by Duncan Kredion

With faster machines cropping up almost daily, the life span of a midrange PC is a little more than two years of service. Physically, the computer you bought a few years ago is just as sound as any new piece of hardware. Ideally, it could probably last you a decade or two–as long as you didn’t add any new software or surf the Net. Realistically, that’s not likely to be the case. Instead of buying a new computer, optimize your present one. The following are 11 things that Chip Manufacturers and PC Retailers don’t want you to know or how to perform. Following these advices will drastically increase your PC performance and help you regain your sanity while saving loads of money. And, if your PC is years old and can’t afford to upgrade yet, you will be able to squeeze out some more juice out of the old thing!

1. Disable file indexing. This is a tiny service that uses a great deal of RAM and induces much disk thrashing. Your system instantly becomes more responsive. Here’s how: First, doubleclick the My Computer icon. Then, right-click on the C: Drive, then hit Properties. Uncheck “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching.” Next, apply changes to “C: subfolders and files,” and click OK.

2. Zap the Windows Prefetch folder every week. Windows XP can “prefetch” portions of data and applications that are frequently loaded. This allows processes appear to start faster when requested the user. Over time, the prefetch folder overwhelms with references to files and applications no longer in use. Guess what happens? Windows XP wastes time and grinds to a halt by pre-loading obsolete data. It helps you gain some performance on your XP Professional to periodically empty the prefetch folder.

The prefetch folder resides on your local hard disk, under the Windows folder.
%systemroot%\prefetch
-or-
X:\windows\prefetch

Where X is the drive letter where you have Windows installed. Either path will get you to your local system. The second path is for those who have the default installation on the most commonly used drive letter, C:\

3. Optimise Display Settings. Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. Kill unnecessary animations, and nix active desktop. Here’s how to do it:
1) Go to Start
2) Click Settings
3) Click Control Panel
4) Click System
5) Click Advanced tab
6) In the Performance tab click Settings
7) Leave only the following ticked:
(1) Show shadows under menus
(2) Show shadows under mouse pointer
(3) Show translucent selection rectangle
(4) Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
(5) Use visual styles on windows and buttons
Feel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the stability of the computer – only its responsiveness.

4. Remove the Desktop Picture Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.
1) Right click on Desktop and select Properties
2) Select the Desktop tab
3) In the Background window select None
4) Click Ok

5. Remove Fonts for Speed Zap extra fonts fonts installed on their computer. Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. The more fonts they have, the more lethargic the system will become. Anything over 300 fonts tax the system and slow down load times- especially graphic apps. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.
1) Open Control Panel
2) Open Fonts folder
3) Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

6. Speedup Folder Browsing You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:
1) Open My Computer
2) Click on Tools menu
3) Click on Folder Options
4) Click on the View tab.
5) Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6) Click Apply
7) Click Ok
Reboot your computer
To prevent a single Windows Explorer window tanking up takes the rest of your OS down, you can launch separate folder windows in multi processes. Open My Computer, hit on Tools, then Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Scroll down to “Launch folder windows in a separate process,” and enable this option.

7. Disable Performance Counters Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea. To disable:
1) download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List
2) Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom button below

8. Optimise Your Pagefile Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.
1) Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2) Select the Advanced tab
3) Under Performance choose the Settings button
4) Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5) Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

9. Improve Memory Usage PC Washer improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.

Once Installed:
1) Click the ‘Tools’ from the left menu
2) Select ‘Memory Booster’ in the tools list. A new window named ‘PC Turbo Memory’ will popup.
3) Click Defragment button in the new window.
4) Exit the program. That’s all.

10. Disable unnecessary services Windows XP loads services you will never need. To determine which services you can disable for your client, visit the Black Viper site for ideal Windows XP configurations. Here are a few services I booted off to streamline my PC:
* Alerter
* Background Intelligent Transfer Service
* ClipBook
* Computer Browser
* Error Reporting Service
* Help and Support
* Indexing Service
* IPSEC Services
* Messenger
* NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
* Network DDE
* Network DDE DSDM
* Performance Logs and Alerts
* Portable Media Serial Number
* QOS RSVP
* Help Session Manager
* Remote Registry
* Secondary Logon
* Server
* Smart Card
* Smart Card Helper
* SSDP Discovery Service
* System restore Service
* TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
* Uninterruptible Power Supply
* Universal Plug and Play Device Host
* WebClient
* Windows time
* Wireless Zero Configuration
* WMI Performance Adapter

11. Disconnect USB devices you aren’t using. When Windows starts, it must load all the drivers for the devices connected to your computer. If you have many devices connected to the USB ports, such as printers, scanners, cameras and hard drives that you don’t use on a regular basis, disconnect them. You can reconnect them when you use them. Disconnecting them when they are not in use will allow Windows to load the drivers only when needed.

