How crazy is this?  I had heard for years that Google was buying up all the ‘dark fiber’ in the country so that it could pipe Internet to residential areas…  But gigabit speeds?  That’s awesome.

Could Google be your next ISP? Maybe. The company has just announced a trial of its own high-speed network that it plans to offer to “at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”

Google says it will be capable of delivering speeds more than 100x faster than typical U.S. Internet connections with up to one gigabit per second. It will do so at a “competitive” price.

via Google Getting Into the ISP Business With Ultra High-Speed Network.

When I first got into building businesses and websites online, I had no idea where to start…  I didn’t know the first thing about ‘Virtual Property.’  I had to teach myself everything…  Thank God I found WordPress when I did!

Naturally, the thing that sparks most people’s interest about starting an online venture is the idea of making a few bucks online.  So naturally, I started looking!

After fiddling around with Adsense and certain CPA ads, I decided to try my hand at something a little different: website flipping.

Website flipping is a bit like house flipping, only it’s with virtual property (aka websites).

By now, you’re thinking that I’m going to drag this out and tell you some long, stupid story about how I made lots and lots of money by doing something as easy as tying my shoes…  But I’m not.

Instead, I’m going to introduce a friend of mine who does make a living flipping websites.  His name is Ryan Moran (@ryanmoran).

Ryan is a smart cat.  In fact, he’s one of the few I still like to learn tips and techniques from.

You see - you’ve been told that you need to build websites, choose niches, and do all the hard work to get websites and businesses started, but I want you to watch as Ryan proves that you can skip all of those steps and have instantly profitable campaigns…

Check out this video:

http://drohnresearch.com/skip

In the video you’ll see how you can skip all of the hard steps that monopolize your time and keep you stuck.

No need to opt into anything, just fire this up and the video will start playing automatically:

– Jason

P.S. Ryan is holding a webinar in a few days where he’ll be teaching exactly how he skips all the hard steps and still rakes in the dough. And for every person that registers for the webinar, $1 is being donated to the Haiti Relief Effort. Do yourself and the people of Haiti a favor by registering for the virtual property webinar after you watch this video:

http://drohnresearch.com/skip

I just wanted to put up a quick post asking if anyone wanted a Google Wave Invite.  I’ve been playing around with it for the last few days and am pretty impressed, but I was wondering if anyone else wanted to join in the fun?

In case you haven’t heard of Google Wave, here’s a brief description:

Google Wave is an online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless — in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is a conversation with multiple participants — participants are people added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It’s also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.

All you have to do is leave a comment and I’ll send the invite to the email address you enter for the comment.  I think I have six invites left, so the first 6 get them!

– Jason

** I’m trying to get my hands on some more!  Stay tuned.  As you can see the comments filled up quick :0)

If you’ve thought about starting your own business, or you have one that has yet to take off, make sure you read this post ’til the end!

Tomorrow, I’ll be doing a business building webinar (Thursday, September 3rd) at 5:30 PM titled “The Top 5 Startup Questions Ever Answered.”

It’s going to be question and answer style - half presentation, half one-on-one consulting with a client of mine.

The webinar will be free for everyone who signs up.  If you miss it, I’ll post the replay for 24 hours :0)

• What is the most effective way to market services to potential clients? And in order to do this, what do I need to find out first?
• How can I ’sell’ myself to potential clients when I’m new in the industry and I don’t have a lot of experience?
• What challenges may I face when starting my own business?
• What are some of the big no-no’s when owning my own business?
• What should I be doing to stay ahead of my competition?

Make sure you sign up before this thing gets too crowded!

Sign up –>> Top 5 Business Building Questions Ever Asked Webinar.

Don’t get me wrong - I love Freshbooks.com.  But, I always have an internal argument whenever I sign up for a web app because I never really know where the data is!

That data, if you run an online business, is your absolute most valuable asset.

The other day, I found a free, online invoice system that I wanted to share with you.  It’s an open source web application meant to help manage and create invoices in a simple, straightforward way.

The invoice system really is nice.  As of right now, it doesn’t integrate with Paypal, so it won’t let you send one-click-and-pay invoices to your clients, but hopefully a developer will get it straightened out soon!

via siwapp - Free Online Invoice System.

