Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

How Fight Club Changed My Life (And How You Can Change Yours Too)

Posted: 22 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

When I was a junior in college, I was one of the laziest bastards ever…

I really had no ambitions in life. My days consisted of eating like shit, going to class, watching 5 hours of T.V. and then usually going out and getting drunk at night. I would wake up the next morning all groggy-headed and usually repeat the same thing over and over…

I was content with my life, so I didn’t really care.

Then I read Fight Club and everything changed for me.

I was browsing some forums online, and came across a discussion of Fight Club. The main idea of the book immediately caught my interest, so I darted to the book store and picked myself up a copy. Up until this point, I had read probably 7 books in my entire life – all of them for school, and none of them interested me at all.

I dove into the book, and finished the whole thing in a few hours. After the first read-through, I sat there… pretty much stunned at what I had just read.

I realized everything I was doing in my life, and everything I wanted in my life was just like “Jack’s” character in Fight Club.

I was materialistic.
I was living a very mediocre life with no real ambitions
I was looking for everything outside of myself to make me happy
I never really felt “alive”

Since reading Fight Club back in college, I’ve made a bunch of big changes in my life and I can attribute most of them to that book finally “waking me up”…

Fight Club forced me to look at myself and make an honest assessment of what my life consisted of. My favorite quote from Fight Club has pretty much been my motto for the past few years – In fact, it’s helped me so much, I’m even getting a tattoo of it later this week…

Here it is…

“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time”

Fight Club motivated me to be a better person. It motivated me to get off my ass and start my own online business. It motivated me to stop being lazy and get serious about working out and eating better. It helped me figure out what I want in life and also how to make sure that other people don’t distract me or try and pull me away from what I want.

But most of all, it made me realize that your life really is ending one minute at a time.

Each day we have is truly a gift. And I don’t have any interest in living my life the way someone else thinks I should.

- Justin

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Getting your privacy back offline

Posted: 21 May 2012 02:53 PM PDT

Over the last 10 years I have not really tried to protect my privacy. Its not that big of deal to me.

But I know that a lot of people get pissed when I show them our API from sources we aggregate data from on the PARprogram.

Don’t hate the player… hate the game =P

This morning while building out our system for consumers who wish to opt out, I thought people might find it useful to goto some of the sources directly to remove their data from them selling it.

Lexus Nexis

Lexus Nexis has been the go to spot for students, attourneys and about anyone who needs information about someone. If you have a Nexis terminal you can get an amazing amount of stuff. SSN, Birth, Mothers maiden name, everywhere you have ever worked. (where do you think credit companies get all this info?).

If you want to opt out of the Nexis database you have to go here first.

Nexis terminals are EXPENSIVE. And they want to keep all the data they can. So they do not make it easy for you to opt out of their database.

After you fill out that form it takes you to a page with all your information. You then have to print out that form and mail it to their physical address. They also recommend you fax it.

You also have to provide a copy of 2 forms identification as well as every place chronologically you have worked at for the last 10 years, and a utility bill.

You ALSO have to have a compelling reason why you are asking to be removed. They suggest a copy of a police report of someone threatening bodily harm.

A friend of mine just said that it was an “executive request” and it was all taken out. So I would suggest you go with that.

ADD SIDENOTE – Years ago my old house address was listed on alexa.com and I couldn’t get it off to save my life until Michael Gray suggested that I use the phrase “executive request” for removal. I did and it was removed days later.

So Lexus Nexis is a real bitch but its the most definitive place out there to get peoples info.

The others are easier:

Experian:

Experian is a large data seller and about everyone under the sun either buys or sells data to them. Its MUCH cheaper and we have been a customer for a long time.

They are a great resource to get phone numbers, household income, and tons of other data.

In order to opt out of their send a email to dataselect@experian.com with the subject line “PLEASE REMOVE”.

In the body of the email make sure you put:

Please do not send me any promotional information from Experian.
Please do not share my contact information with third parties.
Include any phone numbers, emails, addresses you have lived, aliases and anything else you think is relavent (hey if your putting it together might as well include it).

If you want to protect your offline and online privacy the Experian opt out is really important. If I had to guess I would say 50-60% of anyone in the data business is selling or buying with Experian.

The do not call list:

Ahh remember that awesome thing that was going to stop telemarketers in their tracks! – https://www.donotcall.gov/register/reg.aspx – Keep in mind that this is a publicly downloadable list and some people will argue that you are providing marketers your information…. thus defeating the purpose?

