William McCamment

Life Outside of Hell

William McCamment

WARNING: No Sexy Photos. Also, I’m not SPAMMING You…

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IMPORTANT FACT #1: I am not the one spamming you (keep reading for explanation).

IMPORTANT FACT #2: Remember… I’m not the one spamming you.

I’m aware people are getting spam from some jerk pretending to be a sexy young Russian girl seeking a nice man and offering to send “sexy pictures.”

Well, I can assure you, it’s not me. I am a grizzled old white guy from California who—some say—doesn’t look too hot in a bikini.

If you are angry because you have received a junk email from someone using my email address, consider this: I am getting over 100,000 “undeliverable email” notifications every day.

In order to get that many “undeliverables” I’m estimating they are sending at least 10-million emails using my email address… every… single… day!

And, it’s been happening since NOVEMBER!

What’s happening here is they’re doing what’s called, “email spoofing.”

Email spoofing is where a spammer simply types someone else’s email address into the “FROM” field in their emails.

That someone, in this case, is me.

I have no control over it. There are no compromised email servers.

As far as I know, I have no way of stopping it.

So, if you’re one of the millions of people receiving these annoying messages, I’m sorry it’s happening to you, but it’s not me that’s doing it. You’ll have to look elsewhere for the culprit.

I wish I could find him myself because, if I could, I would wrap his weenie in bacon and let the dogs have their way with him.

I would do horrible things with electricity.

Anyway… in conclusion, there are no sexy pictures of a Russian beauty at this site. Only me, the biggest victim of all in this cruel hoax.

Defining Your Ultimate Superpower Statement

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Defining Your Ultimate Superpower

So now we come to the ONE THING you absolutely MUST do to become any kind of success online (or, even offline, for that matter).

Whether you’re a coach, a consultant, a blogger or a social media expert, it’s absolutely critical you define exactly who you are and who you’ll serve in your marketplace.

It’s important you clarify this definition and be sure enough about it that you’re not likely to change to your mind later.

Now, look… you CAN change it later if it’s not working out for you or you realize it’s not what you really want; but, trust me when I say spending a few extra hours or days on it will make life easier for you in the long run.

Anyway… I’ve found that the best way to define who you are and who you’ll serve is to create your Ultimate Superpower Statement.

The Ultimate Superpower Statement is kind of like a “mission statement” except it’s reduced to a single sentence.

It basically answers the question, “What do you do?”

But, instead of answering with something like, “I’m an online marketing coach,” or “I teach people how to make money online,” the Ultimate Superpower Statement has to be constructed in such a way that it will accomplish two very important things:

  1. It ATTRACTS the perfect client/customer/follower
  2. It REPELS the wrong client/customer/follower

Why is this so critical?

Because working with the right person is awesome for everyone involved whereas working with the wrong person, or with someone you cannot help, will almost always devolve into a living nightmare.

Yikes!

So, here’s a template I came up with to make it easy for you to create your Ultimate Superpower Statement:

I help [struggling audience segment] to [transformation process] so they can [desired result] without [undesirable action, aspect or fear]

I used this exact same template to design my own USS (which I’ll reveal later).

Anyway, it’s really just a simple matter of filling in the bracketed sections.

[struggling audience segment] = puppy owners

[transformation process] = potty training

[desired result] = live a happier life

[undesirable action, aspect or fear] = having to clean up stinky accidents

So, in this example, with a little smoothing, the statement becomes:

I help puppy owners to potty train their dogs so they can live a happier life without cleaning up stinky accidents

For my own USS, I came up with this after DAYS of contemplation:

[struggling audience segment] = people who spend their time working hard so someone else can get rich

[transformation process] = shift from employee to financially independent

[desired result] = live life on their own terms

[undesireable action, aspect or fear] = being forced to live by society’s life plan

I help hard-working people escape the soul-crushing 9-to-5 so they can live a life of freedom and happiness on their own terms

Notice that a lot of the details are implied. In other words, I simplified the statement by implying the various facets rather than writing them all out.

