TikTok has taken the world by storm, it started as the mobile app Musical.ly. Now it boasts billions of downloads and somewhere around 800 million monthly active users.

Recently TikTok seems to have added the ability to go beyond the mobile app and allow the users to upload videos directly from their computer or laptop. Using a normal browser, you can now upload videos to TikTok.

This is really useful if you're creating videos on a regular movie editor like Final Cut Pro, or Adobe Premiere, DaVinci or something else.

The only caveat is that you don't have access to all the same tools when you upload to TikTok through your desktop or laptop. Here's a short video on how to upload to TikTok from your computer.

Video: How To Upload To TikTok From Your Laptop or Desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw773GbfMv8

The post How to Upload to TikTok From Your Computer appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Today, Twitter is vastly different. Most people come to Twitter to absorb information about their favorite topics. The other majority is looking for information curated by the people they consider experts or knowledgeable about a specific topic.

The landscape of the Twitter world has changed dramatically due to technical changes and shifts in internet culture. That's not to say that you can't make personal connections and grow your business using Twitter.

One of the notable things that has changed for businesses is the fact that it's almost required for a business to have a Twitter account.

Having an account isn't enough though. It's like a muscle, you have to use it and exercise it if you want it to grow and give you results.

You, as a spokesperson for the business, must nurture and work on the account regularly. It's great to talk to your prospects, existing customers and anyone that might be friendly to you or your cause.

But if you have that covered, what else can you do to leverage Twitter?

If you want more Twitter traffic, share your content on Twitter

Sharing your own content on social media must be a part of your plan to grow your business and influence. This sentiment is shared by most of the top online business people and influencers. Even if they don't tell you that they're doing this, their actions usually reflect this.

But some of the helpful social media and online marketing experts, like Neil Patel, actually teach these techniques. Neil suggests that we share 10+ articles which go back to our content, each day.

He also talks about how to grow your audience on Twitter fast on this video:

But Twitter can be exhausting, after you talk to people, and respond to conversations pertinent to your interests and objectives, you may feel too tired or overwhelmed to share your own content. And didn't Neil say to share your posts 10 times each day IF you already have a lot of followers?

What if you don't have 200,000 followers or more like Neil does?

The actual number of times you should share your own articles each day may vary by a number of factors, like how many articles you have and how many followers you have.

If you have a few hundred followers, you may annoy them really fast if you share 10 or more articles about your own stuff every day; this could hinder your growth and hurt existing or budding relationships.

But you can determine the right number of articles for yourself by experimenting. Maybe you share 10 articles total, four that are yours, and six about the industry by other influencers or media outlets. Maybe you can switch that ratio.

Play with those numbers, but remember that if you want more Twitter traffic, share more stuff on Twitter. BTW, if you agree with that by now, do me a favor and hit the following Tweetable quote just by clicking on it.

If you are skeptical or hesitant to share a lot of your own stuff, I totally understand, in fact, I had a question about sharing other articles instead of mine and how I should split that ratio. I didn't expect it, but Neil actually answered my question right away:

By the way, my traffic did go up, significantly.

But even if you could magically determine the exact number of times you should share your own content, the problem remains the same for you. If you don't schedule all these articles at once, you have to consciously share the articles every day at random times throughout the day.

This is exhausting, and time-consuming. Add to that the fact that you are also trying to respond to people on Twitter or initiate conversations, and run a business, you may feel like giving up quickly.

I get it, it's a lot of work.

But technology and tools are here to make our lives easier, don't overcomplicate things.

Use the right techniques and tools, as Neil suggests and as I show you in the video below, you can schedule all your own content to be shared in advance, on a set schedule. You can set this up once a week, or once a month and schedule all of your content.

On a future blog post, I'll show you how to weave your own content with niche content by other influencers in your industry so that you can keep a healthy and interesting balance of content. Make sure you subscribe, or follow me so you don't miss it if you want to see that.

But here's the video I made explaining how to use Buffer's power scheduler feature to accomplish what we've been talking about.

This is one of the strategies that has helped me triple my Twitter followers. By the way, if you aren't following me, you can right here: @Notagrouch.

TL;DR

In conclusion, you should have a Twitter account to help you grow your business. One of the strategies to grow on Twitter and get more traffic from Twitter to feed your business is to share relevant content that you've created on top of the regular, one-to-one interactions with your followers.

The easiest way to do this is to schedule all your own content in advance using a tool like Buffer coupled with the technique I demonstrated in the video.

I'm in the draft mode for another post that will simplify this process even further, and will make you a Twitter powerhouse without breaking the bank. Make sure you stick around or subscribe to my list to get notified when that comes out. Of course, you can also get notified if you follow me on Twitter.

Have you tried this before? Are you hesitant? I love teaching and sharing my expertise, but I also want to hear back from you about this and would love to know if you've done this, or not. If yes, what kind of results have you seen and if you haven't done this, why not?

The post How To Schedule Your Content on Twitter Once a Month appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

As I've been working on optimizing WordPress, I decided to take a look at the server side of things. If you're looking to improve the performance of your website, this may be useful for you. Please keep in mind the things in here are exclusive for VPS or Dedicated type of servers, they will not work with shared hosting or managed hosting, but may work for other hosts besides Inmotion Hosting.

If you haven't done so yet, you may need to configure SSH first so you can access your server from the command line and do the stuff I talk about here. Check if your host allows you to do that, and how to set it up. If you have a VPS with InmotionHosting, you can setup SSH as explained here.

Most web hosts allow you to ssh into your VPS.

As a quick disclaimer, I run all the commands listed here as root. This can be risky so be careful when you're running this on your server; you should always run commands with your own username and use sudo to run commands as root when needed. But I'm awesome, and I live dangerously, so I run as root, deal with it.

Turning off unnecessary services.

The first thing you should do with any server if you're going to optimize it for performance is to turn off unnecessary services. There are usually a half dozen or more services that run on every server but aren't needed, they're there for your convenience and just in case.

Conversely, you should know and remember that if you turn these services off and you need them later, you'll need to turn them back on.

How to find out what services are running.

Depending on the operating system your server is running, you'll need to run some commands to see what services are running. In my case, my server is running CentOS which is a spinoff from RedHat. To find out what's running on a RedHat server, you can  run these commands:

service --status-all

To narrow down to a much smaller and useful list of stuff you can run this command:

chkconfig

And to eliminate even more noise, we can filter the output of the chkconfig command to just the stuff that is running right now at our runlevel, like this:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig |grep 3\:on

That command shows only what's running right now under runlevel 3. Let's take a look:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig |grep 3\:on
apf            	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
atd            	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
cpanel         	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
crond          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
exim           	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
fastmail       	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
filelimits     	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
httpd          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ip6tables      	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ipaliases      	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
iptables       	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
mailman        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
messagebus     	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
modules_dep    	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
mysql          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
named          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
netfs          	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
network        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
nscd           	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
psacct         	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
pure-ftpd      	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ror            	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
rpcbind        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
rsyslog        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
saslauthd      	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:off	5:off	6:off
sshd           	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
sysstat        	0:off	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
udev-post      	0:off	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
vzquota        	0:on	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:on

From the services listed (notice the 3:0n column) that are running, most of them are necessary for the proper operation of the server. The ones I am questioning are exim, fastmail, mailman and ror.

