August 2006 Posts

Content Thieves are NOT Entrepreneurs

Internet entrepreneurs are a dime a dozen these days. I find that most of them, like most people, are well meaning folks, working hard, trying to carve out their niche and make their dreams a reality. I put myself in this category and I put many friends of mine in this category (Chris, Brandon and others).

But, as with the general population, there is a group of so called “entrepreneurs,” whose idea of entrepreneurship is stealing from others. It’s important that you have integrity in everything that you do. Having ethics, having integrity allows you to be truly successful and truly happy. It allows you to be a true entrepreneur. I want to get rich, sure. Who doesn’t? However, I also want to feel good about doing it, feel proud of what I am doing and be able to talk about what I am doing. If you steal, you can’t really do that.

Of course, there is a type of person who steals from others and sees nothing wrong with it. To the contrary, they consider themselves to be successful, even happy and proud of themselves. These people are the reason we have laws and prisons, though. These people are not entrepreneurs.

When you do the right thing now, you are assuring your future, as well. You can steal and maybe you can get away with that for a while. But, you definitely should watch your back and be afraid of what tomorrow will bring because one day, eventually, maybe soon – maybe not so soon – the rug will come out from under you. You’ll be exposed. You’re credibility, if you even have any, will be in the tank and you’re little operation will suffer in all aspects.

Dictionary.com gives the top definition of entrepreneur as “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” Then, the difference between a thief and an entrepreneur is: both take risks, but only one takes initiative.

Weird Al’s New Album Out September 26

Today, I discovered Weird Al’s MySpace.com and he has a new album called “Straight Outta Lynwood” that is coming out September 26. He’s got the first single up and you can download it for free, even, from his MySpace.com page or the song site. It’s called “Don’t Download This Song.” Good stuff.

Via Cameron via Daniel Krause.

I’ve Moved!

I’ve been (still am and will be for awhile) really, really busy with moving and getting caught up and unpacking and all that fun stuff. I’ve moved from West Springfield, MA to Harbinger, NC. My new address:

P.O. Box 243
Harbinger, NC 27941

Community Spam Service

No big shock or anything, but a couple days ago, I had a piece of spam posted at the PhotoshopForums.com, the phpBBHacks.com Support Forums and CommunityAdmins.com. Violated all of their guidelines, removed at all three, user banned.

The person was spamming a “forum promotion” service. Basically, they will post your message to thousands and thousands of sites. They’ll post them in “advertising” forums on communities where advertising is allowed and it is less likely to be deleted, etc. Now, if that were true, if it were posted in advertising sections as appropriate, that’d be fine, as far as I am concerned. The problem is that the message he posted was in the PhotoshopForums.com Market Place forum, the phpBBHacks.com Support Forums Install Stuff for Me forum and the CommunityAdmins.com General Chat forum…

Nick Saban is My Kind of Coach

I already loved the guy. This just increases it:

“Our players do not determine what their outcome is relative to their future,” Saban said following Thursday’s practice. “They should be focused on what their responsibility is to be a part of this team. When guys don’t do those things there are consequences for it, and they don’t determine what the consequences are.

“We don’t have any of this stuff, ‘When it doesn’t work here, let me go someplace else.’ That’s not how it is. This is the real world. It’s business. You have a job and a responsibility. If you’re not capable, we’ll certainly support you and help you. But if you’re not interested in doing that, then we determine your fate. You don’t.”

When a reporter asked Saban if he is holding out hope that Wright will still play for the Dolphins, he said, “I don’t have any hope for anything. I have hope that he has hope that he can do what he’s supposed to do so that he can play for the Dolphins.”

Blocked from Google? Keep Working on that Content!

I don’t know about you, but when I get blocked from Google, it’s because of things like purchasing an expired domain name and using it. I don’t try to cheat anybody and I don’t do anything devious. So, basically, I know I’ll be unblocked. I usually wait 3 months and if I am still not being listed, I e-mail a re-inclusion request to Google. This has never failed. It’s only happened 3 times. 2 of which was expiring domains and the 3rd time, I am not sure what happened. I think it might been because I had the site accessible for a few days, but then took it offline for a while. Not sure. But, all 3 times, my sites have been re-listed. So, my assumption is that you are not evil.

