John Dilbeck Musings

Today, instead of talking about business or marketing, I’m going to tell you a brief story about a woman I admired a great deal, my Mom.

After fighting against a long illness, Mom died on Friday, November 21, 2008.

I wrote a little about her this morning: In Memory of Mattie Lee Dilbeck.

I’m going to miss her.

After a very long hiatus, while I was trying to decide on a new approach, I have published the latest issue of the Act On Your Dream! newsletter.

It is archived at Act On Your Dream! — Issue #6 — Getting back on track

If you would like, you can subscribe to Act On Your Dream to get the next issues when they are published.

I intend to publish the newsletter on a regular basis, probably twice a month, and I want to feature you and what you are doing to act on your dream.

What can we do to help each other find the success and freedom we all want?

Act on your dream!

JD

A couple of weeks ago, I installed NeoOffice.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t replacing Microsoft Office. I quit using Microsoft products over ten years ago and didn’t upgrade after Word version 5 for the Mac, several years before.

I’ve been using Microsoft products seemingly forever. I started with Word version 1.0 on the Mac and I used Microsoft Office on both Mac and PC for quite some time, since Windows 1.0 and Microsoft Office 1.0.

I even wrote a book using Word 5 for Mac that included table of contents and an index, so I feel like I know the product, even if I haven’t used any of the most recent versions.

For most of the last ten years, ClarisWorks and AppleWorks have offered everything I needed, and since I own my own business, I’m not tied to any corporate dictates about the software I have to use.

The only problems I faced were people who sent me documents in .doc format, which I could not read and didn’t feel much of a need to read. If they sent the files as Rich Text Format (.rtf) files, then I could import most of them into AppleWorks - at least well enough to read.

I was perfectly content until last month, but then my needs changed.

I have plans to write a variety of reports and short ebooks over the coming months. I spend a lot of time researching various things and I’m going to write about them and make the reports and ebooks available - some free and some paid.

In the past, I would have written in PageMaker and produced the PDF files by printing to the included Acrobat distiller.

With my new iMac, I can no longer use PageMaker, so I had to look at different solutions.

As you may already know, it is easy to print to PDF from just about all Mac OS X applications, but I discovered something that was very surprising.

It seems that the applications I had available could create active hyperlinks in the docments, but those hyperlinks would not be active when I printed the documents to a PDF file.

I tried AppleWorks, and, while the PDF showed the correct words styled with underlines and blue text, the links were not active; I could not click on the text and go to the URL in my designated browser.

I downloaded Nisus Express with the same results.

I tried Voodoo Pad with the same results.

While researching the problem, I found on a forum (don’t remember which one) that Word would create PDF files with active hyperlinks. That wasn’t an option for me.

So, if Word would do the job, I wondered if there was an alternative that would do what I wanted. I’d been following OpenOffice for awhile, and I was willing to install X11 and OpenOffice if it would do the job.

While researching this, I ran across a project I’d never heard of: NeoOffice.

NeoOffice takes the OpenOffice code and turns it into a Mac OS X application, complete with easy installation, and the Mac look and feel.

Best of all, it wasn’t related to Microsoft and it was free.

The trouble was, however, that it was a 145 MB download, and on my slow dial-up connection, that just wasn’t feasible.

I mentioned this on the NeoOffice forum and several people offered to burn a CD and send it to me. I accepted an offer from one very generous person and a few days later, when the CD arrived, I was able to install and start using NeoOffice in less than an hour.

The NeoOffice team used to ship CDs, but discontinued doing so due to lack of demand.

Linboo.com had been shipping the NeoOffice CD, but when I tried their site, it was offline. I didn’t know if it would come back or not.

Since then, it has, and LinBoo ships a variety of Unix and Linux CDs, including NeoOffice 2.1 and OpenOffice. If I’d waited a day or so, I could have ordered directly from them.

I am perfectly happy with NeoOffice 2.1. It does exactly what I want to do.

