Tech Conniption

Most people get their computer with Internet Explorer already installed and set to all the default settings. The default settings are what Microsoft calls “recommended settings”. These settings are not always the best for your usage. One size does not always fit all. But how do you change the settings and what do they all mean? I’m glad you asked…

In this article I am going to take you step by step through these settings to explain them to you. Open a new browser window before you start, so you can follow these steps as you read the article. At the top of your new browser window, click on “tools” then “Internet Options”.

The first tab you will see is the “general” tab. The very first option you have is where to set your home page. Type in http://forum.dugancom.com/. I’m just kidding. That is my website. Pick a website that you want your browser to open to every time you go online. If you have a favorite search engine, put it there. If you have a home page enter that. Hit apply when you have done this and that will be your home page from now on. Anytime you hit the home button at the top of your browser it will automatically go to that page.

The next option you have is to “delete cookies”. There is a lot said about how to manage cookies and what they are for on the Internet. But for the purposes of this article I will just tell you that cookies store information like websites where you want to be automatically logged in rather than having to type in a username and password every time. There are other cookie uses and hopefully I will have time to write about that in another article. If you delete the cookies, you will have to login to websites you use often and it won’t remember your username etc.

The next button says “delete files”. These are the temporary files Internet Explorer stores on your hard drive so if you go back to them they will load faster because the images and other files are already downloaded. Later we will get to another area with a setting that will help you manage this. You can go ahead and delete these files if you want to and every now and then you should.

The next button is called “settings”. Click on that button now. It says, “Check for newer versions of stored pages… “ then gives you several options. Clicking “every visit to the page” will cause pages to load slower because rather than going into the temporary Internet files for cached files, it queries the server for the newest version of any files on that page.

“Every time I open Internet Explorer” means that the first time you visit that website, “this session”, it will check for a newer version of the page. After that, it will refer to the cached page on your hard drive. “Automatically” means you let Internet Explorer manage this for you and that is the recommended setting. “Never” means it will always use the cached version on your hard drive rather than check for newer versions.

I recommend either auto or never, because if you want to check for newer versions of a page all you have to do is push shift and hit the refresh button on your browser tool bar.

The next option in settings is how much space to allow for temporary Internet files. Five to Twenty megabytes is plenty. Internet Explorer tends to override your choice here anyway. Bill knows best I guess.

The next button is “move folder”. Don’t click that. Back away slowly and do not touch that button. It sends nuclear missiles at several minor countries. Seriously, moving the location of your temporary Internet files is not a good idea. The next button, “view files” is pretty boring stuff and you don’t need to do anything here. The same can be said for “view objects”. Those three can all be left alone.

Go ahead and click ok so we can go back to the general tab. You will see the next option is about computer history. Now this is a personal choice. You know how links you have clicked on before are a different color than those that you have not clicked on? Well history remembers that for you so you know which pages you have or have not visited. It also records the history of all the websites you or anyone else on your computer has visited. In your address bar, the drop down arrow that shows you all the websites you have been to is put there by the “history” option. It is also used if you have auto-complete enabled for web addresses you are typing into your address bar.

You can set this for the number of days you want to save history for. If you have kids, you can access these files to see where they are going on the Internet as well. If you are using a computer at work you might want to set this to 1 day. To the right of where you enter the number of days is the button to erase history now. Computer experts can still find your history. This is not absolute.

Next button is “colors”. The best setting is “use windows colors, but experiment if you want to. Next button is “fonts” and if you click on that, it’s pretty self-explanatory. This is not where you choose font size. That is in the “view” part of your browser rather than the “tools” area we are in now. “Languages” is also self-explanatory. “Accessibility” is where you can alter settings if you have special needs.

Ok, now let’s move on to the “Security” tab. “Medium” is the best setting for most users and probably is already set there. Be careful when changing security options that you do not understand. Click “custom level”. Scroll through. If there are things you are absolutely sure about and want to change, then do so. But if you are not sure, don’t change it.

