Ultimately it is YOU who has something to lose if the backups aren’t working properly. If you are paying for a maintenance service, you should be able to rely on the service provider to ensure your backups are working fine and they’re kept offsite. But what if they aren’t doing a good job of looking out for you?

A few people I’ve talked to think that having their web host create their backups is good enough, but this is far from the truth. The backups that your host provides are not sufficient to make sure you have a bullet-proof blog. Most hosts, including Bluehost, Dreamhost, Hostgator, and even my sponsor host Inmotion hosting only provide backups for a few days or maybe a week. After that, the backups are deleted or overwritten.

Why is this bad? If you are a daily blogger, then this may not be such a bad problem. If there’s a problem with your blog, you’ll notice right away (hopefully). But if you have just a business website that doesn’t get updated very often or you blog only occasionally, this could be very bad.

Imagine that you make a change to your website on Sunday. Then on Monday something happens to your site and maybe it gets hacked, or you accidentally break it but don’t realize it. If you were to rely only on your hosts’ backup files, you would have to know about this problem right away and restore the website very quickly.

If you don’t notice the problem for a week or so, then chances are that your hosting provider will make a backup of the bad website and then by the time you take notice, it could be too late to restore to a point in time when your site was not broken. Essentially they will have a backup of the broken site only! This has happened to several people I know and it is a common fear of the conscientious systems administrator. That is why we have elaborate hourly, daily, weekly and even monthly backup schemes.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

1. Make sure you have a recent backup of your database and files on your computer, or somehwere else other than your hosting account.
2. Review your backup files on a regular basis to make sure they are actually setup properly.
3. Make sure your backup schedule matches the frequency with which you blog or update your site.

Use a robust backup solution like Backupbuddy or Vaultpress. Both of these are paid solutions, but they offer peace of mind and if configured properly can save your butt in case of a successful hacking attack or fat-finger mistake that goes unnoticed for a while. Do NOT rely on someone else doing your backups especially your web host. You can find free backup plugins in the WordPress.org repository as well and some of them work great, but I know for a fact that these two I mentioned work wonders and have saved many people from a catastrophe.

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The next step was easier than I thought, I just had to delete dead pages or pages that never took off. A few weeks back I tried to just do it but I missed the option where I could do this and just kept putting it off. But it is actually super simple to delete a Facebook page.

Do it with caution. In coupled cases Facebook asked me for my password to confirm I wanted to delete that page; other cases the page was simply deleted it once I clicked on the confirmation button.

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I’m very excited but also disappointed (yes the bitching and moaning continues). Now that Vine is available for android, they have to go back and fix it. It is broken so much that it is almost unusable. When you do manage to get it to work then it’s cool and I got a few vines under my belt already if you want to check them out.

First a couple of the issues. Once you fire up the Vine app, after you hit the record button you can expect 5 – 20 seconds of “initializing” time. Most often than not that defeats the whole intent; usually the moment has passed.

Once the recording fires up and you record your vine you’ll notice that in longer segments of your recording, the audio has about a 50/50 chance of being totally and completely off-sync from the video.

Fine, you get your vine recorded and finally you say Yes!!! I got my vine ready and you hit the share button. You wait and wait, it’s “uploading to vine servers” and about 38 minutes later you’ll get a notice that says: “Post failed Tap to retry.” You’ll tap that over and over again with no results. Immediately after you hit tap to retry, it will fail again. Essentially wasting all of the 90 minutes you used up trying to get the vine app started, a recording done and tapping it to upload it.

In the off-shoot chance that you do get a vine to work, you should do a little happy dance because that will be one successful attempt out of about 67 of them. Be happy and lucky with that, don’t even dare ask where the Facebook share button is like in the iOS counterpart because it simply isn’t there. You can tweet it but that’s about it.

So I finally got it to work a few times and these are some of my vines:

Having a burger at The Counter in Irvine:

The forecast of my day:

Fueling up

Having a drink at the bar

The Corona dance

Getting ready for the cocktail mixer at the Home Business Summit

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But, really, why should you attend? (as if that wasn’t enough).

First, because we’ll have meetups that range from an informational overview type of meetup, to hands-on workshops and also social events like dot com lunches. The lessons learned will be powerful, the networking and support will be unparalleled. The value you will derive from being a member will be priceless. I guarantee you that much.

Second, because we are more than well qualified to lead you in this path. John Chow basically pioneered this lifestyle when he propelled his blog to making $40,000/month with just 2 hours of work each day, although he won’t admit it in public, or officially, I can guarantee you he makes way more than that now.

Mark Berkowitz is a marketing genius. Mark prefers to keep a low profile online, but Mark has led a company named Aptivo to be one of the top companies in their space and one of the highest rated apps in the Google Apps marketplace. His understanding of marketing, implementation and deployments is unparalleled.

And me, Oscar Gonzalez, I am the technical and social guy behind this. Having worked for startups and well established companies has given me an amazing breadth of experience in collaboration, team building, courseware design and delivery, design and implementation. And over the past few years my focus has been in marketing through social media and other online channels. After coaching and advising countless entrepreneurs and small business owners, I’ve decided to break this lose for everyone to benefit from what I’ve learned.

If the company you will be with isn’t enough to convince you that this is the place where you should be on Tuesday or Thursday evenings, perhaps the cost will be interesting to you. The cost will vary between free and your own cost to pay for lunch. Provided that our venue is hosted, we will host you for free. We want to share with you our knowledge and advice, and give you an opportunity to join us in this journey.

