I guess it was just a matter of time before my kids’ computer was infected with a virus.

It had been getting slower for a while. But a while ago, the strangest thing happened. All browsers on the PC were unable to connect to the internet. The machine still had connectivity because online services worked. But I had 4 different browsers installed and none of them could connect to a page.

This machine has had either Norton Antivirus or Windows Security running on it since Day One. But neither was good enough to stop whatever this bugger of a virus was doing.

I downloaded and ran several other anti virus programs but nothing worked. Finally, for the first time in my lifetime of using computers (since 1983) I had to throw in the towel and bring it to a PC expert to see if they could disinfect the PC.

Long story short – they couldn’t. So I had them wipe it clean and reinstall the operating system, Windows Vista.

Here’s the good news. I have awesome backup. All data is backed up online using Mozy Online Backup. So no worries about losing the kids homework, etc.

But I have had the PC home for seven hours and I have been installing Windows updates non-stop since then. Have probably rebooted the machine 15 times already. The guy at the store told me it could take two days to do it. And that’s before I install any apps. Ugh.

Moral of the story: Backup your files online. Automatically. I use Mozy, but Carbonite is another option. Less than $5 per month for peace of mind. Do it now – before this happens to you.

BTW – My kids are instructed to ask me before they download and install any software on the PC. They are far more careful than most kids probably are. If it can happen to a PC that is protected with up to date virus software – and NO bit torrent or sketchy file sharing, it can happen to anyone.

My oldest son joined the team this year and last night was their first meet. Previously, Ryan has always participated in team sports. He has played football and lacrosse, both of which are tough and physically demanding.

By the way, if you are wondering what this has to do with marketing, I’ll get there in a minute.

There’s a big difference between team sports and wrestling however. When you wrestle, all eyes are on you. It’s just you against the other guy. Nowhere to hide. No one else to blame. No one else to share the credit with. It’s an entirely different level of pressure on the kid. And I have a new found respect for anybody who can do it.

At this point, my ERAM kicked in. ERAM stands for Everything Revolves Around Marketing and it describes how my twisted mind views much of the world.

I started thinking about some of the similarities and differences between internet marketing and wrestling, especially for people just getting started in either.

My son is lucky to have a good group of coaches who are helping him learn a brand new sport. He’s learning the basics of move and counter-move. But also some specific tactics and holds he can use to attack or defend against his opponents.

I realize how this is similar with getting started in Internet marketing. At first, the information comes in like water from a fire hose. We are overwhelmed with all the different aspects of internet marketing.

But after a while, there is usually some aspect of it that makes the most sense to us. For different people, different aspects of marketing seem to fit better.

For example, an analytical person might be more attracted to PPC marketing where keeping track of click through rates, conversion percentages and quality scores is crucial to success.

People who enjoy writing might be drawn towards article marketing where they can put their skills to use. Or perhaps blogging makes sense to them.

Eventually, you have to stick a stake in the ground and dive deeper into the particular area that interests you so that you can build your skills. Hopefully you can find some good coaches along the way that have been successful in that area and it can lead you to success.

But just like wrestling, when you step onto the mat the success is all on you. No coach or system will do it for you. At some point you have to step into the lights and put your skills on the line. Nobody can do it for you.

You may not win your first match. But you learn from it and move onto the next match (or marketing campaign) and improve as you go.

There is one important difference between wrestling and marketing.

Wrestling is a zero-sum game. One wrestler wins and one wrestler loses each match. And whatever your record is before this match doesn’t really matter. All that counts on today’s score board is how you do against this particular wrestler.

Fortunately, marketing is not like that at all. You don’t win in marketing at other people’s expense. In fact, helping other people reach their goals is a great way to help you reach yours.

It’s what we call abundance thinking. Is there competition? Yes. But there are always multiple solutions in every market niche. There is always room for new idea or a new twist. Established competition proves there is a legitimate market.

And yesterday’s competitor can easily become tomorrow’s affiliate partner.

