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John L. Dilbeck's News Archive

John L. Dilbeck's Ramblings

Whatever strange and wonderful ideas tickle this big brain of mine.
ISSN: 1533-8193

Being a voracious reader, I go through lots of news and stories. When I find one of interest that I think will benefit you, I write about it here. Your feedback is always welcome.

News Archives
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April 2005

Residual Income Forum Opened

Posted by johndilbeck on Saturday, April 30 2005 at 3:46 PM
Category: affiliate_programs

You are invited to join the discussion at my new Residual Income Forum.

If you're an affiliate or network marketer, come on over and tell us about yourself, your products and your company.

Context Tag: residual income

Small Business Loan Workshop -- Peachtree Community -- May 9, 2005

Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, April 28 2005 at 5:30 PM
Category: news

• Find lenders for your deal
  
• Discover secrets of borrowing
  
• Learn if venture capital is possible
  
• Negotiate your best deal
  
• Find your best funding source
  
• Make an awesome presentation!

• "Very good!..(liked) group input (and) seminar leader", Thomas J. Jackson, CPA
  
• "Enjoyed seminar..very informative..(liked) the feedback", Timothy Smith, Bank South, N. A.
  
• "Handouts go with lecture, easy to follow .. Great Program!", Linda Longstreet, The Boat Slip
  
• "Opened my eyes .. very relevant .. excellent instructor", Dan Sherlock, Georgia-Pacific
  
• "This course is a MUST for anyone going into business", Kellie Acosta, Latin Image Interntnl.

AHC semi-annual yard sale -- Murphy, NC 28906 -- April 30, 2005

Posted by johndilbeck on Wednesday, April 27 2005 at 6:47 AM
Category: ahc

Appalachian Heritage Crafters will hold their semi-annual yard sale - Saturday, April 30, 2005 in front of their crafts store located at 2016 Highway 64 West about two miles west of MacDonalds.

Context Tag: Murphy NC Arts Crafts

Question: Why do you have so **many** websites and blogs?

Posted by johndilbeck on Monday, April 25 2005 at 12:03 PM
Category: home_business

That's a very good question and I think I should tell you some of my reasons.

I sell the services that I use and I think it is incumbent upon me to know what I'm offering to you so that I am aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of the products.

A long time ago, I learned that price should not be the reason to make a purchase for business services. Quality, reliability, and support are much more important. If the difference between a web hosting service at $7.99 and $30 per month is important to you, then you don't really have a business. Any business can purchase the more expensive hosting service and appreciate the advantages of superior service -- if it does, indeed, offer superior service, and some don't.

Webhosting Services

I test a lot of web hosting services and there are only a few that I continue to use. I recommend them highly. They are:

Site Build It! -- This site offers the best mix of site research, design, hosting, and promotion that can be found on the planet, and the price is more than reasonable. Before you host your site anywhere, check out the features and tools Site Build It! offers. I use what I've learned from Ken Evoy and all the people on the private SBI forums to make all my websites better. I'd pay the price of an SBI account to get access to all the information and research, even if I didn't host a site with them. But, they offer proof that no other hosting service can offer. See for yourself.

Assorted Internet -- this company hosts JohnDilbeck.com, GeorgiaDragRacing.com, and several other domains. I have been working with this company for years and while there have been technical problems now and then, their support staff always sorted out the problem and corrected it. They offer outstanding pricing and you can even design your own hosting plan. I look for great support as the number one priority for a hosting company and I've always been happy with Assorted Internet. And, to top it off, I won a free iPod Shuffle from them in March, 2005 just by signing up for their new newsletter! Thanks, guys!

HostingWithUs -- I found out about this service because I'm a Cognigen agent and I signed up for a reseller account to test it out. I host DilbeckCommunications.com, CherokeeCountyNC.com, ResidualIncomeGazette.com, and other domains on this service and it, too, has proven to be a great value. I've always gotten fast responses to questions and outstanding technical support. I recommend them highly, and their sister company, DomainsWithUs is where I've been registering all my new domains. They offer great pricing, outstanding support, lots of extras, and a forum where their customers can help each other.

Marketing Hosting and Training

I maintain accounts on a couple of services, not because of their webhosting services, but because of all the ancillary marketing being done on the site, and that is like getting a private marketing education for a very low price.

I first found Stone Evans because he is always one of the top producers in the SFI Marketing Group and I wanted to learn what he's doing that is making him so successful. So, I did some searching and learned about his Plug-In Profit Site (commonly called PIPS).

