Internet Marketing Muscle Blog

I'll be honest. I didn't do much today, business-wise. Heck, I haven't really done much since last Wednesday! And I won't do much until January 4, 2021. I admit it: During the end-of-year holidays, I never do much, if anything, business-wise. But I did take my two littlest kids and my wife to Mt. Rainier National Park today. We played in the snow. Actually, it wasn't so much snow as it was ice. We drove all the way to the “end” of Highway 410. Every year, they close it down due to ice and snow and this year is no different. It's only about an hour and a half from our house, so, all told, we were only gone about 5 hours. Three to get there and back and two to play. When we got home, I promptly dosed in and out of sleep while we sat in front of the TV. Yes, a fairly boring day! But sometimes, that's what the body, mind, and spirit need. I've got a whiteboard full of notes about what I'll be doing the next few weeks. I've go...

I finally broke down and bought a new laptop. It's another HP. Last time, I got a 17 inch Envy non touchscreen. It is an Intel i7 with a badass 4GB Nvidia graphics card. But it was a beast to lug around. And the fan ran all.the.time. One of my kids is always borrowing it to play video games on, so I thought I should just get another one. This time, I opted for a “convertible.” It's an Envy x360 with an AMD processor and graphics chip, 16GB of RAM, and comes with only a 256GB SSD. It's also a 15.6 inch that weighs about 4 pounds with a solid 4-cell battery. It's a custom build, so I won't get it until the end of January. I guess they have to assemble them on Mars. Oh well. I'm looking forward to being able to easily carry around a laptop again. I should be more productive now, as I won't have either excuse (“Kid's got it” or “It's too damned heavy”). For Christmas, I got a Fitbit Charge 4. I really never wanted one of these, and funny...

Today, I'm looking inward and forward to 2021 and all the challenges and opportunities it may bring. Google Analytics is a beast Sure, it brings in a ton of data about your website, visits, where they came from, most popular pages, etc. but man, is it unwieldy. So I've started investigating some training on it. Google does offer some free training, which is always a good starter (using the vendor's own training – I mean, it makes sense). Here it is, if you're interested. There's also a promising Udemy course that I'm looking at if I want to take a deeper dive, and I fear I must End of Year Musings Christmas is almost here and I'm looking forward to taking a little time off. I won't go completely dark, but I will turn down the volume considerably. I'm not a big “goals guy” but I do like to reflect back on the year almost completed and briefly look ahead to determine “where I want to go in 2021.” I'll be glad when the pan...

Today, I'm looking inward and forward to 2021 and all the challenges and opportunities it may bring. Google Analytics is a beast Sure, it brings in a ton of data about your website, visits, where they came from, most popular pages, etc. but man, is it unwieldy. So I've started investigating some training on it. Google does offer some free training, which is always a good starter (using the vendor's own training – I mean, it makes sense). Here it is, if you're interested. There's also a promising Udemy course that I'm looking at if I want to take a deeper dive, and I fear I must End of Year Musings Christmas is almost here and I'm looking forward to taking a little time off. I won't go completely dark, but I will turn down the volume considerably. I'm not a big “goals guy” but I do like to reflect back on the year almost completed and briefly look ahead to determine “where I want to go in 2021.” I'll be glad when the pan...

Whelp! I missed writing yesterday. *They say* that in order to make a thing a habit, you must do it 21 times consistently. I don't know if 21 is the right number. Why not 20? 23? 37? 3? What I do know is two isn't the magic number for creating a sustainable habit. So this is my third daily writing out of four (I don't write on weekends). Time to refocus, keep my eye on the prize, and keep pushing. On Starting a Podcast A thing I'd like to do in 2021 is a podcast. I wrote about this last time. I'm still pondering it. What would people like to see? I've listened to dozens, maybe hundreds of podcasts, and many are just dandy. They've found their product. I've yet to find mine. What about you? How's the weather? It snowed last night. We got about a 1/1000th of an inch. But the kids were giddy. And that's good enough for now. I've always wanted to get one of those “ weather machines .” They fascinate me. In fa...

