NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Archives for May 2012

How to profit from hackers

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Here’s a quick business idea (more like “consulting”) one of you can run with.

I got this “Pharma Hack” on my WordPress blog a few days ago.  Apparently it doesn’t have any effect on WordPress blogs, except it changes your title tags in your database (so you can’t easily change them) to promote pills…..this is what it did to my search rankings:

Sooooo……apparently NevBlog now sells Viagra :-)

It’s actually not a “hack” but rather a small “exploit”.

ANYHOW, I ended up paying to get it removed (yet it still came back).  I REALLLLLYYY wanted to do a search for “WordPress Pharma Hack” and see a sponsored result saying:

….instead I found nothing.

I had to personally call Chris Pearson who wrote the most detailed post about the pharma hack to get a recommendation for the removal of this brilliant little exploit.

But these large-scale exploits seem like a GREAT opportunity for WordPress junkies to make a bunch of extra money.  If someone charged $200+ to just “take care of this shit” for me….I would’ve GLADDLLLY paid.

-Nev

 

P.S.  In case you’re wondering, I’m currently moving this blog to WPengine  and they’re cleaning it up right now.

Spray Alcohol Experiment

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Browsing the news I saw this article about a mouth-spray alcohol that gets you “temporarily drunk”.

A little YouTubing showed videos like this:

I was instantly reminded of this thing I read about in Europe a while ago called AWOL (Alcohol Without Liquid)….

….which is essentially an oxygen vaporizer machine with hard alcohol infused into it…..and you inhale the liquor instead of drink.  This means you only have to only get a SMALL amount of alcohol to have an effect, but it only gets you “buzzed” for a very short amount of time.  It looked like:

 

SO I WANTED TO SEE IF SPRAYING ALCOHOL IN YOUR MOUTH WILL GET YOU BUZZED!
(since I really have nothing else better to do all day) :-)

STEP 1.) I bought several different types of atomizers from Sephora (those little perfume pump thingies):


STEP 2.) Bought a bottle of Titos plain vodka (40% alcohol) and a bottle of Everclear (90% alcohol).


STEP 3.) I filled the purple spray thingy with Titos, and the Silver one with Everclear


STEP 4.) TIME TO SEE IF I GET DRUNK!  I wore safety goggles (in case I mis-sprayed pure alcohol into my eyes):


STEP 5.) Waiting to see if I got drunk!
The first few sprays actually didn’t taste THAT bad like expected (although not particularly good either).

I sprayed a few Everclear, and a few vodka….and I’ve gotta say….(unless it’s placebo effect speaking), I FELT SOOORRRTA BUZZED! (it was a similar feeling to the very first sips of alcohol you take in a night…..you’re not “buzzed” yet, but you know something’s swirling around in your brain).

I’m 29 and have been drinking since about the age of 20 years old.   So I can tell by my first drink of alcohol that “something is happening” in my head before I get full-on buzzed or drunk.

Two of us tried this, and we both are almost 100% convinced we felt a very light buzz.
The buzz however wears of literally in about 2 minutes or less.

I’m sure there’s MANY other ways to achieve this (such as just swishing around alcohol in your mouth), but this “spray” method seems to be the most convenient.

 

CONCLUSION.) I’m almost dumbfounded to say this…..but IT WORKED!
…however, only a little. Drinking still seems FAR superior.

However there was only a few milliliters of alcohol in each spray bottle, so this alcohol delivery method is surprisingly efficient.

 

VIDEO OF THE EXPERIMENT:


SO IS THIS A VIABLE PRODUCT?  WHAT OTHER USES?

Here’s a couple of quick ideas an “alcohol spray” could be marketed as:

  • Anti-anxiety spray for approaching and picking up girls (placebo effect will also be strong on this one).
  • Anti-anxiety spray for shy people (placebo effect will also be strong on this one).
  • Creativity Spray – “Spray twice, and start brainstorming!”
  • Calm-Down Spray – “Two sprays will calm ya down!”
wow….those are all kinda dumb ideas.  Maybe I’m still drunk ;-)
Happy spraying!
-Neville

Cool AppSumo Guitar Picks gift

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One of the interesting things about being involved with AppSumo and all the products we sell, is people THANK US in odd ways.

I get emails all the time that start off with “THANKS YOU FATASS SUMO’S!”

Normally them’s fightin’ words….but it’s actually a sign of affection :-)

Books, cookies & ukelele’s  have come our way….and now my new favorite gift: Personalized AppSumo guitar picks from Andrew Woo from ProspectSnap!

I’ve actually been using them!

May 2012 Goals

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New Month = New Goalzz.

Here’s mine for May 2012:

 

1.) Taco Stand Validation: 
From the SumoBusinessBlueprintLIVE, a decent amount of people  wanted to know how to validate a PHYSICAL business.  I always tell them:

“If it’s a physical business, you’ll usually have to do some physical validation”

So in true Sumo-style….I’ll be validating a TACO STAND!  Details later :-)

 

2.) Course Reinforcement:
To make sure all my previous courses stay relevant and last a long time, I’m going through each of them and “cleaning things up” …or adding content if necessary.

For example a couple of things like:

  • Google discontinued “Google Friend Connect” which means alllllll the comments on my courses were one day just erased.  That really sucks because there were some great Q&A’s going on.  I will be trying to restore most of that on a different commenting platform.
  • Will be adding more emails to all the autoresponder sequences (so signup for all the email lists if you haven’t already)!
  • There are literally HUNDDDRREEEDDSS of emails with amazing testimonials…..and none of them have been posted.  This will be changed.

 

3.) A.R.K:
This is the next course coming out called AutoResponder Kourse.  It’s like an add-on course to the KopywritingKourse to show people the power of autoresponders (I realllyyy wish I knew about these when I was starting out).

 

 

Anyhow…..cheers to a great May 2012 :-)
-Neville