If you don’t have a solution in place that you are using to back up your important files, they could be gone tomorrow. And yes, it’s April 1st, but this is no joke. I have a really great recommendation for you—to use the Drobo mini backup solution—and I’ll tell you why.

I’ve always encouraged my customers, family and friends to always have more than one place to keep their files, whether it is on an external drive, in a cloud service or, at the very least, making sure to create a partition on your Windows hard drive (or Mac). Having that extra partition should be done no matter what; if Windows crashes, your data is isolated from a reformat of the installation partition.

But, due to the horrific idea of paying for a cloud service for the rest of your life (and exposing all your privacy to the Internet), I recommend having a really good home-based solution. After all, if your password gets hacked (which is likely unless you have a strong one for each site you use), do you really think that data is actually very safe and secure? Sure, it’s in two places, but if there is a better solution, wouldn’t you choose it instead?

For home-based back-up solutions, you have Time Machine for your Mac and…well…nothing really for Windows except a few pieces of software and hardware here and there, but each will require you to have a fairly credible skillset in using Windows. For example, you could buy some extra hard drives and create a RAID, but that’s not for the faint of heart or for anyone who has never built their own computer.

So is there an easy solution that doesn’t require an advanced skillset? And is there something better than Time Machine for the Mac? Well, let me answer the question about Time Machine first. Time Machine is really great for keeping a snapshot of your Mac, but as far as a home-based backup for any Windows machines or having a long-term backup of your important files, chances are you need more than Time Machine. And if you don’t have a Mac then Time Machine is not for you.

Yes there are some really nice solutions out there such as Network Area Storage devices that also connect printers up via USB and I’ve looked into these myself, but these are single-drive solutions and a drive failure would mean disaster.

But there IS a solution that I recommend that is better than a one-drive solution and is useful for anyone with a Mac (or without as most are). I’d strongly recommend this for anyone with an extensive photo, graphics or video solution.

And then there’s Drobo…

The Drobo is unlike a single-drive backup because it has its own pre-built four-drive RAID. For those who are not technical, what that means is that if one of the drives is about to fail, you can replace the drive without losing the data. A RAID is like a duplicate set of data on each drive which allows for the permanent loss of a one drive without losing any data.

This is really the best possible solution because it requires the kind of computer knowledge you would need to set up a network printer (most people) and gives you essentially three places for your data. On your computer and in two places in the four-drive RAID in case one drive fails. So, if your data drive on your computer dies, you have the Drobo; just replace the drive and then copy data you need from the Drobo. If a drive in the Drobo dies, you have the RAID inside the Drobo; just replace the drive and you’re done. It will do the work for you.

One additional nice bit about the Drobo is that you can use any 2.5″ SATA drive, no matter what the make or capacity. Drobo devices also come in different configurations, so please check those out, but this one is really nice because it’s small and takes four drives and does all that is needed for a credible backup plan.

Here is a more detailed review of the Drobo mini.

Please get yourself a credible backup solution even if you don’t use something like the Drobo. You would be hard-pressed to find a better backup solution four your home. You can get the Drobo mini here at the link…

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

First, you must know that if your password is ever leaked from a website as happens from time to time, that same password with your email address can be used on other sites if you use the same password for every site you visit. That means that you must use a different password on each site you visit that’s important enough to protect. I do use a weaker password on some sites where my credit card information can only be used to pay for services but not products; for example, my Tivo account and my high-speed internet service are on different websites, but they use the same weaker password. It’s only necessary to use a different password where your credit card can be used to buy products (in addition to your most important sites such as email, your computer, your online banking, etc.).

You may think it’s hard to have a different password for each site, but that’s where the secret comes in because it makes it easier. The secret is to have one easy-to-remember “key-ring” password, a joining character and a pattern. That’s all.

So in this example, we start with a key-ring password by picking a song, band and year. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zepplin and released in 1971 becomes S2HLZ71. Star Wars starring Harrison Ford released in 1976 becomes SWHF76. It’s not necessary to worry about upper and lower case letters just yet. The important thing is that you have something easy to remember.

Next, you choose a junction key or something to join your password to the website you are using. You can use any of these and more than one if you really wish to: plus sign, underscore, exclamation point, equal sign, dash, dollar sign, pound symbol, etc.

