Encrypt

I’ve been a wild advocate for the Internet since the beginning, and I still believe in it as a massively liberating technology… but not in the current, popular form. The Internet that we know has been recaptured by the power mongers with a massive assist from hucksters. It is, to be very honest about it, all but finished. And considering the massive inertia and mindless obedience of the dominant 9/11 culture, it won’t be saved.
So, we need a Plan B. Many people don’t want to think about such a thing, and while I understand their hesitation, I can’t endorse anyone taking the ‘ostrich position.’
That being the case, I’ll start right out with the naked truth.

Big Brother is now called “Internet.”
Using the existing Internet, as most people do, involves Big Brother reading your mind and sticking his fingers into your brain. And that’s not something that is ‘coming soon’; it is something that is here NOW… and it’s getting worse all the time.

I’ll pass up the details in this article; I’ve covered them repetitively in the past. Whoever doesn’t want to believe me is entitled to his or her choice.

Plan A2
Plan A2 is the one I’ve been talking about for a decade or more: protecting your Internet traffic. I should warn you, however, that this gets harder every day. And that means that fast, easy, and cheap is not possible. To be clear: If you’re using cut-rate protection, you’re not protected.

Yes, I have a dog in this fight – I manage the Cryptohippie Service – but what I’m writing is true all the same. Cheap privacy services are not going to protect you these days. You need professional systems (with their own private key infrastructure, multiple hops, DNS, etc.).

You can still protect yourself (see this guide) but it’s real work… as in spending hours of focused effort, and consistently.

Beyond these things, you MUST stop using free services, especially Google and Facebook. They are the tele-screens from 1984 and are in some ways worse. Like it or not, that’s the truth.

The problem with Plan A2 is that you have to pay for it. It does still work (which is why Big Brother’s operators would like to outlaw anonymity services), but it isn’t free.

Plan A2 flies in the face of the triumphant Internet hucksters who have conned nearly the entire planet into believing that there really is such a thing as a free lunch. And reason be damned, the planet has fallen for it.
Ah well.

Plan B
Plan B is far simpler and easier than you’d guess: It’s to build our own networks. Here are the two major pieces: 

MESH NETWORKS
Meshes are local networks built with standard Wi-Fi components. They are cheap and fairly easy to build, especially after the first one or two. And they can cover large areas. In fact, a rural mesh network in Spain connects some 30,000 users. Here’s a list of mesh networks around the world. 

CONNECTIONS
Connecting networks can be accomplished by any number of means: fibers, radio links, phone lines, and so on. The one method that I particularly like is packet radio.
All sorts of things can be added to this base. Here are two that I like.

FERRY NODES
These are individual nodes (computers) that connect to both a mesh and the big Internet, ferrying data between the two: emails, page updates, etc. 

FIDO NET
FidoNet is a system for sending and receiving messages. But unlike the standard Internet, it doesn’t require real-time transmission. In other words, it is perfect for a mesh network that synchs with remote email servers only four times per day, for example. (This breaks the Big Brother Internet’s ability to correlate traffic… to read your mind so easily.)

You could easily go far beyond my short list, but this is a strong start. The External Links section of the Wikipedia mesh page would be a great place to start looking for further information and ideas.

The leading edge and the oppressed are already getting busy with mesh networks. This is where intelligent and ethical energies need to be spent, because the existing Internet is all but gone for anyone who wants some distance from Big Brother.

If you’re looking to start doing something that matters, I can barely think of a better area in which to start. If you have any technical skill at all, you’ll find it accessible. Building mesh networks requires fairly little cash and it is of major importance.

So, I recommend that you jump in and start building and start communicating with other people who are doing the same thing.

Then, once you understand what you’re doing, start innovating.

This is a line of work that’s worthy of your time and energy.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Related posts:

1. Don’t Forget Your Plan A
2. Digital Diversification: How to Do It
3. Big Brother Is in High Gear
4. Free Services Are for Suckers

Tech Help for Windows & Dell Computers

You mean I can run an entire operating program on a computer with no internet?

I need this page for new drivers. 

You need to go to the Dell web site, actually. This is the page you need:
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Products/?app=drivers1
If you have a USB stick, you can do this on a computer that actually has working Internet access.

If you don't see the WiFi icon, you may have a driver problem and need to install your wireless drivers.

