Financial Security Tips

When I think of security, the first thing that comes to mind is hackers online. I worry about compromised passwords, credit cards, accounts, and protecting servers. I already have several best practices to stay safe online to combat digital security.

Digital Security Tips

  • Unique passwords
  • Use a password manager (1Password, Lastpass)
  • Always enable Multi-factor authentication
  • Firewalls
  • VPN
  • Up-to-date software

When it comes to physical security, I already do the standard things like locking the doors, security cameras, etc. But for the most part, I did not worry much about being robbed. A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were hiking in the mountains. We parked in a safe parking lot for a short 2-mile hike. We were gone about an hour and returned to our car window broken and my wife’s purse and laptop stolen. We immediately called the police and credit card companies. Due to being in the mountains, cell phone service was poor, and it took a while to cancel everything. In the meantime, the thief had made it to the closest Walmart and bought over $2,000 worth of prepaid Visa cards. They were experienced and planned to get as much untraceable money before the cards were reported stolen. After countless hours on the phone with the bank, insurance, and police, I wanted to share some tips to help you in this situation. Read More

T.LY Affiliate Program

I’m a big fan of affiliate programs for the products I use and recommend. It’s a great way to make some extra cash if you have a popular website, a significant social media presence, or a large YouTube Channel. Some people earn a living just from affiliate programs! I’ve been using Amazon Affiliates since the creation of this blog, and it’s a win-win for bloggers and readers. Amazon Affiliates was how I made my first money online when my first post made over $500 in a few days back in 2015.

T.LY is one of the top link management platforms, and I just added an affiliate program to help grow awareness.

  • You can earn a 20% commission for every T.LY customer you refer for the first three months.
  • The cookie will last for 60 days. As long as your referrals come back within those 60 days and convert to a paying account, you’ll still earn the revenue on that sale.
  • We have an affiliate dashboard where you can view your total visitors, leads, and conversions. You’ll also be able to see how much commission you’ve earned.
  • You will be notified, by email, whenever you earn a new commission. The payments will be made monthly through PayPal.

Read More

Subdomain or Subfolder for Blog?

When deciding if a blog for T.LY link shortener, should be on a separate domain, I reached out to IndieHackers to get their opinion. I originally was going to use my tdotly.com domain for the blog and marketing site but decided to just use blog.t.ly and /blog redirects on T.LY from all the feedback. This is primarily for SEO reasons to consolidate authority to a single domain. Google claims that sub-domains are not worst/better compared to a subfolder if this is easier for your server setup. Just make sure you add both sites to Google Search Console. Read More

Has Everything Already Been Invented?

There is a famous quote “Everything that can be invented has been invented” believed to be by Charles H. Duell a commissioner of US patent office from 1889. Even though this quote is not accurate, it shows that many people believe the best inventions already exist. Of course, we know today this is not true. Think of the many inventions created in the past 30 years from technology to medical advances.

It is true that new ideas are hard to come by. I often find myself asking, “Why didn’t I think of that?” It seems that all my “good” ideas are already taken. The key is to remember that there may not be many new ideas, but that you can always improve existing products, apps, etc.