Article Syndication

Sometimes I write to my blog and sometimes I write to gooruze and sometimes I write to forums. The problem I have is that there ends up being three separate instances of the same article floating around the net. I was wondering if you guys post articles to your blogs first or post articles to gooruze, or whatever other network/community you’re a part of first? Do you even cross syndicate at all? It would be interesting to have a standardized article format that would, ideally, be compatible to all major publishing mediums (e.g. blogs, social networking sites, etc.) For example take an imaginary article I have written with a URL similar to http://whateverarticlehost.com/articlename. I could then go to a website that’s compatible with that format and just enter the address to that article and it would automagically be displayed on the site so I wouldn’t have to rewrite it. Another feature would be that if I need to edit the article, it updates the article on all the sites that link to it. Does anyone see any inherent errors with this system? What are your thoughts? Is it the way of the future; or simply the ramblings of an obsessed mind?

Google Checkout Blues

I recently ordered a Wacom tablet for my girlfriend's son's birthday off of Google Checkout. The seller was "The Deal Specialist". Google Checkout processed my credit card and sent the request to the seller. The problem is, the seller never got back to me. I tried sending the seller two emails but they never responded. I checked out the Google Checkout Forums, and found a link to a customer support response page. I filled out the information, and Google replied within hours saying that they will try and contact the seller. Google Checkout policy says that if a seller does not respond, Google Checkout will refund the money back to the buyer. The email stated that either the seller or Google will contact me within 5 business days. I have mixed feelings about this experience. I am disappointed that I will probably not get the product for my girlfriend's son's birthday, although I am happy that Google responded personally saying that they will contact the seller and get back to me. I am unsure at this time whether or not I will use Google Checkout in the future. What are your experiences with Google Checkout? Have you ever been ripped off by an online purchase?

Topicks.info

TOPicks.info is an awesome site that features feed customization. You can enter a RSS feed and then select the topics you want displayed from that feed. It will consolidate all the feeds into a single feed displaying only your selected topics. The site is still in beta so it's a little buggy. But its an open invitation so feel free to check it out!

Adventures of a pseudo advertiser

So recently--within the last couple of days--I was checking my email and I noticed that I had received an email from payperpost.com telling me that they had added 100 dollars to my account to try out their service. I had been an advertiser for awhile, but never actually posted an Opportunity. I decided to check it out. I created an Opportunity for approx. $23 (I know, I'm generous, but it wasn't my money so what the heck!) I promptly had someone post an article about my website topicks.info I then posted another Opportunity for $5 and allowed 5 people to post an advertisement. (5 dollars per person) This result was much less satisfying. One person even wrote that my web application was "ad-ware" and that it was "advertisement" based. Neither of which are true and I don't know how he/she would even come to that conclusion unless they never even visited the site in the first place, which is highly possible/probable. So my advice to you, if you are advertising, would be to pick blogs with higher ranking, (even though you pay a little bit more money per post) because the people who write for the minimum 5 dollars do a pretty crappy job in general.

What are your experiences with PayPerPost and the like?
Are there any other pay-to-blog/get-paid-to-blog sites out there that you recommend?

Discontent with social networking sites

There is one aspect of social networking that I'm frustrated with. It is that people always add other people to their "friends list" (or whatever that particular platform calls it) when they don't even know who they are actually adding. On a regular basis, I look at people's listing and see that they have a large number (in the thousands) of friends. I don't even know how it's possible to keep up with that many "friends". Personally, I only want to add people that I care about and that can help me succeed. I believe that adding only people you know will increase the amount of "relational experience", and minimize the amount of "comment spam" and other random things that you are probably better off without. Recently, I have ventured into the contact management arena with sites such as 37 signal's Highrise. This is due to my lack of faith in social networking sites. CRM (customer relationship management), or "contact management" sites are helpful because they provide a user space for each person, instead of just a generic "guest book" type framework found on most social networking sites.What are your thoughts on this? Do you think adding people randomly is good for your "networking"?

