I Paid Lee McIntyre $20 and He Gave me back $1000

I first discovered Lee McIntyre when I purchased his Instant Internet Lifestyle video series for a mere $20 in the summer of 2010. At the time I was only making about $1100 per month online and working way too hard to do it. When I finally viewed the videos a few days later, I was stunned by wealth of internet marketing education that they contained. The Instant Internet Lifestyle was a recording of Lee McIntyre’s ‘Upside Down-Inside Out’ Workshop Sessions that took place over the course of 2 days. It contained a little over 6 of info product creation instruction, online marketing techniques, and affiliate program management strategies that I had never heard of despite being active in internet marketing for nearly a decade. Needless to say, Lee’s Instant Internet Lifestyle videos immediately expanded the way I thought about online marketing and internet business building. In short order, I implemented the strategies I had learned from Lee and nearly double my monthly earnings to about $2000 per month, easy. The Instant Internet Lifestyle videos are no hype and no fluff and neither is this review. So, if you are looking to grow you internet based business then I urge you to start by grabbing Lee McIntyre’s Instant Internet Lifestyle or the FREE Momentum Marketing System. It’s a real jewel! Check out these screenshots from inside the Instant Internet Video member’s area:

Lee McIntyre Is Helping Me To Grown By Online Business

Having seen the impressive results from implementing the bundle of online business growth strategies that I learned from Lee’s $20 video, a few months later, I decided to join Lee’s Internet Lifestyle Intensive program. Lee McIntyre’s Internet Lifestyle Intensive is every bit as rigorous as the title sounds. It’s a 12 month, 52 week course that includes weekly coaching calls, 30 hours of workshop videos, hours and hours of coaching call recordings, and weekly modules that teaches you everything from product creation to recruiting Joint Venture (JV). While I had begun making dependable a few months prior, joining this program represented a series investment for me because it comes with a premium price tag. Ultimately, I decided to register for it for the following reasons:

• I want to launch my own series of information products in the near future. Lee McIntyre’s Internet Lifestyle Intensive teaches you step by step about how to build info products and sell them.
• The Internet Lifestyle Intensive teaches you the finer points of building membership program to generate recurring income
• I identified a need to increase my knowledge of setting up and managing my own affiliate program, finding joint venture partners, building a continuity program, and building a targeted list.
• I believe my business would benefit from access Lee’s McIntyre’s resources, including – templates, joint venture partners and coaching. Basically, I think I can expand some portion of my business by leveraging his asset’s and resources.

As of the writing of this post, I am a few months into Internet Lifestyle Intensive and I must say that it’s not just worth every cent I paid but is actually over delivering in value! I’ve increased my monthly income by another $500, traffic to my website is up 500%, and I’m in the process of creating my line of internet marketing information products. In other words, my knowledge and business is growing as a result of Lee McIntyre’s coaching.

In Order to Get To the Next Level You Need a Business Coach

If you’ve been following along, this is the second part of my blog series when I introduce my readers to my business coaches and mentors. It took me years to realize it but the simple truth is that in order to make any real money online and develop a profitable business then you need access to heavy-hitter online business coaches like Lee McIntyre and Rich Schefren. I used to think (and many people still do) that a $29 video tutorial will only get you so far in this game – you learn exactly $29 worth of strategies and that isn’t nearly enough to get you noticed, let alone to compete effectively, online.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned since endeavoring to build my own internet business is that in order to be successful you need a mentor and by mentor I mean someone who has actually accomplished what you are trying to do. You will not only need their expertise and experience on your side, but you also need access to their resources, partners, and customer lists – else you could spend years trying to acquire them yourself.

Additionally, if you’re looking to get the how-to’s of building and promoting information products you need an expert walking you through the process like Lee McIntyre. While it may sound as simple as producing a screenshot video and generating a dazzling ecover, it takes a bit more sophistication to make a truly professional information product – one that you can sells and delivers value to your members.

I am a proud client of Lee McIntyre’s premium Internet Lifestyle Intensive and I am also a Lee McIntyre affiliate. Yes, there are several affiliate links in this review. But what makes me different than all the other Lee McIntyre affiliates out there is that not only have I actually purchased his products, but they have brought me a great deal of success. I can truthfully testify to the fact that they work.

One last thing – Watch for my one-on-one interview with Lee McIntyre that I will release in August. It’s going to be awesome! If you have any questions you’d like me to ask Lee, please write them in the comment section of this blog post.

