Hello, you wonderful you!

What do you want to learn in 2012 in addition to HTML and CSS tutorials?

• More search engine optimization?
• How to make graphics?
• Traffic generation?
• How to create content people want?
• Keyword research?

You tell me, and I'll see what I can do.

By the way . . . be sure to check out the Bullet Points for an announcement about my new affiliate program. It's a 50/50 win/win!

PS - Feel free to take the "Happy" graphic for your own website.

Bullet Points
The Tips Jar: Shadow World
Webmaster's Q & A: Delayed Alert
Life's Little Goodies: You Can Have Everything You Want
Off the Cuff: A Thought Experiment
Miscellanea

Bullet Points

• New Affiliate Program!

  I've finally got my first product in ages set up on an affiliate program. It will sell for $27 and you'll be paid 50% instantly for all sales you refer. Not only that, but if someone buys it there is a unique one-time offer that sells for $47. If your referral buys the one-time offer, you'll also get 50% of that sale!

  There are many ways you can promote this product, you don't need experience, only a desire to earn some extra money is needed. I'll soon have a page set up explaining several ways you can promote this.

  As a teaser, let me just say that Google is really trying to weed sites with thin content out of their top search results. This product is the cure for that.

  If you'd like to know more about the product and how you can earn money from it, drop me an email for the details.

• Easy Home Business Blueprint

  In the last issue I mentioned I bought the rights to a home business course that previously sold for $497. It was originally written by two guys who both earn over $100,000 a year online.

  I'm rewriting the course to improve the writing and add my own insights to it. There are 13 modules (lessons) that cover every aspect of starting and running your own online business. Here's a quick look at each module:

  Module 1: Getting Started Online
  Everyone needs to start somewhere and the last thing we want is confusion! This lesson starts at the beginning and gets everyone going in the right direction.

  Module 2: A Winning Mindset
  You may think you have this down, but this is the single biggest problem that keep so many people from ever getting the results they are really capable of getting. Discover how you can live in your greatness!

  Module 3: Passion to Profits
  In this module you'll discover how to find Niche Markets and know what your targeted market is eager to buy. Discover how specializing brings more business, and understand the market's "hot buttons" and how to push them.

  Module 4: Backend Products to Create Lifetime Customers
  How to explode your sales with one time offers, down sells, and up sells. Discover how the first sale is the start of a mutually beneficial relationship.

  Module 5: Setting Up Systems
  Automation allows you to spend more time growing your business and less time working in your business doing tedious "chores." Discover which systems to use for sales processing, list building, support and more.

  Module 6: The Irresistible Offer
  Learn how to become the next hard hitting info-preneur. Understand what makes a TOP quality product and how YOU can achieve those elements in a zap! Know how your list will help you create the products they crave.

  Module 7: Interviewing a Guru (Transfer of Power & Credibility)
  Establish instant credibility and expert status with this strategy. One of the original writers of this course created a product in 3 weeks, generated over $100,000 in sales, and build a 10,000+ subscriber list using this strategy.

  Module 8: Lucrative List Building
  Step-by-step instructions explaining exactly what you need to do to START, BUILD and MANAGE your own opt-in mailing list. This lesson takes you by the hand and guides you all the way, starting with the very basics.

  Module 9: Traffic Secrets Revealed
  You have built your website, now you need to get customers in the door. Once you know how, where, when and why you should do things you will begin to see amazing results.

  Module 10: Email Relationship Mastery (Emails That Get Results)
  Discover how to write emails that get opened and create sales. Understand how to write your first "autoresponder message" so you can build your list on autopilot. See why 2-way communication is a must with your list.

  Module 11: Joint Ventures
  The JV Partner is the secret to generating thousands of the most qualified "cash-in-hand" prospects. Find out what they want and how to contact them.

  Module 12: Psychology in Marketing and the Product Launch Process
  Find the methods to getting more prospects and pulling in more sales! That means money in your pocket! Discover how to get your JV partners fighting each other to make the most sales for you.

