Check Out IM John Chow

The main difference of IM John Chow is that it’s focused on making money via email lists and affiliate marketing. I think this was a smart choice by John, as this strategy is one of the most profitable you can use, and it’s also one that tends to produce the fastest results.

Inside the members area you’ll have access to a “Daily Action Plan”, which guides you through the process of picking a niche, setting up your webiste and auto-responder, picking products to promote and actually promoting them to your list. John will be running the program as an ongoing membership site, so every week or so you should have new videos and lessons, including some answering to questions from members.

On top of that there is a “Knowledge Bank” section, with tutorials about installing WordPress, SEO, list building and so on, a section with free templates you can use to build your lists, and a bonus section with tips and strategies you can use to get leads from Facebook. I checked some of the videos, and the approach is very straight forward, aiming to get members taking action in the right direction.

And here’s the cool part: you can learn from John even by watching how he launches his products. For instance, you’ll notice that on the sales page of IM John Chow he has a video explaining how the program works, but below it there’s no “Buy It Now” or “Add to Cart” button. Instead there’s an input box where you need to write your email, and a “Get Started” button below it. Once you register your email address you’ll be redirected to the page where you can finalize the purchase.

With this strategy John is collecting upfront the email addresses of all the people interested in purchasing his product. Many of those will not purchase right away, but with the email addresses John will be able to keep in touch with those leads, and over time it’s likely that many of them will get convinced to buy John’s product. A simple trick that must be increasing his conversion rate a lot. Brilliant huh? Inside the program there’s more stuff like this, so click here to check it out.

When it’s Time to Kill Your Blog?

Yep, you read it correctly. We are going to talk about the biggest fear of every new blogger. And that is the fear of FAILURE. Failure is definitely not sexy and it seems like there is no space for it in today’s world where everyone want to be successful. Failure shows that you are only a weak person with lack of required skills right?

- OK, maybe I am exaggerating here a bit, but you got my point, do you? -Sure, we all want to be successful bloggers. That’s why we all started this challenging online journey. We are doing this “job” hours and hours without making anything and many times without any notice from the online world. The only thing we got is a fate, the fate that we can get beyond the general averageness and to make a difference to get noticed by others, to make our opinion be heard and respected over the Internet.

Of course, the success means something different for each of us. Someone wants to bring 1,000 visitors to the blog every day other wants to truly engage with audience and receive dozens of comments to every blog post and create online relationships.
Among others dreams of new bloggers often also belong:

• To reach thousands of subscribers to your feeds
• To create an image of the expert in the industry
• To become a real “Blogstar”
• To make at least thousands of dollars from the blog

Yes, success might have many different faces. But they all have one thing in common. They are our motivators, something what push us forward and keep us going day by day, month by month.

How to get there?

There are many people who make their livings from coaching others showing them the secret of becoming successful (blogger). – Although I believe that this cannot be learned. - They explain how to become a better writer, how to engage with the audience, how to make all those cool social network things and to become viral, what steps you should take and what steps you should avoid, what set of mind you should have and which thoughts you should bury alive - what products you should buy maybe:) - and so on.

- Please do not take me wrong here I admire and look up to all these people. It is because many of them were able to distinguish from hundreds of thousands of others in this competitive online world and have achieved something -

I was reading a lot of “How to become a better blogger” articles, eBooks, whitepapers whatever and they usually have couple of mirroring ingredients. Here are those I noticed most of the time.

You have to

• Be passionate about the topic
• Be a hard-worker
• Treat your blog as a serious business
• Have the right intention, whatever it could be – of course money is not the right intention and you know it, right? –
• Break down your goal into small steps and then reach them one by one
• Understand that successful blogging is a long-term process. In other words you will not become famous overnight.

And the most important ingredient of the Blogosphere’s success? YOU HAVE TO BE PERSISTANT IN ORDER TO REACH YOUR GOAL. If you are persistent enough you can reach almost anything you imagine.

I truly believe it this and it is not just because almost everyone who means something in the Blogosphere saying that but it is because I have verified this in my personal offline life many times.

One short story for all…

I am partially dyslectic. It is not that bad but sometimes in the past especially during my high school years it was really challenging for me to learn the curriculum. I had to spend twice as much time studying as my peers to be able to reach at least mediocre grades. I felt shame many times because of that and I thought that I will not be able to go study to a university. Despite my shortage I really wanted to continue studying so I could have a better chance to get a “dream job” in the future.

