Here’s what I went through on Christmas Day, just to get songs we legally purchased through Itunes to play on my kids new MP3 players…

I will never spend another dollar with Itunes after what I went through. Tell me again why anyone would pay $.99 a song, only to (eventually) figure out that you’re not allowed to listen to them on any device other than an Apple brand music player?

This is so wrong, and I can’t believe there isn’t more fuss about this, and some consumer backlash. Who does Apple think they are, Microsoft?

Anyway, my kids received Creative Labs brand MP3 players for Christmas, and they also each received a $15 Apple music gift card.

After painstakingly helping them through the process of installing iTunes on their computer, which is mandatory just to spend the gift certificates, we sorted through hundreds of songs choosing what music to buy. I had to listen to samples from Hannah Montana, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the Jonas Brothers until my ears were bleeding, but we finally completed the process and had all 30 of our songs downloaded.

Then came my attempt to get the music onto their MP3 players, where I finally figured out that it could not be done with that music. I was shocked! What kind of crap is that? Ultimately, I had to jump through several hoops to make it happen.

In the end, here are the steps, and as far as I can tell, there is no simpler way, but it still sucks, having to burn and then throw away perfectly good CDs.

• Buy music from the proprietary format ripoff music vendor (a.k.a. Apple)
• From inside the application of the forced download of Itunes, assign all of your desired music to one playlist
• After selecting the play list, highlight all songs with Ctrl – A on your keyboard, and hit the “Burn Disk” button in the bottom right of the software.

• Insert your blank CD, and go to the process of burning your music to a CD you’ll never need. Too many songs may require multiple CDs, but they can all be done in succession.
• After all of your music is on CDs, uninstall iTunes so you never make this mistake again (this step is optional)
• Open Windows Media player (I’m running version 10) – , and maximize the window so you can see the menus at the top.
• Go to Tools > Options and select the “Rip Music” tab from the menu. Pay close attention to the location you’re going to “rip” music to so you can find it again.
• In the “rip settings” pulldown menu, instead of the default Windows Audio, and hit “apply”. I also chose to check the box that said, “Rip CD when inserted”.

• Assuming you have the CD in already,go to the main “Rip” tab in Windows media player, and highlight all (Ctrl-A) of your selected songs.
• Hit the “rip music” button at the top right of your screen, and in just a few minutes you’ll have all of your music back off of your CD, and ripped into MP3 format, at which point you can use your regular software that came with your MP3 player to import your music.

This ridiculous limitation by Apple serves what purpose exactly, other than to alienate me as a customer?

If I had known ahead of time that the music could not be played on a regular MP3 player, then I would’ve bought it elsewhere in a standard MP3 format, and I’ll never again buy music from Apple. Why is there no warning on their website and on gift cards people buy that the music use is limited?

One note of caution is that this process completely removes all of the song information, such as title and artist. For my own kids it didn’t matter, since their MP3 players had no screen for selecting songs, but for someone who wants to be able to see and select what song they are going to play on their MP3 player that would be frustrating.

If I had wanted to retain my song information, (which I bought and paid for legally), I would’ve had to use a third party program to outsmart Apple at its own game, and remove Apples DRM (Digital Rights Management)and I’ve been led to believe that one of the best is called Tunebite.

Instead of using that I’ll just choose to never give the Apple music store another dollar of mine, and instead whether for my own video Ipod, or for the kids songs, I’ll use one of the many other music services that sell you music you can play on any MP3 player, such as…

MP3.com , or Legalsounds.com, or Emusic.com, or Napster or Buy.com or Magnatune or MP3 Ninja or 100 others. Perhaps I’ll even use Walmart, where it’s only 54 cents a song, but after forcing me to waste my time on Christmas, (and today writing this blog post), iTunes is dead to me forever.

Although it’s been reported by lots of news outlets and search engine writers, my kids still had not heard that Google has teamed up with Norad this year to help improve it’s Santa tracking using Google Earth.

It’s pretty amazing, and you’d better go take a look right now!