  Module 13: Affiliate Marketing Survival
  Find out how those affiliate marketing experts are making millions of dollars online every year. When you know why they are highly successful, you can begin to replicate what they do to create your own success story.

  I'm not making Easy Home Business Blueprint available to the general public yet because I want to get feedback to make it as good as I'm able. I'm going to make it available at a big discount to just 100 subscribers for now.

  If you want in, it will only cost you $17 right now (remember, this was a $497 course). I only want people with a vested interest, and the only way to have that is to charge something, even though it isn't much. Rest assured the price will be higher when I release the product to the public. Here's what you get for that:

  • One lesson per week for 13 weeks. The lessons include a homework assignment. You don't have to turn the homework in, but if you want to get the most out of the course you'll do them for your own sake.
  • I'll answer any questions you have.

  Here's what I want from you for the big discount and personal attention:

  • Your feedback. That's it! You can offer specific feedback per each module as we go along, or general feedback about the entire course at the end—it's your choice.

  When the course is finalized for sale to the public you'll receive the finalized version and a thank you gift.

  The 100 subscriber limit is a very strict limit because I want to keep this process manageable. In fact, I may even cut it off before that point.

  Those allowed into the program will be on a first come, first served basis. When we hit the 100 subscriber (or sooner) limit the offer will be removed. If the offer is still here there is at least one opening left, but maybe no more than that.

  If you want to have your own online business and need to start from step one, and be guided every step of the way, this is your chance if you're one of the first 100 subscribers to order.

  Edited to add: I've had several requests from folks who want to pay via Paypal. If you prefer Paypal you can send an email payment to me at:

  As long as I'm editing the page I'll let you know the openings are going fast. There are less than 50 places left. The next edit will probably be to close the offer.

Easy Home Business Blueprint

Yes, Dennis! I'm excited to get started with my own home business.

I understand the course will start February 1st.

Click there for the love of AAN! :)

Important: We may take a week or two off at the start of April to give everyone a chance to do their taxes if enough people request it. Otherwise you'll receive one lesson each week for 13 weeks.

The Tips Jar: Shadow World

Today's tutorial will cover a few other uses for the shadow. First, a couple of notes about the shadow color:

• To look like a shadow, it has to be a darker color than the background color the shadow is cast upon. This is especially true when the shadow is being cast over a background image.
• On a dark background, light colors can have a "glow" effect (not so much shades of gray, though).

Below are several examples, along with the code that produceed them. All these shadows are created by code.

In addition to the examples below, there is a CSS3 text shadow property. It works in all browsers except Internet Explorer. IE will show the actual text just fine, only the shadow is missing, so it's safe to use. We'll go over that in the next issue.

Shadow on a Picture

Shadow on a Picture Code

<img src="images/boss.jpg" 
width: 160px; height: 120px; 
style="-webkit-box-shadow: #777 5px 5px 12px; 
-moz-box-shadow: #777 5px 5px 12px; 
box-shadow: #777 5px 5px 12px;" 
alt="my boss">

You can put these style codes in an embedded or external style sheet too. For an explaination of what all the numbers mean please download the previous issue. The download link is located near the top of the right-hand column of this page, just under the newsletter subscription form.

Horizontal Rule with a Shadow

Horizontal Rule with a Shadow Code

<hr 
style="box-shadow: #ddd 2px 2px 6px; 
-webkit-box-shadow: #ddd 2px 2px 6px; 
-moz-box-shadow: #ddd 2px 2px 6px; 
border-right: none; 
border-bottom: 1px solid white; 
border-left: none;">

Text Container Shadow

Shadows are fun!

That's just a span tag with CSS as you'll see below. You could use the same code on paragraphs, divisions, and any other text element.

Text Container Shadow Code

<span 
style="border: 1px solid #3E9554; 
padding: 3px; 
box-shadow: #aaa 2px 2px 7px; 
-webkit-box-shadow: #aaa 2px 2px 7px; 
-moz-box-shadow: #aaa 2px 2px 7px;">Shadows are fun!</span>

Button Like a Graphic

No Graphics!

