Reading blogs from other people (yes like me) who are telling you what to do …Well, that just ain’t going to cut it!

That’s why I am going to publish a short serious of posts over the coming months, in the hope that they may just be enough to inspire you to get back to a blank page and do some work!

Note: All links open in new window.

Mondayitis Motivation Tip #1

First up:

• Make an offer
  Everything starts here, how can you expect to recieve money if you haven’t made an offer yet. An offer can be
  • An info product is about the easiest offer you can make and it delivers itself (how to’s sell well if they solve a specific problem).
  • Research, rewrite and improve someone else’s pdf until it becomes unmistakably yours.
  • It don’t have to be all fancy like, just get something up and tweak it later.
  • Start with a 5 page PDF for $1 (sold as a secret or trick).
    • Name it via a keyphrase with some traffic and low competition.
    • Get it up (hosted online) and attach a Paypal button to it.
    • Wrap a Wordpress blog with a sexy theme around it.
    • Set up a manageable, regular posting schedule for your blog.
    • Start syndicating your content.
  • If you sell one copy, increase the value:
    • It sold …now its worth investing some time back into the product (not before). Don’t go perfecting something you will never sell.
    • Avoid making promises you can’t keep.
    • Add more value to your pdf and sell it as a $7.95 report.
    • Make sure you communicate the value to your readers.
  • Keep the visitors that aren’t buying:
    • When you have sold 5 copies take half your profit and get an email list; capture form, and management account.
    • Give away that old $1 version in return for getting email list subscribers.
    • Set up a series of automated emails that deliver good content, express your character and plug your product/offers.
    • Add more value to your pdf and sell it as a $29.95 ebook.
    • Broadcast the increased value to your email list via your automated email list manager.

Get the picture?

Make an offer as fast and easy as you can, quick and dirty. It can be the worst ebook on internet - trust me, I have seen plenty of those out there making a tidy income on autopilot.

While your own product will be the solid foundation of a future business, affiliate marketing (selling other peoples info products for a commission) is an easy way to get your feet wet. Just take some time to pick one really good product » Like this one « and stick to it. By it, master it and become the self appointed poster boy for it!

I spent - near on - one year, before I made any half decent cash online. The truth is that any of the systems (ebooks and courses) you can buy will work …If you follow them through to the point of making an offer, but you have try a few systems out first before you find that one that your most comfortable with.

This is not just ‘making money online’, how you make money online is a whole new learning curve and career change that is often packaged up to look as easy as 1, 2, 3 (because that’s what you want to hear and making buy Internet Marketing products). The reality is WORK, committed and consistent work towards a finished product or offer. If your doing anything else, call that STUDY.

The next post » Productivity: Time vs Money

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In this feverish gold rush we often loose perspective of our own integrity and honor and choose to hide behind the anonymity of the internet.

The big attractions are Auto-this and Auto-that (auto blogging software, auto tweeting software and auto submission software). And there really are some great tools out there, BUT!!!

What are you trying to do?

Get rich quick or build a long lasting and secure business?

Well, first of all. Getting rich quick is only going to happen if you can commit full time to a proven plan and then throw a lot of money and time at getting the tasks done. This leaves no room for failing, learning and growing your business. It’s a gamble, a short term tactic with no solid foundation and strength to endure any future storms.

I have looked at and played with most Auto tools… But none of them are ever perfect and the crude they spit out is really cold and useless to actual people, so who are you trying to fool? Google …well good luck with that! I certainly would not want to build my business around the idea of fooling Google.

“If you want to recieve money, you have to give value!”

So hold on to your identity, your honor and your integrity:

• Set up a Wordpress blog and lock in a blogging schedule.
  • Every Wednesday night?
  • Twice a week?
  • Once a day at 5am?
• Just start giving away your knowledge and research.
• Blog about anything and everything.
• Track it using a Google Analytics Plugin.
• Find out:
  • What you rank for
  • Who’s coming
  • Who’s staying
  • What they want
• Start targeting specific keyphrases with:
  • Some traffic (100 per month via Google Keyword Tool).
  • Minimal Competition (<2000 pages via “keyphrase in quotes” search on Google’s Search Engine).
• As you improve your education and skills at ranking on Google for your keywords, start target keyphrases with:
  • More traffic (1000 per month)
  • Low competition (<10,000 pages)
• Eventually you will find your niche or better yet ‘your micro niche’
• Build a new site around the best achievable keyphrase’ (<30,000 pages) for your niche.
• Create your own information product or choose some one else’s product to promote.
• And have every page funnel your visitors towards a clear ‘call to action’ or goal (sales page).

But above all else, keep your integrity and stand in front of your business, put your face, your voice and your character on the front of your website, bond with your visitors, and build trust!

Auto tools are useful for creating support sites (backlink sites pointing to your main busineess) but even then, they need to be vetted and tweaked to look more human. You would be better off going to a freelancer site and paying someone $3 per hour to research and write unique articles for your niche!