You will see that when we first came to the tab the “Internet” icon was selected in the window at the top. You can also click on “Local Internet” and do the same for your settings there. This is for your local network if you have one. The next icons are, “trusted sites” and “restricted sites”. You can add websites to either area that you wish to allow or disallow no matter what other settings are on your computer. This is one way to block your child from visiting a particular website.

Go to the next tab at the top called “privacy”. Now this is another area where you need to be careful and understand what you are changing before doing so. This is probably already set to “medium” which is fine for most users. The “import” button probably doesn’t apply to you. Click the “advanced” button. Everything here is probably grayed out except the option to check override cookie handling.

Automatic settings mean that you accept both first party and third party cookies. That means you accept cookies from the website you are visiting and from any other websites that the website you are visiting has chosen to set cookies on your hard drive like their advertisers or others who want to track user’s habits.

Click ‘override automatic cookie handling”, then check “block” for the third party cookies and you will block some spyware or adware being placed on your system. If you want to block cookies from a particular website or you want to only allow cookies from specific websites, this is where you add those websites.

Next, we go to the “Content” tab. Again, this is an area that you need to know what you are changing before you change anything. You can click “enable” for content advisor. The first slider bar can be changed to block different types of content. First you can start with types of language you wish to block, then nudity, sex, and violence by clicking the icons in the window and using the slider bar. The “more info” button will help you understand this more.

The “approved sites” tab at the top will let you enter websites that you want to access regardless of the settings you just made with the slider bar. On the “general” tab, you should click allow websites that have no rating because not all websites are rated. You can also check the box that says a supervisor, you, can use a password to access restricted websites.

If you share your computer with your children, this is an option where you can visit restricted websites but they cannot. Be careful when setting this password. If you forget it, you will not be able to make changes to these settings later. If you lose this password, you have to know how to go into the registry to get it removed. Unless you know about rating systems, you don’t need to worry about the two buttons at the bottom of this tab or the “advanced tab”.

Click ok to make any changes you made and to enter a password if you decided you wanted one. If you understand about “certificates” and “publishers” then you don’t need my help here. If you don’t understand them, leave those buttons alone.

Click the “autocomplete” button. This is pretty easy to understand. Autocomplete works to help you not have to type the same information on forms and in your Internet Explorer address bar. You can also clear any previous information here. Click prompt me to save passwords and it will ask you each time you enter a password if you want Internet Explorer to remember your password for this website so you don’t have to type it in every time. I don’t recommend you allow it to remember banking and financial passwords.

“My Profile” is where you can enter information about yourself and use that whenever asked for your profile on a website or it can be automatically accessed by some applications saving you time.

Now, click the “connections” tab. If you are currently connected to the web and reading this article, then it is safe to assume your settings here are correct and you should leave them alone.

Click the “programs” tab at the top. There are drop down menus to help you set the default program for each of the tasks. This is a personal choice that will let you set your default web browser, html editor, and email program.

Now we reach the “advanced” tab at the top. Scary hunh? No, this area is mostly personal choices and your choices don’t have near the serious consequences of your settings in “content”, “privacy”, and “security”.

Most of the choices should be left where they are as the default settings. I will only talk here about the ones you may want to change. Do not check notification for EVERY script error unless you want to be annoyed a lot. Not every script in every webpage is error-free and there will be a lot of popups about them if you check that box.

Notify me when downloads complete if checked will give you a sound when a download is done. Underline links is a personal choice. I leave it set on always so I know when I see a link. The next ones again are a choice of whether you want to use Autocomplete.

You can scroll through the rest of the choices and change the ones you understand. Likely if you don’t understand an option you don’t need to change it anyway. I hope this article has been helpful to you and has helped you personalize your settings rather than have Bill Gates do it for you.

There is a great potential in product funnels as used in mailing lists to earn you money.

But they have to be set up correctly – something most of the advice I’ve gathered from articles on the web don’t do.

Let’s cover some basics. 3-4% of the people you contact (or opt-in) will buy anything you put in front of them – so the bigger your list, the more income you will make.

80% of your total income will come from 20% of your public – more or less. (And this means 64% comes from 4%, 51% comes from .3% – at least on paper.)