It starts here.

Power to Do More, Dell Computers.

Tom's Hardware.

HowtoGeek.

Official Microsoft Windows Forum: Technet forums

Windows Forum: Windows Forum

Windows Central Forums

Windows 10 Forums

Dell: Company Information

Support Forums - Dell Community

Dell Community

Okay, I've tried a few of the sites mentioned above.  Not too helpful.  They start off helpful, but if a glitch or further question arises, you don't hear from them.  I am referring to HowtoGeek and Tom's Hardware.  I signed onto Windows Central, asked a question but got no reply.  They post on their landing page that you'll get an answer in 5 minutes.  So far it's been 45 minutes and no answer yet.

The 4th site I will try is TechSupportForum.com.  I don't know who owns this but will check it out.

There is an other place I had not thought of trying and that's Reddit.  Try their techsupport forum.
Here were some replies:

1)  There are MANY!! In fact, I almost answered by saying "Google". And that answer would not be a joke or sarcasm. "Just Google it" is always the best answer. Yes, always.  But if I must pick only one website among hundreds, the best place I know for general computer help and knowledge is HowToGeek.  For Geeks, By Geeks.  And if by some stretch of imagination you cannot find what you are looking for by Googling it, and the Geeks haven't written about it... You might try Quora.

2)  Actually there is no specific website that can provide all the solutions for a problem. Problems which arise with a PC are most commonly individual problems which all the users may not suffer from, in most of the cases. So you can't find all the solutions of a problem in a single tin. However, I can provide you with some of the best websites that help you troubleshoot your problems.

Official Microsoft Windows Forum: Technet forums

Windows Forum: Windows Forum

Windows Central Forums

Windows 10 Forums

Dell: Company Information

Support Forums - Dell Community

Dell Community

Apart from the above forums, I have a personal blog in which you can post your queries and I'll typically reply in a hour or 2 with helpful videos and screenshots too: www.dustmoon.com.

3) Google is the best site to help troubleshoot any PC. Search the error codes, type in what is happening on your PC etc...it finds it all.  Generally though you will not have many hardware errors (unless strange things happen like a cat nesting inside the PC) so you are most likely to get help that is useful from Microsoft's forums for your OS and from Dell Official Site - The Power To Do More or for your driver errors you might experience.

Alternatively if you have a Radeon or NVidia graphics card you may want to check their sites out for driver and troubleshooting support as both manufacturers have some pretty good answers on their forums and drivers with updates for their hardware.

There is no one place to go and find the right answer, but in general the manufacturer of the hardware or software with issues will be the one with the right solution to the problem.

4)   I'd say Google, Microsoft user community, Tom's hardware, etc.

With all of he troubleshooting that I've done I should probably list those things that I have done and state whether they have worked at all. Here is what I followed to solve the problem of the Diagnostic Policy Service not running.  It was running before I watched this video and it is running after.  In his video, it reads "Started" under the STATUS.  In my list of Services, it reads RUNNING.  

And here is what I have done to solve the problem of

Yaro Starak on How to Make Money Blogging

I listened to a podcast this morning by Yako Starak.  He offers a program or system to make money through blogging.  I took notes. Those notes are here:

1.  Blog is your central platform.
2.  Email list: direct line of communication.  This goes to a person’s inbox where people check it everyday.  Email marketing is so powerful.  Direct line of communication. 
3.  Free giveaway (lead magnet)
4.  Deliver a result before asking for money.  This is why we give so much free value.  give customers a result before you ask for money. 
5.  You need a product to sell to people: product or service.  Using digital products for digital delivery.  This is important so you can make money while you sleep. 

THE THREE T’s

1.  Traffic

2.  Trust

3.  Transparency.

WHAT TO DO?

Use blog to attract people to show them what you’re doing.

1.  How you build trust is through transparency.  Be transparent with your blog and information on your blog. 

SAMPLES of SUCCESS

1.  Tracy Raftl on acne.  Thelovevitamin.

2.  TheBookDesigner blog by Joel Friedlander to help people with self publishing.  He sells book templates, online courses on self-publishing, and a 10-Secrets on self-publishing that he gives away. 

