Overwhelment
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Lifestyle, Pickups
Just got this inspiring piece of advice(from Abraham-Hicks) in my inbox that I’d like to share with you:
Overwhelment is about you not being up to speed with what you told the Universe that you want. The Universe is yielding to you. You’re just not ready to receive it right now.
— Abraham
Interesting, eh? Haven’t thought of it that way!
—Marcus
5 CommentsPermalink Tags: Abraham
Frank Kern And San Diego
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Business
I’m on my way to San Diego, to a jam packed Frank Kern invite-only weekend seminar. One of the neat things is that I’m traveling business class for the very first time (paid 90,000 miles for it), and I already enjoy a good breakfast in the Lufthansa Lounge at the moment. That pays back very well considering how little time I’ve slept last night…
Besides that, I’m looking forward to the things I’ll learn, and to the new stuff I’m about to teach you, my blog readers.
I probably won’t have time for a walk in the sun (other than a “round trip” from my accommodation to the seminar location). But that’s OK because right after I get back from the U.S. I’m heading back to sunny Brazil. A good half year in Germany was great, and I’m already missing it, but I’m also looking forward to spending some time in Brazil again.
Either way, if you’re in San Diego as well just give me a ring. :-)
–Marcus Hochstadt
P.S. Isn’t it amazing how Frank has transformed his live over the past years?
Steve Jobs’ Blood Pressure
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Pickups
Looks like Steve Jobs set up a separate Twitter account for his blood pressure (his words), and is attracting around 100 followers per hour.
http://twitter.com/ceoSteveJobs
Although I’m still not on Twitter yet, I incidentally captured that today and found a few hilarious tweets from Steve, and I thought it would be fun to share my Top 5 with ya:
- Microsoft, kiss my apps.
- Adam’s Apple was an iMac.
- An Apple a day keeps the doctor away. Best healthcare plan there is.
- First Opera. Now Google has submitted Chrome to the App Store. I give up.
- Plotting to acquire Google.
Which one is your favorite? :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
Aaron Brandon’s Last DVDs
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Pickups
Aaron Brandon is selling out the last DVDs of one of his best sellers, Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter. I urge you to check it out as soon as possible before they’re gone forever.
Well, perhaps it already is too late…
That said, I’ll be creating some pretty cool stuff with Aaron Brandon together very soon. As a matter of fact, we’ll be meeting on the phone this very week sharing our strategies on how to start a thriving Internet business.
Who’s Aaron anyway?
Well, one could say we’re two shining James Brausch apprentices. ;-)
Anyway, we’re going to share some hard core techniques and strategies on that call. We’ll come up with plenty of cool stuff, that’s fo sho, and it’ll help a bunch of people.
Yes, we’re going to create a product out of it.
We know what’s going on in the Internet business world today, how badly people are struggling and starving to make a living online, and this product, with its step-by-step advice, would certainly sell like crazy. But, perhaps I’ll give it away for free to those who sign up to my newsletter here.
What do you think?
—Marcus Hochstadt
James Brausch Is Back
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Business, Pickups
“Who’s James Brausch?” you ask? Yeah right, he wasn’t one of those noisy Internet business figures you read about every day.
Well, just browse through past entries of my blog to get an idea, and take a look at the seven James Brausch DVDs still on sale here (sidebar) that provide precise step-by-step instructions on how he made millions online. (As a matter of fact, just last week I offered something very cool to my list of subscribers that was James Brausch related. You may want to subscribe to my blog announcement list to receive notice of more cool stuff that’s coming up soon.)
Anyway, James Brausch is back — not in the Internet business scene (yet?), but I’m very glad to read (and learn) from James again, nonetheless.
If, after reading through my blog, you’re still curious, here’s what had happened.
Welcome back, James, and all the best for you and your family on your boat tour!
—Marcus Hochstadt
Cool Monday
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Announcements
You may want to subscribe to my blog announcement list (below) as I’m going to offer something very cool to my list of subscribers in less than 40 hours from now, on Monday, March 29th. It’s something that will substantially help improve your Internet business.
I won’t tell you what exactly it is, for this you’ll need to subscribe. Just this: It helped me greatly in my Internet business endeavors, and my wish is that you get a chance to take advantage of it as well.
Subscribe here:
—Marcus
Autoresponder Open Rates, So What?
