Virtual Vendor - My online money making journey http://www.virtual-vendor.net My quest for a passive income. Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:59:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.2 en Learning to code php and c# http://www.virtual-vendor.net/learning-to-code-php-and-c/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/learning-to-code-php-and-c/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:59:17 +0000 VirtualVendor http://www.virtual-vendor.net/learning-to-code-php-and-c/ So I have decided to try and learn PHP so that I can work on my projects without relying on outsourcing it to someone I don’t know. I downloaded some Ebooks for PHP but as I was looking through them I found it might be a better idea to start out with a C based language to give me a better understanding of coding in general, plus the books are better. I am hoping that by learning C# first that the PHP information will come easier and the end result will be better code. I am through the first three chapters in the Ebook I have and hope to have the book finished in a couple of weeks. Most likely I will move onto another C# book before I move onto PHP.

]]> http://www.virtual-vendor.net/learning-to-code-php-and-c/feed/ 7search - my first impression http://www.virtual-vendor.net/7search-my-first-impression/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/7search-my-first-impression/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:14:22 +0000 VirtualVendor http://www.virtual-vendor.net/7search-my-first-impression/ So I decided to go with 7search to send the initial traffic to my affiliate product site. I went and signed up at 7search and entered in my payment information. Not only did I have to verify by phone but I was also asked to fax in a copy of my ID or Passport and the front/back of my Credit Card/Debit Card. This didn’t really bother me as I have had to do with with other online companies in the past, but they didn’t offer efax which I thought to be ridiculous. How could you be doing massive amounts of online transaction and requesting this information and only allowing paper fax? Hopefully in the near future they move into the new era of faxing and stop relying on paper faxes.

]]> http://www.virtual-vendor.net/7search-my-first-impression/feed/ I finally picked a niche http://www.virtual-vendor.net/i-finally-picked-a-niche/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/i-finally-picked-a-niche/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:36:47 +0000 VirtualVendor http://www.virtual-vendor.net/i-finally-picked-a-niche/ So after an epiphany at work today I did some research and decided on a niche to go with. I choose a niche that I don’t really know much about but it will have a much higher rate of naive users. It looks like the Adwords CPC will be around $0.75 and $0.90 which I feel is a good starting spot for me. The keyword competition is low but the advertising demand looks very promising so I feel really good about my choice.

I decided to purchase three different domains, all of which have the keywords in the domain name. I will be using different ad placement and networks on all three to see what my best conversion will be. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I can have the sites designed, ad campaigns built and the sites submitted to many free directories. Luckily the weather is really crappy right now so I have nothing else better to do.

]]> http://www.virtual-vendor.net/i-finally-picked-a-niche/feed/ Affiliate Marketing Niche http://www.virtual-vendor.net/affiliate-marketing-niche/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/affiliate-marketing-niche/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:30:09 +0000 VirtualVendor http://www.virtual-vendor.net/affiliate-marketing-niche/ So I have been trying to decide on my first niche to hit to start my passive income goal. There are so many possiblities and so much competition that I feel this is the most important step in my plan.  I feel it is a good idea to choose a niche that I know something about, but most of those markets are saturated. I was thinking of maybe diving into MSSP stuff but I don’t really see any affiliate money in that. I also thought about online gaming, but exactly what can I offer this market that isn’t already available? This is my quandary.

]]> http://www.virtual-vendor.net/affiliate-marketing-niche/feed/ Cpanel is installed http://www.virtual-vendor.net/cpanel-is-installed/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/cpanel-is-installed/#comments Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:07:09 +0000 VirtualVendor http://www.virtual-vendor.net/cpanel-is-installed/ Well I finally got time to sit down and work on installing Cpanel. I followed this guide at the Cpanel forums and was able to get everything working without any problems. I am currently running on the 15 day trial license and hope to be purchasing my full license in the next few days. I still have not decided where to colo this server. So at this point in time I have it at my house creating a very loud office environment.

The software raid running on the box seems to work flawlessly. I can say I had my doubts as I am used to running hardware raid on PERC controllers. I decided to go ahead and mirror the swap and /tmp so I could have full redundancy. Soon I hope to be posting about my first website hosted on this machine.

]]> http://www.virtual-vendor.net/cpanel-is-installed/feed/ Server has arrived http://www.virtual-vendor.net/server-has-arrived/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/server-has-arrived/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2007 04:20:14 +0000 VirtualVendor http://www.virtual-vendor.net/server-has-arrived/ The server arrived today and I was able to get CentOS installed. I will hopefully finish up the WHM/CPanel install tomorrow and start securing the server. This will be my first attempt at installing and securing a Cpanel install so hopefully I don’t miss something important and leave my whole server vulnerable to attacks. I must say the Dell SC1435 is a little louder than I expected it to be. I’m glad I don’t have to sit with it in the same area as me for much longer as I wouldn’t be able to hear people on the phone if I did. I will try to keep a good running diary of the setup that hopefully will help others in the future who are newbies like me.

]]> http://www.virtual-vendor.net/server-has-arrived/feed/ My first purchase http://www.virtual-vendor.net/my-first-purchase/ http://www.virtual-vendor.net/my-first-purchase/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2007 05:21:32 +0000 admin http://www.virtual-vendor.net/my-first-purchase/ I bought the following server from Dell this past weekend. I plan to install CentOS with software RAID and Cpanel. This server should arrive tomorrow (Tuesday April 3rd). I hope to get CentOS and the trial version of Cpanel on it by the end of the day. I have not decided where to colo the server but I will hopefully make that decision soon.

PowerEdge SC1435 Dual Core AMD Opteron® 2210; 1.8GHz,2X1MB Cache,1Ghz HyperTransport
2GB, 667MHz, 2×1GB Single Ranked DIMMs
PCI Riser Riser with 1 PCIe Slot
1st Hard Drive 80GB, SATA II, 3.5-inch, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive
Primary Controller Onboard SATA Controller - No RAID
Network Adapters On-Board Dual Port Gigabit Network Adapter, No TOE
CD/DVD Drive 24X IDE CD-ROM
2nd Hard Drive 80GB, SATA II, 3.5-inch, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive
HD Configuration Onboard SATA, 2 Drives connected to Onboard SATA Controller - NO RAID

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