I have already been hearing the horror stories popping up everywhere of site ranks dropping dramatically off the grid that were once top 10.

My 2 cents: Don’t let your entire business rely on Google and its massive amounts of web changes whatever they may be called (Panda…Chuck Norris…whatever).

Build a business that uses Google as part of its overall strategy but not the end all be all to your success. Why would you want to leave your success in someone else’s hands anyways? You can still succeed with or without Google.

I won’t explain the whole update details here, but if you want to read more check out
Search Engine Land.

What are your thoughts? Share below

1. Success starts in your head

Know where you want to go. Have the vision in your head of where you want to be, what you want to do, and go for it. Many successful people claim they first invision anything before they do it, and Bubba Watson is another shining example, “I got in these trees and hit a crazy shot and I saw it in my head and somehow I’m here talking to you with a green jacket on.”

2. Have a Can Do attitude

Have a positive Can Do attitude about your success is very important to actually succeeding. If you don’t believe you can do it, no one else will. Attitude is everything when it comes to having the confidence to go for your dreams and becoming successful on your terms. When asked about his shots Bubba stated, “I can do it, it’s just not something I really want to do.”

3. Keep pushing forward

Be persistent and keep pushing forward. In Bubba’s words, “I attack. I always attack”. In life, business, or any endeavor worth pursuing you must continue to “attack” and push forward towards your goals to become successful. While you shouldn’t force success, its important to always keep moving forward.

4. Have fun

At some point you have to enjoy what you do and have fun with it. I know your thinking, Golf fun? Yes, while it may not be as exciting for many as a slam dunk from Lebron James, Bubba Watson loves to have fun playing golf as he was quoted, “I just play golf, fun-loving Bubba, just try to have fun and goof around”. Have fun moving towards your success. You don’t always have to be so serious about it, sometimes its ok to loosen up and have fun.

5. Be a self-directed learner, and autodidact

While coaches and trainers are important, sometimes good old fashioned self-learning is the way to go. Some of the greatest people in history were self-learners including legend Leonard Da Vinci and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Bubba Watson is no different, passing on coaches and becoming good at what he does through his own efforts and learning.

6. Practice, practice, practice, and become a master

Practice is extremely vital to being successful. You have to become a master of your craft, whatever that may be. Whether its golf, a business, or anything you are trying to succeed at, it takes lots of practice to be good at it, but a shit ton of practice to master it. Are you willing to put in 10-12 hour days mastering your golf swing or are you playing virtual golf at home instead?

7. Be you

After winning the Masters Watson said, “I just want to be me and play golf.” A lot of people forget to be themselves. Even worse, they lose themselves while pursuing their dreams. This happens all to often and it’s important to remain you, because you cannot be copied, you are unique, and if you bring that into anything you do, it adds that extra spark required for success.

8. Go for the amazing shot

“I don’t like to go to the center of the greens. I want to hit the incredible shot; who doesn’t? That’s why we play the game of golf, to pull off the amazing shot.”

We are only here once, and for a limited time. Why waste it on small shots? Don’t be afraid to go big. Like Bubba you can aim for your big shot, because it only takes one to land properly that will rocket you to the moon on levels of success you never dreamed of.

9. Have something to fight for

Sometimes this is the fire you need under your butt to make things happen. Bubba was fighting for his mother, wife, and kid who have supported him from the beginning. In a news interview Watson mentioned his mother worked 2 jobs to help him keep playing golf. To me, that’s something worth fighting for.

10. Stay humble

“I don’t really want to be famous or anything like that,” Watson said. “I just want to be me and play golf.”

When it finally happens and you do become the success you wanted, stay humble. A lot of people lose the person they were on their way to success once they get there. Don’t let it get to your head, stay grounded to the unique you that got you there in the first place.

Something like this is what people are receiving: “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links”

So what’s this all about anyways? Why is Google sending all these letters, even to white hat sites? Is Google going to shut down your site?

These are questions I’m seeing all over the web but the truth is, the sky is not falling, just pop the chill pill and chase it with this short but actionable list of what to do about it:

• Remove bad links – If you do have a bunch of bad links from private networks that got banned from Google (like BMR) or look shady, ask to have them removed. To do this go to your webmaster account, check the backlinks, and contact the sites that are sending your site links that look unnatural. If you bought backlinks, don’t remove all your backlinks in a fearful frenzy because that will just send up red flags to Google again anyways, get them removed gradually.
• Mix it up baby! – Mix up your backlinks more, especially using social media (Google is focusing a lot on social metrics, this should set off some flags for you).
• Content is still king – While content alone wont make you rank well (backlinks still matter more), its still king in my eyes for the simple reason of people don’t want to read garbage. Keep creating your content and adding it to your website at the pace you like.
• Chill Out – As mentioned before, take a chill pill and keep trucking

Do backlinks still matter more then content?

I’d say for now definitely yes. Don’t believe me? Just Google the words “Make money online”. The site in the #4 position currently is a blog with not 1 post.

So if Google cares so much about content why is this site ranking so high with such a competitive set of keywords? You guessed it, backlinks.

I have, like many of you, fallen many times, whether it was off your bike when you were a kid or even in life. You begin to fall and everything seems like its going to be over. You prepare for the impact on the ground, the world goes into slow motion and the worst possible scenario comes to your mind just before you meet your fate with Mr. Concrete.

Then it happens, your on the ground feeling a little bit of pain, maybe a lot… but your still alive.

Life is very much the same way. We all find ourselves hitting the ground at some point, and if you’re like me, many points. But the truth is that ground is really just imaginary. It doesn’t really exist. I don’t mean in some hocus pocus new age thinking sort of way, which has it’s own place. I’m talking about it really doesn’t exist. It’s just a limit or mental fear we have placed in our own heads for whatever reason.

I’ve been there plenty of times, falling towards my imaginary ground, thinking the whole world is going to end and the pain is going to be unbearable. Then as I’m laying there on my imaginary concrete of life I realize it wasn’t as bad as I thought, things could have turned out much worse. I’m not dead, I’m still alive, and I can try again. Then just like when we were kids you cry for a bit, dust yourself off, patch yourself up and keep riding.

So when you find yourself in panic at the way your life, business, relationships, or anything else is going, just remember as long as you make it out alive you can turn things around by just getting back up.

So lesson of the day, when you fall down, just get back up my friends.

Share below points in your life when you have fallen and gotten back up, would love to hear how you overcame it…

and if you need a little more motivation watch this video I posted a while back I found on YouTube, I watch it every time I reach a slump in my life: Dare to be Great

Most people who try and build an income with their own blogs don’t become successful for just three reasons:

Reason 1 – Bad Planning

The first pitfall that numerous bloggers get stuck in involves not enough preparing. In order to make money as a blogger, the true secret towards being successful is always to create a practical plan and stay with it.

This is huge because they just sort of try something for a little while and when it doesn’t make them rich by tomorrow they quit.

Even I use to do this all the time and had to train myself to stick to one thing until it worked.

Write out some goals you would like to achieve such as how many posts you’d like to make each week or how many videos you’d like to make for your blog in a month. The hardest part is not making the goals but sticking to them.

Reason 2 – Lack of Visitors

Typically, blog owners have goals of just how rapidly their very own audience will probably develop and just how much revenue they may produce, and once those goals aren’t realized they quit.

To ensure success with running a blog to make money, it is important that you have a huge audience. The bigger your website traffic, the more often you will make money from ads, and the more often big advertisers are going to approach you.

Having said that, you’ll want to grow your number of readers. As increasing numbers of personal blogs surface daily, creating a good plan as well as a amazing way of posting is not good enough to acquire recognition. You’ll want to be capable of advertising your blog successfully. Which brings us to our next reason…

Reason 3 – Lack of Advertising

Way too many blog owners dedicate all their energy producing blog posts and virtually no effort on marketing and advertising.

You can create the most bad ass posts of all time but if no one is there to read them then you wont make money.

Consider cutting down the amount of blog posts and increasing your effort to attract fresh website visitors. Some ideas are simply creating link swaps with other blog owners, creating YouTube videos, participating in blog communities, in addition to pursuing additional proven ways of gaining targeted traffic like banners and paid advertising.

Get Committed

Needless to say, even if you are a internet marketing pro or even have the coolest looking blog, being successful won’t come about over night. Building the sort of audience in which blogging to make money calls for needs time, and in all probability it will likely be around a few months well before you can be able to make a decent profit.

Stay commited to your business. Set solid goals how many times you will post and set goals for how many new visitors you want to get to your site, how you will get those visitors, and before you know it you’ll be making money online.

Are you afraid of success?

Not too many people realize it but they are actually afraid of succeeding. I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s true. You see they are not afraid of the money, fame, or lifestyle, but they are afraid of the responsibilities that come with being successful.

Have you ever considered that the reason you are not as successful as you want to be is because you’re afraid of all the responsibility that will come as a result of that success?

Well, the only way to get over this fear is to face it. You see if you don’t face your fears you can’t overcome them.

How I Conquered My Fear of Heights

Like many people I had a huge fear of heights, I mean my heart drops whenever I would look over a balcony of a tall building. This fear came from when I was younger and some crazy family friend (no longer a family friend) at a party thought it would be funny to hang me by my feet from the 26 floor of a condo balcony here in Miami Beach.

Needless to say I survived but I was only 10 years old so this basically scarred me for life…or so I thought.

You see there is one thing I hate more than anything else and that is being afraid of something.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best,

“The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”.

