The other thing is that even though I have no immediate plans to return to Australia, I’m sure I will one day, and I think I will probably move to Sydney or Melbourne if/when I do. It’ll be nice to have the option to live right near the beach.

I was working with a Perth real estate agent I know and he flew to Sydney in December to look at properties for me. He found an absolutely gorgeous art deco apartment which I desperately wanted but I got outbid at the last minute and had to let it go. It probably wasn’t a great investment anyway.

In the end I got a 2 bed, 2 bath, 1 car bay modern apartment (10 years old) just off the corso, half way between the beach and the harbour. Perfect!

The apartment never actually went on the market (which is why I think I got such a great deal) but an almost identical apartment in the same building was for sale. Here is how it was described in the listing:

Perfectly positioned between the beach and harbour, this stunning top floor, split level security apartment offers the perfect lifestyle choice. Showcasing the sophistication of an inner city apartment, an open plan lounge/dinning and designer kitchen with soaring 3 metre ceilings flows to an entertainers balcony, perfect for capturing sea breezes. Accommodation includes two spacious bedrooms with built-in robes, main with ensuite, internal laundry, storage, lift and security carspace. The apartment is tastefully appointed with stylish roller blinds, polished floorboards and stone feature walls. Step out to enjoy a superb selection of cafes and restaurants. This is Manly living at its best.

I don’t have photos of the actual apartment but it looks just like this:

The CFMAIL tag sends an email whenever the page is displayed and is often used in a custom error page. So an email is sent to the webmaster to say that an error occurred as well as the error details. This is how I use CFMAIL.

To set up the SMTP details, login to the Coldfusion Administrator then go to:

Server Settings > Mail

Mail Server: mail.securitytransfer.com.au [for example]

Submit Changes

I use CFINCLUDE to include a footer at the bottom of every page of the site.

To set up a mapping, login to the Coldfusion Administrator and then go to:

Server Settings > Mappings

Logical Path: /Templates
Directory Path: C:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\[website]\Templates

Add Mapping

Login to Coldfusion Administrator

http://127.0.0.1:8500/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm

Password: *********

Data and Services > Data Sources:

Data Source Name: anyName

Driver: other

CF Data Source Name: anyName

JDBC URL: jdbc:as400://[database ip address]/

Driver Class: com.ibm.as400.access.AS400JDBCDriver

Username: username

Password: ********

Save the jt400.jar driver in the Coldfusion directory:

C:/CFusionMX7/lib/jt400.jar

Add this class path to Coldfusion:

Server Settings > Java and JVM

Coldfusion Class Path:

C:/CFusionMX7/lib/jt400.jar

Submit Changes

Restart the Coldfusion service:

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services

Verify the class path:

Server Settings > Settings Summary

Check the last entry in CF Server Java Class Path

Verify the connection

It does have a few bugs though. I would find that if I closed Qumana and then later tried to open it again, it wouldn’t open. I’d have to go into the Task Manager and stop the process, which would still be running. This was a small problem which was overcome by not closing the program!

After getting my new computer a couple of weeks ago, which runs on the Windows Vista operating system, I installed Qumana and it was working perfectly. Then 2 days ago it crashed and it wouldn’t open again. I tried rebooting, uninstalling, reinstalling but no luck. I suspect it’s a Java related problem. It just won’t start up. So I had to find an alternative.

I looked at quite a few editors and BlogJet was looking like the way to go but $40 seems a little pricey when there are so many other free blog editors. Then I came across MS Live Writer. Live Writer is free and gets good reviews and so here I am writing my first blog post with my new blogging editor.

Setting up a blog is easy, as with Qumana, and was ready to write within minutes. The best thing so far is that it uses the blogs CSS file so I can see exactly how the post will look. Plus it is faster. I had problems with Qumana where I would type faster than it would recognise what I had done and I’d have to wait for it to catch up to me. That was kind of strange. I don’t have that problem now.

Another little thing I like about Live Writer is when highlighting something to create a link. If you try to highlight a word in Qumana by double clicking it it would also pick up the comma or full stop which followed it. That constantly bugged me. That’s not an issue with Live Writer.

One negative with Live Writer is that it doesn’t detect when I have copied a link. So when I go to insert a link I have to paste it into the dialog box whereas with Qumana it would automatically insert it, making linking easy.

Let’s hope all goes well when I publish. Fingers crossed…

Update: Success, it posted, yay!

Another thing worth mentioning is that Qumana used to put an extra line between paragraphs with Blogger. I couldn’t figure out why. That problem is no longer, yay again!

So special thanks to the very kind people who pointed me to the Australian English (Kelvin version) dictionary files.

I really wanted to get the latest and greatest computer but at 2000 pounds, that was a bit over my budget. In the end I went with an Acer laptop with 17 inch screen, 1.6 GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, and who knows what else, for 700 pounds. It’s not the best on the market, by any means, but it is significantly better than what I was using. The increase in speed in incredible and so is the LCD screen.

The first thing I had to do was set up a network so Ferbent can use the old computer at the same time as I use mine. It took me ages to figure out how to do but in the end it was very simple. Here are the steps for adding a computer to an existing network using the Livebox and internal Wi-Fi. This is really just for my reference because I think I’ll buy another computer in the next month or so for Ferbent. The old has so many problems and he’s helping me with my marketing efforts and he needs a new computer to be more productive.

Full instructions with screenshots can be found at Orange.