This is all code. You could enlarge it to make it look like a graphic banner. You could add a background texture or gradient to make it look even more like a graphic.

Button Like a Graphic Code

<h1 
style="width: 250px; 
text-align: center; 
color: #3E3E2F; 
background-color: #C6C6B3; 
border: 5px outset #79795B; 
outline: 1px outset #000000;
padding: 3px; 
box-shadow: #777777 3px 5px 15px; 
-webkit-box-shadow: #777777 3px 5px 15px; 
-moz-box-shadow: #777777 3px 5px 15px;">No Graphics!</h1>

A Colored Shadow?

This is Silly!

Colored Shadow Code

<span 
style="border: 2px solid #7a4; 
padding: 3px; 
box-shadow: #b8e 3px 4px 9px; 
-webkit-box-shadow: #b8e 3px 4px 9px; 
-moz-box-shadow: #b8e 3px 4px 9px;">This is Silly!</span>

How about some GLOW?

Glow Code

<img src="images/boss.jpg" 
width: 160px; height: 120px; 
style="border: 1px solid #000000;
-webkit-box-shadow: #67BFE0 5px 5px 12px; 
-moz-box-shadow: #67BFE0 5px 5px 12px; 
box-shadow: #8AE9EE 0 0 28px;" 
alt="my boss">

I've got some really cool stuff coming in the next several issues. You don't want to miss them. :)

Webmaster's Q & A: Delayed Alert

Q: I'd like to have an alert open when my page loads, but I want it to be delayed by 5 or 10 seconds. How do I do that?

- Clancy M.

A: You can do that with just a snippet of JavaScript. That's not my specialty so there may be a better way to do it than I've got, but what I have works and it's pretty simple.

Add the following JavaScript to the BODY tag of your HTML page:

  onLoad="setTimeout('alert(\'Place your message here.\')', 5000)"

The setTimeout creates the delay. At the end of the snippet you see the number 5000. That's how long the alert will be delayed as measured in milliseconds. There are 1000 milliseconds in a second, so the 5000 milleseconds means the alert will be delayed for 5 seconds. Be sure not to use a comma in the number (5,000 for example) or it will nullify the delay.

Place your message where it says Place your message here. Be sure not to use any special characters in your message unless you escape them. For example, if I wanted Boogie Jack's to be in the message, I'd have to write that as:

  Boogie Jack\'s
  

The backslash in front of a character causes the browser to treat the character as text rather than interpret it as JavaScript.

There's not much formatting you can do in a JavaScript alert that I know of. If you want a line break like a <br> tag would cause, place \\n where you want the break.

If you want a double line break like a <p> tag would cause just use that twice (\\n\\n).

Life's Little Goodies: You Can Have Everything You Want

I've been saving quotations and collecting quotation books for over 30 years now. One quotation that you've seen me use here before is the following line from Zig Ziglar:

You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

Something I read the other day made me realize I'd seen this quotation from different angles and in different words many times. It's about serving others.

When I was a teenager the idea of serving others didn't appeal to me. Perhaps part of the reason was that I didn't see a lot of difference between serving and being subservient.

Serving others evoked mental images of my mother, working her tail off for minimum wage for people who thought themselves better than her. With that came mental images of a life of lack in material goods and in limited options for self-determination.

That was then. Today I understand serving others is a privilege. The world owes us nothing. We earn our way through life by being useful to others.

If you think about it, I think you'll find our best friendships are based on serving each other in some way, or more likely, in many different ways.

I've also learned that serving others doesn't have to mean serving for free. There are many, many ways to serve others. It can be as profitable monetarily as it is rewarding to the inner self.

Writing this newsletter is an example of serving others for free. If I go by the feedback I've received over the years it's a valuable and much appreciated free service to many.