3.  Shetakesontheworld.com by Natalie MacNeil, a Canadian that focuses on video.  In this podcast, she talks with an Australian gal who owns the site LuckyBitch.com.  Whomever she is she is ditzy.  Her quaint little world view on money adds no value to anyone.  It's basic information.  Below basic.  I generally don't like to knock people, but I do want to register talent and value when I see it and record poor value, a waste of time when I see it.  The Lucky Bitch is one such waste of time.

4.  MuhammadNoer.com.  Indonesian.  Still follows his system.  Teaches people how to speed read. 

5.  VirtualMissFriday.com from Michelle Dale.  Good example of digital nomad through Europe.  She’ll stay put in one city—in Rome, raises her kids there, and runs her business.  Runs a virtual assistance, and also teaches people how to become virtual assistance.  Lots of things available to people.  Virtual assistance, $30k a month.  And courses at $30k / month.

6.  Entrepreneurs-journey.com.  how I overcame my fear of failure. Personal development, marketing, selling products, email courses.  Blog is the starting point for everything that he does.  It’s not the end-all, be-all that the owner believes it to be or wants it to be, like some shrine to greatness.  It’s a funnel—a funnel to your digital, problem-solving products or services.  That’s what a blog is.  Gives away free value, offers a result before making his offer for paid products.  And then has various niche products that solve problems of those in his market.  Build an audience through content, marketing yourself, bringing people onto your email list for direct line of communication, sell products, make money while you sleep.  Blogging plus email list to sell products and services.  Jkonwledge, ideas, and turn into advice and package up into products to sell.  He’s coached thousands of people who’ve built successful blogging businesses.  He then invites them onto his podcast to tell about what they did at the beginning and how they earned money. 

BLOG SALES FUNNCEL CONCEPT

Blog > Email List > Front-end product > Front-end subscription > Flagship Course > Membershiph Site > Live Event > Private Coaching.

This system is effective at selling products.  

Winning PowerPoint presentation.

Kawasaki's recommended structure for any entrepreneurial presentation is as follows:

1.    Problem
2.    Your solution
3.    Business model
4.    Underlying magic/technology
5.    Marketing and sales
6.    Competition
7.    Team
8.    Projections and milestones
9.    Status and timeline
10.   Summary and call to action

Regardless of a specific structure you choose for your presentation, your story needs to accomplish three goals: frame the issue, present the challenge, and explain how you will solve the problem.

I do know that they have a free app that lets you create a Facebook store (a page different from your personal page), which you can also include as a tab on your personal page. People coming to your personal page can go directly to your store, and vice versa.

Your Facebook store is tied to your Shopify store, so when you add or remove products, change descriptions, upload an image, make something unavailable, create a coupon, etc. you do these things in your Shopify store. The changes in the Shopify store are then automatically shoved through to your Facebook store. 

You can sell physical and/or downloadable products on Shopify.

Another service with identical Facebook functionality but without the transaction fees that Shopify charges is Volusion.com. Also, with Volusion your customers don't leave your site when completing a purchase, as they do with Shopify. 

You can sell digital and physical products on Volusion also. Before you jump onto Shopify, check them out.

Both services also have mobile responsiveness and extensive social media features (e.g. Tweet, Share or Like this product) and have extensions such as allowing customer reviews, abandoned cart keep-alive, live chat with your customers, and a variety of analytics.

One thing to be aware of with selling digital downloads is that downloads consume bandwidth, and some platorms have restrictions or impose extra charges if you exceed a certain amount. You'll want to discuss this topic with someone knowledgeable at any store platform that you're considering before you commit yourself.

A winning product mix strategy for 2016

Times are changing, and so is our product mix strategies. In this article I lay out the direction we'll be following and why, plus I list the kinds of products we will be developing.

A few years back, I published A Winning Product Mix for 2009, in which I wrote about the product mix strategy that my wife and I would be focusing on to reach our income and lifestyle goals.

In that article, I listed these as being the winning product mix:

• Subscription Websites
• DVDs
• Autopilot Web Sites
• Domain Names
• Software Products
• Private Label Resell Rights
• Training Workshops

That mix worked extremely well for us, reaching and exceeding the income goals we set.

But times are changing. The product mix that worked five years ago may not work now. The economy has changed, the internet has changed and consumer demographics and desires have changed as well.

For example, according to a recent study, a majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings and are one paycheck away from being homeless. ((See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-paycheck-away-from-the-street-2016-01-06).

