Here’s an excellent talk about time management from a Randy Pausch. Randy gained fame for his “Last Lecture” but here he shares time management tips from the perspective of someone with less than 3 months left to live.

Below you’ll find the notes that I made while watching the video. And here are the powerpoint and pdfs of the slides from the lecture.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why Am I doing this?

• Does it help me get to my goal?
• Is it fun?

If there isn’t a good reason, then just cross it off of your to-do list.

• Goal setting: it is much more important to do the right things adequately than it is to do thing right. Also, don’t do the wrong things beautifully.

Remember the 80/20 rule and ruthlessly shove the 80% of the things that don’t matter, off of your to-do list.

Inspiration is Important

“If you can dream it, you can do it!” ~Walt Disney.

Entire original Disneyland was completed from first shovel dig to first paid admission was completed in 366 days!

Planning is Essential

• Failing to plan is planning to fail!
• Plan each day, each week, each quarter (semester, whatever makes sense)
• You can always change your plan, but only once you have one!

To Do Lists

• Break things down into small steps
• Child can’t “clean his room” it’s too big, but he can ‘make the bed’, ‘put away the clothes’ ‘vacuum the floor’
• Do the ugliest thing (least comfortable or most impactful) first. [if you have to eat a frog, don't spend a lot of time looking at it first, and if you have to eat three of them, don't start with the smallest!]

– Being a boss is about “growing your people” so it is better to spend twice as much time teaching them how to do something than it would take you to do it yourself.

Four Quadrant To-Do

Most people sort by order received, or by due date, both are WRONG!

Easy part

Which ones to work on first? Upper left!

Which ones to work on last? Lower right!

Where everybody goes wrong

After number 1, they do the “Due soon, but not important” because they are due soon, but to be very productive, you will have an “ah-ha” moment where you realize that you should NEVER do anything that is not important.

A way to do this is to use a spreadsheet with a column and the first column is priority from 0 – 9 then you can add to it at the bottom and then sort by priority.

Paper Work

• It is crucial to keep your desk clear
• Only have one thing on your desk at a time – the thing you are working on.
• “Touch every piece of paper (or email) only once maximum”
• Your inbox is NOT your to do list – either read it and take care of it now, or put an item on your to do list.
• Everyone must have a place to put papers – ideally an alphabetical file system

Misc

Write thank you notes to express gratitude, it will make you rare and remembered and it’s a good thing to do.

How to eliminate to dos

Say NO.

Use gentle “nos”

We all have times where we are most creative – productive

These times are not intuitive; you have to discover them by trial and error

Defend these times ruthlessly

Same goes for “dead time” where we are not productive.

Use these for exercise, meetings, errands etc.

Interruptions

Have a very high cost, since it can take a long time to get back “into” what you were doing.

Tips:

• turn phones calls into email – have a phone message saying to send you an email
• Go to email only when you are ready – don’t let it interrupt you.
• When someone calls you say “I only have 5 minutes” at the beginning of the call.

Time Journals

Time is the commodity, so find out where it is going

Monitor yourself in 15 minute increments for between 3 days and 2 weeks.

Will yield fascinating revelations about where your time is going.

From the time journal data ask Yourself

• What am I doing that doesn’t need to be done?
• What can someone else do?
• What am I doing that I can delegate to someone else?
• What can I do more efficiently?
• How am I wasting other people’s time

The Goal
You become more efficient at work so you can spend more time doing what you love.

When you have all the time in the world, you treat your time like it isn’t precious

Focus your time and energy on the things that matter, and let go of the ones that don’t

Procrastination

We don’t usually procrastinate because we are lazy.

Understand: doing things at the last minute is really expensive.

Deadlines are really important; we are all essentially driven by deadlines. If you don’t have a deadline, make up a fake one.

When you are procrastinating, identify why you are not enthusiastic. There is always a deep psychological reason. Eg. Afraid of being embarrassed, or afraid I will fail, or fear of doing something, fear of asking for what you want.

Delegation

You can accomplish much more, when you have help.

Don’t micromanage – when delegating:

1. Give them responsibility AND authority to get the job done.

2. If you trust someone to do the work, trust them enough to give them the time and resources and authority to get it done – give them the whole package.

3. Delegate but always do the ugliest job yourself.

4. Treat people with dignity and respect.

If you want someone to get something done for you:

• Give them a SPECIFIC thing to do
• A Specific Date & Time when you want it done
• A specific penalty for not completing or a reward for accomplishing on time.

Don’t be afraid to challenge people – most people want more of a challenge.

Don’t tell people how you want it done – tell them what you want and let them do it.

Tell people the relative importance of each task.

Beware of reverse delegation – people who try and give you tasks back.

Reinforce behavior that you want repeated – praise is valued highly.

Meetings

Must have an agenda

Take away all Blackberries – so everyone is all there.

Must have someone take the minutes – so people are held responsible.

Email

Never delete anything – because it is a record and searchable.

If you don’t get a response within 48 hours, then it’s okay to nag them.

Don’t read email on vacation – it’s not a vacation if you are reading email!

Last Tips

Don’t watch television – average American watches 28 hours a week. If you don’t do a time journal, at least track how much time you watch TV in a week.

Pay people to do things like mow your lawn.

Never break a promise, but it’s okay to re-negotiate in advance.

Ask people in confidence for feedback – it can be very valuable.

Time Management Tips by Randy Pausch is a post from: Art of Money

This guy who I haven’t heard of before today, was on all the top economic TV shows, stating EXACTLY what was wrong with the economy and what the results would be.

The experts mocked him and laughed at him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And if you’re like me, after you watch that, you’ll be thinking, “so what’s he saying now?”

Part 1 of Peter Schiff on BLOOMBERG 28 Oct 2008

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 2 of Peter Schiff on BLOOMBERG 28 Oct 2008

Click here to view the embedded video.

Politicians and people in general all go for solutions that try and minimize pain, but feeling pain is an inevitable part of the healing process, and without feeling it, you don’t see the critical mistakes, and you don’t learn.