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Marketing, Strategies
If you’re using an autoresponder — and since you’re reading my blog you certainly are — you’re eventually concerned about the Open Rate of your list. If not, or if you’re still sending your newsletters in plain text format only (which I used to do until just recently), then you can dismiss this post for the time being. Bookmark and come back to it once you do.
The other day I received a “last newsletter issue” from a spiritual business person in which he expressed the concern of apparently low open rates. He grieved that only 25% would actually open the issues questioning why he should continue sending the advice if 75% would not even bother reading it (my own MyGermanCity.com’s stats exemplify the opposite, BTW).
This made me realize that even high profile Internet business people are still concerned about open rates? I was under the impression that dignitaries would be aware of the idiosyncrasies of open rates and that we have to take them with a grain of salt — especially those who use AWeber‘s main package (like I do).
Are you aware that a portion of your audience has set their e-mail client to block the display of images in e-mails received? And are you aware that AWeber tracks the open rates by slyly including a reference to a tiny image from within e-mail campaigns? So those who block the display of images in e-mails would read your message but the autoresponder stats would imply that they have not opened it.
On the other hand, and this is another oddity, if your subscribers open an individual message more than once, they’re being counted as often as they accept the display of images each time they open that issue. In other words, let’s say Joe opens the message today and then next week again, it will be counted as if two subscribers opened your newsletter. Yup.
This may count especially heavily for e-zines with a ton of high quality content where subscribers will likely read it again and again.
Solution?
Well, I welcome further elaboration on this matter. Besides, I’m aware of extended subscriptions in which one can activate tools which resolve this issue.
Still, what about those who are not willing to pay double price and still, to some extend, trust the current stats? How can you improve its accuracy?
Let me list a couple of solutions on how to get more valid open rates in your e-mail campaigns…
- Include a distinctive header image without which the issue looks somewhat incomplete.
- Include a unique image for each individual newsletter issue that will make your audience want to display pictures so they can see what interesting graphic or pic you show them this time.
- Have your newsletter inundated with images so that it can’t be read without accepting the whole enchilada. This is a personal choice, and it’s not my favorite, but it may be highly effective for select audiences. The downside is that the open rate could ridiculously shoot to the roof since folks will likely open individual issues more than once and thus need to unblock images each and every time or else they cannot read a single word of it.
What do you do or use to refine the accuracy of your open rates? Or do you still send your issues in plain text and thus don’t really care about them?
—Marcus Hochstadt
15 CommentsPermalink Tags: autoresponder, aweber, open rates
November 9, 1989 — Freedom For Millions
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Chitchat
Celebrating the fall of the Wall 20 Years ago on November 9, 1989, when millions of people became finally free.
No more shot people who were trying to illicitly cross the border. No more Cold War between countries of the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. No more prison for 16 million East Germans.
The lives of millions of people across Europe had changed dramatically to the better.
Time to celebrate, reflect, and to give thanks! :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
12 CommentsPermalink Tags: berlin wall, fall of the wall, freedom
Firefox 3.5 And Its Questionable Image Enhancement
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in HTML, CSS, Design
When I installed Firefox 3.5 last week I was immediately impressed by one of its improvements: When viewing the source code of a Web page URLs in that source are now underlined and clickable. And the best news is when you click on a link you’ll get to see that page or file! Wow, very neat and time saving. :-)
There’s also a questionable enhancement, however…
Did you notice that images on some Web sites appear darker than before or when viewing with a different browser? For example, go to istockphoto.com and you’ll see that all of their images are darker now, when viewing with Firefox 3.5.
My coder, Pat Heard, educated me on this new “feature.” I was asking him because the face image in the footer of MyGermanCity.com appeared darker. Pat pointed me to a thread in the Mozilla forums that provides a fix.
What I did, however, was I simply opened up the image in Adobe Fireworks, re-saved it and voila — the image now appears correctly again.
Why or when do images appear darker in FF 3.5? I’m not completely sure, but my guess is when you save images with an ICC profile or in an CMYK instead of RGB color set.
—Marcus Hochstadt
40 CommentsPermalink Tags: firefox
Luciana Domingos Faustini — Nossa Musa do Carnaval 2009
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Chitchat, Contests
Carnival is one of the most important cultural and economical events in Brazil.
