My answer for that is 2 fold: yes, if you are new… no, if you’ve got regular visitors.

Why do I say that?

Okay, let’s take a step back for a bit. The reason why this question might pop up is because I’ve come across many article marketing strategies and one highly recommended action to take is tofirst put the article on your site.

After which, build backlinks to that article with the selected keywords and keyword phrases.

This results in you building YOUR site and making it more valuable while clearly crediting you as the original author of your article (unless you’ve been using rehashed PLR material).

So, back to my 2 fold answer… why yes, if you are new?

You should put the article on your blog because in the beginning, you’ve got NO content on your site! New visitors don’t want to see a site which has not been updated.

Even if it’s content they know of… they still want to visit a site which has been regularly updated. Time moves really quickly online… 2 weeks and you are old, a month and you are friggin’ ancient!

Therefore, if you are new, yes, you should put all the articles in your blog so visitors and search engines can come back for fresh content. (Watch the video below I made for a certain setting to make sure your WordPress blog is visible to the search engines)

Now for my next answer… No, if you’ve got regular visitors.

If you’ve been building up a blog with original content, by slapping on your marketing articles on your blog, it might turn off your visitors easily.

Regular visitors of a site tend to feel that they’ve got a certain investment into the site because they’ve placed time and effort to visit the site. So if a site makes a certain change, some of them will react… be it positive or negative.

Can you think of a site where they’ve made some changes you DIDN’T like? I’m sure you have… what did you do about it? (Leave me a comment)

Did you…

• Leave?
• Comment?
• Stay?
• Do nothing?

… whatever it was, you had to make a choice as to whether you’ll stick around or you won’t.

If you’ve got a regular bunch of people coming to your site, why make them want to leave? Unless it’s your intention to do so and you know what you’re doing, I don’t recommend it.

Without separating the two, users might get confused as to what is really going on. I personally recommend making a separate subdomain specifically only for marketing purposes.

This results in a blog that’s not only more personal but also cleaner because the marketing aspects are in a separate location. While some people like to mix personal life with business life, I think its best to keep them separate.

The onus/focus is on the visitor.

As the owner, while you have the final say as to what you want to do with your site, don’t forget that it’s your visitors who will eventually determine whether your site is worthy of their visit or not.

Can it really be done? Are the claims on various “make money with Twitter” true? Can someone really make a lot of money just by following people, build up a mass following and tweet some affiliate links to make quick cash?

Here’s the truth behind it – and if you want to make some income with Twitter, I’m going to show you how you can do it with the exception of you having to pay money for it!

This article is going to ruffle the feathers of the “Tweet-thugs” as I rip out the rug of their claims.

There are 3 things you need to know, first, understand the basic idea of how Twitter works, secondly, the concept of building mass followers is flawed and lastly, how you can really make money with Twitter.

Let’s look a little closer at each point.

Understanding the Basic Idea of How Twitter Works – The login page of Twitter has the tagline: “The best way to discover what’s new in your world”. Or as it used to be… what’s going on now. The initial hype has somewhat passed now and people are now getting wiser as to how to use Twitter and what to expect on it.

The people are no longer idiots – they know what they want and if they deem so, they will unfollow you without you even knowing it happened.

“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” – Leonardo da Vinci

You can’t do much with 140 characters (except if you type in Chinese/Japanese). The only reason people start following someone else is because that person offers short messages of interest, intrigue to their area of interest. Screw that up and you miss the whole basic idea.

The Concept of Building Mass Followers is FLAWED – Who are the people who have the most number of followers on Twitter? The answer: Celebrities. Ashton Kutcher being one of them but a recent post on Mashable says that he has little influence.

You can build followers but you don’t do it by the follow-me-and-I’ll-follow-you concept, you build it over time. One thing I noted is that even though celebrities like Ashton Kutcher may have little influence, 0.1% of 5 million is still 5,000 clicks if he has a link in his tweet.

I’ll be the first to admit, I built up my large following on Twitter with the flawed concept of “I’ll follow you so you’ll follow me” which I paid for by Twitter Nuke.

Even though flawed, this concept can still be used. I’m not denying the benefits of it, you CAN build a follower list with it but it’ll be a hollow following unless you decide to provide real, good value in the tweets you make. And to which, I come to my next point…

How You Can Really Make Money with Twitter – The short answer is: you make money AWAY from Twitter. Here’s what I mean… you get your followers AWAY from the constant flow of distraction on Twitter to where you can start communicating with them one-on-one – by using squeeze pages, etc.

