Today I wanted to let you know about the best password manager I have come across online. I only found it a few weeks ago, and I love it already.

When you get into internet or affiliate marketing, you will soon notice that you will very likely start signing up for many, many sites and services. Be it Affiliate programs, forums, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, article sites, squidoo, youtube  – you name it, you will sign up for it and need a user name and password.

Many people start out with writing their user names and passwords on pieces of paper (like me), or start writing up a notepad on the computer and just create one long (and usually disorderly) list of secret names and numbers. It can be hard to find what you need on that sometimes!

What an Internet Marketer really needs is a great password manager. One that remembers every single user name and password for you, no sweat. And Last Pass is exactly that (and no, this is not an affiliate link! )

Last Pass is literally the last password you will ever need! You will get one master password, and the program will remember all of  your user names and passwords for you, super easy. If you have a look at their home page, there are plenty of testimonials on there from enthusiastic users, and also some really good reviews from sites like PCMag.com, ZDNet Microsoft Report and PC World.

Now, I am not good at explaining any technical things or how exactly it works, but it does, and it’s brilliant! Oh – and did I mention that it’s free, too? I would suggest for you to just head over to their website, have a bit of a snoop around, and check it out!

Seriously, as Internet Marketer this is something you really need, and Last Pass is one of the best password managers you can get!

Never mind, I still want you to have this post, I might just try and leave out the screen shots I did – you will still be able to follow, trust me. So here it goes:

Have you ever wondered how to create a flash looking banner or button to advertise your website? I certainly did, and a little while ago I actually found out, from one of my fellow webmasters Maya, who runs a very successful blog for beach lovers called Completely Coastal. I came across her blog searching for possible sites for a link exchange to my beach site. And there it was, in her sidebar on the right hand side – a great button to advertise your site, even with a copy-and-paste html code for anybody to grab it and display it on their site! Of course I needed to know how she did it. And Maya was so nice to explain it to me.

One thing I changed in her instructions, though – she said she created the button with Paint.net, and I tried that, but I have to say I found the program too complicated for me, I just couldn’t work it out. (Blonde? )

The software I have been using to create my banner is called XHeader, and it is probably one of the best free website tools I have downloaded so far. It is absolutely free and so easy to use, it’s not funny.   In fact, all the header graphics for this site and for my site Healthy Diet Weight Loss have been created with XHeader. It really comes in handy for all sorts of graphics for your site.

So after Maya explained to me how to create a banner or button for my sites to advertise them, I played around with XHeader for a while to create a nice 125×125 graphic. If you have a look at my website Lighthouse Home Decor

(note: this is my Beach Decor website, and I am starting to build backlinks to some of the inner pages of it now to get the pages ranked in the search engines, too, not just the home page, that’s why I use another one of my keyword phrases “Lighthouse Home Decor”; this will over time give me more visitors to the site through my other keywords, too),

you will notice the new “button to grab” on the left hand sidebar towards the bottom. This is exactly what Maya has on her site, too, and that’s what I want to show you. You can create all sorts of sizes of banners or logos with XHeader.

When you create a button or banner for your site, I believe it is important that you keep it in line with the theme of your site, like colors, pictures, etc. What I have done for my Lighthouse Home Decor site is just grab a piece of the site graphics and incorporated it into the button (you find the crab and the thong at the bottom of the site )

So, here is what you do:

1. Download your free software XHeader and install it on your computer.
2. Have a good play with the software – you can’t do anything wrong! Here is what I usually do:

• Click on “new”

• Click “Create a blank header”

• Enter the size of your graphic. Now, the square little button is 125 x 125 pixels. But you could really make it any size you want.

And then just start having a go at creating a nice button! I usually start by importing an image, then adding text and transparency etc.

Once  you have created your masterpiece, just save it as .jpg in a location of your choice. (I always go for “superb” size).

Once you have done that, you need to upload the image to your website. I have a self-hosted WordPress blog, so I uploaded it (from the folder I had saved it to) via my free FTP program FileZilla to my website (wp-admin/images/YourImageTitle.jpg). You need to do that because you will need an URL for the image.