I have personally suffered from many of these afflictions below, and as a result, I’ve had a loss of productivity, loss of time, and most likely a loss of income.

This started out to be a quick list of things that I could do to improve in 2008, and it wasn’t going to be an actual list of New Year’s resolutions.

But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized they applied not only to me, but to employees and probably to Internet marketers all over the planet.

One thing led to another, and the list started growing, and the next thing you know, it’s a blog post.

In 2008, I hereby resolve to:

1. Pay less attention to visitor counts, and more attention to conversions.
One of the best tips overheard at Pubcon 2007 was from Rand Fishkin, pointing out that it’s much easier to double your conversions than to double your traffic. Take better advantage of the traffic you already have, instead of chasing after traffic that you don’t, and and you’ll make your clients much happier.

2. Spend less time in forums, reading peoples advice whom you don’t know
Forums are one of the biggest time wasters on the Internet, and although many are filled with valuable information & advice, they are also frequently the source of misinformation and rumors.

Unless you’re actually researching an issue for a solution, try not to get sucked into the pointless theoretical conversations, and wandering around these communities filled with anonymous users.

Instead, save yourself valuable time, and try asking specific questions in one of the communities or web pages where experts are hanging out, offering to answer specific questions with their reputations on the line; and you can also ask me too!

3. Spend more time reading the blogs and articles written by industry leaders
Unlike many forums, when a search engine expert posts something on their own personal or company blog, they have a reputation to protect, so you can bet it’s usually going to be accurate.

If it’s not true, the rest of the internet marketing community will be all over them with comments, pointing out any factual errors, and keeping them accountable for what they say. (See my “recommended reading” links on the left for more)

4. Pay less attention to search engine ranking reports
It doesn’t matter where you rank for any given phrase, because ranking itself makes you no money. The actions taken by a visitor after they reach your website that’s far more important, and analyzing visitor behavior is a much more valuable service you can provide than ranking phrases for your clients egos.

The hard part is of course getting clients to understand this, but once you’re making them more profitable, they’ll quickly get the picture.

5. Develop more niche affiliate relationships for products or lead generation
It’s highly likely that the most profitable website in the world has not even gone online yet, and every day new opportunities, new inventions, and new ideas pop into people’s heads all over the world.

By developing more “affiliate” relationships as opposed to flat rate services, you will have more incentive to do a good job, add quality content, and develop the valuable links. You both will be much happier in the long run, making everyone more money.

6. Stop worrying about keyword density & the search engines
Running your text through a keyword density analyzer and agonizing over small changes that will get you to that “magic percentage” is a complete waste of time, especially since the magic percentage changes every week. By providing valuable information, tips, knowledge and content to your readers, or to your client’s readers, is going to provide a greater long-term benefit, as the search engines get smarter at determining the subject of a page.

7. Unsubscribe to most of the “Guru” newsletters
The proliferation of “get rich quick” schemes seems to be accelerating rather than declining. More and more self-proclaimed “experts” continue to develop and share their email lists, to which they market “the next big idea” in the form of downloadable products, e-books, linking schemes and membership sites you can join.

The VAST majority of these products and schemes are just recycled ideas anyway, and you can get back a significant portion of your time by simply unsubscribing. Trust me, if it’s something “really good”, you’re going to hear about it anyway.

8. Develop more video content, and do it properly
It’s all about content, no matter what industry you’re in or what you’re trying to accomplish. You know you’re already behind the pack when it comes to producing and distributing video content, but nobody is likely that far out in front of you.

Video is undoubtedly here to stay, and by completing all of the the meta-info, and by supplementing your video pages with surrounding text, you’re going to better capture the attention of your audience, attract more inbound links, and basically, do much better than the next guy.

The day may not be far off when videos can stand on their own and actually be indexed by the search engines for content, but for now that’s just wishful thinking, so don’t be lazy.

9. Participate more often in the Sphinn community
Whether you’re trying to increase your own visibility, or you’re trying to stay up to date on the latest information available about the search marketing industry, you’ll find no hotter community than Sphinn. Everybody who’s anybody has an account on Sphinn, and nothing goes on in this industry that escapes attention there.

