Lower costs mean big business for developers in Silicon Prairie is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I came to realize long ago that the secret to my business was that I needed to streamline all costs involved so my profit levels were 100% and I actually kept all of the money I ever took in without having to spend much of anything for the return other than some sweat equity and hard work. Living in a city like Fort Lauderdale had its advantages for some time but as I realized the high cost of living there was a damper on my ability to grow we started looking elsewhere to cut costs and after some math and budget adjustments I was able to figure out we could actually move to Jamaica and live like life were a vacation when compared to what it cost us to live I Florida.

The cost of things in Florida was so much more than life in Jamaica that we actually kept more of the money we made each month running my business online with a laptop and satellite internet connection. now the trend is for startups to take off in lower cost areas like Kansas which has become the new “Silicon Prairie” for many developers and tech industry players who want an edge over the high cost of startups in a developed urban area. What this will do for integrating tech industry into the mainstream of America remains to be seen but it is certain to make a change to small cities like Kansas and even Fort Lauderdale for that matter.

Techies reject coasts for ‘Silicon Prairie’ – CNN.co

Midwestern tech is coming into its own. Jeff Slobotski produces an event called Big Omaha that includes more than 500 of the region’s workers from Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. The annual event just took place in May.

“We’ve got a real healthy and growing community,” said Slobotski, innovation director at the AIM Institute — a nonprofit membership organization for IT leadership.

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Using portable apps to run my business is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

As a webmaster and online entrepreneur my entire business if focused on using the web as a marketing tool. For years now I have had a personal computer setup with all the great software that I need to do things like check emails, build websites and promote them.

I chose to use open source applications whenever possible because they are free and updated often. My biggest problem of late has been the issues my computers have been facing. My primary laptop needed repairs for a faulty ac connection and my backup laptop was being used by a friend for his music production.

I started using my moms home computer while I was visiting her. Her first complain was “all these things on my desktop” which were icons for programs I needed. I installed Firefox because I hate IE. I installed Filezilla for FTP access to my servers. I installed Photoshop because I needed to do some graphics work. I installed OpenOffice because she had no spreadsheet applications to use.

After having all of these installed and configured I realized it would be nice to be able to move these newly installed and updated applications to my laptop when it was available to me again. I’ve seen portable applications in the past but paid them little attention until now. Over the last week I installed all of these apps on a thumb drive and tweaked them to run smoothly from any computer.

It was actually pretty easy with the help of PortableApps.com which has a portable version of every open source program you can imagine ready to download and install on anything from a pen drive to an ipod. I have my thumbdrive configured to load Mozilla Thunderbird and cache copies of my most important emails so I can have them available offline if necessary. I setup Firefox with the Google Toolbar and I can now update my blogs using Google SideWiki or ScribeFire if necessary.

With this setup I can actually run most aspects of my business from any web enabled device that I can plug the USB drive into. So if something horrible happens and I’m without a computer for any reason I can just use my thumbdrive at an internet cafe, library or even a friends home to keep up with my business until I am able to repair or replace my own computer.

As an added layer of protection I have backed up the available data and applications on my server so that if I lose the usb drive I can replace it quickly and be back in business with little to no trouble. My only concern at this point is security. I would hate to lose the drive and have my business files and history available to anyone who finds it. I’m looking into encrypting the drive but that seems more difficult than I expected. Anyone else using portable apps to run their business?

PortableApps.com

PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). The entire platform is open source built around an open format that any hardware or software provider can use.

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How do you check your Website Return on Investment is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

The return on investment for web site development is a key metric in determining the value of services provided by qualified webmaster for web development firm. There are many ways to determine a return on investment for a web site for web based project and just about everyone you speak to all have a different opinion on what is most important to track and point to as an actual return on your investment.

This article is not to go into detail of the many different facets of investment analytics for the wide and varied number of tracking systems and analytic tools available to a web developer for determining the true return on website investment. I am not an ROI professional I recognize the need to hire these type of services out to those with better training and greater experience in this field.

One such company is ROIanalytics.com, a leading provider of web site analytics and online metrics for measuring the return on investment and the proper tracking of web site traffic performance. Their professional services will help to determine your return on investment and identify and missed opportunities in your online advertising and marketing efforts.

Their key product ROIanalytics Pro allows a web developer to track the success of existing Internet Marketing programs and maximize the value of their advertising dollar and increased sales with a unique suite of reporting tools designed to provide the account manager with the most accurate and detail analytics available. Their services include but are not limited to analytics consulting which will assist you to analyze develop and deliver measurable analytics solutions we’re web based or online projects.

If you want a better way to tracker online Advertising Investment consider taking a look at ROIanalytics.com, and the analytics tracking and consulting services.

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Make huge internet profits and money from home is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

It’s a great sounding title and I wish it was as simple as one single blog post for me to tell you how easy it is to make money from home online but to be honest you’ll need to read a lot more than just this blog and even though our advice is great it’s just a small part of the information you will need to seek internet profits and wealth online.

Making money from home online with powerful programs like those offered at ProfitOnInternet.com are a good way to get started on the road to internet profit and fortune. They aggregate the very best information on how to make money online with programs tailored to your desired internet marketing niche.

With advice on a variety of programs including making money on the web with Google and how to make money working from anywhere in the world they carry a wealth of information and resources for those just getting started on their path to internet profits.

I got my start to internet profits as a webmaster for my own network of websites and when people ask me what they should do to make money online I tell them they should find a great resource that specializes in that field of information.

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How to monetize your Simple Machines Forum is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I really like WordPress and I’m building a large portion of my business on this easy to use content management system. I started out before we got to version 2.04 but that’s when I really got into it. I have had to update and upgrade many WordPress installations over that time and to be honest it has never been much of a hassle. The most difficult part has been with heavily customized websites and those that use a lot of plugins.