If that is the case, my point is that, during this time, don’t sit around wallowing in self pity. Keep improving that content because when Google finally adds you, you will probably reap the rewards of that content. I have a great example to show. Bad Boy Blog launched at the latter portion of March. Up until a couple days ago, it had not been listed in Google’s search results. I waited my 3 months and then e-mailed Google at the end of June or whatever. Second week of August, it’s listed. During that time, I treated it like any other site. I posted a ton, made contacts, visited daily, came up with cool features and unique ideas and I finally got to the point where I was doing about 350-400 pageviews per day without Google. Generating some AdSense revenue, as well.

So, what happened when it finally got listed? Here are the numbers (pageviews):

Date Pageviews
August 10th 2006 814
August 9th 2006 1,833
August 8th 2006 1,520
August 7th 2006 737
August 6th 2006 403
August 5th 2006 373
August 4th 2006 493
August 3rd 2006 402
August 2nd 2006 354
August 1st 2006 461
July 31st 2006 372
July 30th 2006 285
July 29th 2006 310
July 28th 2006 462
July 27th 2006 468
July 26th 2006 335
July 25th 2006 349
July 24th 2006 337
July 23rd 2006 321
July 22nd 2006 289
July 21st 2006 388
July 20th 2006 399

It was finally listed on August 7 and you can see the affect. 4x the traffic. Why? Because I’ve got good content. For Bad Boy news, there is really no better source and Bad Boy has had a couple of huge hits this year, so people are doing a lot of searches related to those as well as the Danity Kane album and, of course, Diddy is about as big as it gets.

Oh and my AdSense revenue has gone up comparatively. I’m very happy with it.

So, if Google blocks you and you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t get frustrated. Give it time and keep working and you’ll reap the rewards of good content production later.

One of the Quickest Ways to Lose Credibility in an Online Discussion

I was reading an entry over at Jason Calacanis’ blog and I noticed 3 comments (by 2 “different” people, supposedly) where they both personally attacked him for his spelling and grammar. This brings me to this:

One of the quickest ways to lose virtually all credibility in an online discussion, as far as I am concerned, is to attack the person’s spelling or grammar. It all goes back to the common “attack the point, not the person” mantra that I repeat so many times to the users of my communities, but to attack spelling, to me, really gives away that you don’t know what you are talking about or you simply have no good, useful (counter) viewpoint, so you resort to a personal attack. At that moment, my interest in what you have to say shrinks…

The comments in question were deleted and I would have done the very same thing, without hesitation. They were the typical “anonymous” comments, one word names, no URLs, no e-mails, etc. So many “stalkers” out there. If you don’t have any, you need to get to work! :)

T-Shirts I Want to Buy

Partially a reminder for myself, more than anything…

Thinking So You Don’t Have To
Get ye flask
Support The Municipality!
No, I will not fix your computer
RPG
What The Deuce Are You Looking At?
President of Poopie
I Want You
1 Up
Classically Trained
Zelda Triforce
Olde School
David Palmer for President
Counter Terrorist Unit
24

Dedicated Server

Today, I signed the contract for my first dedicated server. It’s a fully managed server from HostMySite.com. Some specs: Intel Xeon 3.2 GHZ (1066 MHz FSB), DDR 2048 MB (2 GB), 3 x SCSI 73 GB (10k RPM), SCSI Raid Card, Linux RedHat Enterprise and 2000 GB monthly transfer. I’m splitting it with my buddy Brandon. We’ve been talking about it for a couple months, I think, with the last few weeks being “busy” getting quotes, recommendations, etc. In the end, the way we found HostMySite.com was simply by Googling for managed dedicated servers, funnily enough.

Kind of a big deal, really. To me, anyway. It also means I’m on the hook for another $300 a month… so, I’ll be working hard to fill the server. :)