My server doesn't work as an email server and I don't want it to be a relay, the first 3 services I listed are related to mailserver stuff. If I know my stuff, then I'm willing to bet that those services aren't needed for my WordPress site to operate properly.

But what about email sending from WordPress? WordPress sends email out sometimes, like when there are updates, or sometimes certain plugins send updates and alerts. I believe that the sendmail script is all that's needed for that, but I decided to test this theory.

Then the 4th service I found suspect is ror which is the Ruby on Rails service. I don't have any ROR apps running so I don't know why that would even be active.

Turning services on and off

You can turn a service off and on with a simple command:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig servicename off

That turns off a service named servicename. Changing "off" to "on" turns it back on. Note that this command is temporary until the server restarts, so if you make a mistake or shut down a service that you shouldn't have turned off, you may need to reboot the server and the service will restart automatically.

This is how I test to see if I need a service. I first turn it off and then check the site, then if all works fine, I make the service permanently turned off, so it stays that way even after the server restarts. You can see more information on how to use the chkconfig utility here.

To make a service stay turned off permanently, I use this command:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig --level 3 servicename off

Testing services before making permanent changes

To verify that the services I want to disable will not affect my WordPress site and prevent it from sending email, I'll turn off each one at a time and then test my site's ability to send an email. In this case, I'm using a basic contact form from WP Forms to make sure sending email still works.

So I run this command to turn off exim:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig exim off

I then use the test contact form to confirm the site can still send email, I also check the inbox to make sure I received the message. If you're going to follow my steps, I also recommend you test all this before you make any changes to the services running to make sure it's all working fine to begin with.

After I turned off exim, I could send messages just fine. Next up fastmail.

root@servername [~]# chkconfig fastmail off

This also resulted in being able to send emails fine. Next is mailman.

root@servername [~]# mailman mailman off

I turned off all four services, fastmail, mailman, exim, and ror without any adverse side effects. So the next step is to permanently turn off each of those services, like this:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig --level 3 fastmail off
root@servername [~]# chkconfig --level 3 exim off
root@servername [~]# chkconfig --level 3 mailman off
root@servername [~]# chkconfig --level 3 ror off

To confirm that all the changes are permanent, I rebooted my VPS using the restart server button from my Inmotion account dashboard. I don't use the built in reboot or shutdown command from the command line because the server never seems to come back up if I do that. There must be a routine that happens when the server is rebooted from the dashboard instead of the command line so keep that in mind if you feel like restarting your server from the command line.

I confirm one more time with the chkconfig command to list what is running on runlevel 3:

root@servername [~]# chkconfig |grep 3\:on
apf            	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
atd            	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
cpanel         	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
crond          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
filelimits     	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
httpd          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ip6tables      	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ipaliases      	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
iptables       	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
messagebus     	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
modules_dep    	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
mysql          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
named          	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
netfs          	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
network        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
nscd           	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
psacct         	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
pure-ftpd      	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
rpcbind        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
rsyslog        	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
saslauthd      	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:off	5:off	6:off
sshd           	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
sysstat        	0:off	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
udev-post      	0:off	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
vzquota        	0:on	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:on

Notice the services are not listed as being "on" for runlevel 3, success! There are a few other services that other sysadmins would question, like named. In my case, I'm pretty sure that I need everything else listed here for now.

While the active resources that these services may not be very significant, I don't need any mail services running. I also noticed in my mail logs that spammers have been trying to use my server as an email relay, turning off all mail related services should help minimize this activity. To be sure that gets shut down as well, I should turn off all ports that aren't needed. I will tackle that in another post soon.

Conclusion

If you want to start squeezing every bit of performance out of your VPS server, this is an example of some of the things you can do. In this case, I showed you how I turned off 4 services that were running but not being utilized. They may not impact your server significantly, but every bit counts and this is easy to do so why not start with this. You may have other unused services running, but this should be a good guide to show you how to find said services, test them and then turn it off if they're not needed.

The post Server Performance Improvements for WordPress – Turning off Services appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But Youtube has some flaws, and one of those is the subscription system. If you use Youtube on a regular basis, you know that most channels encourage you to subscribe to them so you can stay up to date with their videos.

Obviously, after a while, you may end up being subscribed to hundreds or even thousands of Youtube channels.  What happens then is that Youtube can't notify you of all the updates. It wouldn't be practical.

Youtube came up with a solution for this, and they introduced the "subscription bell," a little icon that is available next to the subscription button on each channel. This bell icon lets you tell YouTube that you want "all notifications" from this channel. You can think of it as a priority status for that subscription compared to the other subscriptions.

But this doesn't solve the problem of too many notifications. You may have a thousand subscriptions and clicked the bell on 300 of those to receive all their alerts. But if those 300 channels are very active, then this is not a solution either.

I got sick of this notification mayhem and decided to unsubscribe from all Youtube channels so I could start from a blank slate. I went to the Youtube settings to look for a way to unsubscribe from all channels. No luck! Youtube wouldn't want me to unsubscribe from all channels because it would go against their goal to keep me on their site for a longer period of time.

So I went to use one of my favorite tools to make an unsubscribe script for Youtube. This tool is called iMacros, it's free. Even though it works with Firefox or Chrome, I think it works much better with Firefox, so that's what I used.

The following video shows you how it works and some of the basics. After the video, there are a few notes and also a download option for the script so you can just start using it yourself right away.

How to unsubscribe from all youtube channels, notes.

You need to install iMacros as an extension for Firefox.

If you want to subscribe to some channels after you have unsubscribed from all, I recommend that you back up your subscriptions first. You'll find the backup option on the bottom right of your Subscription management page. This option will let you download an OPML file which you can read with an RSS reader like Feedly.

Use this unsubscribe method at your own risk! Youtube doesn't have an interest in making it easy to mass-unsubscribe from all channels; they have an interest in selling advertising. One of their goals is to keep you on the site as long as possible, and they accomplish this by trying to show you content you would be interested in based on your previous watch history and subscriptions.

Using a script to unsubscribe is probably not something Youtube would endorse or encourage so use it your own risk. It's for this reason that I deliberately made the script with lots of pauses and time delays. The script is intended to be convenient, not to be fast.