Personal Identity Branding / Reputation Management

A lot of people are currently talking about product branding. You know, giving your product that irresistible image that gives everyone the urge to try and use it/buy it/talk about it, etc. Well today, I want to talk about personal personal identity branding (if there is a better name for this, please let me know). I was stumbling across the web awhile ago and I found a site called Ziki. They are a social networking-esque site that will sponsor your name on google for free. Skeptic at first, I registered for their service. Low and behold, a few days later, my name had its own link on google aligned to the right of the rest of the search results. I believe that having your name appear first on search engines is vital to your success as a blogger/designer/freelancer/whatever, as people quickly associate your name with your personality. Another concept I have been pondering is that of linking sites together, in weblike fashion, that have any personal information contained on them. Lets say I have my Ziki page, and then I have my myspace page, and then I have my facebook page, and then I have my Gooruze page, and then there's my blog. I should have a link to all of these pages on each of these pages. That way, a person has one click access to anything pertaining to what I might be doing. I believe this will highly increase the amount of clients I get and the amount of traffic to my sites. What do you guys think?Does linking all your sites together help to better promote yourself or do you think that it just creates more "link spam" for people to sift through?

Gooruze

Check out gooruze.com (pronounced Gurus). It's a blog network for Online Marketers, their definition of online marketer is expanded to include all things online/digital so most readers will probably get something good out of it. Check out my personal gooruze page at tjgillies.gooruze.com

Free Shared Shortcode!

For those of you who don't know, a shortcode is a 5 digit number that you send an SMS message to and it sends a reply back. There is an awesome website called textmarks which lets you use their shortcode for free to allow people to subscribe to your "keyword" and send alerts to them. I use it to alert people when they can download new ringtones from my ringtone service. To try it out, txt RINGZ to 41411. My keyword is a $4.99 per month suscription, but you get unlimted ringtones and it updates you when I upload new ringtones! You can also subscribe from my blog on the right hand side.

Interview with Jonathan C. Phillips from Smart Wealthy Rich

Recently I had an interview with Jon over at Smart Wealthy Rich. I saw that in one of his blog posts he said that he enjoyed doing interviews, so I decided to give it a try.


Web Goodness: Ok, so first question is, what tool do you use to post your articles?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: To post my articles, I use wordpress, I usually write my posts in Text Edit (notepad for Mac) and then copy it in Wordpress.

Web Goodness: Is there a method to how often you post an article?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I usually write articles "on the spot" but I do have about 30-40 posts that are unpublished, in case I run out of ideas or something. I usually post 1 per day, sometimes 2. I don't really have a method as far as posting frequency goes, I just go with the flow and dedicate time everyday to write at least 1 post.

Web Goodness: 30-40 posts, woah, that is a lot of backup posts. How long did it take to accumulate that many "emergency" posts?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well I started writing on my blog in February, and right from the start I started writing those posts, but I didn't publish them mostly because a lot of them are not finished and incomplete 3-4 paragraphs and in need of serious editing, but I often use those posts as starters for new ones.

Web Goodness: So you basically have a topic and then try to build on that. I guess you could call it a "stub" (little wikipedia plugage ;)

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Exactly! :)

Web Goodness: When did you actually start posting?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: The end of February / beginning of March of this year

Web Goodness: So, you spent about a month writing articles before you posted your first one?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well, I started posting right away in February, but at the same time was writing other articles that I didn't publish, either cause I got a better idea and posted that instead, or simply cause some posts were incomplete. At first I wanted to write 2-4 posts a day, but realized 1 was already nice, and all the other unfinished posts still serve as starting points :)

Web Goodness: Is smartwealthyrich your first blog?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I also have jonathan-phillips.com, which is more like an experimental thing. It was a static website before, and after I decided to start blogging on smartwealthyrich, I decided to turn jonathan-phillips.com into a blog also, but it's not updated often (4-5 times a month) althought it will be updated more often eventually, but you could say smartwealthyrich is my first and main blog :)

Web Goodness: How large would you estimate your audience to be?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Humm, good question, well I have arouund 290 RSS Subscribers, but judging from all the comments and traffic this blog receives I'm thinking it's more than that, say maybe around 1200-1600 "casual" visitors (swr gets between 800 and 3000 visitors per day)

Web Goodness: Wow, congratulations!