I urge you to go read Stone's Plug-In Profit Site offer now. Even though I already knew a lot about webhosting, I learned much from Stone that I've been able to put in play on the website he built for me at 21stCenturySales.com. I've modified it since he built it and have moved in a different direction than the new PIPS sites.

To make full use of Stone's system and to set in motion your earnings potential, you should be prepared to invest about $100 per month in the services Stone requires and recommends, and you should be able to invest at least 8 - 10 hours per week in building your online marketing business. If you have no time and no money to invest in this, it is not for you.

On the other hand, if you can invest about $3 and an hour of work per day, you will learn a great deal about online marketing in a short time.

Home Business

I want to remind you that not everyone has the personality, experience, ambition, and resources to run their own business, whether it is a home business or any other kind, so many people will not benefit from Stone's or any other help. However, if you're willing to invest the time and effort in learning and putting what you learn to work and you can afford to invest the price of a cheap lunch every day in starting a business, you can learn how to make it work. It will not happen overnight and there is no such thing as a system that will make you rich with no effort on your part. If that's what you want, you're better off buying a lottery ticket.

The very best skill you can learn is how to market and sell your products and services. Once you learn this skill it will serve you very well in just about any business or job you try.

Site Builders

Another reason I build so many websites is to learn various site builders and content management systems.

An example of a site builder I really like is the one I use to build and manage 21stCenturySmallBusiness.com. This is a service provided by Webmax Studio and I first tried it because I'm a Cognigen agent and I can sell this service and earn a commission. I originally intended to take advantage of the 10-day free trial they offer so I could learn the system and then delete the site. However, after trying it, I liked it enough to pay the very reasonable $19 monthly fee and continue building it. The sitebuilder works on my old Macintosh system (over 10 years old and still going strong) or a brand new computer with just about any operating system. Even a beginner can build a site with this system.

(But, let me reiterate, there's more to a successful site than just building it -- you have to attract visitors and that's why I recommend Site Build It! so highly.)

Content Management Systems

I test a variety of content management systems to see how they work for me and to help me be able to advise you better. You'll be seeing a lot of articles from me in the coming months about these topics.

I'm using PHP-Nuke to build and manage my portals at DilbeckCommunications.com and CherokeeCountyNC.com. I like PHP-Nuke, but it has a rather steep learning curve and it helps if you have a good background in both HTML and PHP to make use of it. If you know PHP and have a basic grounding in using the MySQL database, then PHP-Nuke offers a lot of power and there are many ways to extend your site to make it do just what you want. These sites are designed for interaction by an entire community.

Last year, Mambo won the award for the best content management system, and I didn't know anything about it. So, I decided I should learn.

Recently, I started ResidualIncomeGazette.com where I'll be talking about how to build a nice residual income through online marketing. Some forms of residual income include getting ongoing royalties from writing books, composing music, starring in movies, and other similar ways. You can also build residual income through online marketing. I get checks every month for work I did many months ago, and the more I add to my sites and blogs, the more the income grows. But that may or may not be residual income.

I define residual income as selling something once and getting paid every time the customer reorders or renews, whether I have anything further to do with it or not. An example is referring someone to a service where they can register a domain or build a website and then I get paid every year when they renew their domain and every month or year when they renew their hosting service.

Others are earning money every month because they referred me to services I use and I'm happy they are because the services are helping me earn a living, too. I'm earning from the people I refer. Some of them have recognized the opportunity and are now earning money themselves. You don't have to participate in the business to enjoy the benefits of a particular webhosting company (for instance), but you can if you want. If you refer a few people who use the service, you're webhosting becomes free and once you earn enough to pay your fees, you'll earn a profit every month, without a lot of effort.

Getting back to ResidualIncomeGazette.com...

The Residual Income Gazette is powered by the free, open-source version of Mambo that is included free in almost all HostingWithUs accounts. I have it installed and I'm currently working to customize it so I can start adding content over the coming months. I already like the system and I look forward to really being able to fully use the power built into it to manage a dynamic site.

I'll probably continue with some of the services I'm currently using for the rest of my life. If a site is earning a profit, I don't even consider the cost of hosting into the business equation.

Online Marketing Business

If your site doesn't produce at least $1 more than your hosting fees, you need to seriously reconsider what you're doing. Do you have a business or a hobby?

I wouldn't care if web hosting cost me $1,000 per month, as long as I was earning at least $1,100 every month using that service. This is a 10% return on my investment and I'll do that every day of the month and do more and more as I have time and energy.