If you are pushing the boundaries and Youtube decides to prevent you from unsubscribing quickly, you'll see a screen like this when running the script:

All you have to do at that point is wait a minute or two and then start the script again.

You can run the script manually, and it will unsubscribe you from 25 channels. Just use the "Play" button.

To run the script mostly automatically you should use the "Play (Loop)" option and specify the "Max" number of loops to run through. I ran the script ten times at a time, and this made it so that I unsubscribed from about 250 channels at a time. See screenshot below:

You'll notice that the script has a screenshot command, this is to take a screenshot of your subscriptions before it unsubscribes you from the first 25 listed on that page. If you don't want to keep screenshots, you can just delete that entire line. Screenshots are saved to the designated "Downloads" folder for iMacros.

If you want to remove the time delays (not recommended), you can delete the lines that say this:

SET !VAR1 EVAL("var randomNumber=Math.floor(Math.random()*4 + 2); randomNumber;")
WAIT SECONDS={{!VAR1}}

I recommend if you're going to "loop" the script to do a few hundred unsubscriptions at a time, you leave the last time delay so that there's a pause each time that the loop starts over. This delay may prevent Youtube from flagging your account or limiting you and showing you the 504 error I described above.

I was able to run the script on ten loops, and it only gave me the 504 error twice, depending on your Youtube usage and other factors you may not see it at all or you may see it more frequently. If you see the error every time it loops, you should log out of Youtube, clear your cache and log back in.

For more documentation and information on iMacros, you may want to take a look at the extensive documentation they offer in their Wiki here.

The script is here. Download it to your computer, put it into one of the iMacro folders, then play it through Firefox using the iMacro commands.

The script is herehttps://notagrouch.com/wp-content/uploads/youtube-unsubscribe.zip. Download it to your computer, put it into one of the iMacro folders, then play it through Firefox using the iMacro commands.

The post How To Reset Your Youtube Subscriptions appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The InstaWealth Growth System is part of the Wolfmillionaire offering, and as a matter of disclosure, I did not get paid or compensated to do this review in any way. As with all my reviews, these are my thoughts and opinions on this product. You can find the course at Wolfmillionaire.com

The first chapter didn't do a whole lot for me. I've been using Instagram for a while, and I know the ins and outs of the app, settings and all that stuff.

There were a few tips I picked up along the way but nothing earth-shattering yet. You may find that this is the case for you if you're also experienced with Instagram already. However, this is a comprehensive course so it makes sense that Chapter 1 would be a complete overview of all the basics of setting up your Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BS37gSSheLJ/

Based on this approach, if you're new to Instagram or are ready to dive in seriously, I highly recommend you go through this and take notes.

If you're completely new to Instagram, I would suggest you complete all 12 modules before you do anything on Instagram because some of the modules later in the chapter connect back to some of the first modules.

If you have had an account for a while and have been active, then you should go through Chapter 1 and fill in the gaps as you go to make sure your profile is all tidy and ready for the next sections.

Below are my comments from each module for Chapter 1

Chapter 1 has 12 modules.

Chapter 1 Intro video

Basics, intro, setting up the expectations for the course and quick overview. The introduction covers all the basic stuff from the get-go; this is ideal for anybody that is totally brand new to Instagram or someone that might want to give their profile a "once over" to make sure everything is tidy and ready for growth.

Chapter 1 - module 1

This section covers the differences between the two mobile operating systems: iOS and Android. Good tips that will help power users decide between the two platforms.

Chapter 1 - module 2

Suggests creating a brand new email address to prevent hacking and phishing attacks. Explains why and when you'll need it.

Chapter 1 - module 3 (iOS / Android)

This module covers creating an Instagram account using either iOS or Android. Covers name, username, password and best security practices. Expect a full walkthrough of the account setup process for each platform.

Chapter 1 - module 4

This module covers all the Instagram settings for each version of the app, iOS/Android.

Account verification and configuring all the settings. It's a complete walkthrough of all the fields and options available. It explains why you should use different things for each field. You think you should just use your real name? Think again.
Anthony covers all the icons, menus, notifications, linked accounts, and privacy settings sections.

Simple yet powerful tips for bio design, using the right email address, link and more in your bio. Overall a good chapter to help you get a good foundation for your Instagram account. A good review for existing Instagram users.

Chapter 1 - module 5

I noticed the first "mistake" with a blatant spelling error in the title of this module. Most people would criticize this as being careless or low-quality, but being a content creator myself I can overlook this. So far the content and training videos have been really good, so this doesn’t bother me.

Great chapter to help you protect your account against hackers and thieves. Best practices and tips to help Instagram recover your account for you should you ever have a problem with it. Also, covers how to get in if you lose or forget your password.

Chapter 1 - module 6

This module dives further into the configuration for bio, including picture and details for a better bio. A couple of neat little tricks to make your bio stand out and be more efficient. Some of the differences between using a photo vs. a logo.

Chapter 1 - module 7

This is an interesting module, it’s about 18 minutes of analyzing profiles of over 15 accounts. Covers the good and the bad, and how each profile might be improved upon with small tips and tweaks.

Chapter 1 - module 8

This section covers how to set your link in your bio to maximize its effectiveness. One of the things I disagree with is using a bit.ly link.

I think Bit.ly should be the last option to make a short link. Instead, I would recommend using your blog to create a redirect or use a custom URL shortener with your own short domain using something like Linktrackr.

If you want to link to a social media profile, you can use your own website to create a redirect to make the link look clean like Anthony recommends. I covered that in this blog post before.

Chapter 1 - module 9 & 10 (Android and iOS version)

A module covering some of the apps that Anthony recommends as essential helper apps. The only issue I have with this module is that some of these apps may become popular or die depending on user interaction so they can change with time. I think you can focus on the functionality and maybe find alternatives that you prefer.

The apps are meant to enhance your Instagram experience and to make you more efficient. These apps cover a few things that Instagram lacks and help you with some efficiency and productivity hacks to save you time.

Chapter 1 - module 11

Covers direct messaging, the ins and outs. - This might be the least useful module from chapter 1. At least it was for me, but if you’ve never used Instagram before, you should go through it to understand how the internal Instagram messaging system works.

Chapter 1 - module 12

An overview of the various places where you can find new content, explore, search, places and hashtags. A good overview of these Instagram features. This may be useful if you’ve been using Instagram but never actually ventured into these areas, but a must for anybody new to Instagram.

Covers how to find accounts, content, how to determine which accounts are verified and legitimate, also ties back to picking your name and understanding how your choices affect your discoverability.

Also, covers some of the ideas behind what niches work and how people are making money on Instagram; seems like a good segue to the next sections.