So what are you waiting for? RSVP here, our first event is next week on Thursday evening. Kick-off meetup. Living the Dot Com Lifestyle.

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It was pretty cool, check out the pictures and a video I made about it. By the way, this documentary should be out sometime next year or later this year and it should be pretty cool. John is just one of many subjects in the movie and it all revolves around the new economy that the internet has created.

The opportunities that are availalbe for everyone are amazing. John happened to capitalize on these opportunities earlier on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it today. In fact, he had many more obstacles than you do today. Back when whe started, many of these things we use everyday and we take for granted weren’t around, were too expensive or required extreme technical ability.

After the film crew finished, we headed out to run some errands on his new benz. Man, that thing is insane. Check out the little video we made on Driving with John Chow. I want my own benz like that, but it probably wouldn’t be good for me. I’ll stick to a sedan when I’m ready for it.

Driving with John chow is a lot of fun. This was episode #5 and I’ll be coming up soon on episode 9. Stay tuned for that.

The post Driving with John Chow episode 5, The Notagrouch Edition. appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

Check out the video I recorded, it’s short and to the point and LInda is much better at telling you what Passion4KIDS is all about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-TdJoNrs0A

Charles story is pretty amazing, I’m not going to tell it all to you because I’m sure I’ll butcher it, but I know he had a rough childhood. He grew up as an orphan during WWII, so you can imagine his outlook wasn’t too bright. But he persevered.

Charle’s is now over 70 years old now and has spent his life helping people. That’s the kind of person we all need to strive to be. I like helping people too, no, scratch that, I love helping people but I can’t tell you that at 70+ years old I’ll be out and about chugging along trying to change the world. I would like to imagine that I’ll be spending time with Helen in a tropical paradise, drinking fruity drinks with little umbrellas. But not Charles.

Charles developed a vitamin drink that is pretty amazing. I actually have tried it and it really made me feel better. But his efforts didn’t stop there, with his life-long goal to change the world, he’s using his vitamin company to help kids. This is what this post is all about. The other day I got a chance to have lunch with Charles and Linda and after lunch we headed out to the coffee shop 85°C (85 Degrees). This is where I got a chance to ask here to tell me more about the charity Passion 4 KIDS. Passion 4 KIDS is also one of those recursive acronyms I think. In their name, KIDS stands for Kids in Desperate Situations.

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This new meetup that I’ll be running with my friends Mark Berkowitz and John Chow is called the Dot Com Lifestyle because it will focust on helping you achieve the elusive but highly desired dot com lifestyle. This is a lifestyle of freedom as John says.

A little background.

I believe that John actually coined the term several years back, and it refers to the concept of having the financial freedom, to do anything you want with your time and do it from anywhere in the world. Entire books have been written about this idea. One example, the 4 hour workweek by Tim Ferris. This is Location, Time and Money freedom!

So when I started running meetups, I started with Smart and Social, but Smart and Social was too broad. I was going to teach you all about technology and blogging, websites, email and social media. But I found that we didn’t really have a clear focus. The answer to WHY? wasn’t clear.

Our focus is clear.

So we’re redefining it. The Dot Com Lifestyle will teach you technology, that is the main topic. But the focus is to learn all this stuff with the goal of quitting the 9 – 5 grind and making more than enough money from anywhere in the world. We will teach you how to run this lifestyle from your laptop, or ipad or even just an internet browser.

You’ll learn how to blog, how to do email, social media, google analytics, and all the other stuff you keep hearing about so you can actually make passive income and take control of your life.

We invite you to join. Now, just watch this video and join us.

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The show was hosted by F+ Gallery in Santa Ana, and the opening night was off the hook! A DJ was spinning beats, wine and beer kept people talking and for those that got the munchies, A bite truck was waiting to serve you some delicious treats. All in all, the night was full of win. I got to see Sam’s first solo art show take a life of its own, and I even got to meet one of the most popular bloggers from my blogging group.

If you’re looking for something to do in Orange County, I suggest you take a trip to F+ Gallery and check out the show, it will be there until the end of the month. F+ Gallery is at 661 Poinsettia St Santa Ana, CA 92701. You can also find them online, and of course you can find Sam Carter on his website as well. Here’s a little video and some snaps from the event.

12►

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Believe me, this event is life-changing and you should come with me and John. You’ve heard me tell you the stories, I’ve shown you pictures, videos and techniques from past events I’ve been to. These are good and I’ve learned a tremendous amount of information and made incredible connections. The secret that John doesn’t mention on this video is that in the event you’ll certainly learn quite a bit… but the extra benefit that makes this be worth it is the networking.

Everyone knows you don’t go to yale to “learn” and you don’t go to USC or UCLA to get a “degree” — those are just side benefits. Really, these universities are 4 year long networking events to put you in touch and connect you with possible partners employers and investors. The Home Business Summit will teach you all the techniques and methods required to grow your business or start an online based business… no doubt about that, but you will also get a huge bonus by just meeting people.

I’m anxious and excited about the event, I’m really looking forward to Friday night’s mixer (open bar) where we will get to know each other and start bouncing ideas and collaborating. Saturday we’ll put our heads down to learn and Sunday we’ll learn even more. I have not been this excited about an event in a long time. Best part about it is that many of my friends will be there so that we can network together and meet even more amazing people. See you there!