For this and other reasons, we've re-evaluated our product mix and have made adjustments.

Since you're probably in the same kind of business we're in, I thought you might be interested in seeing what we plan to do.

Our 2016 to 2019 Product Mix

• Writing and Publishing Books for Kindle - After testing this market with one non fiction book and five novels, I've learned that writing the right kind of books and publishing them on Amazon can produce a significant five figure monthly income stream.
• With Amazon, you eliminate most of the hassles and expense of running a business. There is no need to have a merchant account, maintain product inventory, take orders or ship products. You don't even need a web site.
• You just have to write and publish books and cash the checks Amazon sends each month.
• My strategy is to publish at least one novel a year for the next five years and at least one (and likely more) how-to book each year. The how-to books don't earn as much as the novels, but are easier and quicker to write.

• Monetized YouTube Videos - With our monetized YouTube account, we've seen our YouTube earnings sometimes exceed $5,000 a month. I believe that with a little more focus, we could easily double that.
• As with Kindle publishing, a major advantage of monetized YouTube videos is there is no need to have a merchant account, product inventory, take and ship customer orders or deal with product returns.
• This creates a truly hands-off kind of business. Just create, upload and monetize videos and cash the checks YouTube sends month.

• Domain Names - I've found that registering and then selling quality domain names is an easy, almost no risk business with very high returns. But to successful, you do have to buy the right domain names and get them inexpensively (under $4.00).
• While the income we generate from domain name sales is usually less than $8,000 a year, it does add to the product mix. We will continue to do this in the future.

• Subscription Websites - Operating a subscription website has be a significant part of our business for the past fifteen years, and we expect that to continue for the foreseeable future.
• Subscription web sites are an ideal web business as they can be operated by one person, yet serve tens of thousands of customers.
• We plan to continue our subscription web site and work to see its continued growth.

• Templates - One of the surprising potential income areas has been the free templates we offer on our site to visitors. These templates attract thousands of new visitors and I often see our templates being used (and even sold without my permission) on other sites.
• Since creating certain kinds of templates is relatively easy, I might put together a package of several of them and sell at a relatively low price.
• Since this would be a digital download, delivery would be easy and the sales could generate several thousand dollars a year.

Dropped from our Product Mix

If you're read previous articles about our product mix, you may have noticed we have dropped a few things from the list. These include:

• DVDs - In the past, we often sold 300-500 DVDs a month, and in some months, we shipped over a thousand. But due to changes in consumer preferences and the wide availability of free videos on YouTube, the demand for DVDs has fallen way off. A recent article in USA Today, said the era of the DVD is over, and they might be right. Consumers are no longer buying DVDs like they used to.
• While there is still demand for certain how-to topics on DVD, the demand is not great enough for us to focus our efforts in that area. So we won't be producing any new DVDs.

• Auto Pilot Web sites - We've created a number of auto-pilot web sites that we filled with content from eBay, YouTube and Amazon. These sites would generate affiliate income when visitors clicked links that led them to products on ebay and Amazon.
• We've seen the income from these sites fall off as changes in search engine rankings meant fewer visitors and changes in the commission structure at Amazon and eBay meant lower per click earnings.
• While I won't be shutting down any of my existing auto-pilot sites, I won't be creating any new ones in the future. They just aren't generating the income we want from them.

• Software products - As the developer of MemberGate, eShowcase Pro, Pubster, OrderDesk Pro and several other software packages, I know that developing and selling software can be lucrative. However, it can be hard work and can be quite draining to focus all your time and energy on developing and supporting just one product.
• With the advent of multiple mobile platforms and millions of free and low cost apps available, it becomes increasingly difficult for individuals to make a profit from selling software. That said, it still can be done, especially if you use a strong affiliate network and can reach millions of people with your promotion.
• But for us, this is not the direction we want to take. 

• Resale rights - While there seems to be a constant demand from individuals interested in purchasing resale rights from us, we no longer have any rights to offer, so we are out of this business.

Our evolving product strategy

Our main strategy is to use the big three (Amazon, YouTube and Google) to handle the mechanical side of our business (order taking, packaging and shipping of physical products), while we focus on the creative side.

By letting Amazon, YouTube and Google worry about the coming changes in the credit card industry as well as problems associated with dealing with taxes on internet sales, we can focus our efforts on supplying them with the products and content that they are happy to pay us for.