In conclusion to chapter 1, these are my thoughts.

This is a great introductory chapter to the Instagram world. It's good whether you're looking to extend your reach or make money from Instagram. I haven't gotten to the "make money" so when I get to it, I'll let you know what I think.  And you should go through it whether you've been on Instagram for a while or are just about to get started. It is especially important if you're going to really put effort into growing your Instagram following because if you don't have the basics right, not even

You should go through this chapter whether you've been on Instagram for a while or are just about to get started. It is especially important if you're going to really put effort into growing your Instagram following because if you don't have the basics right, not even Social Runner can help you.

For those of you that have gone through this, let me know what you thought about it in the comments, do you agree with my assessment? Chapter 2 is next and I'll probably give you the rundown of that section in a few days. Stay tuned!

The post Instagram Course Review. Wolfmillionaire’s InstaWealth Growth System Chapter 1 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This series of blog posts and videos cover all steps and necessary information for you to make the right decisions and start your blog in the right direction.

Let's Talk About Web Hosting Video

Notes and Additional Info About the Web Hosting Video

In this video, I talk about web hosts. Selecting a web hosting company is one of the most important decisions you'll make when starting a blog. If you buy the cheapest option, you may be fine for a long time. The quality of the hosting will come into question if somerthing goes wrong.

You could get lucky and never have a problem. Or you could be like one of the dozens of people I help each month after their host fails to support them properly.

If you go with the first host that shows you an advertisement, you'll probably go wrong as well. In the video I cover some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web host for your blog. Take a few minutes to watch it.

At the end of this blog post, I also have a list of my recommended web hosting companies.

Age of the web host

This may be unusual, and many other bloggers won't even talk about this. It may or may not be essential to talk about it, but I think it is.

I mention considering the age of the web host (how long have they been in business) because when you're starting out, you want to go with a company that has been around for some time.

It is true that sometimes a brand new (6 months - 1 year) company may offer fantastic web hosting services with lots of features and benefits. But you just don't know if they're going to last and be able to work for you and with you when things get difficult. When starting out, stick to the veterans in the industry. 6 - 10 years or more.

Reviews and Public Comments

Reviews are important but don't make a rash decision because you see a few bad reviews or a few amazing reviews.

Dig deeper into it and make sure you understand why people are praising the company or complaining about it. Generally, the list of web hosts I recommend below are all excellent in all the critical aspects of web hosting --If you want to save yourself some time.

Support for WordPress

Do they provide WordPress-specific support and services? -- Webhosting is a bit of a utility nowadays, almost anybody can do it, so in a general sense, it almost doesn't matter which one you pick.

But some real differences will make deciding a little bit more easily. Since you're looking for a host now, the real benefit of picking a good host is picking a host that supports the application you will be using.

In the case of a blog, you will likely be using WordPress. WordPress is also what I recommend 98% of the time. All of the hosts I recommend have WordPress specific services and expertise and support WordPress.

Customer Support

Not only does WordPress specific support matter, but general customer support is important as well. Do they provide phone, email, or chat support?

Or maybe all of them? Most of the hosts I recommend provide at least two of these methods. My favorite kind of host provides phone support, chat support and email support. I expect them to respond to email requests within 12 - 24 hours, simple requests should take less than 4 hours.

Phone calls may take 3 - 10 minutes to be answered and generally, the issues are resolved within 15 - 90 minutes. Chat support is usually the best because it's real-time but you aren't waiting on hold or wondering if anybody's working on your email support ticket.

Cost of Web Hosting

Whatever you do, don't go cheap for sake of being cheap!  There are a few different types of web hosting. I broke them down in practical terms and highlighted the price range at the end.

Regular shared hosting.

Also known as shared hosting, it works for 95% of the blogs out there. It's simple to use, you control everything via web interface. The main downside to shared hosting is that you are using a pool of resources distributed amongst any number of customers.

So for example, when you sign up for shared hosting, you will be put into a server with a number of other customers, maybe 150, maybe 2000. It all depends on the company and the type of resources.

The problem comes in when you are put into a server that already has for example, 300 users but it's really designed to host 200. They tend to do this because they know that statistically, most users won't use any resources so it's okay to have a lot of people there.

They handle this as they go, and if a customer complains a lot, they may get moved over to a server that is "less crowded" to put it in simple terms.

That's the problem with shared hosting, the other customers may affect the performance of your website. If one of the other customers gets featured on a viral post in Facebook, or makes the front page somewhere, the traffic coming to that site may affect all the other customers in that server.

There are VPS (virtual private servers) services, there are also managed hosting services and there is also dedicated server hosting.

When you are starting out, you will most likely use a shared web hosting account. This ranges from $2.95 per month up to 15 - 17 per month.

The next best thing is a Virtual Private Server.

VPS and Managed hosting.

VPS means Virtual Private Server which guarantees a certain amount of resources, and you have a little more control and options than you do with regular shared web hosting. Prices for VPS services range from 15 to 30 dollars per month and up.

Managed hosting is somewhat of a newer service in the web hosting space, especially when it comes to WordPress. It generally means the quality of service somewhere in between shared hosting and VPS or Dedicated hosting.

Many companies offer shared hosting and VPS and dedicated hosting and you can seamlessly upgrade as you need through their various offerings. so if you start with shared hosting, you can probably upgrade to any plan you need if your blog grows, they will help you and I know everybody that I list here and I recommend is able to do that, it's one of the requirements I have before I can recommend a company.

Generally, VPS hosting plans and managed hosting include high-end guaranteed resources but they also manage and control the application; often these services don't allow you to install other applications and access to files or database may be limited.

Managed hosting plans range between $16-$35 per month and more. These are highly recommended if you're willing to pay for it and really value the purpose of your blog or website. Most times these services come with dedicated support staff, faster response time, automatic backups and other nice perks. Your web developer, or web guy, or web designer will love you if you have this kind of service or better because fixing issues is much easier.

To decide, work out your budget

Decide what your budget is per year and then break that down on a per month basis and that way you can see which type of hosting you can afford.

Having a budget is a good thing, but you also need to know that you will need to spend some money on your blog. Your budget should be around $120-$500 per year to start.

With the hosts I recommend below, if you use the shared plans you'll probably end up between $80 and $100 for the year.