As a rookie, my son didn’t actually wrestle last night. But at Saturday’s meet he is definitely wrestling at least three times. He’s nervous, but also very excited. He’s spent a lot of time in the gym with his coaches, getting ready. This Saturday, he steps into the lights.

How about you? Are you on the sidelines or are you in the game? I doubt any wrestler thinks he’s completely ready for his first match. But whether it’s yor first match or your first foray into marketing, you have to get out there, get something started, and improve on it.

Good luck in your match.

The point is simply this: You cannot download any image you find on the web and use it on your own web site, product, blog, etc. Doing so may, and usually does, violate a copyright of the person who originally created the image. That could mean legal hassles, and possibly major penalties for you.

Fortunately there are several sites where you can find good images that are OK for you to use. These images have a “Creative Commons License” which allows public use of them as long as their terms are followed. Sometimes this means you have to give credit to the author. You need to check this on each image.

I know many people use Google images or Flickr to find images. Both of those sites have images that are legal – AND illegal to use. You have to know how to find the images that are legal to use and avoid the illegal images. This Google blog post shows you how to find images that are licensed for your use on your sites.

Don’s blog post has a video showing how to find images on flickr. Be sure to also read the comments on Don’s blog as several of his readers suggested alternative sites for finding legal images. For example, I found the image on this blog post at http://www.sxc.hu .

Finally, there are limitations in using these sites. They don’t have as many images available, and they aren’t always the best quality, especially Google and Flickr, because anyone can throw an image on there. If you have a specific image you need that has to be good, like for instance a cover photo on your eBook, then you might have better luck at a site like http://www.istockphoto.com. You can find great photos there for a very reasonable price.

I had heard rumors these still exist, so I went to visit.

Okay, that’s a bit tongue in cheek.

Anyway, I was browsing through some business books and found a book on Internet Marketing. naturally, I picked it up and started browsing through it.

Then I looked at the copyright date. It was 1997.

Are you kidding me? A book on Internet marketing from 1997?

Let’s see. There was no Google, no eBay, no Facebook, no YouTube, barely any auto responders. You get the picture.

After I finished chuckling to myself about how useless this book was, I brought it up to the circulation desk. I politely pointed out to the woman that this was an Internet marketing book from 1997 and was completely obsolete.

I further pointed out that it would actually hurt somebody who came in and read it. It would completely waste their time and send them in the wrong directions.

I was hoping she would immediately see the logic and pull the book from the shelves.

Instead she told me that books stay on the shelves based on how many times they are taken out. But she might be able to bring this up to the reference committee and they could meet and make a decision about it.

In other words, the more people that make a mistake and take this book out, the longer it will stay on the shelves. I did not get the feeling she took me seriously.

What a joke!

I did realize that there is an important lesson in this. Many people today minimize the value of online education. They think that a book in print has more credibility. There may be some truth to the credibility part, but my experience is that any book about Internet marketing in general is obsolete by the time it hits a bookshelf.

There’s just too much time that goes on between when the author writes something and when it is finally approved, edited, published, and distributed.

So the next time you are browsing through your local library or the local bookstore, enjoy the fiction and the recipes and the history and the biographies. But stay the heck away from anything to do with online marketing.

Online courses, membership sites and e-books, especially those with active forums, are much better places to get current information. Do look out for the dates, you can still find old e-books available. But in general, you are better with information that is published online from a reputable source.

Internet marketing information is not like wine, it does not get better with age.

“I had this really good idea for an e-book/product/website. What is the best way to get it produced?”

Whenever someone asks me the best way to make a product or make a website, my first question is always the same.

How are you going to get traffic?

Personally, whenever I am considering a new project the first thing I always think about his traffic. What are the different ways I can drive traffic to this new venture?

If I don’t have several good ideas, then the project is a no go.

There is no point in spending all the time to create a product or website if you don’t know how you will be getting traffic.

Fact is: nobody is going to beat a path to your website. You need a solid strategy to drive targeted traffic if you have any hope of your project becoming a success.