As people don’t find things to be of value, they will drop off/opt-out.

With a poor conversion factor, you will probably wind up with 50% or more of your list being that 3-4% and so this will skew your data. High opt-outs, few purchases will give you a steady income – as long as you keep creating new products for these “buy anything” public. You are then in maintain mode for this small niche – and your income is pegged.

You want to be able to scale your income and keep increasing it, plus freeing your time to find new niches – not just new stuff to sell old customers.

Conversion is the key. You have to take that 80% of your public and convert them to buyers – if not big buyers, you want them to move up your funnel as fast as possible.

There are a couple of solutions to this: [Note that the below is new theory based on study of brick-and-mortar sales functions - but what works in the real world converts over to the virtual simply.]

1) Make your funnel look like an upside down champagne glass (the old-fashioned wide at the top, thin stem and then flattening out to a base as wide as the top – an hourglass that was sat on, more or less).

What you don’t want is to have a shape like a grain silo – straight sides up and down with only one path to the top, take it or leave it.

Think champagne glassses – for the expensive varieties of that beverage you can celebrate with. You want to have lots of introductory services so that they can take cheap or free courses one after the other, while you continue to build relationships with them – plying them with various surveys until you know where they personally are coming from/looking for and also you have a better idea where your beginning list participants are at. Many don’t buy right off, so give them more to do which builds trust so they will.

The top of your upside-down champagne-glass-funnel is wide again – but for those who have made it right on up with their Paypal account open to you at every offer. You have to keep them buying, so have a lot of new material up there, which they can use and benefit from. This doesn’t just mean selling them more hours of personal coaching – which is expensive for you as well. New webinars on your latest research – on a reserved seat basis – is probably a more likely ticket.

2) Make people an affiliate at every level. This builds your community and allows participation. As well, you can offer rewards to top-performing affiliates, so that they work for you just to earn those top rewards (which other people buy outright). Regular training webinars at an affordable price also will keep them working for you. This is also a way for these people to get more exposure to your solutions and makes them more able to afford your higher-end services.

Now an interesting organizational point comes up. You are going to not just “segment” your list as some articles have pointed out, but you are going to have to subdivide it, stratify it, and then segment those stratas and divisions. Let’s clarify those terms:

Division – part of the list by product line. You have an autoresponder service which should give you virtually unlimited email series. Set up your service so that you are servicing each different product line as itself.

Example: I have a list for people interested in self-help books and products. Another division would be the list of affiliates selling my self-help products. Affiliates wouldn’t be excluded from taking services – they should be encouraged – but regular public wouldn’t know what’s in the affiliate division, unless they signed up for it. Now, in the self-help area, I have general self-help and a section just based on the Law of Attraction. These people can go back and forth through all the lower-level ecourses I offer (and I am planning about 5 or more, in addition to special reports, MP3′s, etc.) Afterall, they are part of the self-help division, if not (yet) self-help affiliates.

Example: Suppose I start a blook on earning money through Internet marketing. This is a completely different division to self-help. Even the affiliate program is completely different. Now they could actually subscribe to my self-help division, but generally I wouldn’t offer it in my email series – except perhaps at the very top end.

What this does is to enable you to have multiple income sources from the Internet, using the same autoresponder service for each source – but being able to keep them straight from each other. Note that each ecourse is its own series, as might be each special report. But at the end of each ecourse is the option to sign up for another ecourse – which continues until they buy something, where they are bumped upstairs. Your subscribers move seamlessly from segment to segment until they “graduate” to the next higher level through buying a higher-priced service.

Not to be cruel, they are able to complete their current ecourse, but ecourses after that will have a different set of emails, thought the material will be the same.

This opens up Stratas. Once a person has bought something, you want to sell them the next gradient material – although they might jump for your top-dollar item right off the bat, so you have to craft these carefully.

