Archive for November, 2009

Blogging for money… well, kind of

Nov 30 | by Sam Deeks | blogging technique, how to
2 Comments

Want to make money from blogging?  Here’s how it worked for me

Look, before we go any further, I’ll tell you the truth about how much I’ve earned so far.

Are you ready?  £15. Yes! £15 that could just as easily be yours!!!  That (as far as I’m concerned, friend) makes me a pro.  Which, in turn, qualifies me to tell YOU how do it, right?  And think yourself lucky I’m not trying to sell you my eBook ‘How to make more than £14 with my £15-Google-system‘ for $47! :-)
clik
Joking aside, it’s fun to see my grand earnings total rising inexorably day on day. And I’m not even trying, really I’m not.

So here’s the ‘mu:kaumedia guide to making easy money like what I do:

1) Set up a Wordpress blog

2) Blog regularly about an area you’re interested in and (most importantly) that will interest other people

3) Make sure your basic post SEO is good (keywords in titles, headers and content)

4) Anticipate what people will be searching for in your area of interest and blog about it before they start searching

5) Sign up to Google adsense and splash a small block of ads on your site in a non-intrusive position

So how exactly did I make my Google fortune?

SpotfyBlog2

Way back in Jan 2009, someone invited me to the new, ‘invitation-only’ music streaming service Spotify.  It didn’t take a genius to work out that something as groundbreaking as Spotify + invitation-only membership was going to lead to a pile of people looking for invitations.

I then wrote a couple of quick blog posts with titles like, er.. “How do I get a Spotify invitation?” and some useful links (plus offer to give away the invites I got when I signed up).

Result?  Lots of visitors to give those invites to.  Followed by Spotify dumping about 600 more invitations on me to give away for them.  Followed by lots more people looking… followed by people placing links to my post in various forums and sites.

Eventually, I ran out of posts but that didn’t stop the people coming.  In the end, I posted a link to a page that, oddly enough, by-passes Spotify’s invite page altogether (I still can’t work out why they left it open??).  And still the people come at the rate of 1000+ a day.  And most of them go away happy.

After 8 months of traffic, I decided to sell my soul to Satan and put some ads on my site.  Result?  Vast sums of Adsense revenue.

So if I can do it, so can you.  Why, if I had me 10 blogs running… and I was actually doing it seriously, who knows how much money could be made each month?  £150? More, if I had no qualms about the nature or quality of my content or affiliate marketing scheme…or…or.. the mind boggles.  The only thing I didn’t do was put the ads on earlier. Heck, I might be blogging this from my yacht in the Caribbean if I hadn’t wasted those 8 months of traffic.

Lloyd can’t sing. Official. And we’re all mad

Nov 29 | by Sam Deeks | madness
No Comments

The X-Factor: Lloyd’s inability to sing is proof we’re all mad

I remember that in mathematics, ‘x’ represents the unknown. I spent a lot of time finding ‘x’.  It’s taken me another 30 years but I’ve discovered that x=shite.

That’s right.  Shite.  Why? Because Lloyd can’t sing.  Because Jedward are sorry, self-obsessed little egos.  And so on and on.

I’ve always been amazed how politics seems to be a process of finding the least wise, least capable person out of millions of possibles to entrust the future of the planet to.  I’m amazed, too, how ‘The Apprentice’ narrowed down the business talent of this country to eight or so arrogant, thick, sociopathic tw*ts.  Quite a feat.

And now Lloyd.  Who can’t sing in tune.  But desperately wants to be recognised.  *sigh*

We must be mad.

OysterCard max fare: somebody needs to make it clearer to the ‘out of towner’

Nov 22 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, scam warning
2 Comments

Have you been had by the OysterCard ‘max fare’? I bleedin’ well ‘ave

Seems like to avoid getting hit by max fare charges, I would need to have used my ticket to exit the overground rail system and then come back in with my Oyster.  I’m not a Londoner; how the bleedin’ ‘ell would I know that?

Somehow I’ve missed that information.  Don’t you get caught out.

OysterCard taking me for a ride?

Nov 21 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, WARNING!!, scam warning
1 Comment

oyster

Is Oystercard profiting from ‘out of towners’ like me?

Last week, I was surprised – and inconvenienced – to find my OysterCard had run out of credit.  Again.  I went to the ticket window and asked the woman to put £5 on it.

“You’ve got a negative balance” she said after swiping the card.

“What’s that?” I asked. ‘Look” she said showing me her little screen “It says -£2.20’ “

“How the hell did I get a negative balance?”  I asked.  She printed a list of my journeys over the last couple of days.  The first thing that struck me was how many of them were £4.00 journeys, not the usual £1.60.

“Why was I charged £4.00 for travelling two stops between Richmond and Gunnersbury?” I asked, confused.