The above steps should help increase the performance of Windows XP as well as keep it running with more stability.

About the Author:

Duncan Kredion is a software engineer focusing on system optimization area since 1999. To read more system optimization tips, please visit Windows XP & Vista Optimization Tips Archive .

by Jim Edwards

Here’s my question to you: Even if you’re making sales from your website, are you paying through the nose for the traffic that gets you those sales?

If you’re making less than $500 a month from your website sales — or even if you’re making a lot more — read every word of this letter very carefully and I will share with you information about my method for getting free traffic that turns into hard cash month… after month… after month!

Have you ever asked…

“How can I get more visitors to my website without spending a fortune in advertising?”

I used to ask that question daily until I discovered a dependable traffic source that

Doesn’t run dry…

Requires no complicated knowledge or skills, and…

Doesn’t cost any money to advertise!

Every website could use more traffic!

Every website could benefit from an extra 100, 200… even 500 visitors a day – especially if you didn’t have to pay for them!

Those extra visitors translate into spendable cash… and I like that. However, if you’re like me, you’re not a search engine guru and you don’t have an unlimited advertising budget. Also, you know that traffic schemes like “safe lists”, FFA links pages, and “exit traffic” exchanges simply don’t work.

So what do you do?

Well, I’ve found a system for generating steady traffic to my websites that doesn’t require you to become some sort of “guru” who can manipulate HTML code or install strange scripts. I’ve found something far simpler and effective that anyone can duplicate that drives targeted customers to your website as well or better than all the complicated and costly traffic schemes in the world!

It’s a simple formula really – I’ll tell you exactly how it works right now…

Step #1 – You write a 500 word article on a topic of great interest to a targeted audience and then…

Step #2 – You get a few of the tens-of-thousands of ezine publishers on the Web (who by the way need articles desperately) to run your article to their thousands of subscribers.

Step #3 – Of those thousands of people who see your article, some will click on your link at the bottom of the article, visit your website, and purchase your products (or earn you commissions by purchasing other people’s products through your affiliate links.)

What makes this system even more effective is that, in many cases, website owners will also post your article to their websites (they’re hungry for content too!), the search engines will index those pages, and you end up getting traffic for months — sometimes years — after you initially publish your article.

Bottom Line: Learn secrets to get traffic and customers from a one-time action! http://tinyurl.com/5lud2n

About the Author:
Legitimate, simple method generates traffic to Your Site!

There are lots of products that are called “smart buys.” Then there are comprehensively delicious products such as the Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 Master Collection – Full
that can only be called smart-as-hell buys.

From Adobe.com:
Adobe® Creative Suite® 3.3 Master Collection software is a comprehensive creative environment for designing print, web, film, video, and mobile content — in one value-packed offering.

Combines Adobe InDesign® CS3, Photoshop® CS3 Extended, Illustrator® CS3, new Acrobat® 9 Pro, Flash® CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver® CS3, Fireworks® CS3, Contribute® CS3, After Effects® CS3 Professional, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS3, Soundbooth™ CS3, and Encore® CS3, and also includes Adobe Bridge CS3, Version Cue® CS3, Device Central CS3, Dynamic Link, Adobe OnLocation™ CS3 (Windows® only), and Ultra® CS3 (Windows only).

Click the link Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 Master Collection – Full
to learn a lot more about this brilliant collection. You’ll find “reasons for buying,” as well as information on upgrading, system requirements, and more.

Copyright (c) 2008 Jim Edwards

Tools for making online video get more common every day online. The latest craze, Flip Video cameras, make it simple and fun to snap high-quality video clips and use them for business or pleasure. Despite the widespread popularity of online video, most people think online video is only for the super-geeky set. But, with an influx of free and low-cost tools, online video has never been easier for everyone to get in on the “lights – camera – action!”

Video Blogging. Probably the easiest way for anyone to get started, video blogging or “Vlogging” combines the use of a blog with simple video “posts” on your website. You can sign up for a free blog at Blogger.com to act as your platform for making posts. Then, you can upload your videos (for free) to www.YouTube.com or http://Video.Google.com and they’ll convert your videos for online play. You can then take the copy-and-paste code either site gives you, paste that code into a new post on your blog, and voila, you’re officially video blogging. Blogger.com makes a great, fast way for you to set up a personal video blog, and it really is as simple as I describe.

If you want to put your blog on your own domain and hosting account (which I highly recommend if you operate a business), then you can get the best blogging software in the world for FREE by visiting www.WordPress.org. Once you create your blog on your own domain, you can post video exactly the same way I described above using YouTube or Google Video.

