Merely one year ago I decided to finally take my first BIG step online, acquire my own domain and start my first blog. On this day 365 days ago pancholink.com was born, both personal and professional it has been my greatest solo project yet.
It was a great challenge for me as I had never set up a website of my own and I’ve only had written on my own free blog at WordPress for a little while at the time. Even though I’ve been working online for over a year (mostly administrative work on websites) I did not seem confident enough or too willing to finally open and manage my own website.
But this one year journey is far from over and has just begun.
I’m in a place right now, where my professional life is pushing me to do my best every day and get better with every minute spent. My personal life has been really blessed too and my work has accomplished many goals and brought 1 or 2 pennies to my company and many personal achievements that I could not have done otherwise.
I’ve learned so much! (which sometimes is the reason for my lack of time to not write as much as I would like) that’s why it’s only fair to set the bar higher this year and set a great goal to push me even further.
I thank you, my reader, for sticking around so far. I started this project as a challenge for me but the wheel has turned and the time has come for me to give you all back what I think you deserve best, a personal touch, a little bit of useful knowledge you can actually use but above all “a peek” at what you can do too if you’re just starting out…like I did, 365 days ago.
Thank you for keeping on coming back.
The best to you!
Francisco H.
pancholink
Michael Dunlop, amazing young entrepreneur who runs IncomeDiary.com has recently posted his Top 30 Earning Websites list on his blog and I just had to share this with you.
All kudos go to Michael for taking the time on creating this list which can only go so far as to show us how an online business can grow to its full extent.
Here I just show you the top 10:
| Rank | Website | Founders | Annual Revenue | Per Second |
| 1 | Jeff Bezos | $24,509,000,000 | $776.66 | |
| 2 | Larry Page and Sergey Brin | $23,650,560,000 | $749.46 | |
| 3 | Ralph Roberts | $9,600,000,000 | $304.21 | |
| 4 | Pierre Omidyar | $8,727,360,000 | $276.56 | |
| 5 | Jerry Yang and David Filo | $6,460,000,000 | $204.71 | |
| 6 | Marshal Wace | $3,400,000,000 | $107.74 | |
| 7 | Erik Prince | $3,137,100,000 | $99.41 | |
| 8 | Added Mark Schroeder | $2,937,010,000 | $93.07 | |
| 9 | Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, | $2,900,000,000 | $91.90 | |
| 10 | Jeff Robbin | $1,900,000,000 | $60.21 |
If you want to check out the complete list on IncomeDiary click here
And I finish this post with a quote from Michael himself:
There are 31 536 000 seconds in a Year — make all of them count — like Amazon.com
Here’s to our biggest year yet.
Cheers!
Francisco
I haven’t been updating my site in a LONG time.
Now that I got that cleared out of the way. I’m sitting here typing these words as I recall on what has been going on all this time that I’ve been away.
First up, I’ve been learning, reading, and doing so many things!!! So much that it’s crammped all of my free time and left me with little to no space to get the time to sit down and work on my blog.
BUT if I learned one thing in all this time…and believe me this might be the most importan thing so far…it is that, we have to take time in order to have time. Or put simply, there is time for everything if we organize better and keep a schedule, and stick to it!
So, finally I’ve made up my mind and decided that I would love to keep this attitude flowing and what better start than to retrace my old steps and kick off with a new start. With a beautiful sight of what this year will be.
I know it’s February already but this new year will bring new media, new pursuits, new aproaches, and a whole new me.
Thank you for sticking around so far, here’s to our greatest time together! Cheers =)
How many times have you logged into your email account and found many, maybe 10ths…you mean 100ths, wait WHAT, 1000′s of emails from people you don’t know???
That’s a very lousy way to welcome you into the new tool millions, and i mean this LITERALLY…MILLIONS of people around the world are using to try to earn a living.
WELCOME to this little post I’m calling “Unwanted email, SPAM & email marketing”.
Through my good friend Otakupahp we’ve discussed many times over and over again, in our own conversations, as well as conversations we’ve had with our clients about the difference between the different kind of emails we receive.
Otakupahp wrote a great article where he states the key differences between these 3 methods of sending emails and I just wanted to simplify them and add my own opinion to it, so here I go.