The lady printed out my ‘Oyster Usage Statement’ for the last two days:

19/11 08:00 – Gunnersbury No Route Data £4.00
19/11 16:47  Pre Pay entry Gunnersbury £4.00
19/11 16.47 Add Pre Pay Gunnersbury £10.00
20/11 10.41 – Gunnersbury  No Route Data £4.00
20/11 13.52 Pre Pay Entry Gunnersbury £4.00

ending up, of course, with the attempt to get through gate with a negative balance

20/11 18.21 Rejected Exit (Code 36)

She explained that the reason this had happened was that somehow I hadn’t registered the start of my journey.  Her explanation was that often, the card doesn’t register properly – but still opens the gates.

Eh? Hang on a minute.

It failed to register my card properly yet still let me through?  And given the gates opened to let me through, how was I supposed to know I was being charged £4.00 each time for a £1.60 fare?

I was, as you can imagine, outraged, thinking “I’ve been overcharged by nearly £10 by a system that’s programmed to let me through a gate and then secretly charge me more than double the fare!!”

Well, apparently, it’s much simpler than that.  I found out today that if you take a train (main line) to Richmond – as I did – you either have to exit the train station with your mainline ticket and come back in with your OysterCard or find a machine to ‘touch in’ to start your journey.

Apologies to TfL.  I got it wrong.  I’ve obviously had to learn the hard (expensive) way :-) . But what the lady at the ticket office said worries me. Does the system really allow people in through the gates without properly registering the start point of their journey?

Expo Guide and World Business Directory: Could Twitter kill off these nasty scams?

Nov 5 | by Sam Deeks | Scambusters!, Twitter, scam, scam warning
2 Comments

Could the wisdom of the business crowd decide the fate of Expo Guide and World Business Directory?

TwitterMonsterThe challenge

You’ve arrived here because of my Tweet about the Expo Guide and World Business Directory scams.  First of all, thanks for coming.  Second, I’d like to invite you to take part in an experiment.  Could Twitter kill these nasty scams stone dead?

Have a look at the evidence (below) and if you want to play a part in stopping these scammers, then please RT the Tweet that brought you here to people in your network and let’s see if we can help stop people getting ripped off.

The Scam

As some of you may already know the world of business is still being swept by a family of scams which deliberately set out to fool people into inadvertently signing expensive contracts they don’t want.  An early and well documented version of this is what’s known as the “Construct Data scam” originating from Austria.  The most recent variants of this scourge are European City Guide, Expo-Guide and World Business Directory.

How it works

  • You get a letter in the post (or email with pdf attachment) from the company.  It’s designed to make you think they’re offering you a free listing in their online directory.  It asks you to sign and stamp the form.  You do and send or email it back
  • Nothing happens for a while
  • A couple of months later you get a demand for something in the region of €3,000
  • Their demands direct you to the form where – for the first time – you notice to your horror the tiny, faint small-print saying “signing and stamping this form constitutes a contract for 3 years entry into our directory at c. €900 per year..”.
  • A couple of months later, you start getting various demands.  Eventually, you get formal letters from a debt collection agency.  Now you start to worry.  What if they take you to court?  What if your boss finds out?
  • You write back to the company saying it’s a rip-off and you don’t feel you should have to pay.  Eventually, they graciously agree to let you off with just one year’s fee out of three.  Maybe you pay up so you can put this whole traumatic episode behind you.

This scam has been running for years and shows no sign of stopping.  Why?  Because there will always be enough people out there who can be bullied or shamed into paying some – if not all – of this extortionate fee.

Governments seem to have little or no interest in stopping it.  Watchdogs aren’t particularly bothered.  It’s down to a few individuals like Jules Woodell to campaign against it – see http://stopecg.org/ and http://stopecg.blogspot.com/ for a thorough history of all the main mutations of this scam.  For my own posts on the subject (and to read more than 50 comments from victims) click here.  You’ll get some idea of the kind of worry and distress this scam causes.

This scam is real and current and it’s costing business people like you and me a lot of money, stress and worry.  This site gets 20+ new visitors every day searching for help on this issue – most of whom are new victims of the scam from all over the world.

Personal

For your information, I didn’t get stung personally by these scams (too long in the tooth!).  However, like millions of others, I regularly receive their scammy emails.  My motivation is to use the blog / Google platform to mess up their operation a bit and prevent others from being ripped off ;-)

“I like to keep busy. It passes the time”

Nov 3 | by Sam Deeks | change
2 Comments

Is your need to get somewhere stopping you from being here?

Richard Cooke got me thinking with a post on his i-Change blog.  He talks about how it feels to have lost the familiar milestones and landmarks of change; to be out in the featureless plains of your life.  It got me thinking about time, change and the present moment.  I answered:

“I used to wonder what would happen if I shut myself in a room without windows, or clocks, or routine or any familiar landmarks of change.