Additional Notes, Questions, and Answers

• How do you actually get the low rates that are advertised? And how do you save the most money? Answered at timestamp 2:48.
• How I pick web hosting for my clients and why. Growth and expansion are important too. Answered at 3:45.
• If you need to upgrade, will the web-hosting company help you? I talk about this at the 4:20 mark. All the services I listed below will help you move up to a larger plan when you need with minimal or no hassle at all.
• What are the value-added services and items you get with web hosting companies? I cover this around the 4:55 mark

I also mentioned that I would put a link to my recommended web hosts, so here is that list, in order of preference:

My Preferred web hosts

These are my preferred go-to hosts for myself and my clients when they are starting out and or are budget conscious. Perfect for personal blogs and business starter blogs. These companies and all their plans will upgrade nicely as you grow, you just need to contact support when you start hitting your limits. That's a nice problem to have, right?

• ** Inmotion Hosting - They have it all. This link goes to their current best deal. ** RECOMMENDED **
• GreenGeeks * - They're great, they also have a better-than-zero carbon footprint.

Managed WordPress Web Hosts

There is only one web host in this list, and it is the top WordPress-centric web host. It is super fast and very efficient. Though, there are a couple of downsides to using this. Primarily the price and the restrictive nature of a "WordPress only" host, but if you can afford 29/month and you don't need a lot of custom software outside of WordPress then you can go with these guys. They also take care of hourly backups which can make a huge difference if something goes wrong.

• WP Engine

Other Recommended Web Hosts for WordPress

These are web hosts that I am comfortable recommending because I have used them personally in the past, or currently manage websites running on these services; they generally run well.

• Dreamhost * Please note, Dreamhost uses a custom management panel and it can be frustrating to use at first but once you get used to it, it's great. Its performance is generally fine, but management can be difficult for people without prior experience. If this is your first time hosting a website, you'll be fine since you don't know any different.
• Hostgator * This also has fans and haters. Some big bloggers use it, some bloggers hate it. I have a plan with them and run a lot of projects with them, Never had a problem, and support has been great every time. I also manage a few customers there with no issues at all.

As I continue with this launch your blog series, I will add more information and videos. Be sure to subscribe to the email list to receive the updates and don't miss a thing.

Please help me help others by sharing this post on your favorite social media sites too!

The post Let’s Talk About Web Hosting – How to Pick a Good Web Host for Your WordPress Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

How do you get people to subscribe to you, leave comments and like your videos. Maybe even share them out to their friends. This video focuses on establishing relationships with other youtubers.

This will help you increase youtube engagement. Just keep in mind that the method and tips described in this video are meant to be a medium to long term play.

Youtube is one of the most trafficked websites in the planet, and many people use it as a search engine to find tutorials, instructions, entertainment and all kinds of other content. I'm sure you've heard this before: Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.

So how can you leverage Youtube for your business or cause?

As far as Internet marketers, bloggers and social media professionals go, I feel that Youtube is underutilized. Not very many people are using it with successful results. I decided to make a short video to help out with some of the basics.

In addition to this video, I also recommend that you take a look at my 7 Power User Tips for Youtube. Soon I'll make new videos explaining other aspects of Youtube and how you can leverage it to make money, promote your brand or help get your message out.

If you have any suggestions for new videos or blogpsots, please leave me a comment with your idea.

Here is the video: Tips to Increase Youtube Engagement

If you have any questions, please leave them below and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I would also appreciate if you could rate this post using the stars at the end of the article, Thank you!

The post Tips To Increase Youtube Engagement appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Theses videos tend to be huge! They are high quality recordings of our Skype interactions and my desktop training session all in one. Most of the time, I use Dropbox or a similar file sharing service so the client or student can download the video of their training session.

But sometimes, file sharing doesn't work exactly as planned. An alternative way of sharing big video files is through Youtube. Technically, I could just share the video in Youtube privately and call it a day but I also would like the client to have a copy of the file for their own offline viewing.

There are some caveats with this method, primarily loss of quality, and privacy. When using this method, the very best version of the video that a client can download will have the quality at 720p. You can read all about video resolution here. The video also must be set to unlisted or public, it cannot be private.

In my case, my videos are always better than 1080p and I would like the client to have that quality. But in a pinch, this may work just to get the file over to the other person so they can start reviewing it.

I also want to put a little disclaimer out there, I don't condone the illegal download of videos, mkay? So don't think that this is for that purpose.

So let's get to it:

How To Download a Youtube Video File

If you are not the owner of the video, find the video you want to download and get the URL for the video.

Copy the URL for the video and open up a new tab or window in your browser.

Visit KeepVid and paste the URL in the box and press the gray download button on the right. This will return a long list of files that you can download as you can see in the screenshot below.

There are other services out there that work simiarly, but this was the only one that didn't try to install some junk in my computer or tried to mislead me in some way or another. The ads can be deceiving sometimes a little which is why I made it very clear where to get your file from.

To get the highest quality file, select the 720p option that I highlighted in the screenshot.

To download, right-click on the link and use the "save as" function. This file ended up being about 900mb, compared to the original 5.6GB file so you can be sure the video file was heavily compressed and also evidently by the 720p limitation, it was scaled down as well.

In the past, Youtube allowed us to download up to 1080, but they removed that option. Who knows if they'll allow it in the future.

What if you are the owner of the youtube video?

If you are the owner of the video, you can download the video directly from the video manager section. Unfortunately the original file is not available, you'll also only be able to download the 720p version of the file.

The only benefit for you as an owner is how simple it is to download the file, and you don't have to go to a 3rd party website to do it.

Go to your video manager section in Youtube, this link will take you there.

Then find the video you want to download. You'll see a dropdown menu available to the side of the video. Clicking on this will reveal many options about your video. To download the file, select Download MP4.

This will not be the full resolution original file, but it saves you the trouble of using a 3rd party site to download the file.

Depending on your specific computer settings, you may or may not be prompted to select a location to save the file and give it a name. If you don't get this option, chances are that the file was just downloaded directly to your downloads folder, it will be titled to match the title of the video in Youtube and not the original file.

You now should have a video file from the youtube file you wanted.

And if you have any problems watching either one of the video files, don't forget to install VLC Media Player, good for any platform and it's free.

The post How To Download a Youtube Video appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you have LastPass Premium, and a late model Android then you have a featured called App Fill. With app fill, LastPass will autofill in your usernames and passwords when you try to login to an app like Twitter, or Instagram, or Netflix, or whatever.

This is similar to how LastPass works on the browser, except it works with your mobile apps on Android.

But sometimes we goof it up or we have fat fingers and It seems that Lastpass autofill is broken.

If you don't have the app fill option and you always have to copy and paste your username and password, I recommend you get LastPass Premium which is only $12 per year. You get tougher security like two-factor authentication and mobile integration amongst other things.

At one point when switching between Instagram accounts I accidentally told LastPass NOT to prompt me anymore. This meant that whenever I logged out of Instagram I would have to manually go and find my password for the other account I wanted to use.

This is a major PITA and it defeats the whole purpose of using LastPass. If you find yourself in the same boat as I did, then this is how you fix it.