But, in reality, it probably costs less than $40 to host that site and it would not return $100 in profit, but -- hypothetically at least -- $1,060 in profit.

Let's see, hmmm, $1,060 divided by $40 equals 26.5, or stated in another way, a 2,650% ROI (return on investment). And, once that site is built, it will continue to make a profit for an indefinite period with only ocassional maintenance and updates.

Look at it another way. If I'm paying $30 a month for hosting (see Site Build It! which is the best site building, hosting, and marketing service I've been able to find) and I'm earning $31 in Google Adsense revenue, then, effectively, I have a free website with which I can do whatever I want. Once it earns $62 a month, in Adsense and other revenue, I can reinvest that additional profit in another site and start the cycle all over again. When I reach the income level I'm targeting, then I can stop building sites and work on making the ones I have more useful, informative and profitable.

If I end up with 100 websites that earn $130 per month, each, then I'm going to have $100 profit from each site multiplied by 100 sites and that's a total monthly income of $10,000. That's what I call a business and a full-time income. Of course, I'm not going to try to limit the profit from each of those sites to just $100 -- more is better in this case.

Looking at this another way, $130 income divided by $30 expense equals 433.33% ROI -- and that beats the heck out of what I can get from a savings account or CD.

Right now, I'm reinvesting almost all of my profits back into growing the business. Once I have all of this done, I'll be pulling in a steady stream of residual income for work I did months previously -- then I can concentrate on showing you how I did it so you can see if you can duplicate my success.

Or, you can check out Stone Evan's Plug-In Profit Site and start learning today from someone who is already doing what I'm working on accomplishing.

But, I'll guarantee you this right now -- you will never be able to do this unless you get started. Even if you have to get a part-time job to afford it, set aside extra money until you can afford to spend $300 to get your Site Build It! account and start learning how to duplicate the success of others who are changing their lives for the better.

You gotta get started -- now -- or you just won't do it.

Of course, not everyone wants to approach this the way I do. I love building websites and blogs, so it is business, hobby, and recreation for me.

Perhaps you want to build one site and put all your effort into making it a success. This would certainly take less time and effort -- and money -- than approaching it the way I do. I think for most people, this would be the desired approach. If you have a particular topic in which you have a passionate interest, Site Build It! can help you succeed at building a website devoted to your interest and making it a success. Many people have done so. You can read their case studies and see for yourself.

You waste more than $30 every month. Why not try investing it into something you really love and see if you can earn a profit doing it. If you can build a nice residual income stream, so much the better.

That's why I have so many websites and blogs, and I'll be building more until I reach my income goals.

Context Tag: home business

Experimenting with new websites, blogs, and RSS newsfeeds

Posted by johndilbeck on Monday, April 25 2005 at 9:29 AM
Category: websites

Over the last few weeks, I've been doing a lot of work testing blogs and RSS feeds. As part of that research, I've been building some test websites to see how the tools work together.

At 21st Century Small Business, I've been experimenting with the Webmax Studio site builder and I like it a lot. Even on this old slow Macintosh, it works great. I believe that even a beginner can put together a great website using their services. You can get a free 10-day trial (information on the bottom of every page of the site).

I've been working on that site to integrate RSS feeds from PRweb.com and other sites. I'll be adding integrated feeds from some of my blogs, blogs I recommend, news feeds, and other resources in the near future.

On 21st Century Webhosting, I've been working with the new version of WordPress (1.5) that can create both blog entries and stand-alone pages out of the blog chronological structure. I've been creating a number of pages targeted at specific subjects related to modern webhosting and I'm bringing in information from Amazon.com, Yahoo!, About.com, WikiPedia, and other sites. Most of the pages have a lot of dynamic content built using PHP and various feed processors. It's been an interesting experiment and I'm looking forward to building this site with more information as I have time.

On 21st Century Marketing Tools, I've been experimenting with using WordPress and a links program I licensed to store links to sites that I recommend and use in my marketing efforts. I'm not interested in exchanging links on this site -- the directory will be hand-built to point to sites I want to use myself and which may be useful to you, too.

Over the last half-year, or so, I've been working with PHP-Nuke on A Portal for Cherokee County, NC and on Dilbeck Communications.

I like PHP-Nuke, but it can be intimidating to beginners and even experienced webmasters. It helps if you have a very good grounding in both HTML and PHP before customizing and extending PHP-Nuke, but I like the sites and the tools they offer and look forward to extending them in the future.

