OIOPublisher is the best solution for bloggers trying to sell direct advertising. Before this awesome piece of software came along, I would always recommend new bloggers use 3rd party ad networks instead of selling ads directly because you need to concentrate on producing content when you’re starting out.

What OIOPublisher automates the ad buying process so you can concentrate on blogging instead of selling. By using OIOPublisher, advertisers can order, pay for and upload their ads directly to your blog. The only thing you have to do is approve the ad. If you get a sale, then great! If not, then OIOPublisher will run ads from the ad networks or your own house ads until you do. Some of the other features include:

• Possible to integrate the ad platform with any website that uses PHP
• Purchase / account pages are now templated, editable within the admin area
• Text links are now controlled via zones (like banner ads)
• Works with PayPal and PayPal Subscription
• Full javascript ad display support
• Entrecard Payment option integrated

The software will work on any website that use PHP. Wordpress users get an easy to install plugin. OIOPublisher Direct sells for $47 and is worth every penny. However, I have two copies to give away.

How To Enter

To enter for a chance to win one of two copies of OIOPublisher Direct, simply reply to this post. It doesn’t get easier than that! You only need to reply once. Replying multiple times won’t get you more entries. However, if you blog about this contest and link to this post, I’ll give you five more entries. I give you three more entries if you send the following tweet to your followers.

Win a copy of OIOPublisher Direct from @JohnChowDotCom. It automates ad sales for your blog. Enter here! http://xr.com/lnf

The contest deadline is Friday, January 30. The winners will be drawn on Saturday, January 31 at Dot Com Pho. Good luck and enter now!

Download OIOPublisher Direct

Marinepolis Sushi Land is an eleven store sushi chain with locations in Washington and Oregon State. Whenever I’m down in the Seattle area, I make a point to hit up Sushi Land for lunch or dinner. If you go there for lunch, expect to wait because the place is always packed. Dinner time is generally less pack because Sushi Land caters to the lunchtime business crowd.

Sushi Land is very much like the Japanese version of the American diner. It’s a place to get good food at very reasonable price. All the sushi are placed on a belt with multicolor plates. The color of the plate tells you the price of the sushi. Take as many plates as you want. When you’re finished, add it all up and pay the bill.

Normally a trip to Sushi Land is a very pleasant experience. However, this time, we had to drive through a snow storm to get there. That wasn’t fun at all. I tell ya, the lengths I go through to get some good sushi!

Many years ago, I used to run my sites out of an office building in an industrial part of Richmond. There were two other tenants in the building. One was an auto repair shop. The other was a drug dealer who used his unit to make illegal substances. He was eventually busted after a month long police sting operation. I thought that was hilarious because the previous tenant was a marijuana grow op.

The laugh ended when the landlord informed me that I would have to leave or be evicted. It seem he thought I was a drug dealer as well because I had associated with the dealer and my lifestyle seem to mirror his. I wouldn’t show up to the office until around noon and the first thing I did was go for lunch. I used the office more as a hang out than anything else. The sign on the door read “By Appointment Only” but there was no phone number listed anywhere for people to call. Of course, I wasn’t a drug dealer but that didn’t seem to matter to the landlord. I was guilty by association.

You Are Who You Associate With

Have you ever noticed that successful people hang around other successful people? Birds of feather really do flock together. If you’re a jock, then chances are most of your friends are jocks as well. If you’re nerd, then you hang around other nerds, If you’re broke, then chances are you don’t have many rich friends. This is not by accident. This is the Law of Attraction at work. You attract to you what you are.

One of the reasons many commentators disagree with my Never Live On Cash post is because of the power of association. The commentators asked me how many people I know who never run a Credit Card balance? The answer is everyone I know. I hang around financially responsible people who know the difference between good debt and bad debt. I don’t hang around people who are financially irresponsible. The people you hang with affects your reality. I had assumed that everyone pays off their Credit Cards because all my friends do that. However, others assume most don’t pay off the balance because none of their friends do.

The power of association is extremely powerful in the way it dictates who you are and how much money you make. If you want to change yourself or you lifestyle, then quite often, it will require you to change the circle of people you associate with.