View Lee McIntyre’s Instant Internet Lifestyle

I could literally write a book telling you about the years I struggled to create a sustainable online business. If you’re story is like mine, then you know that the years I’m speaking were filled with a greater share of disappointments than achievements in regards to creating an online business. To be blunt: I was failing. Sure I made a few hundred dollars here and there by doing some affiliate marketing or product resales, but in the larger scheme of things I was truly a long way off towards achieving a sustainable internet marketing business. And that was until I saw Rich Schefren’s free webinar training. This webinar open my eyes wide open to the reason why I was only achieving minimal results despite working countless hours and spending several thousands of dollars on software products and affiliate marketing education. In a nutshell, the reason for my shortcomings came down to the fact that I was not running my business strategically. I was thinking like an “opportunity seeker” rather than as a “strategic entrepreneur”. If you don’t know what these terms mean than I implore you to view this free webinar and watch Rich to explain the difference.

Many new Internet entrepreneurs fall into the same exact track as I did. It’s the trap that Rich Schefren talks about in his free training. It’s the difference between trying to capitalize on an opportunity and purposefully creating your own opportunities. It’s the difference between letting others think for you and being a thought leader in your field. It’s the difference between having some vague notion of your desired business outcome and having a crisp and clean picture of what your final business goals are. This is the clarity that becoming a client of Strategic Profits has bought me and my business.

I’ve seldom come across people in my professional life, my academic studies, or in my entrepreneurial internet marketing activities that deliver such clear business growth insights as Rich Schefren. Whether we’re talking about a report such as his famous Internet Business Manifesto, this webinar that I think every internet business owner should attend, three hour long coaching session, or a module from the Business Growth System, each time I’ve encountered Rich Schefren’s teachings I get a new perspective on things and my business grows as a result.

Rich Schefren’s Advice to Me

When I last spoke with Rich Schefren we discussed the importance of me pinpoint precisely what I’m good at. And I must admit, it was something that I had trouble isolating at first. Think about it – in school or at work, and even in our daily lives we are taught to focus on the things that we are not good at and to work to improve them. So here’s counter-intuitive part: in Rich Schefren’s point of view trying to convert weaknesses strengths is a waste of time. Weaknesses should be isolated so that they do not prevent you from achieving your business objectives. Strengths, on the other hand, should be maximized, nourished, developed. The reason is because if you’re good at something, really good at something, it puts you in a league of your own – a level above all those who attempt to compete with you. So when you start to build your online business, because you’re leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, you’ve essentially created your own niche. In other words, you are the best provider of products and services in the marketplace. After speaking with Rich Schefren, it became clear to me that I needed to identify and build a business around my strengths before I even began to think about anything else. Strategic Profits also gives its members access to psychological testing to help them to better identify how they operate so that they can cultivate their strengths. It is this type of straightforward advice and access to resources that has helped me to an advance my online marketing business and to truly glimpse my first taste of success.

Strategic Profits Is A Business Investment

I have no doubt that Rich Schefren and Strategic Profits have put me on the road to achieving my ultimate goal of self-employment through owning my own online business. If you’re serious about building a prosperous online business – I strongly recommend that you view Rich’s free training – it will certainly change your life. But here’s a bit of warning: Rich Schefren is the real deal! He’s not a flake that will charge you $37/mo and teach you the latest Twitter spamming tactics. Rich is a genuinely effective online business consultant who has no real peer as far as I’m concerned. He has a track record of helping the biggest names in internet marketing, affiliate marketing, and make money online game of reaching incredible profits and achieving their business goals. With a clientele like Mike Filsaime, Jim Edwards, Leslie Buterin, you should view your enrollment with Strategic Profits as an investment in your online entrepreneurial education – one of the most important investment’s you may ever make. Check out the free training, and learn just as I did, why you’re business is not reaching its full potential and how you can begin achieving your goals.

Question – “I was recently contacted to write articles for a website.  The offer was $15 per 400 to 600 word article.  What do you think and are there any tips you can share with me?”