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The party was pretty much awesome and rumor has it that it was the best party in the world. That’s how we roll. Thank you to everyone that made it possible, hosts, sponsors, organizers and everyone that I probably forgot to mention in the video. Thanks for putting it together and letting me be a part of this great community. Enjoy

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I tried Viddy before, as an alternative to Vine for Android. It isn’t the same, or similar. Well, I guess you could call it similar because it lets you make a short little video and share it with your friends. But it has some issues and I obviously it ididn’t keep me interested for more than a week or two.

It makes me wonder, when will we see a true Vine app for Android. Like the real deal. To this day, I still find it perplexing that app developers continue to neglect the biggest smart-phone market (Android) in lieu of iOS. I know iOS is great, and I have nothing against the iPhone but why can’t app developers just make the apps for both. Do’nt answer, that’s a rhetorical question. I know the 1/2 dozen answers already.

But really, it took Instagram what? 3 years to come up with an Android version? When an app becomes very successful, I think it’s worth investing in the other platforms pretty much immediately. The momentum is there and you might as well capture the attention of both platforms. Nobody cares about Windows mobile or Blackberry so I won’t talk about those, but Android and iOS are a must.

I mean at the very least, Vine could come up with a Vine viewer for android. You know, a little app that could be used to watch vine videos that your friends share. Even that part is missing today! And definitely there is no android app just like vine. And I can’t find anything explaining how to get vine on Android, even as a hack.

So what are we left with?

I found a few ways of watching vines even without an iPhone. There are several vine online viewers that you can check out. These let you only watch or view the videos posted by vine users, but they don’t actually let you upload anything. To share vines, you still need the vine app.

View Vine Online

There is View Vine Online, which requires that you enter a username to watch the vines uploaded by that username. I don’t like this because I’d rather watch just a stream of vines or browse around to see what’s out there. This method is cumbersome and impractical, but it works if you know the person.

Vine Viewer

There is also Vine Viewer This is pretty good and it lests you browse through recent vine postings and it is pretty fresh so you can find new things everytime you load the page.

SeenVine

I found another one that is interesting. This one lists the users in columns and then you can click on the users to watch their vines. A couple of cool features about this one is that you can leave a Facebook comment or take the vines and embed them into  your own website. This one is called SeenVine. This is a cool place to find interesting vines. Like this one:

This one is from Joel McHale from The Soup

Here’s one from Seth Green

So what do you think about Vine? Are you using it? Are you Android or iPhone?

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When you have your why, your passion, your reason, that is when you’ll make breakthroughs. It sounds so idealistic, but it’s true. It is also essential.

Remember the movie A Beautiful Mind? In the closing sequence. He says: “I’m only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons.” He is speaking to his wife, and if you remember the story, you know how he lived through decades of paranoia, delusions and mental problems, despite being a genius. Yet deep inside, something kept him going, something made him fight through tick and thin. And it was her, that was his WHY.

I know it’s just a movie, but it illustrates the point clearly. You can’t have a reason that is selfish, not because that’s inherently selfish, but because the spirit of humans isn’t as strong when IT is for Oneself only. There must be a reason beyond ourselves that drives us.

In my case, my why is my family. My wife is everything to me, and my daughter has given me a new and even stronger reason. They are both my whys. We always have other reasons, and very valid they may be. Maybe your reasons are different, but they must stand the test of all the challenges, trials and tribulations that come your way.

Starting a business online, or from home just to make money, or just to quit your day job isn’t going to work. There must be more behind it. Maybe it is your passion to travel, or your desire to spend more time at home with your kids or wife. What is your Why?

So I ask you, and John asks you in the video, what is your why? — It’s funny that he made this video as I was about to write a post about how clients come to me with crazy projects all the time and my first question is “why?” and they can’t answer it 95% of the time. What is the reason? what is the why? If they can’t answer this clearly I don’t work with them.

You must have this answer crystal clear if you want to succeed on anything you do.

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The purists of social media will tell you this and that about organic growth, and relationship building, and puppies rainbows and unicorns. But the reality is that you can yap away in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all day long and get hundreds of people to visit your site. Unfortunately these will be (most likely) the wrong people.

Building a relationship is nice, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll achieve your goal with that relationship. It is better to attract the right people with whom  you want to build a relationship with. Doesn’t that make sense?

SEO is about getting the right people to your site, and the right people are those that are uniquely interested in your content, in your story, in what you have to say. SEO is about getting the right kind of traffic to your site, the kind of traffic that converts. You think your friends and family in Facebook will care about your latest product? Maybe. Will they buy it? Not likely.

This is a Review for

But, there are thousands of people that are looking for what you’ve got. The trick is letting Google know that you have the answer to those people’s problems. You have the information to answer their questions. That you are a valuable resource worth of brining up to the front page.

So what’s a blogger to do?

You can spend hours in your Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools, researching, segmenting and creating goals and whatever else you want. That’s good, learn how statistics work, learn how Google indexes your site. That’s good, but it’s also time consuming, tedious at times, and most often it is not what you want to be doing.

As a blogger, you want to blog. So my advice is to do that. Blog. Blog for you and your audience. Don’t worry too much about keywords and keyword density and all that stuff. Instead, write. Write often, write well, but just write.

Then let technology step in for you.

After you’ve written a few articles or blogposts, you can then take a look at how they’re doing. But there’s a better way than Google analytics and Google webmaster tools. Well, let me rephrase that, there’s a simpler and quicker way. That is HitTail.

