twofold. Be careful what extensions and plugins you install, and be careful what links you click.

See a tinyurl link? You think it is there simply for your convenience so you don’t have to see a long-ass url? Ha! The cunning and suspicious among you will immediately think “affiliate link”. So, why would anyone click an affiliate link? Well, many people don’t know what they are and are oblivious to the fact that such things exist. I’m sure at some point in my browsing history, I’ve inadvertently scored an internet marketer some commission. Some people do know what affiliate links are though (like your nan for instance because she has read this brilliant scree on what your grandma doesn’t know about internet marketing) and they chose to click anyway, to reward the website owner, you know because they appreciate the rather eloquent writing and all.

Now go tell your nan all about affiliate links and plugins. And if she doesn’t understand, well I’m happy to come round and explain it to her while I give her computer a tune up……..ooh a cup of tea? yes please! ta very much.

“down mighty internet marketing devil”