Ted Ciuba is a world-renowned marketing consultant who calls himself “Mr. Mail Order in the Internet Age.” He teaches people how to make six figure incomes using your phone, fax, computer and the neighborhood copy machine. His best-selling bible on the subject of making a million using mail order marketing techniques is called (of course!) “Mail Order In the Internet Age.”

The promise of this book is to make anyone $3,288 in less than one hour using the computers that we all own. Not a bad return for your money on an instructional book that costs less than twenty bucks.

Ted Ciuba is definitely a teacher for the masses. He is not anti-technology but he insists that you don’t need a lot of expensive programs, courses or software to make a lot of money on the Internet. He first started in the business by putting up a free ad on America online. The overwhelming response he got for this ad made him recognize his own talent as a marketing copywriter and spin meister.

Ted Ciuba claims that by using his techniques you can make profit margins of 7000 percent or more. Most importantly for the newbie just getting into marketing, he explains how to launch a direct mail marketing campaign without spending a penny! He also gives you tips on how to design your site cheaply and also make informational products appealing.

Ted Cuiba also describes how to sell information rather than products. He also explains how to sell products you don’t even own through organizing joint ventures and enrolling in affiliate programs. He demonstrates how this works by giving you examples that shows you the to-the-penny accounting of his own businesses. Is he a dreamer? His favorite example is the individual who sent one fifteen-cent press release to Family Circle and ended up with three million worth of orders in just three days.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Her photograph seems innocuous just another girl sipping on a slushy somewhere but the face belongs to Lilly Allen. Allen is a famous twenty two year old singer in the U.K. who has received a lot of acclaim lately for what she calls her “silly blog” but which is actually one of those celebrity confessionals that tries to imitate the kind of “cry for help” that gets people like Britney Spears so much attention.

In Lilly Allen’s myspace blog (http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic) she recently posted a picture of herself sobbing her heart out in bed and called herself “fat and ugly and shittier than wine house (making a reference to recently rehabbed singer Lilly Allen.

As Allen appears to feel really fat she has also written that she is considering laser liposuction and gastric bypass surgery.

Still mixed in with all of this heavy weight stuff is this lighthearted promotion of her shows in which she says things like “The British is silly enough to give me my own deal.” There is also reams about shopping and travel adventures which reveals her actual life of privilege as in “going to Argentina tomorrow!” and
”bought some nice things for the house”

So why is this blog so popular in the U.K. Once again Allen has that touch that we should all have as a blogger, which is to fascinate by being unpredictable. People log in to see what is going on with her mood o’ meter. It is sensationalist as well particular when she implies that she has eating and mood disorders. There is no better way for a pop singer to get her name in the papers as is shown by the example of Britney Spears.

Still she connects to her audience and that is a job as a blogger. Maybe it is her way of saying goodbye to her readers every day – “I’ll let you know how the gig goes.

Lily Allen has 473117 friends. You can also of course download her songs on the site including hits like “Smile and Knock Em Out.”

Popularity: 50% [?]

If you have ever wondered who the big guru of web page usability is it is Jakob Neilson. He is the guy that the big companies go to when they want to make their web sites more users friendly. Right now he is working on a book called book tentatively titled “Designing Excellent Web Pages: Secrets of an Information Architect.”

Neilson has a list of the top ten mistakes that people make in web design and his hobby is looking over big sites to see if they fit his idea of functionality. According to Jason M. Grow in the New York Times, one of his pet peeves is the Hewlett Packard site which he says emphasizes marketing over functioning. In other words the design of the site actually sabotages the selling of the product.

He has also criticized the Toys ‘R’ Us site as event Hough it is nicely laid out the buyer experience degrades once it comes to ordering. On that site the 2.0 type of problem is that you have to scroll through dozens of pages to find the one that you want.

One of the sites that he has shown the most contempt for is the Pepsi World web page, which is covered with bright blue images and funky looking writing. He describes it as useless.

It is well worth your while to look into the suggestions of Neilson as he really is one of the first analysts to really look at websites as being something that we can control and not the other way around. Too many designers feel at the mercy of technology and that is why even big businesses seem to settle for less when it comes to user technology.

His own blog got more than five million hits last year estimates that some 200,000 visitors read his bi-monthly column on how to organize web site information so people can find what they are looking for.

Popularity: 55% [?]

If you are an information architect or content manager then it is very much worth your while to take a look at Web Dezigner. This is an advanced content management system that allows you to easily and quickly update the information on your website without fear of ruining your site design or having to spend hours fixing it up because your text has nudged menus and everything else out of place.