My Response  – This looks interesting.  Here’s some tips to make the most out of this engagement:

• You might want to create a general working agreement that states payment terms (agreed upon payment rate, timing of payment, payment method), number of revisions, expected turn around time, etc.
• There’s a huge difference between a 400 word article and a 600 word article and they’re probably not worth the same $15.  See if you can negotiate a per word rate or make each article a certain maximum length plus or minus 10 words.  I think this will work out best for both parties.
• Ensure expectations are clear for each project.  You may want to request a written document which details the requirements for the project.  This includes things such as tone, style, reading level, purpose of the article, length of the article, and keyword usage (if the article is to be used for SEO purposes).  You may also want to clarify the format of the article – should the articles have headings and sub heading, bullet points, etc.
• Make sure there exists clear lines of communication between you and your client.  It is important to be able to ask questions as you’re working on the project, but don’t overdo it.  Too many questions can cause your contractor to doubt your abilities.  Also, know which forms of communication – email, telephone, instant messenger – are acceptable.  At the same time, you should respond promptly to your client’s questions.  Be professional and notify your client of any hurdles that may delay completion of the assignment.
• You should have some of the level of research required to complete each article.  For example, if you must do five hours of research before you begin to write, you may want to bill for that time too.  Just be sure that you have reached an agreement with your contractor beforehand.
• See if the contractor is willing to give you a recommendation upon satisfactory completion of your assignments.  Although you’re being hired as a ghostwriter, many contractors will be more than willing to give you a raving review.
• If it makes sense, consider using a third party to administer the freelance relationships.  Outsourcing broker websites such as Textbroker.com and eLance.com might provide an additional sense of security for both parties.
• Lastly, I think you should try to over deliver in terms of quality and not quantity.  For example, a 400 word article that addresses the topic in a clear, precise manner will make your client happier than a 600 word article that is off-topic.

Today’s video topic is how to make a review video. I am going to give you lots of different tools that you can chose from to make your review video and then additionally different tips that I found from doing reviews – kind of some best practices – some stuff that will save you a lot of time when you get up and go in trying to do your own to start off with so.

Video Recording Tools – Which Should You Choose?

If we go ahead and get into it the first thing we need to go over is Tools and of course the first thing you are going to need is recording software. Now this applies if you viewing a website a web service, video games – something on the computer you would need that otherwise you are going to need a camera. But for this I am going to go over recording software and there is really a lot of choices. I my myself am using CamStudio it’s free and opensource.

Fraps

There is also Fraps which you will most commonly see people use with video games – it’s really meant for being able to handle the type of refresh involved in video games. Adobe Captivate which is kind of like the Mercedes of screen capture software, it runs about $700 so you might want to start with CamStudio, Fraps or something first maybe work your way up to Captivate.

Jing

And also Jing is a new software that is come out recently from Techsmith they are the same people that produce Snag It which is a screen shot software and it’s got a lot of nifty features too.

CamStudio

I have gone with CamStudio simply because it lets me do recordings as long as I want without any watermarks and save them in the AVI format which all three of those things you cannot do with Fraps or Jing on their free versions and I haven’t worked up the money yet to or really the need to upgrade to Fraps or Jing. CamStudio does everything that I need. If you look at any of my other review videos you will see that the quality seems to be just fine, it keeps up with the type of screen recording I am doing and that might change if I decide to go and review a site that has a bunch of flash or flash video or something on it, I am sure CamStudio won’t be able to handle that type of motion on the page because its recording at a very low frame rate. But at any rate for what I am doing this works great and so I figured I would go ahead and give you guys a quick view of what cam Studio looks like.

It’s got a very simple interface here, by default it is going to record to AVI which is what you would normally want to save into. Places like YouTube, Vimeo, Etc, aren’t going to accept SWF or Shockwave Flash videos anymore which is the other option in CamStudio so just leave it to record on AVI. You will want to change a few of the default settings before you get started. For region the region option will let you make a box anywhere on the screen and it will record whatever is within that fixed area. But it will let you change it every time you go to record a video it will ask you what part of the screen do you want to record. The other customizable one is fix region which you go and create that once you say I always want to record this particular square of my screen and every time you go back to record it will just assume you want to record that exact same location. You can also do window and full screen fairly self explanatory.

