A real tele for real men …

I love it!

A TV with built in wireless. Well that’s only the half of it – but really – a TV with built in wireless. This is truly a wonderful, wonderful world we live in.

Read the full post here …

Top 5 Tips for TradeMe and ebay

Is it luck?

Most of have bought or sold something secondhand over the Internet. Here in New Zealand we typically use TradeMe although I see there are other players now (www.zillion.co.nz is one of the other players). Over in the states I know that eBay is huge and I think eBay dominates a lot of Australia too but I’m not entirely sure. Regardless there are some pseudo-rules in addition to the terms of service that really impact how successful you are when selling your not-so-loved artifacts via a fee-for-service website like TradeMe and eBay (and Zillion).

Read the full post here …

WordPress Plugins Review

There are a number of the plugins that I now wouldn’t be without:

All in one SEO pack

I believe that this has had an enormous positive impact on my sites getting to the top of Google. Change the key words in your blog title without having to change the actual blog title. Experiment till you find something that works without wrecking your permalinks. This really is a clever and useful plug-in and I highly recommend it.

My rating – 89/100

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FD Feedburner Plugin

I use Feedburner for nearly all my feeds. Great stats available and I can include Adsense ads. A little bit of setting up involved but if you can drive WordPress you can drive this plug-in. Another highly rated plug-in.

My rating – 87/100

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Sociable

Easy one click action to post a link to your site on Facebook and the like. A must if you want to encourage your audience to ‘tweet’ something great about your site. I was surprised when I found out how often this was used over the past two weeks – and not just by me! Recommended.

My rating – 78/100

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WP Security Scan

A must-have plug-in for noobs who know no better and a prudent double-check for those of us who think we know it all! I have wrecked multiple installs of WordPress on my sites by ‘enhancing’ working versions (it’s a guy thing) and although I am sensible enough to have back-up copies of my posts it’s not entirely rare to omit a crucial step and leave a directory unsecured (i.e. write-able). This plug-in is an excellent way of double checking your site’s security and is another recommended plug-in.

My rating – 92/100

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Adsense Manager

If you’re lke me you’ll find it a little pesky to add your Google Adsense into posts and have them sit in the right spot. And if you want to change them it can be frustrating remembering the colour palette for each ad. Adsense Manager is like a mini Content Management System for ads. It makes cataloguing HUGE lists of ads really easy and also facilitates very easy swapping of ads across multiple pages and posts. There are updated versions of this I understand and I’ve tried a few different types of ad managers however this is the one I found the easiest and best to use. Recommended.

My rating – 88/100

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7 Recession Busting Tips!

Feeling the pinch of the recession?

Looking for ideas on how to beat the recession? Bust it even?

Here are seven tips – practical tips – for making sure that the pinch you feel is nothing more than an inconvenience rather than devastating to your known world.

1. If you’ve dug yourself into a hole – STOP DIGGING!

Obvious?

Of course!

This is fundamental really. If you find that you’re really in strife already it’s time to stop the obvious things that you do that have contributed to your predicament. The Large Latte for morning tea every day. A bought lunch to save having to make it the night before (and cafe food is so much tastier – right?). Wine with your meals. Those extra Sky TV channels. Hey, I’m not saying you should join a monastry and sell everything you own and give it to the poor … but maybe you are ‘the poor’ and you’ve not yet heard the eminent ‘knock knock knock’ on your door by the bailiff.

Take a moment to think about the luxuries you enjoy now but may have to really pay for later and that you don’t really need …

2. Take stock of your situation

How much time do you have available to do maintenance on the house? On the car? Do you even have the skills to do so? What items in your world require significant funds to upkeep? What extras, what luxuries are you really paying for right now – directly and indirectly? How long till the car needs replaced? When will the kids need new shoes? Uniforms? What plans do you have this year that may require money? Holidays? Weddings?

Taking stock of your situation means looking at your lifestyle and trying to account for everything – now and future. This requires honesty and courage. Honesty to tell the truth about the things that need to be sorted and courage to write this down and make it real – to your wife/husband/partner/kids/YOURSELF!

