One day after getting through one of the worst MYSQL database failures of my life, my work computer hard drive crashes.

It was a tough week to say the least.

It’s funny, the last time my hard drive crashed, I lost everything. I was devastated because I had to start over on so many projects, had so many lost photos, memories, documents, etc.

It was then that I went backup crazy. I got dropbox, carbonite, 4 external hard drives, and made sure that everything was always backed up. I also got a very expensive 15k rpm “tough” hard drive that is supposed to last longer than those cheap $50 hard drives you can buy anywhere.

You can probably understand that I was not too worried when that hard drive crashed. I had all those backups right?

My Carbonite Vs. Dropbox Experience

After I went and got a nice new solid state 256gb drive (soo excited to have a solid state finally), I reinstalled windows 7 and went about trying to recover all my data.

First thing was dropbox. Click, click. Installed and recovering all my data. I love it. So stinkin easy.

Next is carbonite. I install their software, and being the recovery process…

Recovering files with carbonite is like pulling teeth

• Anytime a file was remotely big (300mb+) Carbonite would completely stall. The entire restore process would be haulted.
• Anytime a folder had a lot of files in it, carbonite would completely stall. My music folder is not even 25% downloaded and it has stalled like 15 times.
• Anytime carbonite stalls, you must cancel the entire transfer and restart the transfer.
• I tried downloading the bigger files using their web interface thinking that it might be a program issue. No luck, their web login sessions are so short that you get logged out before you can download a 100+ mb file.

All in all, the entire carbonite backup system is awesome… until you actually need to restore any files. Seeing as I was paying $50 per month for carbonite pro, you’d think it would be so much better but it wasn’t.

Leaving Carbonite For Dropbox

After having all those issues, I decided to completely switch from carbonite to dropbox pro. I get 100gigs of space for less than $20 bucks per month, over 50% less than I was paying.

The only tricky part will be putting the files I normally used carbonite to backup, into my dropbox. Completely worth it in my opinion though.

What do you use as a backup solution?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Now that it’s actually Friday and in honor of the worlds worst best lyrics, please blast this music with the speakers on full.

This just goes to show, that marketing is not about being the best, having the best, or any combination of that… it’s about marketing to the correct audience and knowing how to connect with them.

Now, go check out the friday affiliate interview with Mike Pacheco from NDemand Affiliates (NDemand Affiliates on Affiliate Paying). It’s a great interview!

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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It’s getting crazy how many of these posts I have made now that my blog is like… 4 years old.

For my 24th bday, my wife surprised me by planning a two day mini-vacation to the city (San Francisco). We live just outside the city but don’t visit it nearly enough. Will write more about it later…

Time for bed. (Soo tired from all the walking)

Oh – and tell me all the cool FREE things I can get for my bday. Already getting my free starbucks coffee, free yogurtland yogurt, and possibly free japanese food. Give me more ideas! Gotta maximize the day. haha

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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This last affiliate summit I got completely owned. I mean, I did really poorly. Bad cards, bad plays, etc. I blame the fact that I was really tired (ok, I am making that up).

I was asking friends for tips and tricks when I found out my friend Neil Patel and his buddy Mike Kam launched their own Poker blog, Online Poker Low Down, with tips and tricks on becoming a poker pro.

It’s actually got some really great content so I figured that I would share it with those of you who also like playing poker and could use that extra advantage next time around.

Looking more into the site, it’s all about making a living playing poker, which is a pretty interesting concept. Regardless of whether you want to make it your living, it’s got great tips on bluffing, learning good strategies, etc. He even has a free ebook on learning to play heads up poker that was really good too.

If you’re into learning how to play a better game, subscribe to his feed – It’s nice getting those posts no fluff tips in my rss reader every couple days.

Now, let’s see how I do next time I play at DK’s Poker Tourney! I know my friend Chris Guthrie got third place at ASW… so he’s my target to take out next year.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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However cliche’ it is to make new years resolutions, I make them in my attempt to continually better how I do things.

This year, I have three main goals or “resolutions”:

1. Give, give, give… And then give some more
I strongly believe in the saying, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.” I believe the truly blessed lifestyle is giving. Giving to the church, to people, to the community, to the poor, to the hungry, etc. Some giving is monetary and some is your time.

It’s my goal; it’s my wife’s goal.

This is something I encourage EVERYONE, no matter the financial status, to do. I hear people say, “when I’m rich I will give.” The truth is, if you’re not able to give when you have less, you probably won’t give when you have more. That’s why, giving should start now, if you aren’t already.

2. Keep Better Accounting Records
Ok, I tweeted about this one.

It’s true – this is a tough one for me… I just want to make my life easier come tax season. That’s why I have adopted a scansnap + evernote account to digitally archive all my important receipts. It’s pretty legit. One button scan to evernote which then converts and OCR’s the receipts. Epic.

You can read more about it on THIS guest post I made on John Chow.

3. Enjoy life more

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in trying to run a business, pay all the bills, keep the savings account growing and forget to enjoy the process.

It’s easy for my personality to just want to work 24/7… and for the first couple years, I practically did. Now that I have been building a team of people around me, I plan to lean more on them to help me run things. In fact, in just 1 month, my employee, Jacob, will have worked for me for 2 years now. There’s no way I could be where I am now without his tremendous effort!

Besides all the freelancers we have a great relationship with, we are looking at the possibility of taking on an off-site intern and another full time employee! That should help things run even more smooth and continue our path towards internet awesomeness.

So, What are your new years resolutions?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Merry Christmas!

My wife made a hilarious jib jab for her blog with her, me and our dog, Oliver.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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*They gave me special powers*

This year I got an awesome set of Clicky shoes. Hahaha! Actually, they’re extremely comfortable. I’m going to keep them at my office so I can wear them during the cold days.

Thanks a ton Clickbooth and Thao! Always enjoy the thoughtful gifts.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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Every year I get bribes gifts from different networks as a thank you or as a way to entice me over to their network and I have to admit that I love it.

I always like to thank the different people who send me stuff by writing a post about them and giving them some link love. It’s the least I can do for those who went through the trouble to send me something.

Last year, Clickbooth took the cake with the most awesome gift. (Note: Eric and I are both drummers)

Each and every year I always receive a gift that does not have any name, message, or any identifiable way to know where it came from. Last year it was a Flip HD camera. The year before that was a nice gift basket.

This year, it happens to be a really tasty batch of Mrs. Fields cookies.

The cookies are so extremely good… I put them out when some friends came over to watch inception on blu ray and about half the cookies were eaten pretty quickly. Haha…

Anyways – whoever sent this, Thanks!

Hit me up so I can update this post with some link love.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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If you’re like me and love to play poker, then you MUST come to this tournament that is going on at the Mirage during Affiliate Summit West.

Think of this: Playing a very awesomely fun game with 100 other affiliates, affiliate network staff, advertisers, and traffic sources.

If you’re not the best at networking, this is a great event to attend and has been such a blast every time I have gone.

Check out this video:

Click here to register!

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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You should check it out.

Basically, if you’ve ever felt the crushing feeling of losing all your files, you’ll want to check this out. I guess you can saw I was inspired to write it after almost having my computer “blow up” the other day.

Enjoy!

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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