For example, I left out the part about “being forced to live by society’s life plan” because it’s implied by the statement, “on their own terms.”

Hopefully, that makes sense.

Anyway, before you set out on any life plan, whether it be starting a business or running a blog, make sure you define your Superpower Statement.

Take some time on this… don’t just throw something together. Make sure it’s where you want to position yourself for the foreseeable future and commit it to memory.

Once you define it, say it to yourself over-and-over until it’s second nature to use it as the answer to the question, “What do you do?”

This is who you are.

Blogging Essentials — Google Analytics

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Welcome to the greatest non-productive activity in the history of blogging: Google Analytics.

I call it Google Analytics for two reasons: one, because that’s the official name, and two, because Google has rejected my repeated suggestions to change it to something much more honest, such as Blogger’s Time Toilet.

Anyway… you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t planning on adding this highly addictive, yet necessary tool to your blog, so let’s get on with it.

Google Analytics will let you see how many people are visiting your blog and where they came from. You’ll also have the ability to run all sorts of other important data which we’ll get into in another post. For now, we’re just going to focus on the installation.

In a previous post I explained how to setup Google Webmaster Tools. That’s kind of important if you plan on showing up in Google’s organic search results and improving your ranking, so if  you haven’t followed along with me on that one yet you should probably go do it before you continue.

Alright, there are several ways to install GA on your blog. You can either use one of the many WordPress plugins available, or do it the right way and simply paste some code on your site and be finished with it in 10-minutes.

I know there are a lot of highly respected bloggers and experts out there singing the praises of their favorite plugin, but I am here to go against all of them.

In my book, any time you can reduce unnecessary bulk and load time to the backend of your site the better. Not to mention every one of these plugins grant 3rd-party access to your data. Also, a lot of them are feeding ads into your statistics.

Look… I know it’s convenient to see your stats right on your WordPress dashboard, but they don’t give you the full picture anyway.

As you can imagine, I’ll only be covering the manual installation of Google Analytics in this post. If you want to go the plugin route, go try and sift through the complicated, authentication process for your chosen plugin.

OK, the first thing you’ll need to do is have an active Gmail account. I know, it sucks they make you do that, but if you want access to everything Google offers, it’s a requirement.

If you have that, then the next step is to actually sign-up for Google Analytics.

Next, they’re going to put you through some basic questions about your site. They’ll want you to give your site an account name (which is how you’ll identify this particular site in GA), the name of your website, the web address and whether or not it’s a website or a mobile app (hint: it’s a website).

Click on the Get Tracking I.D. button and accept the service agreement.

If you’ve got all that finished it’s time to simply grab the code and paste it into your blog.

Since I use the Genesis Framework for my theme I have easy access to header and footer code placement (it’s at the bottom of the Genesis theme settings). If you’re not using a theme with that support, it’s a simple matter of downloading and installing the Insert Headers and Footers plugin.

Note that this is NOT one of the bulky, intrusive, GA plugins I mentioned before, this is a simple, light-weight plugin that won’t bog down your site one bit. All it does is make it easy for you to place code in the header and footer, and that’s what you’ll need to do to get Google Analytics to work.

Are you still with me? Good.

So, copy the code supplied by Google Analytics in the first box. Ignore everything else, it’s just there to confuse you.

Now, get into the backend of your WordPress site and paste that code into your “Header” box. You’ll find that in either the Genesis theme settings (if you’re using Genesis) or if you’re using the Headers and Footers plugin you’ll need to find the link in the left-hand sidebar.

Obviously, if you’re using some other theme supporting code placement, go there instead.

Click “save” and you’re done.

All that’s left now is to log into Google Analytics and check to make sure it’s recording your site’s visits.

Open another browser tab and go to your website then click back on the GA tab in your browser and take a look.

If everything is set, you should be able to click on Real-Time >> Overview and it should indicate the number of visitors on your site (which should be any number other than zero).