Here’s some essential links for a succesful online business:

• Cheap domain names
• Great web hosting
• Good email list management
• Your SEO education
• Outsourcing tasks

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1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
   As well as pulling in a large chuck of the visitors, Search Engine traffic is converting the best. This is due to the concept of permission marketing, which in theory would mean that Google is matching my content with customer queries and instead of interrupting the visitors train of thought with irrelevant offers, I always target keywords with high commercial intent.
2. Email (Newsletter Lists)
   The high conversion rate related to this traffic source would vary according to the age and trust that you have developed inside your list of email subscribers. If they have been on your list for a year and are still clicking on your links, the trust is high and therefore so are the conversions
3. Videos
   Videos still carry an extremely high ‘perceived value’ online. Email your list about a new video and it will get more click-throughs than telling them about a new article. And when your traffic watches a video featuring your mug or voice, some serious bonding takes place increasing the trust and final conversion rate.
4. Blogs
   These versatile yet simple ‘conquerors of the interweb’ are still flying, very much, under the radar as a sales vehicle. Still considered to be a news source rather than a sales platform. The get a higher flow of of clicking through traffic and higher conversions.
5. Social Sites
   Yes… I know. They can be a huge time suck and its very hard to measure the value of your social efforts online. But don’t let that stop you from signing up to sites like Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube. Your profile pages will become a great source of traffic and valuable back-links to increase your search engine rankings.
6. Partners
   There is a massive push at the moment to ‘increase your followers’… It seems every other person you meet on a social site is selling an ebook or system to do just that! But this really is quite useless. What you should be looking for are alliances and mutual friends (real friends) that will return the long list of favors you have been showering them with. Yaro Starak will teach you how to be a popular, famous and rich blogger like himself, but the truth is he got his break the old fashioned way, when Darren Rowse (Problogger) featured him on his already popular blog. That old business tip is still alive and well on the net. - “It’s not what you know… It’s who you know!”
7. Twitter
   Twitter is a great fresh source of traffic for your website, blog and sales letters but the conversions as yet a comparatively low. Probably due to the inbuilt conditioning towards short attention spans and a touch of interruption marketing. Lets face it, 140 characters may build intrigue but its certainly not enough communication to secure a sale. However, I am still not ready to turn off this stream of traffic just yet.
8. RSS Feeds
   While I highly recommend submitting your website/blog to RSS directories, your actual RSS followers can often be asleep at the wheel. When they do actual notice your stream of information again, you can bet that your marketing efforts are firmly situated in the murky waters of ‘interruption marketing’.

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• I wanted to keep all my old posts, comments and user accounts.
• I didn’t want to use the same URL address (permalinks) for each Blogger post with its date style.
• I wanted NEW, cleaner, better SEO’d permalinks but wanted to keep all my backlinks and search engine ranking links (including PageRank) to each individual post.
• I wanted to keep my old feed RSS addresses for the new site.

And gee! It’s nice when things go smoothly.

How to Import Blogger to Wordpress

1. You will need a domain name
   • I already had 1to1million set up with Blogger, if you already have a domain you can skip to step #2 now!
   • Try and align your Domain name with the keywords that are currently giving you the most traffic.
     • Or use the Google Tool to find a keyphrase with some ‘Global Monthly Search Volume” and low “Advertiser Competition” and use hyphens to separate the words. Example: blogger-to-wordpress.com
   • If you register your domain with Godaddy just get to the checkout, avoiding all the upsells and use a coupon code like cjc749dom to get a discount.
2. You will need some Hosting
   • I already had an unlimited account with Hostgator, if you already have hosting you can skip to step #3
   • Getting an unlimited account means you can add unlimited websites, domains, Sub-domains and email addresses. With HG you can even get a free 1800 number and they have a great one click way to install wordpress for you.
     • Access your cpanel (hosting account configuration page)
     • Click the “Addon Domains” button
       • Fill out the “New Domain Name” blogger-to-wordpress.com
       • Skip 2nd & 3rd Fields, skip to Password
       • Confirm, submit and add your details.
3. Now we gotta point your domain to your host where Wordpress will live.
   • Check your emails for the Hostgator “NameServers” addresses for your account, there will be 2 of them. NSxxx3.HOSTGATOR.COM NSxxx4.HOSTGATOR.COM
   • Log into Godaddy and go to Domains/MyDomains and click on your domain name.
     • You will see a link to change your nameservers on the right (it will take a while, take a break).
4. Now we will install Wordpress the easy way.
   • Back in your hostgator cpanel, scroll down and click on the “Fantastico De Luxe” button.
   • In the left column, click on “wordpress” / “New Installation”.
   • Pick your addon domain from the drop down list, fill out the fields and click through to finish.
5. If your nameservers have had time to adjust you can now access your domain.com/wp-admin and Import your posts from Blogger to Wordpress.
   • In your wordpress backend click on Tools/Import
   • Select Blogger from the list
   • If your already logged into Google/Blogger, all your Blogger blogs will load so you can pick the one you want to import.
   • Click the import button and your done. Easy!
6. Now what about the links, backlinks and redirects from the old URLs to the new ones?
   • First go set your Wordpress permalinks to something better for SEO (search engine optimization).
     • Click on Settings/Permalinks
     • Custom Structure
     • type in… /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/
   • To do the redirects from all the old Blogger urls to these new wordpress ones we are going to use a wordpress plugin.
     • Click on Plugins/AddNew
     • In the search box type… Blogger Redirector
     • Install the one from Sam Wong
     • *If you did not have your own domain already set up at Blogger then you will need to redo the search and also install the additional plugin from Espen Antonsen
     • Then go an activate them both: Plugins/Installed
7. For your RSS feeds just create an account at Feedburner and use the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin.
   • I was already using feedburner so it was just a matter of installing the plugin and entering in my old RSS feed address.