3. Create a budget – a REAL budget.

A budget is not a ‘wish list’ nor is it a ‘nice to have.’ It is another fundamental necessity. How many buildings do you think were built without working out the costs first? How many government departments operate without knowing how much they’re spending every week, month year? How many successful businesses go from strength to strength on the hope that that when bills come in there’ll be money to pay? How long do you think a hospital will provide care if those who manage it have no idea how much it will cost to keep th elights on, pay the nurses, replenish medicines and repair the plumbing? Budgets are ‘real world’ records of the money coming in and properly assessed forecasts of money going out.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to provide in depth budgeting advice however you are very welcome to contact us at support@clannz.com and be put in touch with helpful, free and independent advice on budgeting.

For the rest of this article click here

The seige is over!

The episode in Napier is drawing to a close. The guman is dead. The dog is alive. The police are winding up their cordon and in a few days we’ll have forgotten all about it – probably.

I’m a little bothered that there were explosives found (see ODT) as who would know if there are nutters in our street who have a similar inclination? Scary to say the least.

I guess that while I sit beside the fire typing my narrative I’m just happy that the much loved dogs are safely singeing … as is the police dog that managed to survive the Napier ordeal.

Ultimately we live in a happy little country where nothing much happens … most of the time!

Awesome WordPress Plugins

So I’ve been surfing like a mad thing (the internet that is) and trawling for useful WordPress plugins – well additional plugins – and I’ve got a reasonably useful list now that I’ll share with y’all.

The primary reason for getting all these is to see what is useful and what isn’t and also to satisfy my craving for new and exciting things to play with on my ‘puter.

So what did I download today? Check out this list:

Latest WordPress plugins I downloaded just now

So what do I think of them all? Well I created this post two weeka ago so I’ve had ample time to test them all and work out what I like. Check out my review findings here.

Writing a business plan

Everyone worth their salt knows that any serious contender in the business world needs a business plan. This includes everyone from the café owner to the budding blogger. Over the coming days I’m going to share with you the key points to putting a business plan together.

This isn’t new to me and I’ve successfully completed a few now.

I cannot stress how crucial they are to ensuring your endeavour, whatever it is, has real focus and a good chance of succeeding. I’ll demonstrate the key elements using the example of a budding blogger to provide some real life insight into how one might go about this.

Here are the broad headings I’ll cover:

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. The Vision

4. Background to the Business Opportunity

5. The Service Being Offered

6. Marketing

7. Operations

8. Management and Ownership

9. Finance 10. Action Plan

11. Suggestions I’ll provide examples and commentary to help get you down the path to realising your dream endeavour.

So lets get straight into it by looking at the Executive Summary……..[Read more]

Making it to number on Google

Well tonight I check on my other website (CLANNZ) and see that I’ve legitimately made it to number one on a Google search just by searching ‘clannz’ (without the quotes). Fizzing even more now, to say the least.

Top of the list on Google

So I can now share with you how I did it exactly and what you need to do.

A featured blog and 3rd on Google

A blurry-eyed morning, struggling to move from the bed to the shower just because it’s Monday. Pull the curtains and WHAM – sunlight is blinding. Slowley waking and finally sitting down to a large cheese omelete (the breakfast of champions). Lots of work related issues and tasks start bouncing around in my skull and then the other daily ritual begins … check and see – has anyone at all read any of my blogs?

Begin ritual:

Google for clannz (lower case in case it might be cheating to have it match my blog site). It’s my main focus so most likely to have visibility I figure. Nope – nothing added while I slept. Okay – next step.

Check for comments. Okay – can’t see anyone has looked and commented on any of my sites (ngatai.com, clannz.com and riking7.wordpress.com). Onwards to the next step of the ritual.

Do at least one research task a day. Okay. I decide to look at the top three Goggle results from the step above to see what ideas I can come up with. First site. Check. Okay. Lawyers. Cool. Looks professional. Clean and tight looking site. Second site. Check. hmmmm. Funding for education. Don’t like the site colours and style but then they’re not selling anything. They’re giving away money! Doesn’t really matter I guess. Right – third site. hmmm – it’s a WordPress page. Interesting. Hold on … this featured blog looks familiar. Hey. That’s me!!!!! Yikes. I’m a featured blog! NICE ONE!!! Okay. Deep breathing. Maybe they do this for everyone? “Who cares”, I say. Ring the wife and tell her, “Hey I’m third on a Google search and a ‘featured blog’ on the WordPress site”.

What can I say? This morning I’m now fizzing.

Searching on Google I found me - at number three!

Look - I'm a 'featured blog'