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Thanx! :) :)

Web Goodness: How well do you know other popular blog authors?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I do know Liz Strauss from successful-blog.com pretty well, she helped me a lot when I started out. also Wendy Piersall from emomsathome.com, Phil from makeitgreat.typepad.com and many others, I met many when I attended the sobevent.com conference in May in Chicago :)

Web Goodness: I'll have to check out one of those conferences one of these days.

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I love those conferences! ;) It's really a great occasion to meet fellow bloggers. The sobevent one was really "taking the conversations out of the comment boxes" which is awesome

Web Goodness: What feed reader do you use and why?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I use Netvibes, mostly cause the interface is really user friendly, and you can add myspace profiles, weather, news and other stuff on top of rss feeds.

Web Goodness: Ok. I was wondering about your take on AdSense. Do you click on other people's adsense ads. Also, what percentage of people to your site would you say click on your ad links?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well, I don't click on other people's adsense ads, cause I wouldn't wannna see my adsense account cancelled for click fraud cause adsense verifies that. I'd say about 2% of the visitors on my blog click on those ads.

Web Goodness: I'm not sure i understand the fraud issue fully. What would you being doing that would be considered fraud?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well, since I use adsense, clicking on other people's adsense ads is considered click fraud. When you're in the program you cannot click on your own ads, or other people's ads

Web Goodness: Oh, I didn't know that. That's very strange. I've clicked on an ad before. It was actually something i was considering purchasing.

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I did that a couple of time, cause I was i nfact interested in purchasing something and clicked on the ad, but a couple months ago I got an e-mail from adsense to remind me their terms of service, so I just never clicked again hehe.

Web Goodness: What are some of your favorite social media sites?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: stumbleupon and reddit :)

Web Goodness: what percentage of viewers read your XML feed compared to actual site visits?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: I have around 300 feed subscribers, but get an average of 2000 visits per day, so about 15%

Web Goodness: Where does most of your traffic come from? (e.g. search engine, etc.)

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Most comes from social networking sites, especially stumbleupon, I get stumbled so often I don'T know what my "real" traffic numbers are hehe.

Web Goodness: Is this common for most sites that have been stumbled or have you optimized your site to receive stumble visits?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well i really believe a blogger shouldn't focus on write "for" social networking sites, but for the readers and visitors, there are a couple of my readers who are really active on stumbleupon that stumble almost every single post I write, and I'm also realy active on SU and stumbe other sites a lot.

Web Goodness: What do some of your routine activities on stumbleupon include?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Hehe, well, I just use the stumbleupon toolbar quite a lot, I just stumbel sites and thumbs up or down. And write reviews and tag them when I like them. And I also check often for stumbles from my stumble friends, so I stumble those too.

Web Goodness: I read on one of your comments that you're in a rock band. Any information on that?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Yes, I'm a guitar player, been playing for about 13 years, and well, we're in the recording studio, recording an album, which should be out in October. And we plan on touring most of Canada, then the US, and then see where we can take the band :)

Web Goodness: How long has the band been around. Name of band/ website?


Jonathan-C. Phillips: it's been around for about a year, it's sorta like a rock/metal/alternative band, there are some samples you can listen to on myspace.com/thegodsofnow

Web Goodness: Awesome! I'll have to check it out!

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Cool :)

Web Goodness: I noticed that all the money donated goes to Kiva, how did you hear about them?

Jonathan-C. Phillips: Dave Olson (http://www.daveolson.ca/) told me about Kiva, and he held some sort of contest a while back and donated some money to Kiva, and I decided it would be a good idea to do the same, so I put up that paypal thing, and all the money I get on donations I send to Kiva (not a lot, but so far it helped 3 entrepreneurs, 3 X $25 each)

Web Goodness: Well, thank you for your time! I think that is all i'm going to ask for now unless there is something you would like to add?