Then you will want to make sure and come down and click record from microphone. Sometimes I think by default it does not record audio so you will just want to check that and perhaps come into audio options and make sure the right microphone is selected sometime it might choose the microphone built into your monitor and not your external microphone so you want to make sure that is checked to get your best possible audio quality out of it. Then a few of the little options are just a minimize program on start recording which I usually have enabled but I disabled it for this video so I could show you the Cam Video Software. You will also want to set a directory from the save to otherwise it is just going to save it in a temp directory which is going to be difficult to go find and bring out later so you can upload it to Youtube or Vimeo or whatever your preference is there. And then I additionally have it ask me for the file name so it doesn’t record it say like time stamp.AVI after I am done recording it will ask me what I want the name of the video file to be so I can easily recognize it later on when I go to grab that. And then lastly you can set up some keyboard shortcuts so by default you can hit F8 and CamStudio will start recording. But there is no option no key binding to stop the recording so I went in and set a key binding for control shift Z stops my CamStudio so I don’t have to open the software and hit the stop button when I am recording and then edit that part out later it just makes it a little bit easier for me. That is really all you have to configure in CamStudio everything else is pretty much standard right out of the box. It a nice little piece of software that has actually this version of CamStudio is an open source rendition of an old commercial product that was actually sold two or three times and eventually got turned into Adobe Captivate now obviously the features of CamStudio don’t compare to what Adobe Captivate does but its just nice knowing that it has some good solid roots like I said it works for what I want to do.

If you are interested in these other ones Fraps, Abode Captivate, Jing almost all of them have free trial you can go download so if you are not happy with one of the features of CamStudio go ahead and download one of their demos they will either put a watermark or time limit on your video but you can get a feel of what type of subject matter there ok with recording whether they can record a lot of flash being on the page or a video game or something like that and it always best to try before you buy it right.

If you don’t like CamStudio go try one of the others and get whatever works for you because you are the person that is going to have to be using this on a regular basis so if you are using software and you don’t find it easy to use you are not going have fun doing it take you longer and you want to make sure you are using tools that making it as easy as possible for you to get done what you need to do. That is probably enough on recording software.

Video Recording Equipment

Microphone

The next bit of tools you are going to need is a microphone. I can’t stress how important a microphone is to doing this type of review process because people are really more than half of what the video is, is your voice so video quality is one part of it audio quality is the other and if you’ve got a noisy poppy crackly muffled microphone in your video no one is going to want to watch it, no one wants to listen to that. When you are going to pick out a microphone a couple of rules to keep in mind are you get what you pay for.

The $8 microphone that you find at Best Buy or the one that came built into your monitor laptop or what not is going to have awful audio quality I wouldn’t even start with those its really not worth it. Lots of them have popping calking you can hear your hard drive or something whistling in the background. So go out and get a microphone and be willing to spend a little bit of money you don’t have to go out and spend hundreds of dollar but even if you go out and buy a thirty forty dollar microphone you are going notice immediately a much better quality in the audio that you are getting out of it and that’s going to help your voice and your presentation come across that much better.

Secondly, get one [a microphone] that you are comfortable with, if you get yourself some boom microphone hanging that is standing off of your desk and you have to lean over to talk into all the time again its not going to be comfortable its not going to be easy you are going to feel like you are forcing yourself to do it and if its especially if it uncomfortable and you are moving back and forth from it or what not that is going to effect the other quality to. Then lastly if you can now this is a big if is get a condenser microphone, most of the microphones that are in the consumer type microphones headsets desktop microphones and what not are very cheap relative to condenser microphone. A condenser microphone is a little difficult to explain but it’s a much higher quality, it’s the type of microphone you would use in radio ads and what not and they are going to run a lower condenser microphone at least $150 probably $200 but if you really getting into doing reviews or your audio quality is just paramount to you go out and find a nice condenser microphone preferably one that hooks up via USB so you don’t have to have a sound board or something to adapt the condenser microphone into your audio input and give it a shot. Spend a little bit of money on you microphone it will be worth in it the long run get one that you are comfortable with and you know that you will use and if you really are concerned about your audio quality spend the extra money and get a condenser microphone you will never have to buy another microphone as long as you are careful with it.

PC Requirements

Our last tool is a powerful PC. Screen capturing like this takes a lot of processing power, a lot. If you are recording in 720p so you can think of that as 1024 x 768 about there, if that the screen area that you recording I would recommend that you have at least 2Ghz dual core processor, you will have one core to run your browser or the game or the video or whatever it is you are recording and another processor core to do your recording on that end. That is what I am running my system on seems to work ok the video doesn’t always have the highest frame rate but I don’t have any audio jittering problems which is what you will see if your machine was severally underpowered for the type of media you are recording. 720p is respectful that is what a lot of people are going to watch on Yutube they might even watch it lower at 480p. But 720p is your first high definition resolution that is probably where you should start for your recordings but if you really want to get out there and do 1080i and that would be if you had a 1920 x 1080 resolution monitor and you were recording the whole screen that would be a 1080i video and there you are going to need at least a 3Ghx dual core or more to be able to do that and really if you are recording at that high of resolution you probably want to dish out the money for something like Fraps or Adobe Captivate because they are much more efficient things like Jing and CamStudio and other software aren’t going be able to keep up with that amount of recording so keep that in mind when you are going to start up doing a review or something you don’t want to have to go out and rebuild your entire machine so if you know something like this up front you can down scale the size of your screen that you are going to be recording so that the video comes across clean and the audio comes across well also.