TIP: If you do not know much about file transfers via FTP, there is another solution: Photobucket, a free image hosting site. Just become a member of photobucket, and you can upload any number of pictures or graphics from your computer to your account in photobucket, and each of the photos will then have an URL for you to use.

So, once your image is uploaded to your website (or Photobucket) and you know the URL, here is the magic:

To display the button on your site, including the Text window with html code for other people to “grab it”, you need to use this code:

<img alt=”Your keywords for your site” src=”the URL of your Image“/><br>
<textarea style=”width: 125px; height: 125px” name=”textfield”><a href=”The URL of your Website” target=”_blank” title=”The Title of your website“><img border=”0″ src=”the URL of your Image“/></a></textarea>

The red colored text is what you will have to fill in with your details. Voila!!! Isn’t that cool??? I thought so.

…I am going to upload my new button for this site straight after doing this post, so check out my sidebar and let me know what you think!! And if you like, you can also grab my new button and put it on your site…

Thanks, Maya, for your very much appreciated help!

I would love to hear back from all of you who try this out, to see how you go. And of course, if you create a banner or button for your website or blog like I have done with this method, let me and my readers know and leave us a link to your site so we can check it out!

Domain Coupon Codes

Ahhh, yes! I have just come across something I wanted to share here with you: Domain Coupon Codes.

This might not be anything new for some of you, but I am thrilled to have come across it after 1 1/2 years online, and I hope I can help some of you to save at least a tiny bit of money. I mean, every bit helps, right?

As I told you in my last post, I signed up with Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program, and right now I am slowly working my way through the modules. In one of the modules we had to register a domain name, and Alex gives the hint to look for promotional codes for the domain registrar you are using.

There are many domain registrars on the net, and I think if you have found one you like and that works well, why not stick with it. My preferred Domain Registrar is the World’s Largest Registrar – GoDaddy.com. For the past year and a half, I always paid full price when registering a new domain (and I did register a few, even if I didn’t use all of them!).

After Alex’s lat coaching module I thought, why not simply google “Godaddy Domain Coupon Codes” (actually, I googled “Godaddy July Promo Code”) and see whether anything comes up? – Guess what! I found a great site that had all sorts of current Promo Codes for GoDaddy. I simply entered one of the domain coupon codes during checkout when asked for it, and VOILA! I saved $3!!!  Now, as said, it might not be a fortune, but if a “normal” domain costs $9.99, then I think this is quite a substantial saving.

So what I wanted to suggest is that next time you want to register a domain name, just google “Domain Coupon Codes” or similar for your domain registrar, and see whether anything comes up. It doesn’t cost anything, and its quick, and it can save you money. So it gets a thumbs up from me!

Free Website Tool "Just ZIP it!"

Okay, what I am going to talk about here isn’t actually a website tool, but it’s a great tool anyway!

I don’t know about you, but I have downloaded so many ebooks to my computer, and there are quite a lot that come zipped up. When I was still working from my partners computer, he had WinZip installed, so I used that to unzip the files. Which was ok, but not great. (My version of a great software is if you do not need to use any brain cells whatsoever to be able to operate it ).

Anyway, when I evolved to my own pc – we did a “bulk buy” on ebay for a couple of old Desktop PC’s for about $100, so you can imagine what a piece of @#* it was – I was suddenly without a working Zip tool! Of course I looked into getting WinZip, as I knew the program (sort of) and could operate with it (I am a real sucker for “same old same old” and very comfortable with everything I know), but when I discovered that it cost some money I wasn’t prepared to pay that amount for it. I thought there has to be something else that will do the trick just as good.

So I started looking on the Internet. And came across a few different free Zip tools. And tried some just to be surprised that some of them were too complicated for me who wanted something really simple. I wasn’t impressed!!!