About three weeks ago, I learned about a way to increase sales through a website by 13% with relatively no effort.  Now, obviously, when I heard that I was like, “Gimme a break!”  I work my ass off to write good sales copy and you can throw a button on the page and increase sales?!

So now, three weeks later, I though I’d let you in on the secret too (plus give you a link to the freeware I’m using!)

The secret is live help or online customer service.  You’ve probably seen it if you go to VerizonWireless.com to pay your cell phone bill or some of the upper end sales pages online.

By simply putting the “Live Support” button on one of my niche websites, conversions went up a staggering 24%.

Now, just so we’re all on the same page, there have been a few people that clicked it.  6 to be exact.  4 of those have been, “Oh!  There is someone on the other end of this chat window” type conversations.  But for an increase of 24% overall, I’ll take it!

Here’s the link to the live help software I’m using…  There are open source, server side apps out there like HelpCenterLive, but I find this app to be pretty solid.

LiveZilla - Freeware Live Help

If you know of any other server side live help applications out there, let me know!  All the ones I tried seemed ugly and outdated, but who knows.  Maybe I’m missing the good ones…

There’s no limit to free media players for handheld devices.  My Nokia Internet Tablet has a player that I can stream media from network locations (aka Gandolf, my media server).

You can even do it with a Windows Media Extender like the XBox 360 or the Popcorn Hour (also highly recommended).

But what about your desktop?  Well, if you want to kill productivity, install a media player that lets you stream movies!!

Yesterday, I found a player that I particularly enjoy, Moovida.  It’s compatible with all the major operating systems and is truly a beautiful application.

Moovida is much more than a simple media player… it is a cutting edge media center bringing the best of the internet to your TV screen. Automatically creating your own digital library you can browse from your sofa with a remote control. The elegant and easy to use interface automatically displays artwork and fan art throughtout and gives you access to movie synopsis and artist info.

Granted, it’s got some bugs but that’s cool.  It’s a great app anyway!

Check out Moovida, the free media player

I can’t remember if I ever shared this with you, but it’s an awesome tutorial on how to build a server rack for your house or your office, without having to pay thousands of dollars!

Admittedly, it isn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever put together, but it works and exemplifies the geek in me :0)

For about $150 and 3 hours of work, it’s entirely possible to put together a stand-alone unit to house all of your computers/servers.  I, for instance, have my email server, web server, media server and file server in this bad boy.  There’s also a rackmount network hub, modem and monitor hanging off the side so I can monitor vitals…

Anyway, here’s a link to the original how-to article:

Deadly Computer Blog » DIY ~20U server rack.

If you’ve ever thought about operating your own microblogging service, I’ve got an app for you.  Obviously, dethroning Twitter isn’t really a possbility, but you might do one for your office or your family!

I found this cool open source server script for you to play with.  It’s called Laconica, pronounced “luh-KAWN-ih-kuh,” and is a Free and Open Source microblogging platform. It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange short 140 character messages over the Web.

Users can choose which people to “follow” and receive only their friends’ or colleagues’ status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter, Jaiku, and Plurk.

Want to try Laconica without installing anything? Hop on over to identi.ca, the largest microblogging service based on Laconica.

via Laconica.

I’m cleaning out my Firefox bookmarks (all 2300 of them) and dumping them into Evernote.  It’s proving to be more of a pain than I thought it would, but Evernote gives me persistent search and a way to attach files!

Here’s an interesting WordPress hack that I thought you guys would be into…

WP-CRM is a WordPress system for creating a basic Contact Manager / CRM. The system requires a combination of plugins and a theme. It was inspired by the great work David Yeiser did with WP-Contact Manager, and by 37signals Highrise.

Features:

• Add contacts from the front end of WordPress – no need to go to the admin screen.
• Associate an image with each contact.
• Assign each contact to a company… or don’t.
• Create a note history for each contact.
• Clickable email and website links.
• Google map contacts address.
• Dial a phone number works on cell phones with internet browsers.
• Fully hcard / vcard compatible.

Check it out at WP-CRM: a basic CRM built with WordPress | SlipFire.