As an investor, I am thinking that a way of shorting the US dollar long term could make someone very rich in the next few years. Gold is one way to play that angle, but a form of leverage would really accelerate the potential gains.

Ask Peter Schiff – Reality Can be a Tough Sell is a post from: Art of Money

I’m writing this primarily as a reminder to myself, but if you’re trying to make money with an online business, you may enjoy it as well. It was taken from Shoemoney’s latest Q & A session:

Marty asks:

When you first got started, how long did it take you to start earning significant money online? Significant meaning when you started earning let’s say at least $1,000 a month.
Thank you,
Marty

ShoeMoney: 7 years

7 YEARS!!!!!!!!! Not 7 days, or 7 months.

I guess the take away is that it takes time, there is a lot to learn an assimilate. The other thing is to favor the long term in all your techniques and methods, if you go short term, you’ll likely have to redo most of the work.

A Make Money Online Reality Check is a post from: Art of Money

WordPress Blogger’s (and My Sanity) Survival Guide

As someone who sold videos that taught people how to install their own blogs, and now operating my blog installation service, I get A LOT of questions about WordPress and blogging in general.

Quite frankly being a typical computer geek, these questions mostly drive me nuts, but I know that they are a part of learning a new and complex skill/art like blogging. So rather than resent everyone who asks me a question, I decided to compile them and the best answers I can come up with into a guide and give it away as a promotional tool for my service.

Very experienced bloggers will probably know most of this stuff, but newer and non-technically inclined folks will likely find some useful reference material in The Ultimate WordPress Blogger’s Survival Guide.

It has 2 main sections. Part 1 is errors and problems and what to do about them and part 2 is “how to” for almost all common problems or situations that a blogger may encounter.

Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Course is Closing it’s Doors

My friend Yaro’s very successful Blog Mastermind Course is closing it’s doors on December 10th and Yaro is doing a last push to bring in new members.

As an enticement he has released a free lesson called Blog Marketing Through Conversations, which I understand is one of the most popular lessons. Even though I’m a member of the course, I haven’t made it that far

I especially like the section on building traffic that applies to blogs or any other sites:

I’m going to cut to the chase, there are only four ways you can get traffic to your blog -

1. You can buy it
2. You can get it from search engines
3. You can take other people’s traffic
4. You can do or create something that generates attention and word of mouth

We will cover all four methods through the upcoming lessons. Note that you don’t have to use every single method, in fact many people focus on becoming proficient at one method only. Obviously the more you diversify, the less dependence you have on any one source, which is important because no technique remains effective forever and the environment constantly changes…

As with all the lessons it ends with a set of clear action steps that you can take to immediately improve your marketing efforts. Check out this valuable free blog marketing resource and if you haven’t already, download Yaro’s extensive Blog Profit Blueprint (also free).

Ultimate Blogger’s Survival Guide is a post from: Art of Money

A while ago I posted my 7 Reasons to Use Domains for Affiliate Links and reason number three was “they can get listed in search engines.”

Today I was going over my affiliate stats for the University 20/20 affiliate program and noticed quite a bit of traffic coming from Yahoo.

I investigated a bit further and discovered that my affiliate link (the domain name BuildingProfitableWebsites.com) was ranking number one on Yahoo for the term, you guessed it Building Profitable Websites.

I’ve seen this type of thing before and it amazes me that it happens, but I’m not complaining. Yahoo has picked up the title and meta description for University 20/20 site and listed my link (which doesn’t even have a website of it’s own) as it’s top search engine result, for this phrase.

Granted it isn’t a high traffic phrase, but this certainly is a way to add value to your affiliate marketing efforts. Not only do I get more traffic to my affiliate link, but the value of my domain name is increasing as well. If I was going to build a site about making money on a website, this domain name is very well primed.

You may want to read the other 6 reasons to Domains for Affiliate Links.

Killer Example of a Domain Name as Affiliate Redirect is a post from: Art of Money

Yes, I’m still alive and I have been resisting the “why I haven’t been posting lately” post, but I guess it’s only polite to provide an update.

A couple weeks ago I realized that the current trend that my online business was on, just couldn’t continue. The central problem was the I was spending more and more time doing maintenance tasks rather than moving forward. Yes, income was increasing but way too slowly.

A quick inventory revealed that I had something like 35 websites, 100 domain names, 15 email accounts, 6 hosting accounts and 7 places where I had domains registered. I began to feel sick, but more importantly I realized that I was not on the road to wealth and success.

I don’t know what the long term solution is, but short term I know that I need to reduce the number of pieces of online debris that I am attempting to juggle. I’ve begun to sell websites. I’m on my third auction at SitePoint and the current offering is my Real Blog Videos (see auction in progress).

I’m not sure how deep I will continue to cut, but I am VERY tempted to sell everything and start over completely. I’m fairly confident that it would only take me a couple months to replace a full time income starting from scratch, especially with a decent whack of cash in reserve to use to hire out tasks, and a complete lack of distractions.

Reflections About Blogging

There are some other reasons why I haven’t been blogging. The idea of just taking a break seems to have developed out of a growing resistance to writing on a regular basis on this site. If I was ProBlogger or CopyBlogger, I’d work these into a well thought out thesis about the life of a blogger, but I’m far too busy selling stuff.

Blogs Promote Clutter

It has occurred to me that blogging promotes Internet clutter. I’m not a newsy blogger, so I really only produce articles with my idea on a certain topic. While a lot of bloggers seem to be able to cover the same topic over and over again (hopefully from a unique angle each time) I can’t.

I can’t help thinking that if blogs had better information architecture, I could just write one article on market research and I wouldn’t have to talk about that any more. Possibly add to it, but not a constant re-inspection. With this format a good niche blog would thoroughly cover a topic with about 25 to 50 high quality articles, rather than an endless parade of tepid posts.