*If you did not have your own domain already set up at Blogger and all your old posts have a blogname.blogspot.com URL, you will need to access your Blogger, go to Settings/Publishing » Custom Domain » Advanced Settings and add your new domain there. If you have a well tweaked blogger, then of course …You are going to have a long list of things left to do from, moving site analytic tracking codes, favicons, and sitemaps. If you are looking for the sexiest wordpress themes on the planet, go check out Elegant Themes. Good Luck and I hope this helps move from Blogger to Wordpress smoothly.

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• Be interesting
• Update often
• Find your niche
• Provide a useful service
• Do original research or reporting
• Give great information
• Live blog
• Make lists
• Create controversy
• Meet people on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed

As 1to1million is just a place for me to occasionally rant about the whole ‘Make Money Online’ things - it is not a money site for me, nor does it lie at the heart of my business - I thought it could serve as a great example of what not to do!

…And what I strive to do with my more profitable blogs.

• Be interesting
  We’ll this should be an ongoing goal as you develop your writing skills. I tend to start writing a blog post and end up with a novel that would be better published as 10 separate posts.
• Update often
  I can go for a month without posting, I have gained and then lost PageRank. You should set a schedule and post date posts, that way you can write 3 in one day but release them according to your ‘regular’ schedule. Consistent blogging builds traffic it will ensure steady growth, stop blogging and you will loose traffic, rankings and PageRank.
• Find your niche
  I started this site with a broad market ‘Make Money Online’, I have no hope of ever ranking for it (considering the limited effort I am prepared to put in), to be really successful it needs to target a very, very specific and micro-niche.
• Provide a useful service
  This is an ongoing learning curve for me on my other websites… Always asking; Would I use this site, What can you DO here, Why should someone do it. I have one website with over 2000 pages and yet there are just a dozen that are USEFUL and USED.
• Do original research or reporting
  If you want to make money with a website then you need to provide a service. Your getting paid to do the research fr your reader and save them some time.
• Give great information
  The operative word here is GIVE, don’t be afraid to give great information away
• Live blog
  This is really about freshness and relevance. The energy you put into a site/blog is directly related to the energy taken out.
• Make lists
  Making 101 lists - example 101 lists - is the best way to get backlinks… Be worthy of backlinks. Again they take time to compile and great resources worth bookmarking. I think I made a 101 list here, but therein lies the second problem… make sure all your posts are relevant to it (your niche) and you feature that link to your list.
• Create controversy
  Saying the wrong thing is often more popular than saying everything right, it leaves room for conversation and keep your topic alive.
• Meet people on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed
  I have thousands of ‘followers’ over a number of social media sites, but most are useless. What you want is a core number of useful people that communicate with you, develop a relationship with you, and become allies willing to return valuable favors.

Here is the slideshow from the Matt Cutts presentation http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-for-bloggers/

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I have made the mistake of blazing in stinking of spam and tripped the occasional scam detectors. I have been desperate for attention and also made the mistake of starting and finishing the conversation all in one post… Not leaving any room for others to participate… Like there is no future to social marketing.

Now! I am more realistic, more open and more transparent. I think we all begin our journey by edging into the social sphere with only one aspect of ourselves exposed. Clinging on to privacy like a baby to with a security blanket. Wanting everything but not prepared to give anything away for free.

I started my journey in the social web as ‘JD’ but it’s not my real name or even a nickname in real life… But online it’s how everyone knows me. It feels weird if someone uses my real name online and even weirder when someone uses my virtual name in real life.

Just 2 hours ago I had a conversation in Google chat with an old mate from a virtual world ‘Entropia Universe’ where everyone is leading two lives. This is Timm in the perceived persona of Dreamdancer talking with Paul in the (my) perceived persona of JD about Timm’s other persona of Rothorsekid. Whats interesting here is that even after years of communicating online I still have 3 separate impressions of each character and the only thing that would merge those is a sharing a beer in real life.