If you don’t see anyone there, make sure you’re actually on your site in another tab.

Well, that’s all there really is to installing Google Analytics on your site.

Good luck!

Blogging Essentials — Google Webmaster Tools

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One of the first things I like to do with a brand new WordPress site is setup Google Webmaster Tools.

This will give me access to the Google Search Console and allow me to monitor and maintain my position in the Google search results.

If you’re one of those people who set up a blog years ago but wonder why you don’t get any love from the search engines, this could definitely help you to find some answers.

If you’re about to setup a brand new blog, congratulations for finding this post, it could really get you off to a great start.

This isn’t necessarily the first step in setting up a new blog; there are plenty of other things you should do first (like knowing WHY you’re blogging in the first place), but I’ll be covering all that in a future step-by-step series.

Right now, this is where I’m at with THIS blog, so in the name of documenting my progress, here it is.

Where I’m at so far with the technical side…

  • I’ve got my domain name and hosting
  • I’ve manually installed WordPress (Using an “automatic” installer for WordPress is a bad idea–more about that in a future post).
  • I’ve chosen my theme (Genesis framework with the Metro Pro child theme)
  • I’ve arranged my layout
  • I’ve setup my categories properly (blog post coming)
  • I’ve installed the essential plugins (blog post coming)
  • I’ve setup my comments mechanism and tested it out (I went with Disqus this time — that’s a first for me)
  • I’ve written a few blog posts to make sure everything works

Now it’s time to get the back end lined up properly. I mentioned in a previous post that I’m not going to worry too much about search engine optimization aside from basic WordPress SEO.

Well, this is part of that basic WordPress SEO.

Setting Up Google Webmaster Tools

So, before I begin setting up Webmaster Tools I made sure I have the Google XML Sitemaps plugin installed.

Google Webmaster Tools setup is going to make you install it anyway, so instead of having to jump back and forth between your blog, the WordPress plugins page and GWT, just save yourself some stress and pre-install it.

I’m not going to worry about the sitemap settings for now… the default settings are good enough. I’ll tinker with that stuff later.

OK, time to go to login to Google Webmaster Tools and get things rolling. You can get there by following the link below:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/

I already have an account, so that part is done.

Next, click the big red “Add a Property” button in the upper right-hand side then fill out the form with your full web address like so:

 

That will take you to a screen with instructions on verifying your website.

GWT will then have you download a file to upload to your site. The only purpose of this file is to verify you have access to the backend of your blog and therefore are the legit owner or administrator.

You could also be a hacker who’s gained illegal access, but if that’s the case, why are you concerned so much about the Google Search Console?

Anyway… you’ll want to put the verification file into the Public_html folder. There are a couple ways to get it in there; you can either use the file access through your hosting’s control panel (my hosting company uses CPanel), or use a standalone FTP app.

If you’re using CPanel, here’s how to upload a file.

I use FileZilla and just navigate to the Public_html folder and then drag the file in there from my desktop.

OK, once we get the file in there click the link to make sure it was uploaded correctly (if you got everything right, it’ll just show the file name).

Then tick the “I’m not a Robot” box and verify your website.

If everything’s cool you should get a notification like this:

Now click the little blue “continue” link and you’ll be taken to your dashboard.

The first thing you should do is look for any security issues especially if you’re doing this on an older site.

Go along the left-hand sidebar and click the Security Issues link.

If there are any issues they will show up there. If you have some, you’re going to want to take care of them as soon as possible.

Mine came up clean, so I can move on.

My site is new, so there aren’t any crawl errors or search analytics to look at.

Right now, Webmaster Tools doesn’t know I have a sitemap, so I need to click the Sitemap tab and then the ADD/TEST SITEMAP button:

Give it the address of your sitemap. If you followed my advice and pre-installed the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, it will look something like this (but with your domain, of course):

Since I have pre-installed the XML Sitemaps plugin, I can skip the “submit” and go straight to “test.”