1. Push the little button on the bottom of the Livebox, next to the connection for the electricity. The opens up the network to allow you to connect the new computer.
2. On the new computer click Start – Connect.
3. Select the number of the Livebox (which is written on the bottom of the Livebox.
4. Enter the WEP password which can also be found on the bottom of the Livebox.
5. Wait a few seconds and the connection is made.

Yay, that was easy. Now if only I can figure out how to set up the wireless connection to the printer…

Oh, and it doesn’t come with Microsoft Office so I downloaded the open source package Open Office. It was recommended by someone but the spell checker on the Word type program doesn’t work That’s the whole reason I wanted it. Don’t tell me I’ll actually have to fork out cash for Word and Excel? I wish Qumana came with a spell checker (with Australian English) then I could live with Open Writer. Although I prefer to check my grammar too before posting. Looks like Word it is.

I had my doubts about whether people would be interested in this kind of thing and more to the point, whether people actually buy As Seen on TV products but in fact, it sells really, really well. My conversion rate is around 5% which is great. Well, I think it’s great. Other affiliate programs I work with only convert at around 1 to 2% so needless to say I’m pretty happy with the Wonder Cooker.

The only reason I’m not looking at retirement any time soon is that I’m not getting enough volume. People just aren’t searching for the Wonder Cooker. Maybe it’s only a new product or it isn’t being promoted on TV at the moment; I’m not sure. So I’m only getting around 1 sale per day. Yeah, I won’t be going on a 5 star holiday anytime soon.

This has motivated me to try promoting other As Seen on TV products. As soon as I finish with the Nouvelle Star campaign I’ll be working on promoting other products like with my One Cooker website.

As seen on TV products seem to be doing well at the moment so I’m trying to sell the Wonder Cooker. The landing page goes something like this:

If you’re anything like me, you want to prepare healthy, tasty meals for your family but it just doesn’t happen often enough. You know fast food is bad for you but you lead such a busy life that you simply don’t have time to cook. You want to be sure your children are eating the required servings of vegetables every day but it’s hard to find recipes they love. You want to prepare gourmet meals for your family and friends but you don’t know how. When you do finally get the time to cook you’re then left with a massive pile of dishes to wash. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be so difficult.

Then it goes on about the benefits etc. Writing sales copy isn’t really my thing so we’ll see how it goes. I’ve just got the write the ad and then wait for the results. My first goal is to break even and then try to drop my bids to less than 10 cents per click. I’m looking for a 1:2 or 1:3 return on investment so wish me luck.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been dealing with a wholesaler of organic cotton clothing in Australia. They asked me to review one of their t-shirts and I agreed. They then wanted to advertise on my site, great I thought, so they paid me for 3 months advertising and I put up their banner ad. Then they wanted me to exclusively sell their organic cotton toys through my site. Great again. Then they wanted me to exclusively sell all their products through my site. What more could I have asked for. I was to get 10% on all sales. While I didn’t expect to make loads of money through them, it would have added a couple of hundred dollars a month to my income, which would have grown over the next couple of years.

So I wrote a couple of posts about them, one of which got picked up by Treehugger, the number one ‘green’ site. That was great exposure and great to get a link from a PR 7 website. Things were going really well, too well.

So then I wrote the Natural Fashion review. This is where the not thinking too much part comes in. I cover the item one point at a time. I mention the quality of the fabric, how it washed, how it ironed, that kind of thing. Then I mentioned that I didn’t really like the colour. It’s that natural, undyed colour which probably only suits half the population. It doesn’t suit me and I said so. I then mentioned the crappy, old fashioned designs. I tried to be nice about it and did mention that not all the designs were rubbish but I was in trouble.

When the idiots people at Natural Fashion found out they went crazy. Demanding to know how I was going to sell their products with such a negative review. Good point. The problem is I wrote what I thought was right. I don’t like their crappy website and their crappy clothes. Sure the organic toys are pretty cute as are the children’s clothes but the women’s stuff is just rubbish. Who in their right mind would wear those dresses? If you want to see them just search for natural fashion in Australia. I won’t waste a link to them.

I said it wasn’t that bad, it was just the review of one top after all, it wasn’t a sales page. I agreed to add a few more positive points but not to change what I wrote. They emailed me analysing each paragraph, highlighting all the negative things I said. That was a shock. I was pretty pissed off by their attitude. I tell you they pissed off the wrong person. My website ranks much better than theirs so I can write whatever I like about them and loads of people will read about it.

So naturally, I updated the post with everything they said to me. That sure made them angry, if they weren’t before. They then demanded I remove all the images and logos about their site, including the banner ad they had paid for, that I remove all links to their site (meaning they would lose all traffic I was sending them; yes they are stupid), and that I remove all mention of their trademarked name, Natural Fashion.

That last point is pretty ridiculous and there’s no way I’ll be doing that. Why should I? I didn’t go to all that trouble to just have to remove the post. Plus I want my visitors to see how stupid those people are – Renata and Doug Giles that is. I’ll mention their name just in case they have a Google alert set up for themselves, I’m sure they’d be happy to read this

The brilliant thing is now if you search for natural fashion in google.com.au, the second listing is my review post. So most people searching for them and see all the crap I wrote about them. Don’t you just love blogs? With a bit of luck this post will show up too

So yeah, I probably lost a bit of money but who cares; there are other organic clothing suppliers around. The last thing I need is to work with morons like those at Natural Fashion.