One I am brainstorming traffic ideas, I spend a lot of time on free or strategic traffic sources. I’m trying to find ways to get other people to send traffic to me.

Obviously, there has to be something in it for them, too. That’s one reason that many of my projects include an affiliate program. If I can offer to pay another website a percentage of the sales that traffic generates, they are much more likely to listen to my ideas.

For example, in my pilot niche site, there is a very popular aviation website that thousands of pilots visit every day. I spoke with the owner and arranged to have him install an opt in form for our newsletter. Everyone who signs up through the opt in form on his website is cookied with his affiliate ID.

It’s a huge win-win. He has made thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions for about 20 minutes of work. We have added thousands of subscribers and thousands of extra dollars in revenue.

There are examples and ideas for this kind of thing in virtually any niche. It is amazing how many websites are not collecting email addresses. And you could create a massive traffic and revenue source.

You can talk to a website owner and arrange something like this before your product is created. Sell the concept. If you succeed, then create the product.

If you have expertise in a particular area, look for newsletters in that niche and offer to provide a weekly column. If your content is good and the newsletter owner agrees, you have just created a nice ongoing source of traffic with no cash outflow.

Here is one key. Pick up your telephone. It’s much easier to structure a deal like this when you are actually talking with a person. Something like this often requires a lot of questions and answers, and is much more efficient in person. Virtually every good deal I have structured like this has been done over the phone.

Honestly – not so exciting for me.

But as I was wondering around, I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks.

This is a picture I snuck while the counter girl wasn’t looking. I blurred the details to protect the innocent, but you can see it is a list of names and phone numbers.

Across the top it says:

Name..Phone number…Call me for special events

And people are dutifully filling this out.

Hello? – is this 1983? 1965?

Nowhere on this form was a place for email.

So let me ask you this – who do you think is actually going to call the hundreds of people who are filling out this form?

My guess is: nobody.

They didn’t even specify a cell or home number, so they have no idea when to call or where they are calling.

Fools. I mean really – fools.

You and I realize that getting customer’s emails would be far more powerful.

Further, I would get some old $100 laptop, connect it to the wifi, and have a permanent email capture form telling customers the great benefits, sales, special events and discounts they will get if they just leave their email.

When they hit submit, I would take them to a page that tells them to go home and look for the confirmation email and click on the link to get their first special deal.

After 30 seconds, that page would redirect automatically back to the opt in page for the next customer.

With this method, Macy’s doesn’t have to get someone to enter hundreds of names and email addresses into some program. The customer takes care of it – and is happy to do so.

With a nice database of emails building up every day, Macy’s can run specials to get customers in the door.

I might even have the customers enter their cell phone number so I could do some mobile marketing. Maybe send a text message every once in a while when there’s a really good deal running.

All this would take is an old laptop, an hour or two of set-up, and a $29/month Aweber account.

Anyone can do this for any local business and help them tremendously. And at the same time, charge them for set up and even a monthly fee if you wanted to help them with the emails.

Here’s another idea.

What’s the #1 thing every local business wants?

It’s to show up on the first page of Google for their key search term, like “Merrimack NH Orthodontist”

Getting on page one of Google for something like that is far
easier than the kinds of competitive national terms you typically hear about.

Interesting SEO Lesson:

I originally posted this late at night. The next morning, I happened to do a Google search for “Merrimack NH Orthodontist” and, amazingly, my blog ranked #2 on the first page for the term.

This resulted from the use of quotation marks around the phrase. As people become more sophisticated searching with Google, more people will use quotes for their searches.
This indicates that it might be a good idea to use quotes around your key search term at least once in any pages you are trying to rank.

Another interesting note: I rank #2 when I search using Internet Explorer and #3 when I search using FireFox. Hmmmm…..

If you’ve been doing some reading and studying about internet marketing for any length of time, you already know enough to help local businesses with their marketing, and be paid nicely for your effort and knowledge.

Watch this video to learn more.