Unwanted Email
“He or she who is free of never sending a forwarded message can throw the first email”. This is as clear as it gets, it’s email you receive without subscribing to anything and has no “method” to stop receiving it (you can mark your friend’s spam but come on, they’re good people) . The best example, a forward message from your mom with a very beautiful Power Point presentation to cheer you up with the marvelous wonders of life.
SPAM
This is where I wanted to focus my attention. Otakupahp mentioned some of the features typical of a spammer but I wanted to add my own, let’s start from the beginning:
- It floods your email with useless information you never requested
- It can be a direct message just for you or an unlimited key-chain of forwarded emails and you can’t stop receiving.
- They can send you annoying emails to your inbox but when you own a blog they can send annoying comments and fill your posts with very unnecessary links.
- You can find them anywhere; on your blog, on a forum, on Youtube, any free space where people can leave suggestions or type something can be the playground for a spammer.
And THE WORST THING yet:
- They have surpassed our human realm and have now become little systems, code, software entirely developed to publish annoying messages about whatever product they want to sell
- If you block them, spam them, deny them, they will find a way to create a different account or find an open way where they can reach you again and again.
Otakupahp mentioned most email services (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, etc) have now included their own filters, and this HELPS A LOT, they’re really great systems to stop the annoyance and send these little suckers right to the trash or a different folder than your Inbox.
Email Marketing
Ok, this I will refer to as “the right way” of sending massive emails. But why do this? Why would someone want to send emails to a lot of people?
Well, as users of the internet we may not look at it from a commercial point of view but as entrepreneurs, business men or women, the internet has proven to be the ultimate marketplace where you can provide people with services or products they are searching to buy.
This works out well for both, the consumer and the provider. Mainly because email marketing is just as it name implies a marketing tool, and this by no means falls in the category of a spammer. Let me tell you why.
There are some parameters you must follow and fulfill in order to send emails the right way.
The first one and key important is you must obtain a person’s information voluntarily and willingly. This allows you to start building what is known as your mailing list / client list / subscriber list. People give you their information in exchange of receiving something extra, like news, promotions, discounts, updates on new products, services, etc, you name it.
And this will become an asset for you since these are the people that are interested in what you have to offer, sell or inform and that is why they are giving you their information in the first place.
That’s why they are referred to as subscribers, because they are inserting their information and subscribing to receive what you have to say.
But let me sum up the key steps so there’s no confusion, in order to work properly doing “the right way”you MUST:
- Obtain a person’s information with their permission (you have to be careful and tolerant here, sometimes friends / enemies, can insert someone’s email anywhere they feel and you may not know it, nor will the email owner).
- You can obtain a person’s information by inserting a form in your website with fields like Name and Email (Best & most recommended way)
- Always in every email you send and your subscriber receives there has to be an active link where they can access to stop receiving your emails and unsubscribe from your list.
(Asking them to send an email with “Subject: Unsubscribe” is not meeting this requirement)
- You cannot sell or allow a third party buy this information from you.
- You can send all the emails you want to your list but BE WARY, you can does not mean YOU SHOULD but you should inform them about how many emails they might receive from you and DO NOT abuse this resource, you can annoy people very easily and they can mark you as SPAM, plus it will make you look desperate and overall give you or your business a bad image.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Working the “right way” manually is not impossible but nowadays there are very useful and complete systems that can do all these steps automatically. You only need to configure the fields you want for your subscription form and configure the email/s you want to send and that’s it. Everything will be run automatically.
Conclusion
We live in a world where SPAM and spammers have made us believe that everything we see in our inbox is a threat or stuff made by people who want to steal or credit card number or maybe even our organs.
But don’t be so paranoid! BE CAREFUL and don’t be so careless and give out your email address or personal information in any public space, use security measures in your inbox and even on your Facebook, Twitter accounts and whatever services you are currently using. Spammers can be annoying but risking something more valuable just because you thought you had actually won the Nigerian lottery is beyond naiveness.
Additional note: In Ecuador, where I live, they “foolishly” believe that by inserting a footer at the end of an email with some article approved by our government in regards of online messaging, they can send any email to anyone. Don’t be so dumb, Hotmail, Yahoo or Google, do not work or abide by national or local laws, if people mark you as SPAM these services can suspend your account just like that and no “article or national law” can stop them from doing so.