Additionally to our list here you might need some video editing software. I don’t use that myself for these I do all of my videos in one take but video editing is a pretty big topic I could probably spend a whole another segment just talking about all the different video editing options that are out there the pros and cons of those and what is going to work best for your particular use case but I will definitely save that for another time.

Preparing for and Recording Your Review Video

Our next subject is prep work this next to the tools making sure you have quality tools the next biggest thing is going to be your prep work. The one that I can’t stress to people enough is get to know your subject matter. I don’t know how many times I am reading a review on line or listening to someone’s review on YouTube and they get a fact wrong about the product that they are reviewing and it just really goes to their creditability they have done a review on something and they don’t even know all the details of it so if you are going to review something don’t just pull out of the box or pull it up on a webpage and do a review 10 minutes later. Get out there and really use it feel like you are intimate with the product the service whatever it is you want to be reviewing, spend a day or two with if it’s a web service and its free sign up for it set it up, go through all the options, try and customize it, if it’s a product spend a day taking picture with it or playing games on it whatever it might be and make sure that you know the intricacies of it enough that you aren’t going to be reading from a list to point out qualities from it and you also not going to goof up and say something about the product that might not be actually be the case.

Second is write yourself an outline of its qualities. So don’t go through and list everything about the site service or product but write yourself an outline of its really excellent at this it could use some work on this aspect of it service, here is the three things that I really liked about it. Just a general outline of what makes the product stand out what could be improved upon, etc. so that you are not doing your review and having to come up with stuff out of your head end up with a lot of “hmm, ummm”, stutters and pauses that you might have to edit out later. If you write yourself an outline get to that point you can glance over at it and see what outline was and keep the flow of the video going and not have to stop and try catch up where your thought process was.

Last of all is do not make a script. I don’t know how many times I have listened to reviews and people are reading off of a script and they get into that mono tone voice because they are reading off of a piece of paper. Its not fun people don’t want to spend their time learning about a product just to have someone ramble on in a monotints tone just reading off of a script that is the problem even if you take all those qualities that you have picked out and then you make a script about them you lose all the flare, the emotion of why you think the product is really great or perhaps why its really bad and so try not to make yourself a script try to get to the point comfortable enough with product that you can go out there and its like you are talking to your viewers because that is what you want to be talking to them, forming relationship with them have that emotional connection and reading off of a script you might as well just take that script and put it up on your web page as an article because it is not going to do any good as a video review.

Additionally to this prep work you could bounce stuff off some other people you know get on line, look at forum post, look at some other review not the plagiarize but just to see if they had any strong opinions one way or another because they might have found something that you’ve missed a particular use case or what not. Maybe run it by some friends there’s all sorts of options out there for you to get a lot of this stuff done before you even hit the computer and start doing the recording so that the video turns out that much better.

Lastly, just a few additional tips that I have run into so I will try get them out of the way for you so you don’t run into the same hurdles is check your microphone volume. Every time before I actually go to record a video I do a few tests here and there placing my microphone with my surrounding audio environment sounds like and then play it back to myself because there is nothing worse than going to watch a video and you can barely hear the person you have to crank your speakers all the way up to try to hear the person because they didn’t make sure their volume was normalized. Additionally if you’ve already been watching a bunch of videos on YouTube and then you click on someone else’s video and your speakers are just blaring because this guy had his volume cranked way up that is going to be an annoyance to and a lot of people will be turned off by that. Take the extra minute to do a couple test runs position your microphone make sure everything is normalized will save you a lot of headaches down the road.