Re-Associate LastPass app fill with your app

Here is how you can associate LastPass with an app after you accidentally or deliberately told Lastpass not to prompt you.

1. Open up LastPass, and on the top left corner click on the menu slider. I can't show you screenshots of everything because LastPass doesn't allow screenshots of any of its screens.
2. Once you open that up, at the bottom you'll see the cogwheel icon and settings menu, click on that.
3. The 3rd option down the list is labeled "App Fill," click on that.
4. Then look for the option to "Edit app fill settings" and click on that.
5. Search for the app you want to associate with LastPass, in my case, it was Instagram.
6. Click on the app, then you will see two boxes. To add the association make sure "Show fill helper" is checked, then click ok.

After you do this and you get back to your app, LastPass should come up at the login screen and try to help you fill in username and password. No more copying and pasting.

The post How To Fix Autofill on LastPass Mobile appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Sometimes a video landing page is better than a text only. With a short video, you can demonstrate your service, product or tell your story much better than text can.

Today's tutorial shows you how to create an elegant, but minimalistic video landing page. The page is mobile friendly by being responsive and it is highly effective when implemented correctly.

The tutorial is below, includes a video and written tutorial. Then you'll find links to all the different resources I use and the Youtube embed code for the landing page.

Questions or comments? Please leave them below in the comment section.

Creating a simple video landing page with a call to action.

The call to action can be to opt-in to sign up for your email list, or to send the visitor to another link. I show you both methods in this tutorial.

Video Tutorial

Text, step by step tutorial

First login to your Leadpages account and go to the templates section.

In the Template section look for the template labeled: G+ Hangout Page (Doubles As A Sales Page or Opt-in Page). You could use a number of other templates available. There is one specific template called Video Landing Page. I wanted the two calls to action to be big buttons.

And I want the ability to find out which is a better landing page, one with the social media icons and one without it. In the future I would A/B test this feature.

For now, we want a simple video landing page. No fancy stuff, no social media, no thrills, no frills.

Once you select this template and go into edit it, you will notice it looks a whole lot different than the finished product that we want. This is what the original template looks like the screenshots below (click  to enlarge).

video-landing-page3 video-landing-page2 video-landing-page1

What we really want is to make it look like this page here (opens in new window) the video will autoplay. That is simple and direct. There is a headline that pitches the offer, then a little bit of instruction. Then the video follows and it autoplays while showing the minimal number of distractions.

There are two large call to action buttons, one immediately after the video and one after the text box that follows the first call to action button.

Please note: For the sample landing page I showed you above, I just took one of my Youtube videos and made the page as an example for you. It's just for demo purposes.

Why so simple?

If you want your visitor to take action on your landing page, then the page needs to be clean, organized and it needs to have a clear and single purpose. That's why I created it so simple.

To clean up the template so it looks like my sample, you just need to go through the elements we don't want on the left hand side. You can use the "eye" icon to remove them.

In my example, I removed a lot of elements from the page starting with the top logo, most of the middle box stuff and a few other things. Here's what the list of elements looks like on that page.

Notice the highlighted green box shows the eye-icon when it is active so the element which it indicates is visible and the red box indicates what the icon looks like when it is hiding an element.

Adjusting the call to action

Once you get it to look clean, the way I show in my sample, you need to adjust the call to action. In some cases, you will leave the call to action connected to an opt-in form where the visitor enters their name and email and they get added to your Aweber email list. But what if you don't want to do that?

In some cases you want the call to action to be a simple link to another page. To do this you just need to adjust the settings for the call to action. Mouse over the button and a small cogwheel will appear on the top right hand corner of the button.

When  you click on that, you will see a the "link options" action menu, click on it.

Then you simply change the option from "Show Opt-in Form" to "Go to a URL." Enter the URL under the Target URL field.

Fill in the Text for the button or link and whether you want the link to open in a new tab, or use the nofollow option.

Click on done. Save the page and publish it, and you're ready to go. You can then use direct link from Leadpages to plug into your traffic source (ad, solo ad, social media). Or like I showed you in the example above, you can connect it to your WordPress website using the Leadpages plugin for WordPress.

I use three tools to get this video landing page done

Leadpages. Get your account at Leadpages setup here (affiliate link). I have the Pro level account because I like to do A/B split testing. I recommend you get that as well.

Aweber. My go to email list service. They recently revamped their entire operation and I really like them. You can get started for free for the first month (affiliate link).

Youtube. You should have an account there already but if you don't, go get one. Every internet marketer needs at least one youtube account. You could also use Vimeo, but I don't cover that in this tutorial.

If you don't have a Youtube account, here is a video explaining how to get a Youtube account.

Youtube Embed Code for Leadpages

If you're looking for the code to use on your own landing page, this is the code I used for my Youtube embed video on the tutorial. I use some of the options that the youtube player provides.

If you copy and paste this, don't forget to change the video id code so it works for your video, I explain that in the video tutorial.

<iframe width="857" height="482" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kecoShfR1Nc?controls=0&showinfo=0&rel=0&autoplay=1&autohide=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Youtube embed code documentation

For a full list of the parameters you can use on a Youtube embed video, you can review the official documentation here.

Youtube embed codes have 2 main parts. One is the address of the youtube video and the other is the parameters instructing Youtube how to play the video. These parameters work with values, like this: parameter_name=value.

With these commands, you can hide most of the player controls, autoplay, loop the video, etc. In my code example above, I use a few different parameters to customize the youtube video. Let me explain them:

controls=0 - This means that the play / pause controls will not be shown

showinfo=0 - This means that the video will not show all the details about the video as Youtube normally does

rel=0 - This means that when the video finishes, it will not show related videos like Youtube does normally

autoplay=1 - This instructs the page to automatically start playing the video. Please notice that autoplay does not work on most mobile devices.

autohide=1 - This means that all the stuff that is shown when you hover your cursor over the video will disappear when you move your mouse away.

Wrapping things up

This is just one method of creating a video landing page. Keep in mind that a good video is important as well as a good pitch. You can have the best looking, fastest loading, simplest page in the world but if your ad copy sucks or your video is not good, you will not convert traffic into sales.

Do  you have any questions or comments? Let me know below.

The post How to Create a Simple Video Landing Page appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

What is Automator? Automator is a very simple yet powerful scripting and programming tool available in all modern macs. It's job is to automate tasks very much like this one. If you have a relatively new Mac, you have Automator already installed so this download should work for you.

There are many apps on the App Store that can re-name many files at once, these batch file renamers cost in the range of free to $20 or more. But most of the times, you don't need all the fancy bells and whistles. Personally when I see a price tag of $20 dollars or more for something like this I get a little ticked off.

Shouldn't this be a part of the basic operating system nowadays?