What is great about Web Designer is that you do not have to be that technically savvy to use it. It is a point and click system with a user friendly interface that allows people with no knowledge of HTML or other computer languages to expediently change their content.

People who have content that involves the publishing of many listings benefit from this type of program. An example is the real estate agent who must upload description of different types of properties for sale. The program has all kinds of different customizable fields and templates such as separate “agent logins for managing listings and images.

Web Dezigner also has programs that can help make your website more user friendly. For instance it has a powerful “Search This Site” type feature that you can employ. This is good for sites that sell things like used automobiles or micro stock photography sites. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to return to a site where they know the content is searchable.

The program is very versatile and can support many different types of browsers including Firefox, Netscape, Internet Explorer and Mozilla.

Offshoots of this product also include Article Dezigner, which saves you hours of HTML edits every day. News Dezigner, which helps you, upload and manage hot content you get in from the wires and Auto Designer, which is a program that can be specifically employed if you have a site where you are selling cars.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Bruce Berman is one of those celebrity web development gurus who has written quite a few ebooks is sometimes dubbed the “intellectual property guru.” This is because his specialty is wealth creation through the investment in the intellectual property market. His best selling books are “I Got Here, You Can Too”, “Ideas and Assets” which is about investing in intellectual property and “Hidden Value” which is about profiting from the intellectual property market.

Berman is a heavy hitter who has implemented marketing, investor relations and public relations programs on behalf of technology-based companies, merger and acquisition candidates, licensing departments and consultants, investment bankers, investment partnerships, owners of branded products, and law firms.

If you are serious about making money, enhancing your design and also about maximizing content on your blogs you should read the Bruce Berman books.

Hidden Value explores the best ways in which to increase the value of, and manage, crucial trademark, patent and copyright assets. It was written in tandem with key intellectual property owners, industry leaders and lawyers.

From Ideas to Assets provides a detailed overview of what intellectual property assets are and how they work. This is the book that is more recommended for small business start-ups as it tells you what you need to know about intellectual property in order to succeed in the competitive world of selling information online

Berman’s books also tell the newbie the basic stuff such as how to create a money making venture. They also fall into the category of motivational books, as they are very inspiring as well as educational. Bruce Berman’s books include everything that you have always wanted to know about starting up a money making empire including business plan templates, how to design websites and, how to set up a corporation, the His books also include investment guides that contain over a thousand funding sources located in the United States.

Popularity: 46% [?]

If the name Chris Crocker seems familiar to you it is because he reached worldwide attention after he posted a video of himself ranting about how the press and everyone should just “leave Britney alone.” His over the top, fey delivery completely with admonishments, tears and a build up to a hysterical tantrum was mesmerizing for many people who viewed it. People were also awed by his other contributions on you tubes which are videos of himself musing on such subjects as “If I were miss universe…”

So what is that Internet marketers can learn from viewing this video, which garnered millions of viewers, spawns of imitators and invitations for Chris Crocker to appear on talk shows?

First of all he has the shock factor with his eyeliner and tendency to film himself with a sheet over his head. Oddly that builds intimacy with the viewer instead of repels them. If people are curious or puzzled they will come back to view a website again and again as is certainly the case with Crocker.

Secondly he has a sense of drama, which keeps people hooked. As a designer of web sites that is also your job – to keep people hooked somehow so they return to your website to see what will happen on it next. Piquing people’s curiosity is what selling can be out.

Thirdly he is very unpredictable and people are very entertained by that aspect of Chris Crocker. Furthermore he is not overtly selling anything, which is another tact of a good marketer. However some would argue that he is marketing the understanding of a lifestyle – of Chris himself as a gay man and a transvestite.

As an Internet guru it is good to vies Chris Crocker’s famous and very notorious Leave Britney Alone video. It teaches you how candid remarks a hot subject and shock value can bring a website lots of attention.

Popularity: 38% [?]

It used to be the bickering, whining and defaming during your divorce happened in coffee clatches with girlfriends or in the psychotherapist’s office. In the world of celebrities it used to be that divorce dramas were played out in the celebrity tabloids. According to a fluffy entertainment piece done by ABC news the trend in divorces (whether you are a celebrity or not) is to write about your relationship in detail for anyone and everyone to read. In fact, blogging about your divorce while it is going on is one way to get yourself a court order to stop.

This is exactly what happened to William Krasanksy and view his colorful response at his pug dog blog which originally started out as cute observations of his dogs.