As stated earlier, the hype has passed.

People don’t just randomly click on every anonymous link anymore – they award the click based on whether you’ve been tweeting good, relevant stuff and whether your pre-link message was enticing enough.

That’s just 1 method – the other method is to build a real relationship with someone.

Twitter allows you to chat up some well-known people and if you’re nice enough, they’ll respond back. Start tweeting with them and strike up a conversation whenever possible.

By doing so, you open up doors for yourself because you can start offering your service to that particular person if it matches… and he/she may also open doors for you because they see what kind of value you provide to your own followers and audience.

Building mass followers and throwing up a link or 2 to an affiliate link hardly converts now. Start providing real value in your tweets and really communicate with the people on your following. Be nice!

If you like what you read here, be sure to follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/asheraw. Do say hi and leave your comments =)

It’s not the subject line… let me give you a hint –  it’s uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob gives you candy when you were a child, every you see him, he gives you stuff.

He may not be the smartest guy around the block but uncle Bob knows his stuff, he’s trustworthy.

Everyone of us has an uncle Bob… and we’ve got an uncle Jack.

Uncle Jack’s the smartest guy you know, ever since you knew him as a child, you hear him talking about his latest project and how much he’s making. He gave you candy too… but only when you wanted to play with him.

It seems all he ever wanted was to speak with your dad… you’re practically invisible around him.

Now, you’re all grown up and you’re working, making an income and making your mark in this world. One day, you receive a letter that says “I need your help” and you see it’s from uncle…

Uncle who?

…

Have you got the answer? It’s the “From” column in the email inbox. That’s the biggest determinant in getting a good open rate.

See, in most list building courses available online, they talk about building a huge list and making an income from there but quite often, they neglect the factor of making it worth the subscribers/customers time to be in the list.

I did an online check and I hardly found anything that supports my claims… but I’d be willing to bet I’m right.

Most of the online stuff I found are about email subject lines, about having it less than 50 characters in total, about having certain magnetic words in them like you/free/new, etc.

But those are easy to talk about.

Because you can always start anew with the next email… with a brand new subject title.

But the “From” column?

That doesn’t change.

Bob or Jack?

Shouldn’t we be paying attention to the kind of things we’re attaching to ourselves every time we send out an email?

See… if you have some hyped up email attached to your name, you become hyped up.

And when your new subscribers get a emails or pre-set autoresponder messages, that’s when you become either uncle Bob or uncle Jack.

In your early emails, your subscribers don’t know who you are yet and you’ve got to get your name embedded in their minds. The emails you send should contain stuff that’s helpful to them.

If you make it a point to send good content together with promotions, you’ll make more money than just sending promotions after promotions.

It’s like “buying” a kids obedience with candy. Some kids can be ruckus but when you’ve been good to them, they’ll pay attention to your words.

But if you’ve been bad… they’ll get it straight away. And forever, you’ll be uncle Jack. Fortunately, if you’re uncle Bob, you’ll be that way for a long time too.

But what about subject lines?

The Reverse Email Subject Line

One particular thing I like to do before I send out emails… is to write the content first and then summarize the email. After writing the email, I’ll actually spend a few minutes contemplating the subject line.

I ask myself…

1. Is there a way to say the exact same thing with lesser words?
2. Is the subject covered in the email?
3. Will it arouse curiosity/surprise or wrath?
4. Is the title “blind” or am I revealing everything in the title?

Think of the long terms aspects before sending it off… once it’s out there, it’s out there.

The simple goal is to get the click – it’s to get them to open up the email so they can get to the content.

But if the title (or your name) immediately pushes their “ugh” button, the battle’s lost.

Worse, they’ll unsubscribe and you’ll forever lose a potential client/customer.

Personalized Email

Another thing I try not to overuse is the first name and last name tags in the email autoresponder.

Back in the olden days when people would go “wow, he knows my name!” when they see their name in the emails, nowadays, it’s more common to see the tag misused and a follow up email saying “Oops! Sorry about that”.

The trick’s revealed… the magic’s gone.

The first name tag doesn’t work because it’s been abused over and over again.

HOWEVER!

If you use it once in a while, it can still do its magic of grabbing attention.

I remember getting an email from a well-known marketer who did not use my name until the middle of the email. I was surprised to see my name… even though I know it can be done.

But it was tastefully and beautifully pulled off.

If I see my name in the subject line or the early “Hi (firstname)”… I turn an immediate blind eye to that. Because it’s been abused.