Until I came across Just Zip It – a very simple yet effective and FREE Zip tool that actually made me wonder if I missed out on a few important steps the first time I used it. Because it worked so simple compared to all the other Zip tools I had tried that I assumed something was wrong. Just to discover that it really is that simple, even I could operate it with no problems!:)

All you have to do is download the File, install it on your computer, and then whenever you download a zip file just right click on it, then click on “open with” and then on “Free Simple Zip Tool” (at least that’s what it says on my program Windows Vista) – and the file gets unzipped in seconds. It really is so simple, and I like it very much, so I thought I’ll tell you all about it.

Feel free to check it out.

Ok, so don’t get any wrong ideas here, alright??? Here it goes:

I have just (and I mean just! Literally 5 minutes ago) found this site called “ScratchBack“, and I love what this site is all about! See, I was reading a post on one of my favorite blogs, the Work From Home Business Blog, and noticed this interesting widget on the sidebar that said “Tip me to get in my list of links”. After quick examination I ventured onto the original site where this widget came from.  And ended up on ScratchBack.

What is ScratchBack?

Basically what you can do with ScratchBack is put a widget on your blog where the readers or friends of your blog can “tip” you and you give them a backlink (or image) in return. So it is like an online “tipping” system that benefits you (the website/blog owner) and your readers. Your readers scratch your back, and they scratch yours!

• You can accept tips and have fun
• You earn money from every single tip you get (into PayPal, nice and easy!)
• Super-easy to set up (and I mean it when I say that!)
• You give your readers the possibility to thank you for your work
• It is FREE to sign up!

So I decided to try it out, right here on my blog. Now, I hope there are a few of you out there who will value a backlink from my blog and feel generous enough to spend the $5 I am asking for a tip… And I think if you like the idea of a bit more interaction with your readers, this is a nice way of doing it that will benefit all of us!

I really think this could be a great way of earning some extra income (even if it might not be much) and especially to HAVE SOME FUN!!! Thanks, Jim Kukral, for inventing this great online tipping jar!

You scratch my back, I scratch yours!

Recently I had an email in my inbox from a fellow Internet Marketer, Richard Legg, about a pretty new and exciting Clickbank tool called “Hop Ad Builder”.

You can access Hop Ad Builder through your ClickBank account (Account Settings/HopAd Builder), and with it you can actually create ads for ClickBank products to display on your Web site or blog. These Ads look a bit like Google Adsense ads, but instead of just getting a few cents per click, if somebody buys something through your link you will be getting the full ClickBank affiliate commission, which is up to 75% of the sale ($20, $30, $40… per sale!). I think that’s pretty neat, don’t you?

Now, that’s not all, though. Because Hop Ad Builder is still just a little bit technical, and you will have to insert a whole bunch of code into your website or blog, Richard Legg and a couple of  his friends have developed a WordPress Plugin to make the whole process easier and more flexible - the WP HopAd WordPress Plugin! And you can get it for FREE!!!!

Free WordPress Hop Ad Builder Plugin

(Sorry, but if you are not working with WordPress, then you will not profit from this! You will have to work with the Hop Ad Builder itself )

With this plugin you can quickly and easily create and edit ClickBank ads through your WordPress admin. You simply have to install the plugin like any other plugin (download, unzip, upload to your wp-plugins folder), then activate it through your wp-admin and start creating your first ad! And you know how the Google Adsense ads always say “Ads by Google”? Well, with the WP HopAd WordPress Plugin you can actually decide what you want to name your ads, too! What works very well is, for example, to have “Recommended Downloads” or something like that above your ads. That way, they look like genuine recommendations! You can change background color, text color, font etc, so the whole thing is really flexible.

It is also very easy to use, Richard and his friends have put up a couple of videos explaining it, so really, there is nothing to lose! You should go and grab this nifty plugin as soon as you can! I have used it on my blog Healthy Diet Weight Loss, if you want to have a look. I will still have to install it on my blog here

I hope I made your day today! Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Another great free website tool I use all the time (it’s actually 2, and they go very well together) is for one the Firefox Web Browser. Now, if you are working with Firefox already, you will very likely agree that Firefox is a great browser that – in my humble non-techie opinion – works so much better than Internet Explorer. I have a few websites up and running, and if I look at them in Firefox, they just display nicely, and I have never had any problems with the browser.

