Am I skeptical?

Yeah you bet. So why do it? Well, I followed the first few videos out of curiosity and I do think I’ve already learned a few valuable skills which could be applicable to other web based ventures. More about that in future posts.

Any initial concerns?

Yes, while everything can be done for free, it’s obvious to me that the suggested methods require an abundance of time or some paid software, and whereas the guy running Niche Site Duel, Pat Flynn formerly used one affiliate product (Market Samurai) he’s now using and recommending another (Long Tail Pro). He claims either can be used, but and at the time of writing there is no video showing how to achieve the same results with Market Samurai (I’ve tried it and fallen flat on my face – yes this may be my fault, but as someone new to this I don’t feel it’s easy to do and the duel is meant to be easy to follow). Deliberate or not this is convenient for Pat - any of his users who’ve already bought Market Samurai will feel some compulsion to buy yet another affiliate product. This leaves me feeling more skeptical than I’d like.

So here it goes …

My next three months are now dedicated to finding out whether someone like me can really generate a passive income from this, or whether I’m being sold snake oil. I’m my own harshest critic, so if I believe failure is due to errors on my part I’ll be sure to say so, and if I’m successful I’ll let you know. This is assuming I can stick with the program.

One of the features I’m most appreciative of is the ability to vary the speed of playback on all their course videos. It enables me to speed up or slow down any of the training videos to suit my needs and has literally saved me days.

Aside from Lynda I also view a fair number of educational/training videos on YouTube, but find myself irked by the lack of this feature. Sometimes the information is great but it’s divulged at an excruciatingly slow pace.

Thankfully, YouTube’s HTML5 player now offers the ability to vary the playback rate too. Many of you may, still be using the old Flash player. To get the variable speed option you’ll need to opt in to YouTube’s HTML5 beta trial, which is really easy. Click here for details.

Once that’s done you can just click the gear icon on the YouTube video player (bottom right) and choose one of the speed options from the menu:

Youtube HTML5 Variable Playback Speed

If for any reason this doesn’t work for you, you may find a solution here.

You will typically see subscription options such as 25 images per day for 1 month which, though expensive, are the obvious choice because they work out way more cost effective than buying just one or two images individually.

With a plan like that you’ll calculate that you’ll can download a maximum of 750 images, but wait, here is where you should differentiate between “files” and “images” and here’s a tip that could increase the number of images at your disposal dramatically, without costing you a penny more …

Before downloading your chosen photo, search the site again and prefix/postfix your query with the word “collection”

Why? Well see that cheeky little hamster chap on the right? A search for hamster may well return that picture as a result. Let’s say you love it and want it – that’s one download.

However, search for “hamster collection” and more often than not you’ll discover that the exact same photo or vector image is available “bundled up” with other photos or vectors of a similar nature. As you can see, the image below is a single file but it contains multiple hamster images including the one I liked  (note: the image below has been cropped by me but contained about 5 full images. The overall image dimensions were something like 3000×3000).

I found that this technique gave me about a five-fold increase in the number of images I was able to obtain for use on my blogs.

Works Especially Well For Vector Images & Icons!

Vector images are images that can scale to any size without pixelation – they are illustrations as opposed to photographic pictures. Say you are after a silhouette of a business person so you do a search for “silhouette business” and find an image you like. Now you search for “collection silhouette business” and you will probably find that the very same image is part of a collection containing twenty or thirty silhouettes of business people. Result!

But what about image quality?

If you are downloading vector images then no problem at all, and this is where I have benefitted the most.

As for raster images (i.e. pixel based images) it’s worth using this technique unless you know that you will need a super-high resolution version of the subject at some point, for example, if you want to use it for print work.

… because you can never have too many hamsters

I’ve been surprised how often the image I want is available as part of a collection, especially when it comes to vector images. I’ve found collections particularly useful for things like icons, flags, decorative shapes, brushes, silhouettes and, erm, hamsters. If you have any quick tips when using stock image sites please leave a comment and share it.

FREE WEBINAR: January 23rd, Wednesday, at 12PM Eastern (9AM Pacific)

But what if you live outside of the U.S.?

Take “Pacific time” as an example. Does it mean Pacific Daylight Time or Pacific Standard Time? As a non-U.S. citizen I don’t instantly know, do you? Eastern time? Same problem. Make a mistake and you’ll either ‘arrive’ an hour early or an hour too late.

Surprisingly, I found most time-zone converstion sites on the web to offer an abysmal user experience, they don’t even make it clear if or when certain countries (such as the UK and US) are using daylight-savings hours. In the absence of a good conversion site I turned to the Google search box (great for quick sums and conversions) but time zone conversion is not yet built in so I had to find another way. Here’s what I found to be the most useful solution:

Consider the situation I found myself in a few months ago:

The hard way

Through a bit of hard work I found out that the local time at which the webinar started was 12.a.m. – figuring this out hurt my brain:
9am (start time) + 8hrs (G.M.T) + 7 hrs (Thai time is G.M.T.+7 during British Winter time) = 12 a.m.