I've added an RSS newsfeed to my Forum on JohnDilbeck.com and I'll be syndicating it over several sites in the coming weeks. You can see an example of this syndication on the home page of JohnDilbeck.com. I'm looking forward to more conversations there and hope this will help introduce new visitors to the forum.

As much as I like PHP-Nuke, it doesn't do everything I want to do, so I've started a new site at Residual Income Gazette where I'll be talking only about creating residual income through online marketing. This site is powered by Mambo. I've yet to finish customizing the installation, but I'm getting close. I look forward to adding content to the site over the coming months and I invite you to drop in and take a look around.

Between illness, thunderstorms, and probably too much experimentation on new websites for my own good, I've gotten behind on some of my correspondence, and I'm looking forward to catching up on all of that soon.

One of my primary goals for May and June is to add a considerable amount of content to A Year From Now -- Act on Your Dreams!. I have some good ideas on expanding the site in a new direction and I've been talking to an experienced editor and writer to take over the newsletter duties so we can participate more with our valued visitors. Even though the site has been neglected for a couple of months, it's attracting hundreds of new visitors every month and I look forward to working with Dennis to make the site grow into what we've been imagining and discussing.

In the meantime, I've signed up for over a dozen new blogging services and I like some of them and don't like others. When I have some time, I'm going to talk about them and then I'll discontinue the ones I don't like.

I've started at least two dozen blogs over the last few months so I could quickly get some experience with them, and more and more I'm liking WordPress over all the others. I'll probably be cancelling all but a half-dozen or so blogs so I can concentrate on writing about what I'm learning rather than spreading out so wide and learning as much as I can in a short period.

While I like WordPress more than the others I've tried, I also like Blogger and I'll continue developing several blogs there. Some, such as John Dilbeck Musings are hosted on Google's site, blogspot.com. Some, such as MurphyNC28906.com are managed by blogger, but the actual pages are FTPed to one of the servers I use for several of my other sites so that it's actually hosted on one of my domains. I'm doing this for several reasons, one of which is to see whether I get better natural search results using my own domain or letting Google host them for me for free. The jury's still out on this at this time.

One thing I've already noticed is that I get better search results on Yahoo and MSN than I do on Google when searching for keywords I use a lot on my blogs, such as "Murphy NC" (without the quotes in the search). I'm getting first page results on Yahoo, MSN, and Ixquick, but not always on Google. I'm not sure why, but I am very happy to see Yahoo and MSN giving Google some competition.

If you have any comments on any of this, I'd love to hear from you.

Context Tag: websites

Free Business Workshop -- Murphy, NC 28906 -- May 9, 2005

Posted by johndilbeck on Monday, April 25 2005 at 8:24 AM
Category: cherokee_county_nc

A free business workshop, How to Get a Small Business Loan, will meet from 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm on Monday, May 9, 2005, in the Patterson Building at Tri-County Community College's main campus in the Peachtree community of Cherokee County, NC.

The workshop will be facilitated by Jerry Chautin, a SCORE volunteer business counselor. He retired from a mortgage and business-lending firm he founded and is a local business writer for the Cherokee Scout.

SCORE, Counselors to America's Small Business, is a nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Small Business Administration with an office in Murphy at the Small Business Center at the college.

Pre-registration is required and space is limited. Call 828-835-4318 to register.

For more information, call Jerry Chautin at the SCORE office in Murphy at 828-837-4634 or email him at JKChautin@aol.com .


Context Tag: Murphy NC small business

New Service Allows Small Businesses to Connect with Consumers Online

Posted by johndilbeck on Tuesday, April 19 2005 at 3:52 AM
Category: websites

Yahoo! Inc. a leading global Internet company, today announced a new feature on Yahoo! Local that provides free Web sites for small businesses. This free and easy-to-use feature builds upon Yahoo!'s leadership position as the number one online destination for local information and small business services. Small businesses can quickly and easily establish an online presence and connect with the increasing number of consumers using the Internet to find comprehensive local products and services. The service is available in beta at local.yahoo.com/freesite.

"As more and more consumers rely on the Internet for information about their neighborhood — from finding restaurants to plumbers to dry cleaners — local businesses are realizing the value of reaching potential customers online," said Paul Levine, general manager, Yahoo! Local. "By providing small businesses with free Web sites, we are not only helping them leverage the Internet, but also adding depth and comprehensiveness to our local product for consumers."

