I check my bloglines a few times per day and trust me, it suggests people are still blogging. Sure, people are still using WordPress and other blogging tools to update their sites, but are they blogging? I don’t think they are, I think they are writing. I’ve been pretty vocal about not really liking the whole “blogging” label in general because it doesn’t quite convey what we do, and for a long time it wreaked of someones online diary where they told you what they had for breakfast. Technology aside, semantics aside, I think blogging, or at least the blogs I read, have left the blogosphere and entered the realm of magazine quality publications.

More and more of the blogs I visit, and again, this may be a shift in my personal focus, are writing longer, well researched, higher quality articles. Sure, there’s still some opinion pieces, news bits and other odd items, but by and large I’m seeing more content that I would call “featured stories”, things you would lead a magazine or newspaper with. While there are plenty of personal blogs, product blogs, news blogs and every other kind of blog, some seem to be pulling away from the crowed. There have always been blogs like this but most were run by ex-main stream media writers and editors or managed and funded by them. What I’m seeing is a rise in production quality from your every day blogger and I, for one, like this shift. I hope it’s not just me noticing more, but rather the game being stepped up.

From the WordPress blog

WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. A flaw was found in our XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow any valid user to edit posts of any other user on that blog.

Emphasis mine. This isn’t that urgent, if you ask me. If you don’t trust users on your blog then they shouldn’t be on your blog. This won’t effect too many people, but still, it’s always worth upgrading and fixing any potential threats no matter how small a risk they are. Grab WordPress 2.3.3 or the patched XML-RPC file if you don’t want to upgrade.

[Update]: This is more urgent than I thought for some people. I forgot that you can let people register on your blog to make comments! Those will be valid users as well and could exploit this bug. I don’t have user registration turned on, but I know a lot of people do so this is quite serious indeed. Upgrade ASAP.

A few weeks ago I posted about the High Performance Affiliate Marketing ebook and how much I liked it. At the time it wasn’t available anymore. I was hoping Jeremy would start up an affiliate program because the ebook is one of the few that I feel provide quality information on a subject full of scammers. Jeremy has decided to release this ebook for free, all you have to do is sign up for the newsletter (nothing is free). It’s well worth it and the newsletter is pretty good too.

Grab High Performance Affiliate Marketing now, just in case he changes his mind!

[Update]: I was wrong, it’s completely free! You don’t even have to sign up to the newsletter. It’s still worth it, but not required. Very nice.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Quit Your Day Job

My accountant has been over the last few days do do my first quarterly tax returns. Man, this is one part of freelancing I don’t like. I don’t mind paying my taxes. Well, I don’t like it, but I want to pay what I owe and not any more than that. The taxes aren’t too bad so far, but I’m about to have to pay taxes on earnings. I’m showing a profit for the end of last year, which isn’t the case. My expenses for getting setup, among other things, there just wasn’t any profit. Because of some where some deposits fell and when the payments made after those deposits came it shows on paper that I made a profit.

In the long run I don’t think it’ll be too bad. We still haven’t finished recording all my expenses for last year and I’ve got a few months before we actually pay my yearly taxes.

But seriously, taxes are much simpler when you work for someone. And people will give you loans. I always thought there were plenty of breaks for a small business to get started yet every time I turn around a different department has their hand in my wallet draining my money.

Any of you freelancers or small business owners got any tax tips?

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, Small Business, Taxes

My friend Patrick, whom you probably know from phpBBHacks.com, just announced the launch of his latest project, ManagingCommunities.com.

The site targets anyone who runs an online community, though I think anyone who has to manage users would benefit from subscribing. But perhaps the most important part of Patrick’s announcement is the release of his book, Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards. The book is due out in April but I can tell you know it’s well worth reading. I was happy when Patrick asked me to read some early chapters and then eventually a couple of early versions and final drafts. He also asked me to write the Foreword for the book, which I was honored to do.

So help Patrick out, go pre-order the book. It’s listed at $24.95, but amazon has it on sale for $16.32 plus another 5% of you pre-order. Grab it Managing Online Forums now.

I think some of my favorite blogs are reaching out to me today. I started working from home this past August and most of the time I love it. It’s got its share of ups and downs too, but for the most part, I love it. If you work from home, or want to know more about what it’s like, I highly recommend these articles:

• Working from home – Motivation and Accountability?
• Top 30 Tips for Staying Productive and Sane While Working From Home
• The “Work From Home” Generation

I found it odd that 3 stories from 3 different blogs I read would pop up on just about the same topic. I guess it’s just “in the air” lately, and it is a growing trend.

Technorati Tags: Work From Home

Ben over at the Blogging Experiment writes Learn from the Gold Rush: SHUT UP!. His article suggests that if you happen upon some successful idea, don’t go running to tell everyone about it, or you’ll find yourself with a bunch of prospectors trying to stake a claim to your find. It’s actually good advice and I’m about to disregard it and tell you how to make money like they did during the gold rush.

Ben left out a little bit of history when describing what happened during the gold rush. Most prospectors didn’t get rich from finding gold. These people often sold everything they had to move out to California to prospect. Nearly 300,000 people rushed into the area in search of riches promised by large veins of gold discovered there. But the smart money wasn’t on the gold at all, it was on the prospectors themselves. The people who cleaned up and made the real money are those forward thinking folks who sold the prospectors their gear. They sold them pans, picks and all the tackle they would need to go out and prospect. Most of which they’d have to buy more than once as they broke, lost or had theirs stolen. As more prospectors showed up, so did more merchants, ready to peddle their wares to the new settlers of California. Between the rising cost of living, equipment and goods offered, the people mining the gold were just handing it over to the people who saw the opportunity to market to a captive market. In short, the people mining gold did all the work while merchants simply sold their wares from the comfort of their shops. There were exceptions, of course. There are always a handful of savvy business people in any group, and the prospectors had their share as well. Eventually, though, only large groups with money and equipment would be able to get at the valuable ore.