Blogging is a Treadmill Activity

I don’t like treadmills and blogging can feel like posting just for posting sake. Who says you need to have 5 articles a week, or that you can’t just take a week or 3 off? Does a blogger inherently make a promise to ride the treadmill for his/her readers?

I began to question the need for constant new stories, better to disappoint the treadmill watchers and write only when I was really moved to it.

It’s Good to Step Back & Reflect

My blog was lacking in direction and this is partially caused by riding the treadmill and not taking the time and space to reflect on bigger picture stuff.

Despite larger than ever economic pressure, that’s what I’m doing now.

I Don’t Like The Blogging Clock

Related to the treadmill is the “blogging clock”… you know the one. It gets re-set every time you post a story and begins to ring loader and loader the longer there hasn’t been a new post on your site.

I think I began to enjoy defying that voice in my head saying “IT’S BEEN 4 DAYS AND YOU HAVEN’T POSTED.”

Now, after a couple weeks of not posting, I seem to have broken the blogging clock’s grip on me. It doesn’t mean that I will magically want to post daily again but it does mean more quiet in my head.

In some ways this de-connect from blogging was in-evitable, I never really have had the right personality type for a blogger. I’m erratic, inconsistent and not particularly social.

I do value the readers of this blog, and so I do hope that you don’t feel disrespected by what I’ve just spoken of above, it was certainly not intended. Hopefully you’ll stick around or drop in once and while to see if I’ve come out of hibernation.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and line up some “best of” posts. Like I mentioned above, blogs suck at information architecture and the best posts are almost always buried in the archives, so I’ll pull out some of my favorites (and yours) and highlight them in case you missed them the first time.

All the best & feel free to leave a comment or question,

Jon Symons

Where’s Jon? is a post from: Art of Money

Here’s a little tip for you, for when you’re doing market research of if someone is trying to tell you how fantastic they or their product is for search engine rankings.

Haven’t we all heard people say, my ABC SEO killer product is so great, “I’m the number one site in Google for the term blankety blank out of 1,630,000,000 possible results”?

Here’s how to debunk this one, preferably in the face of the braggart.

1. Make sure your Google results settings (go to advanced settings) are set to display 100 results per page.
2. Enter your term in the search box.
3. Press Enter
4. Google will display: “Results 1 – 100 of about 1,630,000,000 for internet business.”
5. Now scroll to the bottom of the page, and where the page counter is click on the number 10 link.
6. Google will now display: “Results 901 – 930 of about 1,630,000,000 for internet business.”

That’s it, not 1.6 billion, but actually Google only considers there to be 930 results for the term internet business. Scroll down to the bottom of the page again, and notice that there are no numbers or “next” after 10.

It doesn’t mean that it is easy to rank in the top 10 for internet business, but just to take a little air out the balloon of the SEO hype-sters.

Another way to use this information is in market research. You will get a much more accurate picture of the amount of effort required to compete in a market by looking at the “real” number of results rather than the giant inflated numbers.

Where do the BIG numbers come from?

In the earlier days of search, when Google and AltaVista were going head to head there was a “my penis is bigger than yours” type competition based on the number of pages each search engine was indexing. The numbers eventually became so silly that they were dropped from the home pages of the search engines, but I suspect these silly “…of 1,600,000,000 results” are a throw-back to that testosterone war.

Monday Morning SEO Tip – Google Exaggerates is a post from: Art of Money

I went to my bank today to deposit two Clickbank cheques and for the first time since I was a kid, the Canadian dollar was worth more than the US dollars that my cheques were issued in. Which meant that I had to pay a subsidy to be able to deposit them into my Canadian dollar account.

Same thing goes for my AdSense earnings, and every other source of funds in my online business; they all come from US dollar banks which I’m beginning to see is becoming a serious risk and expense in my business.

Check out the graph of the US dollar verses the Canadian dollar for the last 3 years that I have been earning money online.

US Dollars vs. Euros for the Last 2 Years

US Dollars vs. Canadian Dollars for the Last 2 Years

US Dollars vs. Australian Dollars for the Last 2 Years

Are you seeing the trend? How ugly is that!

This isn’t the blog to get into a detailed discussion of why this is happening but in a nutshell, US monetary policy ( I call it the “stick your head in the sand to ignore domestic financial reality and bomb a few other places as a distraction to keep CNN pre-occupied” approach) has created a massive problem which boils down to either keeping the economy afloat, or controlling inflation. In reality either approach leads to almost certain disaster in the long term so the real choice is to find the path where the disaster will be the least painful.

The path the US federal reserve has chosen is the lower interest rates in an effort to keep the US economy solvent and this is causing a balloon in inflation, which consequently is lowering the value of the US dollar.

This Costs a Lot if You’re a Web Worker Outside of the U.S.

What the chart above shows is that my $200 dollar Clickbank check from 2 years ago is only worth about $160 today. Essentially being paid in US dollars is becoming more and more costly for anyone outside the US.

Yeah! Serves You Right, All You Non-Americans

For any Yankees reading this, don’t think you aren’t being affected, it is actually worse for you. At least once I deposit your currency into my account the inflationary effect of the US dollar has stopped. However for US citizens, it continues on every day. As you government continues to pay debts by issuing more and more money (a fiat currency) the relative price of all goods and services in that economy goes up.

What Can you Do About it?

It’s clear from the chart (and the many many fundamental economic factors that are stacked up against the US dollar) that this is not a trend that looks like it is going to be reversing any time soon.

Therefore anyone who is earning money in US dollars, including US citizens would be wise to take one of two strategies:

1. Start converting dollars into another currency. Gold, oil and other finite hard assets have traditionally done well as hedges against the US dollar.
2. Look for alternative sources of income or payment.

How Are Big US Companies Affected?

I know that Google is the king of the jungle right now in contextual advertising, but it seems to me that they (and any other US online company) are vulnerable to competition on this front. If someone was to be able to pay me, and the thousands of other non-American partners, in anything other than US dollars, whether it was an affiliate company or contextual advertiser, it would be a pretty large incentive to try them out.