In his blog, William Krasnansky lashes out about a marriage gone bad, saying: “It is my great fear that the ending of this tragic tale may be so very much worse than this terrible story’s already horrific beginnings.” He also goes on about how his right to free speech has been violated and that everything that he is writing about in the blog is “fiction” even though everything that he has been writing in the blog has directly to do with his divorce and his wife.

The Web site has been up for weeks and has been garnering a lot of attention, as people are very curious to see what he will write about next. In the meantime his wife’s attorney has charged that the logs are defamatory, derogatory, inaccurate and inappropriate and that when he blogs he is using it as a form of harassment.

A Vermont judge has ordered Krasnansky to shut down the Web site, but Krasnansky instead has left it up and as a deliverate act of civil disobedience as he feels the court order violates his rights.

The image in this post is a fair use screencapture for reference.

Popularity: 44% [?]

If you know nothing about web design but still want to have some kind of artistic control over what you produce without looking amateurish then you might want to check out Design Dashboard.Even if you know nothing about HTML this program allows you to build your entire website from scratch. This is one of those one stop point and click solutions to web site building on a budget. You simply download this Clickbank type product to your computer and it can also save you a lot of time. Mainly though it can save you the expense of hiring a designer to do it for you from one of the freelance talent sites like Elance or Guru.

This program is not just a design tool. The application can also help your organize, plan and streamline the element of your entire business. If you hate reading instructions or second guessing what to do next when it comes to the sometimes complex business of building an e-commerce site then this visually oriented point and click web design program is for you. You get to look at one dashboard, which means everything that you need is on one page.

The dashboard itself is a web-design formula broken up into six steps that help you get it done. This program is also good for beginners because it can also help you do perform business enhancing promotions like build and opt in list or create as series of auto responder newsletters. By using this point and click system you are more in control of not only how your website looks but also how and when your website is launched. This costs around one hundred dollars depending on when you buy it as it is a very popular web design tool that is used by new businesses.

Popularity: 44% [?]

If you haven’t heard of Day Job Killer by now you soon will. It is a book for scavengers, predators and vultures by Chris McNeeney who is one of those new celebrity gurus when it comes to web design. The book is about a year old but people are still hot on his concepts, which may be unethical. Unlike many books by whiz kid gurus this one is still hot possibly because everyone knows that nice guys finish last.

Anyone who has read Chris Cheney’s stuff knows his web business tactics are quite ruthless. He is also the author of Affiliate Project X and Ad words Miracle, which in eBook land were big best sellers on Click bank. His obsession with making gooney on the Internet has made quite and impact. This newer book is supposed to assist you in making thousands a month because his mode of promoting himself and his web products is totally “bad boy.” People know that he is a real maverick and they do experiment with his many suggested techniques. However the jury really still is out as to whether they work as it can take some time for websites to prove they have made a profit using any given method.

Mcneeny allegedly once published a video that created a $1-million dollar deposit in his Clickbank account in less than three months using direct linking methods. If you are getting into the pay per click and affiliate end of things on your website then you can see how this would be controversial as not many of the big gurus recommend this approach anymore as making money out of Commission Junction and Google Adsense is the equivalent of trying to compete in a saturated market. There is, however, money to be made in the lesser-known markets that offer affiliate income.

Popularity: 47% [?]

Have you ever suspected that your keyboard was filthy and possibly the reason you keep getting so many colds? Studies have shown that keyboards and mice are pretty filthy especially if they are attached to shared computers.

Many people simply do not clean their computer keyboards and mice for years because they are so afraid of damaging the electronics. According to an article in the Dallas News there are now a couple of gadgets that can help you rid your computer of germs without you having to apply wet cloths, sprays or the kind of scrubbing that might potentially damage the computer.

One of these gadgets is the Vicks’ Germ Free Warm Mist Humidifier has a cool design and destroys almost all bacteria, mold and spores. You simply plug it in and ultraviolet rays in its germicidal chamber help destroy germs in the air. The device can also supply the right amount of humidity in a room. It was originally invented for babies but there is no reason why you could not use it in an office. It costs between $30 and $90 (depending on when you shop for it) and because it was originally developed for use in nurseries you can find it in stores like Babies R Us.

Yet another incredible gadget allows you to zap germs from your keyboard without touching it at all. It is called the Cleanselight and it looks like something out of a Star Trek episode.

You simply turn it down and shine its beam on any type of surface. This means you can flash it across your keyboard and eliminate the risks that come with trying to clean it with sprays, Q-Tips and paperclips.

This U.V. light destroys 99.97 percent of bacteria, fungus and mold present on any type of surface including your computer services. This sanitizing light runs on four AA batteries and is available at Brookstone.

Popularity: 26% [?]