Read, vote, submit, and comment (when appropriate) as often as you can, setting aside at least a little bit of time each day.

10. Attend at least one major industry event annually, such as Pubcon, SMX or SES
You’ll never have a better opportunity to mingle with the experts and pick up inside bits of information weeks before the rest of your competition does.

Barely half of the value even comes during the sessions, with incredible information and relationships to be acquired at lunch time, in the halls after sessions, or over cocktails in the bar. You’ll simply never get the really best stuff by only reading all of the great live bloggers who were (or werent) there.

I have a few more too, that pertain to my business personally, that include doing more speaking about search, and continuing to increase my use of my own  Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In, accounts. I also want to escalate my activity and improve in all things Web 2.0 and social,.

I also vow to work less in 2008, sleep more, and spend more time with my kids, Mikkel and  Matthew by helping coach on some of their various sports teams.

Anyone have any more to add to this list?

Do you want to know what fascinates me the most about Internet marketing, and that I find really enjoyable about this business? It’s the speed at which things can happen if someone has an idea.

A person can go from an initial concept to an actual reality in a matter of just a few minutes, especially if they’re not bogged down by a committee of “deciders”.

Here’s a quick example -

Yesterday Google announced support for a new site map for videos, that you can add a right to your existing webmaster tools account.

By today, some enterprising person in the United Kingdom has already got the domain name videositemap.com registered, hosted, up and running, and even monetized with Auction Ads. Now that’s speed and determination I can respect!   – ooh – he’s even using WordPress, my favorite. – Sorry buddy, no link until you fix your database errors ;(

Sure the content he’s using is just RSS feeds, but at least the clock starts running on his “domain aging”, which is one of the factors in rankings. A few pages of original content added regularly will start to build equity. (If there were such a thing as a “Google Sandbox” then this would begin to get you out of it sooner.)

I guess I’d like to believe that it’s not going to be just another MFA site (Made For Adsense) so maybe he has plans to be the first video site map generator software – (Hey, if you do have a product, I’ll be your first affiliate

As the Internet land grab continues, don’t assume all of the good domain names or ideas are gone. There’s still plenty of real estate out there for everyone with a good idea and quick implementation skills.

Tonight in Las Vegas I’m going to a dinner with one of the smartest people in the world when it comes to search, Jerry West, of Web marketing now. I’ve done nothing special to get the invitation (other than remain a subscriber over the years) but it’s going to be a treat to hang out.

Jerry was actually on the development team for WordPerfect, before migrating to the world of search at the end of the last century, and his company has remained in the forefront of testing SEO theory vs. fact.

Jerry was one of the faculty members at the first Search Engine Workshops I ever attended back in 2004, and I’ve been a subscriber to his premium newsletter ever since.

These are just a few of the things that I found out from Jerry, months or even years before they became public knowledge -

• Google prefers (preferred) dashes over underscores
• The fact that duplicate content can exist within your own domain (canonical issues) and how to fix them.
• How to test landing pages in a pay per click campaign
• How to identify the top competitors in any market

Upon agreeing to accept his newsletter, there are certain nondisclosure agreements, so I can’t be a lot more specific. But if you’ve ever wondered how the top Internet marketers in the world keep up on everything, his newsletter (aff) is one of the ways.

Spots are filling up fast for the poker tournament this Thursday night in Las Vegas. Dr. David Klein has done a good job getting the word out, and there are some pretty big names in search playing. I’m not a big time poker player or anything, but it should be fun to hang out with them. Imagine the inbound links that winners will get…

He also has a really cool project going on with ceramic tiles at the bottom of this page.

There’s an online community of search engine marketers called Gooruze that’s picking up steam, and I’ve been lurking there quietly for the past month or so.  The information available there is phenomenal, and I strongly recommend a visit, and signing up for this free community.