Jonathan-C. Phillips says: Thanx a lot Tyler :)
I really like those interviews, if you have any questions feel free to ask :)

Keeping track of expenses

I am sitting in my room trying to think of content to write because I had previously told myself that I was going to write (or at least try to write) an article every morning, so far it has been wishy washy but for them most part I have stuck with it. It is very therapeutic to be able to write down ones thoughts early in the morning. It gives a direction and goal to what would, probably, be an otherwise chaotic day.

I received mail this week from the Department Of Treasury. I thought it was a bill. I opened it and saw that I owed the Defense Financial and Accounting Service my entire tax refund! (I filed late this year). I called them up only to find out I owe them $4,000 dollars for not fulfilling my service agreement to the military. We proceeded to setup a payment plan.

One thing that I am noticing since implementing my GTD system, is that I have become more financially accountable because I actually know where my money is going. The guy was asking me questions about my expenses so that we could setup an appropriate amount to pay, and I was answering his questions to the exact dollar. I have a money tracking system built into my current GTD setup; I use Buxfer (http://www.buxfer.com) to make my budgets.

Before setting up this system, I would have ignored my financial obligations and would have run the other direction. This, I am noticing, has not helped me in the past and I am thankful that I have found a system that holds me more accountable.

Parents

Growing up, I was never really close to my parents. I used to blame them, like a lot of children do, for the majority of bad things in my life. Only recently have I discovered that these things weren’t entirely their fault and that I have to take some responsibility for my own actions. I’m not saying that they never did anything wrong. I mean everyone makes mistakes. But they did the best they could for the amount of wisdom they had at that age.

I think we tend to dwell more often on what is wrong in our lives rather than dwell on what we are thankful for. This has detrimental affect to our wellbeing because it causes depression and other effects on us that hinder us in our daily lives. A big part of overcoming this condition is to try and forgive our parents for whatever wrongness we think they have incurred on us in the past. I know this is easier said than done. I have problems with it myself. In fact, only recently, after several support groups have I even been able to entertain the notion of objectively understanding the bad parts of my life and trying to heal from them instead of getting angry and lashing out at the very mention of their occurrence.

This has been an exciting journey for me because it has brought a lot of peace and restoration to my otherwise chaotic life. It’s difficult when your parents expect you to heal faster than you are ready to. They shouldn’t pressure you into it no matter how healthy the processes may be for you. In the end, you’re not really healing, you’re just stuffing it own deeper. Which says a lot about the parent, but I’m not going to go into that right now.

I would like to end in saying that I am grateful for my parents and admire any efforts they made to do the right thing when raising me. If it were not for their diligent work during those years I would have ended up a very different person; most likely not for the better. Some people say we are a product of our cumulative experiences. If that is the case, then we owe some of that good result to our parents. As I said before, I don’t think the issue is really deciding whether or not our parents were good parents. The real issue is deciding whether or not to dwell on the positive, instead of the negative.

Radical Thankfulness

Whenever we feel irrational anger towards someone this is usually pointing to the fact that Satan is lying to us. In order to counter this lie we must discover the truth in what is being done. In order to do that, we have to ask ourselves, “What lie is Satan telling me right now?” Once we are able to identify the lie, we can take steps towards correcting it and finding Truth. As we all have heard from John 8:32, “You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.” This is a very important verse because until we realize Satan's grip on us, we can never be free. We are constantly bound to his incessant lies.

Another step to this procedure is to not only realize the lie and the consequent Truth, but to discover something you are thankful about in that person. The natural response to real understanding of Truth is thankfulness. Effectively, what we are doing here is, converting irrational anger towards someone into radical thankfulness. The reason I use the word radical, is because there is an overwhelming sensation we feel when we can dispel the lies that Satan is trying to feed us, and instead embrace Truth.

This method, while affecting your current attitude, also provides great emotional healing. When we start to realize Satan's lies for what they are, it allows us to identify the lies we have believed from him in the past. We may still even cling to some of them. Once we have identified the lies of our past that we had accepted as Truth, we can purge them from our minds and lead a more spiritually healthy life.

While I have only recently put this method into everyday use, the benefits I have seen thus far are staggering. Not only do I feel better emotionally and spiritually than I otherwise would have, other people around me see the difference. This effect is what makes it all worth while. They see the change and ask what is different. This gives me an opportunity to explain to them my method of Radical Thankfulness and thus the cycle continues and Truth prevails.