The easy way

Now let’s see if I can get the same result easily with the search engine Wolfram Alpha, a powerful “computational knowledge engine” which is perfect for this kind of thing:

Search term 1: “9AM Pacific time as Bangkok” – this returns a start time of 12 a.m. Correct! No need to know about daylight saving times or even the name of the time zone I am currently in.

I mentioned WolframAlpha was powerful. How about this as an example:

Search term 2: “9am Pacific time to GMT+7” – correct! In winter time I know Thailand is 7 hours ahead of GMT.

So there you go. Until I find a decent time-zone conversion site, Wolfram Alpha will be my go-to destination.

Using most online converters there is no way around needing to know the difference between ‘standard’ and ‘daylight’ times – easy if you’re in the middle of summer or winter, but not so easy if you are in between seasons as you’ll have to find out the specific dates on which the changes occur.

Last year was so last year

Consider a blog post from 2011 entitled “How to create an ebook for the Nook”. This may turn up in your search results in 2013, but 24 months in ebook years is like a decade in human years!

Much of the information in that article could be wildly out of date. Trust me, spending hours following inaccurate information is no fun. No fun at all!

Thankfully there is a way to ensure you only see recent articles in your Google search results. Once you’ve performed your initial search you will find yourself on Google’s results page. This has a toolbar at the top. Click on the “Search Tools” button and filter your results:

I usually change “Any time” to “Past year” so that my results are filtered down to posts from the last 12 months. This isn’t exactly ultra efficient, because it requires you to search and then filter. There must be a better way.

A better way

I read a comment on the Lifehacker.com website from “scottsmith7″ who suggested a good alternative. Here’s how to implement it:

Chrome

If you use Google’s Chrome browser, go in to your settings, choose “manage search engines” and set this as the default:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:y&q=%s

Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer

If you’re using one of these browsers try setting your homepage to this (essentially the same, minus this end bit)

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:y

The even better way

The above solution is cool but it would be very easy to forget that all our searches are subject to this filter. Imagine never having seen this post simply because it was written more than 12 months before you searched; Oh, the tragedy!

It would be better if we had a choice. How about a *really* quick way of performing custom filtered searches when you need them? The trick is to setup your omni-box to recognise a keyword (or keyletter) and thankfully it’s really easy to do.

Here’s a link to a video that shows you how to set up keyword searches automatically:

If you’ve watched the video you’ve seen how it works, which is the important bit. It’s a small step to set up the same thing manually. I don’t want to turn this in to some massive walkthrough tutorial but if a lot of people have trouble I’ll put together a screen recording (leave a comment below if you are struggling).

My “Search Engine” settings for Chrome look like this:

As you can see Google is set as my default search engine (so I don’t need to use any keyword when searching). However, if I prefix any of my searches with the keyword “r“, the omni-box will automatically use the other URL (see pic) and my results will be filtered. How.Cool.Is.That!

How to check if it’s working … or undo the change

If your results are being filtered properly then you should see dates next to every one of your search results. The picture below gives you an idea of what this loks like:

and if they are not being filtered by ‘time’ you won’t see dates next to everything.

If you want to go back to receiving your normal unfiltered Google results, don’t fret, just set your homepage or default search engine to:

http://google.com/search?q=%s  (or http://google.com/)

And finally

I guess I should end by saying that this information was correct at the time of publishing

Is this useful? Do you have a better way? If so, leave a comment!

Chrome
1. Log in to your main Facebook account as usual.
2. Choose File -> New Incognito window. This opens up a new incognito window (intended for when you want to keep your browsing a secret) and you can now log in to your second account from within that window. Because the login cookie information is kept separate you can stay logged in to both accounts.

Firefox
1. Download and install the Multifox addon. Multifox is an extension that allows Firefox to connect to websites using different user names simultaneously.
2. Restart your browser.
3. Choose File -> New Identity File – and from here on in the process is essentially the same as it was for Chrome (see above).

Safari
As far as i can tell there is no easy way to do this from within Safari but you could download and install something like Fluid (mac only) which allows you to create ‘apps’ from your favourite sites and circumvent the issue that way. The basic version of Fluid is free, but you need the paid version to take advantage of the cookie separation that allows you to have multiple logins.

Internet Explorer
1. Download a copy of Chrome or Firefox! Okay okay, if you insist on using I.E. hold down ALT and choose File -> New Session and follow the same process as you would for either of the other browsers