How did I find HitTail?

I was hanging out at the masquerade party for Affiliate Summit with John Chow and Syed Balkhi and they kept talking about their long tail. LOL, and not that kind of tail. They were talking about their longtail keywords. It was all SEO talk. And they mentioned a tool called HitTail. So I decided to check it out and it turned out to be one of the best tools ever to come across my radar.

But you don’t have to go through this trouble, just go to HitTail.com and check it out.

The Lowdown on HitTail.

HitTail is an analytics tool that you can install on your website. Similar to Google Analytics, or Quantcast or other tracking tools. You install it by adding a small piece of code to your site, or if you have a WordPress based website, like the free ones I build then you can use a plugin. The purpose of HitTail is to show you how people are finding your website. This just makes sense to me. Instead of you trying to guess how people are going to search for you, why don’t you just let the facts guide you? Let your content sit out there for a little bit and see what kind of things people are typing into Google and leading them to your website. Then, and only then can you truly optimize your keywords.

HitTail is not a free service, but they have a free trial. After the free trial is over, prices range from 9.95 to 79.95 depending on how many websites and how much traffic there is to be analyzed.

The way HitTail works is that when you install it and it starts collecting information about your site, after a couple days you’ll be able to login to HitTail and see exactly what terms people used to find your website. Sounds familiar? Maybe a bit like Google Analytics… But this is way better.

I would say that HitTail embraces the utility paradigm of the Unix philosophy and that’s why I like it. Write programs that do one thing and do it well. And that is exactly what they do. There are no convoluted funnels and stats and tracking numbers. There are two statistics. The top ten keywords, and the long tail keywords. Technically they also show you total visits per month, total visits up to date, and forecasted visits for the month, but that’s it no complicated segments, etc.

The 80/20 rule applies to keywords too. Look at the percentages

So what are long tail keywords anyway?

Generally when you ask someone what their keyword is, they’ll tell you a one or two word keyword. Like “chocolate milk”, or coffee mugs. These are regular keywords, and millions of people probably search for that everyday, but guess what? these are super competitive, any one 1-word, or 2-word, even 3-word keyword is most likely a very competitive term. These terms will tend to be dominated by bigger websites with a big operating budget to be on the front page of google.

A better way to start ranking for google is to find the long-tail keywords that relate to those main keywords. For example: organic chocolate milk coupon, or left handed coffee mug. Can you see the difference? Many more people will be searching for the first examples I gave, but the long tail keywords are extremely focused. They’re also probably easier to target and try to rank for.

The Reveal.

HitTail will tell you that about 70 – 80% of your traffic comes from the long tail keywords searches, so do you think it is worth looking at? Of course it is. It would be nice if you could be on the frontpage of Google for a single term search, like “shoes” but what are the chances that you’ll beat Macy’s Zappos and Payless shoes anytime soon? Instead, you can beat them at the long tail keywords.

HitTail will help you in two ways. If you write like I suggest, for your audience, then HitTail will show you what keywords your new visitors are typing to find your site. Maybe there’s a phrase you use regularly that is attracting new visitors and clicks and you never imagined that this would be the case. So then you know that you should write more articles using that term. Slowly you keep building up the chain to shorter and shorter keywords.

Going back to the shoes example, a natural progression of building your SEO starting with HitTail could be to find that “orthopedic athletic shoes for seniors” is one of your longtail keywords, then as you improve your rankings, you can aim to make “athletic shoes for seniors” the next “shoes for seniors”, and then eventually something like “athletic shoes.”

This would allow you to eventually rank for both “regular” keywords and also longtail keywords and you could basically dominate your niche.

Exact searches people have performed also help you.

But you can use it in the opposite direction too.

But the other way that you can use HitTail is in the “negative” way. Perhaps you’ll notice that a keyword is being used very often to find you, but in fact it has nothing to do with your content. It could be a phrase you use, or a popular topic, or a popular phrase in a specific community like a country or group of people. But you’ll notice that the people coming in for that keyword just don’t convert. HitTail will show you the keyword and then you’ll have an “aha!” moment and you’ll be more conscious not to use that phrase and find the proper keywords instead and use them for your next article. And then of course, you would want to go back and edit those posts or pages that have the attractive, but ineffective keyword.

This last way of using HitTail is how I recommend you look at it at first, when you start blogging. Do not make assumptions, but let the stats and facts tell you what is working and what is not working. When I started using this tool, I was blown away by how many things I’d missed on my own site.

Easy to move from keywords to suggestions to to-do at the top.

So all this theory is nice, so what?

Well, you can find this information in other tools too, if you know how to use the tools and can manipulate them to do it and if you do it right. But like I said, HitTail is very easy to use. And the best part about it is that it guides you through an actionable process to improve your site. When you see the keywords in the dashboard, you can move the keywords to a “suggestions” section where you can review them in more detail. Once you decide you in fact want to use one of the keywords to help you optimize your site, or your next article, you can move it to your “todo” section. This simple but powerful system allows you to take action and not just look around.

The interface to order your keyword focused articles.

When you come back to your blog to write, you have an action plan and clear list of keywords that you should be focusing on. Now… that’s when you focus on keywords and keyword density and synonyms and all that stuff. One cool thing about HitTail that I haven’t used yet is that they also have one more service to offer. After you’ve moved your keyword from “keyword” to suggestion, to “to do”, you could actually request the expert SEO writers at HitTail to write an article for you based on that keyword. I like writing myself, but if you need to ramp up your traffic and ranking for a specific keyword, this article writing service could be an excellent tool for you.

