Answers for Cathy

> 1.Downloading books: I'm on dial up and there is no way I can download
> large files like that (I live in a rural area...so there is no way I'll
> get cable out here). IS there another way to do this? I was toying with
> going to a friends house and using their high speed to save to a disk.
> What do you think?

You might be surprised at how small some of the files at Project Gutenberg are. Most of the books I download are between 50K and 100K in the Zip format. Even large books that run 700+ pages in print are less than a megabyte when zipped. If PG seems slow it's probably because their server is busy.

That said, if you wanted to use someone's high speed connection to download and burn to disk, you could probably fit nearly a thousand books on one disk. :)

> 2.Conversionary program you wrote. I am very interested in this because I
> want to get into this area very much...but I don't know html at all and it
> looks like you need to know this to use your program. Any ideas there (I
> know I need to learn html but just haven't had the time yet to do that.
> Its on my list).

You do need a little familiarity with HTML, but if you've already got a website designed, I'm fairly confident that most people would be able to place the few tags that are required to use it.

>Also is your program only for putting the info for free
> on your website because I'd also like to, for some public domain stuff,
> re-package in an ebook to sell.

I've only ever used it for website content, but now that you mention it, Conversionary should work wonderfully with all those Windows ebook compilers that convert HTML to EXE. That's something I'll have to experiment with myself.

> 3.How is link management program used? What do you use this for. Again I
> looked at it but wasn't sure what it exactly did (again the lingo problem)

Link Management Assistant is a script that 1) allows you to import a huge directory of topical links (from Dmoz.org) and 2) lets you encourage and manage reciprocal links to your site without much effort.

It is a little intimidating the first time you install it, but it gets better with practice :)

I believe Margaret is working on a more detailed tutorial than I offered. Having installed it so many times I could do it in my sleep, I think I'm probably not the best person to offer a how-to, since I'd miss so many of the details and potential pitfalls.

> 4. What is the purpose of your blog. You said you link all your new sites
> there....do you make any money from your blog or is it more of a mechanism
> to get more traffic/exposure?

Going to blogs is kind of like being invited to an acquaintance's house for coffee. A number of different things can happen:

a) you can end up talking about nothing in particular
b) you might end up listening to them rant about their pet peeves
c) they might want to show you their new tools, toys or (heaven forbid) vacation photos

...or the dreaded...

d) you could find yourself hoodwinked into an Amway prsentation

I think you can see parallels to most blog types.

Mine's mostly a 'c'. I find that not only is it more fun to blog that way, but if I want to pitch a product, sales come much easier when you blog "look at all the cool things I can do with my new toy" rather than using hype or a sales pitch.

My blog is a personal playground, a place to presell products and services I use and like, as well as a quick way to get my other sites indexed. I'll admit the blog is not a huge money maker, most months making less than $250 in adsense and affiliate commissions combined.

> 5.Gutenburg as well as other sites mention that you need unix server,
> 1mysq1 database or php4.0 to use their programs or download info. What is
> this and how do I get it. I have windows XP.

You're probably looking at their mirroring information. Just browse through the catalog, find books you're interested in, and scroll down that page to the download section to choose the option that says :
[Plain text iso-8859-1 zip]

The files are just plain text, so they require no special hardware or software at all.

> 6. Do you submit your websites or do you let them just get spidered by way
> of your links with your other websites and your blogs?

Usually I just link to it and let the spiders find it themselves. I keep an eye on the stats, and if one of the major three (google,yahoo and msn) hasn't spidered after about 10 days, I submit to that one manually.
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