Are Your Friends Keeping You Down?

It is said that you are the average of the five people you hang out with most. Take a look at your five closest friends. If they are not where you want to be, then it may be time to find five new people who are.

Dumping friends because they’re not where you want to be may seem cold but one of the biggest barriers to success is quite often the people you hang around with. They laugh at your crazy dreams and say you’re wasting time trying to be a big money blogger. More often than not, you’ll let your friends keep you down because of peer pressure and the desire for acceptance. However, If you want to break out of the rat race, then you may need to stop spending so much time with your current buddies and start associating with people who have the same dreams and goals as you.

The truth of the matter is, you’re not really leaving your friends. More often than not, it will be your friends who will leave you. As you move up the ladder of success, your old friends will no longer be able to relate to you. There will also be the jealousy factor as well.

In order to continue climbing the ladder of success, I make sure I associate with other successful people. I thought I was doing well when I was making $10,000 per month. Then I started associating with people like Shoemoney and Neil Patel. Now, I can’t imagine living on only $10K per month. If you aspired to be more than what your friends want to achieve, then you’re going to have to find others at your level or above and start associating with them. Birds of feather flock together. Success breeds success. This is why the rich get richer. If you want to become rich, you need to hang with the rich.

Perception is 9/10 Reality

I wasn’t a drug dealer. But because my landlord saw me associating with a drug dealer, I got branded a drug dealer. Perception is a really powerful thing. For a politician, perception is reality. For the rest of us, perception is 9/10 reality.

Just by hanging around successful people, you are perceived as a successful yourself. This is based on the birds of feather flock together mentality. It is perceived that the rich don’t hang out with the poor and vica verse. If you associate with successful people, you are perceived as successful even if you’re not. The cool thing about this perception is it can manifest into reality. Hang around successful people long enough and you’ll become one of them.

Success Is A Team Effort

Success really is a team effort. No man or woman has ever done it alone. Sure, it may seem like it sometimes. But I assure you, anyone who have achieved success had a supporting cast. Like it or not, the people you hang with is your supporting cast. They will either keep you down or lift you up. If they’re keeping you down, then it may be time to find a new supporting cast.

My advice. Don’t associate with a drug dealer.

Dot Com Pho returns to Pho Vancouver (AKA Happy Pho) on Main and King Edwards for the first Pho of 2009. We had a full house of 15 people braving the snow to meet up at the happiest Pho restaurant in the world. It was great to see so many make it out to the weekly Pho fest. Anyone is welcome to join us for Dot Com Pho. Follow me on Twitter to find out the time and location of the next one.

For the first Dot Com Pho of 2009, we have another Dot Com Pho commercial, Pho menu #L3, the gadget of the week, iPhone app of the week, trying to learn mandarin, the night before CES party, the biggest Twitter shout out to date (43 shouts!) plus a whole lot more.

This week’s Dot Com Pho was sponsored by Market Leverage, filmed with a Flip Mino digital camcorder and edited with iMovie 08 on the MacBook Pro. See you next week!

Many people may consider this a minor issue but from a branding and professionalism level, making sure your blog has the correct year on the copyright notice is very important. Now that we’re in 2009, it’s time to update that notice.

For most bloggers, this is a fairly simple task of logging onto the blog server and editing the footer.php file. The problem is, because this is done only once per year, many bloggers will forget to do it. However, there is a simple way to make the copyright notice update automatically.

All you have to do is FTP into your blog and open the footer.php file. Find the part with the copyright notice and replace it with the following.

Copyright &copy; <?php echo date(’Y'); ?> Blog Name

Instead of hard coding 2009 into the copyright notice, you replace it with <?php echo date(’Y'); ?>, which will automatically pull in the year from your server. Hopefully, your server is showing right year. If not, you’ll have to get your admin or web host to adjust the time. In my case, I like to do my copyright from the year the blog started. The code will look like this.

Copyright &copy; 2005 - <?php echo date(’Y'); ?> John Chow, Inc.

Now, instead of trying to remember to update the copyright notice at the start of every year, the blog will do it automatically. That is, as long as the clock on the server is correct.