If you’ve ever been frustrated with trying to remember passwords for hundreds of websites, across multiple web browsers and multiple computers…there’s finally a bulletproof solution.

LastPass is a kickass free browser plugin that allows you to save web account information (username/passwords) and retrieve them from any computer.  All you ever need to remember going forward is your LastPass password, hence the name “last pass”.

Why does it “own”, you ask?

• Works on multiple platforms:  Windows, Linux, Mac
• Works with every browser
• Way more secure than storing passwords on your local PC using the embedded password manager that comes with IE, FireFox, Chrome, etc.
• Super easy to use!
• Also comes with auto-form population
• If you’re on vacation or using someone else’s computer, you can retrieve your passwords…such a time saver
• Auto-generates secure passwords, so you can start using crazy complicated and unique passwords for every new site rather than using the same password repeatedly like most people currently do

Check it out! I’ve recommended LastPass to a handful of close friends already and they’ve been very impressed, so I’m confident you will be too.  It’s not often that a free application comes along that is genius and something you soon wonder how you ever lived without.

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He guessed that it wouldn’t be very much, maybe like 10% max.

Well, surprisingly it’s much higher than that!

While I haven’t seen any data from Google for the click-through rate averages for each position, there’s data floating around from AOL that could easily be applied to any search engine.

• Ranking #1 gets 42.1 % of clicks
• Ranking #2 gets 11.9 % of clicks
• Ranking #3 gets 8.5 % of clicks
• Ranking #4 gets 6.1 % of clicks
• Ranking #5 gets 4.9 % of clicks
• Ranking #6 gets 4.1 % of clicks
• Ranking #7 gets 3.4 % of clicks
• Ranking #8 gets 3.0 % of clicks
• Ranking #9 gets 2.8 % of clicks
• Ranking #10 gets 3.0 % of clicks

This means that if a keyword gets 100 searches a month, the #1 result will get 42 clicks whereas the #2 result will only get 12!   Pretty big difference.

Great example of why it’s so important to be ranked #1

Even better, if you’re #1 for organic search results, Google Maps listings, AND AdWords, you can completely dominate the competition.

An excellent SEO service I’ve used in the past is Mariah’s SEO Blaster.  She’s very skilled at helping local and global businesses get ranked highly in all 3 of the above categories.

Related posts:

1. How to get your YouTube video on Google Page 1
2. Google Position Tool
3. Free Traffic System – a completely unbiased review

So, just when you thought you were already overwhelmed with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, along comes yet another social networking/sharing service.

Google Buzz has joined the party.

There’s already lots of rants floating around about why it’s awesome or why it’s great, but I’m going to talk specifically about what should be improved with it.  To be perfectly honest though, I do like the idea of having a social networking tool integrated into Gmail, since I already use it for all my email as well as chat.  Plus, the Gmail search feature is wicked-cool and will undoubtedly be useful with Buzz.

Confusing Privacy Features

Most people want to be able to manually approve each follower, rather than having them auto-follow.  However, they don’t realize that Google Buzz is integrated with your public Google Profile.  So this means whatever you post in Buzz as “public” can be viewed by ANYONE on the internet via your Google Profile page.  Therefore it doesn’t matter if people have chosen to follow you or not.  If you are concerned about the privacy of a post, simply choose “Private” and optionally post to a “group” of Gmail contacts.

No Way To Tell Which Post is New

It’s nice that there’s an indication near the Buzz logo in your Gmail menu of how many new Buzz posts there are, however once you get into Buzz there’s no way to know which posts are the new ones.  So you’re stuck reading through a lot of what you’ve already read.  Definitely a time-waster.

No Tags / Keywords / Categories

These would be very handy to help search and organize our Buzz’s.

Can’t Include an Image in a Comment

When you create your own post there’s a useful link to insert a photo from your computer.  However, this isn’t possible when commenting on your friend’s posts.  There’s been a few times I wanted to include a pic in my comment but wasn’t able to.

Re-Buzz?