I always wished we had an automatic way to update WordPress and now we do. WordPress Automatic Upgrade is the best plugin ever made for WordPress and a hopeful feature of future additions. The ability to upgrade your software is essential to preventing hack attacks and this plugin makes it so easy to do that I just updated this blog from 2.5 to 2.7 while I was typing the post. I’ll post a couple of screen shots but I don’e have much to say about the steps involved.

It’s all so simple there isn’t much need in like 6 or 7 clicks i was able to backup my database, download the new files and install them and it was so smooth and seamless that all I had to do was save this blog post and then refresh the page. For this site I was told that I need to upgrade to Simple Taggin from Simple Tags and there is now an updated version of Akismet for me to download. The best part is that the new version of WordPress does this in two short clicks and i can now keep my entire blog up to date using the WordPress software and the right plugins.

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Keeping up with link building is important is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I lost some PR rank on the last two Google updates and my best sites are suffering because of it. It’s my own fault also because I knew what I was doing was not good. Around the beginning of this year I came to realize that links were tainted. What I mean was there was so much hype on links and link building that i thought to myself Google must be downgrading the importance of links by now. There are simply to many spammy link building methods and in the end they’ll catch on to things like link exchanges, trackback spamming and blog commenting. I gave up on link building and focused instead on content development.

I built an army of blogs and added as much fresh and unique content as I could produce. For the past year I spent 4 times more on content development than I did on link building and I think it has cost me. I think content is still important but I think my PR drop is directly related to the facgt I gave up on link building for months now. I have changed things up and focused on link building to my better blogs while maintaining the same level of content production so I can keep my readers satisfied while boosting readership with new inbound links.

The lesson here is to maintain a balance of link building and content development so I can keep my ranking while building a bigger and better site.

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Running an online business with Google Documents is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I have run as much of my business online as I possibly can. I have been able to shift all of my accounts to direct deposit over the last year. It was pretty easy to do for everything except one or two of my accounts which still mail me a check based on invoices I had to mail each month.

These invoices and the checks were the last pieces of paper that I had to deal with and generate the most waste in my business besides the electricity it takes to power my electronics devices. I moved the invoices to Google Documents this month and I will continue to produce the in PDF format and email them.

Everything in my business has been digitized, this means I have no more paper copies of invoices, checks or anything else to deal with on these accounts. It also means I no longer have to produce said reports from a certain PC and I can now access the documents from anywhere at anytime.

I no longer have any paperwork to deal with in my business and this includes all state corporate documents, all banking transactions, all customer invoicing and billing even all of my business licensing is now done online. I’ll have some paperwork in taxes and a few other small things like receipts for business expenses I have to deal with but I no longer produce any paper waste and I can run everything from any computer with internet access.

Now all I need to do is make more money and my business will be perfect.

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Spam email overload is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I’m overloaded with spam emails. I get over 200K in sp;am emails in my Spam folder for my primary Gmail account but another 200 per day slip through and its getting to be old. I’ll start by saying i created many of my own problems. I’ve used that email address for just about everything over the last 5 years including any kind of online submission you can imagine.

My spam comes to me with unique names I chose for my many online personas and I can tell how a spam originated either by the email address it was sent to or the name they are looking for when they contact me. I have use this domain as an email account provider for years and there a zillion spam messages directed here each year to addresses such as google@thisdomain.com which was used exclusively to setup my Google Ads account so many years ago. Some employees have been spamming that account almost since I created it.

I don’t know what more to do then start using Thunderbird again and run some fuilters to junk it before it reaches my screen. Gmail seems to be having trouble keeping my inbox spam free and many of the emails I get are actually labeled SPAM in the title.

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I need a social network! is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I need a big idea like Youtube or Plaxo so I can sell off one of my web properties for $100+ million and retire! Anyone working on a future hit in need of a marketing professional to assit you then please contact me

Comcast To Become Plaxo’s Owner

Comcast announced Wednesday that it will acquire social network site pioneer Plaxo. The deal is valued somewhere around $135million to $175 million, and is intended to make the social portal part of Comcast Interactive Media. Plaxo will remain located in Silicon Valley and one of the things it could do is work with Comcast’s Fancast Internet to facilitate users’ access to the internet service provider’s movies and TV shows database.

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XP still kicking Vista butt is a post from: Affordable Web Pro

I just bought a laptop and insisted it come with Windows XP because I’m not interested in Vista. I don’t really know why but I just feel like I don’t need it and refuse to have it forced on me. I think XP rocks and I am happy to keep it on all of my systems. I don’t want to have to upgrade all of my machines and having Vista on my laptop alone made very little sense to me. I simply do not have time or need to learn a new OS. It may still be windows but its all new and you know you’ll spend hours playing with it. This is a business machine and I have no time to play around right now. I need this thing to work and XP can guarantee me that. IO have my doubts that Vista will offer me the same.

I think Microsoft could be in real trouble with this and I know of many others that feel as I do. What are your thoughts on Vista being forced on us as the only OS from Microsoft?

PC World – XP Reprieve: Microsoft Gives OEMs Five More Months

Microsoft is extending the time it will allow original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and retail outlets to sell PCs with Windows XP as customers continue to balk on upgrading to Windows Vista.

Microsoft had planned to stop selling XP through OEMs and retailers on Jan. 31, 2008, while custom system builders have until Jan. 31, 2009, to pre-install XP on machines. But because sales of Vista PCs have not been as strong as expected, OEMs and retailers have asked Microsoft to extend XP’s availability. OEMs and retailers will now have until June 30, 2008, to sell PCs with Vista preinstalled on machines, Microsoft said. Retailers also can sell XP out of the box until that time if they choose, the company said.

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