Providing products for sale is an example of a paid service. If not for the paid service I couldn't afford to provide the free service. At the same time, providing the free service helps promote the paid service.

If you have a job you are serving others. If you are raising children you are serving them and society. If you buy a product from me now and then you are serving me by supporting what I do so I can keep doing it for you.

Thank you for that.

In fact, when you buy a product from me you not only provide a service to me, but you help provide a service to all the subscribers who enjoy the free and paid services I provide. By buying a product from me you are indirectly providing a service to thousands of people—you are truly the unsung heroes of my business!

Zig Ziglar's quote could be rewritten as:

You can have everything in life you want if you will just serve enough other people.

Serving others is an honor to them. Some will honor you back. Sometimes your service is returned to you by someone you haven't served. Serving others starts a chain of good will that returns to us in time, multiplied, in answer to our own wants and needs.

In nature, everything serves a purpose . . . but nature would get along just fine without us humans.

Given that, perhaps we are here to serve a higher purpose than mere self-preservation. Perhaps we are to serve each other. If that were true, serving others is more than a privilege and an honor, it's a natural calling . . . but one that takes a measure of sophistication and maturity to understand.

You can have everything in life you want...

Sounds good!

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To do more for the world than the world does for you -- that is success.
- Henry Ford

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.... You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
- Frederick Buechner

In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.
- Flora Edwards

Off the Cuff: A Thought Experiment

Let's conduct a thought experiment. In this experiment we're going to call the things that work as planned truth, and call the things that do not work error.

Suppose my goal is to get people to my yard sale. I head to the corner and put up a yard sale sign with an arrow pointing toward my house.

After a while I notice I'm not getting the expected results. I go back to the corner to see if my yard sale sign is still there. It is, but upon seeing it I realize I placed it on a one-way street that flows away from my house. No one could follow the sign without breaking the law.

I made an error when I placed the yard sale sign, but the error also revealed a truth. Trying to send traffic the wrong way down a one-way street doesn't work because it's against the law.

When we're trying to accomplish something in our lives, to be successful we also have to follow the law . . . the universal law of cause and effect.

When what we do creates the results we want, it can be said that we acted on truth because our actions (the causes) created the results (the effects) we expected.

If we didn't get the results we wanted, we can assume we made one or more errors because the law of cause and effect never fails. We may have erred in our expectations, in planning, or in execution of our plan (or any combination of the three).

This, too, reveals a truth. We have learned certain causes did not produce the effects we expected.

Errors reveal truth. The more truths we know the fewer errors we make and the more effective we are.

We should not be afraid to make errors because they are part cause and effect, nature's universal feedback mechanism, that leads us to the truth. We should be grateful to have such an effective mechanism in place.

In a sense, doesn't this reveal that life is about the quest for truth?

Featured Site: IE6 Countdown

It costs companies millions of dollars in manhours to find workarounds for IE for what is otherwise a perfectly functioning website simply because IE either strays from the standards or are slow to comply with them.

According to AptiQuant, many of these companies are started to pull support for IE6, which is particularly problematic. It's full of bugs, proprietary nonsense, and is a riddled with security vulnerabilities. Yet, 7.7 percent of the world is still using this very old technology.

Even Microsoft wants IE6 to die. They've send flowers to IE6's funeral and they've even launched a website to help kill it. Thats today's featured site.

You can help by placing the the IE6 Countdown on your site and help kill it to keep people safer from viruses, phishing attacks and more.

» Web Site Link: IE6 Countdown

A Video Interlude: I'm a Sucker

It's true, I'm a sucker for these "candid camera" style videos.

Reader Feedback

Reply: Glad you're enjoying them. I wish I would have thought of archiving them in PDF format a long time ago.

Reply: You're welcome, and thank you. Last chance at the discount below, folks. It goes back to the regular price after this issue. Remember, the discount also includes lifetime access to the new SEO member site I have planned.

As always, whether it gets printed here or not, thanks for your feedback everyone! You make my day. :)