credit: stevendepolo

Why is it so hard to smile? Or even worse, to make other people smile? I don’t know if it’s a hard thing for you to do, but it sure is for me. It seems like that for every 30 random people in a social gathering, there is maybe one person (and that’s on a good day) that is genuinely happy. This person smiles for fun, is complementary of other people and is apparently tons happier and more fulfilled than everyone else around him.

I would love to be this person, but the fact is that I’m not. I have social pansy-itis disorder and tend to hang back in the shadows and errmm (not) smile. However, I’ve realized that smiling and making other people smile in life can have a huge impact on other people’s self esteem. Not to mention the impact on the self esteem of the person that made person b smile.

So lets all smile more, damnit. I think the more we try to focus on getting other people to smile (and I’m talking about being genuine here!) the happier we will be ourselves. It totally makes sense in my head, but so do a lot of things that I can’t execute well on… sigh.

Take a look at the video my friend posted on his blog about the impact that validating other people (or making them smile) can have on them. Pretty insightful. I like videos that make me step back for a few minutes and evaluate the role that I play in the game of life.

I wasn’t very happy to listen to what he had to say, because A) he’s obviously a commission-based marketer, just like me (and us marketers don’t really like being pitched to) and B) I’m not a fan of meeting with anybody outside of my computer. Primerica seems to be a pretty legit, down to earth, no pressure company that offers sound financial advice without any hype. Anyways, I’m not trying to talk about how great Primerica the company is, I’m going to tell you something that you can thank me for in 50 years:

As soon as you turn 18 (or if you’re older than 18, now!), you need to start a Roth IRA & contribute the max amount possible. Max annual contribution = $5000. Max That Shit Out! I don’t care if you do it through Primerica, Sharebuilder, TD Ameritrade, or any of a number of other companies. Just do it. Do it as soon as you can. I don’t care to go into the details of why, or provide a fancy column of numbers that show how much the investment will make you, you can Google that all on your own. All you need to know is that you need to start a Roth IRA…like 2 years ago (in my case).

The guy showed me a chart that showed person A that started maxing out a roth at like 22 years old, then stopped at 30 and didn’t invest a cent more after that until retirement. At the bottom of the page it showed that after all those years his investment amounted to like 1.5Mil. Then he showed another person, we’ll call him person B, that started at 30 and maxed their roth out every year, and then retired at the same time that person A retired. Guess what? His investment only ended up being around the same 1.5Mil amount. What does that mean? That it’s super duper duper important to start a roth IRA and max it out as young as you can possibly start one!

If you don’t believe me, do some Googling and read about Roth IRA’s. I have nothing personally to benefit from writing this post (not that I usually do or anything), but I really think you should take my advice.

I’m going to meet with an accountant in the next day or two to get my finances in order so I can start being a responsible human being and contributing to a Roth IRA myself. I’ll probably meet with the Primerica dude a time or two more so he can advise me on some more wise investments. Looking forward to it. I swear, it’s all about the people you know so that you can get the information that you need to know that is vital to your success in life. It’s all about learning…and then taking action.

FYI: Lots of swearing in the video…don’t watch if you’re a delicate individual.

credit: jeffwilcox

How I got in this predicament:

With the success of my site, I’ve had a few ideas for custom development to better meet the needs of my visitors. Yesterday I posted a job on elance to finally get a custom project underway for my site. Fast forward to today…about an hour ago when I awarded someone the job. I figured I’d do everything right this time with outsourcing development work. This included scolding the developer to make a backup (or two) of my site before making any changes just in case anything went wrong because I couldn’t afford anything to go wrong with this site.

So I award the job. I make him his own login to my WordPress site, then I figure I’ll make him a custom FTP Login so that I won’t have to share mine with him (not like it even really matters!) So I make him a login, but I try it out and I didn’t give him access to the public_html folder. So I did a few other things (wasn’t really paying attention) and I ended up seeing this message:

Are you sure you wish to delete the FTP account (……)?

Yes | Yes & Remove All Files in /home/…/public_html Two options.

I wasn’t really paying attention, so guess which one I clicked? Yep. I deleted the whole damn public_html folder of my website. This sucks. Funny that I should have been more concerned with telling myself to back up the site than telling the developer.

Anyways…WiredTree (excellent, on the ball web host by the way) is in the process of restoring my site to one of their server backups from earlier today. Awesome that they have a backup, cause I sure as heck didn’t. Every time I go through this freaky process I always tell myself that it will never happen again. I always tell myself to back up the site before doing anything that may cause damage. But I’m pretty awesome so I never think that anything bad will happen. And it always does.

All of my eggs are pretty much in one basket right now, and the only good thing that has come out of this downtime is making me realize that I totally need to diversify my web portfolio. My goal is to build a website that does $500 daily…in addition to the site that is doing well for me now. (no, my site isn’t doing $500/day right now…but I’m working real hard to get it there)

Save yourself the mental anguish. Make daily backups of your databases, and at least bi monthly backups of the files on your server.

Just back it up…

Update: I now use Digsby instead of Meebo. Same concept, it just works better and has more features (social networking + IM + Email). Just be sure to be careful when you’re going through the install process. They try to load a bunch of junk on your system.