Finally, you choose a pattern for the website you are using this password with. For example, it’s not uncommon for people to abbreviate Bank of America as B of A. Using this same pattern of upper case and lower case, you can make any website the same. Amazon.com becomes AmaZ. For your Gmail account, it could be GmaI.

When you put them all together, you end up with a very complex and hard-to-crack password that is suited for each site you use.

Bank of America becomes S2HLZ71+BofA.

Amazon.com becomes S2HLZ71+AmaZ.

For a Gmail account, you would use S2HLZ71+GmaI.

iTunes would become S2HLZ71+ItuN.

The more that you use your key-ring password, the easier it will be to remember the rest of your password using your joining character and the pattern of uppercase and lowercase for the site you are visiting.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

If I had to give a talk on how to best use online video and blogging together (sometimes called vlogging), I would talk about how best to put them together. What tools would I recommend? How would I use them? And what would I call such a talk? I can sum up those answers with the title that I would use for my talk: “Get The Best of Both Worlds: YouTube and WordPress.” I’m not going to talk about why WordPress and YouTube are the largest platforms and why they are the best platforms, but I will talk about how you, the person doing a video and putting it on your blog, would benefit the most from them.

How To Leverage SEO With YouTube and WordPress

1. Write Your Blog Post as a Draft
First, write your blog post but save it as a draft. There are many reasons for this but I will save the best reason for later. One reason I will tell you about right now is that it will help to flesh out your best ideas by writing your topic out on a keyboard. If you wanted to, you could just print your draft blog post and re-read it just before you do your video.

2. Jot Down Top Ideas on a 3×5 Card
Next, write down your best points on a 3×5 card. Try not to go with more than 10 because it may be difficult to try and cover each one of those in one video. However, “Top 10″ videos and videos about the 10 best or worst things are very effective, so don’t be shy about going all the way to 10.

3. Make Your Video and Post
Then make your video and post it on your YouTube channel. You can fill out the “description” field if you wish, but you will be doing some very specific things in this field for the video which are super important, but for now you can leave it blank. This is a VERY important field if you want your video to attract viewers. Do go ahead and set all the other settings such as the category and the sharing settings, etc.

4. Review Your Draft, Update and Publish
Now that you have made your video, come back to your draft blog post and re-read it. Did you talk about anything on your video that you forgot? Or maybe you came up with something while doing the video that you feel could be useful? Well, now is the time to tidy up your WordPress post, do your SEO on it and make sure to put your YouTube video after the first paragraph. My favorite WordPress plugin for SEO is the one by Yoast. He also makes a plugin for YouTube SEO for WordPress as well.

5. Copy Your Blog Post and Paste Into Description Field
The description field in a YouTube video post is the most powerful part of a YouTube video for SEO. Google has even gone as far as trying to transcribe every single video they distribute so that they can use the words to extract the SEO value out of each post. This is why, if you could, the very best way to do this would be to make your blog post, print it as a script and then read the script as you make your video. People generally don’t have teleprompters, so that’s going to be out of the question for most people, so the next best thing is to use a 3×5 card of your best ideas and re-read your draft blog post before you make your video. Just try to keep the content as close as possible between the two and Google will, in my experience, give you more SEO power for going the extra mile.

In other words, when you put your entire content in words into the description field, it’s better than Google transcribing your speech. And again, the most difficult but most rewarding way is to either make a script and read it word-for-word or maybe transcribe your video yourself so that what you say exactly goes into that description field. The rewards are worth the effort. In my opinion, this is the most powerful use of SEO you can find. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google, so what could be better than having your post and your video in both places and done in a way that can’t be beat?

Also, make sure to put the link to your blog post on the first line of your description field! YouTube will follow your link to your blog post and if it’s got the same content then that will show it’s a more valuable link.

YouTube and WordPress really rock together, so if you are using both, you’ll get the most mileage out of them using this method.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Here are my best tips for pictures and phone video cameras.