At first, I was really disappointed. I tested a short report with multiple hyperlinks, and, when I printed it to PDF, I got the same results I’d been getting with all the other applications I tried. The resulting PDF had what looked like links (underlined and blue), but they were not active.

So, apparently, the fault lies with the Print to PDF feature of Mac OS X. I would say that not creating active hyperlinks is a rather major shortcoming of the programming. I’m surprised that Apple hasn’t fixed this problem.

However, when I went looking through the NeoOffice menus, I noticed “Export to PDF.” That sounded promising.

Instead of printing to PDF, I chose to export to PDF and that made all the difference.

The resulting PDF file has real, active hyperlinks.

Why is this so important?

If I were writing a short report of 10 pages or less, I would have to edit the document and print to PDF. Then, I’d have to load my full version of Acrobat (version 4), add hyperlinks to the PDF in the appropriate places, and then re-save the PDF report.

For a one-off version of a short report, this is not much of a problem. However, the longer the report or ebook, the more the links and the more trouble to rewrite and update all the links. I don’t even want to get started if I have to go through such a complicated process.

I intend to update these reports and ebooks as it becomes necessary, and I don’t intend to go throught this process over and over. I should be able to modify the report and produce an updated PDF with all the links in place, directly from my word processor.

Now, with the NeoOffice export to PDF command, I can do this exactly how I want. Perhaps I’m getting lazier as I get older, or maybe I’m finally learning about this “work smarter, not harder” concept.

I tried a variety of different links of varying complexity and all of them worked as desired when I exported the document to PDF.

I’ve tried exporting word processing docs (Writer) and spreadsheets (Calc) and the resulting PDFs were exactly what I wanted.

Now, I am not a corporate power user and have no need for probably 99% of what NeoOffice provides, but now I have the perfect application for creating reports, ebooks, and even books with tables of contents and indexes.

A side benefit - that some of my friends may appreciate more than I will - is that I can open .doc files directly and they don’t have to send the files to me in .rtf format. I still serve on a nonprofit committee that makes small seed grants and matching grants for fundraisers to small grassroots nonprofits in western North Carolina, and the standard format for sharing information by nonprofits is Microsoft Word.

If you have a broadband connection, you can downlowad NeoOffice for free, or you can get a CD from LinBoo.com.

If you don’t use a Mac, you may want to look at OpenOffice.org or purchase a CD with OpenOffice from LinBoo.

I’ve had no problem with NeoOffice and I spent half-a-day putting the various modules through their paces. The only thing that feels weird is that NeoOffice opens all the modules in one integrated whole and that feels more like AppleWorks than Microsoft Office. As long as your computer has enough RAM, it shouldn’t be a problem. Right now, I have Radio Userland, TextWrangler, Safari, Preview, and NeoOffice all running in a Mac with 512 MB of RAM.

I’m happy with NeoOffice, and I recommend it to you if you want to dump Microsoft Office.

Will it do everything you need or want?

I don’t know. You’ll have to test this for yourself, but the cost is right. There is very little work or risk involved in trying it for yourself.

Act on your dream!

JD

Chris Metcalf has a nice article, How-To: Dirt Cheap Wall-Sized Whiteboards, where he tells us how to create a large whiteboard for pennies on the dollar and a few hours of work.

Want to track that big project, brainstorm your latest idea, flowchart that important process, or just play? Look into this one.

Nancy Williams, a resident of Graham County, North Carolina, announces the publication of her new book, A Matter of Destiny. If you are interested in a fast-paced story that combines UFOs, aliens, government conspiracies, and political intrigue, this book may be right for you.

Her background in the US Air Force and knowledge of ham radios, combined with an actual incident that occurred in Brookhaven, NY in 1992, make the fictional story more realistic and exciting.

The sequel, Agenda 21 Conspiracy, will feature a plot set in Andrews, Murphy, and the Nantahala Gorge in western North Carolina.