Addendum - One of the big benefits of the above plan is it allows us to significantly reduce our business operating costs as well as the equipment and space needed to operate it.

In years past, we rented office space (even entire buildings) to house our video studio, cameras, recorders and have desk space for employees and room for inventory storage and an area for shipping.

With our current product strategy, we can operate the entire business from a small laptop computer. No office space or expensive equipment is needed. No employees required. No need to stock any inventory. No worry about merchant account or payment gateway expenses.

This means much less time, money and stress needed to operate the business and a huge savings in business overhead.

So we significantly reduce operating costs while increasing income - which is a proven strategy to business success.

A Flexible Mix

Our strategic product mix is always a work in progress and is likely (and expected) to change as the world around us changes.

But for now, the above is our plan. By relying on Amazon, Google and YouTube, we eliminate the risky and most costly aspects of operating a business in a global economy, while taking advantage of the marketing power and resources those three entities offer.

40 WAYS TO MAKE QUICK MONEY

41 MAYBE?

WORDPRESS MEETUPS

Last thing: Assuming you're near a city, go to meetup.com and search for local Wordpress meetups. Or Google "[your city] wordpress meetup." You want one aimed at users and not Wordpress programmers or designers. There you will meet people that can answer any further questions you have and they are happy to help. In my city, I went to a couple meetups. There were only about 10 people there, but most were semi-professional bloggers and there were a couple designers/programmers. It's a good way to get tips from users, as well as make contacts with some local designers. Wordpress can be tedious to get to look "just right." The Pareto rule is in effect -- you can get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the work. Once you get it 80% of the way there, it would probably make sense to pay an expert to tweak your theme rather than try to fix it yourself. Since a few designers will be attending the meetup, you can evaluate them then and consider hiring them in the future if you decide you need their help.

How to become a WordPress developer.  More ways here.

FACEBOOK or WEBSITE?
The problem with Facebook fan pages is visitors can't 'join' to automatically see the posts like they can do with personal pages.

Also, people who search google won't see facebook pages in the results.

That's why it usually is better to have a real web site as well as a Facebook presence.

ECOMMERCE
The world of the internet is rapidly changing. Techniques that worked just a few short years ago no longer work.

These days, the hot spot on the internet are the social media apps - facebook, twitter, pinterest and YouTube.

Those are the sites that attract the most visitors and the most attention and if you want to drive traffic to your own site, a good way to do it is to create something on your site that is viral worthy and then post comments and links to it on the major social media sites.

Almost everyone in internet marketing understands the value of social media and all are trying to get their product to go viral on social media, so there is a lot of competition. But if you have something crazy, weird, or funny and you can get enough people on social media to share or like it, you might be able to draw a crowd to your site.

FYI: According to Facebook, 72% of all internet users visit there at least once a month. Over a billion internet users visit there each day. http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/

WHICH WEBSITE DESIGN?
Are you talking web design or a website content management system (CMS)? WordPress is a hybrid of both.

For designing a website (creating web pages, etc.), there are many applications - something like Brackets, for instance, or old standbys like DreamWeaver. To a great extent the design tool would depend on which web technologies you intend to use.

With these, you would design pages on the desktop, either from scratch or using templates they provide, and upload the pages to your website.

If you're talking about a CMS, there are alternatives to WordPress such as Joomla, Drupal and some others. You install these on your website much as you would install WordPress (most hosting auto-installers would accommodate the two I named, at least). However, they typically do require somewhat greater skill with web technologies than WordPress does when it comes to customizing them, managing them, securing them, etc.

Then, there's another category of hybrid design/CMS/hosting platform like Wix, Weebly, Moonfruit, Shopify, SquareSpace, etc. Basically, you get a website, a collection of themes, a visual drag-and-drop/point-and-click tool to customize the theme you choose, and various extensions are available to add extra functionality to your site, like a shopping cart. This might be the sort of thing you're looking for.

Not knowing what you mean by "design software", why you're avoiding WordPress, or your level of technical skill, it's difficult to say.I know Bill's position on this, which is that WordPress powers about a third of the websites on the Internet and that as long as you stick with WP-approved plug-ins, stay current on the latest stable version of WP, and back up your site religiously, WP is the platform of choice.