Your Computer!
YOUR COMPUTER
Do not worry though, not long ago, I used to scream for my teenage son to come help me do a simple copy-paste!
There are places you can learn basic computer skills and I personally enjoy very much those illustrated books that show you exactly where to go and what to click. There are also a ton of YouTube® videos if you are stuck. The trick is to start your search by “How to…’ and then state what you want to do…edit a page with Elementor® in WordPress® for example). Do not get distracted by those cute kittens videos and only look at the info you need.
Computer learning is a work in progress and if you have children at home, the odds are good they can help you!
Most computer programs also hold a help section where most if not all your questions are answered. I personally find these programs to be hard to understand and need to print the instructions. My most helpful resource is to go into Google search and type in my problem. 99,9% of the time other people have experienced the same problems and are willing to share their solutions with me.
The power of the internet is created by the fact that all its users (billions of them) are creating a community which supports one another.
For example, I had a printer which had tremendous power but was always malfunctioning. I was just about ready to throw it in the trash! Suddenly, it stroke me that if I had this problem, someone else must experience it too. So I did a Google search and found all the creative solutions other people found to make this kind of printer work. I now love my printer as I am getting the most of it.
Another way of getting basic computer knowledge is to take a course but then again some teachers really enjoy making simple things sound complicated and you end-up wasting your time and feeling stupid.
I HONESTLY CAN SAY I HOLD VERY BASIC COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE AND YET I HAVE MANY WEB SITES RUNNING AND HELPING PEOPLE! You can too.
They say in internet marketing that you should only have one important message and one important call to action on every page.
The way this web site will be designed (limited to 38 squares like a standard board game), I will have no choice but to put more than one valuable information on every page.
HENCE THE NEXT SECTION IS CRUCIAL FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING.
John Reese who is a great experienced internet marketer said it best when he said: “It is not a question of IF your computer will crash but WHEN it will crash!”
There are no ifs and buts about this. You need an antivirus for your computer.
There are many antivirus companies. Some of the most popular ones are Mccafee , Norton , AVG, Avast etc. The windows protection system does not provide a complete anti-virus software so you need to get an independent one. I use the free version of AVG. You can download it here for free: https://www.avg.com/en-ca/free-antivirus-download
Those anti-virus have the problem of running scans that are sometimes very slow and prevent you from working. A good idea is to schedule your scans at night while you are sleeping.
Websites use cookies to track you and reload their pages faster when you come back. If you do not like those cookies, you can delete them. One way to delete cookies is to go in Google Chrome (standard on every recent computer), click on the upper task bar, click on “internet options” and then in the middle of the window, click on “delete cookies”.
The other thing you need to do to protect all your valuable files (data, text, pictures, etc) is to do regular back-ups of your computer. These back-ups should be done on external drive devices.
If you feel the need to go shopping and get a new computer, antivirus software in physical products Amazon is the place to go. You can also get routers, external disks etc If you are not in a hurry, waiting for those black Friday deals are often worth it.
An anecdote!
Many people come to me telling me they have bought those little external disks you can wear on your neck that cost anywhere from 20 to 100$. They are scams! I know I bought one.
The salesman was very convincing of telling me how practical they are and how I could put my entire computer data on there but when I started trying to download songs, I got the message the files were too big. I then called my sister who laughed at me and asked: ”How many Gigs does it say on the device?” I answered: “512 megabytes”. She said: “take out any 50 cents plain CD you have and read how many megabytes they can hold!” I checked and answered sadly: 700 megabytes!”
You should be happy, I just saved you tens of dollars…
The easy way I have found to do my computer back-up as I travel a lot and do not carry my heavy backup device, is I bought an Ipod that is 80 Gigs. When I told my hip 15 year old daughter that I was going to do a back-up of my computer on my Ipod, she just laughed at me.
I, of course, had no idea how to do a back-up of my laptop using my Ipod, I just relied on what a friend had told me. What could I do? Who could I call and disturb?
I just did a Google search and there it was in three simple steps!
This is one thing I just looooooove about internet it’s that it contains its own solutions. Most of your problems when you are stuck have their own solutions on the internet itself.
TIME FOR A SAD STORY!
I have a friend who is the sweetest person in the world and a great internet marketer. One day, he was not his usual chirpy self and we asked him what was wrong. He answered that the company who was hosting many of his money making web sites had just crashed and went out of business. When he contacted them, they just answered:”we are sorry. We lost everything. We cannot recover your data.”
The second lesson on this page is that you need a back-up of all of your web sites data so if anything happens, you can rebuild them easily and rapidly. Unfortunately, most web masters do not bother with offering a back-up of web sites and are just content to admire their masterpiece.
Most Hosting companies will do back-ups but you never know if they will be hacked and lose all your data like it happened to my friend. So, when you have one or more websites, you will need to not only do back-ups on the hosting server (more on that later) but you will need to export this data and put it safely on a physical device (similar to having cryptocurrencies on a cold wallet for those cryptocurrencies fans out there)
I found that out the hard way when all the pictures on one of my web sites (www.hypno-baby.com) had disappeared one day. Nobody knew what happened and blamed a little gobbling but the matter of the fact was that all the pictures had vanished!
I had to search on all my back-up disks and find the missing pictures. In summary, I wasted an entire day of doing some recovery work.
How would you feel if you were finally successful in your internet marketing business and lost it all overnight?
You can easily buy one of those CD holding binders (they even sell small ones at the Dollar Store) and store your precious recovery CDs in there. When you reach out to that binder, you will be glad you have those back-ups!
Of course, if this is a problem that you may encounter, there are other people that have encountered it and found solutions to it. There is a good software that can create a back-up of your web sites in minutes and you will never have to suffer the agony of loosing your hard labor.
So to be clear, you need to back-up your website and you need to back-up your computer.
Most computers have a built-in restore and back-up functions whether they are powered by Windows or Apple. You can set-up regular back-ups to happen automatically and will not regret it.
On the other hand, having an external device containing all your precious files and back-ups is a great idea. Now you know what you want for Christmas!
Amazon offers great external back-up devices, computers, antivirus software etc
URGH!! I knew this was going to happen! I just wanted to write simple pages but they end-up being long. My apologies but my main concern is to give you as much valuable information as I can.
Whatever you do in the course of building your online business, if you feel stuck, you can always hire someone to do the task for you. Honestly, you will need to understand what the task requires in order to know what to ask for and how much it is worth. I have used extensively Fiverr in the past. You do have to be careful when you hire someone from Fiverr and ask them specific questions about the task to make sure the person is qualified. Fiverr has a review system which is also a good guide. I highly recommend you only hire providers with lots of good reviews. Also, always chose a provider that offers unlimited revisions as sometimes communication can be tedious. Beware of those copy-paste answers that say “we are happy to provide…blah…blah…blah…” this is usually a sign that the person is not fluent in English. You can get great services for very cheap when you are stuck designing your website or any other task (video creation, graphic design, article writing etc)
Click on the Fiverr® banner below and browse their service providers. Beware of people promising the moon for 5 dollars. Also, beware that some services are what is considered blackhat and would get your site penalized by Google®.
HERE IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION
- Make sure your computer is protected with a decent anti-virus. It could be AVG: The Free version has been sufficient for me. Norton, McCafee, AVAST etc
- Check to see if your computer is set-up to do regular back-ups. You might want to copy one of those back-ups on an external drive (either one of those big ones or the slimmer ones).
- Take time to de-clutter your computer’s desktop, files and e-mails if you have not done it in a long time.
Well, congratulations. You get to advance to the next square!
See you on the Next Square!