My theory was that if I removed all signs of change then time itself would become meaningless and strangely elastic. Who knows?

But maybe that’s a bit of what happens when we move out of the routine landscape of change (school runs, workdays, weekdays and weekends…) – when we move from one stage of our lives into another?

You asked how people deal with this lack of the signs of progress. At the risk of being philosophical (lols – hey, you DID categorise this post as ‘Values and Philosophy’)…

I remember once someone saying to me “I like to keep busy, it passes the time”. Duh? To what? Death?

I’m really not in a hurry any more to be anywhere other than here and now, in the moment. I used to be, but not so much any more. It’s not always easy, but the result is that I don’t worry about change or progress because I’m not so attached to getting from somewhere to somewhere.”

The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz. Amazon and Audible should reclassify it as fiction

Nov 2 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media, review
No Comments

Slavomir Rawicz’s ‘The Long Walk: The true story of a trek to freedom’ was anything but, it seems.

So why do Audible and Amazon still sell it as non-fiction?

I just finished listening to this book, via my ‘2 titles a month’ account with www.audible.co.uk.  I have to say, I quite enjoyed it (heroic second world war Russian gulag escape romp) up to a point.  The point being the party’s encounter with a pair of 8 foot tall Yetis.  Hmm, I thought.  I bought this thinking (not unreasonably, given the title and the marketing puff) it was a ‘true’ story.
Picture 1
Wrong.  The tiniest bit of online research demonstrates quite clearly that it’s credentials are, to put it midly, shaky.  No corroborating evidence; no trace of the others in the party, no historical records except those which contradict the story entirely.  Ah.

Ok, so I wasted £10.  But at least I got a chance to review it on Audible (let’s see if they publish my comment!).

The process of research was interesting.  Why? Because it took only a couple of minutes to surface the controversy over this book – a debate that’s nearly 60 years old.  The first clear indication was, of course, good old Wikipedia.   The second was the huge number of reviews on Amazon.com.  Note the number of reviewers who found it inspiring (and want to believe in it).  Note also the clarity of the critics’ arguments.  You can see that some of the critical reviews come from as early (in internet terms) as 2002.

All of which makes the Guardian’s 2004 obituary for Slavomir Rawicz seem mildy amusing – and makes the journalist involved look faintly ridiculous.  Alright, so in 2004 Wikipedia wasn’t up to much (started in 2001) but c’mon? You’re a journalist for God’s sake.

If you’ve arrived here after reading the book (which is more likely) all I can say is ‘Yep, you’re right.  It was too good to be true’ and ‘Come on, Audible and Amazon, you need to put a virtual sticker on the front of this one’ or else people will be asking for their money back.

“Truth” said someone a little while back “is information about which there is no serious dispute”.

Life, the Twitterverse and Everything

Nov 1 | by Sam Deeks | change, history
2 Comments

“I love this tool for cleaning up follower issues. Cannot live without it”

Saw this comment in a Tweet just now. The words “Can’t live without it” keep ringing (or is that ‘twinging’?) in my ears. This person is talking about some bit of software that let’s them prune their follower list…or something. Which is kind of amusing since most people using Twitter seem to be in a hurry to get as many followers as possible as quickly as possible.

Its not just the crazy sense of perspective in that Tweet. It also reminded me how self-referential the Twittersphere has become; how obsessed with itself and technology it is. And how grand it’s sense of it’s own place in history and its power to shape current affairs and even democracy itself.

Twitter is fascinating to watch, for sure. I read in the paper today one of the founders likened creating Twitter to putting a bat and a ball into a jungle clearing and hiding while the natives invented baseball.

Have people really reached a point where they can’t live without it? It looks like some have. Personally, I’m teetering at a point where the prospect of stopping using it is almost as attractive as using it, as I did with Facebook some months back.

Drugs: evidence that Professor Nutt is talking sense

Nov 1 | by Sam Deeks | culture, what do you think?
3 Comments

Evidence that harm-reduction and Government revenue don’t mix

addiction1Photographed round the back of Tavistock Post Office yesterday, this is clearly the staff ’smoking bucket’.  It looks awful to people who have never smoked.  It looks awful to those of us who once smoked but have since given up.

If I remember my days as an addicted smoker, it would have looked awful even while I was still smoking but, insanely, I – like the Post Office people – would have carried right on doing it.

It’s a powerful symbol of a drug that is so clearly destructive that no-one (not even a smoker) would argue otherwise.  More than that, it stands for a form of cultural suicide: death by self-medication.

The same, or worse, situation exists with alcohol.

One day, we’ll look back at these times without the fog of this cultural self-medication intertwined with its mass denial and political revenue generation.

And we’ll see that Professor Nutt was right.   These two drugs are far more damaging than all the illicit drugs put together.  The problem is simply that most people don’t want to look at their relationship to them.  The Government is only to happy to benefit from that.