In closing…

Don’t let all the mumbo jumbo of the SEO world intimidate you, don’t let the so called gurus and SEO experts try to swindle you. Educate yourself on how it all works and you’ll be better. Then you can hire someone to help if you need it, but chances are that you don’t need them. Try HitTail and see how people are finding you, then you can adjust as needed. The pricing is very decent given the fact this tool saves you time and energy like you wouldn’t believe.

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I say short because they’ve flown by, but really, they’ve been the most intense five months of my life. Working through running your own business, coordinating a massive move, leading a non-profit, mentoring a couple of other non-profits and generally doing what I do AND raising a child is no easy task. But I wouldn’t trade any of this for the world. And I have to also throw in a very heartfelt thank you to my supportive wife and family. Amazing stuff.

The one thing we’ve not had a chance to do is process and upload lots of videos we’ve made together with Claire. But I took a little time to create a quick update video for you guys and you’ll find it below.

If you want to see more of her… Claire Gonzalez, and Claire Gonzalez on Youtube.

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I knew the people with negative responses just didn’t know mucha about how it works. As I explained before, Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing and Internet Marketing are just fancy and specialized terms for promotional or performance based sales & commissions. You promote a product that you love, and in return the company rewards you when a new customer signs up.

It’s simple and it works. For those of you that are still skeptics, I thought I’d show you the payment I got yesterday. I get these regularly and they are increasing. One of the beauties of internet marketing is that as you create information and share it online, it stays there “forever” so work I did a month, two months or even six months ago continues to generate revenue. Even though I am no longer “working on it.”

That’s how people make passive income and say that they “make money while they sleep.” Anyway, here is a screenshot of one of my payments. This payout equates to about 2 hours of work. Wouldn’t you like to make $300/hour?

Trust me, affiliate marketing works. It’s not a scam, it requires work but once you get the hang of it, it’s easier than you think. Here’s the proof.

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Most of the home based entrepreneurs fail in their first year or two. Not because they have a bad product or service, but because they don’t know how to use the internet effectively. Things like email blasts, newsletters, traffic, SEO and converting visitors into customers. The Home Business Summit will teach you how to address those issues effectively and successfully.

I will be there along with some of my friends. Here’s how the seminar will go:
- Friday afternoon/evening there is a mixer and networking session.
- Saturday morning and all day you’ll be in intense learning sessions and at night we party.
- Sunday there’s half day more of learning and we’re done.

You can stay at the Hilton where the event will take place, or you can commute. I’ll probably be commuting since it is only 20 – 25 minutes away. But If you stay at the hotel, the event will refund your money if you don’t learn what you were there to learn.

I promise you’ll be amazed by what you learn. I’m going and hope you can come with me. Like I said, I can bring you in for free (so you have nothing to lose) but you have to sign up now the event is just about two weeks away. Let me know your email address below and I’ll send you the details and information. Limited spots are available for me to bring you in for free, otherwise it is $97 standard or $197 for the vip pass.

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We looked around for a bit but after a few walks back and forth, we decided to adopt Picasso. There he was, just chilling in his cage, the runt. We took him home and he has been with us ever since, making us smile, hanging out with us, keeping our feet warm at night. Everyone says this about their dogs, but truly Picasso is pretty awesome. He’s smart and playful, he is a terrier after all. Early on I taught him a few tricks and he picked them up really fast.

Picasso playing with his older “brother” Tyler.

Picasso stole my spot!

We were so bummed out when I came home after #dotcompho the other day and couldn’t find Picasso. He didn’t come running to greet me at the door as he usually does, I figured he was sleeping, tired from playing with his buddy Dexter; we’re dog sitting him for my brother in law for a week or so. But after a few minutes it was clear to me that Picasso just wasn’t in the house. My heart sank.

We just moved recently, about 3 – 4 weeks ago. The first 2 – 3 months are the most important months for a dog (or cat) to get acquainted with their new surroundings. You must be vigilant and attentive to their behavior during this time. Often they don’t understand what happened to “home” and all the familiar surroundings they were used to. Sometimes they may even think that the move is temporary and if they get an itch, they could try to make their way back home.

Picasso’s first walk.

Picasso is an explorer by nature, part of being a terrier I think so he loves wondering around but he always comes back so I knew something wasn’t right. We are not in the habit of letting him out unsupervised but from time to time he sneaks out and sprints for the next house or the hedges searching for rabbits, squirrels or lizards. That’s his thing. I asked evryone in the house if they had seen him and nobody really remembered when they saw him last, I had been gone for 2 – 3 hours so I started feeling even worse. 2 – 3 hours for a pet outside of their familiar surroundings can be devastating.

The new place where we live is pretty much in the hills. North Tustin is notorious for small winding roads carved into the hillside and this creates two major problems for small pets. Small winding roads with no sidewalks, and the wilderness entrenched within the neighborhoods, snakes, hawks, and coyotes are very common around here.

I thought he had been hit by a car or attacked by something. So thinking the worse and hoping for the best I got to work and went around the neighborhood, whistling and clapping (the usual call signs), also I think I knocked on about 100 doors within the vicinity of our new place. Nobody had seen him. I came back home and extended my search in my car, stopping to talk to all runners, bikers and walkers. Nope, haven’t seen him at all. At the same time I was doing this, Helen, my Sister in law and her husband, and even a couple of neighbors were looking for Picasso as well.