Example: person on a free ecourse buys your $47 item. Now you are going to work on getting them to buy your $147 or $197 item – but you can occasionally offer them a glimpse at webinars or personal coaching, just to tantalize them. If they don’t buy, then get them in for another round of services at that level. More ecourses, with emails that offer them more $47 – $197 items of the same value are in order. As they trust you to deliver, they’ll order from you. And the freebies you give out at this level (which are not widely available) are all valued at $47 or more.

Once they buy a $147 or greater level item, they are bumped upstairs to another strata. On that level, the freebies are proportionately greater in value, and they are being offered your $297 item. They may start racking up their credit cards at this point – if not, give them another high value service.

At the top strata, you can give them everything you have to offer for sale, since they trust you inplicitly with delivering high-quality items routinely. At this point, you also should have a sales record of them, as well as what courses they have taken – so you can personally suggest some items to them based on their experience. You now have developed a one-on-one relationship and can easily move into the per-hour coaching. Enough of these and you can reserve a suite of rooms and a meeting hall in some exotic locale so that they can all meet you in person and get their questions answered personally. A workshop – which they foot the bill for.

With the whole system in place, I can now talk to you about Segments. On the intro strata, the people who didn’t buy right off got another intro service. Each intro service is a segment. On the next strata up, they could take more courses (segments), but the emails were tailored to their new status as a paid customer. Here they go again from segment to segment until they buy the next-higher course.

As you test and tweak your squeeze pages, you will be able to move them rapidly up to the highest levels where you can have them buy anything and everything. Your conversion rates will be much higher and your efficiency at turning newbies into trusting supporters will be high.

Why do I say to make affiliates at every strata/level? Because they can give their own testimonials about how your product has helped them change their own lives. If you set up your autoresponder properly, you can allow them to email that segment of your list with appropriate offers – or create a new segment just for joint ventures (and be able to shut it down if you have too many opt-outs happening from confusing cross-sales). But good affiliates can open up trusted lines with individuals on your funnel and help them take their next higher step – as the affiliate gets paid all the way.

The logical solution for Affiliates is to offer them personally segmented lists, available to them and to you only – in this way, they have a guaranteed percentage of all their sales to these individuals.

Yes, this would get complicated real fast – but around this time you are making so much income that you hire a person to chart this all out (and who is paid a percentage of the total gross, so constantly works to keep it efficient and come up with new ideas).

The above was based on studies of a multi-national organization and interviews with top sales personell on every level as well as their immediate managers through the course of several years.

What autoresponders do is allow you to have a multi-national sales force for your particular niche products – but automate them instead of having to deal with the massive HR headaches and meet that regular payroll. Start small and when you get past your first couple million in income, you can then contract someone to keep your ball rolling for your – freeing you to find more niches to invest your time in…

Now these are just notes at this point, a lot has to be fleshed out and tested. But I thought to break this to you early as I continue my research into this field.

When you connect to the internet you can harm your PC. That is a fact. The reason antivirus software and other similar products where created is to protect your PC.

It is not your fault that you got viruses, however you should take the precaution methods to stop this from happening again.

Keep PC Clean: It is important that your PC stays clean if you use the internet. Clean from the ‘bad, harmful objects’ that are also known as spy ware, adware or viruses.

There are many different types of harmful objects but luckily there exist also cure to keep your PC protected.

A must use Software: The two most important software you must have are an antivirus and an anti adware. There is no need to purchase 30 different kinds of anti spy ware software…

However you must choose two software which will protect your PC. These will work in the background automatically. Some anti adware products also heal spy ware not just adware.

Schedule Maintenance: The software will block spy ware and adware. However you should also use the software when you are offline. You should scan your
PC using both software at least once every three weeks. That will clean any harmful objects. These objects can make a lot of harm to your PC.

Safety Measurements: We already mentioned that you need two software to keep ongoing protection on your PC.

If you download software/movies/images/videos or any other thing from the internet it is recommended that you scan those items. Before opening them right click on them and use your antivirus to scan them.

Go to Control Panel to turn on Firewall. Firewall is also an ongoing protection which is very important.

Once you have your software installed these protect your PC and you get back the freedom you deserve. Remember that prevention is better than cure.