I had been playing around with the fxcm practice forex account for about a month, they give you 5,000 in fake money and in that month I made 15,000 in profit so I thought it was time to take the plunge and start investing real money. So yesterday I opened a mini account with the minimum $300. I didn’t want to put too much into it since this was my first time and that was both a blessing and a curse.

I short sold usd/jpy and bought eur/usd and got knocked around big time. You could make some good money starting with only 300 in your account but it is really hard because one you have to trade small amounts to not risk a margin call when a large unpredictable change happens so forget long term trading with only 300 dollars. Based off my trading so far, I would say to have a minimum 100 dollars for every 10 dollars you trade. Otherwise you are going to be annihalated by one erratic shift in the short term market.

I f you are interested in trading forex, before you start an account definitely go through the entire “school” at babypips.com and trade with a practice account for at least a month before opening a real account. Also be sure to have a large amount of disposable cash you can commit before beginning otherwise you are just going to be throwing away money.

Is bringing in outside help bad?

Bringing in a partner to work on a project is often thought as bad since it potentially means you will have to share some of the earnings and there is always the fear that that person you brought in will steal the idea leaving you with nothing. These are real possibilities but they shouldn’t cripple you when necessitiy requires you to bring in a new person.

Don’t make a partner when all you need is a consultant

Before you start thinking about making someone your partner in a project, make sure what you need from them can’t be achieved through lesser measures. Meaning if you just need an industry expert to tell you all the details of what they would want from a software don’t make them a partner, if all you really need them to be is a consultant. In the long run 100/hr is cheaper than any % of a viable piece of software.

Dont hire a consultant when you really need a partner

Just as its better to hire someone as a consultant than a partner if thats what you need, if you seriously need a partner to complete and run the project/business don’t waste your time and money hiring a consultant or employee. For me, I needed someone for the long term to help do things I not only didn’t know know how to do but couldn’t learn to do properly in a reasonable amount of time. So I needed a partner.

Now that I’ve decided I need a partner how do I find a good one?

From past partnerships, failed and succesful, I have noticed a few things that help when trying to pick a good partner.

1. Write a list of the technical requirements you would need from a partner i.e. knowledge, time and financial commitments,etc.
2. Once I know what I need I think who do I know(trust) in the related industry and then pitch a rough draft to them and ask them who they think would fit the requirements.
3. If they know someone, I then call them, tell them who I am and what I’m looking for, if they are interested I set up a meeting in person*.
4. At the meeting there are a few things I try and figure out….
   1. What motivates them? I prefer working with people who are primarily motivated by things other than money. Money is nice but people who only focus on the money dont make good partners, they make good accountants.
   2. Do I like this person? You aren’t looking for a friend but business is easier to do if you can stand to stay in the same room for more than a few seconds with your partner
   3. What do they think about the idea? The answer Im usually looking for here is something along the line of “Its a good idea but you’ll have to do A, B,C for it to work”. A good partner, for me, is able to tell you not only what is wrong with your “great” ideas but come up with some possible solutions.
   4. I ask a few more technical details like job experience, education, time they can devote to the project, I usually have these type of questions answered by the person who refered them but its good to get first person responses as well.
5. If I think they’ll be a good partner for the project I end the meeting saying “I look forward to working with you.” and set up a time to set him/her up with the project. I have luckily never had to do this(If I meet with someone theres Ive already decided95% that this person will be a good partner) but if the person seems like they’ll be a bad partner, the best thing to do is say politely you don’t think they’re what you are looking for.

*Some times meeting in person isnt possible because of distance and phone or video conferencing can be substituted for a face to face but if its a large project, I highly recommend meeting face to face even if that means one of you flying out.

What if no one I know or my friends know is a fit?

If you can’t find a good partner via first hand referral than it gets tricky and you have to rely on other means to find good candidates. There are a few means to find good partners besides first hand referall and I’ll go over them in another post, to be continued…….

Becaus I prioritized, Instead of being just another blogger, I….

• own a successful forum and am an expert in my niche
• Have a varied portfolio of sites that earn steady income
• Am developing a serious piece of industrial software

And thats just what I’ve been doing on the computer, not including university and offline projects. So I really can’t stress it enough. If you are trying to start a business or just trying to make money online, sit down at a desk and write down all your business idea and then write a step by step plan to launch. And then DO IT! Reading books, blogs or magazine are helpful but only to spark your ideas. No one is going to do it for you, thats your responsibility. Of course people will provide help along the way if you ask properly just don’t expect them to do it for you.

Thats my rant and I hope if you came here looking for some secret make money idea you’ll take the advice in this post.

P.S. You will begin to see constant updates here.

What is WebProxyTalk.com?

Webproxytalk.com is a forum for proxy owners, developers, hosts and pretty much anyone who deals with proxies on a regular basis. Before WebProxyTalk if you wanted to find quality proxy hosts, specific script mods or even a good theme you would have to browse and ask around on a few general webmaster forums primarily within a single post on DP. Now all those resources are located in one central location at Web Proxy Talk.

Being an Admin is “different”

The forum has been live for a week now and in that brief period of posting as an admin, Ive learned people hold admins to unbelievabley high standards. If I don’t know something I will tell you “I don’t know”. People can’t believe you(Mr.Admin) don’t know everything just on the basis that you set up a forum on the subject. So thats taking some getting used too and forcing me to learn about every little detail related to my forums niche.

What do you talk about on webproxytalk.com?
Heres a sampling of a few of my favorite threads so far…..

1. Are Proxies and thus proxy owners Immoral?
2. Tips to run a succesful newsletter
3. How do you promote?
4. Freebies are always good

Special Feature

I am working on compiling a resource page for proxy owners containing themes, mods maybe some ebooks. So if you are good designing, scripting or have written a good ebook please leave a comment so I can contact you and we can work out a deal.