I didn’t find out about this until this past monday (one day after the incident).
And here’s how it broke down. Sunday was a very particular day since MTV held its annual VMA Awards and it all went as expected with lots of celebs, music performances and the very predictable winners for most of the categories available but…
When Taylor Lautner announced the winner for Best Female Video, a very surprised Taylor Swift got up and went on to do her very warming acceptance speech (or at least she thought she would) THAT’S WHEN IT HAPPENED! Out of nowhere Kanye West appeared and took her mic and said “Yo Taylor I’m really happy for and I’ll let you finish but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time”….WTF right?
But all strings aside, and whether this was planned, staged or not. What I found so curios after the “incident” is how quickly this was satirized over the net and that’s why i wrote this article to show you 2 of the best sites that have turned this whole thing into a funny web experience.
1. http://kanyelicio.us
This site is devoted to one thing and that is dissing other sites! You simple have to add at the end of the URL another site’s URL, for example to see Kanye diss my site, click on the link below:
http://kanyelicio.us/http://pancholink.com
2. http://kanyegate.tumblr.com/
This site compiles funny pics involving the incident and showing Kanye interrupting on a whole new world of characters, personalities and whatever people seem like having their fun on.
What do you think of this whole thing. Was it all set up? or did Kanye West just had a bad day?
Today, August 29 is a commemorative day for me, it’s what would have been, the 51st birthday of the late Michael Jackson. And instead of talking about him and his biography and what has been said so many times before…I wanted to bring up a message from one of my favorite songs performed by The King of Pop.
Man in The Mirror was a hit single from his album “Bad” way back in 1988 and it’s a very intense song because it talks about change, about realizing our world needs help and we can start with The Man (or Woman) in The Mirror and ask him (or her) if he’ll (or she’ll) change his (or her) ways?
So today in commemoration of that message, I’m asking myself about my ways, and I just wanted to put in words as my own personal reminder what I0m trying to do to be better and help out, I’m setting different priorities in my life and deciding my goals and the reasons why I want to achieve them, fulfill my dreams and help out others do the same. Give out my hand where I can in the measure I can.
Today more than ever I hope someday, not too far in the future, I can be the source or the means so more food reaches out people who don’t have enough, share clothes or bring shelter who never had any and bring smiles and plant “humanity” in the corners of my own country and if God takes me, to the world.
With this I hope to share about something important that many times gets confused or fades in today’s agitated world as a simple “song” or something that “was” in the past, the undeniable truth is the world still needs help today, right now is when we can do something, or give something, and share what we’ve received and the world has provided ¿isn’t that something worth giving?
So in the spirit of that message, let me share the first paragraphs of this beautiful song:
I'm Gonna Make A Change, For Once In My Life It's Gonna Feel Real Good, Gonna Make A Difference Gonna Make It Right . . . As I, Turn Up The Collar On My Favourite Winter Coat This Wind Is Blowin' My Mind I See The Kids In The Street, With Not Enough To Eat Who Am I, To Be Blind? Pretending Not To See Their Needs .... Chorus I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place (If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place) Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change (Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change)
Check out the complete lyrics here
If you work around the field of design and/or media creation or own a self-hosted blog and work your way around themes and making great designs for your site then you must know Envato.
This the company behind some of the best sites for almost every multimedia resource you might need.
They specialize in graphic, audio, video, flash created resources and wordpress themes.
Today is the last day they celebrate theird 3rd anniversary and they have built up an incredible birthday bundle of 37 items (300$ worth) and are giving it away for the incredible price of 20$, that’s right only TWENTY bucks.
I for one purchased the bundle this past Tuesday, and I got to say that you GET WAY MORE than what you pay for. The audio files alone are well worth the 20 bucks, my main interest were the wordpress themes and I got to say they look incredible. I still have to upload them and try them out to see what kind of widgets are available but from what I could see they include the complete package.
So if you can invest 20$ I suggest you get this. You can go to their site through any of the links above and click on the Birthday banner at the top of them all. I guarantee you won’t be dissapointed.
