tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57971192009-06-17T13:13:33.207+01:00Steve Browne - Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Stuff and General Ramblingsstevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-23783069893549330162009-06-03T20:21:00.007+01:002009-06-08T23:35:41.258+01:00

Last time I updated this blog was just before I embarked on a contract with a large consultancy. It was fun, and I did some interesting things, but for much of the time, I was aware that I was missing many opportunities on my own projects.Well, a year later and my contract is up and I am back working from home. Some people get to this situation and feel that they MUST look for another contract. I

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-10328286395305821522008-06-07T11:03:00.003+01:002008-06-07T11:19:02.296+01:00

A while ago, I had to buy a new PC as my 2 main development machines (one for .net 2.0 and one for .net 1.1) were getting flakier and flakier. I decided to buy an iMac and experiment with virtual machines.Well these last few weeks I have been running Visual Studio 2005 in a Parallels virtual machine without a hitch. In fact I owuld say it's even better than under my regular PC (an ageing Dell).

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-78798755710844701862008-05-03T12:59:00.003+01:002008-05-03T13:21:44.800+01:00

During the past 10 years we have seen staggering house price increases, especially here in the UK. There are thousands of 2 bedroom flats (with laminate flooring) around the country priced will in excess of £250k - that's half a million dollars. Usually in previously down-trodden city centre locations, with the promise of "city living", they were snapped up off-plan by the naive and gullible.

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-85588786790154900562008-01-26T14:15:00.000Z2008-01-26T14:21:03.541Z

For those who wonder about the values of domain names and whether scarcity value really exists:Fan pays record for Formula One car platesA businessman has paid almost half a million pounds for the car registration plate "F1" - making it the most expensive ever sold in Britain.Afzal Kahn, a Formula One motor racing fan, has fixed the £375,000 number plate to his 200mph black McLaren SLR sports car

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-1287684196854847312008-01-11T07:50:00.000Z2008-01-11T08:28:44.269Z

I wonder what would happen to an individual or business that earned £103,000 and didn't report it to anyone. I'm not sure, but I can guess.Of course, if you are a Minister, you don't have to worry about little things like the law. That's for normal people, not the powerful-overlords.

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-51836480723895196352008-01-10T13:39:00.000Z2008-01-10T13:53:08.181Z

Google + Blogs is better than any manual or helpfile, due to the fact that you can almost always find someone else with the exact same problem, and usually a solution as well. The blog aspect helps as you tend to also get a stream of user comments that might go into more detail.A case in point. For whatever reason, one of my servers decided to stop resolving names. OK, chances are that the DNS

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-62916931579477786942008-01-07T09:03:00.000Z2008-01-07T09:18:03.066Z

Lead Generation is technically quite easy. You need a trust-worthy site, with a form asking all of the questions that a correct lead requires. Obviously the fields required for a mortgage, loan, double glazing or DNA testing are different, but the concept is the same.1. Provide detail of the product/service2. Display a form with the relevant fields3. Validate the form values, so that you don't

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-50504279274829316552008-01-04T13:56:00.000Z2008-01-04T14:11:02.637Z

Serious domaining means that you need to have an edge over the rest of the market. For some this is budget: if you have the cash, you can buy excellent domains. For others this is speed: dropcatching is very profitable, but you gotta be quick. For the rest there is the brain. This involves out-thinking the rest of the domain buying market, or just being quicker.For example, going through my

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-357873375334385432008-01-03T18:08:00.000Z2008-01-03T18:19:34.165Z

This year, I absolutely need some new computer power. My two main desktops are at least 4 years old, and although still great at the day to day stuff, are starting to struggle with newer web media, Office 2008 and just general usage.What I need to do is separate out tasks, so that one PC is rebuilt and used only for .Net 1.1 development, one is used only for .Net 2.0 development, and an

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-47966959992171274212008-01-03T12:07:00.000Z2008-01-03T12:29:51.665Z

A new year brings new thoughts and resolutions and the belief that "this year will be different". Well this year, I intend that to be the case.There are a couple of client projects that need to be signed off/completed, but beyond that, I'm intending to entriely self-finance for the year, with minimal client based work. I have a number of strands to this strategy:Affilliate incomeDomain name

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-51027157828299739922007-11-20T18:57:00.000Z2007-11-20T18:58:33.604Z

That domain's a steal at that price. I thought it would go for a lot more than that.

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-70008722231108443382007-11-20T18:14:00.000Z2007-11-20T18:31:00.482Z

The same Government that want us all to have ID cards, is trying to create a national DNA database and wants to keep every bit of data possible about British citizens has managed to lose the personal records of 25 MILLION PEOPLE.Yes, 25 million. Names, addresses, National Insurance numbers, dates of birth and bank details. It sounds like it contains details of anyone in the country who receives

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-4096169988789830022007-11-15T11:25:00.000Z2007-11-15T11:28:06.946Z

I'm just testing posting to my blog directly from my iPhone. It shouldwork , but who knows!!