In terms of blogging or doing business online, that gold rush is still happening. The people making the most money aren’t those building sites, but the people catering to them. Offering them advice, hosting, programs, ebooks, seo, consulting… the list goes on and on. Like with the gold rush, there are obviously people creating web sites and making money, but like so many other industries, it’s the feeders, as I like to call them, who are really raking in the cash. One great example is the ‘writing’ industry. There is no shortage of business that cater just to writers, everything from professional copy editors (a good thing) to people who will be happy to charge you to publish your book (a very bad thing). There are even scams, like poetry.com, who will publish every single poem submitted and sell you an author copy for a nice sum of money. They know that the writer is going to buy a handful to pass around to friends. They aren’t targeting readers, they are going directly after the writer!

My point, before I get too lost, is that if you can find a way to service a niche you may be able to make more money than if you were publishing in that niche. Something to think about when you’re cooking up ways to make more money online. Anyone out there with a site need a consultant? I’m kidding. Unless you do need someone.

Technorati Tags: Making Money, Consulting, Gold Rush, Marketing

After the recent fiasco with buying and selling text links, I wanted to make sure it was still allowed to sell banner ads. I was suprised to find out it’s not. You don’t have to worry about putting “nofollow” on your banner ads though, Google will do that automatically for you. Pretty cool, right?

I think anyone would agree that webmasters bring Google ungodly amounts of money, yet it seems like Google has grown to hate us. Google, the search engine, lives on links. They even say so and warn against a site that hordes there on traffic without linking out. They encourage you to link out. But they don’t want you to get links in!

Here is some of the shenanigans Google has pulled lately:

• Link exchanges are bad
• Directories that link directly to you are bad
• Buying links is bad
• Selling links is bad
• Selling ads that directly link to the buyer’s site is bad
• Giving away a program, plugin, theme or software that requires a “link” is bad

And the list goes on and on. I’m not the only one that feels this way. I work hard on my sites and I try to stay within the rules. The one on the list that probably bugs me the most is “linkware”. If I put my hard work into a software package (a forum, community site, whatever) or a theme, I should get some sort of reward. If I decide to release it as “linkware”, that’s my right. They are currently cracking down on sponsored themes, which I do get to an extent. But as a theme creator, that’s my design and in exchange for using it, I ask for a link. That’s a small token of support and helps me continue doing those kinds of things for free. I’m giving something of value and getting something of value back.

I don’t know how far they are going to take their vendetta against links, but I’m starting to lose faith in a company I used to have huge respect for, who’s motto is “don’t be evil”, who’s products I truly enjoy and tell everyone to use. I’m feeling burned and as more webmasters look for alternative sources of traffic we will influence our readers to use that source. Google is creating the tool of their own undoing. Sure, it’ll take a while, but their sewing the wrong kind of seeds. They won’t like the crop come harvest.

Technorati Tags: Google, Big Brother, Text Links, Banner Ads, Making Money, Webmasters

Since I’ve relaunched my blog I’ve been focusing on the things that pop up in my day as a freelancer and blogger. I’ve been posting a mixed back of items, everything from my thoughts on freelancing to actual programming tips. I’ve got another domain that would be perfect for tech tips and I’m thinking of leaving those off here and keeping the site purely focused on the business end of things. Observations, tips and other information and anything I learn as I do this full time but leaving all the “geek” technical stuff out. I think it would make more sense to keep the code and stories separate because I doubt the majority of the audience would be interested in both.

So in a few weeks I’ll launch a more technical blog, but in the mean time, this one shall continue on it’s new path.

I had to update a link for a client today and most of their content is database driven. This makes it easy to do quick searches and even search and replace. Most databases support this and the syntax is pretty close, but this tip is specifically for MySQL.

So, lets say you have an affiliate link that looks like this:

http://www.domain.com/aff.php?affid=1234

But you get an email from your affiliate manager telling you to update your links to a new format like this:

http://affiliates.domain.com/offer/1234

MySQL will make that easy.

First, lets check to see how many of our records have that url:

SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE field_name like ‘%http://www.domain.com/aff.php?affid=1234%’

In plain English, that means, select everything from the table named ‘table_name’ where the filed named ‘field_name’ is like the url. The % signs around the url are “wildcards”.

Lets say it returned 189 records. Now lets do our replace

UPDATE table_name SET field_name = REPLACE(field_name, “http://www.domain.com/aff.php?affid=”, “http://affiliates.domain.com/offer/”) WHERE field_name like ‘%http://www.domain.com/aff.php?affid=1234%’

This query is a little more complex, but still pretty straight forward. You should see 189 records updated. You don’t have to use the where clause in this query, but I do simply because it speeds things up and it’s a good habit to always use a where clause unless you really need for your query to look at or check every record. In that query, inside the replace, the first field is the OLD string that you want to replace and the second one is the NEW string you want to replace it with. Just like search and replace using your favorite text editor.

Technorati Tags: MySQL, Search, Replace