“How do you think the creation of the blogosphere and its later monetisation has effected the quality of journalism within both new and old media?”

The winner of the contest is Michael from Problogdesign with the below answer.
All of the answers were good and I thank everyone for participating. Surprisingly none of the answers took the side I would have chosen so expect to see my answer and my replies to those of you who did answer in a post this week.

Great question Jacob. I believe that the creation of the blogosphere has greatly increased the quality of journalism.

In old media, we were stuck in a fairly ridged gutter. You had a selection of 4 or 5 decent newspapers, and each newspaper had a slightly different slant, or of watching a quick news roundup on the TV/radio.

The blogosphere has changed everything because it has given everyone a voice. As a reader, you have a choice of not just a few sources, but of hundreds of different sources. Everyone can find a blog with a style that suits them. It makes news much more enjoyable to read.

The depth of information has also increased. Whilst in a newspaper, your topic of interest may have been limited to a 400 word column once a week, in the blogosphere, there is a probably a full blog dedicated to it. The amount of information available is far greater this way, and it is being written by someone with a passion for it.

The web has also changed how we get the news. The web is a much more flexible medium than newspapers, TV or radio ever where. What is the best way of digesting information daily? Long articles? Quick snippets and bulleted lists? Audio recordings? Videos? The web has made it all possible, and through continuous experimentation, we are slowly perfecting various approaches.

The greatest improvement however has been the very fundamental of how we receive the news. It is no longer a one sided affair. In old media, we heard the news and that was all. In new media, we hear, and then we can give our opinions. Instead of talking to us, journalists are talking with us. They are able to give their thoughts and listen to ours. The discussion that follows is often more valuable than the original article ever could be (A great example is the BBC’s The Editors’ Blog).

The monetization of the blogosphere is crucial because it has made the blogosphere sustainable. Blogging is no longer just a pass-time, or a collection of personal sites. It has become a valuable industry, and a respectable industry. The monetization has allowed the quality of blogs to greatly increase (Full-time writers, professional designs, marketing etc.), making blogs a reliable way of obtaining the news.

Whats the big deal?
Until about 6 months ago, a high pr would allow you to make some pretty good money by selling text links. But Google doesn’t like people selling text links because by buying enough text links for a certain keyword, you are able to skew the natural search results to make your site show up in the first position for a keyword. So, for the past 6 months on top of postponing the pr update, Google has been penalizing the search engine rankings of sites selling text links. So while previously I would have been been able to make some pretty good cash off of digitalorder’s pr4 selling links through TLA or TNX, now if I do that, I risk a search engine ranking penalty.

Is the risk worth it?
It all depends on your blogs priorities. For this blog the priority is to provide quality articles to help my readers and me learn. Though if the priority of your blog is to make money and you still want to sell links you probally should be a little more discreet about it. If you use a network to serve your links make sure the php is properly installed and you arent broadcasting for Google’s crawler the fact that you are selling links. If at all possible I would suggest handling your text sales privately.

Conclusion:
- If you depend on text links for money, be discreet.
- If you depend on google for traffic, dont sell links.

Selling Links
Unlike other Text Link servers there are no traffic or pr requirements to get your site approved. All you have to do is have at least one page indexed by Google in order to qualify to display text links. Of course they do determine the price by a mix of PR and Backlinks, so if you dont have those you arent going to be making much. So their pricing system is pretty flawed since PR hasn’t been updated in 6 months and there has been no signs of Google doing one anytime soon. So blogs like Digitalorder that have high stats for everything but pr get the shaft in the TNX system. TLA manually set the price for a one month text link in the sidebar of this blog at 15/month. The TNX system on the otherhand which says DO only has 2k of its 10k backlinks, would have me selling 4 links on everysingle page for the high price of .23/month.(23 cents for 450 links?). They have the ability to be a good source of income for alot of bloggers especially since they only have take a 12.5% commision but right now, if you dont have a pr its not even worth it.

Buying Links
For the same reason that I am not going to be using TNX.net to serve text links on any of my pr-less blogs I will be using them to buy text links. You are able to get a text link on a pr0 site with 5k-50k backlinks for only 15 points,. You may say but its a pr0 and I say because of the lack of update there are pretty popular sites i.e. digitalorder.org, johncow.com that have traffic but no toolbar PR.

The Point System
Instead of dealing directly with money, you get paid and buy links with TNX points. This makes it very easy to reinvest the points gained from selling links into Linking campaigns. The current price of 1,000 TNX-points is $0.63 - 1.26 depending on the quantity you buy. They offer pretty impressive discounts. >$50=20%| >$100=50%|>$250=100%. So if you spend more than 250/month on links, they look like a pretty good solution. Also the price per thousand points grows by 2% each week so you actually gain a little interest by keeping your points in the system, Im not sure how it would compare with a bank so do the math before you decide to do that.

Affilitate Program
As with every ad network they do have an affiliate program. Its a pretty good one too. When you refer webmasters to TNX.net, you get 13.3% (as long as your account is active) of all TNX-points that are generated by their websites. In addition, you receive 5% of all payments, made by referred advertiser.

Promotions
Currently they are running a promotion over at DP giving away 5000 free tnx points worth of free links. To get the points all you have to do is sign up with TNX, get a site approved, and then post your TNX ID/username in the DP post. I’ve already got my points and have reinvested them back to buy

Conclusion
Overall TNX has a pretty good system set up, If you have PR. I dont think Id ever use TNX.net as a source of income but I would and if PR ever updates I will use them as a means to get some more backlinks and possibly more traffic to DigitalORDER.