Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Beware of USB Drives, Article Writing Update, Ebook marketing

Hello Business Website Customers, Associates and Friends,
 
You should be writing articles to market your website. It works and is fun. Despite my urgings, some of my customers still do not do this and yet complain they are not getting visitors to their websites. In November 2009, I created a few DotNetNuke websites and started posting articles. See the article below for a eight-month review of the effectiveness of this approach.
 
Beware of viruses on external media. See the article for a disturbing case.
 
Do you have an Ebook in you? In one of my other careers, I am a dance instructor and have written a book. See the article for how to market your Ebook online.
 
Be Happy, Healthy and Prosperous,
Andrew
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
In This Email:
 
Article: Update on the Effectiveness of Article Writing
Article: Beware of USB, External and CD Drives Carrying Viruses
Article: Self Publishing an Ebook
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Other Items of Interest
 
 
"70 per cent of Microsoft engineers are working on something to do with the cloud," added Elop, saying it would rise to 90 per cent in a couple of years. "We're all in," he said.
www.techradar.com/news/internet/microsoft-we-won-t-use-search-engines-in-2020-692234
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Quotes:
 
All of life is peaks and valleys. Do not let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low. ~ John Wooden
 
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. - Henry David Thoreau
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Article: Update on the Effectiveness of Article Writing
 
In September of 2009, I created some DotNetNuke websites and started posting articles.
 
Go to these three websites. Next to each article is the number of visitors.
- www.DotNetNuke.bz
- www.InternetHandholding.com
- www.Programmer.bz
 
The articles are in order of newest first. Notice as the articles age, they get increasingly more visitors.
 
I have done nothing to promote these articles. I only posted them on my website. DotNetNuke automatically pings Weblogs.com when the article is posted.
 
You can see the newest articles have around 30 or 40 visits. Older articles typically have 100 to 300 visitors, with one article over 1,000 visitors.
 
These are the number of visitors per article, not per website.
 
The number of visitors tells some interesting tales, like what people are searching for the most and which articles are the highest ranked.
 
www.InternetHandholding.com has about 80 articles in eight months, which is a little less than two articles per week. You can write an article in as little as fifteen minutes, though I usually take longer. Still, in only an hour so a week, you can build up a nice accumulation of articles that work to market your website without additional effort from you.
 
I have not done this yet, but you can give your articles a boost by submitting them to article directories. You can find a bunch of article directories here.
 
 
Follow my planned upcoming article series on marketing an Ebook to see the effectiveness of article directories.
 
 
You have specialized knowledge that can help or entertain others. Take an hour out of your week to share your thoughts and help yourself and others.
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Article: Beware of USB, External and CD Drives Carrying Viruses
 
One of my customers got a virus from a shrink wrapped USB drive from Costco.
 
Think about that. Imagine you buy a package of brand new USB drives from a store and there is a virus on one. You use the USB drive to transfer some files from your home PC to your laptop and then to your computer at work.
 
Suddenly you have infected all three of your computers.
 
You can read about the MIRC virus that infected my customer here.
 
 
I had written a couple of articles on:
 
 
 
The information in those articles is still true, provided companies you trust and depend upon, like Costco, do their job and make sure they are not selling you drives with viruses packaged on them.
 
That particular drive was made in China, what a surprise.
 
I cannot prove that the drive came shrink wrapped with the virus, because my customer used the drive to transfer data, so it is possible he got the virus some other way. However, all he does with those USB drives is transfer a database file from work to his desktop and laptop at home. There was nothing else on the drive besides the database file and the virus. The drive was not formatted with the typical CD virtual drive, that is usually on that USB drive. I believe the drive came infected from China.
 
Anytime you put in a CD, DVD, USB Drive, SD Card or some other data device that automatically starts, you could be at risk of getting a virus.
 
There is a good article here about Autorun attacks and how to disable AutoRun. I have not tried it.
 
 
Before putting any removable data media into your computer, be sure you trust the source. Remember, even shrink wrapped packages from reliable companies can have virus. If you have any doubts, check the removable data first.
 
To check the media, download and make a bootable CD of Ubuntu from Ubuntu.com. Follow the instructions on the website.
 
This is a Linux operating system with a user interface a look like Windows and the Mac.
 
An Ubuntu bootable CD is handy to have around. See the article on Ubuntu to the Rescue.
 
 
Once you boot up Ubuntu, you can put in your removable media. Ubuntu will not autorun, since the autorun is for Windows, not Linux. You can then browse the removable media. Ubuntu will show you all the files, including system and hidden files.
 
If you see anything suspicious, rename it and move it to an out-of-the-way folder.
 
You can then use the removable media in Windows.
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Article: Self Publishing an Ebook
 
If you have some knowledge that is useful to other people, you might have an Ebook in you.
 
An Ebook has many advantages over a printed book, one of which is you can publish the Ebook yourself and another is you can sell an Ebook for a lot more.
 
In one of my other careers, I am a social dance instructor. In the course of trying to teach folk dancers how to dance with a partner, I figure out that you only need to know three rules to communicate every step in every dance unambiguously.
 
This is amazing if you think about it.
 
This is also original and I have written a book about how to communicate in social dancing called Partnership Dancing(tm).
 
You can see the website I am building around this product here.
 
 
If you are interested in the process of developing and marketing an Ebook, stay tuned. I intend to publish a series of articles to help you learn from my mistakes.
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
You can find this newsletter online here.
www.internethandholding.com/Newsletter/tabid/154/internet_marketing/201/Beware-of-USB-Drives-Article-Writing-Update-Ebook-marketing.aspx
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Bronze Inc. is the provider of this newsletter. Bronze is a for profit company and may get compensated for products and services listed here. To support this free newsletter, use the links here and on the websites to view the products.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
 
Copyright (c) 2010, Bronze Inc. All rights reserved.
 
Andrew Weitzen, publish@internethandholding.com, 352-327-3672, Gainesville, FL
 
 
 

You may forward, print, post or use any part of this email as long as you include this copyright notice and leave a link back to the source.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)