Brazil’s biggest television broadcaster, TV Globo, holds a contest every year to find the Musa do Carnaval do Rio de Janeiro (Muse of the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro) — a Samba girl who best represents the Carnival in Rio. Think of it like the “Miss Country” competitions throughout the world each year.
My sister-in-law, Luciana, won second place out of twelve competitors, and it was her first appearance in this big TV Globo contest!
Rio de Janeiro’s twelve major Samba schools pick their best Samba girls to represent their schools on TV Globo for this big contest. Mangueira, the Samba school Luciana dances for and was chosen to represent Mangueira in the TV Globo contest, is one of the biggest and oldest Samba schools in Rio.
The TV Globo contest was divided into two rounds. The first round (to pick the four finalists) was divided into two groups. Luciana performed in the first group (six participants) which was broadcasted on January 17.
Here is the video from that day where she won first place, showing her incredible first-class performance…
The Final, recorded on February 5 and divided into two semi-finals, was shown on TV last Saturday, February 14.
Here’s Luciana — first showcasing her home, then dancing to win the second semi-final…
And here are the voters, including the audience, clearly voting her to enter the Grand Final…
Based on Internet votes, Luciana is even the clear winner of all twelve participants, thus she is The Internet Muse of the Carnaval of Rio de Janeiro 2009…
(The winner, Suellen from Portela, is voted fourth place here.)
Please join me in on a BIG Congratulations (Brazilian: Parabens) to Luciana Domingos Faustini by submitting a comment below! :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
P.S. Luciana: Você é nossa Musa do Carnaval 2009 — uma garota muito simpatica, com estilo, corpo perfeito, elegante, muito profissional, samba como ninguem, e linda demais. Parabens! :-)
WordPress Developer, Coder, Consultant Needed
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Business
Before I go ahead and create another project on Elance or RentACoder for this, perhaps I’ll find you thru my blog? That way you would receive more money for your time. Let’s see… :-)
I need a seasoned WordPress developer, coder, and consultant for a few hours per week or per month (depending on the amount and intensity of questions and requests I have).
First, you will assist me in getting a few things straight such as utilizing existing WordPress codex without installing new plugins as well as finding the most appropriate plugin(s) for certain tasks (and setting them up properly).
Later on I may ask you to handcode plugins that fulfill specific tasks or to modify, expand, or improve existing plugins.
Ideally, you are an expert in…
- PHP
- JavaScript
- XHTML and CSS
- WordPress
- MySQL
If you feel that you would be the perfect fit then go ahead and post a comment below. Please include a link (or links) to a few of your work examples as well as your hourly rate (in USD).
If you prefer that I keep your proposal confidential, please indicate so in your submission and it will remain an unapproved comment.
Payments via PayPal.
—Marcus Hochstadt
3 CommentsPermalink Tags: coder, developer, wordpress
Using A CMS For A Content-Rich Website
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Business, HTML, CSS, Design, SEO
It was when I visited my good friend, Daniel Levy, in Paris that I heard of the term CMS for the first time.
If you’re now wondering (like I was) what the heck CMS means and for what it should be good… outspoken it means Content Management System, and it can be useful for organizing and managing content that you publish on the Web. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
There are free or open source and paid content management systems available.
Up to that point, I was using Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver for my websites (except for this very blog). But when Daniel and I were talking about the future of my Blue Baby, MyGermanCity.com, a travel related content-rich website, and the plans I have with it in terms of features and number of pages, his reaction was: “You need a CMS!”
“CMS?” I asked.
“CMS,” he said. He then went on and explained what CMS means, what it is, does, and the advantages — and possible disatvantages — of using one.
It made sense to me so I went ahead and researched both costly and open source top content management systems. One tool I used was the CMSMatrix.org, although their database was — and still is — partially outdated. (Showing WordPress version 2.2.1 when the current version was 2.6? That’s a huge difference.)
I also went to OpenSourceCMS.com, but take it with a grain of salt since feedback is marbled by spammy comments of users and partners or owners of the respective software.
Additionally, there were at least 40 reviews and reports whose URLs I purged; though I’m sure you’ll find them using Google’s powerful search engine. ;-)
This entire research (plus testing, and testing, and testing…) took me almost three months.
Which content management systems did I test?