Similar to a Twitter Re-Tweet, it would be cool to be able to send a Buzz from one of your contacts along to your other contacts.

That’s about it for now.  Does anyone have other ideas?

Related posts:

1. How to get your YouTube video on Google Page 1
2. SU.PR from StumbleUpon
3. How to set a Default Font in Gmail

Apparently in late December 2009 Google heard the complaints and finally created a Lab feature that allows us to set a Default Font.  Woot!
 

Here’s some instructions:

1. Click the green lab beaker in the top right (or go here https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings/labs)
2. Scroll down about 2/3 until you find Default Text Styling (or CTRL-F to search for it)
   
3. Click Enable
4. Scroll up to the top
5. Click Save Changes
6. Click the General Settings tab at the top (or go here https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings)
7. Set your Default text style about half-way down
8. Click Save Changes at the bottom

Now marvel at how with this time-saving hack Gmail became even more awesome

Related posts:

1. What’s wrong with Google Buzz?
2. Bitchin’ FireFox Add-Ons
3. Tag Format Converter

I’m both shocked and impressed at how simple it is to outsource IT work completely online nowadays.  I’m very curious to see what affect this trend is going to have on the IT industry in 1st world countries.  Instead of finding a graphics designer in your local city for $100, you can now hire one who does comparable work from the Philippines for $5.  It’s a no-brainer!

Although there are many outsourcing sites, services, and companies, here’s a few that I’ve used myself or heard good things about:

oDesk

• One of the more popular sites, thousands of potential employees (called “providers”) to choose from
• You only hire someone if you feel there’s a suitable candidate for your job posting, you’re not forced into making a decision or anything
• You can arrange to only pay after the job is complete, so there’s no risk!
• There’s online tests that providers take, such as English proficiency, PHP, etc. so you can have an idea of their skill sets
• You can arrange interviews with prospective candidates before hiring
• There’s a “Work Diary” section of the site where you can see screenshots of what your “employees” were working on, very cool!
• All in all, I’ve had a positive experience with nearly everyone I’ve hired.  There’s been a couple people that didn’t work out, but that happens in a normal office environment anyways.

Elance

• Another popular outsourcing service
• I haven’t used it myself, but I have friends that have had good success with Elance
• Has a great “Water Cooler” community forum where buyers (employers) and providers (employees) can share ideas and network
• “Elance University” training program to get both buyers and providers up-to-speed with how to use outsourcing effectively
• Like oDesk. there’s skill tests to verify that the candidates are up-to-par in specific areas
• Con – a tad on the expensive side

GetAFreelancer

• Apparently they have over 500,000 service providers…wow!
• People have complained about email spam; it sounds like once you register your inbox gets flooded with offers and whatnot
• Site has an easy-to-understand layout
• It takes 15 days after your first request for payment (this is for providers) to receive money, “for security reasons”.  If you need cash quickly you probably want to look elsewhere.
• All in all a decent service that has tons of prospects to choose from.  Really seems like an employers paradise.