To achieve my goal I decided to take extra private lectures apart from that I started to read during my spare time much more that I used to. I was working really hard. And guess what? Two year ago I finished the most respected university in my country. I think that is not bad for someone who had problems to understand a written word correctly.

This experience convinced me that people are capable of anything if they stay focused on the goal and are persistent enough to reach it.

OK, so why I titled this article When it’s time to kill your blog?

Well, persistence is definitely a great personal attribute that might help you to reach many things but sometimes it is not enough.

Everyone has to give up sometimes and it does not matter whether you are a 16 years old boy who is just trying to find own place in this world or a successful entrepreneur who jumped into another business opportunity that turned out to a business nightmare. That is the life…

The thing is that we all should know where the tinny line between a hard trying and stubbornness is. And once we reach the lain to be clever enough to say “STOP! I don’t want to go any further”. Such decision should not be taken as a personal lost but rather as a shift toward other challenges.
How many times you did not reach the goal you imagined and after some time you realized that this “lost“ led you to other even more exciting path?
Giving up is a natural part of our lives and if you are able to take something out of it, it is not a lost but a valuable lesson. Something that forms your personality and gives you, maybe, more realistic view on the world we live in. It is nothing we should be ashamed of or what should put us down for a long time, discourage us from future trying. Sometimes things just don’t work out as we planned - or hoped -…

So, when is the right time to back off?

Wasting more resources, time, energy and even money on useless gadgets that promise to make your blog BIG is really not clever. On the other hand to be able to appraise a current situation realistically might be the smartest move.

So, when is the right time to move on in your blogging career?

• When writing about the topic does not make you happy anymore
• When there is another very promising project that needs your full attention and you feel that your old blog is going nowhere
• When you have no vision where you want to see your blog in the future
• When you want to start to fully enjoy all the beauties of the real offline world which you neglect because of your blog
• When you are in a “dying” industry – for example you might be really a best expert in the landline phones however apart from you there would be probably no one interested in this anymore –
• When you believe that blogging will not lead you to the goal which was your main intention to start with it.

5 Questions You Got Answer Before Blogging Full Time

So , you have decided that you want to start a blog and build a successful online business. You have also decided that you will take up blogging as a full time career.

Let me congratulate you on your mindset of enterprenership. Considering the fact that hundreds of new blogs created every day, only few bloggers achieve incredibale success and rest of others fail leaving blogging midway or blog in a while. It’s because they dont see the expected results from thier blogging activities.

Let me tell you that I am not discouraging you, in fact I would encourage to take up blogging as a full time career. Before I do that ,I want to ask you few important questions which will help you to re-affirm your decesion and give you a first hand knowledge about what are the pillars for building a successful blog.

Believe me, I want you to create a online business, not a just a blog. An online business is much more than a content writing, it’s a complete business model involving content generation, marketing and a supported by a payment management system. Its a real business. It’s serious.

Are you ready for my questions? Take a deep breath and let’s begin.

1. Do you love to write?

Yes, this is where you start. Are you passionate about writing? Because, your passion for writing determines your success in blogging. Remember, you can always improvize your writing (by writing more) but core questions remains same. Are you a passionate writer?If you are passionate about writing, then blogging might be a great avenue for you. Go ahead my dear and if you dont love writing and want to start a blog just because someone else succeeded, believe me you are not gong to go too far. You might fail in midway because a quality content is the lifeblood of a blog and not being able to produce quality content is like running out of gas while driving on a beuatiful highway.

2. Are you dumping your current job to blog?

Let me discuss another important topic. What are doing currently? Are a full time employee or running a profitable business already or doing a freelancing job which is of course earning you bread and butter? And if you are starting blog by leaving your full time career then I suggest you to go slow. Message is go part time for blogging.

Why not? After all blogging is such a wonderful way to work. Many of the A-List bloggers were full time employees before becoming successful bloggers. Start small, test, experiment, expand and achieve. OVer the time,If your blog earns atleast 50% of your full time job, then its a sign that you can take it as a full time career.

3. Are you willing to learn?

Blogging is continuous learning experience. If you are brand new to blogging, then you might have to learn lot about how to set up a blog, adding plugins , publishing articles, content marketing , social media and so on.

Apart from these, you also need to wet your hands in technical platforms such as php, css and photoshop. I am not asking you to become an expert in any of these skills but you need to get a grip of these which can help you establish your own brand in blogging.