When we first brought Picasso home.

Drove to the pound, they wouldn’t tell me over the phone if a dog matched the description. They get a lot of dogs daily and I guess they don’t have the resources to field all the calls. Searched all the cages, calling, whistling, clapping. Nothing. Drove to the Irvine shelter, no luck either.

Taking a break at the beach

Just as I was driving back home, around the corner from our place I saw a neighbor pull into his driveway. I had stopped at his house earlier but nobody answered so this was one more opportunity to ask someone about Picasso. I did and he said, oh yes, my wife saw him earlier and a lady picked him up. Come inside, let’s talk to my wife. So I did and she described the events that basically renewed my hopes and put me at ease.

Apparently this lady had seen Picasso pretty much wondering in the street and tried to get him to come with her and at the same time a person stopped by and offered to help. Turns out this other person knew exactly what to do and took charge of the situation. She took Picasso with her and told my neighbor that she would look for a microchip and try to return him to the owners. I left my neighbor’s house with a renewed sense of hope and motivated to post signs around the neighborghood. Got to work on a flyer, printed about 30 copies of it and with tape on hand I headed out to cover the area.

The next morning I continued my search. I pretty much got to know the entire neighborhood and all the intricate roads and pathways around. No luck. But I was hoping that the same person that picked him up would drive by again and see my signs. I ran out of signs so I headed over to Office Depot to get extra copies made and found out that they will actually make 50 copies of your flyer when you’ve lost a pet. That’s nice of them so I got my 50 copies and headed back to the search.

Running at the beach

We had to leave soon for an engagement and as I was getting ready to leave my phone rang. I did not recognize the number so my heart started racing, I picked up anxiously waiting for good news. The person in the other end identified herself and after her name she said …and I found Picasso.

She had gone out that morning to post signs to let us know Picasso was found and before she posted any of them she saw our sign. What a great turnout right!? I picked Picasso up about 10 minutes later. He was very happy to see me and of course I was too.

Picasso the visionary

The cool part of the story is how well these things worked out. The lady that picked Picasso up actually runs the Saddleback Animal Hospital so she knew exactly what to do and had the equipment to scan Picasso’s microchip and trace him back to us (but his chip hadn’t been updated). I wasn’t going to put signs up, thinking that they never work but this time they actually served their purpose perfectly.

After I picked him up we rode back home as we usually do, windows down, nose in the wind, ears flapping. That’s a happy dog.

Thank you Saddleback Animal Hospital! And everyone that shared my facebook post, tweeted out my message and helped me search for him. You are all amazing.

The post The Story of our Found Dog, Picasso. appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

The getaway comes with amazing stuff. You get to hang out with the App Sumo guys (ubersuccessful company) and a lot more. Check out the list of goodies in this amazing package:

• 5 nights in a huge mansion.
• Flights to/from Seattle.
• Libations for a week.
• Meals cooked by a private chef.
• Access to a designer, sales and development experts.
• 1 week consultation with Noah: He doesn’t normally do this

So if you’re an entrepreneur and want some good advice and tips and help from the pros, check it out. This is an all expenses paid trip to Seattle.

AppSumo has been recognized by TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Cnet, and many others as a leader in their industry. AppSumo is more or less a marketplace for apps that benefit entrepreneurs and startups and even established companies, the apps usually come in bundles or at really deep discounts. You can think of it more or less like a groupon for apps. I love their offerings and have bought a couple of things in the past. Once in a while they have free stuff as well.

So how do you win? Well, they’re going about it the new giveaway route. You have to go here and enter. You have many ways of entering to win, you can do it through Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and even pinterest. The giveaway will be short lived because the event is in June July, so you have a chance to win because not everyone will hear about it in time. I’ve already entered but if they allow additional daily entries, I’ll be going back each day. This would be an awesome trip to attend.

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food + beer + entrepreneurs = awesome

I’m honored to be the leader in the Orange County chapter for Free Lunch Friday, and I would really love it if you came out to check out what we’re all about. Free Lunch Friday is a non-profit organization and we are building a community to bring startups and entrepreneurs together for a free lunch & beer. Yes, really. The goal is to connect them to one another and to foster the relationships that make everyone successful. Our website says it best:

You’ve heard the old saying, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Well, we are busting that myth wide open.

FLF (Free Lunch Friday) believes to feed our global economy we need to start by feeding our startups and entrepreneurs. And to do that we are launching FLF locations around the world where startups and entrepreneurs will gather on the last Friday of every month for real human interaction and community. At these locations you can connect with startups, entrepreneurs, mentors, experts, partners, and investors all while enjoying some free, beer, and great community.

I attended the first ever FLF in Santa Monica in January of this year and soon after, my friend Emily (@emilyquestions) asked me if I would lead Orange County. And so I jumped in and along with Patt Ryan from ROC, became the leader for the new location. I never imagined what I had signed up for. The journey so far has been amazing, rewarding and extremely educational. Each time I start the event, with microphone in hand and my co-leader next to me I’m usually nervous as hell. Palms are sweaty, voice cracks, but I get it done.