I rarely read tech/news/affiliate blogs daily anymore so it had been a while since I checked out John Chow’s blog. I’m glad I saw Chow’s post about how he runs his business from a browser because it told me about Meebo. I think I had heard about Meebo a few months/years ago but had never given it a shot. So what is Meebo?

Meebo is essentially one messenger that connects you to all of your other messenger accounts. In other words, I used to open Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, AIM (because for some reason all of the affiliate managers in the world use this archaic messenger) and sometimes Yahoo Messenger on my computer in the morning. Not to mention Facebook messenger. So now all of my contacts are in one place – a browser window. Did you notice that I’m online nearly 24/7 lately? Well, that’s because I have Meebo on my iPod Touch and that’s what I take home to use because I leave my computer at the office now.

I’m sure there are other messenger services like this, but come on guys, John Chow uses it. It’s gotta be pretty rad. My favorite part about Meebo is that it’s browser based. Now I don’t have to open or use any other messenger programs on my PC. I just open the browser window and I’m ready to rock and all of my conversations are in one place. Not to mention that I don’t have to see a little blinking window in my windows taskbar when I get a message.

Something funny that I noticed while using Meebo is that I now treat all of my contacts the same. You probably don’t know what I’m talking about cause I’m weird sometimes, but different messenger programs give you a different attitude. For instance: Windows Live Messenger was my friend messenger, Gtalk was my work messenger, and Facebook messenger was for only when I was signed in to my Facebook profile. Each of those different environments have obvious attitude implications. Now that all of my contacts are in the same place I care equally about everyone in a way.

I was going to blog about Meebo a few days ago when I first started using it, but I figured I’d give it a couple of days before I went talking about how much I love it because usually when I do that about something new, I end up hating it the next day. But I could tell that Meebo would be useful and functional for my workstyle from day 1. That’s right, I just invented a new word: workstyle.

So there you have it. Try out Meebo. It’s free (no, it really is), I endorse it, John Chow endorses it, and I bet you’ll like it.

Have something useful to say about Meebo? Let me know.

Alas, I have discovered 5 tips that can save you time (in the future, when you’re not being lazy), while you’re being lazy right now. Everything I list below can be accomplished while using only half of your brain, and only your mouse hand. The other hand can be behind your head, or in whatever other lazy position you want it to be in.

5 Tips To Save You Time in the Future:

1. Clean up your desktop!

If you’re anything like me, your desktop is a complete mess at least 5 out of the 7 days of the week. You have folders, files, .zip folders, and every other kind of folder imaginable. You don’t have any idea what 50% of the items are anymore. 25% of the items you know you don’t need, and the rest are files and folders that you may need, but could be filed in a different, more efficient location. Do it! Start deleting, moving, and cleaning up. You’ll be a lot happier the next time you have work to do on your computer.

2. Clean up messy files / folders. (May require a typing finger, or two. If you’re really talented, a toe may work.)

Good. So one way or another, you managed to clear your desktop of the folder-infested rats nest that it was. But where did you toss all of those files and folder? In the recycle bin? Into other folders somewhere else on your hard drive? Maybe you were clever and took the lazy way out by cutting all of the files off of your desktop and putting them in a dated folder somewhere out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Stop kidding yourself.  Start sorting the files and placing them in easier-to-find places. Think tree-structure. i.e. Structure your files in a way that makes sense to you so that you can navigate your own computer more easily.

3. Delete old sites residing in your FTP client.

This was a big one for me. When I was new to affiliate marketing, I started buying up all sorts of web real estate thinking I could make some money one way or another. The sites just ended up wasting time and money. Most of them were still sitting in my FTP client until I cleaned them out a few days ago. Having them in there did nothing for me but make me waste time looking for other sites that I was trying to connect to. Do yourself a favor and chop them out of your site list.

4. Clean up your bookmarks.

Everyone that does anything serious on a computer most likely has tons of bookmarked sites sitting in their browser. I suggest setting up Google Reader, adding all of your frequented blogs to that, and then deleting all of your blog bookmarks. Now you just go to Google Reader to read all of your favorite blogs and news. For all of your other bookmarked sites that aren’t blogs, I say organize them well. Think tree structure again.

5. Delete old databases, domain names, programs that you will never use again.

As I mentioned earlier, when I started affiliate marketing, I bought tons of useless domain names. I set them up, loaded some files onto the server, and forgot about them the next day. This not only costs money, but all of the extra sites will do nothing but distract you. Delete them. Delete the databases that you set up with them. Turn off the auto-renew setting so you don’t have to pay for them again next year. Stop playing like that stupid domain name is going to make you millions. It probably could, but are you really going to take the time to develop it? Be honest with yourself. Save yourself the $9.99 re-registration fee.

Let me guess: now you all of a sudden have better things to do? I promise, if you do everything, or even one thing I suggested above, the next time you are in a productive mood, your work will be much more efficient! You won’t have to stumble through all of your old folders to find that file you were looking for. I find that the less I have to think about the stupid little things, the much more efficient I become. Stop wasting time with a cluttered up computer, FTP client, and browser. Make your processes more efficient, so that you can accomplish untold amounts of work the next time you aren’t being lazy.

Got more tips? Lemme hear in the comments.

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