If you apply these regularly to your email marketing and list building, I’m quite sure you’ll have a happy list who love hearing from you over and over again.

Uncle Bob. =)

Statistically Speaking

It’s official – I’ve finally nuked my Twitter following. A month ago, I made a goal to bring down the Twitter following from 9,744 down to a hundred or so.

As it stands, it is now down to 190 following. I’m expecting the followers to drop after a while. After all, if it was reciprocal following that got them in the first place, nothing wrong with reciprocal unfollowing.

What’s interesting, however, is the number of lists I’m now on has increased.

A list is what other people “label” you as. So, you can get a good idea of what someone is focused on by checking out their lists.

How I Got 10,000+ Followers (and my name on the local papers)

Back when Twitter first came out, I signed up but did nothing with the account. After which, I bought an info-product which taught me how to increase my followers.

Increase it I did – I got interviewed and my name even appeared on the local papers as Singapore’s Top 5 Twitter Users.

Later, the secret “how to do it” was out – people started massive reciprocal followings.

(One fellow Singaporean decided to snub me by tweeting “Hey, I just overtook you in followers. It was easy.” I couldn’t snub him back because Twitter decided he was doing something funky and suspended his 60k followers account.)

As I spent more time on Twitter, I found it hard to build relationships with the people I wanted to connect to. It was like trying to have a decent conversation in a Death Metal concert mosh pit.

The Twitter Nuke

That was when I decided to do a mass unfollowing… what I call the Twitter Nuke. (It wasn’t a new concept, others were already on it)

After the Twitter Nuke, it was deathly silent.

I could no longer hear all the inane cacophony of senseless tweets. Whoever survived the nuke, they instantly became closer. I could hear them now.

As for the tools I used, most of them don’t work now. Twitter did not allow bulk unfollowing. I did, however, use UnTweeps – this allowed me to unfollow some of the dead/stale Twitter users. Unfortunately, the application hung on me often as I had too many to unfollow.

I ended up having to manually unfollow Twitter users. Which was, in a sense, paying my dues.

Social Media Marketing?

Let me say this upfront: I’m not doing this to get attention. This isn’t anything new and this post is more like “refer to my blog” if people want to know (or even care) why I changed my Twitter following/followers strategy.

There are other ways to increase Twitter followers and make money using Twitter – I believe it all boils down to creating real followers.

By using articles, videos, podcasts, list building, etc to build a real, natural following instead of hollow reciprocal followers.

Ever heard of stories where people discover they’re about to die in 40 days and they start to discover life by doing everything they’ve never tried before? Bungee jumping, skydiving, confessing to that girl, getting laid, trying new foods, travel, give/help more people, seeking forgiveness, et cetera.

Well, they’ve just been given a “Deadline” in their life. So, to turn back the clock a little bit… I had initially thought that “Life Begins With A Deadline” – but thought that it was in its raw state… so I never did use it except in a Twitter post (which I can’t find anymore).

We all know that death is a part of life and while there are still many people with a fear of death, I believe this is what helps some of them to truly live life.

Let’s take this “new age” concept a little bit down to the realm of human talk.

Ever had a deadline when you simply have to hand up a certain piece of work or project? You might not have realized it but its exactly because you have that deadline that you can do so much work.

Had a piece of work have no deadline, most likely, you will put it off because you think “I’ll get to it later”. Examples?

• Insurance (Nothing’s going to happen)
• Dating (I’ll ask her next time!)
• Exercise (I’ll get in a program next month)

… and a whole lot more I cannot possibly list here (wanna list yours? add it in the comments!)

But, imagine if a deadline was suddenly imposed upon you and you find out that you have a disease – you immediately start thinking of the costs it would incur upon you and your loved ones (too late for insurance), you dare to try asking her out for the first and final date (romantic huh?), you probably won’t exercise but if you think that exercise is going to rid you of that disease, you might get into it regularly (and if you have enough time left to fight it!)

However, for most people… they just can’t “self-impose” a deadline upon themselves. That’s why Procrastination exists. If you’ve got a real “deadline”, your procrastination would vanish by itself.Procrastination is simply a lack of a Time-limit Goal.

So, if you truly wish to maximize your life and time, utilize deadlines. It’ll make you work faster and more determined towards achieving it. Some people may truly HAVE to have a real deadline before they can do anything… others, can impose it on their own minds.

For myself, I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable in my chest area in a way I’ve never felt uncomfortable before in the past few days. Instead of focusing on the pain, I use it to “imply” a deadline upon myself to get to doing the work I’ve been setting out to do.

Many people I know just choose to complain and moan about how uncomfortable and sick they are to other people – they don’t know that they’re adding more sickness to themselves (probably talk about this in another post).

So, want to truly experience life and have the courage to do what you’ve always wanted to do? Get a deadline. Most people avoid pain rather than gain pleasure – so, if you have a deadline with costs to it, you’ll do more to avoid it than try to get the gains of your goals. Okay, let me de-abstract that statement using the example of a man dying soon:

• Dating – If I don’t do it now, I’ll never get to know what she thinks!
• Experience – If I don’t try it now, then when? I’ve always been too scared to try before, there’s nothing to lose even if I fail now.
• Changing – I’ve been a horrible person all my life, now that I’ve been given time to make things right, I’m going to do it.

… and again, so much more I can’t possibly list.

Life Begins At Death.

In this post, I’m going to recount the time I spent during Tony Robbins “Unleash The Power Within” 20094-day weekend seminar held at Hall 2, Singapore EXPO.

I learned a whole bunch while I was there – watching Tony Robbins teach and helping some people out of their own personal problems LIVE in front of a crowd of 5,000 people from 16 countries. He spoke to and helped a Japanese wife who couldn’t give birth by helping her to see that her happiness does not lie in a child that might never come; another 22-year young Hong Kong woman discovers why she is constantly depressed and over-emotional and how she’s trapped herself into a never ending cycle.

Here’s a quick video I made about my Firewalk experience. Enjoy!

As for me, there were 2 things in particular that I would like to point out here.

1. “Who We are Today is the Result of the Choices We made Yesterday,
Who We Become Tomorrow is the Result of the Choices We make Today”

That simple statement sums up a lot of the things that we do to ourselves – because of our own limiting beliefs and thoughts, we often tend to hold ourselves down. Not letting us go forward and doing what could be better for us… because we are afraid. Afraid because of fear… fear of failure, fear of success, fear of unknown, fear of loss, fear.

There was a session where we had to write down what were the negative decisions we made before and how it has benefited us in anyway.

I wrote that I had decided that I will avoid making mistakes others make by learning from theirs – while this has benefited me in terms of not having to experience what pains they go through… I also lose that exact experience. Without the experience, I won’t know how precious and important it really is!

Then I recalled something amazing…

When I was 15 years old (that’s 10 years back), I…

• was lonely,
• got angry easily,
• was pretty vulgar,
• was very violent,
• spoke my mind and hurt people without knowing it,
• had no understanding…

The good thing is, I went to City Harvest Church and started to change but I do believe I was 15 when I said… “I don’t want these anymore! I want friends! I want to be happy! I want to laugh! I want to enjoy life to the max!” and I decided to change my life.

10 years down the road to today… I see the results of that decision. Wow. Time flies. I am who I am today because of the decision made 10 years ago. Of course, I had a lot of help and support from the folks at church, but nevertheless, the decision started from within me.

(Thank You God)

And the second thing is… hrmm, what was the second thing?… Oh yes…

2. “Learn to Burn Energy like Coals, not Lighter Fluid”

Huh? What’s this got to do with anything?

You see… attending this seminar took EVERY OUNCE OF ENERGY outta me. I was completely, utterly, spent. When Tony said “Go to level 110, go berserk” – I took it literally (part of the whole ‘enjoy life to the max’ mindset I got going). And physically went ape-wild.

So, being already physically worn down due to the high-level activity and being sleep deprived, I caught a bug from one of the members. I met that members’ friends on day 3 and they told me he was down with fever.

Day 3 was 50% screwed because I caught that fever. It didn’t catch on strong until I did another activity by Tony Robbins.

It’s quite like a “deliverance” seminar I’ve experienced in church – without the laying on off hands and casting out of demons and stuff.

After that “deliverance” effect, I was 110% overspent on energy and I almost collapsed. The last time I felt that physically worn out was during my army training days at the Standard Obstacle Course (S.O.C.) training.

The energy we’ve got to burn can be used in 2 ways… either we burn them like coals – where it’s slow, constant but long-lasting. Or like lighter fluid, a huge powerful burst but gone almost instantaneously. To go further in life, one’s gotta maintain the energy so one does not burn out too early!

Tony’s been doing this type of whole-weekend seminars (with only 1 break for the whole day) for the past 32 years and it amazes me how much energy he’s got. The only other people I know who could possibly be on par or higher is Pastor Kong Hee.