Are you willing to learn more about writing magnetic posts? Writing gets better with writing more. A quality content needs to touch people’s thoughts, solve thier problems, inspire them or motivate them to take some action. You may also need to learn about latest trends in social media and online world.

If you think, I am scaring you, then thats not my intention. Learning is beautiful and learning a life changing skills is a bliss.

I have just asked , are you ready for this wonderful challenge?

4. Are you ready to collaborate?

To succeed enormosuly in blogging, you need to collaborate and treat your blog like an enterprise. You may need to collaborate with other bloggers, sometime may need to outsource some work and so on. I am just making you aware of the steps in the journey, and about that fact that you won’t be able to achieve success alone.

5. Do you have patience?

Sorry for asking this one. Patience is virtue and even in blogging ,its true. Dont expect that your blog starts earning a crazy five figure income within six months of inception. Things will take time. You need to keep working and celebrate every small success as an online enterprenuer. You need to wait. You need to keep working. You will have your wow moment soon.

So do you have patience within you?

I am done with my questions. These questions may sound rude or discouraging at first reading but think again. Why I am asking these to you? I am arming with you with solid information about how to build an incredibel blog. If you get through most of these questions with a positive answer, then go ahead and create your first article. Be the next wave. Blogosphere needs you.

About the Author: Naveen Kulkarni blogs about personal development and life improvement on PlanetNaveen.com.

Treat Your Online Work Like A Job And Watch Your Earnings Explode

I have been trying on and off to make money online for a while and it is only recently that I have started to see the fruits of my labor. This is due to one thing. I stopped treating my online activities as a hobby and started to really think of it as a job. As soon as I started to make small changes, I started to notice an increase in my productivity level, my confidence and my earnings.

If you implement the following things, you too could see a dramatic change in the way you view your online work which could lead to a higher level of success.

1. Figure Out When You Are Most Productive & Stick To It

The huge advantage of working online is that you you can set your own hours. There is no boss waiting for you to arrive at the office and you are not stuck on the 9-5 treadmill. However it is really easy to allow yourself to drift from hour to hour without actually getting any work done so it is a good idea to set specific times when you are at your most alert and most productive. You can choose to work in blocks of 2 hours, 4 hours, or even in short bursts of 45 minutes. You can do whatever suits your lifestyle as long as you know that you will focus on the specific tasks that you have set for yourself.

2. Set Deadlines To Get Things Done

As well as deciding when and how long you will work each day, it is also a good idea to set deadlines for your tasks. Out in the real world a boss would expect your work to be completed on the date that he or she sets and you would most likely achieve it. Now that you are your own boss, you need to make yourself accountable. If you are working on an eBook, set a deadline for the draft to be ready, if you are setting up a new website, set a date for when you want to have all the articles completed for it so that it is ready to go live. This will ensure that you are not allowing procrastination to get in the way of what you need to get done.

3. Invest In Training

If you were at an offline job and you didn’t know how to do something, the company would have funds to invest in proper training for the workforce. Well this is what you need to do for yourself for your online business. You need to invest in your own trainging so that you can gain the necessary knowledged needed and work effectively and effieciently. For example, if you want to learn the skills in order to build up a network of affliate websites, then you should purchase the relevant eBook or training course. If you want to offer website themes but do not know how to design them, then you should consider signing up for web design classes.
Spending a little bit of money to learn new skills will bring you closer to achieving or improving your online earnings potential. As soon as you can make sure that you invest some money and time into building up your knowledge.

4. Remove Distractions

One of the worst things about working at home is the amount of distractions that there are. This includes the television, your bed, Facebook, Twitter and the many other social forums. You have to get out of the habit of switching on the television and channel hopping. You have to stop updating your Facebook account and you have to get out of bed! With no one around to make sure you get your work done, you have to make a concerted effort to reduce the amount of distractions or you will find that you will get nothing done which will lead to zero earnings.

By implementing these few changes into your daily routine you will start to see a difference. Treating your online work like a job means setting some ground rules. If you can do this then success is just around the corner. Good luck.

About the Author: Tiptopcat is a PLR content provider at The PLR Boutique. She provides quality PLR articles on a range of topics.

8 Lessons Learned Growing a Site to One Million Monthly Page Views

1. Choose Your Niche Wisely

Most people who read this blog probably think it is my largest and most profitable website. Well, it’s not. The reason? Niches like blogging, make money online, SEO or Internet marketing are pretty small when compared with mainstream stuff like gadgets, movies and television, cars, health and so on. That is why my “money” sites are placed in those niches, while I write on Daily Blog Tips mostly because I have fun doing it.

