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Optimize Your Website Using YSlow

January 5th, 2011 . by Anup



Have a lot of people leaving your site too fast ? Your high bounce rates could be due to a slow loading website. People these days simply don’t wait for 5 or 10 seconds for a page to load.  A slow loading page affects everything else you do . You can say bye bye to those sales and leads. Therefore it is important that you optimize your websites. Lets forget usability or anything else that would affect sales. We’re going to concentrate on making your site more responsive i.e load faster. Want another reason ? Okay then .

Here’s something that happened to me a while back.Now serving niches is a relatively small site / blog. There are only a few 100 posts. You don’t exactly see it and expect it be heavy on the server.

As it turns out I had just deleted older posts which I thought were longer relevant and some I thought didn’t live up what we are trying to achieve here. Now as it turns out the blog was loading a bit faster after I had deleted a lot of older posts, atleast I thought so.  I felt content and logged out.

Next day I check my email and there’s an email from my hosting provider.

First I sit there and scratch my head thinking what on earth could they be emailing me about on this day of the week.

Turns out my small site was so slow loading and so heavy on resources and the server, it was starting to affect the other sites on the server. So they had to temporarily suspend my account and stop all traffic to it until I speed it up.

Needless to say I was shocked. Well okay first I was confused and then I was shocked. My teeny blog is causing problems ? So they agreed to let me in provided I fix stuff or lease out an entire server. Of course they weren’t exactly going to throw me out. There weren’t going to let in any traffic unless I had fixed the problem.

That is where YSlow came to the rescue. I ran it and well it gave me an F . But it also told me how to go about fixing the blog and site .

The next few blog posts are going to be all about Website and Blog Optimization. First we’ll begin with Yslow. We’re going to take it a bit further than that in later blog posts. But first YSlow.

Today is the simplest part . Installing Yslow and related Components.

You need to get the Firefox Browser first . Download the browser from http://mozilla.org and install .

Now you need the firefox browser and and add on called firebug. YSlow is  a plug in for Firebug. Firebug is pretty cool itself but its features are out of the scope of this blog post. Back to installing YSlow.

Go to http://www.getfirebug.com and install Firebug

Then go to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/5369 to install YSlow

Once all these are installed , You are now ready to run Yslow. Restart your FireFox Browser.

You should see something like the picture below at the bottom right of your firefox browser.


Once you have restarted Firefox, open your website.

Go to “Tools > Firebug > Open Firebug”.

A split window should open . Click YSlow . Choose appropriate Ruleset. It doesn’t really matter .

It will analyse your website and give you a grade.

We’re going to work on improving that Grade in the next blog post.


To learn more about Firebug check out

http://www.packtpub.com/article/installation-and-getting-started-with-firebug

Get Unlimited Access to Hundreds of Games

Email Marketing 2.0

April 19th, 2010 . by Anup



better conversion rates ?

like to see your marketing efforts rewarded with increased sales ?

like to stop missing huge opportunities ?

This is what you need

Click Here

P.S.  Its free

Rest In Peace Mr. Laut

March 16th, 2010 . by Anup




Received this email on March 13th , 2010. Was subscribed to Phil Laut’s list for nearly two years. He will be missed


Sean Collins here, with sad news.

Philip R. Laut passed away on March 11th, 2010.

Here’s something you may find remarkable:
He worked to his very last day.

Even while he was under hospice care, we worked together
over the phone (the computer was a little tricky), putting final
touches on his PhilMyWallet program.

Why would he do that?  Why not just relax, take it easy,
coast for a while?

Because he LOVED his work.

His work, you probably know this, was helping others find
– and profit from — work that THEY love.

One by one, client by client, he was making good on his
commitment “…to eliminate poverty in the world and to make
abundant living socially acceptable.”

I remember talking with him recently about the Jimmy
Stewart film It’s A Wonderful Life. (Maybe you know that movie?
It’s about a guy who realizes all the positive influence his lifetime
has had on others.)

It would be impossible to tally – or even imagine – all the people
whose lives Phil touched around the world.

I am writing to you because you may be one of those people.

Sincerely,

Sean Collins

Email Marketing – Get Started while reading this Post

June 2nd, 2009 . by Anup




Lists, Opt-In Forms, Aspirin,

Coffee and Email Marketing


Hello Again. Wow. So much worth discussing I’m not sure where and how to put it all out there.

What put a dent in my Email Marketing Posts were Mailing Lists and Autoresponders.  I haven’t posted them yet.  Simply because I am not trying to put out brief paragraphs. I wanted to explain the Landing Page and Opt-in Form in Detail. Most Importantly I wanted to explain how You could set up One right away while reading this Post.

Building a List is ridiculously important. It can be ridiculously Good . It should also be Ridiculously easy. It is. Depending on what You decide to Use.

I’ve been wrestling Code and Settings everyday last month. To Setup the Mailing List for Free.  I loved the Big Complicated looking stuff . Explaining it to You would have been no small task though. Not to mention the amount of errors turned up.Made me wonder if an error free installation was even possible. Right Moving On.

You’ve heard about Lists and how important they are. You’re probably on several already. Make no mistake, email is the internet’s number one tool.

Today we’re going to Set up an Opt – In Form for a WordPress Blog. A Really Nice Opt -In form too. Using free autoresponder/mailing list service and a free wordpress plugin.  Can’t beat that.

