This is a guest post from Ayo Alaran, co-founder of
Paazi, a “shop & ship from America to Africa” company based in the US.
Secure online shopping is very possible but many people still fall victim to various online shopping scams such as phishing. Ensuring that your information is safe is a key ingredient to secure online shopping.
We suggest your taking the steps below to ensure the safety of your online shopping experience.
1. Avoid storing your debit or credit card information with any online merchant.
2. Assume that employees at the online merchant can and will see your password. Try to use different passwords for different merchants.
3. Make sure your password is strong. Try to use a password that has at least one of the following: small letter, capital letter, special characters (%$#!*@), and numbers. You can use this password meter to check the strength of your password.
4. Watch out for emails that claim you need to update your debit or credit card information. Unscrupulous people may be looking to steal your information through a method called phishing. Read More
I don’t know folks, but when a company gets acquired by a bigger one all hell breaks loose. I just hope this isn’t the case as I’ve been with Netfirms for years now, and seriously would like to continue with them.
Just got an email this morning with the following, you can just read it here already.
I only use Netfirms for domain management, tried their host sometime ago but wasn’t satisfied, it was horrible. I’ve continued to use Netfirms for domain management because of their platform (I love their proprietary management panel), setup of any sort is a breeze, dns management is so cool and makes it look like a child’s play, and their overall customer service is very responsive and helpful.
I just hope this continues with Endurance group or whatever.
If you use Netfirms, be sure to be on the look out during this their “transition period” as they termed it to avoid service disruption.
I usually do not tend to write techie stuff due to the type of readers I have on here, but in this case I’m going to make an exception as I tried to do this but couldn’t find any reasonable help on the internet.
As most of you already know, kloxo is a free alternative to Cpanel and DirectAdmin hosting control panels, and I make use of it for most of my vps hosting needs.
I needed to setup a wildcard dns for Kloxo to use with WordPress multisite for a project I’m working on, but sadly there wasn’t any readily help available, not even on the kloxo help forum.
After some tinkering I was able to solve this problem and have my setup working fine, but I had to quickly write this post instead of continuing with my work for many of the users who may be having same problem.
Here’s how I did it, very simple and straight forward: Read More
As you are probably aware, my blog runs on the thesis framework with straight shooter customization from the folks at thesisthemes.com.
While I’m glad that the former theme (straight shooter) really helped distinguish my blog design from the rest, I’d like to go back to the way it was when I started newly, bare and simple. I really like the way it is now as it gives way for quality content which we all want by the way. And it just looks cool!
I’d like to know what you think about this change. And happy new year by the way.
1. You’re there to simply sell, and nothing else. Forget about making a sale for a second, and just communicate, and have fun.
2. You don’t have a plan just like me. Create a marketing strategy, and no, this doesn’t have to be how you’re going to sell more products either. But how to successfully communicate your brand, grow a vibrant community that do nothing else but talk about you everywhere. Think of viral?
3. You’re not consistent, again just like me. Don’t let a day go by without tweeting or updating your page status on Facebook or whichever social media channels you’re on. It might just be what your followers are craving for all day. An update or tweet might just be what went down at the office or any funny encounter with a customer. Be creative about this, there are lots of things to talk about. Make it fun.
4. You’re still making this a one way communication. Listen to your followers/fans and respond appropriately. It’s about relationship, and you can’t build it without listening and responding.
5. You just don’t know what you’re doing on social media. You don’t even have a strategy, no game plan.
Is this you?
My mom hears me most of the time on phone talking about SEO (search engine optimization) to clients, and as a curious mother, she wanted to know what it was.
So I basically told her it’s a process of choosing appropriate and targeted Keyword phrases related to a website and ensuring they rank properly in the search engines. So that when someone is looking for an information or wants to buy something online, and they type that into the search engines, that website shows up in the search result.
And she was like, how do you do that? And then I went on to tell her that it consists of fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process.
And what are Meta tags, she asked? They are are just a way to descriptively inform the search engines what your website is all about when they come to inquire (index). You add these tags to the various areas on your website where the search engine will find them. Read More
Many people are of the opinion that we got nothing to celebrate about. Well, while that may be true, I think we still have one or two things to give glory to the almighty God for. That Nigeria is still in one piece means a lot to me, irrespective of what opinions others might have on this. That our democracy is still intact shows that there is still some sort of hope for us as a nation.
While we celebrate, let’s not forget the 15 kids that were kidnapped. We pray to God for their safe return.
Happy 50th anniversary to all Nigerians wherever you are, and I hope you show love to somebody today.
Cheers!
Now I don’t mean you should go off and start a “how to make money online” type of forum which I see everyday popping up here and there.
There are other untapped areas that need attention especially in Nigeria which nobody seems to be targeting.
Think of dating, romance, marriage, celebrity gossips, politics, health, self improvement, music, entertainment, TV shows, sports, and countless others which you probably have expertise in and know much about. Nobody seems to be covering these areas, the ones who manage to do pack everything into one forum.
Don’t build a “one size fits all” type of forum, target a specific niche or topic. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather join a forum where they discuss just “Home Theaters” instead of a general electronics forum, assuming I’m only interested in home theaters and of course provided the forum has the answers I’m looking for.
If you start a forum on just “dating” alone in Nigeria, you’ll have people jumping out of other popular and over-sized forums just to see what you have to offer. These small tightly focused niches are hungry for discussion. Why don’t you be the one to provide that? Read More
The sooner Clickbank realizes that most of their income come from legitimate and hardworking Nigerians, the better for all of us. That said, if you’re struggling with Graphcard’s US address system and their lousy customer support, then I’d recommend you try these other USA address options. But you must be earning first with your affiliate programs to avoid unnecessary waste of money.
1. Myus
This company offers a good mail forwarding service, they accept Nigerians and ship to Nigeria. They give you a real US address that’s solely yours. There are 3 subscription plans you can choose from, browse through and select one that’s most convenient for you. I’d recommend the premium + mail plan. Read More
I got an e-mail message from a distressed subscriber recently, I’m going to quote him below:
“guday david. how is your biz and your family? Dav, it is yet another set back to me . my savings account with 1st bank was totally emptied by the A T M fraudsters last week. i am presently with no money. please, if you can help me send life line. thanks
Now I seriously don’t know how he gave away his PIN/Banking details so easily, but…
…from my experience, these guys use email extractors to extract your email addresses from forums, social network and the various websites you visit which you must have probably used your email address to register on.
Now once they’ve gathered these email addresses, they go ahead to build a fake website which is called a phishing website. These websites usually have the look, feel and little functionality of the site they intend to impersonate. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s a completely hoax, but to my amazement people still fall for it which of course I wouldn’t blame them.
Here are some precautions to guard yourself from falling victim to these scumbags: Read More