Video E-mail. Video email rates even simpler than video blogging. You can shoot your video using even a simple web cam and then email it to your family and friends. Now, this works great for smaller files, but once you get above about 3 Megabytes (MB), emailing those files becomes a pain for both you as the sender and your friends as recipients. However, you can easily share video files via email with the help of free online file hosting services. Services like www.Box.net and www.XDrive.com enable you to upload a file once, then email a special link to as many people as you want. They visit the link online and download the video file from the server rather than getting forced to download it as an email attachment.

By the way, these two services work great for sharing any large file, not just video.

Attract New Website Visitors. If you operate an online business, you know traffic represents the life-blood of your site. (If nobody shows up, it’s hard to make any money.) Video makes a great way to reach new viewers and get them to your website using FREE online hosting services. At a minimum, you should upload your videos to: YouTube.com, Video.Google.com, Revver.com, and MySpaceTV.com. You can also “announce” your video to multiple sites at once using Tube Mogul.com (which offers both free and paid options).

If you want traffic, make sure to put your domain name across the bottom of the entire video so viewers can find your website or blog. Also, if you want people to get excited about you and your business, make sure your videos entertain people (no boring content), educate them (teach them something good), and empower them (give them something they can use). Following these simple rules will massively increase the pulling power of your videos to act as “traffic magnets” for your site.

About the Author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs… Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? “Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website NOW! Click Here>>> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

by John Elley

1. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should related to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.
2. When you visit a web site you’ve enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.

3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site’s ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.

4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.

5. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site.

6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web sites ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.

7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what’s in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.

9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.

10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they either link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

11. When you purchase a product and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Make sure your statement is detailed. Give them permission to publish it on their web site if they link to your site.

12. Create a directory of web sites on a specific topic. Give people the option of adding the directory to their web site by linking to it. Put your business ad at the top of the directory’s home page.

13. Exchange content with other web sites. You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

14. Allow people to download software at no charge from your web site, if they link to your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.

15. Trade other forms of advertising to people that link to your web site. You could trade e-zine ads, print ads, autoresponder ads, classified ads, ebook ads, etc.

16. Give away web space to people for free. Since you are giving it away for free, request they link to your site by placing your ad or banner to the site.

17. Join or create a web ring. A web ring is a group of web sites on a similar subject agreeing to link together. To find a web ring to join type keywords “web rings” into your search engine of choice.

18. Create an online club or association. Tell your visitors what’s included in the membership and what it costs to join. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

19. Allow people to use an online service or utilities from your web site if, in exchange, they link to your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission, web page design, copywriting, proofreading, etc.

20. Offer a free e-book to your web site visitors. The ebook should be related to your target audience. Allow them to give the e-book to their own web site visitors by linking directly to your web site.

You can get free website content here and use it on your website to keep your customers coming back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John Elley is the owner of Free-Viral-Advertising.com which is a Free Advertising Service that helps you to get real people to actually visit and look at your website. Click Here to see how the power of Viral Advertising can explode the traffic to your website and increase your business.

by Demond Jackson

Making money online is a dream for many, but the simple fact is that it’s often just as tough as making money offline. Making money online with selling ebooks with resale rights or recommending them through affiliate links offers great opportunities of making money online. I used to be one of those people who sometimes ask, “Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts”. People believe only the scammers and “gurus” are the only ones earning a decent living . You no longer need to be afraid to get started. The internet is ready and willing to offer you a piece of this money making pie. There are two simple things every newbie can do starting today position themselves for great wealth in the future.

Become An Affiliate

Affiliate programs are when you promote a product or service for another website and earn a commission when you make a sale for them. Affiliate marketing is a big and profitable industry that covers a wide spectrum of topics and fields. Affiliate programs enable your blog to serve as a conduit between readers and online sites offering various goods and services. They are great additional streams of income. Affiliate marketing is a skill not a get rick quick scheme. Affiliate marketing should be a really fun and exciting home business that you can run from your personal computer, or notebook.

Making money with Affiliate Programs is the process of making “feeder” web sites that drive traffic to various affiliate programs or products. Done correctly, affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money from the web. I was under an impression that making money online was difficult or uneasy to learn. Boy was I wrong. Anyone with no marketing skills can signup to be an affiliate, get the company’s marketing material and begin promotion immediately. Personally, I’ve found affiliate marketing to be the best source of making money online. If you look a bit you can find some very nice commission, affiliate products that are very easy to sell. When you combine affiliate marketing with blogging, it’s almost impossible to fail.

Blogging

Many bloggers are earning $100 to $1000 per month and more only from writing reviews at their blogs. Earning money online by blogging is a pretty straight forward way for most bloggers. It’s better than a hard sell sales page because blogs have a more personal connection with readers, so readers are more willing to listen to a bloggers’ recommendation. The mistake many niche bloggers make is they get content that is too focused on a specific keyword and only that keyword. One of the main goals of making money online blogging is to build a large RSS readership. We can also connect with like minded bloggers. Even though we are the smartest things on the earth at this point who live and breath we still do not realize the power of word of mouth. Promoting affiliate programs on your blog is a sure thing.