2. Find A Unique Angle

While picking the right, relatively large niche is important, I wouldn’t recommend you to start yet another tech or cars blog, where you would get most of your content from other, larger blogs and sites. Most mainstream niches are crowded, and if you just write about what everyone else is writing, after them, people will have no reason to visit your site. The solution? You need to find a unique angle. You need to come up with an idea that will differentiate both your site and your content from others in the same niche. Not easy, but possible.

3. Repeat Visitors Matter

There’s one metric that very few people pay attention to, yet I believe it’s one of the best indicators of the potential of a website: repeat visitors. Basically if the amount of repeat visitors on your site is increasing over time it means that you are converting some of your casual visitors into loyal ones, and that your overall traffic will increase overtime. If the amount of repeat visitors is not growing, on the other hand, it means that your content is failing to engage visitors to the point that they will remember your site a couple of days after visiting it. In this case you need to rethink your strategy.

4. Quality Over Quantity

If you need to choose between quality and quantity, go with quality. In order words, you’ll get much better results publishing one top quality article per week than publishing five average ones. It’s the quality of your content that will increase the amount of repeat visitors you get, after all, and the amount of backlinks you’ll receive from other sites (more on that below).

5. Google Is Your Friend

Whether you like it or not, Google is the main traffic driver around the web, so you better befriend it and use its help to grow your site. This means that you need to understand how search engines work (e.g., how Google crawls the web, how it decides which websites to serve when people search for stuff, etc.) in order to optimize your content, pages, and to promote your articles in a way that will increase their exposure with search engines. It will take some effort from your end, but the results are certainly worth it.

6. Research and Gather Data

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization and to promoting your website in general, you’ll need to research and gather data (as opposed to trusting your gut or intuition). That is, you’ll need to understand what are the hot topics inside your niche, what search terms are sending you more traffic, what visitors are more likely to stay on your site and so on. With the numbers on your hand you’ll be able to make much better decisions, both in terms of content and promotion.

7. You Can’t Do It Alone

While there are many people who manage to grow large sites alone, I found that getting some help along the way made all the difference. On most sites I have these days I focus exclusively on the strategy/promotion aspects, while leaving the web design/content development to other people. Sure, you’ll need to spend some money, but this is one of the most efficient ways to grow any website (and any business, for the matter).

8. Slow and Steady Wins the Race

It took me around three years to go from zero to one million monthly page views. During that time frame there was no single event that catapulted my site’s popularity, no large spike in traffic. It was a gradual and slow process, where every month I would promote the site a bit more, do some guest posts and so on. All that mattered to me was to see the traffic numbers increasing, albeit slowly, month after month.

Lessons Learned

As you certainly heard, Steve Jobs died today. Apple published the following official statement on its website:

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

While most people are focusing on his death and on what impacts it’s going to have on Apple’s future, I think we should first pause a bit and try to learn some lessons from him. After all he managed to revolutionize several industries (e.g., computers, music, mobile phones) and he made the tech company he co-founded on his garage the one with the second largest market capitalization in the world.

If you want to learn a bit more about Steve’s life and get some advice from the horse’s mouth check out the video below, which is a commencement speech he gave in 2005 to a Stanford class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D1R-jKKp3NA

Whether you are a Mac fan or not, you can’t deny Steve Jobs was probably one of the most innovative and successful CEOs and marketers of our time. It’s a huge loss for the tech community, but his legacy will remain.

You Only Lose When You Quit

Succeeding is not hard if you think about it.

All is takes is persistence and a minimal amount of common sense. The common sense part is to make sure you will learn from your failures and not repeat your mistakes. If you got that and are willing to keep trying, sooner or later you will succeed.

I am not saying it’s easy, as the “keep trying” part can be quite cumbersome. You might need to sacrifice things like time with friends, entertainment, travels and what not. But if you are willing to pay that price, again, sooner or later you will succeed.

In other words, you’ll only lose the game if you quit. Even if you keep failing it still won’t be over until you either quit or finally make it. These are the only possible outcomes.

You probably heard about the game Angry Birds, right? It’s the most popular game on most mobile platforms, with over 13 million downloads to date. As a consequence of its success Rovio, the company behind the game, is now worth $2 billion.

How did they manage such a hit? With persistence and some common sense. How do I know this? Because they launched 50 games that went no where before hitting it big with Angry Birds.