Check for artifacts/tearing. Once you have done your video go back and watch it a few times make sure that any video on the screen or your cursor scrolling down the page isn’t tearing either too bad or at all. That’s going to really effect how people are thinking about your video if they are trying to watch it and there is all this pixilation and screen tearing while they are trying to pay attention to it to figure out what you are talking about that’s really goanna take away from their objectivity when they are trying to absorbed the information you are giving to them. So take the time to go through and proof your video before you put it up there can save you a lot of time and that is the other thing have someone else proof your video. You know, you are always going to think that what you’ve done is probably the best that can be done but the amount of quality, the amount outside perspective you might get just from having someone else take five ten minutes and look over you video to see if you missed a fact, you stuttered too much, you made some type of verbal typo in video that is going to save you embarrassment later all you have to do is redo the video or edit that part out if that kind of thing happened versus to go back and put in something type update or redo on you video online.

I think what I have given you here is a good set of tips and basic best practices for doing a video but I really think you should be able to go out there and do your own now. If you just want to get started just go find a web site or service that maybe not everyone knows about obviously don’t go do a review of eBay but go out there find a website pick out five six things you really like about it, maybe a couple of ways how they could improve down load the software, hook up your microphone write yourself an outline and go ahead and try it. That’s all I have for you on this I will probably do a video later on video editing software, that’s something people want to see. Otherwise this will probably wrap it out I want to thank you for your time again this vide was brought to you in part by DigitalSapien.com your source for everything SEO, SEM eCommerce and more. Signing of this Evan Dean from the bog cheers.

Thanks to Evan Dean – DailyNerd.net Tech Blog

Download the Internet Marketing Guide for Nonprofits in PDF format

Today, as an accompaniment to the start of New England’s GiveCamp weekend in which I will be participating, I am releasing A Nonprofit’s Guide to Internet Marketing: Cost-Effective Opportunities to Accelerate Online Marketing Success for Your Nonprofit. This is a 15-page guide designed to help nonprofit organizations activate or to accelerate their online marketing efforts. The Nonprofit’s Guide to Internet Marketing contains information about:

• Why nonprofits should consider Internet marketing and how it can help to expand membership rolls, event participation, donation collection, and to increase awareness
• A brief overview of the main disciplines within online marketing and how nonprofits cans get started, including search engine optimization (SEO), paid search marketing (pay-per-click) , and social media marketing (SMM)
• Specific programs offered by companies like Google and Flickr to assist nonprofits in marketing online
• Additional opportunities within emarketing and a brief look at how to implement each grassroots style
• Guidelines for vetting and working with online marketing agencies

The guide is totally free, but if you like it kindly donate to any of the charities that will be present at New England GiveCamp. Here’s the list of nonprofits scheduled to attend the event.

Also, if you know a nonprofit or charity that can use this guide, please feel free to share a copy of it with them or refer them to this site.

If you have any questions about the content of this document, please feel free to comment to this post and I reply there. If you are looking to retain my services for any of the online marketing programs mentioned, please use this form to contact me.

Question:

“Originally, my blog was hosted on my dad’s IIS server, and the links all read http://ustandout.com/index.php/blog-post-name. After transferring the blog to a linux server, we created an .htaccess file to redirect all http://ustandout.com/index.php/blog-post-name to http://ustandout.com/blog-post-name.

Over the weekend, I transferred my U Stand Out blog from my dad’s server to my own GoDaddy-hosted linux server (I figured it was time to take control of my own hosting, haha). The .htaccess file is still there. However, external sites linking to my blog via the original link (/index.php/blog-post-name) no longer work.

As an example, Mashable was linking to one of my blog posts: http://ustandout.com/twitter/free-twitter-badges, but their link reads http://ustandout.com/index.php/twitter/free-twitter-badges, so it doesn’t work. I was getting tons of traffic from this one mention, and now I’m not.

So I know you have experience with redirects, and I just don’t know enough about this kind of thing to research and find a solution (trust me, I’ve tried, and I broke my whole site for a while haha). Do you have any idea how I can make /index.php/blog-post-name redirect to /blog-post? Any help would be much appreciated, but if you’re too busy to think about this I understand!!

Diana”

My Reply:

“Diana, As far as your question goes – here are my thoughts:

If I’m understanding you correctly, it seems like you implemented a general redirect rule using regular expressions in your .htaccess file that only works for a specific URL format. It only redirects all http://ustandout.com/index.php/blog-post-name to http://ustandout.com/blog-post-name.

The link from Mashable also links to you /twitter/ directory which doesn’t seem to be covered by your existing 301 redirect rules. I’d recommend creating a custom 301 redirect rules that works specifically on the URL that is linked to from Mashable. In other words, try adding this:

redirect 301 /index.php/twitter/free-twitter-badges http://ustandout.com/index.php/twitter/free-twitter-badges

But assuming this works, it doesn’t solve your problem site-wide. So, if you send my your .htaccess file maybe I can take a look at it.