So instead of spending the rest of my life in fear of heights I decided to face it head on and do the only sane thing to do when your afraid of heights….jump out of a plane.

Yup, I went sky diving.

And guess what, I’m not afraid of heights anymore…somewhat, at least I’ve gotten better

So what’s the moral of the story?

Face your fears head on, don’t let anything keep you from living a full life, especially FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real).

Don’t be afraid especially of success, you were born to be great and whether you believe it or not you can handle any responsibility that comes along with that success. Don’t be afraid of it, embrace it homie.

Are there any fears you want to conquer (or did conquer)? Share below…

WordPress just announced 18 Million blogs and counting just got upgraded to a new feature for iPad compatibility.

Here is some of the cool features of the new plugin it has if you browse to Appearance -> iPad in your Dashboard:

• Have the theme use an image from your recent posts as a cover.
• Upload a logo to showcase your brand or personality on the cover.
• Upload an image to be used as a loading graphic when visitors add your site to their home screen.
• Switch fonts.
• Choose from 9 different skin colors, to best match the feel of your site.
• Enable or disable the whole thing.
• And much more

Get it here at OnSwipe

Read more about it at WordPress

This is big for us internet marketers since our blogs are being accessed by iPads also. The coolest part is it has it’s own app shortcut type feature, very cool.

Popularity Contest

The biggest mistake most people make when buying themes and templates is choosing the most popular themes disregarding the functionality of the theme. Think about it, if you choose the same themes as 3,855 people, what will make your site unique anyways?

When choosing a good theme look at not only how popular and pretty it is but how EASY it is to use, flexible to change, and has the functions you are looking for on your site.

To whole point of using a pre-built theme is to save time and effort. Keep that guideline in mind when making your selection instead of doing what everyone else does.

Bad Structure

Choose a theme that has the structure your site needs and also a solid built foundation. If you are building a blog it may be wise to select a blog structured theme instead of a a photography portfolio, otherwise you’ll spend your time rearranging it, when the whole point was to save you time.

However,  if there is a template you really really like and must buy, then you should take some time to make those changes yourself or hire someone to make them for you cheaply at a site like odesk.com.

Compatibility

The last big mistake people make when buying a theme is not paying attention to the compatibility of the theme in browsers. This is a big deal because if you’re theme looks great in Firefox or Safari, and looks like rotten cheese on Internet Explorer (Because IE kinda sucks), your wasting your time and money.

Find themes that are compatible with the major browsers.

Some good theme site sources are:
Themeforest
Headway Themes (Used to build this site!)
WooThemes

Thats it! This will help you rank better in search engines and keep your viewers happy.

So to avoid being bitten in the ass here are a few things you can do to conquer your daily tasks:

1. Make Your List The Night Before

I find it easy to make a list every night before going to sleep of a few important things I want to accomplish the next day towards my business. This way I go to bed and my mind is already at work solving the problems for me and when I wake up I know exactly what I am going to accomplish that day.

2. Keep Your To-Do Lists Short

This is crucial, and most people suffer from to-do-list’itis. They just keep adding and adding until there is so much to do they get overwhelmed and asphyxiate themselves from the mountain of crap to do. Remember K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid)? Try to limit your lists to 5 really important highly product money making activites that will produce the most results and do your best on each. Quality over quantity baby.

3. Eat the Frog

Stolen from the highly successful, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time By Brian Tracy, just do the biggest thing on your list first. Of course in the book there are more tips, but in summary just swallow the biggest nastiest frog first and the smaller ones will seem like cake. In the morning when I look at my list I find the hardest task to accomplish and take it down.

4. Set Deadlines

A lot of you out there including myself often just write down your to do list with no deadlines. This is a waste of time…literally. By just setting a deadline on something your brain will go to work to find the fastest way to achieve that goal in the shortest amount of time to reach the deadline. Don’t believe me? Just look back at times when you procrastinated until the last minute to do homework for school, work, or a project and you magically finished it just in time. You set a goal and your brain found a way to make it happen.

5. Go Digital Or Stay Old School

I consider myself a highly tech savvy guy. I love the latest gadgets, apps, and whatever else comes out to get my digital juices flowing. But when it comes to my To Do List I just stick to the basics — pen and a note pad. There is something about actually crossing out your task when its finished that is so satisfying. I’ve tried all the digital apps and software you could imagine but I never stick to them like a simple pen and paper. Stick to whatever works for you but keep it simple.

If you are interested in some cool to do list apps checkout our review round up here:

Top 10 To-Do List Applications

Final Thoughts

Use what works for you, because everyone is different. If you prefer a chisel and stone go for it, who’s to say their way is better? Just remember when conquering your daily tasks to ask yourself, “Am I being productive or just active?”.

Feel free to add your own thoughts and apps you recommend below.

Till next time!