So as it turns out, I missed out on day 4 totally as I had to recover at home… I had fever and I lost my voice. Nevertheless, I got what I needed during the 3 days.

Asher “FIREWALKER” Aw

Often, we’ll need to use some tools to help us out. However, the tools available to us can be expensive and filled with many extra options which we don’t really use, other times, there are free tools which aren’t perfect but they get the job done.

Today, I’m going to give you some free tools you can use to start “panning for gold” or “digging for gold”. No “Free 30 Day Trial” here, it’s all free and good stuff.

Remember though, these are tools. And like any tool, if you leave them in the shed for a period of time, gold will not magically appear on them. You gotta use them to reap the benefits.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Office, PDF, Productivity Tools

1. OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) – Don’t want to get Microsoft Office? This is an excellent alternative
2. PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com) – A free, high-quality PDF creation utility that enables printing to PDF from virtually any Windows application.
3. FruitfulTime (http://www.fruitfultime.com) – This site was develops simple and effective productivity software to help individuals and small teams be more productive, as of 4 December 2009, all products are free for both commercial and private use.
4. FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net) – A free mind-mapping software. If you’re a fan of mind-mapping to structure your thought processes, this will be a godsend.
5. FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org) – One of the best free FTP (file transfer protocol) software available.
6. Article Submission Helper (http://www.articlesubmissionhelper.com) – Unlike most “free” article submitters, this one actually supports automated account registration – so you won’t have to waste hours just signing up. It also has inbuilt article spinner. Great time saver if you use articles to market your business.

Web Authoring, Image Editing Tools

1. PSPad (http://www.pspad.com) – A freeware editor, useful for people who like to code by hand
2. NVU (http://net2.com/nvu) – One of the most well known free WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) web editors available on the net. A free alternative to FrontPage or Dreamweaver
3. Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) – This is a free software for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. For people who don’t want to spend money on Photoshop.
4. Paint.net (http://getpaint.net) – A free image and photo editing software for computers running on Windows. It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software.
5. Picnik (http://www.picnik.com) – An online photo editor. If you only have a browser to help you do image editing, this site is amazing.
6. MyECoverMaker (http://www.myecovermaker.com) – An amazing  resource to help create your online ecovers. Mark Monciardini creator of CoverActionPro has revolutionized the way ecovers are presented. Here, at this site, you won’t get Mark but you can create amazing ecovers at drag-and-drop simplicity.

Multimedia Tools

1. CamStudio (http://camstudio.org) – A free alternative to TechSmith’s Camtasia software.
2. BSRSoft (http://www.bsrsoft.com) –  Another really good free screen recorder
3. Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) – This free, open source software can be used for recording and editing sounds.

Image Resources

1. Stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu) – One of the best sites for free stock photos.
2. Photos8 (http://www.photos8.com) – All photos here are free for any use.
3. morgueFile (http://www.morguefile.com) – This site contains lots of high resolution photos and graphics.
4. FreeDigitalPhotos (http://www.freedigitalphotos.net) – Tons of great stuff for web use but if you want to use for print or graphic design, you’ll have to buy the higher resolutions.

Other Useful Resources/Tools

1. Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) – Of course, Wikipedia is known as the web’s largest free encyclopedia. But did you know there’s a page where there’s a list of free and open source software packages ?
2. DupeFree (http://www.dupefreepro.com) – This software is fantastic if you are using it to check for plagiarism, unique content.
3. Empressr (http://www.empressr.com) – This online site can create 3D presentations for your otherwise boring “click to go to next slide” presentations.
4. Zoho (http://show.zoho.com) – Another online site to create presentations but very much like an online Microsoft Powerpoint, also allows you to share presentations and lots more.
5. Mint (http://www.mint.com) – One of the safest places for accounting of where you’ve been spending your money. The site’s headline is “the best free way to manage your money”
6. Sugar (http://www.sugarforge.org/content/open-source) – Sugar is an amazing free CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Watch the demo videos to be amazed.
7. BrowserShots (http://www.browsershots.org) – This is a great resource to see how your webpage looks like across 6 commonly used browsers at 800×600 and 1024×768 resolutions.
8. Osalt (http://www.osalt.com) – This site will list various open source alternatives to the already existing commercial software. Got software you want? You’ll likely find an alternative here

I could go on for a lot more but then again, too much may be… well, too much.

Check out these resources and tools, use them to your hearts content.