A Matter of Destiny is available in Murphy, NC, at the Curiosity Bookstore in Shoppes of Murphy on Valley River Avenue; in Fontana Village at Ditmore Drugs; in Robbinsville at The Graham Star; in Hayesville at Lloyd Bookstore; and in Waynesville at Osundu’s.

You can order the book from her website at www.NLWilliamsWriter.com.

To order offline, mail a check for $15.95 ($12.95 and $3.00 shipping) to: N. L. Williams, P. O. Box 1477, Robbinsville, NC 28771.

Nancy Williams will be making a number of personal appearances over the coming months. Don’t miss the chance to get an autographed copy.

I’ve been working feverishly for the last three months to simplify my online presence and my Internet marketing activities.

At the end of 2006, I had over 70 sites I was managing, with many of them duplicating others. One of the major reasons for this is that I experimented a lot in 2006 to find what worked best for me. I tested quite a few blogging platforms, content management systems, forums, and methods for constructing websites. Most of them did not produce the results I wanted.

In January, 2007, I reviewed all of them and made some difficult decisions. Over the last three months, I have been busy closing quite a few sites and I’ll be consolidating several others. A very few will be recreated in a different format.

Over the last three days, I’ve been moving the 21 surviving sites, including JohnDilbeck.com, onto a new server, and it looks like the transfers have been successful. There are still a couple of days of testing to complete, but things are looking good. I’ve found some errors to correct, but they don’t look too difficult.

You may not notice a difference at first, but now that I’m not spending all my time testing, I’ll be able to get back to what I was doing at the end of 2005, prior to all the problems I had with my blogs at Blogger.com. 2006 was a stressful year, but I believe things will go better henceforth.

I’ll be getting back to promoting businesses, organizations, and events in Cherokee County, NC, and particularly in Murphy, NC. The blogs that have not been updated for months will become active, again.

I’m looking forward to actually producing something as opposed to spending all my time testing and implementing different ways of doing things.

I’ve decided that my primary marketing blog will be John Dilbeck And Friends, and this blog, John Dilbeck Musings, will be supplementary to John Dilbeck And Friends.

I’ll be doing a major reworking of all my sites over the coming months, and this applies very much to JohnDilbeck.com, which will be refocused and expanded.

I hope you will not be too discomforted by the changes and I think you will find the new information I’ll be able to publish will be useful and educational for you.

I am grateful for your visits here and hope you come back often.

Act on your dream!

JD

Several years ago, I needed a way to earn a living while staying home and being a full-time caretaker for my Mom.

I tried several things before I decided that affiliate marketing was for me.

There were many reasons for this decision. There was a low cost to entry since I didn’t have to buy merchandise, pay for inventory or interest, hire staff, set up an online order entry system, manage customer service, deal with shipping and returns, and do many of the other things that are necessary when you are selling products or services to the general public.

As an affiliate marketer, basically I work in advertising and marketing, and someone else handles all the rest of the necessary activities.

The downside to affiliate marketing is that there is a lot to learn, there is cut-throat competition, what works for me may not work for you and vice versa, and the Internet and online marketing is changing all the time.

At first, I knew a lot about the technical aspects of building websites, but I did not know nearly enough to be effective as an affiliate.

Fortunately for me, I found Ken Evoy and I have been successfully following his advice for several years. My affiliate marketing business is growing and I’m earning more as time goes by.

Ken provided a couple of things that made a huge difference in my affiliate marketing success. I appreciate his down-to-earth, practical advice and the products he has created to help me become a more-effective affiliate marketer.

The first was a free email course he called the Affiliate Masters Course. It was a five part course sent via email. Later, it was redone as an ebook in PDF format. Earlier this month, he released the November, 2006 updated edition of the Affiliate Masters course. I just finished reading it and the updated edition offers lots of information that was not included in the previous version. I recommend this book to you.

The cost? It’s free.