Conclusion

There are many opportunities to make money online. The key is to find something you believe you can be successful with and stick with it until you succeed. Another tip is that you must be interested in the products/ services you promote. If you feel good about your product, it’ll be easy to promote. For example, I recently was introduced to a program called 4 Minute Money I believe in the product so it’s easy to promote it.

Demond Jackson is an entrepreneur who looks for ways to help people earn money from home. His newest find is the 4 Minute Money System He’s written a personal review of the 4 Minute Money system or you can go directly to the 4 Minute Money website.

by Karl Sultana

The ideal world of affiliate marketing does not require having your own website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development and maintenance. This is one of the easiest ways of launching into an online business and earning more profits.

Assuming you are already in an affiliate program, what would be the next thing you would want to do? Double, or even triple, your commissions, right? How do you do that?

Here are some powerful tips on how to boost your affiliate program commissions overnight.

1. Know the best program and products to promote. Obviously, you would want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time.

There are several factors to consider in selecting such a program. Choose the ones that have a generous commission structure. Have products that fit in with your target audience. And that has a solid track record of paying their affiliate easily and on time. If you cannot seem to increase your investments, dump that program and keep looking for better ones.

There are thousands of affiliate programs online which gives you the reason to be picky. You may want to select the best to avoid losing your advertising dollars.

Write free reports or short ebooks to distribute from your site. There is a great possibility that you are competing with other affiliates that are promoting the same program. If you start writing short report related to the product you are promoting, you will be able to distinguish yourself from the other affiliates.

In the reports, provide some valuable information for free. If possible, add some recommendations about the products. With ebooks, you get credibility. Customers will see that in you and they will be enticed to try out what you are offering.

2. Collect and save the email addresses of those who download your free ebooks. It is a known fact that people do not make a purchase on the first solicitation. You may want to send out your message more than six times to make a sale.

This is the simple reason why you should collect the contact information of those who downloaded your reports and ebooks. You can make follow-ups on these contacts to remind them to make a purchase from you.

Get the contact information of a prospect before sending them to the vendor’s website. Keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. You get paid only when you make a sale. If you send prospects directly to the vendors, chances are they would be lost to you forever.

But when you get their names, you can always send other marketing messages to them to be able to earn an ongoing commission instead of a one-time sale only.

Publish an online newsletter or Ezine. It is always best to recommend a product to someone you know than to sell to a stranger. This is the purpose behind publishing your own newsletter. This also allows you to develop a relationship based on trust with your subscribers.

This strategy is a delicate balance between providing useful information with a sales pitch. If you continue to write informative editorials you will be able to build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that may lead them to support you by buying your products.

3. Ask for higher than normal commission from merchants. If you are already successful with a particular promotion, you should try and approach the merchant and negotiate a percentage commission for your sales.

If the merchant is smart, he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose a valuable asset in you. Keep in mind that you are a zero-risk investment to your merchant; so do not be shy about requesting for addition in your commissions. Just try to be reasonable about it.

Write strong pay Per Click ads. PPC search engine is the most effective means of advertising online. As an affiliate, you can make a small income just by managing PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords and Overture. Then you should try and monitor them to see which ads are more effective and which ones to dispose of.

Try out these strategies and see the difference it can make to your commission checks in the shortest of time.

About the Author:
Discover how to get your affiliate link in top of search engine rankings using Karl Sultana’s strategies.

I landed on a great blog this afternoon – I’m just don’t remember how I got there. It all started where everything pretty much starts for me (Google), but I can’t remember the route.

I don’t guess it matters, right?

What DOES matter is great advice – killer advice, even. The kind that can light a fire under your feet and add zeros to your bank balance. If you’re like me, you welcome both zeros and fire – so, here’s something you’ll like.

Carl Ocab has written a great post titled “I Paid 12 Months to Learn These 32 Things.” It’s the sort of information that’s well worth the effort of copying/pasting/printing/re-reading/highlighting. The whole 9 yards.

My favorite is #6 and I blockquote:

6. Act Now, There’s No Later
You have this super idea that you know if you take action, would make thousands over thousands of dollars. After sometime, you forgot about it and you were surprised to see someone did it and got the cash you dreamed of. Has this happened to you?

When you have an idea, implement it now – before anyone does. If you have to stay up all night long, sure. Just act.

Zip, zing, or zap your way to his blog and read this post from top to bottom. Then branch out and read the other posts as well. Great stuff.