You only lose when you quit.

Burn the Bridges

First of all keep in mind I don’t support or see as a positive thing the massacres that happened in Central and South America when Spain, Portugal and other European nations started colonizing the continent. Quite the opposite. That being said we can still learn from their strategic and military choices, and that is what this post is about.

Hernán Cortés was the Spanish general who was responsible for the fall of the Aztec Empire and sub-sequent colonization of the Americas by Spain. His military technology was far superior, but the Aztec outnumbered his men, and they were fighting for their lives (i.e., as motivated as you can get…).

In other words, he needed something to motivate his men to fight eagerly as well, else there was a chance they would be defeated.

That is why when he arrived at the shores he gave orders to burn and sink all the ships that brought his men. He wanted to make it clear that retreating was not an option. If the Aztecs were fighting for their lives, well, so were the Spanish men now. And as you might remember from history classes, it worked.

Bottom line: sometimes you need to burn the ships and the bridges behind you to make sure you’ll give all you’ve got.

Here are some examples of how this might apply to startups and websites, even if at a smaller scale:

• Renew your domain for 10 years, so you tell yourself that this is for the long run.
• Invest $1000 on a design for your website, so you tell yourself that if you stop working on it you’ll lose that money.
• Once your online business starts making some decent money consider quitting your day job, so you tell yourself that now your websites need to pay your bills.

What about you, are you willing to burn the bridges?

Awesome Presentation

As you probably know, being able to foresee and understand what’s coming ahead is one of the most valuable skills you can have, regardless of the industry you work. For this reason I am always interested when I see presentations about future trends, and last week I came across an awesome one.

The presentation was created by Mary Meeker and Liang Wu, who work at KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers), one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world. Below the presentation:

If for some reason you can’t see it here’s the link for the presentation on Scribd. Let me say it once more: the presentation is awesome and full of facts and insights, so take 10 minutes out of your day today to go through it.

Remember: Your Business Should Run Without You

Suppose you start a web design business. You are the only full time employee, though you hire freelance designers occasionally to help you out with larger projects. Over time the number of clients increases, and so do the revenues. Life is good.

Then one day unexpectedly a family emergency happens and you discover that you’ll be unable to work for three or four months. What happens to your business? You guessed, it will go down the drain since you won’t be there to work on it anymore.

In reality this will happened because you didn’t have a business in the first place.

From Wikipedia: A business (also known as enterprise or firm) is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Notice the “organization”. In other words, a business is a structure that stands on its own. If the whole structure depends on yourself and on your work then it’s not a business but rather a job you got for yourself where you are your own boss.

There’s a quick reality check you can make to see if you have a business: would another person or company possibly be interested in purchasing your business, and by doing so be able to run it without you afterward? If the answer is yes then you have a business, else you don’t.

There’s a very good book called the E-Myth that talks about this point. Here’s a quote from chapter 9:

Your business and your life are totally separate things.

At its best, your business something apart from you, rather than a part of you, with its own rules and its own purposes. An organism, you might say, that will live or die according to how well it performs its sole function: to find and keep customers.

Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.

Bottom line: if your business still relies heavily on your person than it’s time to start thinking and changing things around. You want to build something that stands on its own, cause that is a real business and something much more valuable to own.

The One Iron Law of Blogging

When it comes down to it, if you want to build a popular blog, there are very few “rules” to follow.

Really, there is only one rule.

That’s the “Iron Law of Blogging”, and it can’t be broken, otherwise you’ll end up with a deserted collection of information that you meekly call a “blog”.

Today, you’re going to find out what that rule is, and how you can abide by it… while still adding you.

The Iron Law

This “iron law” is cold, hard, and unforgiving – ignore it, and you will fail.

So what is it?

I think this quote from Marc Andreesen, a venture capitalist and founder of Netscape states it well:

Market matters most; neither a stellar team nor fantastic product will redeem a bad market. Markets that don’t exist don’t care how smart you are.

Or, in other words…

Your blog’s success is completely dependent on people actually wantingto read what you write about.

If there just isn’t enough people in your market, that’s the end of the line right there: it doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are, and it doesn’t matter how amazing your content is.

Henneke Duistermaat calls this the Sin Of Originality in his guest post on Jon Morrow’s blog, and I think it’s an apt title for what I hold as the “Iron Law”.

He continues with this great metaphor:

You write, and write, and write, and nobody pays you any attention, not because your writing is bad, necessarily, but because there is a lack of demand. Yes, your content is great, but there just aren’t that many people interested in reading about it.

