Vinh Pham

I am happy that you got elected. It’s nice to see an intelligent person in control, rather than a team of retards. Although, I must say, I am rather not fond of your long winded speeches. Many people are impressed by your oratory skills, I’d prefer it if you cut the crap and get to the point.

Anyways, I am writing you today to let you know that you should stop this conciliatory, team effort, bullshit. The idea of working together sounds great, and stupid people love it because it makes it seem like you care about them, and that they are being heard. But the reality is, people are stupid, and it is your job to basically protect them from themselves.

I am tired of hearing about WallStreet bonuses, tea parties, homophobia, death panels, warrantless wiretaps, torture, pro-life, illegal immigration, etc, etc, etc…

I know you are to blame for many of these atrocities, and continuing many of Bush’s agenda, but shit man, at this point I don’t really care where you stand, I just wish you’d do something.

Stop playing footsies with the Congress and just kick some ass already. If I disagree with you, I’ll protest or vote against you. But sitting around waiting for you to make a “collaborative” effort happen is extremely annoying.

Listen dude. I don’t agree with you on my things, but I know one thing for sure. I hate the way Republican party is ruining America. And your democratic buddies are just as bad. Can you please get off this “team work” bullshit and do something?

Couple of weeks ago I asked the question “SEO: How much does domain name keywords matter?“.

Here are the results after about two weeks.

If you search “profit and loss templates”, the website I created will be the 8th result. I added a little more content today in hopes that I will jump from 8th to the 1st spot.

Wish me luck!

Every morning when I get into the office, I boot my MBP and click on all the little icons.

They look like little children jumping up and down, excited to see their father coming home from a long business trip. Is something wrong with me?

In reality, the fact that the icons bounce for so long means the computer is taking forever to boot, which is actually bad. But the story I imagined in my head is much prettier…

I have always wondered if having keywords in your domain name matters for SEO purposes. I would read one article that seems to suggest it does, but then another article would repute that claim saying there are many other factors.

I have concluded that it does matter, but now I want to know to what extend?

So today I am testing this new keyword laden domain: http://profitandlosstemplates.com

If my test goes as plan, your search for “profit and loss templates” should show my domain in a couple of days.

Btw, to keep all things even, the domain does have a lot of original content relating to profit and loss statements.

A long time ago I wrote an article about racism, that had a provocative title “I hate **** people” — Little did I know, it has been well crawled and a lot people came to my post to write really nasty comments about their racist beliefs.

At first I just posted those comments because I wanted to have an open forum for people to say anything they want. But lately, the comments have gotten so racist, I couldn’t take it anymore.

So today I decided to remove the post. I guess I should have removed it much earlier, but something just feels so wrong about limiting people’s freedom to speak on the internet.

But alas, those comments do not reflect my point of view, nor did they kept in spirit with the topic of the post. So goodbye.

So I ordered some items from TigerDirect. Then this is the screen I see.

Hrmm, ok… Who the f*ck needs to know my SSN? You can’t be f*cking serious.

I already paid you, and you want me to give you my Social Security Number?

Can someone tell me if any other sites do this? I have ordered thousands of dollars worth of stuff from Dell, Amazon, etc… and never in my life have I ever been asked to divulge my SSN.

Man, f*ck you TigerDirect, f*ck you.

I am big fan of Shopify. Their site is absolutely gorgeous, and their UI is amazing. That’s also what I thought when I first saw Indinero.

Today, I stumbled on this Hacker News post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=988816

I don’t want to point any fingers, so you decide for yourself. Did Indinero copy Shopify?

Shopify Home Page

Indinero Home Page

Shopify Tour

Indinero Tour

Looking to buy a netbook? Try http://www.netbooks.com

So anyways, that’s what I have been up to. I volunteered to manage one of my company’s domain name. And from that experience here is what I have learned about Affiliate Marketing.

	Amazon	Commission Junction	Linkshare
Average % Earnings	7%	1%	2%
User Interface	A+	C+	D+
Deep Linking	A+	C+	B+
Conversions	A+	B+	D+

As you can see, I am a huge fan of Amazon affiliate program. The commission is through the roof, the user interface is very nice, and they have an easy button to let you link directly to a specific product. On top of that, Amazon products are always of high quality, and they offer the best deals so conversions (people actually buy stuff) is very high.

My second favorite is Commission Junction. Their interface is kind of old fashion and lame. But they have a good variety of affiliates and it is relatively easy to set up. However, the one thing that is hard on CJ is deep linking directly to a product. It took me a few tries before I figured out how to use their quirky interface. The downside of Commission Junction is that most of their advertisers pay very low commission. I normally see around 1% – 2%, which is pretty crappy compared to Amazon’s 7%. However, one of my favorite CJ affiliate is Swoopo. They pay a whooping $11 dollars per conversion. This is amazing, and it reminds me of my Google Adwords Success.

The last and my least favorite is Linkshare. Their interface is bad, and its a pain in the arse just to log in. I only use Linkshare because they do have some big names like Walmart, TigerDirect, etc… Linkshare commission is a little bit better than Commission Junction 2%-3% most of the time. However, I noticed that Linkshare affiliates are pretty bad converters. I barely make anything on Linkshare.

Anyways, this is just a rough overview of my affiliate marketing experience. I will have to expand on this post at a later time. But if you are interested in doing affiliate marketing for your website, I highly recommend Amazon. It’s easy to see why this company owns the retail internet. I also recommend using CJ so that you can get in on the Swoopo action. Good luck!

Have you heard that internet meme?

“Yo Dawg, I heard you like Google Chrome, so Immah install Google Chrome on your Google Chrome”

That’s what this feels like.

For those who don’t get it: I am using google chrome, and it’s asking me to install it.

Whoever invented, or have implemented a security question should be brought out in a public square and hung.

Man F$@K you.

I do not want have a favorite food, I did not have a childhood pet, I don’t know the names of any of my teachers, and I have no idea where I was born.

So again, F@#K YOU!

As a developer, if anyone asked me to implement a security question, I will quit on the spot. Because that’s a clear sign the company knows NOTHING about usability.

Why am I pissed? I just called ATT. They REFUSED to look at my account and turn on my internet because I didn’t know who my favorite singer was. I told them to type in “f*ck you”, because that’s what I usually type whenever I get one of those.

Damn I am so pissed. What pissed me off even more is that there is actually a company out there that will literally RESET your password if you know the answer to the security question. WTF?? Why do we even have a password if a dumb security question could overwrite it?

Man F*ck the Developer and UX engineer team that makes security questions. Are you f*cking retarded???