If you have success, click the “view results” button and make sure there are no errors.

All good? Good!

If you’re NOT good (meaning you’ve got errors), you’ll have to look up how to fix them. There’s just way too many possibilities for me to list everything here. Besides, I take each error as it comes up and I’m definitely no expert in that sort of thing.

Now… there’s one more thing we have to do before we’re done. It seems Google thinks you have TWO websites!

You have the “www” version and the “non-www” version. So, the next step is to get back to your Google Search Console dashboard and click the little gear icon in the upper right-hand side.

Choose “Site Settings” and you’ll be taken to a screen where you choose your preferred domain. It will look something like this:

In my case, it’s easy to choose; I just open up a new browser tab, type in my web address with the “www” and see if it redirects to the other version. In my case it did, so my preferred domain is going to be the default domain (which has no “www”).

If you tried this and it DIDN’T change, you should check the other version and see if THAT one redirects. If it doesn’t, then either go into your domain registrar and find out how to redirect to your preferred version (this should’ve already been done when you registered and setup your domain name, but just in case it hasn’t, there’s where you’ll fix that).

The reason you want to have everything redirect to a single version of your domain is because, as I said, Google treats each version as a separate website and when someone links to your site, only the linked version gets the juice.

Anyway, once you’ve figured out which version to use, tick the appropriate radio button and click “save.”

Congratulations! You’ve setup your Google Webmaster Tools console!

We will go through all the cool things you can do with this in future blog posts (such as how to improve your search engine rankings).

Right now we have to wait for Google to start processing our site–there’s no data to look at yet–so just make sure you’re clear on the errors.

In the next Blogging Essentials post, we’ll setup Google Analytics.

Hope you found this post useful. If so, share it with your friends.

Fox News is Reporting the World Will End on My Birthday

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According to a Fox News Science report, biblical numerologists are predicting the world will end on my birthday, September 23, 2017.

The story originates with Christian numerologist, David Meade, who is not in any way a crackpot.

Meade claims the recent solar eclipse and string of hurricanes are a clear sign the bible is lighting up at Luke 21:25 and 26:

“25: There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

“’26: Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.’

You can choose to ignore this if you want, but I think I remember “People will faint from terror!” as the exact headline I used on a birthday invitation I sent out for my 25th birthday party.

Anyway, this is not going to be some simple Rapture thingy where one minute you’re skipping across the crosswalk and the next you’re flying out of your clothes toward heaven.

Nope. Meade believes it’s the work of that merciless Planet X which is constantly hiding behind other planets waiting for its golden opportunity to destroy the earth:

Meade has built his theory on the so-called Planet X, which is also known as Nibiru, which he believes will pass Earth on Sept. 23, causing volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and earthquakes…

It could not be more clear. And, yet, NASA has the gall to repeatedly say Planet X is a hoax.

 

UPDATE 9-21-2017: THINGS JUST GOT SERIOUS

Wow! An actual EMERGENCY ALERT BROADCAST went out to TV viewers on Wednesday, Sept 20th predicting the end of the world.

Orange Country Register reported on the alert Thursday on their website.

I would post a link, but it’s hands down the most intrusive ad-ridden thing I’ve seen in years. I couldn’t even exit out of the ad to read the story on my phone–I had to fire up the computer to see it (and, even then they hijacked my screen).

Anyway, here’s a clip from the story:

Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest said she was watching the HGTV channel via Cox Communications about 11:05 a.m. when suddenly an emergency alert flashed across her screen followed by a voice.

“Realize this, extremely violent times will come,” a man’s voice boomed, according to a video of the alert.

Laflamme said she was alarmed.

“It almost sounded like Hitler talking,” she said. “It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.”

Channel 9 News in L.A. Reported it as well:

I’ll be spending Saturday with my wife and 2-year-old daughter. We’ll be visiting the library and the Temecula Valley Museum. If I see a planet crashing through the roof I’ll know what’s going on.

Party on, people.