The format of the event is simple. Register, check in, get connected and grab some food and drinks. Hang out for a bit, then our keynote speaker shares insights, stories or advice on start-ups, entrepreneurship  business ownership and other related topics. Talks are about 20 minutes and we have just the keynote speaker. After this is over then the rest of the time is networking.

Chris Lema presenting on High Performers.

The location for Free Lunch Friday in Orange County is unique. It is not a single city but it represents all the smaller cities that are teeming with new ideas and startups and entrepreneurs. And it’s not just small businesses that reside in Orange County. Some of the world’s largest companies and enterprises have offices or headquarters in Orange County. Entrepreneurship is in our DNA.

Each Free Lunch Friday location follows the same format so that no matter where you are in the world, you can find community, connections and content in a familiar environment. We have a few cities deployed in the United States already but we’re aiming for many more and going global as well. But we can’t do it without you. Please come, bring your co-founder, your investor, your developer, your team. Come tell us what you’re doing and how you’re doing. Meet new people. COLLABORATE.

May’s speaker will be Robert Cardoza Ph.D., he is one of my mentors and good friend and he will be speaking about the financial aspects of starting a business and growing it into profitability. Robert has been a financial planner and advisor for over 30 years and he is extremely well qualified to help all of us entrepreneurs get our finances in order so that we can succeed. Robert was the host of Robert Cardoza Live, a primetime radio show in the Inland Empire until he switched gears and now hosts his own national television show On The Street. You don’t want to miss his talk!

So come join me for lunch and beer. Save the date and RSVP, the event is May 31st. We have limited spots available and unfortunately we have to limit attendance to about 100 people. Please be sure to RSVP as soon as possible to make sure you have a seat available. To RSVP visit http://www.thefreelunchfriday.com/flf-orange-county/

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• What will I learn?
• I already have a home based business, why would I need to attend?
• What else is going on?

So here are the answers:

By attending the Home Business Summit in Long Beach, you’ll learn about traffic generation, email marketing, online advertising and traffic conversion. In other words, you’ll learn all the stuff you need to make your business grow online. These are the ingredients that most homem based entrepreneurs miss. Many of them will never find out how this works and will eventually close their business, it’s a sad thing really because the techniques aren’t rocket science. So you’ll learn a lot about generating quality traffic for your site.

John is specifically going to cover how to brand yourself, brand growth and how to be an expert in your field.

Friday night, we’ll have a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres mixer and networking. Then the next day is a full day of intense learning. Lunch of course, then at night we have the VIP party.

Sunday will have a half day session and will cover more learning.

I’m not as eloquent as I’d like to be and I’m also a newbie at this (even though I’ve been doing it for a long time). I’m one of those people I mentioned earlier. I have been doing so much stuff that should generate money but for the longest time, it didn’t make any money. I didn’t start making money with my online ventures until I learned several techniques and methods from John himself. These techniques were so “obvious” after looking back at them, but they weren’t obvious when I was looking for them.

But I’ll let John give you the answers to these questions. I asked him on video during our Saturday lunch in Irvine. Watch the video, it’s only 2 min long.

The post What will you learn at the Home Business Summit? appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

My buddy Picasso is missing. Yesterday he left the house and didn’t come back. I asked around the neighborhood and posted flyers and all that stuff. Apparently someone may have picked him up with hopes of finding his home. He is microchipped but we haven’t heard anything yet.

If you are in Tustin California, in the North Tustin, Tustin Foothills, North Hills, and that area by Foothill Highschool I’d appreciate it if you could ask your neighbors and pass this post around. Maybe the power of sharing in facebook and twitter and with Google we can find him.

Details:

• Picasso
• Beige Terrier
• 15-20 pounds
• Fresh shave so he doesn’t look too scruffy.
• Call the number in the picture if you have info
• Call 949 459 3571
• Or Contact me via this website

I hope you can help me if you’re in the area. He has more pictures on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/picasso.gonzalez

The post *UPDATE* *FOUND* – Help Me Find my Missing Dog Picasso #Tustin #NorthTustin appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

If you want to know how to get  a ticket, enter your info below and I’ll email you back right away.

(as always, your email is safe with me. This is strictly for me to send you more information, if you want to join my newsletter, you have to sign up separately.)

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So smart business people noticed the demand and The Kicking Crab opened up just a couple years back. They now have at least two locations that I know of. One in Costa Mesa, on Bristol between Sunflower & Macarthur. And one at the Diamond Plaza on Jamboree and Alton in Irvine. The Irvine location is a bit small so you have to wait there as well, albeit not as long as at Boiling Crab.

But my Wife and I had a date night the other night, no baby and just us so we decided to go to it and have some cajun spicy seafood. The food you get there is messy and tasty. You can get really mild level of spiciness or go crazy for the super hot stuff. On the menu, the popular items are the crawfish, shrimp, crab and lobster. Everything else is good too, but you go there to get your hands dirty and have a beer. It just works like that.

Overall, the experience we had this night was great. We always have a good time there, the staff is friendly and the food never disappoints. Daniel was our server and he was always attentive and took great care of us. If you get the chance to try this place, I’d highly recommend it. If you think this isn’t for you, for whatever reason, reconsider. Invite someone that has experienced and have them show you the ropes. Many people are pleasantly surprised when they get over the fact that you have to peel your shrimp and crawfish and your hands will get dirty. The experience is great, the flavors are amazing and it’s just a fun experience.