Essentially, you’ve created the world’s greatest asparagus restaurant. Maybe you have one or two regulars who are asparagus freaks, but the rest of the world would rather go get some pizza. So, your restaurant (or blog) is empty.

The truth: the originality and creativity that you can bring to a topic will only serve to aid you if the audience is ALREADY THERE.

Just take a look at a blogger like Mars Dorian.

He uses comics and amazingly done illustrations to discuss business and life advice from a really unique perspective.

The thing is, as original as his blog content is, he’s still in a market that people want to read about.

If he had started a blog about extreme ironing (before you even ask, yes, that’s real), he could have somehow made his comics twice as good and it still wouldn’t matter: there wouldn’t be a large enough people interested in his topic to get on board and appreciate his creativity.

When to “Niche it Down”

The thing that gets most people tripped up is that lots of marketers tell them to “niche it down” in order to succeed.

The thing that many people miss here is that this subset that you’ve chosen needs to have two things:

What Do You Need to Become Rich and Successful?

A couple of weeks ago I came across a really interesting post from a guy called Harley Hahn (a writer, philosopher, humorist and computer expert). The post is about a person who can look at young people and tell whether or not they will be rich and successful.

That person basically looks for 12 qualities. The first two are below:

1. Explain your ideas well, in a logical manner.

According to Irwin, if you learn how to talk well, you have an enormous advantage. After all, how can people appreciate what you have to say if they have trouble understanding you? By explaining your ideas in a rational manner, you demonstrate clear thinking and good communication skills.

2. Do not allow yourself to become intimidated by people of wealth, position, or power.

In a general sense, people are much more alike than they are different. If you are a young person who sees others as being similar to yourself, you will not be awed by someone just because he or she is rich, important, or powerful. This gives you an enormous advantage. Conversely, as you become more important over the years, you yourself will not intimidate others, making you more effective as a peer and as a leader.

You can read the full post here: What Do Young People Need to Know About Becoming Rich and Successful?

I highly recommend that you take 10 minutes to read that and perhaps even jot down some notes. Whether you are pretty young or not so young I am sure that you’ll benefit a great deal by trying to develop any of those qualities.

When Purchasing Websites, Look For Very Small or Very Big Ones

s you might know I am a big fan of purchasing websites as an investment option. Instead of putting your money into a savings account or buying stock you can purchase a website, work on it a bit and collect the monthly revenues, either from advertising or from products you might sell on the site.

This strategy has both pros and cons. The biggest advantage is the fact that you can get a return on investment that is much higher when compared to other investment options. I’ve see websites generating as much as 10% of their selling price, per month. That is, you purchase a website for $10,000 and it generates $1,000 monthly in profits.

The biggest drawback is the fact that you need some technical know-how to be able to run a website properly, and you also need to put some time to manage it (which is not true for the other investment options).

Help to Set A World Record: Download Firefox 3

Control Firefox with Mouse Gestures

If you are tired of using the keyboard or complex menus to navigate with your browser you should check this extension.Mouse Gestures is a funny and useful Firefox addon that includes dozens of browser commands through mouse movements. Want to go backwards? Just move the mouse to the left. Want to reload the page? Move the mouse up and down.

Obviously you will need to dedicate some time initially to learn the basics and memorize some movements (most of them are pretty intuitive). But after that adaptation phase you will see that it can actually make your navigation faster and smoother. You can see examples of the most used mouse gestures here.

Make Your Site Faster with Google’s mod_pagespeed

As you probably know a couple of months ago Google announced that it would start taking into consideration the load speed of web pages when determining the its search rankings. In other words, the faster your page, the higher the chances of your rankings going up, and vice-versa.

Luckily for webmasters and site owners Google is also trying to help us to get there. This week one of its tools for this purpose went out of beta. It’s called mod_pagespeed.

Here’s how Google describers it: “mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache module which automatically applies web performance best practices to pages, and associated assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) without requiring that you modify your existing content or workflow.”

Among other things it will:

• Image optimization, compression, and resizing
• CSS & JavaScript concatenation, minification, and inlining
• Cache extension, domain sharding, and domain rewriting
• Deferred loading of JavaScript and image resources

I still haven’t tried it, but when I get some free time I’ll install on my server and see how it works. Did any of you guys installed it already?

If you want to read more about the tool or watch a video about it check out the official announcement here.