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1. Keep the Content Fresh
   • At the least, a new post or page every week is great to keep the search engine bots continually crawling your site.  Plus the more pages your domain has the better.   The total Google PR for your entire domain can not exceed the # of pages.  So if you have a 1 page site you’ll never have higher than PR 1.
   • Yes I realize there’s irony in this point because I don’t update this blog nearly that often.  But I suppose that’s because this isn’t an income stream for me, I’m just doing it for fun, so I don’t really care too much about its SEO.
   • If you’re using a blogging platform, remember to use tags, as each tag creates yet another page.
2. Find Forums to Post in that have Do-Follow Signature Links
   • Be the first to respond to new threads so your sig will appear near the top of the page
   • Try to write useful, respectful comments, and not obvious spam…you know who you are…silly spammers
3. Submit your RSS Feeds to Directories
   • Search engines love RSS feeds, probably because they are great followers of Tip #1 (Keep the Content Fresh), and constantly updating
   • Two of the major ones are Feedage.com and Feedagg.com
4. Use ‘title’ and ‘alt’ HTML Tags for Images
   • This way you’ll get bonus traffic from search engine image searches, such as Google and Bing (my new favorite).
5. Social Bookmarking Rules
   • It’s powerful because each bookmark not only creates multiple backlinks (due to the tags), but also because of the “social” aspect your bookmark could appear on a “top bookmarks” page (with high PR) if other users vote or submit it as well.
   • With SocialAdr your webpages can be bookmarked (to 15 or so of the major social bookmarking services) up to 420 time per month.  And that’s just with the ‘Free’ account!
6. Keyword Research is ‘Key’
   • This is one of the (if not THE) most important parts of an effective SEO campaign.  Too many people rush through it and don’t take the time to realize either (a) there’s weak traffic for the keywords they’re targeting or (b) the competition is insane and it’s virtually impossible for them to get on Page 1 of Google.
   • I use a handy app called Micro Niche Finder – it saves a lot of time compared to using the free tools
   • The free method is simply using the Google External Keyword Tool to find how much traffic each keyword gets and Google (search for the keyword “in quotes”) to find how much competition you have.   I prefer > 1000 searches / month with less than 20,000 competition.  But there’s a lot of wiggle room in those numbers.

Related posts:

1. SocialMarker – A free social bookmarking tool
2. Why Micro Niche Finder kicks ass
3. SocialAdr – New Social Bookmarking Services Community

To help clear up the confusion, Internet Attorney Mike Young has written a short report covering the topic, which you can download below -

In case you’re not familiar with Mike, he is the president of the Internet Attorneys Association and is an expert on Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.  He also created the popular Legal Forms Generator product, which allows you to easily create legal forms for your websites.

Please pass along this link to your internet marketing friends, as it is extremely important that everyone is properly educated on these new changes.   There’s less than a month now until these changes will be live, so we must all act quickly to make sure we’re compliant.

IMPORTANT – These FTC changes will be effective as of December 1, 2009

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It’s organized well, they seem to have new fonts added nearly every day, the fonts range from sophisticated calligraphy to crazy spray painting to symbols of aliens.  And of course there’s the boring stuff that looks like Times New Roman <facepalm>.

I don’t get any kick-backs for sharing this with y’all.  I just like doing my part to promote a good website or service when I come across it.

If you know of a better free font site, I’m all ears!

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I just signed up (it’s free!) with Affiliate Fleet. I won’t say whom but a good friend is associated with this company and has guaranteed me that they’re going to be huge.  I love how they present themselves too.   Not only can you promote “cost per sale” programs but they also have “cost per action” and many others.

Plus, they’re going to make it super easy for affiliates to become advertisers and use the network to promote their own products.  Similar to how ClickBank does it.

A really easy-to-use interface, and apparently the program manager is a genius and really dedicated to provide excellent 24/7 support to members.

We are not your traditional network…

Better than an elitist CPA Network, more advanced than the old Cost Per Sale Networks – We’ve combined the best features of both, improved on them and will work with all of these types of programs:

• Cost Per Sale
• Cost Per Lead
• Cost Per Action

• Cost Per Download
• Email Submits
• Zip Submits

I’m excited to see how this will turn out!

So far they’ve already got over 50 offers, and they just launched today.   Some of them even have up to $100 commissions on sales!   That’s insane.

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Interesting service…it’s FREE to signup and you get paid to receive mail & email, check out special offers, and social network.  You also get paid for referring other people.

PeopleString ‘Where You Own the Web’. It is the new wave in relationship and social communities; it has the Creativity, Culture, Expressive Forums and places to meet new people and network; but now it combines all that with giving you a share in the revenues that are created by the users of the website.

The ‘other’ social sites keep all of the money for themselves and never give any to their users. They are making millions off of your actions and keeping it all. PeopleString shares the revenues that are generated by its members. This is unique for online social communities. Who other than PeopleString gives its members back 70% of the revenues?

I’ve talked to people that have received money from this, so it’s definitely legit.

You should check it out!

Related posts:

1. Hot New Affiliate Network
2. Traffic Drill – Social Bookmarking Community