Maybe Google will begin to open divisions in other countries such as Canada and have clients pay them in Canadian dollars and then make payments to Google AdSense publishers in Canadian dollars. Same goes for Euros. I think this would be a really wise move for Google an other large global companies. It would also be a slap in the face for the US government, which could probably use a wake up call.

Conclusions

Really I have woven two related topic together here. On the high level there is the rapid increase in the US money supply which is fueling inflation and inflicting both short and long term pain on to US and non US citizens.

And as it specifically relates to those of us living outside of the US it is about the loss in income as the US dollar continues to decline. Surprisingly I have seen very little discussion of the trend, even given that quite a large number of the famous and big time online publishers are located outside of the United States.

Are you affected by the decline in the US dollar, and what are you doing about it? What if it takes a dramatic nose-dive?

U.S. Inflation is Costing Online Entrepreneurs is a post from: Art of Money

My prediction is that Blog Rush will be just another form of Internet gentrification. It benefits the biggest and best blogs the most. Which means that the more you, the little guy, use it, the poorer you will be.

Since ProBlogger, John Chow and ShoeMoney are all better bloggers than you and I, our traffic will eventually end up with them the more we use Blog Rush.

They write better headlines, offer more actionable and higher quality content, and know how to make more money from their visitors than you do. By participating in any type of traffic sharing program with them, you are only going to lose market share.

The more you use it, the more traffic will be funneled away from smaller blogs and towards larger blogs. Is this bad? No, it will happen eventually anyway, Blog Rush just speeds up the process. Can you see where they got the name from?

Blog Rush, in terms of its affects on the Blogosphere will function similar to AdSense. It becomes a massive Hoover that will go out to all the smaller blogs and dredge traffic up to the better and larger blogs.

The real question isn’t “How can I get more traffic?” but rather, “Do I deserve more traffic?” and the closely related, “Do I know what to do with the traffic I already have?”

For Blog Rush to not function as leverage tool benefiting bigger bloggers, more of the larger bloggers would have to be more generous as ShoeMoney is with his offer to rotate people who sign up under him into the impressions on his site. In the long run, he’ll still steal your traffic, but at least you’ll have a chance to improve while you get a temporary boost in visitors.

Hopefully this explanation will help you understand why all the big guys are SO FAST to jump on board with this (any any other pyramid style) promotional tools. The bigger you are, and closer to the top you get in, the more you are licensed to steal $$$ from the rest of the users.

[LOL...if you just got the a version of this post with BoguS rather than Blog Rush in it; honest it was the spellchecker ]

Careful, This Blog Rush is Going to Hurt is a post from: Art of Money

My WordPress Upgrade Tip

On my WordPress installation service site, I linked to an amazing plugin and created a video to show you how to make WordPress upgrades a snap.

My Link Building Notes

On my SEO notes blog I have some notes from the latest University 20/20 course about link building. And I also posted about a very cool market research tool that is based on Wikipedia (worth checking out).

Shout Outs

One Man’s Goal and SlyVisions for linking to my WordPress hosting page and for the One Man’s Goal review of my Ninja Blog Setup service.

I’m a Winner

I won, thanks to Random.org, a free copy of the Street Smart Internet Marketing book over at Blogtrepreneur. I will let you know more once I receive the book.

Guest Blogging

I took a spin as a guest blogger on the very popular E-moms At Home site. I shared my best tip ever for making WordPress theme changes easier by putting you counter and stats code into a widget rather than in the footer.

Blog Pulse Rush…wtf?

Can anyone explain to me what’s so great about it? Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon like it is the latest, greatest Internet market product to flog, but there isn’t even any money in it…peculiar to me. Seems like most people are a lot more interested in promoting it than actually using it…which I take as a very bad sign. When I have seen it in action, it looks like it is full of commercial or spam sites. Is there something going on here that Mr. Reese isn’t telling us?

Speedlinking – The One Where It’s All About Me is a post from: Art of Money

SEO Professional – 76%

Are you an SEO Expert?

I came across this cool SEO Expert quiz at SEOmoz and decided to give it a spin. Just a warning this isn’t a lightweight fluff quiz to boost your ego, it’s pretty hard core. 75 questions that will take you about half an hour to complete.

It is a realistic assessment of your SEO knowledge. If everything you’ve learned is from forum rumors, you may find it a little bit tough on the ego.

Even if you don’t score highly on the quiz, by reviewing the answers to the questions, you will learn a lot of good SEO fundamentals.

Personally I have learned more about SEO, SEM and understanding Internet business in general in my last few months studying at University 20/20 and Theme Zoom. Even if you just join the Theme Zoom mailing list, you’ll have access to a lot of advanced SEO knowledge.

Another reason to visit the quiz is to take a look at a very slick and high quality piece of linkbait. Rand, who runs SEOmoz is practically a celebrity in the art of linkbaiting and getting his own and his client’s pages on to the front page of Digg and other top social networks. Take a look just to see what ultra high quality content looks like.

Can you beat my score of 76% ?

Thanks to Adnan from Blogtrepreneur for letting me know about the quiz.

Are You an SEO Expert? is a post from: Art of Money

In the late nineteen nineties, many many people began to invest in the stock market primarily because online brokerage houses made investing so easy that anyone could do it. There was no longer any need to contact a stock broker, so everyone could believe that they had the knowledge needed to beat the market. For the next few years this “easy money” dream combined with the technology bubble drove the stock market to new heights.

By late 1999 I can remember that almost everyone I met was starting to make their own trades online. Then in March 2000 the bottom fell out of the market and many people got slaughtered. If you study investing or any type of money making activity you’ll see this trend repeat itself over and over.

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.

Warren Buffet

Rich Dad describes it as the lemming effect.

…remember these lessons from the way to find investments, simply remembering that when it comes to investing, most people are lemmings.

Lately as I begin to see lists like The Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs I can’t help whether or not the lemming effect is in full force when it comes to blogging, especially when it comes to the “make money online” niche.