In alphabetical order:
- Bitrix Site Manager (7.0)
- Drupal (5.10 & 6.4)
- e107 (0.7 — six years old and still no version 1?)
- ExpressionEngine (1.6.5)
- eZ Publish (4.0)
- Joomla! (1.5.7)
- Mambo (4.6.5)
- MovableType (4.2), and…
- WordPress (2.6)
There were a few more, but due to the fact that I removed them from the test domain within a few minutes — or did not even bother installing them due to detailed reviews — I avoid mentioning them here.
Daniel also mentioned the name CMS400. At that time, the company behind this software, Ektron, did not provide prices on its website (hmm…). And when I contacted an Ektron representative, all the person did was ask questions… still no price.
End of conversation.
At the time of this writing, Ektron does provide prices on its website, starting at a whopping $5,000 per URL for the Standard Edition. But what I would have needed would have been the Professional Edition for which it says, “Ask your sales person for details.”
Sure…
You can see that I was not necessarily after a free or open source content management system. No CMS is “for free.” You always spend time (= money) and energy figuring everything out and familiarizing yourself with it. Or you have someone else do it for you, in which case you spend money, too.
Of course, I could have outsourced this task. The thing though is that I wanted to familiarize myself with it to know whether I want to work with it for the next few years, and to see which is the best or most appropriate CMS for MyGermanCity.com.
At one point I narrowed it down to Joomla! and Drupal with tendency towards Drupal. The thing was I would have spend at least $1,500 just for transitioning the existing template alone. Plus, I also needed someone for setting everything up.
What actually pushed me away from it, however, is the lack of plugin development (which they call modules).
You need to understand that modules are being developed for certain main Drupal releases (ex., 5 or 6) since the main Drupal versions are backward INcompatibel. Now, there were a couple modules that I needed upfront or soon, but they were not available for version 6. So I would have been forced to use Drupal 5 instead. Not that bad, perhaps, but what if I want or have to upgrade from 5 to 6?
That’s a huge task, they say.
This got me to remove both Drupal 5 & 6 from the test domain.
OK, then I was ready to use Joomla!.
Gosh, what a software… really impressive, speaking of customizability and features available right from the start! I even was about to fall in love with it (buy me a t-shirt!), but then…
Writing a simple content page, publishing it, and trying to access it on the Web (using the URL alias, not the ugly dynamic URL), displayed a 404 error… WTF?
The thing was this: If you do not assign a page to a left or right hand navigation bar, a Category, or a Section, you canNOT see the page on the Web using the pretty or search engine friendly URL!
End of discussion. What a pity, but Joomla! was removed from the server within a minute.
Another possible CMS was the Bitrix Site Manger. Again, it does have a cost upfront, but this can be compensated by the fact that most tools are already included. This may save you a lot of time later on.
As an example, one developer I got in contact with said that Drupal can do the same things Bitrix Site Manager does. The difference in terms of cost?
Almost non-existent.
I would have paid a similar amount of money for either CMS. The Bitrix Site Manager as it’s being shipped plus transitioning the theme: up to $3,000 altogether. Letting a developer set up Drupal, hand-code and/or customize certain modules, and have another or the same developer transfer the existing XHTML/CSS template to Drupal: up to $3,000 altogether.
Someone may argue that the Bitrix Site Manager does have a whole bunch of features built-in — tools one would need to develop for a Drupal powered site first. Plus, the assurance that Bitrix will maintain and improve those tools further since they’re part of the whole package, whereas one may need to hire a developer for maintaining and improving a Drupal powered site.
So again, both may sum up to an equal amount of time/money.
The thing that made me uninstall the Bitrix Site Manager was that file names are supposed to end in .php. They did say that it should work without the .php, but my testing consistently displayed nothing but error messages.
Another point was that this software is fairly complex (installation consists of thousands of files and folders), and, again, the need of someone to convert the existing site template to the Bitrix Site Manager would likely amount to up to $1,500 (which one may pay for a new but not for transitioning an existing custom template).
Next station was ExpressionEngine, which was recommended by the gentleman who created MyGermanCity.com’s site template — a coder extraordinaire, Pat Heard.
I can code HTML and CSS on my own, but Pat does it better, he does it in lightening speed, and he’s an expert in JavaScript.