Here is some other things to opt out while your at it.

Acxiom:

Fill out remove request form
You will receive a "Privacy Guide" which contains the final opt-out form for you to mail in.

You can also request to install an "opt-out cookie" for targeted marketing: http://www.acxiom.com/products_and_services/targetedengagement/displayads/pages/relevance-xopt-out.aspx

Google Phone Directory:

Click here and make sure to enter all your numbers.
Remove all numbers used.

I tried to keep this focused to protect yourself from OFFLINE marketing. If you tried online then… good luck cause every website you visit has a privacy policy most likely that they can sell or do whatever with your data that they want.

Good luck

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ProBlogger: 7 Hot Posts on My Blog this Month, and Why They Were Successful

7 Hot Posts on My Blog this Month, and Why They Were Successful

Posted: 21 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT

I always find it fascinating to look at which posts go viral (or at least, which get shared the most) on my blogs. It isn’t always the ones that you expect!

Here are a few of the recent posts on my dPS blog that have done better than others over the last month, along with some reflections on why I think they were successful.

1. How to photograph babies: 9 tutorials

I’ll be honest: this post was one of those “panic posts” that I do on occasion. A post that I had lined up ready to go from one of our authors didn’t come in on time and I just had to publish something. So on the spur of the moment I decided to write this sneeze page (more on sneeze pages here).

While I knew it was a good topic, as we do get a lot of questions on it, I didn’t expect a lot from the post. Today it ended up on one of Google’s Cool Links lists and is getting heaps of traffic.

2. Posing guides

We published this series over the last few weeks. It contains posing guides for different portrait subjects:

The first post went crazy, so we commissioned the next three (and hopefully a couple more). The key I think is that they’re list posts, they’re visually rich with lots of illustrations, and they’re useful—many of our readers said they’ve printed them or are saving them for shoots that they’re planning.

3. Are you practicing these 5 natural light tips?

After our posing guides, this post has been our most popular this month. Why did it work?

Again, the post is visual (but then all dPS posts are visual—it’s what we do!). I think this one worked partly because of the title (I find question titles perform well, and this question makes people curious to see if they are doing what the article suggests), but also because it was on the theme of natural light that we’ve been exploring throughout the month, as part of the launch of our new Natural Light ebook.

While not a series of posts, this one is on a topic we’ve already sparked interest in through previous posts.

Another post in this series that did well was 5 tips for controlling natural light.

4. 31 [+10] Cool photography tutorials, tips, videos, hacks and how to’s from around the web

This post is a wrap-up of some of the best links from other photography blogs from around the web over the last month or so. These posts tend to perform well for us partly because the the links are genuinely good, partly because a few of the sites we link to then share the post in their networks, and partly because they’re list posts.

We also include ten of our own links in the post to drive internal traffic (another quasi-sneeze page).

5. Portrait tip: don’t fill the frame

This post was a quick one that I wrote that I think did particularly well because it is actually the opposite of the advice that most people are given.

Most people hear advice to fill the frame with their subjects, but in this post I take the opposite view and talk about the beauty of shots where you place your subject in the context of a larger scene.

It was also visual (I probably spent more time looking for example shots than writing the post itself), and it tapped into a problem that I think a lot of amateur photographers have—the comments on this post show how many people fall into the trap of zooming in too much.

6. Is camera lust destroying your photography?

This post went crazy. Perhaps it was having the word ‘lust’ in the title (a little provocative), or perhaps it was I took a slightly humorous spin in the intro.

Actually, it was probably more to do with the topic itself, which I know aways sparks debate and discussion. People love to debate how much gear plays a part in photography, and as you can see in the comments on this one, this post was no exception.

The post also tapped into a personal issue for many photographers and came from my own personal experience, too.

7. 7 Secrets every street photographer should know

This post again has a title that just begs to be clicked. The “secrets” and tips that “everyone should know” intrigue readers and grow their curiosity.

The post itself is well written and helpful. It’s also on on a topic that is pretty hot right now—street photography seems to be having something of a resurgence, and is really sparking interest at the moment.

Shtuff people say to photographers also got a guernsey. This one is all about humor—we had tens of thousands of visits to it. Make people laugh and they’ll pass the post on to others.

What were your hot posts over the last month, and why do you think they were successful? Share them with us in the comments.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger