For Free?

Sure, who doesn’t. Where will you get it?

You could just write it yourself, of course. That’s what many of us do, with varying degrees of success. Let me suggest another way that might give you some inspiration.

Steal a headline from a magazine.

Ok, I’m not actually suggesting that you really steal a headline, but you can certainly allow a good one to inspire you. Magazines and newspapers have some amazing headlines. They have to do, to get people’s attention and make them buy.

Just think about the last time you stood in line at the supermarket checkout. Did you scan the magazines? If you did, I bet 1 or 2 made you want to know more, didn’t they? Have you ever picked one up to keep reading and see what the whole story was about?

That copywriter just earned his pay. He got you to take action.

You’ll see some excellent examples of headlines and if you study them you’ll begin to see a formula. You can use that formula, or pattern, for your own headlines in almost any niche you care to imagine.

What if you can’t afford to buy dozens of magazines to study? You can’t very well spend all day in the checkout queue, can you? Your local newsstand vendor may be unhappy if you stand there reading without buying, too.

I recently addressed this question in a comment I made on another blog. I realized my comment may be of use to my visitors so I’m repeating it here.

…surprisingly, using print magazines as a source of inspiration for headlines is still not widely known.

It’s very surprising considering that most of us will read a magazine or newspaper at least a few times every month - even if it’s only while we stand in line at the supermarket checkout desk!

Magazines have been honing their skills in headline creation for a long time and frankly they do a better job than a lot of the so-called gurus out there.

I agree with you completely. They are a good source for your swipe file. You don’t even have to buy the magazines. Many dentists and doctors get rid of older magazines every so often and they’re happy for somebody to take them away.

Just because a magazine is a few months old doesn’t mean the headline is no good. In fact, if you collect them over a period of time you’ll see the same formula used over and over again.

As some people say, ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’.

The copywriters who work for magazines and newspapers are real experts - let them help you write your headlines.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on buying magazines you should be able to get a good selection free from your local doctor’s office. Just ask!

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The particular post is about setting yourself up for success, so if you already earn a huge amount it might not be for you. But for everyone who would like to do better in the next 90 days than they have in the last 90 days, it’s a great piece.

I won’t repeat the information here - I think you should visit this blog to read it in full. I thin the biggest piece of advice is to focus on doing one thing over and over. Don’t dilute your efforts by darting around like a butterfly all over the place.

Let’s be honest, it’s easy to fall into that bad habit, but it’s generally a real killer to success.

Have a look at the blog post and let me know what you thought of it. If you have any questions about it add them here and let’s see if we can expand on the advice given.

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It occurred to me that many people may not be aware that most good hosting accounts usually come with some kind of stats package. Used properly, it can give you all kinds of valuable information about how your site is doing, what you might do to improve it and what’s working well.

For anyone wanting to improve their site, or blog, that’s fantastic information.

I’ve created a very short video to show how to get to the stats package if you have CPanel. CPanel is available on so many different hosting packages that there’s a good chance you’ll have it on yours.

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I’ve been promising myself a new look for ages, but never got around to it. I’ve bought a blog theme that I like and realized that with the content I currently have my blog doesn’t look as good as it might. The problem is that if I wait until I think it looks fine then it will almost be time to change it again.

So I’ve decided to activate the new theme and start working on it, even though for a while it could make my blog lookg messy. Hence the apology.

The one thing I’ve learned in this life is that if you wait for something to be perfect before you do it then you’ll never do it - so take the first step and work out kinks as you go.

EDIT: Well, after 30 minutes of tweaking, I’ve taken out most of the bits I didn’t like from this theme and I’ve customized it to my liking. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and just haven’t got around to it. Yet when it came to do the actual customizing it didn’t take long at all.

How many times do you put something off that might actually be fairly quick to complete?

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Well, Robert Plank has a blog that I enjoy reading and I often drop by, make a comment and think nothing of it.

A few days ago, 23rd July to be exact, I left a comment about Robert’s latest question. He’s wondering whether to ditch Clickbank since they’ve given him a hard time, apparently. There doesn’t seem to be much of a reason why they’ve done that and he’s, quite rightly, very annoyed about it.

He’s considering using PayDotCom and I made an opening remark about it before making some other suggestions.  Seems that Mike Filsaime didn’t like my comments and he told me off in a comment he posted on the same blog entry.

Now, everyone has the right to an opinion and the fact his is different to mine is no problem. But here’s the thing: if you’re a big marketer with thousands of new customers joining you every day, do you really need to be sarcastic to one of your customers if you don’t agree with him?

What do you think? How would you feel if I were sarcastic to you because I don’t agree with your point of view?

It’s an over-reaction on his part, it seems to me, because if I’m wrong in what I said he can simply point out the facts as he sees them. Which he did. But doesn’t it seem a bit overly defensive, or just plain rude and aggressive, to be personally sarcastic? That’s certainly how his comments came across to me.

Anyway, whether he was right in what he said, or he was rude with no good cause, it doesn’t touch the fact that I see complaints about Clickbank and PayDotCom. And right now I don’t see a huge difference between them. I certainly earn money from both of them so I have no intention of abandoning either one any time soon.

But I do wonder why any very successful marketer would need to go straight to sarcasm when they could, instead, do a wonderful job of putting their case just by being very professional.

I’ve asked Mike that in the original blog post. I’m looking forward to seeing his reply because I really love getting my commissions earned via PayDotCom every month - and I stick up for them when I see some of the complaints that people make!

Have any big time marketers attacked you personally? What about small-time marketers? I’d love to hear your comments.

EDIT: please read the comments to this post because I think I took Mike’s comments more to heart than I should have done. I suppose when a very big name appears to have a go it can be a bit disconcerting.

It also shows why you should think before you post anything. My reply to Mike Filsaime is permanently out there for all to see. In hindsight I don’t believe my reply was the best example of how I think and what I believe. As such I don’t believe it’s the best advert for me. Too late to do much about that reply now, beyond being brutally open here.

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PLR stands for private label rights. That means you can put your own name on the article, or ebook, and get the benefit of it.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Somebody else does the work and you get the credit - and sales. But there are some pitfalls for the unwary. I’ve written a guest blog at Frank Haywood’s blog addressing the whole question and showing a technique for overcoming a couple of the pitfalls. I won’t repeat it all here because you can read it in full on Frank’s blog.

To show you exactly how easy it is to follow the technique I’ve created a short video which you can watch here. I worked slowly on the video so you can see everything.Using this technique you can make your plr material unique.

If I’d just been doing this for real it would have taken far less than 4 minutes. You’ll understand what I mean when you’ve seen the whole video, but please read the article first! You won’t get the video until you’ve read my article over at www.frankhaywood.com

UPDATED 20 July 2008: I read some of the comments on my guest blog post. One of them said it all for me. I’ve repeated part of it here, but you need to read the full post and comments to get it in context.

I’ve always thought that editing plr you should do it al at once, hence I’ve never touched any of my plr.

That is exactly why I have suggested a technique for overcoming that problem. Read the guest post and you’ll see what I mean.

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Why is it so hard?

Well, actually, some people have an instinct for it and find it easy, but for most of us it’s work. The traditional advice - and it’s good advice - is to search for a hungry marketplace first and then look for a product you can sell into that marketplace. If you have hungry buyers then promoting a product should make you more money.

Great. Except that’s hard to do for most people. That’s because the steps go something like this:

1. Think of a niche you’d like to be involved in
2. Think up a list of of keywords related to that niche
3. For each keyword, check how many times it gets searched
4. Check how much competition each keyword has by doing a Google search
5. Check the top 10 websites returned by Google for that keyword
6. Analyze the onpage SEO and linking strategies of those websites
7. Go back to 3 until you’ve finished all the keywords
8. Now check all the keywords related to your original list of keywords and start back at 3
9. If you have time, eat something, take a headache pill and continue
10. Discard any keywords/niches that have too much competition, not enough competition(!), not enough search volume, or has no hungry market wanting to buy

The list is bigger than that, but 10 items are enough to give you the idea!

So how can you avoid some of that work?

I recommend that you sign up to Clickbank and take some time looking through their marketplace. Decide what subjects you would like to write about. Then find a couple of great products with affiliate programs to promote in your resource box at the end of the article.

Clickbank will give you all kinds of information about how popular the product is. You don’t have to do all that exhausting traditional keyword research just to find a product to promote. You only need to do a fairly small amount of research.

Next, you spend a little time looking for keywords to use in your articles by using the free tools listed below.

This is not the exhausting analysis you have to do the traditional way. This is picking out between 5 and 10 keywords that relate directly to the product you’re going to promote. You already know the niche and the product, so it’s a lot easier and faster. And the really good products to promote often give you ready made keyword lists as a starting point.

Notice I said starting point. Everybody is going to get that keyword list so how much competition do you think you’ll have if you use it without doing any work? You’ll have tons of competition.

What you’re looking for is a list of keywords that have reasonable search volume, but not too much competition. Reasonable search volume can be as low as 30 searches a day. That’s still potentially 1,000 visitors a month for you. Multiply that by the 5 or 10 keywords you choose and you’ve got potentially 10,000 visitors a month. Even with a lousy ratio of buyers to visitors you’re likely to make some sales with that kind of volume.

The exact number you’ll need for ‘reasonable’ search volume will depend on what you’re trying to achieve, what you’re promoting and the niche you’re in. But as a general rule you will face much more competition for keywords with very high search volume. Everybody is after a slice of that pie.

Keyword Building Tools

Here is a list of resources for finding great keywords:

There is a fantastic free keyword suggestion tool at

http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/

It will give you estimated daily search counts in the top search engines, a link to the Google trends for the keyword, links to the competition results on the search engines. As the first place to start looking it’s a great resource. There’s so much information on the page that you might not even know where to start looking. Just click and experiment. You’ll easily pick up how it works.

Google Suggest - what can I say about this? It’s just very cool. As you start typing it will come up with a drop-down list of words that fit what you’ve typed so far. Type weig for example and you’ll get keywords relating to weight loss. Not only that, but you’ll get the number of search results for each keyword. That’s your competition figure right there!

Google Suggest

Top word is a free tool that analyzes a complete web page and gives you a count of the key words and keyword phrases. It is also great for analyzing your meta tag descriptions, keywords and title tags. This tool is great for checking your optimization so you can make changes to your page that need to be made.

It’s actually meant for checking your web pages so you can improve them. But there’s nothing stopping you from analysing your competition to get some ideas about what they’ve done!

Topword Tool

The other articles in this series are password protected and only for my subscribers. If you’d like to read the rest of this series just sign up - the form is over on the top right of your screen.

DISCLAIMER: All information is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a guarantee of any income whatsoever. Whether you learn how to make income by promoting with articles is completely up to you and the amount of effort you put into your business. We make no warranty, express or implied, regarding your individual

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It’s a nice way to let other visitors know who’s been here and it’s a very good way of getting traffic from other blogs. If you visit blogs in your niche regularly, every day if you can, your image will appear together with a link to your site. if you visit enough blogs your face could become quite well known!

Anyway, if you don’t already have a MyBlogLog account it won’t work, so you won’t see yourself in the widget. You can get your free account at MyBlogLog.

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Traffic is the lifeblood of any website. And it’s also something that everybody with a website wants more of. It is, in fact, something every website owner needs.

You can read my short series on traffic generation, starting tomorrow. For this series I’m going to offer some valuable information, but I’m not going to make it publicly accessible. It will only be accessible to anyone who is signed up to my list. I’ll send a password out tomorrow so you can access the posts.

There are dozens of ways to get more traffic to your website. Actually, there are probably hundreds, but one of the most popular ways is also free and that’s what I’m going to be concentrating on.

So why not make it publicly available? Well, I did think about that, but I want to offer something just to my existing subscribers. Of course, since the series doesn’t start until tomorrow there is time for new people to become subscribers too.  At the end of the series there may be a surprise or two, but I’m keeping that under wraps for now.

Please note that this free training series is not for experienced marketers already pulling down thousands of dollars a week - I won’t insult your intelligence. It’s really for beginners and people just finding their feet a little bit.

So sign up now - the signup box is just over on the right under my picture - and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Often, we look to buy solutions when we have the tools sitting unused on our machines.

Over on the Warrior Forum there was a question about making a screenshot with some graphic effects. A lot of people buy expensive products to do that, but there is a way to do it that is totally free.

You simply take a screenshot using the PrtScn key on your keyboard (might be labelled Print Screen) and then you open up MS Paint (it comes with Windows). Do a paste from the EDIT menu and your screenshot appears.

Voila! Now annotate, or mark up to your heart’s content.

This video clip shows you what I mean.

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I made a reply on the forum, but as I was doing so it occurred to me that the person asking might usefully find it easier to watch what a ‘layer’ is in Dreamweaver, rather than have it explained. Sometimes, seeing 5 seconds of something can replace minutes of reading.

To make it easy to show the video I’m using this blog because it has audio and video facilities built in.

Here it is:

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The reason is simple: You’re doing something wrong. Now, I don’t know what it is that you’re doing wrong. You’ll have to find that out for yourself. But I can safely say that you are doing at least one thing wrong.

This was brought home to me today by something totally unrelated to internet marketing. Let me explain.

I’ve been able to swim for about 40 years. I’m not a very good swimmer, but I can swim. Thanks largely to the internet lifestyle I now have a pool at my home and I have the time to use it whenever I want.  Trouble is I don’t really want to use it much because I’m not that good a swimmer.

But today we had guests over so we all took a splash. My brother asked me how to do the breast stroke. I gave him an answer.

“Wrong answer”, came the voice next to me - my wife.  Turns out that the way I swim the breast stroke is wrong, ineffecient and just plain hard work. After a very, very short explanation on the right way I tried it. Now I’ve never been told this before, even after 20 years of marriage and 40 years of swimming. And I never went looking for the answer, either.

Ok, so this isn’t life-changing, but my swimming speed went up about 70%, maybe more, and the ease of swimming definitely improved immediately. I was pretty astonished. For 40 years I’ve been doing it wrong and because I could swim I thought I was doing it right. I hadn’t considered that just being able to do something doesn’t mean you’ve found the best way to do it.

So here’s how it impacts on internet marketing. You learn a technique and you apply it. Does it still work today? Does it need a change? Are you doing it right?

These are questions you can only answer if you bother to ask them in the first place. And once you do ask them you have to commit to acting on the answers. You see nothing stands still. So whatever you’re doing, especially if you’ve been doing it for a while, might be less than optimal. At the very least you should ask the question.

If you find that you’re already doing it the best way, keep doing it!

But, if you find there is room for improvement, will you make that improvement and reap the benefits?

Nobody learns something once in this industry and then never has to learn again. Change is a given and I’m afraid the effort of constant learning is the price you must expect to pay to keep up. That effort will reward you many times over.

What process do you take for granted in your internet marketing business?

Will you take a close look at it to see where you can improve?

Me? I’ve spent 4 hours in my pool today (try doing that with a J.O.B.) and I’ve now got sunburn - but that’s another story!

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What do you want?

And I don’t mean that in the ‘what do you want out of life?’ way. I mean it literally. What do you want right now?

Once I know what you want, I can provide it for you. The main thing is that you get to shape what that will be by contributing. Just add a comment and let me know what you really want. If it’s within my power to provide it, or go out and get it for you and then provide it, I will.

Fair enough?

And in addition to that I’ll credit everyone who comments with a live link on the next site I put up to handle the download of whatever it is people want. Of course there are some provisos: I’m not going to provide links to gambling and adult sites, or anything that is in the least bit questionable.

If it turns out that what everyone wants is something that has resale rights, I’ll offer those for free (if it’s legal to do so) to the first person who commented and suggested it. Not the first person to post a comment, but the first person to suggest whatever ‘it’ turns out to be.

Let me know what you think, even if you don’t ‘want’ anything right now.

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How would you like some of the best copywriters around to help you out? I certainly would.

That’s why I was delighted to find this blog post over on John Ritskowitz’s blog today. It has a single great tip and even though it could potentially help my competition, I’m really pleased to share it here with you.

Take a look at his blog entry here.

Frankly, this is something that I had never thought of. It’s brilliant in its simplicity.

I’m not a salesman - I’m more of an educator, but my brother is a very good face to face salesman so I’m going to ask him to go through this exercise for me for a couple of my products to see what we come up with.

Sometimes you can pick up good ideas for nothing. When you do, I think it’s a good idea to jump on them and test them out as fast as you can. Why don’t you try the technique John talks about in his blog on your next salespage?

Oh, one other thing: his comments on that post are already shaping up to offer even more advice so I’d definitely recommend taking a look.

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They spend millions of dollars on promotion and publicity and almost everyone on the planet gets to see some of their output at some point.

As internet marketers, we would do well to study how they market new products, recycle old products (’Anniversary Edition, Limited Edition…’) and make you feel like you’re part of their loop.

Individual stars appear to do it effortlessly and so many of us feel we know them, just from seeing them on the big screen a few times. Isn’t it true that you have a favorite actor, or actress? Aren’t there some actors you just don’t like - for whatever reason?

I ponder this point in an article I wrote a while back. You can view the entire article over at Ezinearticles if you want to find out the full details of the lesson I draw from the experience.

But here’s a small taster:

Now I happen to love Julia Roberts - she’s a great actress and I always enjoy her films. And let’s be honest, she’s very pretty. So when I saw what looked like her blonde twin I immediately felt that I would enjoy the film.

That’s not actually logical, because I’ve never seen this actress before, but my emotional response was exactly the same as if it had been Julia Roberts. I guess, if you want an explanation, that the part of my brain that recognizes faces kicked in and sent a message to my anticipation center that Julia Roberts was in the house - so to speak.

When the actress spoke she also sounded like Julia Roberts so that made the connection even more. In the end I had a very good time watching the film, it was thoroughly enjoyable and a good time was had by all the family.

At the end of the film I got to thinking how really good marketers use the same phenomenon to make more sales. Let me explain…

If you think of this in the context of all the big launches that have happened recently you’ll be able to see how they’ve used this phenomenon to reach into your pocket. The phenomenon is likely to increase over the next 12 months as savvy marketers pick up on the fact that it works. Smart marketers are already doing it, but new people are joining the ranks of the ‘friend of a friend’ every day.

This is your chance to use the power of relationship to improve how you interact with your visitors, subscribers and customers. When they see your name, what memories and associations do you want them to have? Because if you’re not controlling how they see you, who is?

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I’m about to launch a viral marketing campaign to test that particular question and, hopefully, to launch a couple of my newest products faster than just putting them out there and ‘hoping’.

As results come in I’ll report on the success of the campaign and let you know what I discover. I don’t want to mention the products here, but they’re in a niche that is fairly crowded so if viral marketing really does work it should provide me with some good results and fast.

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If you work at home, as so many people do these days, whether it’s internet marketing, or answering telephone calls for a call center, it can be very difficult to maintain a positive attitude and stay motivated. Especially if you work alone.

Not everyone is totally suited to working completely alone and instant messenger systems are no substitute for real human contact.

So here are 7 tips that help you keep motivated. And if you keep motivated it should be easier to make more money in your home business.

1. Remember to allow yourself time for a little fun during the day. There’s an old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Your job is not your life and you shouldn’t treat it as such. Don’t feel guilty about taking a little time for yourself - you deserve it.
2. Set SMART goals. You might have heard of SMART before. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. What you want to do is give yourself a little time pressure, but not too much. Allowing yourself forever to finish something means you’ll never finish it, but allowing an hour for something that will take 3 weeks will just stress you out.
3. Try to mix with positive people. The last thing you want is anyone negative around you. We all know people like that and we all know how we feel after spending time with them. Spend time wisely and choose your company even more wisely.
4. Do what you love. Really. It makes a big difference. I’ve been privileged in my life to do what I love since I started work, apart from just a couple of years. I can tell you when you hate your job it’s hard to stay motivated! You’re more likely to make more money if you keep at what you’re doing, so if you’re doing what you love you’re more likely to keep at it.
5. Look to make some kind of difference in the lives of those around you. One of my greatest joys, many years ago, was telling my wife that she no longer had to work because I was earning enough money for her to stay at home. Our son was born about 11 months later (there might be a connection there). It doesn’t have to be family, of course, you could always be nice to a stranger in the street, or help someone you meet online. Sometimes it can be just a kind word at the right time.
6. Do something every day to keep a pma - positive mental attitude. It might be listening to inspiring music, talking kindly to yourself, listening to positive self-talk, or just smelling the roses from time to time. Just do something.
7. Don’t forget to look after your body. If you’re ill you’re not going to feel motivated, or positive and that will impact on the whole of your life, not just your work. Take the time to get out into the fresh air, eat wholesome foods and play sometimes. And don’t overlook the physical benefits of laughter!

You’ll hit some obstacles from time to time. You know that. But it’s possible to keep going right over them, if you keep your motivation high.

I have a Windows PC software application that maintains motivation while you’re working, by displaying positive messages on screen - briefly - while you work. I use it and I find it’s much easier to keep working for longer. As a little incentive to any readers I’ll send you a free copy if you add your own tip for keeping motivated into the comments.

For Mac users, I’m sorry. It doesn’t work on Macs.

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Seems on Friday, 30th May, they’re going to have about an hour’s downtime when they won’t be processing payments - so nobody can buy your stuff during that time. At least that’s how it reads to me.

I’m just hoping they don’t break anything like they did a week or two back, when IPN got busted for a while. IPN stands for Instant Payment Notification and it’s the bit that makes it possible for your customer to pay you and then be redirected to a download page to get their stuff.

A couple of days after that they started canceling a ton of subscriptions, it seems, where there was no reason to do so - at least according to the subscription members who contacted me.

Not their best month, I think.

As I say, I’m hoping they won’t do anything that hurts us with this maintenance, but with systems as complex as theirs must be, it’s impossible to tell until it’s too late. A couple of weeks back I wrote about the special offer 2Checkout were having. You could open up an account and get the sign-on cost returned. I did just that, for the sole purpose of having a back-up payment processor for the future.

Boy, am I glad I did that now.

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Actually, that’s their business. But if they’re shoving it in my face to sell me something, they make it my business.

Now I don’t care whether someone is making a million a year, or just a few thousand a month, or even less, as long as they’ve got something useful to show/tell/sell/teach. I’ve met quite a few people with brilliant ideas who made not a cent off them because they won’t take action. And what I’m looking for all the time are ideas.

Isn’t that true of you too? You’re looking for information, ideas. Something that will give you the next level of success, whatever that means for you right now.

So let me ask you a question?

If somebody is telling and showing you how his ‘methods’ make him a small fortune, would that make you feel more confident that his systems work? Sure it would. And a lovely little screenshot of a Paypal account does a lot to make a desperate buyer salivate at the prospect of earning similar amounts.

What if the screenshots were so small and badly resized that you could only just make out that their ‘big’ income was actually from several years ago? Would it make you wonder what they were hiding about results today? Are they still making big money? Are they making massive money and just don’t want you to know?

Maybe they just couldn’t be bothered updating their site with fresh information?

Seems odd, doesn’t it?

Surely, if their results were so good they’d get even better in time - wouldn’t they? And if they did get better what possible reason could they have for not showing the proof?

Remember, they offered the proof in the first place - they obviously thought it was necessary.

Showing old results doesn’t mean you’re not making money. Not by a long shot. But it does mean you’re not showing your potential customers the full picture and I think in that case it’s reasonable to wonder why.

And even if somebody shows you huge amounts of money going into their account, so what?

Bill Gates and Donald Trump can show you that and tell you what they do to make it happen. Think you can copy them?

My recommendation: don’t fall for income claims. They nearly always come with a disclaimer and they don’t represent what you can achieve. Concern yourself with the quality of the product and if that’s not apparent from the sales page then steer clear. Honestly, there’ll be another “must have” product along in a day or two - won’t there?

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Just ahead of the long holiday weekend Hostgator sent out an astonishing email asking customers to login and get a new password - by providing their old password.

The email looks almost 100% like a phishing email and it’s generated support calls and emails and forum posts galore. Hostgator must be buckling under the strain of all the questions they’re getting.

But the email is genuine!

Hostgator are forcing their customers to change to a password generated by their systems, to enhance security. Once you get the new password you can change it to anything you like. Anything, that is, apart from the old password, which may or may not be compromised.

The ‘Gator has told a tale of woe about how possible it is for ‘evil’ forces to get your details. But rest assured, that hasn’t happened yet - so they tell us. Many have questioned why Hostgator would act in what seems like such a hasty and drastic way, unless there were some serious threat on the horizon - or even worse a ‘break-in’ already.

Hostgator remain adamant that this is a preventative measure.

Let’s hope so.

But in the meantime it probably pays to think about the passwords you use. Do you regularly use 1 password across many of your online accounts? Do you understand how vulnerable you are if you do that?

I know how much trouble it is to have different passwords for everything. I have several hundred to contend with because I use a different one for every email, site, social site, membership site that I own/belong to. It’s a real hassle, but it beats having someone walk in and trash all of them because they got one password.

And please, for your own sake, don’t use the name of your dog as your password. And don’t use your name with a 1 at the end. If it’s easy for you to think up the password it’s just as easy for someone else to guess it.

Don’t ‘plan’ to ‘get around to it’, because you won’t. If you’re going to beef up your security, start doing it now. Because it doesn’t look like anyone else will.

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We’re all so used to advertising of the most blatant and outrageous kind these days - just watch almost any infomercial - that I believe we think it’s normal.

So when some steaming pile of hype comes through your email inbox it can be hard to spot it. Sometimes.

But there’s one particular type of ‘advertising’ that is particularly offensive, in my eyes. It’s the type that promises the mythical average man or woman a chance to get a bargain collection of products that will help them make a living.

I’m not going to start mentioning names - there would be too many to mention anyway! But recently I’ve been receiving some emails that tell me how there’s a wonderful collection of ’superb products’ at knock-down price from someone who’s struggling a little because they had to take a week or so off work to do some other stuff.

Funny really. Well, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that I keep getting emails from the marketer that explain how it’s possible to make money ‘even while you sleep’. Having multiple streams of income that are virtually on auto-pilot isn’t a pipe dream, it’s a reality for a lot of people. And I have no doubt the marketer is making good money online - so why cry the poor tale when you’re supposed to be showing people how to make money?

What I find just a little difficult to take is that this ’sale’ is happening to rectify a horrible situation for the poor marketer. That week or so he couldn’t work really made a big hole in his income, it seems. Perhaps he should have set up a couple of extra new income streams beforehand…

Creative advertising will always be with us and I applaud it, where there’s a transparent level of honesty. But sometimes the hype that you get in the promotions is just ridiculous. And the more ridiculous the claim the less likely there is to be extreme value in the offer, in my opinion.

Here’s a tip for you to keep your hype radar on high alert: if it’s in an email promotion that has more than one person sending similar emails, it’s hype.

Organic referrals, the kind where friends genuinely recommend something for each other, are rarely neat, pre-packaged and identical.

Don’t miss a bargain, by all means, but make sure it is a bargain first. Don’t be too impressed with tales of woe. We all have them, don’t we?

And by the way, my car blew up this week so now’s your chance to get a bargain on a couple of superb products that I’ve never offered this cheaply before. Just send a money order to….

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Many website owners would almost kill to get a top 10 position on page 1 of Google. But Jon’s asked whether that’s actually good enough. His answers may surprise you.

It seems that most webmasters and internet marketers have the goal of getting their sites onto page one of Google. I admit that I, too, feel a sense of joy and satisfaction when my sites hit the top 10 for my keywords.

But is the top 10 good enough? Should you rest on your laurels once you’ve achieved page one ranking? Not according to the AOL search data that was compromised in 2006. Yes, that data is two years old, but I think it’s important to revisit those results and remind ourselves of what it revealed.

That compromised data gave us the following break-down of the percentage of clicks received by each of the top 11 search results:

“Wait,” you say, “those numbers barely add up to 50%!” That’s true. According to the AOL data, that’s because 46% of all queries resulted in no clicks — meaning that the user didn’t see what they were looking for and so tried something else or moved on.

There are a few points I want to make about this. First, this is data from AOL, and without being too unkind to AOL users, well, they’re not the savviest of searchers. That makes a difference. I would theorize that Google searchers would be a bit more prone to “dig” for the result they need, especially since in my own experience the figures aren’t quite so drastic as this data shows.

That said, though, this chart helps to demonstrate the vast difference between the #1 ranking for a set of keywords and all of the other rankings. Basically, the number one ranking gets the lion’s share of the traffic, and the other 9 of the top 10 just get the tricklings.

Number 11, the first result on page 2, gets virtually no traffic at all. I included it in the results to demonstrate how little effect a page 2 ranking has on your traffic.

This is one of the reasons I advocate trying to rank for a series of long-tail keywords, and not putting all of your efforts into one set of very popular keywords. Getting to #1 for a single set of competitive keywords requires an exponential amount more effort than ranking #1 for dozens of long-tail keywords. And, as demonstrated by this data, those dozens of “lesser” rankings will be far more valuable to the bottom line of your traffic than a #9 or #10 ranking for a competitive keyword.

Let me illustrate.

Let’s say that your niche has a set of competitive keywords that generates 10,000 searches a day. Sounds like a goldmine if you have a page one ranking right? Let’s see.

If you managed to get on page one, but only rank #9, based on the AOL data you would only get 150 of those visitors to your site (4,500 or so per month). However, if you manage to rank #1 for 10 keywords that each only receive 1,000 searches a day, you would get 226 visitors (6,780 or so per month). That’s 150% more traffic for the long-tail keywords. And I promise you, it’s dramatically easier to achieve (and maintain) 10 less competitive rankings than it is for one super-competitive one. In fact, in many cases you can achieve multiple #1 rankings for long-tail keywords with the same quantity of links needed just to get you on page one for the super-competitive keywords!

Just ask the happy 3WayLinks.net customer who recently posted at the users’ forum regarding their first $369 day in affiliate profits. Or another forum poster who reached his first $100+ AdSense day thanks to 3WayLinks’ ranking his sites for lesser-competition keywords.

So remember, when planning your keyword targets for your web site, don’t forget to target a variety of long-tail keywords. Even if you are planning on going after a competitive set of keywords, still keep the long-tail on your agenda, and give them at least as much of your time and resources. Do so and you’ll reap the rewards to be found in Google’s “low hanging fruit.”

Source: Search Engine Optimization

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If you want to know a little more, read the full article - the link is given below.

There is a specific system of steps to use to get on the radio—and effective methods to use to create interest and listener action when you’re on the air.

Step 1 - Listen to the radio, read newspapers, watch TV news, subscribe to news blog rss feeds, and setup a Google Alert that tracks your area of expertise. These actions will help you stay current with what’s in the news and how your message ..

Source: Interview

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See if this post can give you some insight into it.

I once made the mistake of hiring a company that specialized in handling technical support for online businesses. The single person assigned to my (smallish) account at the time was a member of MENSA. She was a true-blue certified genius with a technical background.

Who could ask for more, right? Wrong! The woman turned out to be completely unable to handle the support for my business, and after a couple of months of fighting and hoping for the best, I fired the firm.

From that point on I became a bit of a control freak about my business. I mistakenly assumed that if a certified genius with a technical degree was unable to handle my tech support, that I just needed to give up and do it all myself.

After about 18 months of that I was at the point where 80% of my time was used up handling support requests. My business stopped growing. I was chained down by support requests, stuck working in my business instead of on it.

Not long after that Mike Filsaime asked me to give him a call, which I did. We had a long conversation about outsourcing things like support requests.

Mike laid the bare truth on me in a way that only he can. “Jon,” he said, “you have two choices: you can burn yourself out doing everything yourself, or you can hire out and watch your business grow.”

“But Mike,” I protested, “nobody is going to be able to give my customers the kind of support I can! I created these products.”

“That may be true,” he replied, “but not even you can do what you do for an endless number of customers without killing yourself. At some point you simply will not be able to handle it.”

He was right, too. I was already at the point of wanting to chuck it all because I just couldn’t keep up with the support requests the way I wanted to — forget about growing my business!

So I did some hard thinking about what I was going to do. Mike told me that he managed to get a very happy customer of his to do support for one of his products in return for a percentage of the profits. That worked very well because the person was not just an employee, but was actually invested in doing a good job.

I decided to give that a try, and ended up hiring Amin Motin, a very active member at one of the support forums I ran. I had already made him a moderator at the forum because of his freely dispensing so much good advice and support to folks there. It seemed only natural to have him do support for my other products.

Amin is also invested in my business. His “salary” comes from a variety of web sites and services which turn a profit for both of us. And you know what? I was very wrong when I said that nobody could give my customers the same level of support that I was giving them. Amin is better than me, more patient and helpful with my customers, and I’ve read more praise directed at him than I have room to share here.

After bringing Amin on board I suddenly had a huge amount of time to devote both to personal and business pursuits. My net monthly income has increased 40% because of being free to work on other projects and toy with ideas I’d had in the back of my mind — and this increase has come despite Amin’s share of the profits and me working fewer hours than I did before (I devote a lot more time to my personal ministry work now).

You see, I had the wrong outlook on my business. I was so afraid to let go of a piece of my business that I had been burned on before that it was strangling its growth (and stressing myself out beyond belief). I also had the mistaken notion that I couldn’t afford to pay somebody to handle the support for me. What Mike helped me to see, and what indeed has proven to be true, is that I couldn’t afford not to have someone else doing support.

Now I outsource everything. My site design, graphics and logos, my support, my content creation. You name it. If it can be outsourced, I try a few folks out until I find the one who fits the bill and I stick with them.

Doing this has dramatically increased not only my bottom line, but also my peace of mind. My family and I travel on vacation, and I’m not stuck doing support tickets in the evening while we’re away. I don’t stress about how support is going to get handled, because Amin is so fantastic at it. I never worry about how my next web site or product is going to look, because the guys at GraphicsGenie.com do such a fantastic job on every product I put up.

You may really not be able to afford to hire out just yet, and that’s understandable. I was in that position at first also. But I promise you, I promise you, that as soon as you can make room in your budget to start hiring out the services that you do not absolutely have to handle yourself, you will find your business blossoming into something much greater than you could possibly make it by yourself.

Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.

Source: Internet Marketing

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Even if you are, what’s it got to do with me? Well, nothing, really. But I just finished watching a short video by Jim Edwards. He’s the guy who does a lot with video and makes a good living online. His start in the business was like a lot of people’s - no money, bills all over the place and desperation setting in.

He’s made a very good point in his video, which is that making money on the internet is like losing weight. You actually have to do something. You can’t just buy a gym membership and expect to get fit, slim and toned without going and getting a little sweaty. The gym membership card doesn’t do it on its own!

And just buying a course, or report, won’t make you an internet marketer. You actually have to get up off your behind and take some action.

Quick survey: Hands up if you’ve ever bought a product and not used it?

Yes, exactly. Quite a few of us. I daren’t think about how many times I’ve done it and if my wife reads this post she might start looking at my Paypal receipts to find out.

Here’s a startling statistic: I’ve made zero dollars from the products and information I have that never got used.

Like I say, startling.

Here’s another one: I’ve made money when I’ve taken some action and done something.

Man, this internet marketing can be really hard. Of course it’s a bit more subtle than that in reality. Some of the things I’ve actually taken action on haven’t made any money and some didn’t make much money. But collectively they made far more than the stuff I didn’t do.

Jim Edwards is quite right in what he says. You have to take action, or you won’t get a thing. I don’t care how many ‘gurus’ promise you that all you have to do is ‘buy now’ and sit back and watch the money pour in.

It just doesn’t happen that way. Funny thing is, the harder and smarter smart people work the luckier they seem to get. But notice I said smart people and working smarter. You don’t have to do a 96 hour week to make an income online. But you do have to work at it.

Once you’re established and have your streams of income set up it gets easier, but never let anyone fool you that you don’t have to work in the beginning.

As for Jim I’m sure he’ll reach his weight loss goal and if he wants a free copy of my Easy Weight Loss product I’ll be happy to fix him up!

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It’s a script that increases the price after each sale so it’s useful for putting a little bit of time pressure on a potential customer. Especially when, as in this case, I’m offering a valuable bonus in its own right. Because it’s a valuable package I don’t want it to sit there forever so I’m limiting the sales.

So my hosting account Cpanel told me I don’t have enough disk space to work on the database.

Not right - I have plenty of disk space. There’s an issue with the hosting server.

I’ve spoken to my hosting company and they can’t do anything immediately. They’re a good company, so I expect they’ll have this fixed well inside 24 hours (very well inside), but it’s now put my plans on hold because I can’t set up the script.

Good job I hadn’t left it to the last minute. I think it’s always a good idea to build in a bit of downtime when you’re planning something. You never know when you might need it.

So I’ll switch to a product I’ll be launching next week and spend my time productively on that, instead.

It actually took my hosting company more than 24 hours to fix the problem. The first time round the live service agent had to pass on the details to the more technical support team and didn’t pass on all the information I had provided about the problem.

End result: they had to start asking me what the problem was all over, but this time by email. The service tech. who handled the issues also didn’t seem to understand, despite being told exactly what the issue was. He clearly didn’t read the information I had provided him, because he tried to replicate the problem by doing something totally different and told me I had plenty of space.  That was not the actual issue.

Anyway, it’s resolved itself now and I believe it was a temporary issue with the hosting company’s own machines, rather than my bit of space that I rent from them. Fortunately I’ve spread my various sites around different hosting companies so if a major problem occurred with any one of them I wouldn’t be wiped out.

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