How to make a living by being a geek - honest!

It's been just over two years since I started this blog up and I was very pleased today when I logged into Blogger and apparently I've hit 200,000 views, which is pretty awesome - whether it's accurate or not I'm not entirely sure, as Google Analytics tells me that the figure is actually just under 11,000, but at any rate it's all good.  Thanks for reading!

I decided to draw myself a mind map on how to make a living by being a geek.  I know that there is almost certainly no way that I'll achieve this, but having a plan isn't going to hurt, and it was fun to do.

Hang on - I need to move into "internet marketer speak" to do this blog post properly...

The Fortune Making Mind Map that THEY don't want you to know about!

Hi, I'm Mike Raven, and I used to be just like you.

Then I ate a lot of food, and now I'm twice the person you are.

But you can become like me too!

They don't want you to know about this secret.  Tired of the 9-to-5?  Bored of being a rat in the the rat race?

Want to be happy by earning $000s while sitting at home?

Follow these five steps for eternal bliss...

5 - Make the commitment.

Quit your job.  Are you having fun?  Stop that.  Sit at home and sweat, baby.  Put the time in and the rewards will come.  Learn SEO.  And memes.

4 - Get out there.

Network, it's not who you know, it's who the people you know know.  And who they know too.

3 - READ THE MIND MAP

Read the mind map below.

But not yet - keep reading the five steps first.

2 - FOLLOW THE MIND MAP

Do what the mind map says.

Do that now.

1 - LIVE IN ETERNAL BLISS

Go to Eternal Bliss now!

(Disclaimer: All the above is bad advice, or at best variable advice.  Putting the time in to something that you care about is probably a good thing.  The rest is pretty poor)

Okay, now that's over, here's the mind map.  Enjoy!

If you want to be a writer can I recommend this article by James Altucher that I read on Lifehacker this morning - well worth a read.

Otherwise, if you enjoyed this parody of internet marketing, check out my SEO blog post from a while back, Or even a slightly more serious one about gamification.

On the other hand, my most popular blog post is about being unable to locate nappies (aka diapers).  So try that instead.

Not about SEO. Seriously, do not read this post if you are interested in SEO. In fact, don't read this post because it will make your life worse.

I would guess that there is a lot of interest in SEO.  Even on my tiny blog, I have had new Twitter followers and viewers, quite possibly because I mentioned SEO in my post on Sunday.  if you are one of these people and you've stuck around for this article, thank you and welcome.  If you don't know what SEO is, go read my post.

So, what shall I blog about today?  I've been feeling very creative and geeky lately, possibly because I've finished watching The Guild which is a fantastic web show.  Go see it if you haven't.

I'm toying with the idea of doing some kind of PC game review show on YouTube, I think that it'd be quite fun to do (and cheap as well), one problem is that I am a committed mumbler.  My voice is quite dull and I very easily slip into a mumble to make things worse.  Will have to work on that first.

Okay, what I'm going to blog about today is going to make your life worse if you read it.  This is your warning.  Before you read any more, go change to a different website.  Shut your PC down.  Do not read the rest of this post!

I warned you.

I thought about this when I was a kid, and it has blighted me on and off ever since.  And it will do the same to you.

Last chance - go to YouTube and check out Geek and Sundry, it's really cool! Or the Jeff Lewis 5 minute Comedy Hour, I'm really enjoying that as well.

...

Okay then.

Have you ever thought about breathing?  About how your body automatically breathes?  It just does it, you don't need to think about it or anything, isn't it great?

From http://www.radpod.org/2007/02/02/double-aortic-arch-type-2-subtype-3/

Now try to think about something else.

Go on, clear your head.

Except you can't, can you?  You're thinking about breathing.  And you start to wonder, what if it isn't automatic?  What if you have to tell yourself to breathe, or your lungs will fill with carbon dioxide and you'll die.

Time for another breath.  Are you going to consciously work your lungs?  Take a breath in?  You are, aren't you.

Next breath - this one, to prove to yourself that it's an involuntary reflex, wait for your body to breathe, don't tell it to.

But it's not, is it?  You can feel your lungs wanting to exhale, but nothing's happening.

You'll have to breathe again! Consciously! Voluntarily!

How long will this last?  Five minutes?  All day? THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?!?

...

...

Told you not to read this post :)

Is this one funny?  Can't decide if it's funny or creepy. Tomorrow's will be cool, it's going to be about fish!

Until then,

Thog

SEO and doing it

I've been reading about SEO today.

SEO, for those not in the know, is Search Engine Optimisation.  According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) it's "the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural," or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic"), search results."

Basically, when you Google something, you generally look on the first page for what you want, and the further away your result is from the first page, the less likely someone is going to click on it.  When was the last time you went beyond page ten of a Google search, despite it possibly finding millions of results for you?

So it makes sense that you want your page to appear as near to the front as possible, to increase the amount of visitors to your site.

Following the Wikipedia article, there are several ways to do SEO. One is getting indexed - to be found the search engines must visit your site.  Well, I've visited a few of the leading search engines and submitted my site for review, so box ticked for that one. Boom!

Secondly, preventing crawling.  The search engines employ programs called "spiders" to visit sites, and gather key information, and you can tell spiders not to index a certain page if it isn't relevant. (for example the secured payroll website of a company probably doesn't need to show up on Google) Not really a problem for me, I'm happy with everyone seeing any of the pages of my blog.

Five minutes and I've already done two points of SEO. Man, this is easy.

Third - Increasing Prominence. This sounds good. I like to increase my prominence whenever I can.

Writing key words in my documents that people search for will increase the likelihood of being found.

But! These spiders are sneaky, they're like jumpy spiders or something.  If you just post a stream of text like "Cheese nachos yoghurt tablet happy brie" they'll know that you're mean and they won't link you or track you or do whatever it is they do, wrap you in a web and eat you for dinner.

Hmm - I don't want to be eaten for dinner by a digital spider.

Never mind.  Apparently I need to be a white hat, instead of a black hat - tricky, I only have a black hat.

Or a santa hat.

So, the idea struck me, what if I make a story out of the key words for the moment?  That way, it'll look legit, right?

So what are the key words I should use?  I had a little look at a few leading websites to see "what people are searching for right now"

And here's the story.

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Kate Nash sat in Tampa, eating a Mars Curiosity from her Clutch Bag whilst perusing an advert for used cars on her Tablet PC, but she couldn't focus on the offers.  Her thoughts flitted between healthy eating, beerfear, and the Paralympics.
 "If only Victoria Wood was here," she thought aloud, glancing over at the HD television which was showing Celeb Big Brother.  She flicked the channel over to X Factor, and went back to her Tablet PC.

A thought struck her. She shouted for her butler, and within but a moment or two, he arrived.
 "Jeeves! I want to ask you, how big is the moon?" she asked.  Perplexed, he paused, before answering "The diameter of the moon is only 3,474 km across. Madam, may I suggest that you review the progress of the Arenanet Technicians Fixing your Server?"

She fixed him with a steely glare. "Thank you Jeeves, that will be all. Oh Jeeves," she called, as he wheeled around to face the door, "do be a good man and feed Lycos, won't you?"
 "Yes, milady." Jeeves answered, jumping out of the window shouting "Yahoo!" as he fell.
 "Silly man." she said, pressing the lift controls, making them go Bing.

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To the entire world who are now on my blog after I've deployed SEO - welcome to my blog.