It seems like every week I acquire another eBook about some business tactic. I go through them pretty fast now, but it seems there are always at least a few good takeaways in each of them.

Now, with many of the higher end marketing courses being delivered as videos, there’s even more to keep track of.

I found I would read an eBook or watch a video course, get excited by some of the things I learned, and then promptly forget about it – or even worse, I would remember the basics of a tactic, but forget exactly where I learned it.

I finally got organized with a free tool that helps me keep track of the important things I learn in all this educational material.

I use a tool called Evernote.

You can download a free version at:

http://www.evernote.com

(If you really love Evernote and start using it a lot, you can upgrade to a paid version, but most people won’t need that.)

Evernote is a free-form notes tool that lets you create and edit notes in the form of text, screen shots, audio notes and more. You can even twitter yourself a note.

A few things make Evernote really cool.

One is that your data is saved “in the cloud” which means it is on Evernote’s servers and not your own PC.

That means it is accessible from anywhere, and from many different devices.

There are Evernote apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android and Blackberry. I can create and save a note on my PC, and view it later on my Android phone in another country!

Evernote has a strong search feature, and you can tag notes with keywords to help you easily find information later.

I find myself using Evernote for a lot of things besides marketing notes. For example, if I order a wine I really like when I’m at a restaurant, I can jot a quick note in my “Wines” note so I remember to buy a bottle when I’m at the wine store.

When I am watching a video, I can do a quick screen capture and store that part of the video directly into Evernote. This can be very helpful for “how to” videos.

You can also copy entire web sites, which is great for creating “swipe file” of ideas for later use.

What useful tools are you using?

Check out http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

SUPER converts to and from a huge assortment of audio and video files – more than anything I’ve seen including the paid apps.

To download, go all the way to the bottom of the page and look for the text link.

Beware that there are ads on the site that may look like the software you want – but the real software is a text link at the bottom of the page (as of this writing).

This is not a trial of crippled freeware version. It’s everything you need, and a valuable tool.

Recently it became clear that a bit of housekeeping was in order. My “library” was overflowing with books, videos, DVDs and all kinds of infoproducts related to marketing.

I knew I had amassed quite a collection over the years, but I didn’t realize how much until it was time to clean some of it up to make room for the new stuff.

I enlisted my son to help me lay it out on the driveway so I could take a picture and remember it fondly.

(If you are wondering, I had to climb up on my roof to get an angle where I could fit it all in the pic.)

Looking at all of this made me realize how much time and money I have invested in my internet marketing education.

I never added it all up, but if I combined the cost of these products with all the travel and seminars and masterminds I’ve attended, it would easily be in the six figures.

What you don’t see here is the gigabytes of eBooks and downloaded audios and videos I’ve also bought.

Yipes!!

Of course the question I have to ask is: Was it worth it?

Well, there are a few products I should have sent back. But for the vast majority, I easily got my investment back in skills and knowledge that helped me improve my online business.

As for the seminars and masterminds, every one of them was easily worth it.

Some people say, “It’s easy for you to buy all that stuff because you are making money online.”

True – but I wasn’t always making money online. I had to start somewhere. Just like everybody else, I wasn’t born knowing any of this stuff.

You start with something, implement, build on it, and then invest part of the profits to improve your skills.

It’s a circle of success.

Invest
Learn
Implement
Reap
…and repeat.

If you leave out any one part of it, you can’t progress.

And while I’m on the subject, one more thing.

None of the products you see above were “Opportunities”.
Investing in your education is not the same as buying a “system that makes $10,000 per week on autopilot!!!”

Don’t confuse opportunities or programs with education.

One builds a skill. The other may or may not earn some money (but usually not if you don’t have the education.)

Education is never wasted. The best investment you can ever make is investing in your own brain.

Have you invested a lot in your success?
Are you implementing?

Comment and let me know!

Here’s the story of how my son worked to get something he wanted – and what it might mean to you.

Read full story: Blood, Guts and Success.