Where have I been of late?
Good questions. I’ve been around.. Though I have to admit; I’ve been quite preoccupied with lots of things and have only really been updating this mentioned freebie site. That said, you may have noticed (or not) that recently I changed the hosting of this site. I wanted to keep my VPS just for my freebie site so this and few other sites have gone into a reputable shared hosting server.
What.. only been updating this freebie site
Yes.. well, my time has been taken up with lots of personal type of stuff.. I wanted to update more sites but lacked behind a little. However, I’ve had this freebie site called Grab Free Stuff in January 2016. The idea was, I wanted to create a site that had at least 1 fresh new free item each week day; also to list items that were not being listed on other sites.
A lot of freebie sites, you see, have days where they just repeat items they have listed before. Now, this is fine as long as there is something new. I was noticing though, that some of these sites had days with now new freebies. I knew I could do better, provide better, and so Grab Free Stuff was born.
What do I list then?
Another great question. Basically, anything that is completely free. I’ve listed free cosmetic samples, free toys, food, drink and a host of other things. I also list a number of items other sites don’t such as freebie software, freebie kindle books and free online courses. You can learn great stuff for free, read a great novel and use some fantastic free software instead of paying hundreds of pounds.
I often say that I list items I would want. In most cases this is completely true, though with the number of novels I have listed over the past year I could not read them all. I know many get great benefit out of them though.
Just go check it out...
I would say, just get over there and check out this site, grab some free stuff. It costs you nothing, you don’t have to register (although I do have a daily news letter that posts to your email with the latest freebies), you can just go onto the site and get the link(s) to some fantastic free items.
Go on.. you know you want to..
The Question
I recently got asked the question of how can I put a line under each of my posts on the multi post screen?
This is a question that I had asked myself at some point as its nice to separate out each post to make it obvious to everyone where each post preview starts and ends. The solution I came up with was to use CSS and place a bottom border after each post; therefore producing the line.
The Solution
The following steps and images show how I did this using just CSS with in the Ultimatum system
1) Goto your template and layout - So - Ultimatum > Template > Layout
2) Select the specific layout you have with your WordPress Default Loop in it
3) Select EDIT CSS > Layout Specific CSS from the top of the layout
4) Select Core WP > Posts from the menu
5) In Post Container (All Posts) section; Post Container Border - Set a size for Border bottom; select solid or some other style and a colour
Doing it this way its using the Ultimatum framework to edit the CSS and produce this effect. There are other solutions; some of which involve custom CSS - but doing it this way works.
Learn More If you want to learn more about Ultimatum then why not join my Ultimatum Udemy Course. Here is a great coupon that is practically giving away the course and it will teach you many aspects of Website Creation with WordPress and Ultimatum.
So, what is this special price? With this coupon you can get this course; worth $49; for just $5.. $5 to learn how to use this fantastic framework and get more than your moneys worth.. So what you waiting for; below is the link and I will see you on the inside.
https://www.udemy.com/beginning-with-the-ultimatum-wordpress-theme-framework/?couponCode=SEANSBLOG
Has Technology helped us to start our own business ideas? This is a question I often ask myself these days. On the surface of it; there are far more opportunities opened and it takes much less capital. But in my eyes this means there are far more people also taking that plunge.
Many years ago, to start a business you had to have your capital to start, potentially buy or make product, advertise in the local and national directories. Certainly to make it international as a business you had to get seccessful.
Then came out the Internet. That wonderful tool we all love and use. And after a few years of dodgy image sites and various personal pages; businesses started to get they idea that this was a useful media to have a presence on. Even the .com businesses were born and things were wander fun. At least from around 1997 till around 2000; peak trading is recorded at being March 10 2000.
Then the bubble burst and many of the .com companies went out of business. At this stage it's safe to say that technology didn't help us start our own business...
Those companies that did survive have managed to become some of the big players in the market; such as Amazon.
[the_ad id="178"]The good news since then though, at least in my eyes, is that companies have learnt that the biggest advertising force, the best tool to get their brand sold is use, the consumers. By giving us the facility to earn a percentage of their profit by helping them sell their product is a brilliant concept and so affiliate marketing is the biggest help to use to create our own business.
Affiliate marketing gives use the option to advertise products to sell. Products that we don't need to stock ourselves. Products that when sold we earn a commission on. I've seen many online shops created that sell just affiliate products as all you need is a web domain and something like WordPress with WooCommerce. Technology has done well here.
For those that want to sell products sites such as eBay were born. Sites were you can auction off things that you don't want. You can even advertise products for drop shipping which is where you sell a product and its shipped from the manufacturer.
Even Amazon selling is easy to do. You can sell your old items through a seller account. You can sell as an affiliate. You can even buy products from drop shippers that will take the products you purchase to Amazon; you sell through Amazon and Amazon gets it delivered. They even advertise it. So you just pay for the product and a percentage to Amazon. How easy is that...
Next thing we have is advertising such as Google Adwords. You can create a website or blog. You can get a Google Adsense account and you can sell space on your site for advertising. You can even create video and put on YouTube and use Adsense. Some people make their entire living this way.
Finally we have sites where you can sell a digital product. We have clickbank where many products are sold by affiliates. You also have sites such as Udemy where you become a teacher.
So, has technology made it easier to start our own business? Yes BUT so easy that many are doing it making it harder to get noticed. Marketing today is different to years gone by. But that is another subject.
As a side note. You can even run much of a business from a smart phone these days. This blog post was created entirely with a iPhone as an example.
