ScrewThe9to5.com

CafePress Store Customization

Clif — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:56:21 +0000

I make most of my sales through the CafePress Marketplace which means that most of the people who buy my products never even see my store. However, I have been having an increased number of sales of my Texas themed products from my actual shop. This has prompted me to redesign it. You can take a look at it by clicking this very SEO friendly link: Texas T-Shirts.

You might a notice that this store is NOT a customization of one of the templates hosted at the CafePress site. Nope, this is a completely original site hosted on my own hosting account and it uses a cgi script to “pull” my products from my CP shop. This nifty little cgi script is call CP Shop and can be purchased here:

http://marty.net/go2/site/view/marty/101

I highly recommend it.

I Got Me A New Job

Clif — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:56:30 +0000

Well, I’m now living proof that if you pursue doing what you want to do in a field you want to be in you can end up doing it for a living.

It was less than a year ago that I went on Craigslist to try and rustle up some side work as an HTML handyman when I landed a few gigs with a successful SEO company. Now I’m going on board with them full time as their Lead SEO Technician. I’ll be making more money with them than I do at my current 9 to 5 office job, and I’ll be working from home. We’re busy as hell, so there will be a lot of work for me, but it’s fascinating stuff that I love to do.

And, they are a good company. As many of you know, finding a good, trustworthy SEO company is like finding a good, trustworthy mechanic…next to impossible. That’s one thing I dug about this company from day one: they’re straight shooters that don’t promise what they can’t acheive and often acheive results beyond what they do promise.

CafePress Money: My First Triple Digit Check

Clif — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:06:21 +0000

Well, folks, it came in…my first triple digit check from CafePress. Up until this check, I’ve only received checks in the $20.00 to $40.00 range.

The really cool thing is that my current commissions are already up to over $120.00! Here’s the pic of my fabulous CafePress check (click for larger image):

I’ve been thinking about writing an eBook on how to get started with CafePress. It would start with ultra basic info on getting an account set up and then get into the nitty gritty of making profitable designs, SEO, trend marketing research…what do you think? Should I spend the time on that? Let me know!

My First Triple Digit CafePress Check

Clif — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:33:36 +0000

It’s scheduled to be mailed out on the 15th! My first commission check from CafePress in the triple digits. $220 and some change to be sort of exact. Not bad at all. A hefty chunk of that came from the shopping rush of the holidays, but I’ll take it!

Hopefully once a few other projects I have going on wrap up or slow down I can add more shirt designs to the shop.

Freelance Web Design Resources

Clif — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:17:33 +0000

I’ve been trying to hustle up web design work in order to bulk up my own portfolio before implementing a hardcore SEO campaign on my own web design site. As I’ve mentioned before, Craigslist is a great place to snag small web design gigs, but there are also several sites out there that specialize in helping freelancers find work.

Here’s a few I’ve been checking out over the past few days that look really promising. These also offer freelance opportunities for other skill sets such as writing, media production, marketing, accounting, etc.

All of these have free basic memberships, but most require some level of paid membership to get real benefits from the service:

3 Plugins Your WordPress Blog Must Have

Clif — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:46:42 +0000

One of the great things about having a WordPress blog is that there are tons of cool plugins available on the net to make blog management a breeze. Here’s 3 plugins that I can’t live without.

Google XML Sitemaps Generator - This plugin is incredible. Every time you publish a new post it automatically generates a new sitemap of your blog AND submits it to Google. This saves you the hassle of doing this by hand - which can take a while - and it means that your site is always up to date in Google’s database. I’ve seen brand new posts of mine turn up in Google searches within just a couple of hours of posting.

Optimal Title - This little plugin reverses how WordPress displays your post title so that the post title comes before your blog name.

Instead of: MyBlog >> 10 Reasons Why Your Breath Stinks

You get: 10 Reasons Why Your Breath Stinks << MyBlog

This makes posting to social bookmarking sites MUCH quicker, and it looks better in search engine results.

NOTE: You must set your permalinks (post links) so that they display the post’s title and not the default dynamic link name. You know, that link that looks something like: ?=23…that doesn’t tell people or search engines anything!

Here’s how:

Go to OPTIONS in your WP Admin.
Select PERMALINKS.
Under COMMON OPTIONS select CUSTOM, SPECIFY BELOW, and
In the CUSTOM STRUCTURE text box put: /%postname%/

There you go!

Kimli Flash Embed - If you use the visual editor to write your posts you may have noticed that some things don’t end up displaying exactly how you’d hoped, especially if you wrote your post with direct code. The WP visual editor will often strip out HTML tags that your post needs. WP seems to have a particular disdain for the and tags, which are a little important for embedding media. This plugin can make embedding flash players turn out the way you want.

Use Controversy to Spur Comments on Your Blog

Clif — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:41:02 +0000

I don’t know about you, but even if I have several thousand hits to a blog post, if there are no comments on it, I get a little depressed. Sure, I can tell myself that no one commented on the post because I was so absolutely right-on with my analysis, opinion, and prose that my readers were simply rendered speechless, but I only believe that when I’m fall-over drunk.

The truth is, people don’t comment on blog posts for two reasons:

1) No one else has already commented on the post. Well, if no one else has posted on this post it must not be worth it…I’m sure as hell not going to waste my precious time if others haven’t!