Whelp! I missed writing yesterday. *They say* that in order to make a thing a habit, you must do it 21 times consistently. I don't know if 21 is the right number. Why not 20? 23? 37? 3? What I do know is two isn't the magic number for creating a sustainable habit. So this is my third daily writing out of four (I don't write on weekends). Time to refocus, keep my eye on the prize, and keep pushing. On Starting a Podcast A thing I'd like to do in 2021 is a podcast. I wrote about this last time. I'm still pondering it. What would people like to see? I've listened to dozens, maybe hundreds of podcasts, and many are just dandy. They've found their product. I've yet to find mine. What about you? How's the weather? It snowed last night. We got about a 1/1000th of an inch. But the kids were giddy. And that's good enough for now. I've always wanted to get one of those “ weather machines .” They fascinate me. In fa...

I'm not, nor have I ever been, a big Apple fan. In fact, I dislike the company and its products so much that I lovingly call them Crapple. Oh, make no mistake, some of their stuff over the years has been good. I bought an iPod back in 2004, and then another one for my wife a year or two later. Mine lasted well over 10 years (I did have to replace the battery once but it was a DIY thing so not a big deal)…solid. But when I was in customer support and also a network administrator, I just hated working on and with them. They just weren't intuitive like a PC (to me–I know, YMMV). My recent brush with Apple's customer services wasn't stellar. Their support actually sucks. It took WEEKS to get them to make good on a product that was under warranty. Computing speed has a lot to do with DISTANCE But this new M1 chip ? Good god, that thing is amazing! In short, it houses the CPU, GPU, RAM, and other stuff too techy for me to try to explain into ONE SINGLE bo...

I'm not, nor have I ever been, a big Apple fan. In fact, I dislike the company and its products so much that I lovingly call them Crapple. Oh, make no mistake, some of their stuff over the years has been good. I bought an iPod back in 2004, and then another one for my wife a year or two later. Mine lasted well over 10 years (I did have to replace the battery once but it was a DIY thing so not a big deal)…solid. But when I was in customer support and also a network administrator, I just hated working on and with them. They just weren't intuitive like a PC (to me–I know, YMMV). My recent brush with Apple's customer services wasn't stellar. Their support actually sucks. It took WEEKS to get them to make good on a product that was under warranty. Computing speed has a lot to do with DISTANCE But this new M1 chip ? Good god, that thing is amazing! In short, it houses the CPU, GPU, RAM, and other stuff too techy for me to try to explain into ONE SINGLE bo...

I've been practicing writing small classified-type ads. It's fun. It also sharpens the blade. I am testing them on a subscriber list to see if they get any traction. If you want to see a few, let me know. RankMath vs. Yoast SEO I used to use the Yoast SEO plugin on my WordPress sites. Now, I'm slowly moving to RankMath Pro . I used the free version on a few sites and really liked it. So I ponied up and bought the pro version. So far, so good. But I did run into a problem with it. WordPress was reporting it needed updating, and when I tried to update it, it failed, giving me the message, “ Update package not available. “ Well, after 5 seconds of Google searching, I found the solution. If you're using RankMath, you may want to watch this video: Getting this message? Update package not available. Watch this to the end. That solved it. Instead of clicking “update,” just re-upload the files. WordPress will ask if you want to overwrite what'...

I've been practicing writing small classified-type ads. It's fun. It also sharpens the blade. I am testing them on a subscriber list to see if they get any traction. If you want to see a few, let me know. RankMath vs. Yoast SEO I used to use the Yoast SEO plugin on my WordPress sites. Now, I'm slowly moving to RankMath Pro . I used the free version on a few sites and really liked it. So I ponied up and bought the pro version. So far, so good. But I did run into a problem with it. WordPress was reporting it needed updating, and when I tried to update it, it failed, giving me the message, “ Update package not available. “ Well, after 5 seconds of Google searching, I found the solution. If you're using RankMath, you may want to watch this video: Getting this message? Update package not available. Watch this to the end. That solved it. Instead of clicking “update,” just re-upload the files. WordPress will ask if you want to overwrite what'...