There are great areas for beginners to get a lot of advice, but I’ve read some pretty good tips from people sharing some seriously helpful information that’s far beyond what I’d call “basic”.

Members can do lots of things, like ask questions, answer questions,  write articles, rate, vote & comment on the articles of others, or even add their own blogs via RSS feed. I’ve now done to my Goorooze profile, and one of the requirements is that I place this text somewhere in my blog,  so here it is – shendison.gooruze.com.

With so many communities competing for my time, this is one I’m trying to make a few minutes for every day…

It’s official – Search Commander Inc. will not be engaging any new search marketing clients through the remainder of 2007, and possibly longer.

Those close to me know this has been coming for a while now, but I wanted to wait until the expiration of any pending proposals that were out there so this wouldn’t appear as some sort of sales tactic.

I am traveling to Los Angeles for five days in late November for SES, and I am speaking at Pubcon in Las Vegas in December. Throw in the Holidays that are fast approaching, and it makes sense to officially clear our plate now.

Another reason I’ve made this decision is because we have been launching at least two new wesbsites a month of our own, and over the next couple of months, extra attention needs to be given to those projects, and we’re just not going to hire even more people to do that.

Part of my inspiration for this decision came from Jeremy Shoemaker – a.k.a. Shoemoney – from a blog entry where he happened to mention this post.

You can see the development cycle of their new website go from from a concept in a chat conversation to reality in under two weeks, and much of that time was spent waiting for a programmer.

That’s the “fun” part of this business that attracted me in the first place, and something I really want to get back to.

By temporarily not accepting new clients, we can continue to build our affiliate network of sites and give them and other projects the attention they deserve.

The reason I decided to post this today is the news that yesterday, Facebook sold a very small percentage of their business to Microsoft for 240 million dollars. This this comes less than four years after founder Matk Zuckerberg started Facebook from his dorm room. That’s pretty eye-opening, huh?

I have dozens of domain names reflecting what I consider to be “great ideas” that are registered and parked, in need of nothing but a well optimized site and regular content additions.

Instead of pursuing those ideas and working on them for our own benefit, I find myself having discussion after discussion with potential new clients, customizing sales proposals, managing employee time, and basically not doing what I love anymore.

Perhaps this temporary client hiatus will turn into a New Years resolution and a complete new direction? Only time will tell…

Unfortunately, I won’t be attending the SMX social media event in new York city next week, and now I’m even more disappointed.

I don’t think I’ve ever regretted not going to a specific event so much before, and not just because I’m missing great content, but because this is a great way to spend an evening in support of a good cause.

If you are going to be at SMX in New York then you absolutely have to go, and donate $40 at the door of this event to support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s fight against cancer. Attendees will have three hours of open bar partying with fellow marketers.

I got tagged on this post by Todd Mintz, and I’m doing my part by tagging three others – Andy – Jerry and Scott and you can see the incredible amount of community support this is getting at Sphinn

When I first wanted to take classes in search engine optimization, my options were pretty limited, and there were no Oregon search engine marketing classes offered anywhere that I was aware of.

After narrowing it down to just a couple of choices, I settled on attending John Alexander and Robin Nobles’ Search Engine Workshop, in Las Vegas in 2004.

I attended both their three day beginner session, and their two day advanced session not only to ensure I hadn’t missed anything in my self-education, (I had) but also because I wanted to understand the process of teaching the subject, and evaluate their program.

Over the ensuing two years, I traveled out of state to attend five separate SEW sessions taught by Robin, John, and their associates Jerry West, Ginette Degner, Mike Marshall and others.

Each time throughout the entire curriculum, I learned more than I thought I possibly could, and was able to return to work and apply that knowledge immediately for both client sites and my own websites. I feel I owe a large part of my success to their education and teaching methods.

In 2006, Search Engine Workshops began offering franchises to accommodate the budding growth of our industry, and I briefly considered going into the teaching field, because I loved the subject.

However, things were not to be, and my career took a different path. Oregon would have to wait for a qualified and capable curriculum for search engine marketing to come along for a while longer.