A Real World Example

A couple weeks ago, the stock markets took a tumble due to concerns over the US banking industry’s exposure to low quality credit. This caused panic selling and drove prices sharply lower over. The lemming effect was clearly in play. Most investors who were selling were only doing so because the prices were going lower…below their comfort zones.

Realizing this, I took some of my cash reserves and loaded up on my two best stocks (which were both down over 25%). In about 48 hours, as the investors bought back all the lemmings discounted shares, I made about $1000 bucks.

How To Make $1000 in Blogging?

Compare that to the amount of effort required to make $1000 blogging these days and you’ll begin to see the point of this article.

I’m starting to think that to a savvy investor the idea of making money by blogging is looking a lot like the stock market did in 1999. Of course millions of bloggers will not loose large sums of money by starting a blog, but the time involved is equally, if not more valuable, than money and it could be lost just as easily.

1. Lemmings are late and investors are early…and that applies to both buying and selling.
2. It is easier to find great deals in a bad market than in a good market.
3. When markets are bad, lemmings return to hiding in their dirt burrows. When markets are bad, investors are out and about getting rich.
4. You can still make money during a good market. You just have to be a much smarter investor in a good market. When markets are hot, markets are at their riskiest, so be extra careful.
5. When markets are good, the hardest thing to do is not to be a lemming. When markets are bad, the hardest thing to do is to be an investor.

Who Took My Money?, Robert Kiyosaki

The blogging world is hot right now, but in reality very few are making anything even close to a decent return on the hours they are putting into their blogs.

How Would an Investor See The Current Blogging for Dollars Landscape?

Hard to say. I don’t consider myself an expert investor. I don’t think that the the crash has come yet. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m sure many people who had money in the stock markets wished they were sellers and not buyers during 1999 / 2000.

• this may be the time to sell or get out of blogging rather than jumping into the game.
• consider other options before beginning to blog for money. Especially if you aren’t dead certain you can own your topic (and how you’ll accomplish it).
• learn business skills to enable you to work smarter than others. Remember that even a successful blog require a lot of work.
• track your time spent on blogging and measure your return. Be prepared to cut your losses and get out, if the money doesn’t flow fast enough. If after a year you’d be better off working at McDonald’s…

Easy money comes from not doing what everyone else is doing. Blogging has become so darn easy that virtually everyone in a first world country has in their backpack all the tools required to replicate the success of all the top bloggers. In short, just like when anyone could point and click their way to purchasing Global Crossing in 1999 (like I did), there is zero barrier to entry.

Anyone with legs can take a good running jump straight off the cliff and into the blogosphere.

Blogging is Not The Same as the Stock Market

It should be noted that there is a flaw in my analogy between the stock market and making money blogging. That is, of course, that stocks require each seller to find a buyer before they can get paid, so they are particularly sensitive to the sentiment of the market.

Blogging on the other had, relies primarily on advertising revenue to drive profits. Advertising revenue is not showing the same bubble characteristics as the blogosphere.

This distinction may actually be worse news for the smaller blogger. I believe this will mean that advertising dollars will continue to flow online, which will fuel the dream of easy money for bloggers, but a higher and higher percentage of these dollars will flow to the top bloggers. This will result in a lower and lower return on hours invested for the average blogger.

Does it Mean You Shouldn’t Blog?

No, but it does mean that you’d better have a very realistic and focused approach to what you are trying to accomplish and the savvy to know how you’re going to get there. Bloggers like Brain Clark from Copyblogger and Maki on DoshDosh certainly did not benefit from being ahead of the blogging curve. But they have talent and a depth of subject matter knowledge that most people don’t have.

Before you dive over the cliff and into blogging for dollars, I do think that it is worth taking a look around the universe of money making possibilities with the eyes of an investor and to challenge the lemming approach. What other things could you do that aren’t “make money online” that could provide a way out of the rat race? What things are not fashionable right now that you could do?

And if you do decide you gotta do the blogging thing, don’t forget to value your time as part of the investment in your blog.

Warning: Are You Blogging Like it’s 1999? is a post from: Art of Money

This article is about a simple discovery that I made. By asking myself a straightforward question I was able to easy archive my goal and learn an important lesson about how what you ask for actually will determine the reality you experience.

My New Condo = Party Central?

A few days ago my wife and I moved into a condo. Our first purchase, we love it despite the added pressure of having a rather large mortgage. Last night was the first night that things seemed ‘normal’ and I went to bed around 11pm. At about 1:30am the upstairs neighbors arrived home. And they had guests. Their voices were loud, they turned on music (although it wasn’t “call the police” loud, it was easily audible through the floor). Constant footfalls were heard on the floor.

Thinking that I just purchased this place, having disrespectful mid-week party animals as upstairs neighbor was about the worst possible scenario. It wasn’t like I could just give my notice and move out.

I was fully awake at this point and judging by the noise level that I wasn’t going to get back to sleep any time soon.

My Options

Here’s the options that presented themselves in my mind:

1. Get up and work
2. Bang on the floor with a broom to send them a message
3. Go and knock on their door and ask them to be quiet
4. Lie in my bed, do nothing, and continue to feel like a helpless victim and get more and more angry
5. Put in earplugs and attempt to back to sleep

None of these five options seemed to be very attractive to me. They had been noisy the night before and I had felt like working, so I worked until 6am, I didn’t want to exchange day for night on a regular basis to accommodate my noisy neighbors.

Banging on the floor seemed a bit extreme, in all honesty it was debatable as to whether or not they were making excessive noise. They were certainly insensitive, but it wasn’t like a full fledged party. It’s my belief that they are just noisy by nature.

When I thought about going and knocking on their door I thought…what about next time? What if they are Hell’s Angels and tomorrow they slash the tires on my car or punch me in the face?

Number four was equally unattractive. I had lived below noisy neighbors before (ironically the last time I purchased a condo) and all that happens is the resentment and anger continues to grow until something snaps or you have to move to regain your sanity.