It's one of those things that I don't quite understand. OSX and Windows AND Linux all should offer a way to rename many files at once with some basic control and customization. But they don't, so here's a quick and simple solution.

This little script does the trick for me and maybe will work for you too. Follow these instructions or watch the short video at the end.

Installation

1. Download the file
2. Unzip it
3. Double-click it
4. Install as a Service

Usage

1. Select a bunch of files you want to rename and right-click on them to bring up the context menu.
2. Go to the Services menu item
3. Select "file-renamer"
4. Chose the new name you want and any other parameters you want to change and then click continue.

All the files you selected will be renamed according to your rules. Note that there is NO easy way to undo this so make sure you really want to do this.

Uninstall

1. Go to your System Preferences Panel
2. Go to the Keyboard control panel
3. Select Shortcuts at the top and make sure Services is selected on the left.
4. Scroll down until you see the batch renamer and uncheck the box.
5. If you would like to completely delete the file form your computer, right click on "batch renamer" and select show in finder then you can just trash that file.

More info

If you want to check out the other options available, open Automator and open the file renamer script to explore the other options. By default, the script will rename the files in a sequential manner using the "new name" you provide and will append a 3 digit number at the end of the file, using dashes to separate the name from the numbers.

The main options really are about the way in which each file is renamed, but the other options can be handy as well. Add date or Time to your files, Add some text, change between upper case and lower case, or Replace part of the name with "replace text".

Here's a quick video on how to batch rename files on your mac using this script.

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This is a very useful tutorial showing how to remove or blend two images with a black or white background. Very slick, this is very useful when creating your banners or ads for marketing. I know that whenever I get photos or images from Shutterstock they're usually on a black or white background so this is very handy to learn.

The post Remove Black and White Backgrounds appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is the second article in a series of posts to help you get more out of the internet. The previous article was about Evernote.

Just like Evernote, Dropbox is easy to use and jam-packed with functionality and utility. Dropbox is an app that stores your files in the cloud and synchronizes it across all your devices. It is safe and secure from prying eyes because the files are stored with a high level of encryption. Due to its nature Dropbox works best with a high-speed internet connection.

But it's not just storage.

In addition to saving your files and making them available on your iPhone or iPad and your computers, Dropbox lets you share any file or folder in your account with anyone. You can share a file privately via email, or publicly by using a public link. When you send someone access to your file or a folder via email, only you and them can see and access the files or folders and you can revoke the permissions at any time. Sharing a file publicly lets you post it to Twitter, or Facebook or even your blog.

I use the sharing feature all the time to share picture folders with friends and family and I also collaborate with clients in various projects using shared folders. Instead of having to email each other new files or edited files, we just put the files into a shared folders. If more people become involved with the project then we simply give them permissions to access the folder. It's quick and easy.

Ok, this sounds great but how much is it?

Drobpox just like many of today's apps and services operates on a freemium model. The app offers a free version that works for most people. You get 2 gigabytes (GB) for free just for signing up.

After you sign up, you can earn more storage by sharing the app with your friends or family and by completing basic tasks like connecting your mobile device, uploading pictures to your account. From time to time Dropbox will offer special promotions to increase your storage even more. I currently have about 64GB of storage for free.

If the free version isn't enough for you, the Pro version offers three plans, 100 GB, 200 GB and 500 GB at a cost about $1 per GB/year. Dropbox also offers a solution for teams or companies where you can buy 1TB of storage for up to 5 people. In the business plan, additional users are $125/year and if you use all the initial terabyte of space, they'll increase it at no charge, making the business plan a virtually unlimited storage plan.

I can only assume and predict that prices will drop overtime as storage becomes cheaper and cheaper in the next year or two. But at $500/year for 500GB it is still a bit pricey if you compare it to your run of the mill local hard drive. So the convenience of having your files accessible from your phone, or laptop and desktop is what make Dropbox so attractive.

Why do you need it?

If you ever find yourself emailing files to yourself just so you can get them from your laptop or a friend's computer then you may need Dropbox. I use it daily and it is extremely useful. I move a lot between my desktop and my laptop because I work from home and various locations. I need flexibility, but I also need my files. So I have a folder in Dropbox where I keep all my current work; that way my files are available on my laptop when I go somewhere. I also have the app installed on my iPad and on my Galaxy S4 so if I need to read a document quickly I can do it without having to get to my desktop or open up my laptop.

You need Dropbox if you want to be more efficient and if you want to leverage the technology that is currently available. You can get pretty creative on how you use Dropbox, I use it daily for many different cases. There is even a way to have a website built with Dropbox, but I'll leave that for another post. But I can think of three ways I use Dropbox on a regular basis.

Here are a few use cases

As a Blogger

I can use Drop box to gather photos, and save notes or reading material to have handy at any time. Dropbox has a photo uploader feature that lets you automatically save your photos from your phone to your account. That way you can attend an event, or location that you want to blog about, take pictures and by the time you sit down to write about your experience your photos will be available for you to edit, upload and post on your blog. No messing with cables or memory cards and memory card readers, etcetera.

Sales 

If you are in sales, you can keep your brochures and sales documents in a folder that is easy to access from wherever you are. You can have videos, photos, audio or PDF files there easy to show a potential client at a moment's notice.

Real estate professionals

Dropbox is ideal for realtors and real estate teams. While somebody is out in the field taking pictures and saving them to a shared Dropbox folder, somebody else in the office can get to work on the marketing materials for the property. Or if the agent is out with the client and somehow forgets a document, an assistant or team partner can put the document into the Dropbox folder and it would be available for the agent in the field in just a couple minutes, easier and more reliable than sending email.

Photographers

If you are a photographer and like to share your photos in Instagram, or Twitter, Dropbox is for you. You can take your photos with your nice camera, then save them to your Dropbox account. They'll be available to share via Instagram or Twitter or 500px. This lets you share your photos in social media networks without having to compromise the quality of your photos. As an extra bonus, Drobpox has a nice system to view photos online so you can browse through your photos, create galleries and generally manage your photos through the Dropbox system.

Webmasters, programmers and other techies

The geeky side of me also uses Dropbox to save configuration files for several applications I use. This is how that works. I use a program that connects to people's websites via FTP (I'll spare you the geeky details), all the website information is saved in the program and I have dozens of them. Instead of having to re save all the information on my laptop and having to update it any time it changes between my desktop and laptop, I have moved the configuration file for this app to a Dropbox folder so that any changes I make are automatically available on my desktop and my laptop.

It plays nice with other apps. Dropbox has a really nice developer program so that other people developing apps can enhance its functionality. One of my favorite third party services that interacts with Dropbox is If This Then That (IFTTT). I can have IFTTT automatically save any photo that someone tagged me in facebook to my Dropbox for example. I could also have photos I post to instagram automatically be saved to Dropbox for backup purposes.