1. Use the sky as your light. Face toward the open part of the bright sky and put your face in a shadow and point the camera toward you. The sky will give you the best lighting. If you have direct sunlight, it will put deep creases in your face.
2. Use a camera (such as in iPhone) where you can see yourself.
3. Make sure there are no visually-distracting things in the frame; also watch out for annoying noises in the background. If you can hear them, then so can those watching your video.
4. Look in the mirror before you start and get rid of any extra hairs (nose, eyebrow, ears, etc.).
5. Don’t worry about perfection. Casual is more effective anyway.
6. Be enthusiastic!
7. Be real. Don’t try to pretend you are someone you are not. People will watch your video because of the topic and not really because of you. If you do well, then they  may look at some other videos of yours.
8. Write out on a 3×5 card what you want to cover and keep it next to your camera so that you can refer to it during videotaping.
9. Have fun! If you’re not having fun then people will watch something else!

And yes I am talking about Google AdWords coupons for $100 or some other denomination such as $105 or $75.

It was a big surprise to me that they are no longer entirely free. Here’s the scoop:

Effective October 1st, 2012, you will need to pay $25 of your own money before that $100 credit can be applied.

So, instead of me setting up your account with a $100 credit ready to go for testing, I will still set up your account with that $100 credit for testing but you will have to put in your own $25 before that credit will be ready.

Put another way, nothing has changed except that you your ads won’t run until you put in your own $25.

There are probably several reasons for this. For example, people can’t say no to free leads or free traffic to their site. I know I haven’t. I’ve used coupons for some of my own websites to drive traffic there.

But another reason that may perhaps be more important is that this is going to eliminate people who are merely curious or they are simply just freeloaders. That’s not YOU, of course!

Either way, you have to get some “skin in the game” as it were before you get $100 worth of free promotion.

Here is the email I got from Google about this for Engage members (like me)…

Hi Joseph,

We want to make sure you’re aware of some important changes to AdWords coupons and how they’ll work in the future.

Beginning today (September 25th, 2012), you’ll be able to offer your clients advertising credit after they spend their first $25 on AdWords. We believe businesses that invest a small amount in their AdWords campaigns are more likely to be successful, especially with your expert guidance.

Please take some time to read our revised terms and conditions for your new AdWords introductory offers. Please note—the old AdWords coupons will be retired from all markets as of September 30th, 2012 and will no longer work after that date.

What that means is any coupons you currently have will only work through September 30th, 2012. You can, however, request new introductory offer codes through the Engage portal and start using them right away.

To make this transition smoother, our team is standing by for any questions you may have. You can email us at engage-na@google.com or call us Monday-Friday, between 9am-9pm EST, at 1-877-908-4181. The FAQs below also provide additional details and you can read detailed FAQs at the Google Engage portal.

Thank you,

The Google Engage Team

FAQs

Does this change how I currently use AdWords promotional codes?

Only a little.

Google will automatically credit the $100 within 5 days of your client’s account reaching the $25 minimum in AdWords advertising charges. Once applied, the $100 promotional credit will appear on the Billing summary page in your client’s AdWords account.

In order to activate this offer, you still need to enter a promotional code through the Billing tab in your client’s AdWords account.

You may still use only one promotional code per client, subject to the updated terms and conditions.

How exactly does the new system work?

To qualify for the introductory offer your client must spend $25 in AdWords advertising within 31 days of entering the promotional code. For example, if they enter the code on October 1, 2012 they’ll have until November 1, 2012 to spend $25 in advertising. In all circumstances, please remember that the offer expires on the specific expiration date which is provided with the promotional code (if any) or after 3 months.

What stays the same?

Pretty much everything else.

You may still use this offer for new AdWords clients only (‘new’ accounts are accounts that are no more than 14-days-old) in the US or Canada.

You can still only use one offer per client, subject to the promotional credit terms and conditions.

You can still request new offer codes on your Engage page like before.

When will my client receive the $100 credit in their account?

Within about 5 days of your client’s account reaching the $25 minimum in AdWords advertising charges but you should check for it as early as a day or two.

Please remember: the account must be activated using the promotional code and must fulfill all requirements stated in the offer.

Once applied, the $100 credit will appear on the Billing summary page in your client’s AdWords account.

What if my client wants to stop advertising after receiving the $100 promotional credit?

They absolutely may! Your client can suspend their ads anytime before the AdWords $100 promotional credit amount is exhausted if they do not wish to receive additional advertising charges. Please remember: they will not be notified once the credit is exhausted. Any unused portion of the promotional credit amount will remain in the AdWords account as a credit balance.

What if my client wants to spend more than $25?

But of course. Just remember that your client will be charged for all advertising that exceeds the $100 promotional credit.