Download your copy of the Affiliate Masters course now. You’ll find about 160 pages of outstanding information. Others sell ebooks with much less information for $50 or $100 or more. Get this one and read it. Learn what you need to know and put it to work. I believe your affiliate marketing efforts will be more successful if you implement what Ken tells you.

Along the same lines, Ken wrote an ebook called “Make Your Site Sell!” a few years ago. The original version sold for under $20 and the updated 2002 version sold for about $30.

A couple of months ago, Ken decided to offer Make Your Site Sell! 2002 as a free download.

This multi-volume ebook contains over 1,500 pages of outstanding information and has been worth thousands of dollars to me in revenue I may not have earned if I hadn’t followed Ken’s advice.

While some of the information is a bit dated, the core information remains very valuable and you will find much information of use to you in this PDF format ebook. I regularly refer to it and continually discover useful tips and techniques to improve my marketing efforts.

If you want to build an online business, you need to read this ebook. Download it today.

These two ebooks made a great impact on the effectiveness of my online marketing and my affiliate marketing business continues to grow today based on what I learned from them.

Of course, reading and learning isn’t going to build a business. You have to take what you learn, plan how it will help your business grow, and then put it into action.

Act on your dreams!

Generating traffic has never been so fast and fun!

You may know that I have a real interest in castles, knights, dragons, and all the rest. Now, there’s a traffic exchange where these elements are incorporated into surfing for more traffic.

Qualify for the joust each week and you can work towards slaying the dragon, storming the castle, rescuing the princess, and more. Earn more traffic as a result of your efforts and enjoy earning more visitors to your sites.

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RoyalSurf delivers Traffic that’s Fit for a King or Queen!

Dan Nickerson has done it again.

Every time I turn around, Dan has come up with a brilliant idea and implements that idea before you can turn around.

This time, he has created the Newbie Report to help new Internet marketers learn more about the tools, processes and sites you need to master to profit from your marketing efforts.

It’s free to sign up for the newsletter.

The site already has links to some of the best marketing sites a new online marketer needs to find. Not all of the sites I’d recommend are listed, but it’s an outstanding start. I’m sure he’ll be expanding the listing as time goes by.

It even comes with a free affiliate program.

Go to the Newbie Report, sign up for the newsletter (the sooner the better, you’ll see why when you do it), and learn how to be more successful in your marketing efforts.

I’m not a newbie, but I’m looking forward to learning more from Dan.

Check it out right now!

Trick or Treat!

You never really know what you’re going to get when you sign up to build a new website at a hosting company you’ve never used.

Will it be a trick…or a treat?

I have never had a problem with my Site Build It! site. In fact, I just renewed my subscription a couple of weeks ago for another year of what I think is the best website brainstorm, research, design, hosting, and promoting system available - for only $300 per year!

I don’t expect you to take my word for it.

Why should you?

Here’s a chance to try it out for yourself, and for only $100 more to get a second site or a site you can give away to someone in your family, friends, or associates.

That’s right. Until midnight, October 31, 2006, you can buy one SBI site for only $300 per year, or get two for only $400.

(When it comes time for renewal next year, each will cost $300 to renew; the special offer does not extend to renewals.)

Get a friend and buy two sites. Give one to your friend and split the cost. Each of you will save $100 on your first year of Site Build It!

Buy a site for yourself and give one to a child who will benefit greatly from learning a skill set that is highly valuable.

Give a site to a retired parent who wants to pursue a passion for a hobby or any topic that really piques their interest.

If I didn’t already have my hands full right now, I’d take advantage of this offer to start two more SBI sites. Maybe I’ll be ready when the next special comes along.

Cobwebs are for Halloween decorations and abandoned homes, not for websites! Follow the Site Build It! process, find your niche, and put the power of SBI to work to help you build a site that will gather lots of new visitors, not cobwebs.

Tomorrow is Halloween. Don’t miss this special.

Do you have any questions about how SBI can work for you? Ask your questions - free and no obligation.