Number five also felt like coping. I don’t mind using them occasionally (like in a noisy hotel) but I don’t want to train myself to believe that sleep = earplugs.

Feeling Trapped

A complete victim of my circumstances. I began to think that I would never have a decent night’s sleep again. From experience I know that the best thing to do in a situation like this is to relax. Things are seldom as bad as they feel.

As I began to relax a bit I gradually became aware of a more positive train of thought in my head. Essentially a question popped into my mind:

What is it You Really Want?

“For those a-holes to be quiet!”

“For them (upstairs) to become aware that there are other people in the world and to be more respectful of the hassles they are causing others!”

“For the building manager to kick their butts out of here.”

As I continued to ponder the question, it occurred to me that my requests were very limited.

What is it You Really Want?

This time I noticed that my wife had been next to me, sleeping like a baby, the entire time. Then I got the essence of the question. The question was trying to teach me something.

My previous answers were not accurate.

What I really wanted was to be able to be able to get a good night’s sleep, even if there was noise all around me!

I realized that they were not the problem, I was. I wanted to be free from whatever anxiety I had that was keeping me awake in this situation. As evidenced by my wife, there was no real reason keeping me from sleeping in this situation.

Just shifting my focus from the upstairs neighbors to me as the real problem caused me to relax dramatically. I actually began to enjoy the situation as there are few things I like more than learning something about myself and how life works.

No more than 30 seconds later, a huge wave of tiredness swept over me and I rolled over, but the pillow over my head and fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until morning.

Not only did I get a great sleep I had learned a very meaningful life lesson. I believe any problem in life could be solved with this technique. In my experience there are no limitations in life if you will ask for what you really want, from your core.

Duality Does Not Exist

It’s clear to me that there really isn’t any meaningful us versus them scenarios in life. They are simply concepts that we make up to protect us from accepting responsibility. Any time we are hanging on to that concept, we are blocking the flow of creativity and universal aid from our lives. It’s as if the universe simply has no way to connect with us, or help us, when we are holding on to a concepts of competitiveness, adversaries and “others.”

Next time you find yourself in a situation where things are not going the way you would like, try and relax enough to ask yourself What is it You Really Want? in the midst of trying to turn the situation around, and don’t stop asking the question until the answer has nothing to do with the other parties involved.

Then you’ll be in the space of magic and creativity, because it is never about the other person. From international wars to personal relationships the same principle applies; take personal responsibility and the conflict can be gone instantly. Make it about the other person and it will never be resolved.

Finding Harmony In Conflict is a post from: Art of Money

I’m considering re-naming my site to CSI: Interweb as this is the second recent article on the topic of thievery. Both have been based on evidence that I’ve uncovered via my server logs.

The first episode was mild compared to this one. This thief is at least semi-professional, but still left behind too much evidence to be called a pro.

This type of theft will only affect you if you are selling a digital product. I discovered it when I found the following entry in my server logs:

United Kingdom
user-5445ed87.lns4-c13.telh.dsl.pol.co.uk (84.69.237.135)
www.ninjablogsetup.com/HIDDEN.php
www.alexa.com/search?q=%22Thank you for your order%22 link&page=7&count=10

I hide the actual URL of my page that they landed on. Not because it exposes me, in my case it was only a page telling people who had signed up for my service to check their email, but because I have conversion tracking on that page and everyone that visits it is tracked as a conversion, so I don’t want y’all to visit and send my conversion rate through the roof.

Here’s the deal. If you follow the link to Alexa search results on the bottom of the log entry, you’ll see that the searcher was searching for pages that contain the phrase: “Thank you for your order”

If you click through to some of the results of this query, you’ll find the secret download links for many digital products!

Please don’t download them, that’s stealing and terrible karma. You’ll be telling yourself that you cannot afford to acquire what you want in a legitimate manner, which will re-enforce poverty in your life. Really bad idea. My intent is to educate and show Alexa and digital product creators a loophole in their systems, not to provide an key to theft.

How Is This Possible?

After seeing the intrusion, I checked and my page was not indexed in Google. Which makes sense as it has a “no index, no follow” meta tag on it, but obviously the thieves have discovered that Alexa apparently is still indexing pages with a “no index” meta tag on them.

That’s a serious security loophole thanks to the folks at Alexa (owned by Yahoo! Amazon). I guess we know what the exclamation mark in Yahoo! stands for.

Updated: Thanks to Mindanao Bob for catching my mistake … sorry Yahoo! luv ya.

Why A Semi-Pro?

Of course if dude from the UK was smarter he would have copy & pasted the link to my site into his browser rather than clicking on the Alexa search results page, that would have eliminated the referrer link in my logs from Alexa and I never would have discovered the intrusion.

I’m not sure if a specific request in a robots.txt file would prevent Alexa from indexing these pages. I will send a copy of this story to Alexa and see if they respond. If you ever have a page in Google that you don’t want in their index you can use their webmaster’s tools to remove it, I’ll have to check to see if I can find a similar service provided by Alexa.

The other solution for product sites is to not use an obvious thank you phrase; remove the “Thank you for your order” footprint.

Interesting how the same fantastic tool, a simple search engine, can be used equally well for creative and destructive purposes.

Alexa Search Offers Online Crooks a Helping Hand is a post from: Art of Money

I received an email from Text Link Ads a couple days ago telling me that I had to update my affiliate links to their new ones. Fair enough, but then I noticed that the new ones were being run through the “tinyurl.com” service.

Here’s my new beautiful affiliate link: http://tinyurl.com/2twhrb

Very weird, I thought….why would they completely give away their brand and have their entire system rely on a third party website (that’s a major business dependency and a huge risk point).

Then the answer became obvious…Text Link Ads is going underground in response to Matt Cutts and Google’s basically declaring war against paid links. Here’s more background than you’re ever going to read:

1. SES Paid Link Presentation
2. SEOmoz | The Paid Links Debate Rages On – SES San Jose 2007
3. Are Paid Links Evil: SES, San Jose 2007 » Unofficial SEO Blog
4. Bruceclay.com – Are Paid Links Evil?

