Recently in develop Category

This post was created automatically when I finished the installation process of MT 4.0. This Blog is used for testing components, plugins and themes etc... all the good stuff that can be added and modified in Movable Type before I make similar changes on other sites that use the same software. So please be patient as I attempt to get caught up and then back to posting more real articles, photos, and ideas, on this and other Blogs that are designed, developed, and managed by Silicon Palms.

Strategic Profits Coaching Program

Rich Schefren was introduced to me by Mike Filsaime in an email just prior to the release of the Internet Business Manifesto. As a self professed information junky, with a penchant for self improvement, this document truly struck a chord with me. I keep a categorized folder just for eBooks and usually open new ones to make sure they're scanned for viruses and ready to read, then come back later in the day to check-out what I've downloaded to read.

Metrics refers to the standard of measurement and when relating to website visitor traffic there are 3 basic standards which include; hits, page views and user sessions. In the early day everyone used the "hit's" measurement since it will generally be the largest of the 3 and often sounds the best. However, a single user can create a dozen or more hits from a single page view, then banner and text link ads refer to "impressions", sound confusing?

Another Blog that I publish is called "Intellectual Security" and is information related to Intellectual Property (IP) topics such as copyright, trademark and patent law. Most of the content is Press releases but occasionally I come across interesting articles, so I write to the authors and ask for permission to republish. I met the attorney and IP expert John Farmer in 2004 in this way and now he's provided 2 excellent articles for that site.

I'm always on the lookout for digital download products to sell on Commodity Trader and my other sites, so recently I became an affiliate for Gecko Software, they offer the best solution for tracking, charting and back testing the Futures, Forex, and Stock Markets. Go ahead and click on the graphic to download your free 30 trail version of Track 'n Trade 4.0.

Occasionally I read a Blog about making money with websites called Problogger.net by Darren Rowse, it's packed with good advice and cool ideas. Last week a guest blogger named Tony Hung posted an article called "Understanding the Rules of Great Content" in which he shares some wisdom about how to keep the content flowing.

The alert came in an email message this morning, then later in the day the story broke across mainstream news-media. The U.S. Gov. held a press conference in London to make the announcement that the 2 founders of Neteller both Canadian citizens had been arrested and charged with money-laundering.

It's time to get my mind back on making money, so it can be spent on more travel and lifestyle. Planning a trip to Santa Catarina to experience the great beaches of Southern Brazil and visit the city of Florianópolis, for sometime in February, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, it's time once again to analyze and then improve the search engine rankings of my sites an blogs. Search engine marketing is not my favorite task but it's very important, so much so that it could, or maybe should, be a full-time occupation. I'll review some of my tips for search engine marketing.

Several weeks ago I was attempting to find a new, lighter version CMS (content management system) on the best comparison site of it's kind, called CMSMatrix.org. When I say new and lighter, I mean new to me and lighter than Movable Type (MT), as I've installed dozens of MT CMS's and publish pages every day using MT but it's too big of a program and more than what I needed a CMS for, which was for publishing, archiving and managing a few dozen articles in a directory and then be able to share those articles across my network.

My CMS comparison research turned up a real gem of a software program and one of the first open source programs of it's kind; TextPattern

Since the early 90's I've been involved in publishing information about offshore banking and investing. In 1995 I attended my first major conference of offshore service providers, at the El San Juan Hotel in San Juan Puerto Rico. In attendance there were experts from almost every Caribbean Country, as most of these countries offer no-tax, or very low-tax investing and banking to foreigners that use the financial services of these so-called "tax havens".

Silicon Palms was incorporated in Florida on 9.9.99 and has always been the culmination of my desire to become financially independent from the proceeds of web design, development, and marketing. My first company OffshoreNet was the precursor of the dream but the company name was misleading and stereotyped me too much. To this day OffshoreNet is one of my favorite projects and a component of the Silicon Palms cyber estate developer network.

CommodityTrader.com has evolved into a popular website and now I'm taking the next step, adding a Newsletter. For a long time I've been using the open-source list-management software called PHPList by a group from the UK, it's served me well in lists up to a few a thousand subscribers, which is as far as I've gotten in the last few years, although in 1999 we built Rock-n-Roll.com to 1.2M, however it was done through acquisition rather than 1 subscriber at a time.

So today I've been too busy to blog here because I'm getting ready to launch the first issue of Commodity Trader News.

Today I was accepted in the Yahoo beta program to test out their new publisher network, for displaying contextual ads that they serve for my pages. I've always been a big fan of Yahoo, so shouldn't have been surprised that I already had an account because I once used services from Overture, which is now owned by Yahoo. Most people think Google pioneered the idea of brokering pay-per-click (CPC) advertising but I remember Overture selling CPC advertising services long before I knew that Google was involved, however it was Google that improved upon the concept, broadened the scope by including all web publishers (instead of just the major news portals) then made it really user friendly to the masses.

The more hours I pour into publishing web pages and programming the more it becomes evident to me that content is King. You can create the best looking website in the world, load it with the coolest utilities to make it look like a division of Netscape but without interesting content that people are interested to read about it'll atrophy and die. Sure all the cool utilities will get used but not by anyone you would care to associate with, as you'll find links and posts for sex and drugs by people with no-real name or email address.