Limiting Creativity

I have decided to break free from the confines of niche blogging. I have decided to use this blog to post my creative writings. I'm not changing the address to the blog as I will still continue to write GTD related material. I feel that creating a separate blog for each niche topic I want to write about not only hinders my creativity, but is also inefficient.

Pillar Articles

I think I'm going to take a short break from writing. I'm doing this so that I can write a few good articles and release them at a selected time interval instead of writing short filler articles; sacrificing the quality in the process.

Best way to be heard

This morning's post is going to be an open ended question. I've noticed that a lot of blogs are trying different memetic schemes to try and lure people to their site such as ViralLinks and ViralTags. I thought about using these for awhile, but decided not to. They seemed to be a good idea at first, but I think they are too reminiscent of MySpace and the like. The best way to get people to your blog is good content (a.k.a. "pillar content"), thats a no brainer, but what other successful ways do you readers use to get people to your blog?

Google Analytics

I've noticed that a lot of people use AdWords/AdSense with their blog to either make money or advertise. In my internet stumblings (which I'm so prone to do), I came across Google Analytics. I was blown away by the detail of everything.

• You can track where people enter and exit your site.
• You can track Referring links.
• What browser people use.
• Heck, you can even see what screen resolution they were running!
• There is also a content breakdown section to see which pages are the most popular.
• There is even an option on to show an overlay of your site (The website as people see) with little graphs next to each link to show how many times people have clicked on that specific link.

Commerical Software Given For Free

Recently, during my online stumblings, I came across a site that gives out For Pay software out FREE everyday! The site is Giveaway Of The Day. Here is an excerpt from their About Page.

Giveaway of the day is a win-win solution for both publishers and clients

The idea behind this initiative is that many sites and publishers offer trial downloads; but only we offer giveaway downloads. What does that mean?

Basically, every day we nominate one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software will be available for download for 24 hours (or more, if agreed by software publisher) and that software will be absolutely free. That means - not a trial, not a limited version - but a registered and legal version of the software will be free for our visitors*.

The software product will be presented in its full functionality, without any limitations save for those mentioned in Terms and Conditions.

The download link will remain on our web-site for the agreed period of time, together with the review of the software product and the information about other products from the software publisher presenting the giveaway title.

Both reviews and the information on the product line will remain active even when the Giveaway period is over.

The information about Giveaway of the day and the participants of this initiative will be included in our newsletters and distributed among our visitors and subscribers.

We will pay the software publisher for the Giveaway license, and our visitors will only receive those after downloading a special verification program and agreeing to the Terms and Conditions, thus protecting software publishers’ interests and making our initiative beneficial for both clients and publishing companies.

We believe that Giveaway of the day will allow both publishers and clients to meet each other and win together with our initiative.

This isn't a promotion, and I don't get any money to share this. I Just wanted my readers out there to take advantage of this site, because a lot of material they release is GTD related and at an awesome discount price (free).

Wisdom of the 14th Dalai Lama

These were borrowed from This Site.

1. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
2. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
3. Sleep is the best meditation.
4. Spend some time alone every day.
5. We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
6. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
7. We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
8. Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
9. If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.
10. The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

Saying NO! to decrease your stress load

I recently stumbled onto Helium.com, which is a site that pays you to post, yet still has a warm community feel to it. I posted this article on Saying No over there and thought it would be applicable here since it might help some readers with their habit of over committing. So without further adieu:

I used to always say Yes to people even though, deep down inside, I was screaming NOOOOOO!

I recently attended a class at my church that studied the book titled "Boundaries" by Townsend and Cloud. In this class, we discovered how to verbalize our internal No instead of just submitting to whatever the request on us was. I think the hardest thing about saying No is that you risk losing the relationship with the person you are saying No to.

In order for us to overcome that fear, we have to realize that person's relationship with us probably isn't very valuable to them if they are willing to get angry at us simply for our No response.

