Stop The Snooping On Your Web Site

Depending on the configuration of your web server, on some, when you create a new folder and neglect to put a file named index.html or index.php, anyone going to the URL of that folder can see all the contents inside. This screen shot should give you an idea.

Look familiar? Chances are you’ve come across something like that on some sites. As you can see, the files inside the directory are exposed and by clicking the Parent Directory link, people can check out the other directories on your site especially if the next directory up doesn’t happen to have an index file either.

One way to stop that is to simply create an strongindex/strong file. You don’t have to add content to it just create a file, name it index.html so now people will see a blank page when they go to that URL. But what if you have tons of folders and folders inside of folders and you don’t know which of them are exposed?

Relax. You don’t have to go through them all individually. Drop the following code into the .htaccess file inside the public_html or www folder. If there is no .htaccess file just create it and paste the code inside.

span style=”color:#008000;”code# Disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes/code/span

10 Secrets to Repurposing Your Content Part Four

Content repurposing is more than a way to fill in the gaps when you’re on vacation or when you’re struggling to come up with original content. Repurposing your content makes good financial sense too. In past posts in this series, we’ve discussed repurposing books, reports and articles – all fairly obvious content to repurpose. However, one area which you may be overlooking and which can provide powerful and compelling content are ecourses and client communication or FAQ’s.

Let’s take a look at both and explore your options.

Ecourses

If you have an online course or two in your content catalog, either as a product you sell or a giveaway, bonus or lead generator, that online course can be paired down to create snappy and information dense autoresponders.

For example, if your online course has 10 lessons, you can pull three of the most useful lessons out, whittle them down to a paragraph or two, and create an autoresponder series. If the course is a product you??re selling then the autoresponder can be a great way to motivate a purchase. You can also use this autoresponder to promote other items in your product or service catalog or to promote other items, for example if you’re an affiliate marketer.

Your repurposed ecourse also makes for a great lead generator.

Frequently Asked Questions

Whether you’ve been in business for a month or ten years, chances are you’ve been asked questions about your business. They may be questions you get from people on the street who learn about you and your business or questions you receive from your customers. These questions, and more importantly your answers, make great content material. Grab those old email responses and repurpose them into content.

Format them as a Q&A piece or pull apart the important points in your response, add an attention-grabbing headline and voila, you have a great article or blog post. If you receive a number of compelling questions you can gather them together, along with your compelling answers, and create a short report, for example "The Top Ten Questions People Ask about _________."

The great thing about repurposing content is it only takes a few minutes to pull things together and polish it into quality fresh content and it’s an easy task to outsource!

Next time we’ll wrap this series up by talking about repurposing blog posts and PLR content.

Happy writing!

Is Fear Stifling Your Content?

I receive a lot of questions from people interested in entering the freelance writing world and I’ve noticed that one thing holds all of them back – fear. It got me to thinking, and blogging, about how this emotion, which we all deal with at one time or another, affects internet marketers and the content they write. I’d like to take a look at a few ways fear can hold you back from connecting with your audience and from making money.

Fear Can Make Your Content Dreadfully Dull.

When you write , we’re talking about articles, blog posts, and even ebooks and reports, do you write without fear of being judged? Do you write without fear of stepping on a few toes, of stirring up controversy, of being perceived a certain way? Many people write their content with a great amount of restraint and unfortunately their content lacks enthusiasm, passion and to be quite blunt, it’s not interesting.

If this rings true for you, if you feel as if you’re holding back when you write, because you fear being judged or angering people, consider taking a leap of faith. Write about something you’ve always wanted to write about, don’t hold back, and then publish it. It can be a liberating experience. And you’ll likely attract some new attention to your website.

Fear Can Make Your Sales Content Ineffective.

Many business owners struggle with writing their sales content. They strive to cover all the bases, the emotional triggers, the benefits, the testimonials and so on, while at the same time they fear sounding too boastful, too salesy, too cliche and so on. However, what happens when you let fear rule your writing is you end up focusing on the wrong things.

The Poopy First Draft

One of the most powerful ways to overcome fear whether you’re writing sales copy or content, is to sit down at your computer or notebook and commit to writing a first draft. Not just any ol first draft, but what you will gratefully accept as a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first draft.

In our house we call it the "poopy first draft" because my daughters used to sit at the computer for hours writing and editing their book reports. They put so much pressure on themselves for it to be perfect it took twice as long as it should and sometimes they weren’t very good.However when they write their poopy first draft, spelling and grammar check takes care of the editing and a few contextual revisions usually brings their report together quite nicely

When you eliminate judgment from your writing it frees you to write without fear. When you write without fear, you accomplish your writing goals much more eloquently and efficiently.

Your audience is able to connect with you on a very personal and human level and your sales content will feel genuine and have more power to convert.

Do you let fear stifle your content and if so, how do you overcome it – share your stories!

Wolves In Sheeps’ Clothing

Just before April 1st, there was a lot of talk and news coverage about a computer worm called Conficker. If you’re using a PC you probably have heard warnings about it. Most of us are pretty savvy by now. We know we need a good antivirus and firewalls to keep our systems clean of such insidous software.

Before you download that free Antivirus, firewall or virus scanner, do you know if it is clean?

That’s right. Some antivirus, firewall programs and virus scanners are only pretending to be good for your computer but in reality they carry nasty worms, viruses and spyware themselves.

strongSolution:/strong
ulli
Don’t download and install protection programs that you or people you trust to know these things have strongnever/strong heard of.
If you know the program is legit and good, don’t download it from a site you’ve never heard of or looks suspicious. strongGet it straight from the company’s web site/strong itself.
If it came in an email – strongstay clea/strongr of it./li/ul

I’m Just Not That Into My Podcast

When a budding new podcaster comes to me for advice on preparing for their show, I encourage them to make a big list of potential show topics. If they can quickly list 50+ topics, they may just have a chance of making it through the first year without ‘podfading’ into silence.

If you can come up with 100+ that is even better.

We’ve all seen it happen. A new host has a great idea and launches their show with all kinds of vim and vigor – but just a couple of months later they’re struggling to come up with show topic and guest ideas. They thought they had endless ideas but the end came too soon ;)

Maybe they just need to do some creative brainstorming – or maybe they have realized they’re just not that into their show topic.

There’s nothing wrong with giving something a try and changing your mind later – but wouldn’t it be better to go in armed for success?

If you’re thinking about launching a new show – make that big list!