What happened to the old $100 coupons? Will my client be able to get them elsewhere?

The old AdWords coupons have been retired from all markets and as of September 30th, 2012 will no longer work.

Yesterday I listened to a really great audio podcast about the pyschology of writing simply–and to stop using big words! The reason why? Well, you will certainly want to listen to the post, but it covers some very interesting tips (and explains them).

Here are some things I remember from it:

1. Use Anglo-Saxon words and not Latin words. You’d be surprised why!
2. Avoid stop words (and which ones they are).
3. When jargon works and when it doesn’t.
4. Words you use with your customers can unintentionally kill business.
5. Conversational language is best.

And I’m going to add one to this list that they didn’t talk about when writing copy.

It’s super-important for you, as someone writing a blog entry or a Google AdWords ad or an online article to avoid “stuffing keywords.” This means trying to make the content of your article filled with keywords so that it will appear at the top of search engine results for those keywords.

For example, my keywords for this post are “best tips for writing” and you can see that phrase in the title, the URL and in the first paragraph (and again in the body in this sentence). Notice that I didn’t write it over and over and over again. This would create a really weird story for people to read if I did. Either way, I’m not going to expect this article to make it to the top, but if enough people link to this post AND I have done a good job with my keywords without overdoing it AND a number of other search engine factors are satisfied, it might one day make it to the top… Again, it might! Any article can make it to the top with enough links from other pages pointing to it.

I hope you enjoy this article and that you’ll stay tuned for more articles to come! Please leave a comment below to tell me what you think of the link I am sharing!

This video from Google provides a good explanation. The other two videos provide a bit more in-depth info.

Simply put, Google AdWords provides a way for you to reach potential customers or draw attention to your business or website when they are already trying to find someone like you.

And that is the beauty of it. If they are looking for you, then this may be the only time they ever are trying to find you. Don’t miss your chance!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

If you’re at all interested, contact me:

Professionally, I am a webmaster and I do a good job in terms of using the tools I need to use.

Check it out!

http://css.dzone.com/news/9-signs-you-shouldnt-hire-web-

While I certainly understand that people like to go hunting and kill animals for sport, I can’t say that I agree with what he has done. Ethically, I’m simply against killing and I’m all for growing. If Bob Parson really feels the need to help Zimbabweans, then he should help them grow some food as far as I am concerned. But that’s just my opinion and we all know what that’s really worth, right?

But maybe you agree and you feel that no one should support a company whose CEO goes off to help Zimbabweans by killing instead of helping them grow.

Well, here’s your chance to do something you may agree is more ethical with your money. Don’t get me wrong, I like Bob Parsons. I think he’s a great success story, but again, to me, if he wants to help Zimbabweans he should build schools or offer them farming support. Until then, I have found a great GoDaddy alternative.

My GoDaddy Alternative: NameCheap

Here’s a brief analysis of the differences…

Product

GoDaddy and NameCheap offer domain purchasing services. They are priced about the same, but GoDaddy is a bit cheaper…maybe by 10% most of the time.

GoDaddy offers a number of other services as well including webhosting (including cloud/VPS hosting), WordPress installation hosting, email and the offerings are fairly similar. I have not tested the performance of NameCheap’s hosting, but I hope it’s better than GoDaddy because GoDaddy’s was really NOT so good.

Again, GoDaddy edges out NameCheap when it comes to cost, but it’s only a buck or two here and there. Nothing too major at any time.

Service

I’ve never had a problem with NameCheap. I’ve never had to ask them to fix a thing!

I have had problems over the years with GoDaddy. Their support has been kinda shoddy at times, too. Sometimes it has been good, but there were times when it just wasn’t so hot and that’s what I remember.

In fact, I always warn people if they buy something from GoDaddy to avoid all the extras they try to sell during checkout. It’s overwhelming how they try to get you to buy extras that are largely just not necessary.

Affiliate Program

Just like me, you can also spread the word and earn affiliate commissions by taking the “high road” when it comes to buying domain names. I’m am affiliate and if you use NameCheap via my link to their site, I’ll earn a few bucks. And if you have friends who want to spend their money ethically, you can cover your cost of buying a domain easily!

Click to give them a shot!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

These are both for the same author Anna Marie Hernandez and I hope you enjoy them!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.