People in "real" relationships should be very accepting and respect the other person's No. Please don’t take this to mean that this gives you free reign to respond in whatever manner you choose. It is best to give a courteous No, instead of a contemptuous remark.

I have noticed that people who do not have good boundaries (the ability to make your No mean No, and your Yes mean Yes) are usually the ones that do not respect the No answers of other people. Once you start to acquire the ability to say No, you will naturally gravitate toward people who share this ability with you.

The processes of learning how to say No can be quite difficult, as it forces you to embark on a lifestyle changing journey. You will begin to especially notice situations where you deeply want to say No, yet still have this significant urge to say Yes. If your internal response is an automatic Yes or a Maybe, you should say No. If it is a No, then you should stop, contemplate your answer, and decide whether or not this is the answer you want to give.

I say this because, when you are starting your new life of boundaries, your automatic response will be to give a Yes answer. This is why we must counter it with a No. Even if their request of you is a valid, rational one, the giving of a No answer helps to break the habit of saying Yes automatically.

The sense of accomplishment that comes when you begin to synchronize your external and internal No is overwhelming. Start out small with friends and family you are close to, and gradually transition into more superficial relationships. The processes will take some time, but before long, you’ll be saying NO with the rest of them!

Update on Custom GTD System

This post is an update on the Custom GTD System post.

I've added another element to my posting icons. As you may remember, The ones I currently use are $, ,,. I've added P to the list.

P stands for Project. I use this to designate that I want to start a new project but haven't thought of any Next Actions yet. If I have thought of Next Actions then I'll append an -> after the P and then enter a Next Action. For example:

P Build Shelving unit -> Bring cardboard boxes home from work

If I want to add a Next Action to an already existing project I use the -> after the action name, and then I add the project name. For example:

Get tape -> Shelving Unit

I've also started using N for Personal Note, - is now reserved for multi-line entries:

N Smile!
This is an entry
      - thats spans more than one line.

Custom GTD System

I've started a GTD spinoff system that seems to be getting the job done fairly well. I take an Unmodded PocketMod (I don't use any of the mods, I just fold a piece of paper) and start using it for my capture device.

Any money transactions I make, I put a $ symbol next to it (e.g. $ Lunch 2.00, $ Gas 10.00). If its a TODO Item I make a box next to it, so I can check it off when the task is complete. If its a note to self, i usually don't add anything special. If I can't finish a task by the end of the day, I put a circle around my box by the task. Here is an example.

$ Lunch 4.00 (Money transaction)
Take out trash (Completed Task)
Call Dad (Yet to be completed)
- Sunday is father's day (Note to self)
Clean Room (Task to be completed tomorrow)

(*Google sucks when it comes to graphics, took me awhile to figure the best way to stick those images I made in there :: Images created with the GIMP.)


In the morning, I review my PocketMod of the previous day and add any entries that have circles. I also check my Google Calendar and add anything that happens to be there for that specific day.

At the end of the day i put my PocketMod in my Review box (a cardboard box) and at the end of the week, I review my PocketMods (I have only been doing this for a couple of days, so this is still a work in progress). Please leave comments or any ideas you have for how you think I can improve my system.

-- SideNote -- Preview your posts before you publish them, or else they can get ugly.

TabPad Software Review

I recently stumbled across a cool little program called TabPad. It operates much like Windows Notepad, with the exception that it supports multiple tabs. Another useful feature of this program is that it allows you to save multiple tabs into a "Tabset" So you can open multiple related text files at once. While writing this, I have open: the article I'm currently writing, my morning routine, my contacts file and my todo file. These are all linked together with a tabset. The user interface of TabPad is very intuitive and is an excellent addition to any GTD collection.

Real Tags

Today I was cleaning my room and I thought of the idea of "RealTags." You take everyday objects (e.g. a phone charger) and apply a "tag" to it, (e.g. "chargers"). I decided to assign everything in my room a tag, then proceeded to clean up everything by tag. I started with things i tagged "trash, so after the first sweep all (most) the trash was picked up. After that, i picked up items tagged "loose paper", then came "books" and so on. Please comment on any way you think you can add on to this meme.

First post

This post is testing the blog