In conclusion

Using Dropbox requires no special skill. In order for you to use Dropbpox, simply install it and then start saving stuff to your new folder, just like any other folder. This automatically makes the folder and files available online via a web browser, or on any other computer that you install Dropbox. Install the mobile app for iOS, or Android and you'll have your files available there as well. Windows phones used to have a Drobpox app but it is no longer updated or published.

Dropbox is one of my favorite apps and I consider it a must have for anyone trying to wrangle the interwebs. It will save you time, headaches and make your life generally easier. All you have to do is use it and take advantage of it. You can download it here.

If you are already using Dropbox, how do you use it?

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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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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.

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This video shows you the easiest way to add youtube (and other networks too) videos to your WordPress site. I picked up the tip at the Orange County WordPress Meetup group where Jeff Turner showcased the plugin. I also cover a couple other tools I used during the video. Hope you enjoy it.

If you want something else in particular, just leave me a note in the comments. I'd also appreciate it if you could thumbs up the video, and share this post and the video to your favorite networks.

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Lots of people start blogging at WordPress.com. WordPress.com is easy to use, you can get started quickly and it's free.

Other benefits include the built-in community that exposes your blog to millions of potential readers and a technical benefit is that WordPress.com is robust and reliable.

Your blog there will probably never go down. If it goes down, there are some major problems going on and you can rest assured that someone is working on it, double-time.

But then there is WordPress.org the Open Source version. This is the WordPress that you can install on your own server or on a hosting account that you buy from a hosting provider.

Hosting your own WordPress website comes with its own list of benefits. More control, no restrictions, and the ability to do pretty much whatever you want with your blog or website. This is the best choice for many people that want more control than WordPress.com allows.

Practical examples of having more control are

• The ability to run your own ads or ad network.
• The ability to charge for special access to restricted content. Courses, private support, product downloads or sales.
• The ability to customize it and build any functionality you can imagine.
• Building your own photo gallery
• Building your own ecommerce store
• Building your own social media platform

It's awesome to have the WordPress.org website instead of just WordPress.com -- don't get me wrong, I have several WordPress.com blogs too. I use them to support other efforts. I can talk about that later if you're interested.

So what happens if you start out in WordPress.com and then later you want to move to WordPress.org? Moving is relatively easy.

Updated for 2015. I updated the entire post with some new information and finally answered the most asked question. What host do you recommend? I answer is at the end of the document so it doesn't get in your way of the instructions. But if you want to know right away, just scroll down until you see: Webhosting Recommendations.

If you don't have a custom domain already, you'll need to buy one. But if you already have one, you can transfer it over.

Once you have a hosting account and your new domain, then you can move over your WordPress.com blog into your new hosting account and start showing your website under your own domain.

The following video shows you how to do it.

In this video I show you the mechanics of exporting your blog posts from WordPress.com and then importing them into a brand new installation of WordPress.org in a webhosting account (there's that 50/50 link again!)

The post Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (video tutorial) appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

As the baby approaches, we have to unclutter the house. We have been collecting stuff over the years. Some of this stuff is cool, other is useful but a lot of it is junk. But they say that one man's trash is another's treasure so why not make some money as you get rid of stuff.

I asked a couple people when was the last time they sold something on eBay and they just looked at me like I was an alien. They didn't even have an eBay account. I was blown away, it is 2012, almost 2013 and some people have never even used eBay. In the other hand, I just got an email from eBay congratulating me on being a member for 12 years!

So I thought I'd show you how to post your old computer up for sale. This works for anything really and there are just a couple tricks that I'm going to show you to make your listing better. I have about a half dozen old computers that I am going to list on eBay. Whatever doesn't sell there I will sell at a garage sale in the upcoming weeks. After all, not everything sells on eBay.

In the video I cover a few key tips to make this enjoyable and efficient. I tell you how to use Dropbox, how to list your item so it will sell, and how to enhance the listing so it is more appealing. If this is too complicated for you then maybe you should just pay one of those services that sell your stuff for you, bu they'll take a hefty percentage of your earnings.

Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/XNEWCSeq5-s (14 minute tutorial about eBay)

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A WordPress website tends to slow down overtime when the author or admin continues to add plugin after plugin just to have a new shiny feature. Each plugin takes resources and when you multiply those new resources being used, by the number of visitors accessing your site, you can have real problems with your hosting provider keeping your website up. Especially when you have a spike in traffic, as my friend Megan found out when her name hit entertainment news outlets a few weeks ago.

Checking your load times and reducing them as much as possible is important if you want Google to increase its love for your website. It sounds simple enough, make your website load faster and Google will give it some brownie points. But how do you actually find the things that are slowing down your website and how do you make it go faster? It's a lot like tuning a car. And the same principles apply, if you like tinkering with cars and getting every ounce of performance by tweaking the air intake and the fuel ratio and all that stuff you'll be spending time in the garage working on that stuff. If you like the results that come from tweaking your car but you don't particularly like doing the work, you can always pay someone to do it. The same is true for websites and blogs. You can follow tips and advice and even tutorials you'll find online. Each time you adjust something you'll see results and over time you should be able to adjust your entire website and see how your traffic and visitors react. Or you can pay someone to help you optimize your sites.

[pq]Fine tuning loading times can take time and precise adjustments accompanied and directed by research and analytics.[/pq] But to get started, there are two places and things you can do. The first I'll mention applies to any website it's by Pingdom and their page tester tool is free. It's a time load testing website into which you'll enter your own blog URL and see how it performs. The screenshot above shows you the summary view of my consulting website's results. After the summary you'll find all kinds of goodies, like each script that loads and how much time each takes. This is particularly useful to help you trim the fat in all those extra plugins, widgets, badges and other stuff that ends up accumulating in your blog without having real purpose.

The other option and should be used in combination with the first one, only applies to WordPress websites. Using the P3 Profiler plugin, you can actually run a detailed load test from your WordPress dashboard.

The P3 Profiler plugin is free and it works great. It will tell you which plugins and what parts of your website are taking the most resources and longest time. With that information you can identify the plugins, scripts, widgets, badges or images that need to be optimized or removed altogether.

Google also has a performance testing tool but that is a topic for another day. If you're starting your blog out, you probably don't need to do this. But if you like keeping an eye on these numbers you could take a baseline of how fast your blog loads before you do anything with it, and repeat the test each month or so and see how your blog changes overtime.

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How to Share Adsense Revenue With Your Authors in WordPress: "It would be quite useful in attracting new authors to blog on your site, in return for some Adsense revenue for what they’ve written."
(Via Wptuts+.)

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