At first I was ready to wave an angry flag about how Google was abusing their power and spreading fear and paranoia in an effort to make webmasters “be good” so their job as a search engine would be easier.

Then I read this excellent post from John Andrews called Understanding the Google and I actually began to see things a little bit differently. 

Matt Cutts communicated very clearly that Google wants to see more of the kind of content that drives adoption of the web. Google is a carrot and stick company, as we all know too well. The stick goes to paid links. The carrot goes to good content. For those who weren’t there, I’ll recap.

The session was about purchased back links, and why Google says they are bad. One of the complaining panelists asked why Google values links earned by a funny video but devalues links that are bought. Specifically, if a real estate guy posts a funny video on the politics of the search marketing industry, and earns a collection of backlinks, why do those back links count when they are off-topic and have nothing to do with real estate? That was a good question. And there was a good answer. Matt answered that the funny video was creative, was unique, and added something to the web, but the paid links did not. Did you hear that?

Google is talking. Are you listening?

I think that when you live in a dictatorial society, and that’s what life as a webmaster these days certainly is…with Google being the dictator, it is easy to assume the dictator is evil and has only his best interest in mind. After all that’s how we would all behave if we had almost absolute power but what if the dictator really is wise and benevolent…what then?

Just something to think about, I really liked John’s refreshing take on the story and I find that I enjoy believing in the goodness of playing in alignment with the dictator as opposed to fearing where the next shoe will drop.

- Jon Symons

PS. Want a blog SEO tip? …notice how John’s individual post pages do not have sidebars or even menus or categories. Each post has a link to the next and previous, a link to the home page, and his “about page” and a link to the feed at the bottom of the page. That’s it. From what I’m learning at Theme Zoom this is the correct why to setup a page for maximum SEO benefit. I’ve been craving to “go lean” with my theme and I think I’ll borrow a few ideas from John’s site.

TLA Goes Underground – Are Paid Links Evil? is a post from: Art of Money

After my last story about some dude trying to copy my Ninja Blog Setup site in Spanish I received the following email via my contact form:

hi jon i’m being honest, and i tell you, you had an amazing Idea… I’m also a
hug fan… But the funniest thing is “I didn’t know it was yours” also I want
you to leave your post as is because i want other peeps to know that is bad(I
will delete my stolen blog as well) :-S and how i felt after seeing it… bro
I’m a grown Venezuelan man, and i almost cried … cause i had dreams but i took
the wrong way … plz consider writing another post with this letter also and
my photo. I want to be recognized as the man who regrets, and ask for your pardon
an Admirer
David Orozco

I believe that David is sincerely sorry and that he has learned a lesson.

I guess I must be a real businessman at heart because I immediately began to think about “how can we turn this into a positive situation?”

Well he did translate most of my site into Spanish and I’m sure, if my idea is good there is a large Spanish speaking market who would need blog installations too…and in terms of search engine rankings it is probably much easier to acquire access to them in Google.

So I created a Spanish version of Ninja Blog Setup (WordPress Instalado) and invited David to continue his translation work on that site. He can translate, promote and install the blogs in Spanish, and we’ll split the revenue. My guess is that it is a win-win, since my site is already ranking highly for WordPress Installation Service even with a split of the revenue I think he will make more than going on his own.

For me I get to turn competition into an ally and open my service to an entirely new market.

Jon

PS. My apologies for the slow posting rate, my wife and I are in the middle of a move and we’re determined not to move anything that, as she would say, “doesn’t support our journey to wealth.” So we’re going through everything as letting go of a lot of stuff. A big, but worthwhile, process. I should be back to a more normal schedule by the middle of next week.

Negative to Positive… is a post from: Art of Money

You’ve put your latest affiliate love child online and it’s too soon to tell if your idea is going to take off or not, but how can you know that the idea is a killer?

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery…

I guess if some wanker takes the time to copy it verbatim, that would be a pretty good endorsement. I guess it is some small consolation that at least he is translating it into another language.

Don’t be a Stupid Thief

Now if you’re into stealing someone’s site, make sure you’re not as stupid as this guy.

Dumb move #1

Coming to my site over and over, day after day, from the same IP address.

I used my .htaccess file to ban the IP address, but alas dude is crafty, he starting using the Google cache to scrape my site.

23rd August 2007
12:03:49
www.google.com/search?aq=t&oq=&hl=en&safe=off&q=ninja blog setup&btnG=Search&lr=
64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:Osm_3k2nx5sJ:www.ninjablogsetup.com/ ninja blog setup&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

Dumb Move #2

Clicking through to my site from the site where you are posting the stolen content

22nd August 2007
19:02:26
instalacion.blogdinero.org/?page_id=3
www.ninjablogsetup.com/

Really Dumb Move #3

Don’t store a copy of the content onto you local file system, especially if you’ve named your “My Documents” folder with your FULL NAME. As soon as you look at it, since you saved it with my Stat Counter code in it, it will register as an impression in my stats, revealing the local file system.

22nd August 2007
19:25:24
No referring link
/C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Firstname%20Lastname/Escritorio/principal.html

Really Dumb Move #4

Use a domain name with privacy protection, rather than sticking your stolen concept on to your existing site:

Whois Record

Domain ID:D148670571-LROR
Domain Name:  [edit: removed]
Created On:23-Jul-2007 03:44:33 UTC
Last Updated On:21-Aug-2007 05:20:57 UTC
Expiration Date:23-Jul-2008 03:44:33 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:tubKznpgxIKPKRi9
Registrant Name:  [edit: removed]
Registrant Organization: [edit: removed]
Registrant Street1: [edit: removed]
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:san diego
Registrant State/Province:Other
Registrant Postal Code:2006
Registrant Country:VE
Registrant Phone:  [edit: removed]
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX: [edit: removed]
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email: [edit: removed]

I’m not really liking Mr. [edit: removed] chances of doing well with blogging for dineros if he thinks stealing is the way to get ahead.