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-73637894916649401612007-11-15T11:07:00.000Z2007-11-15T11:17:14.694Z

Well the application is out there. It's an Advent Calendar for facebook and can be found here (you will be asked to login if you are not already). Obvioulsy by it's nature, it doesn't do anything until December 1st, so please be patient!But this app was a test really, and it has raised further things that I will do next time, such as store every facebook ID when someone installs the app (and

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-43689860252375487922007-11-07T18:56:00.000Z2007-11-08T11:37:55.973Z

Well in between other tasks today I've finally got my Facebook app complete and working on a public facing server that Facebook can see. Well, I think it's working. I'm recruiting 3 or 4 friends to help test it first, but it's out there if anyone stumbles upon it.The main problems have been to do with the Facebook caching model. I understand why they need to do it, but it's a bit of a nightmare

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-36671252563867840592007-11-07T14:09:00.000Z2007-11-07T14:24:38.064Z

There's been a lot of talk about Facebook's new ad platform for "Social Ads". Well they've gone live and killed my ad campaign which was working fine! The Flyers Pro which were the previous PPC adverts on Facebook have been tarred for low CTR, well I had managed to create a set of adverts which were getting 4-8 times the CTR of usual adverts. This was great and allowed me to drop the CPC down

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-42577953295444384392007-11-06T23:08:00.000Z2007-11-06T23:24:13.954Z

Well, the development is going OK so far. If Facebook didn't keep throwing "An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host" errors at me for no apparent reason, it might go even better. I asusme that the sandbox servers are overloaded, as it works for a bit then stops.Basically I have the structure in place, so I have:Section of FBML that displays on my profile pageThis clicks

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-4561777100676041862007-11-06T13:21:00.000Z2007-11-06T15:51:09.285Z

I dabbled briefly in making Facebook application a few months ago, but never really pushed it due to other commitments. What with recent new stories going on about how popular some Facebook apps get, and how much they can be sold for (!), I thought I'd give it another try.My dev platform is .Net 2.0 with C# and SQL Server to back it up, all hosted on Windows 2003.My idea is kind of time critical,

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-19189742295533263132007-11-05T13:14:00.000Z2007-11-06T23:36:47.145Z

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. Rather than pay £8 a day for London congestion charges, a growing number of Londonders are registering their cars as mini-cabs:"Among the luxury vehicles on the list of shame are "17 Bentley Continentals, which cost £117,500 new, three £300,000 Maybach 62s and eight two-seater Mercedes-Benz SLs". Others apparently plying their trade include an

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-24634102536450057442007-11-05T09:12:00.000Z2007-11-05T09:17:25.453Z

In the car this morning taking my 11 year old to school, someone on the radio mentioned having Nirvana's Nevermind on cassette. A confused look crossed here face - "What's a cassette dad?". I explaine dthem as being those small plastic things with two wheels in the middle that we used to us in our old car. "Oh! Those things that break" was her response.I feel old. :-)

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-23527090697626586522007-11-04T15:06:00.000Z2007-11-04T15:28:13.232Z

Let's get this straight - I'm not going to talk about trademark or typo cybersquatting here. Some people do that, most don't, and most domainers are at least attempting to clear up any trademark issues.What I am going to talk about is those people who call anyone with any parked, undeveloped or under-developed domains a cybersquatter. The argument is usually revolves around wondering why the

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-18090286548244626892007-10-03T15:45:00.000+01:002007-10-03T15:50:49.946+01:00

We had a school reunion on the weekend. The first time many of us had actually seen each other for nearly 20 years. And what fun we had! The night is a bit of a blur, but bits keep coming back to me. It was great to see everyone again, despite what some associates were saying beforehand (they obviously hated school - I LOVED IT!)I heard that I was retired (I'm not) and that I'm a millionaire (

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-73545489218428477492007-10-03T15:32:00.000+01:002007-10-03T15:44:52.283+01:00

Many years ago, I read an article/interview with Jeff Bezos - the guy behind Amazon. They started as do many tech companies in his garage, and had no idea what was going to happen .So that they could keep an eye (ear!) on what was going on, they made the server beep every time they sold a book.They had to turn the beep off after a few hours, as there was just a continuous BEEEEEEEPP noise.That

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-793642976996748892007-09-11T09:34:00.001+01:002007-09-11T09:39:45.565+01:00

It looks like it's time for people to start tightening their belts. The banking system in the UK is suffering due to the collapse of US sub prime mortgages, with the result that banks are not even lending to each other at the moment. This will slow the whole financial market down. If you were looking for a loan or mortgage in the near future, don't be upset if they reject you...If the

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797119.post-90711770382405389772007-09-10T21:00:00.000+01:002007-09-10T21:10:50.925+01:00

Apart from a two week break in Devon, I've had my head in various projects, and haven't had time to come up for air! This has involved various client projects and various personal projects.In that time, I have also become a Nominet member, so can register UK domain names directly, and have written a drop catching utility, which will hopefully enable me to catch some good valuable domain names

stevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758291871825534619noreply@blogger.com0