Now in 2007, the day is finally here where you can learn world-class SEO skills in Oregon, without having to buy a plane ticket, and I’m happy to announce my own affiliation with the Search Engine Academy of Oregon

The owner, Colleen Wright, has agreed to offer my readers a 10% discount for all of their class offerings, beginning in October 2007.

Check out their website, and give them a look -

To get 10% off be sure to enter this coupon code “commander”

This is valid ONLY through their online SEO Class registration and will not be honored otherwise, or after the fact. 

Next week is the San Jose Search Engine Strategies show, and I’m going a day early, because I have a good friend I’ve known since high school that lives in the area.

During the conference, I do have a couple of meetings lined up with both vendors and potential clients, however, much of my time is free.

Unlike certain other conferences, my goal in attending this conference is more geared towards networking and meeting others in the industry, as opposed to getting further educated.

If you’re going to be at the conference in San Jose, please drop me a line, and let’s get together and talk search…

One reason I like driving long distances (okay, the only reason) is because I get to catch up on old broadcasts from Webmaster Radio that I’ve stuck on my iPod.  I’ve tried to listen before while working, and it’s just not productive. I can’t concentrate on the show and get any work done at the same time.

The other day I was listening to Jeremy (ShoeMoney) Schoemaker’s June 5th show, Net Income where he had Rand Fishkin as a guest.

The subject of the entire show, was a debate between them, as to whether or not a blogger should always disclose that he or she is benefiting financially from a recommendation originating from their website.

The reason this become important enough for a show is because Rand wrote a blog post around Memorial Day that wasn’t exactly slamming Jeremy, but wasn’t exactly flattering either. He called the post – The Vast Ocean Between Shoemoney & SEOmoz and Why You Should Be Able To Trust Blog Links

This came about because Jeremy wrote a post called Full Disclosure – Assume the Position

Both posts are interesting, but I don’t really feel that they were that all that far off in their respective positions.

Jeremy’s point was that being a savvy media consumer, you should always assume that there is something coming back to the author on the backend. This should apply whether it’s something as innocent as a backlink in a story or something as obvious as a banner on the side of the page.

Rand’s point was that a blog could quickly lose credibility if it was discovered later that a particular review or recommendation was the result of an affiliate agreement or even a direct payment.

The interesting thing was that I really did agree with both of them. I agree completely with Jeremy, that one should always be suspect whenever reading anything on any blog, and it’s one of the first things I look for when following a link.

You should always do the investigation for yourself before accepting something you read online as a fact. I would even take that a step further and apply it to my general news intake as well, from TV and print media. Why would anyone trust one source for everything they say?

On the other hand, I also agree with Rand’s very well made point about discovery after the fact. In the radio show, he used an example of “what if Danny Sullivan wrote a column about Yahoo…” and later it was discovered that they had sent him a big fat check with a request to write another post about the same subject. Wouldn’t that cause him to lose credibility in the eyes of his readers?

Whenever I’ve written about a product I like on my own blog, and provided a link to it, I make it a point to identify it as an affiliate link, if it actually is one. Lately though, I’ve wondered if that additional work is just a pain in the neck, and thought that it shouldn’t just be obvious to anyone reading that there may be an affiliation there.

After listening to this show, I’ve decided to continue my practice of always identifying any affiliate link that I recommend for the sake of full disclosure.

As much as I agree with Jeremy’s points, the fact is that most people are not very savvy consumers of information. I agree with Rand that going the extra step to identify an affiliate link is not that much work, and it’s definitely a way of keeping my readers trust intact, so I’m going to continue as I’ve always done.

I would encourage everyone who is monetizing their blog to give a listen to this show, and then do what they think is right for them.

I would also encourage everyone who is reading blogs to assume that there may be something going to the author on the backend of every recommendation they give. That doesn’t make it incorrect or invalid information, but in today’s affiliate economy, it is something that you could assume, and in many cases you would be correct.

Here is a (non affiliate) link to Webmaster radio. Look for the June 5 2007 show, to give a listen for yourself…