In comparison, when I look at my sites in Internet Explorer, there is quite often something not right – writing goes out over the page into the sidebars, pictures don’t display properly, centered items appear uncentered and so on…. there are quite a few issues I had in the past with IE, and since I switched to Firefox I am just a happy chappy!

Now if you are on the download page of the Firefox web browser site, if you scroll down a little you see “Take a tour of Firefox 3″ and “Tips and Tricks”. I recommend to have a look through these either before or after you download, there is just very valuable info in there and I think you can never learn enough!

The other free website tool I would like to tell you about is SEOQuake. SEOQuake is a so-called “Add-On” to the Firefox web browser, so to use it, you really need to have Firefox installed on your computer (BTW, it doesn’t mean you have to get rid of IE, I have both browsers on my computer, and I just choose which one I want to work with – which is Firefox, of course!)

This is a shot of part of the SEOQuake toolbar:

Free Website Tool SEOQuake Toolbar

As you can see, it can give you quite a few interesting facts about the website you are viewing. SEOQuake was designed to aid in search engine optimization for webmasters. It helps webmasters measure the success of their SEO campaign and compare it with their competitors. I find this tool invaluable for webmasters, because it will

• install a toolbar on your computer which will let you see each websites Google Page Rank, how many times the particular site you are visiting has been indexed by Google, it’s link backs, Alexa Traffic Rank etc.

• add exactly that information as well to your search engine results pages (when you are googeling (googling???? – tell me if you know how it is written!) something) underneath each website that comes up.

It is the most used tool on my computer!

I really hope you are going to take my advice on this – I am sure you won’t regret it! And if you could just let me know how you like it once you have it installed, that would be great!

Bravenet

If you are in the game of making money through the Internet, you very likely have one (or more!) websites or blogs up and running, trying to earn some revenue with them. To be successful in the world of Internet Marketing it is also essential to monitor your traffic:

• how many visitors do your websites get per day?
• where are these visitors coming from, i.e. through which channels are they getting to your site?
• are all these visitors “new”, or do you have returning visitors (meaning something is working!)
• are these visitors just looking at one page of your site, or are they actually browsing
• etc.

Thankfully there are some great free website tools you can get to monitor all these statistics and to see where your blog is heading. I personally use a specific website tool on all of my websites, it is called “Free Hit Counter” from Bravenet. I have got it on this blog, too (at the bottom of the right side bar)!

With the free hit counter – which you can choose yourself, by the way, there are many options – I can see exactly how many visitors my blog has per day, and check all the other stats by clicking on the counter. I find this tool very cool! Bravenet has got many other free website tools available (and also some pretty cool paid ones!), just have a browse, I am sure there are a few more that might be interesting; I have only used the hit counter so far.

It is really worth checking it out, if you haven’t got it already.

P.S. My hit counter just went up by 1!

You can have different avatars for different forums or sites. You can have a real photo of yourself as avatar, or you can have a cartoon figure, a flower, a monster… really, whatever you want. But I have to tell you, as first impression counts, you should always think about how you want to come across to the other users or members of the site that is going to display your avatar. You might want to use a completely different avatar for posting on Internet Marketing forums than on Games forums, for example.

How to create an avatar was a bit of a problem for me at the beginning of my Internet Endeavors. You probably know that avatars are usually a very specific, and very small, size. I had a picture I wanted to use, but I had no idea how to convert it into a extremely small version. I had a fellow forum user at the time who offered to do it for me, so that’s what I did, and he sent the avatar back to me and I have been using it since.

Because I like to do things myself though, I started searching for how to create an avatar myself, and I came across this really great article on Squidoo which explains it really well. It is so simple!

Avatar Sizer Download

Here is what I did after reading that article: I downloaded  Avatar Sizer and created my first Avatar! But to be honest, the download page was a bit confusing, so I have taken a screenshot of it to show you exactly where you have to press to download your Avatar Sizer!

So here are my old and my new Avatars!

Old Avatar

New Avatar

Happy “Avatar Creating”!