According to The Kelsey Group, over 50 percent of the more than 20 million small businesses in the U.S. do not yet have a Web site. With the launch of this new service, Yahoo! now enables these businesses to establish an online presence by providing a simple interface and template that allows them to create a site in minutes. These new Web sites are automatically integrated into Yahoo! Local, extending businesses' reach to consumers who use search engines to find information about local products and services.

The free service complements other innovative merchant offerings in Yahoo! Local, including Free Basic Listings and Enhanced Listings. These tools give merchants the power to add and edit content about their business on Yahoo! Local. A small business may extend its Internet presence over time as their online needs grow with award winning services from Yahoo! Small Business such as: domain name, e-mail, enhanced Web hosting and e-commerce solutions.

"By bringing together our leadership in essential small business services, our vast consumer reach, and our local and search expertise, Yahoo! is uniquely able to help small businesses get started and be successful online," said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Small Business. "This new service complements our industry leading suite of online services that help small businesses get online, sell online and market online."

Context Tag: websites

Far West Mountain Economic Partners Receives Grant -- Western North Carolina

Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, April 7 2005 at 4:13 PM
Category: nonprofits

(Andrews, NC) Far West Mountain Economic Partners, a regional non-profit economic development agency serving Cherokee, Clay, Graham, and Swain counties and the Qualla Boundary, has received a $150,000 funding grant as a Program for the Rural Carolinas site from the Duke Endowment.

The grant represents the third year of funding from the Duke Endowment, totaling $450,000 for Partners to initiate programs boosting local economies for those "left behind" and serve as a resource to help increase employment and income in western North Carolina. Partner's goal areas include heritage tourism, small-scale agriculture, and the Jump$tart Financial Literacy program. The initial two years of funding also created an affordable housing program, now sustained as a separate program at the Hinton Rural Life Center.

The organization's mission is to develop structures to create and sustain community partnerships and promote leadership for economic renewal.

"Partners is very pleased to enter a third-year relationship with the Duke Endowment and, once again, thank them for their commitment to our communities and residents," said Debra Sloan, Partner's newly-elected board president upon receiving confirmation of the grant. "We enter into this final year of funding as good-faith stewards of what has been entrusted to our organization."

Partner's executive committee includes:

• David Goldhagen, Clay County artist
  
• Pat Moretz, Cherokee County artist and retired teacher of exceptional children
  
• Austin Mott, Cherokee County resident and former executive director of the Florida Commission on Tourism and president/CEO of VISIT Florida
  
• Glenn Tatum, of the Andrews Chamber of Commerce.

• Gwen Bushyhead, Swain County Chamber of Commerce director
  
• Joan Furst, Office of Economic Opportunity program director
  
• Jim Holloway, attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina Inc.
  
• Debbie Jackson, Clay County Chamber of Commerce executive director
  
• Esther Manchester, retired social worker
  
• Clay Smith, Hinton Rural Life Center executive director

i7 Futures Forum -- Cullowhee, NC 28723 -- April 13, 2005

Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, April 7 2005 at 4:41 AM
Category: western_nc

You are cordially invited to attend the i7 Futures Forum to be held on Wednesday, April 13, 2005, at the Ramsey Center on the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC.

There are many concurrent sessions.

Get more information and/or register online at www.wcu.edu/crd or call Nell Leatherwood at 828-227-3445.

New website dedicated to 21st Century Webhosting

Posted by johndilbeck on Sunday, April 3 2005 at 11:59 AM
Category: webhosting

I have just created a new website at 21stCenturyWebhosting.com and you are invited to visit.

The site is less than a week old and there is a lot of empty space as I build the framework and then start adding the content.

The goal of this site is to teach small business owners why a website is necessary, how to build your site to get the best return on your investment, and how to promote your business online around the clock, year-round.

It will have additional information about topics related to the mechanics and operations involved in creating and maintaining a profitable business website.

Additionally, there will be links to top selling books, links to other websites and blogs, and news sources related to webhosting, content management, search engines, RSS syndication, internet access, telecom, online marketing, and similar topics.

It is not about web hosting -- it is about success.

Posted by johndilbeck on Saturday, April 2 2005 at 4:38 AM
Category: sitesell

I just realized that one of the pages on my website was totally out of date so I took a few minutes to update it.

Before you decide on how you're going to present your business or organization to the world, think a moment about whether you want your website -- and by extension, your business -- to just exist or whether you want it to succeed.

Many people have thanked me for introducing them to Site Build It!

Perhaps you'll be one of them, too.

Take a few minutes and see why Site Build It! is different from all the rest.

Back to main news page...

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