2) There’s really nothing worth commenting about. That sounds horrible, but it’s not really an insult. If you post a list of…oh, let’s say…10 Free Internet Tools You’ll Love! people will generally like it, get something out if, and move on. Very seldom will someone post on something that they agree with or that helps them out. Not because they’re rude, just because you have put it up there for the taking…so they’re taking. No worries.

But you can urge people to post if you stir up a little controversy!

Now, I’m not talking about destructive controversy. Not racism, or hate speech. Not something that will turn people off of you completely. I’m just talking about a little, subtle jab. I’m talking about, well, dork controversy.

Let’s say that you write your 10 Free Internet Tools You’ll Love! and you forget to mention (dramatic music) the Firefox browser. You have just created controversy. People who use the Firefox browser are like junkies addicted to open source crack. You haven’t dissed Firefox, so they can’t hate you, but they can sure as hell bang out an “I can’t believe you left out Firefox! Sheesh!” comment to get the ball rolling. And you better believe all the pro and con Firefox geeks will fall right in line, posting like feverish little howler monkeys with ADHD.

Recently, this happened to me…sort of accidentally.

I decided to write a post on MovieBlast! about actors who are also musicians and who are actually sort of good at it. I knew right off the bat that it might stir up something simply because I didn’t have time to list every single actor in a band. But what really put it over the top is that I didn’t mention Jared Leto’s band 30 Seconds to Mars.

Apparently 30 Seconds to Mars fans are just as psychotic as Firefox users! I’m still getting steady comments on this post and it’s almost been up a full week!

In conclusion I would like to say that if you’re not using Firefox to download your 30 Seconds to Mars mp3s then you should burn in hell. Thank you.

Become an HTML Handyman for Extra Cash

Clif — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:50:48 +0000

Whether you’re a web design guru or just know enough HTML/CSS to accomplish the simplest of things, there’s always someone, somewhere on this planet who could use your help.

A lot of people and businesses with websites need help in updating them for various numbers of reasons. You could help them out for a few bucks. This is how I got my start on the road to extra income…

I had done web design for myself and a few friends but had never attempted it professionally. Eventually it occurred to me that I might be able to become a full fledged web designer guy - even though at the time I only new the basics of HTML and hardly any real CSS.

So I went to Craigslist and started looking for any jobs or gigs in the web design listings that I thought fit my skill level. Here’s how to do this quickly and easily to find gigs anywhere in the world:

1) Go to Craigslist.

2) Select any city to start with.

3) Select web/info design under the jobs category.

4) In the search options at the top of the page put a check in “telecommute” and then click on “search.”

This will bring up all web/info design jobs that allow telecommuting - meaning you can work from anywhere - even sitting on your toilet…but turn your webcam off. Email any ads with jobs you feel comfortable performing a bid and then repeat the steps for other cities.

The first gig I found doing this was with an SEO company that needed me to take a few static layouts and turn them into multiple page websites. It paid $400! Added bonus: I still get enough regular work from this company that the money earned amounts to that of a part time job.

Granted, I got a bit lucky with that first shot, but even if someone just needs a one time update to a single page on their website, jump on it! Tell them you charge $35 per hour (or something reasonable) with a one hour minimum. If the job only takes you 15 minutes you’ve still made $35 that you didn’t have before! And if you do a good job, you will be remembered. I have a few people that periodically email me for help with small jobs like this.

Set up a PayPal account and you can email invoices for your fees all over the world!

Keywords Analyzer SEO Pro Is Priceless

Clif — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:12:42 +0000

I’m posting today about a tool that I find invaluable for a few reasons. It is called Keywords Analyzer SEO Pro by Blue Infinity.

As anyone who’s ever done any amount of serious SEO knows, keyword research is a pain in the butt. Even with all of the free tools offered by the likes of Google and Overture, it’s still pretty hard sometimes to get at the information you really want. Information like how many times a keyword or phrase was searched in the last month, other related keywords, Google bids, etc. Keywords Analyzer SEO Pro makes all this a breeze.

Let’s say you have a site selling widgets so you want to optimize for that. Instead of just trying to dream up all the keyphrases involving widgets in your head and then researching each one for its possible value, all you have to do is enter “widgets” into Keywords Analyzer and it will generate tons of other keyphrases about widgets. And these aren’t just suggested ideas for keyphrases, these are actual keyphrases that are actually being searched and the number of times they’re being searched per month!

Another great use for Keywords Analyze is doing niche research. Just as in the widgets example above, the additional widget based keywords Keywords Analyzer churns up will uncover several possible widget niche markets.

Let’s say you enter “widgets” - a very broad term into Keywords Analyzer and it returns 100 other keyphrases involving widgets. You might see that one of these keyphrases is “handmade blue leather widgets” and it’s being searched for about 500 times per month…what a tight little niche you’ve just found! Run on over to Blogger, set up your free blog about handmade blue leather widgets and slap in some AdSense and you’ve got a great start to successful little niche site!

Lazy Blogging Experiment Update 1

Clif — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:18:01 +0000

Well, my little unadvertised niche blog has been up for about 5 days and it got its first hit yesterday. It was a single visitor with two page views. The odd thing is that although the visitor found the blog via a Google search, they actually searched for the blog name, which is three words crammed together: WordWordWord, so I wouldn’t say them finding the site is any huge achievement. They did not, it appears, click any AdSense ads either…damn them!