Be well,
Everett”

Follow Up

Diana added the line of code to her .htaccess file and it solved the problem.  Issue resolved.

Have A Questions?

If anyone out there has any questions, SEO-related or otherwise, please shoot me a line and I will do my best to help you.

and I’m going to show you how you can easily create your own too.  But first, here’s a little background about URL shortening and why it’s an important aspect of your social media, affiliate marketing, press release, and even search engine optimization strategy.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with URL shortening, here’s a quick example of when you may want to chop a long URL down to something smaller.  Let’s say you want to post a link to a specific page on a shopping website for home office furniture in your tweet on Twitter. Unfortunately, the URL you want to include is 133 characters long which doesn’t leave space to talk about much else in your tweet.  You can reduce the length of the link by submitting it a URL shortening service which outputs a shorter URL that takes the user to the same exact page for you to use in your tweet, as in the example below:

Original URL (133 characters): http://www.thehomeofficedepot.com/shop.php?c=500&n=1069102&i=B00252CGL2&x=Cherry_Finish_Home_Office_Corner_
Workstation_Computer_Desk

New Short URL (17 characters): http://xurls.us/3

As you can see, the new URL is 116 characters shorter than the original link, resolves to the exact same pages, and is now Twitter friendly.

Lately, I have been doing a lot with Twitter and affiliate marketing.  In doing so, I’ve come to recognize the importance of “URL control” in posting links on social media networks and within my own affiliate promotional pieces.  There are many services out there that allow people to shorten URLs.  The most well known of these websites are bit.ly and TinyURL, but there are tons of others, each with its own unique features.

It occurred to me that given the relative simplicity of these services that it would be easy to set-up and host my own URL shortening/redirection services using a domain I own.  Having my own URL reduction website gives me the ability to shorten URLs, incorporate keywords of my choosing, view click statistics and user information, set my own redirection rules, and add advertising.  In other words, as a web marketer, I now have the ability to abbreviate links with custom characteristics while gaining valuable analytical insight.

Steps To Create Your Own Domain Redirection Service

What follows is a basic overview of how to get your URL shortening website up and running pretty quickly.

1.  Find the shortest available domain name you can

I’ve been using Bustaname.com to help find some very good unregistered website domain names for a while now.  It was Bustaname.com that enable me to find xURLs.us (the URL for my domain name shortening service) which is a beautifully short and descriptive 8 character (including the period) domain name.  Many URL reduction websites use exotic two-letter, top level domains (TLD) like .al, .cc, .ly.  These are great because they are shorter than the classic “.com” TLD, but they can cost you anywhere from $10 – $90 to reserve.  Please note: many of country-specific TLDs have special criteria that must be met in order to reserve them.  You can also use the little domain availability tool below to quickly check if a website name is available. 

Once you’ve settled on a short domain name, the next step is to register it.  I use 1&1 Internet for domain registration.  It’s quick, easy, and cheap.  Others may prefer www.GoDaddy.com .

2.  Get reliable hosting

Most of the URL shortening services I came across researching this project are built upon PHP and MySQL, so I’d recommend a server host that comes with these two already installed.  Again, I use 1&1 Internet for server hosting, but you should use the web host you feel most comfortable using.

3.  Select a URL shortening script

It seems to be fairly easy for experienced web programmers to write their own custom URL redirection script, but why reinvent the wheel?  There are a few dozen free URL shortening scripts out there and some paid applications for you to select from.

xURLs is built upon a simple PHP script called Yourls.  I chose Yourls as my redirection platform because it’s free, has an easy installation, a straightforward admin interface, and a decent statistics package.

The admin console for Yourls:

The stat package in Yourls:

Some other URL shortening scripts include: Kissa.be, Shorty, and TightURL.

Each script has its own mini-URL creation procedures.  For example, some present the target page in an iframe of a dynamically generated page, while others use a 301 HTTP redirect or even a Meta refresh as the mechanism to get users to the intended page.  Some scripts allow you to create multiple mini-URLs which point to a single long URL.  You should demo, research, and analyze how each script works and select the one that fits your needs.