Dreamdancer: hey mate. I find you are not following me on twitter. twitter.com/rothorsekid
Me: ahh… which of twitter accounts LOL
Dreamdancer: _JD_ I believe lol
Me: I split up my multiple personalities into different accounts
Dreamdancer: hehe… I did the exact opposite, i went all out on the web, fuck privacy linked my real name with the rothorsekid nick via twitter …you can even follow me on latitude it’s kind of an experiment.
Me: yeah I’m think of eventually changing the JD to my real name.
Dreamdancer: I feel, at 35, my notion of privacy became outdated… Actually it feels weird… I was the archetypal privacy advocate… I believe it is not about shuttering off your so-called ‘private life’, but about actively modeling other people’s view of your ‘private’ self. There are things in our ‘private’ lifes, like friendship, sexuality or political views, where the digital natives showed us disclosing them is not bad at all. we have the laws in place to handle each and every problem that may arise from that view. But I also learned from my kids that there are things in life that do not belong online. ever. what these are varies individually, I guess.

The ‘Digital Natives’ that Dreamdancer refers to are those born after 1980.

The last wave of digital natives (born after 1990) are the MSN and Myspace Junkies, not quite on Facebook and Twitter because that’s where Dad hangs out!

Twitter at the moment is at the front line of the social web and a good way to understand it is the birth, life and death of this post… I’m writing about the Future of Social Marketing, but what do I know about it? What does anyone else know about it? A Google search is only going to favor outdated articles but Twitter is a different story. This post was inspired from a tweet on twitter which linked to a blog which I have also commented on, this article will be broadcast on twitter, have a short life depending on retweets, later it will get picked up by my RSS subscribers and in the future it may get served up in a few Google searches. It’s a whole new circle of life for the original post that I will link to shortly.

First, lets go back to the start.

I Prepared this search using the Twitter Search tool » Future of Social Marketing - I hope that when you click on that link you still find mention of a guy who really knows what the future of the social web is becoming, I was lucky to stumble across his informed thoughts due to my daily social web activity.

In his career blog article ‘The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras‘, Forrester Analyst - Jeremiah Owyang covers a few of the aspects covered in the $749 report compiled for the big name brand subscribers of Forrester.com

His 5 eras are a little corporate so lets see if I can sum them up in under 140 characters each
But first, its important to note that the eras are layered and not linear.

1. People connecting online
   We are at the peak of this right now; Myspace, Youtube, FaceBook, Twitter
2. Social operating systems
   Everyday there is a new Twitter or social application to play with on our computers and phones, but while this era has started we have a long way to go before there is no such thing as surfing to a social media site to participate.
3. One ID to rule them all
   How many social sites have you joined and trialed in the last year? Imagine a future where every experience is social and its your operating system that you sign into… Only! There is no need for any other passwords… convenient or scary?
4. Content is no longer fixed
   Currently you post content to a fixed place like a website or blog, Twitter hints at the idea that when you tweet, your content gets retweeted and starts its own journey for as long as its relevant. The future - one would hope - is that content will become more accurate and the authors will become more transparent. The motive for writing the article becomes just as important as the subject matter, when deciding if it is of value to the reader. My fear is that, as more people and more marketers jump on the Social Web it will just become a useless mess unless era #2 arrives early.
5. Shared social and commercial experiences
   This one is crucial to understand, if indeed, you are here to get a glimpse at the future of social marketing as opposed to the future of the social web. Long term success in social marketing does not come from a direct approach. In social communications the author and his motives are easily read and trust comes from transparency and honesty. Good, clear social relationships with your clients and potential clients will recreate the word of mouth effect online. Give an actively social person a good experience and they will share that experience with others. Your product is not as good as your claims, it’s only as good as its visible, independent and easy to find recommendations.

I think the recent developments with Google profiles appearing at the bottom of matching name searches is a hint that Google may be preparing to dominate the concept of ‘One ID to rule them all’ or at the very least it allows you to have the ability to have some say in your own digital biography.

I passed Jeremiah’s article on to a colleague across the road who is just getting his feet wet online - eluvius (AKA Frank) - I dragged him into the social web kicking and screaming so his thoughts are always worth publishing…

So how does all this become useful to the social marketer?

1. In your niche world of social marketing you will easily find your competitors and have to look harder to find your potential customers.
2. Buying is often impulsive and then justified by communicating the benefits of your purchase to others. Therefore, you will easily find customers you have missed rather than customers ready to buy your product.
3. If your selling ’sleeping bags’, climb up your vertical market and create a social broadcast that is valuable to a broader community of active campers. You may even have to create the community yourself.
4. Short term social marketing may be about having 20,000 followers on Twitter, but long term social marketing is about having 20 connected friends that listen and will go out of there way to get your message out. Knowing 20,000 people might make you $20,000 dollars but having Oprah know you, can make you 20 Million!
5. Clearly define which aspect of your identity is the most valuable to the most people. Start connecting with your niche community now, well before you have realized the ideal product to offer them.
6. If you choose not to participate in the social web, be prepared for the social web to interact with all your content and presence online.
7. Start identifying and connecting with connected people in your market, go out of your way to help them out, offer them free use of your products, give them 110% support and convert them into passionate advocates of everything you offer.
8. Get all your technology and online assets ready for a more social web.
9. Design your content so that it can survive in a nomadic journey across the internet. Publish your content and conversations to as many diverse URL’s and social sites that you can discover.
10. Identify the 20% of your social efforts and social media sites that are increasing your traffic, subscribers, followers, friends, reputation, perceived value and ultimately sales. Let the other 80% go so that you can be more vigilante, more active and valuable to the biggest and most attentive crowds.

The real future of the Social Web is in the hands of - and I quote Donna Seaman here from her Booklist review of “Born Digital“, a book that tries to understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives born after 1980 - “the myriad ways downloading, text-messaging, Massively Multiplayer Online Games–playing, YouTube-watching youth are transforming society.”

The real future a social marketing is one where we - as marketers - will first of all, completely abuse the current platforms to the point where every tactic we use on them will become completely transparent to the web savvy Baby Boomers and Generation X’s with money. And on the flip side, the always online lifestyles of the not so cashed up Digital Natives will mature into a new benchmark for the term ‘web savvy’.

The future online consumer will be; an expert at the Google search, connected to every one of your previous customers, able to uncover scams in a single click, faster than a manipulative internet marketer, and sickened by the mass launch, squeeze page, viral script, one time offer, upsell, down sell, cross sell and future sell approach to marketing.

I will sell your product for you because:

• I really did buy it
• I really, really loved it
• I told 20,000 people that already trust me
• My comments are public, well syndicated and easy to find
• And I feel that I owe you something

But don’t get too hyped by the buzz of the social media phenomenon because the people who are not using it are not here to have there say, which in itself may be thee best reason to get onboard before them. Twitter was once a community that quickly became dominated by work at home marketers craving some social interaction and will soon skyrocket as more and more publicly followed celebrities break the current record breaking followers mark.

Saying Twitter out load in your offline communities is still a bit like say ‘dungeons and dragons’ in the 80’s and owning a mobile phone in the 90’s

The real power of social marketing is simply being proficient and efficient at searching and responding to the daily conversations happening around your; niche, vertical markets, and products.

The rest is old school communication and networking.

Technorati Tags: Future-Social-Marketing-Social marketing-Media

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“My … sales have improved since last week … I’ve had a sale a day rather than a sale whenever, which is good news!! I know I’ve more work to do which bit by bit is getting done, so it’s cool.”

Time for Some Website Scaling

That is good news … When conversions go up, as in your quote, this is an important time to get out a whiteboard or butchers paper and work out whats happening.

When these jumps are so big, it can always be traced back to something that has changed either on-site or off-site but it will be somethings measurable with online tools.

So while you should be very proud about a stability of one sale a day… Where is your graph of sales…

• When did this change and by how much?
• Does it correlate with any other metrics?
• Has your visitor count gone up?
  (therefore making it just a traffic boost, further refined by looking at unique vs return visitor graphs)
• Or is this a true conversion boost?
• Is the site ranking any better for keywords related to the sales?
• Are all the sales from one product?
• Whats working about current conversions tactics for that product?
• How can things be improved even more?
• Can you increase trust by recording mug shots, audios or head shot videos?
• What is the current conversion rate Unique visitors vs sales?
• Are you ready to install the opt-in form to capture the non-buyers?
• Can you add more value to the opt-in freebie?
• What would the typical visitor want as a freebie anyhow?

Answer all those questions with a positive yes/completed/ready… AND it might just be time to ‘turn on the gas’ over at Google Adwords (Pay Per Click advertising).
Starting with a budget of $30 over one week in an attempt to uncover some affordable keyword that result in more sales.

* If you can make the $30 back you will have a crucial set of new metrics to analyze!
* If you can make double, you can double the budget.
* If you double the profits you can keep scaling until it plateaus at a safe investment level.

PPC will initially need to be monitored every night, but if you site is converting and your ready to catch the opt-ins…

Well the system has proven itself to you, it’s making money on autopilot, now it’s just a matter of:

A) Scaling (increase) all elements of the current model/website upon itself

1. PROFIT MARGINS (increase them by finding affiliate products with better returns or create your own)
2. TRAFFIC (increasing traffic by creating content and links, on and off page, should be an ongoing process)
3. CONVERSIONS (might be time for some split testing via Google’s Free Optimizer Tool or adding some trust and bonding elements)
4. CUSTOMERS (increase the long term value of visitors via email list capture and marketing)
5. SYSTEMATIZE (automate, know, record, refine your current system for a profitable website so that its easy to follow and duplicate)

B) Scaling the website model into vertical, horizontal and diagonal markets.

1. Based on the SYSTEMATIZE process (above), what is the system for building your current website and making it profit on autopilot?
2. How can YOU refine that system so its easier for YOU?
   Example: Can that whole site be built quicker and simpler using just Wordpress?
3. Can you create the whole site again (unique content but based on the current model and the exact same niche), duplicate yourself in the marketplace, double your sales with little effort because a lot of elements are in place (like Affiliate links, opt-in codes and product top tens)
4. Can you create the whole site again, from scratch even if its a simpler version, using your current skills. 100% ownership of the whole process no outside help.
5. Can you outsource each of the recorded elements in your system to DIFFERENT freelancers and get 10 of these created in bulk? 1 freelancer does step #6 for all 10 new domains… or you do each step but for all 10 sites and so on.
6. Can you use the whole system in a similar but different niche, say still the same broad market but a different problem and solution.

If you can make one sale a day with the current project = ~$1000 a month (this is the current profitability of the website).

Scale that up using duplication building one new site every 3 months

Scale that up using advertising to $10,000 a month

Scale using BOTH:

Now, as you know, that is a dream world because we get in our own way constantly! Real life will get in your way and old habits will stop you from making this a new habit.

Successfully fulfilling that dream would only come if you could turn off all the emotional distractions associated with the Internet Marketing industry off and just laser-focus on doing one of the following three things single-mindedly:

1. Scale your current website using Adwords.
2. Create your own information product that solves or addresses the same problem that your website centers around.
3. Condense the current system down and then continue to refine and duplicate it.

…And that’s just for starters because none of those above speculations include creating your own information product that solves or addresses the same problem that your website centers around followed up with back-end/opt-in sales via your continually growing email lists.

I look forward to seeing your next leap forward!

THE TAKEAWAY: “Just Keep Doing It and Doing It!”

Technorati Tags: Website-Scaling-Profit-money-Tips

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So what tools do we currently have to satisfy our quest for real time search results?

Google News is limited.

Once you have Googled just click on the ‘News’ link at the top left of your search engine result page. Google News is a limited ‘real time search engine’ that only searches an approved selection of websites that it believes are carrying genuine news articles… Actually any one can submit their website for consideration and the crud being what crud is, will always slip through the cracks.

Hot on the heals of the Web 2.0 revolution came ’social media’ and suddenly the whole world is having zero cost international conversations with each other and the very second that a news worthy event happens in the world people are reporting it online faster than traditional media can say “Stop the press”.

First we had Myspace (2003) which threw money and resources at trumping the very first social network Friendster (2002). Although dominating for years MySpace has never really shaken off its grungy image of being a hangout where flirting teenagers can see how my bell, whistles and flashing lights they can fit into a profile page.

Facebook (created in 2004, public in 2006) offered something more professional and it has managed to keep out the teen graffiti because no trendsetting kid in his right mind is going to stick around in a place where his Dad hangs out! Facebook will soon implement its own version of real time conversational search.

WOH, look out! Because then comes Twitter (2006), and users find something they love. It’s over the shoulder, five second blurts of conversation that are easy to post and there is absolutely no obligation to reply back to people that are talking at you or about you! Twitter is a bit like a party but unlike your blog (internet home) it is not a destination but more like a transmission of constant noise, like a universal chat room integrating with phones, websites and desktop applications.

Using Twitter does make you question your own integrity and susceptibility to narcissism as you search for your own tweets amongst the; inaccurate, useless, self-absorbed, distracting, and occasionally useful but endless transmissions of others. Measuring success via the novel excitement of being heard… clicked to… And subscribed to… Rather than being of value to those that you have qualified as most beneficial to network with or most likely to benefit from your own perceived value. “I’m eating toast” does not cut it unless your attempting to break up your incessant marketing spam or your only follower is your girlfriend.

When I first started using Twitter I very quickly discovered its search capabilities; the initial people search, the Summize tool which was quickly acquired by Twitter (2008), the inbuilt search tool on Twhirl, and that tiny hidden SEARCH link right down in the Footer next to Help, Terms and Privacy (Summize incorporated as a subdomain). The more savvy users recognized and started using its power immediately in two distinct ways:

1. Twitter Search is the best, fastest way to find people in your market, niche or industry and start networking with them, because you find the people that are talking about the things your into. A lot of people do jump on Twitter hoping that its going to be a sales platform for their product and services. The truth is… the best that you can hope for is a platform to get new targeted subscribers into your email lists via a link to your website/blog via your - 140 character - profile box. Just remember that if you are looking for customers on Twitter you are more likely to find competitors and allies because as it becomes more and more popular, the more it will be targeted and used as a marketing tool rather than a shopping tool.
2. Twitter Search is also a great way to find out what people are currently saying about a product, subject or anything that you are wanting feedback on. Its a window into peoples minds and therefore a quick research tool.

The search engine at Twitter does support a few Boolean operators like:

• OR (as opposed to AND)

  Breaks the default setting of returning tweets containing all the words in your search phrase.

• - Minus sign

  Before a word will filter out all tweets with that negated word.

• ” ” (quotes)

  Will only return tweets with the phrase (contained within the quotes” intact.

Unfortunately Advanced Twitter Search does not allow you to restrict your searches to just the people you are following but you can use it to restrict a search to people within a specified radius of geographical locations.

Or just use these search operators:

• near:(specify a location)

  Finds tweets from people based on the location specified in their profiles.

• within:(specify a distance in KM or mi)

  Extends the geographic search out to a specified distance/radius

For Example: combine the above 2 searches with a question mark to find people in your area that you could network with by answering their question, further qualified by other words…

- near:chicago within:100mi ? which

- near:melbourne within:100km ? what

As you will discover below, Search.Twitter.com is more valuable than Twitter.com when it’s integrated into Google’s search engine as a quick side glance on queries that you are already undertaking on a daily basis.

2009 and Twitter is now wheeling out a more prominent search box, smack bang on the top of your home page (for a select subset of users, during a test period) and the search results from within that box will have some additional features, one of which could be a placeholder for Twitter’s first attempt at actually making some money via sponsored links similar to those on Google. The new search box may be a small change - that simply increases the amount of users that are using Twitter’s existing search feature - but with so many people jumping on board the Twitter train every day, it will quickly become one of those Google-like tools that we can NOT live without and Google in its current format can’t compete with and therefore ignore.

I personally think Digg deserves a small mention and FriendFeed, which aggregates all kinds of feeds from social network and bookmarking sites, including your blogs, could offer something usefull via it’s Real Time Search but it can only search the Twitter Feeds (and other feeds) that users have submitted. On the upside you it does offer the ability to search within your network of friends.

The future of real time search is however, unwritten.

On one hand Twitter may end being the VHS that killed all the Betamax’s only to be superseded by the DVD… The ‘DVD’ incarnation of Twitter will probably follow cell phone technology, as Twitter’s 140 character limit is currently aligned with mobile phone text messaging and who wouldn’t want 2 text messages for the price of one (280 characters) and while we are at it, lets get the information automatically transcribed into text for us as we constantly speak short, blow-by-blow, self commentaries of our daily lives, into our nose piercings… ending with “Blog That”, “Twitter that”, “Email that”, “Memo that”, “Press Release that” or “File that”. Hmmm! But then our bosses will discover that we spend half the day on social media websites instead of selling widgets. The real fantasy then would be communicating, broadcasting, surfing, socializing, flirting and entertaining all rolled into one device. Presented to you free of charge when your born.. Ohh wait!!! I think I just described the Human Body

On the other hand Twitter may be the YouTube that Google has to buy because it is the new age search engine that has snuck up on them under the guise of a micro-blogging tool. What Twitter started with (once realized) was a well funded tool that collects the experiences and opinions of real people by simply providing them with a free web 2.0 site that makes communication easy, fast and fun. What you end up with is a massive database or real time feedback on everything from commercial brands to natural disasters. The Twitter search engine taps into that - arguably valuable - database of information and serves it up back up to the huge ‘billion dollar box of eyeballs’ that Twitter has become.

The downside is that Twitter’s search engine will quickly become a new battle field for SEO wars where the person that ranks #1 for a popular keyword is the last person that has used the phrase in a Tweet.

Another problem is that, while we may Google stuff 20-30 times a day we are not going to Twitter search every one of those phrases unless its integrated into Google or a tool that is with you all day.

The answer, and this is your big takeaway!!!

How to make Google real-time with a Twitter Search Add-on.

Step #1 - You should be using Firefox over Internet Explorer because, among a myriad of other benefits, it’s faster and required for this to work.

Step #2

Option A - Install the WebMynd ‘real time search’ extension for Firefox and it will integrate a customizable selection of ‘Social Media site’ results (like Twitter) into the Google Search Results Pages… above the Google Ads

(click the link above and then you may have to look out for the ALLOW button to drop-down below the Firefox tabs bar or an INSTALL button to pop up, then follow the prompts to customize it)

Option B - Another option for you comes as a two part install into Firefox and the result is simpler add-on that only displays the last 5 Tweets from Twitter, and serves them up to the top of your Google search results » Realtime Twitter Search Results on Google

And above all else, make sure you are placing limits on the amount of information that is allowed to distract you from more productive tasks and always measure the time you spend on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Technorati Tags: Twitter-real-time-search-Google

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I have a small group of 30 people that I am running through the basics of Online Marketing… Project one is “how to make your first $30 a month” without having to spend a cent. We are using Clickbank and Squidoo.

One student made $30 in the first week and is now tweaking his Squidoo page.

“JD… Can you recommend me a site to upload pictures so that they keep their original image name in the URL when I link them? The one I’m using at the moment (Tinypic) creates a new URL for it.”

You can upload images directly to Squidoo via Modules like “Text with BIG Picture” as your account does come with free storage, but I am assuming that you are trying to add an image directly into the main text module via HTML. Using code similar to the following…

<img src=”http://yourfreeimageserviceonline.com/YourImage.png” />

Before I move on, this might be a good time to go over some additional and recommended code variations.

The following - 2nd version - has you main targeted keyword in the file name broken up with hyphens.

<img src=”http://yourfreeimageserviceonline.com/your-keyword.png” />

The following - 3rd version - includes an alt tag which helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) if it includes your a keyphrase and still accurately describes the image (this is the text that pops up when your mouse hovers over the image or when the image fails to load). Lets say my keyphrase is “Free Image Storage”…

<img alt=”Free Image Storage” src=”http://yourfreeimageserviceonline.com/free-image-storage.png” />

So now, where can you store your images online, for free.

Eventually when your monthly income is stable and growing, you should consider getting an Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) account for just US$0.15 per Gig/Month, they also charge a minimal amount per bandwidth usage but it’s unlimited storage for all types of files (using the best and latest technology).

Free Image Storage Online

Free image hosting sites like Flickr do still mess up the URLs or at least, they don’t make it easy to call up the image from other sites.

The simplest service I have found for beginners is an offshoot of Google called Page Creator

Log in is universal via your Google Account, don’t bother about creating a page just yet… over on the right you will see a small blue box labeled “Uploaded stuff”

1. Click [upload]
2. Browse to ya picture…
It pays to have your keywords in your picture but at the same time it needs to be accurate to what the picture is.

3. The image name will now show up in the list, click on the file name
4. It will take you to the URL for that image
Copy the full address from your browser’s address bar.

You have 100MB of free storage here, they always has limitations but free image storage online is a great way to get started.

Technorati Tags: Free-Image-Storage-Online-Squidoo

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We have just come through the Biggest Natural Disaster in Australia’s history (Victorian bushfires) and I live very close to Kinglake where over 100 of the ~200 people lost their lives. I won’t be going into details here because it has directly affected my friends, family and self. Its all still too raw and I am trying to get my head back into important work online that needs doing.

While trying to find my focus again I was asked to guide an old student who has been slowly creating an online income stream. Now, there is a saying that goes along the lines of ‘follow your own advice’. When I realized that I could benefit from implementing my own advice I thought that you might benefit as well.

So here it is with a few changes to protect the original recipient. Keep in mind that this letter contains replies to questions which have not been quoted and is also a response to the buying of yet another “How to Make Money Online” product (free traffic videos).

Go ahead and own/improve the front page of your niche site… Think like you are trying to engage a child with your front page.. its needs interactive stuff, buttons and some visually engaging content… Ask yourself, “How long would your own son would last on that page and how could you hold his attention a bit longer or get him to click through.

Good call on the off-site content submission, when I post a new page or article on my main niche website it gets rewritten up to 30 times and posted externally all over the web.

Getting traffic to your website is easy and free (once you have done it once) it just requires disciplined action and WORK… Please remember that you DON’T make money buy buying stuff, you make money by selling stuff.

You have to keep in mind two things:

* What are you selling?
And what are you doing on a daily basis to get out there (online) and sell it?
* Do you have your own Product?
Preferably a digital one and if not, do you have a deadline to create one by?

With that to one side, I am glad you realize that you do not have the skills yet to increase the traffic coming to your website and videos are a good way to learn… However… When you learn something that works YOU MUST stick to it and keep doing it every week, you must keep up the momentum and inspiration to stick at it! It needs to become an integral part of a manageable system.

I am sending you some positive thoughts and support with regards to your recent financial stress, unfortunately Internet Marketing is not a replacement for a job if you don’t have one already. It can build to become an substantial income stream in its own right if you give the same respect as creating a business, but it is tough if there is ‘no current income’ coming in. This internet marketing stuff can be a huge learning curve for most people and many just can’t get off the constant jumping from opportunity to opportunity, or the many distractions within the Internet Marketing community…

“It takes a single minded obsession fixed upon the most productive actions for just ONE project or website to succeed.”

It’s so easy to; buy IM products that you will never implement, register a new domain name that will never become a profitable website, and discover a great new niche that you will never get around to testing. Be very careful spreading yourself across other ideas, websites, niche’s and opportunities if you still have not completed ONE (the colon site). Work on ONLY ONE at ONE time if you want to achieve fast results.

You should pat yourself on the back now that your first niche site is making a regular monthly income, although a website should never be considered to ‘be finished’ you will know its close when when you can throw $100 a day via Google Ads at it and it earns $200 a day.. That is then scalable according to the money you have available to buy extra traffic.

You will need your own product in place to make the best conversions and profits on the traffic that comes through. In the meantime… If you are desperate for cash, the quickest way to secure that legally is via a job and it may even help to get you disciplined again as you start to work for someone else as realize how precious your time is.

If you goal is currently set to make $600 a day from Internet Marketing then your time is worth $75 per hour, so be VERY AWARE of how you spend an hour online…

A) One hour checking out offers in your email and on the Warrior Forum will not make $75
B) One hour working on Target Traffic, Conversions and a Product… Can!!!

So either make sure you get $75 dollars from every hour spent or lower your goal to something more achievable.

For now I think you will agree that you only have enough time for:

* One Job
* One Profitable Website
* One Family

Stay focused on the system that has made you some passive income online already.
Identify the most productive tasks that will; increase existing profits, and build your best performing online asset.

Find a job that allows you some time each week to WORK on your online project and still spend time with the family.

Set achievable step-by-step goals and deadlines.

All the Best

JD

To become more productive with your internet marketing efforts you first need to identify that your current situation of; distraction, indecision, information overload, and trying to do everything yourself.. is killing you!

Technorati Tags: Blogs-money-marketing-million-Tips

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