Step 1 – Subscribe to Get Response

Now I’m not talking about signing up for their trial period offer. That wouldn’t exactly make it Free. They have a Completely Free service in addition to their Paid Service.

http://www.getresponse.com/orderfree.html

  1. The above link should take you to the free Sign-up Page.
  2. Fill in the name, email , country , your chosen get response username and how you plan on using it.
  3. Ignore the Preload messages box
  4. Click on Submit when you are done.
  5. They will then take you to a Page where they ask you once again to choose between the Pro version and the Free Version.
  6. At the bottom of that page you should see a button saying “Click for GetResponse FREE !”
  7. Then comes the page where you are asked to check your inbox. Thats a good Idea. Check your inbox . You will need your password.
Take a Break
We have survived the Subscription Process

Step 2 – Configuring Get Response

  1. You need to login into Getresponse. Click on link below to go to Login Page. http://www.getresponse.com/login.html
  2. Sign in and You will be asked for contact information. Fill it all Up. Click on Next Step.
  3. You should then see a link saying “You can now start using your account”
  4. Yes , we are going to click on it. Click on it. You should be taken to the Control Panel .
  5. There You will see a block called “Capture Subscribers”. Click on it . The reason we aren’t going to use this form as is is because we can do better.
  6. The HTML Form option is the only option available in the Free Version .
  7. Click on the “Start Capturing” Button.
  8. You will be taken to the “Create HTML Form Wizard”. Look in the  Pass Subscriber Details block. You can’t use the other options in the Free version except tracking code and custom fields. We won’t bother ourselves with it now. Make sure the “Use Standard Settings for my customized landing pages” is selected . Also check “No Thanks. I won’t use custom fields in my form.” is selected.
  9. Click on Next Step.
  10. You will be presented with HTML Code . All You have to do is Copy that code. Click Select all. Right Click and copy it . Save it in notepad. We will need it later.

Woo. That’s all we need to do at Get Response for the Form. Congratulations on making it this Far.

Step 3 – Getting and Installing the Opt-in Form Adder

Now we can put the form on the Blog as is. Just so you know. But this way is Better.We need to download the wordpress plug-in MaxBlogPress Optin Form Adder. Relax . It is Free.

  1. Open the Link Below in a new Window or just link on it.The choice is upto you. The Link
  2. Once you click on the link, you will be taken to the plugin download page. Scroll Down . You should see a Big “Download Now” Button.
  3. Download the Plugin.
  4. Install the Plugin on your blog.
  5. Once installed you should see “optin form adder” under Tools. Click on it.
  6. You will be asked to Register. All You have to do is click the Register Button. That was the fastest and easiest registration I’ve ever gone through. Probably yours too.

Congrats! You survived the Installation. The hardest part would have been reading the instructions.

Step 4 – Configuring It.

This is last part of the entire process. Its now Man Vs. Plug-in.

  1. Under Tools select Optin Form Adder.
  2. Choose the Optin Form Settings tab.
  3. Remember the Code we copied and saved into a txt file ? Copy that code into the empty box.
  4. After you have pasted the Code. Click on the Detect Button. The Next Step button should appear.
  5. Everything on that Page should be self explanatory. You need a Headline. In the body text type in the benefits and whatever else you want.
  6. Click Next Step button if you are happy with the way the box looks. Most People should find this part easy to deal with.  I had to make the hard decision to not describe literally everything. Otherwise this will come to be known as the “Never ending Blog Post”.
  7. Once again the Next Page should be self explanatory. Click the Finish Button when you’re done.
  8. Now we are done with tools Part. Look under the Blog’s Appearance tab. Click on Widgets.
  9. Under Current Widgets Choose Sidebar. Depending on your theme you might have two sidebars on maybe just one. Choose where you wish it to appear.
  10. Add the “MBP optin form adder” option to the sidebar. Just click on add.
  11. Then click on the Save Changes Button.

And You are Done !

You have now successfully set up an opt in form on your blog. Either this was a lesson in how to set up an opt-in form for free. Or why using a Paid service that offers support is a Good Idea.

There are a few things I’ve left out because it had nothing to do with setting up a form. But they are important. In Get response, it will be a ridiculously good idea to personalize the campaign. We only looked through the capture subscribers block. Go through the others. Set it up. We’ll discuss that another day.

Much Love.

Have a Great Day.

Psychology Of Scams – Provoking and Commiting Errors of Judgement

May 21st, 2009 . by Anup




The Psychology of Scams


Today’s post isn’t related to Internet Marketing Alone. You hear it everywhere. Scams . Is Somethings Someone a Scam ? Scammers.  Everyone I know (Literally) has received an Email from scammers. Some of them have fallen for these scams as in they thought it was genuine. Today’s post will help You  better understand these Con men and con men in general. In the end you’ll definitely know how to pull off a scam and what you need to do for one to work.

A Must Read for Everyone.  They come off as ridiculous at times. But falling for One of these isn’t Fun. We don’t want to fall for a Scam Good or Bad. Do We ?

The Report was commisioned by the UK Government’s London Office of Fair Trade and originally prepared by University of Exeter’s Psychology Department. You can get it Here.

You will have to Sign up at the Site to get the Ebook. Its Worth it .  It goes without saying. You can Unsubscribe anytime you want to.  Your Information is Safe.

Once again to Get the E Book

Click Here.

( Its Free )

Edited on 2/1/2011 :  the links have changed and what not. I recommend the above resource but it does not offer the report anymore. So here’s the updated link to the PDF . http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft1070.pdf

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