Update: I have taken the personal information out of this post, since the purpose has been served. You can read Negative to Positive… to see how it all turned out.

How To Know When an Idea is Good? is a post from: Art of Money

By whatever magic of nature, science or criminal activity, you’ve achieved a baby, but for god’s sake before you name the thing, make sure the domain name is available.

“…One of the criteria was, if we liked the name, the domain had to be available,” Pankow said. It was, and Pankow quickly grabbed Bennett’s online identity.

A small but growing number of parents are getting domain names for their young kids, long before they can do more than peck aimlessly at a keyboard.

It’s not known exactly how many, but the practice is no longer limited to parents in Web design or information technology.

They worry that the name of choice might not be available by the time their babies become teens or adults, just as someone claimed the “.com” for Britney Spears’ 11-month-old son before she could.

The trend hints at the potential importance of domain names in establishing one’s future digital identity.

Full story about domaining your brats on Wired.

Adds a whole new revenue stream to all those affiliate and MFA (made for AdSense) sites for “baby names.”

Parents – Domain Name First then Birth Certificate is a post from: Art of Money

Here’s an interesting report with a message that makes sense when you think about it, but is often taken for granted or overlooked.

Anyone involved in online business knows and spends a lot of time trying to grab searchers from search engines: analyzing keywords, traffic conversions, search volumes etc. But what makes people search for certain terms in the first place?

If you listen to certain sources they’ll tell you that offline ads are in steep decline and that all the money is moving online, but the following story may illustrate that online searches are much more dependant upon offline influences than expected:

While many search marketers understand that there is a connection between online and offline marketing, some may not understand its full extent. According to a new study by Jupiter Research and search marketing agency iProspect, a surprising two-thirds of searchers are led to search on a given keyword as a result of offline marketing.

Specifically, 37 percent of respondents said that in the last six months, a television ad prompted them to conduct a search on a particular company, service or slogan, while 20 percent said a magazine or newspaper ad led them online. Twenty percent said a company’s store drove them online, and 17 percent were influenced to search by a radio ad. A smaller number were influenced by outdoor ads.

…

Besides driving traffic, offline media tends to drive quality traffic, according to Murray. The study asked those users influenced by offline media if they had ultimately made a purchase at that site as a result, and found that 39 percent had done so.

That 39 percent conversion rate is generally higher than the rate achieved by either search or offline channels alone, Murray said. While the offline ad gets attention and creates demand, it’s search that can harness that demand and drive the potential customer to the company’s site and turn it into a sale, he said…

source : http://www.clickz.com/3626795

found via: http://www.axandra.com/nl.php

In the myopic world of Internet business it’s easy to forget that, even now in 2007, the vast majority of people still gather their information primarily from offline sources.

How to Profit From Offline Influence

Even if you are running an affiliate site, look for off line ways to pull in new customers.

In my local paper, which has a daily circulation of at least 100,000 people, the business section has a feature that runs every two weeks which publicizes new local businesses, so I sent in a little blurb about my Ninja Blog Setup service and it was accepted.

I created the write-up in a way that would get readers interested in my service but also emphasized the nature of my online business, hoping that a reporter for the paper would pick it up as an interesting angle, since I have seen very few articles about online business in their paper – do they even know there is such a thing?

I’ll let you know if anything comes from it, but my hunch is that for someone with a bit of creativity there are a lot of sources of traffic offline that would be more powerful and much cheaper than online sources like AdWords and other types of paid promotion.

Offline Ads Are Heavy Drivers of Search is a post from: Art of Money

I heard through the grapevine that Elance is running a promotion where they will give a free copy of Tim Ferriss’ popular book Four Hour Work Week to anyone posting a new project on their site.

I searched their site up and down to find evidence of the promotion and couldn’t see it, so I shot an email to my account manager and here’s the reply I got:

Hello Jon

The 4-Hour Workweek is currently the #1 business book on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.  Author, Tim Ferriss, shares his secret to success—focusing on what he loves and outsourcing the rest!

Receive a free copy of The 4-Hour Workweek when you complete your next project on Elance.  Just post and pay for your next project on Elance by October 31, 2007 and we’ll take care of the rest—mailing a copy of the book to you within 4-6 weeks.

Never been a better time to try the new rich lifestyle and hire out some work. As I mentioned in this story I finally overcame my fears of outsourcing and am very happy with the results.

Just in case you are thinking that you have to be hiring a computer programmer or freelance writer to use Elance, think again.

Here are some offbeat projects ideas (these are actual current Elance projects):

1. Need Assistants To Find Dates!

I’d like to hire several people to find girls to go on dates with me, using MySpace, Facebook, and any other methods or websites you determine.

I will provide an online calendar where you can schedule dates, and let you know my availability. There will be a $100 bonus for the person who gets the best date (the woman I like the most).

I will provide you with details on the type of women I want to meet, and more about myself including photos and background (I am a 24 year old successful business owner and part time model, only interested in very attractive women).

2. Board Members Needed

We are looking to fill our void of Board Members for two small high tech startups. Need assistance in finding 3 candidates.
Candidates must;
a. Be willing to take stock for participation
b. Help in the forming and strategic planning
c. Help in raising seed money
d. Work from home or office, virtually
We shall provide information about companies after award. Winning bidder must show experience and success in this area.

3. Feasibility Study/ Analysis for a new Project Idea

Feasibility Study /Analysis for a new Travel Industry web based project idea.
The Feasibility Analysis should address the following:
A) Need Analysis
B) Process Work
C) Engineering & Design
D) Cost Estimate
E) Financial Analysis
F) Project Impact

There doesn’t seem to be any restrictions on the size of the project, so conceivably if you posted a job to have a few articles written you could get a taste for outsourcing with Elance and get a great book for free.

Four Hour Work Week for Free When You Elance is a post from: Art of Money