Peter Pollock's Blog, page 2

It’s OK to Make Money

Making money is OK. Really, it is. You can actually charge people for your time and talents. It’s OK!

Now, to some of you reading this, my opening paragraph will make you say, “Duh!”

I’m sure you’re thinking that, of course it’s OK to make money. We all need money and charging people for what you do for them is perfectly alright. In fact, some of you will be thinking that it’s no problem at all to charge people as much as you can squeeze out of them.

There’s a crowd of weirdo’s like me though wh...

Update – August 2014

Thank you all for your support in my efforts to become a writer. Things have been a little quiet around here lately, so I thought I’d give you a quick update as to why.

I have been BUSY. All kinds of busy, but good busy.

That last paragraph was probably some of the worst English I’ve ever written, but it gets the message across, which is all I care about at this point!

Since the release of Web Hosting For Dummies, I’ve had a number of companies contact me about doing work for them and have had f...

Remembering While We Still Can

Only two atomic bombs have ever been used in battle. Both were dropped by the USA, one on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and the other on Nagasakithree days later

The bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima was dropped by the Enola Gay aircraft and killed 140,000 people.

This week the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew passed away.

Crewmembers from airplanes in past wars die all the time. There are probably many thousands of planes whose entire crews are now dead, so why is it so notable that...

Why Make Images Smaller for the Web?

A question I’m often asked is, in this world of high speed internet connections and streaming video, does it matter anymore how big your pictures are on your website?

The answer is a resounding YES!

The size of the images you use affects:

Page load time
Processor usage
Bandwidth usage
And even SEO

While your internet connection may be lightning fast, there are still many people out there using much slower connections.

Some studies show that website visitors will click away if they have to wait any mo...

Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes…. What-a-bytes?

What’s the difference between a Kilobyte and a Gigabyte, and which one is bigger?

One of the things I see regularly is people struggling to work out what computer terms for memory size actually mean and how to tell what’s bigger and what’s smaller.

There are some simple rules to remember to make it easier to work out what’s what, but first, here’s a quick overview of how computer memory works.

Every piece of information you save on your computer takes some physical space to store. Computers oper...

A Quick Guide to SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a grossly misunderstood and feared art.

People tend to either think of it as all a big con, just nothing but smoke and mirrors or as one of the ancient dark arts with its roots dating back to the ancient Egyptians.

The truth is, it’s neither.

It is, however, both simple and highly complex at the same time!

To massively over-simplify SEO, you can describe it well with its very name. It is the art of optimising your website to be read and understood by search eng...

Fighting Fear is FREE Today!

Fighting Fear, the second book in the Fantastic Fieldtrips series is free today on Kindle!

I know, I know, we’ve just got over the Thanksgiving holiday with all the Black Friday shopping and everything.

I know also that it’s Cyber Monday today with all the online deals that brings.

So I know that you’re just about shopped out right now.

Why would I do a promotion today then?

Because you need a break, that’s why.

You need a break from researching the best deals and trying to nab the doorbusters befo...

Fighting Fear – Released Today!

It’s official, Fighting Fear, book 2 in the Fantastic Fieldtrips series is out today!

It has been a long time coming and We wanted to release it earlier this month but had various delays but we can finally announce that today, Friday November 22nd, 2013, Fighting Fear is finished and available for purchase.

To celebrate its release, we’re giving it away on Amazon Kindle free all day today, in all countries where Kindle books are available.

You DO NOT need to have a Kindle to get your free copy....

Reaching for the Stars

If you don’t aim for the stars, you’ll never get mooned… or something like that.

We’re reaching for the stars by applying for a grant to help us take a big leap forward in making web hosting easier for everyone to understand and use.

Chase Bank is giving an opportunity for all small businesses (like my own), to be considered for a $250,000 grant to expand and develop to reach their business goals.

If chosen, there are many things I would be able to do to promote and further my goal to help the m...

Time For You to Have Your Say!

We are nearing publication of my next book and don’t want to make the mistakes I made with my first self-published book so we’re trying to take things a little slower, despite my natural desire to rush headlong into it again!

Unlike A Very Different School, which was the first book in my Fantastic Fieldtrips series, we have an illustrator, Tyler Price, who is working hard on illustrations for the interior of the book as well as working with us to create a great front cover.

We really want to ge...