If you’re ever in need of a first-class coder — one who exceeds your expectations — I highly recommend Pat Heard of fullahead.org. Let me warn you though… he’s usually booked out for weeks if not months.
Now, he did not only recommend EE, he also gave me a very important tip:
The choice of CMS is highly personal. Usually, once someone has invested the time to learn WordPress, TextPattern, Joomla, etc., they’ll swear up and down that it’s the best out there.
His comment set me up brilliantly. It made me look beyond the reviews of “raving fans.” ;-)
Back to ExpressionEngine…
The backend looked promising. Somehow, I felt comfortable right from the start. Plus, they promote their excellent forum and staff. Sounds good. They further promise to be extremely flexible. Also good. But then…
You CAN customize the layout to your hearts content. The downside, though, is that it affects the URL structure of your site!
As a side note: You can, somehow, program the software (or add something to the .htaccess file) to remove those template related words from URLs, but they strongly recommend you to not do that. “Extremely flexible?”
The other CMSs also just didn’t make it. e107 is too plain and doesn’t meet my needs; eZ Publish was a bit difficult to get to work, plus I couldn’t figure out how to do certain tasks; and Mambo — I dismissed that one, somehow… (doesn’t it lack development power now that some of Mambo’s previous core developers are in on developing Joomla!?).
That was the point where the thought of using WordPress as a content management system started to grow. But before that… “let me give MovableType a chance”.
First off, they consistently announce which websites use their software, and I don’t care who is using what. What interests me is what a software can do for me and my visitors, and its momentum in terms of development.
Long story short, what got me uninstall MovableType were mainly two things:
1) Somehow, it stands on its own. URLs with underscores?? And you have to be a registered user to enable things such as showing your own image next to your own comment?
2) To me it seems as though their marketing and vision is blurred and fuzzy. One day they decide to have this price; another day they decide to release MovableType as open source — with limited features over MovableType Pro. Yet another day they decide to remove those limitations and have the open source version match exactly the Pro version. Yet another day they change the price structure, again.
What about consistency and a clear plan?
Another thing that underscores my thesis is that their staff often writes mt.com or mt.org instead of movabletype.com or movabletype.org. Laziness (or fuzziness) can lead to strange destinations… ;-)
Enough said; on to WordPress.
But can it do what I need it to do?
I quickly realized that it can, and much more.
- Custom page templates without altering the URL.
- Custom breadcrumbs navigation (and many more custom fields) by utilizing the Custom Fields options when creating pages or posts.
- Customize the file name structure to your heart’s content. You could even add any file extension to it, if you wish.
- Compared to other CMSs, to create a WordPress template is very easy and pretty straight forward. In other words, the transition from a static XHTML/CSS template to a WordPress template was done within a few hours — by myself, a PHP newbie.
- The momentum and professionalism in terms of development and improvement is unmatched. Really impressive. New version after new version; plus, plugins are consistently developed and improved. And if not, it should be comparably simple to create a new custom plugin or alter an existing one — or to find someone who can alter or create and maintain one for a reasonable price.
- WordPress with its array of plugins may save you thousands of dollars in comparison to certain other content management systems.
That’s about my decision of using WordPress as a content management system for a content-rich website. :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
New Features In WordPress 2.7
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in HTML, CSS, Design, Pickups
After following the beta development and testing it on another domain, I went ahead the other day and installed WordPress 2.7 RC1 here on my blog. Furthermore, I updated my blog’s theme to take advantage of the new features WordPress 2.7 offers such as threaded comments (where one can reply to individual comments).
Thank you, Otto, your 2.7 Comments Enhancements instructions were a big help. :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
7 CommentsPermalink Tags: otto, wordpress 2.7
The Biology Of Belief
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By Marcus Hochstadt | Filed in Pickups
I just finished watching an excellent DVD — Bruce Lipton‘s “Intelligente Zellen: Der Geist ist stärker als die Gene” which translates to “Intelligent Cells: The Spirit is Stronger Than the Genes.”
The DVD is based on his book The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles and showcases his live event in Vienna, Austria in 2008.
Excellent, excellent. I recommend it to anyone who wants to go beyond old-school medicine and take charge of their own life.
Looks like you can’t get it at amazon.com, but at amazon.de or koha-verlag.de.
The DVD is in English, German, and Italian.
—Marcus Hochstadt
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