The post The Kicking Crab appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

But what’s cool about Long Beach, is that In just about a month, June 7 – 9 The Hilton in Long Beach will be hosting one of the most important events for Small Business owners and home business owners as well as entrepreneurs. Pretty much like me. The Home Business Summit will have world class speakers teaching you the tools and techniques to make 100,000 in 12 months and more.

Why did I call it double trouble? You’ve probably heard me tell you a story or two about going to past events with John, I went to Affiliate Summit earlier in January, we also went to one of Joel Bauer events last year and every single one has been worth every penny. John’s way ahead of me a far as numbers go, but I see extremely nice results from attending these events. Not only do you learn what is making money (as it is for me), but you also get to meet these experts in person. Or at least have a chance to if you just go. But as my guest, I’ll be sure to introduce you to them.

So this time, John and I both would like to invite you again, check out the video below:

(as always, your email is safe with me. This is strictly for me to send you more information, if you want to join my newsletter, you have to sign up separately.)

And now we’ve removed the financial obstacle for you to attend. Come learn, have fun and grow your bank account with a real business model and strategy that works. This is the event you want to attend if you plan on making money on your home business this year.

The post John Chow and Oscar Invite you to the Home Business Summit appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

But menus are special because they can be organized very differently based on the website owner’s vision or the needs of the company or product. Thankfully, WordPress makes it very easy to customize the menus on the themes. At least the order and naming of each menu tab, or menu item. Things like colors or font or other design-type of cusomizations may or may not be available on your particular theme. You could always customize a lot of those elements using CSS, but we’re not going into CSS today.

So the menus on WordPress can be arranged in whatever order you want, simply by clicking and dragging. If you want a menu that has other sub-menus that appear only when you move your mouse over them, then you just click and drag that menu so it is indented in the menu structure. If you want to change the “About us” Page, to “Learn About Us” or simply “About” you just click on the name and edit it. It’s that simple.

Go ahead and give it a try, or watch this video and see how it’s done.

The post How to Customize the Menus on your WordPress website appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

Special thanks to my own Mother, for I would not be here, or be who I am without you and all the efforts and sacrifices you made. Thanks for the best sister and for being an inspiration, a guiding light. Love you.

La Perra mayor, La Perra Menor y El Desquiciado.

The post Happy Mother’s Day Moms appeared first on Oscar Gonzalez' Blog. Notagrouch.com.

Here’s the scoop:

During the Home Business Summit coming to Long Beach, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from the pros. They’ll teach you how to make your online experience a successful one. They believe in this so much (and I do too) that they’ve made it so you can’t lose. If you sign up for the event (limited seats are available) you will have access to all the event and sessions and if at the end of the summit, you feel like you didn’t learn how you can make 100,000 dollars in 12 months, your ticket and hotel stay will be refunded. That kind of guarantee means this is something special and I would go based just on that. But here’s one more reason why you definitely should go! I will pay for you, come as my guest!

But let me tell you about my friend first…

My friend John Chow and other home business experts and success stories will be presenting you with the tools and knowledge to finally make money from your home business. Or start a home based business from scratch. You’ll be able to spend more time with your kids, your family, or doing things you love instead of being stuck in a cubicle 8 hours a day.

As you might have read, I’ve known about John Chow for almost 7 years now. Well I knew of him for about 5 years because of his money making blog. But met him two years ago unexpectedly.

One day by sheer luck, karma, fate, intervention or  whatever you want to call it, he showed up at one of the meetups I go to all the time in Orange County. Turns out he had moved to Irvine, from Vancouver. Nobody at the meetup knew him so I got to introduce him to the group and meet him in person. This was just under two years ago, so I got to meet him in person and we quickly became friends. Ever since, John has been not only an inspiration, but a coach and a mentor and a close friend.

Like most self employed people out there, I’ve been led down the wrong path with various enticing stories on how to make money online. I’ve bought systems like the ebay auction system, I’ve signed up for get-quick-rich schemes and they all are worth crap. Trust me, I’ve made money online alright, just never did it by using one of those systems. I have a traditional business with clients and all the stuff that comes with running your own business. But having a home business is just like any other business. You have to dedicate time to its development, growth and you have to treat it like a business. Most people don’t do that but expect to become the next rags to riches stories overnight. But there is an easier way.

What does it take to make money online?

Those that have been making a real living online will tell you that it takes work, perseverance and knowledge. Anyone can be a hard worker and most of us can persevere through thick and thin if we have a goal in mind. But knowledge doesn’t come very easily. Yes, you can google anything you want and find answers at your fingertips in just a couple of clicks, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, or what steps to take next, searching may be one of the biggest distractions you’ll find.

You need guidance, and just like John has been a guiding light for me, along with other experts online, you too need guidance and expert knowledge in order to make your online business succeed. It wasn’t until last summer and earlier this year that I started seeing good results from my efforts online. I finally put my ego aside (thinking that because I’m technical  I’d know it all) and started following the guides step by step. The results are pretty remarkable. I’ve used the techniques and systems for myself and also for my clients.

Remember you’ve got nothing to lose, I will pay for you to attend!

That’s right, I will pay for you to go. I will invite any of my readers or friends to go as my special guest and so if you meet me there, I will give you $100 cash to pay for your ticket. So you’ll have better than 100% guarantee. You’ll have the money back guarantee offered by the event, and I will pay for your ticket as well.

So if you want to know how to get me to pay for your ticket, then enter your email below and I will send you more information but I can only do this for a limited number of people, so don’t wait.

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