4.  Install and customize the shortening script

Next, after you have selected a domain shortening script, you’ll need to install it in your web host environment.  You should review the installation documentation for the specific URL shortening script you selected, but for the most part they all involve roughly the same steps:  (1)create a SQL database (2)populate database connection parameters in a PHP set-up file (3)toggle settings in a configuration file (4)upload the files for the URL shortening application to your web server via FTP (5)initiate an installation/customization script.

If you’re using Yourls, you should review its installation instructions and this important note about installing Yourls on a 1&1 web server.  Also, some of you may not want your URL shortening service to be available for public use.  In this case, you will need to password protect your website.  Yourls allows you to do this quickly by changing the line “define(‘YOURLS_PRIVATE’, true);” in the config-sample.php to “true”.

As a nice little feature to get your started, Yourls includes a file called sample-public-front-page.php.txt to give you an idea about how to construct the homepage for your URL shortening website.  You can customize the contents of this file to your liking.  When you’re finished designing your homepage, change the file name to index.php and upload it to the root directory of your website.  I’d recommend designing a decent looking homepage and installing visitor tracking (i.e. Google Analytics, GoStats) for your URL reduction website – you never know when curious users may come-a-knocking.

5.  Start posting your short links

Now that your URL redirection script is up and running under your own domain, it’s time to start posting your short links on Twitter, Facebook, and your own affiliate websites.  Here’s an image of xURLs, my own URL chopping website, at work in the wild.

If you want to see something amazing, try posting a link routed through your URL shortening/redirection service in a tweet and immediately jump over to the statistics screen and watch how fast the clicks accumulate.

1. Website Magazine.  A must-have for online business professionals – subscribe
2. Deliver: A Magazine for Marketers. Published by the US Post Office. – subscribe
3. DMNews. A direct marketing magazine – subscribe
4. Internet Retailer. A very awesome ecommerce magazine – subscribe
5. Target Marketing.  Another direct marketing magazine – subscribe
6. All About the ROI.  Case studies, expert advice, ecommerce, etc – subscribe

Please let me know if there are other free resources out there.

I’m a big fan of education in all its glorious forms: traditional classroom learning, online education, and on-the-job-training.  Having completed graduate school in 2008, I needed a new set of educational goals.  More specifically, I wanted to learn a web programming language.

For the past three weeks, I have been taking a non-credit Ed2Go course entitled Introduction to PHP and MySQL offered through the University of Maryland Baltimore County Training Centers.  Ed2Go provides six week long online courses that cost between $95 – $120.  I must say, that I am thoroughly impressed with the presentation of the material and the quality of the instruction.  I am especially impressed with the knowledge and responsiveness of the course instructor.  Ed2Go classes have flexibility build into assignment deadlines to accommodate working adults.  Lastly, the intuitive e-learning platform means that you don’t have to “learn the platform”, instead you simply learn PHP.

Why did I sign up for an Ed2Go class?

I briefly considered enrolling in another Masters program (which I still may do in the future), however I couldn’t bear the thought of having to amass another pile of student loans obtaining a second graduate degree.  So, I asked myself what do I really want to get out of going back to school?.  The answer was simple: I want to learn about web programming. This is different than desiring to earn a degree in a subject, or wanting to do firsthand research in an academic environment, or all the other responses my heart could have given.

I had failed in the past at completing self-paced enrichment courses because they lacked deadlines, structure, and were low stakes – meaning I wouldn’t waste tuition money or receive a failing grade for not finishing them.  For me, options like MIT’s Opencourseware, although amazing in many ways, aren’t practical.

I have always had a healthy interest in software programming and application testing and despite not having much formal academic training, I have a “better than expected” knowledge of the methodologies of both.  As an undergraduate, I took a C programming course that provided me with an introduction to the data structures and program flow controls common in every programming language.  Soon afterwards, I began developing simple, yet effective procedural programs using Autoit 3.0 to streamline my tasks as an application integration tester.

Ed2Go and Career Changes

Ed2Go classes are great for professionals seeking to acquire new skills to help advance their careers or for lifetime learners desiring personal enrichment.  Although, they won’t help you transition into a new career like a certificate or degree program can, Ed2Go courses can certainly give you the opportunity to test the waters of a career change before spending thousands of dollars on tuition.

I’m still working my way through Introduction to PHP and MySQL but so far, so good.  I’m even considering signing up for Intermediate PHP and MySQL which starts in a few short weeks.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.

But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

By some estimates, reCAPTCHA provides more than 3,000 man hours of free work per day. Ok… I’m down to fight spam and proofread books with just a few keystrokes.