Happy 40th anniversary internet!

Like most of the ubercool things that science and technology brings to us are made for Army first, general population later. Same happened with plasma TVs, GPS devices, computers and the internet. Internet was made for the reason that US government wanted a faster way how to deliver all kinds of files data and plans between its institutions. Mostly it was used by Pentagon so it could deliver everything faster to its peers.

Who would know that this thing called “Arpanet” (that’s howinternet was called first) is going to make a revolution? Look now - we no longer use encyclopedias - we use Google and Wikipedia, we no longer call our friends or relatives, we just “Skype” them or “MSN” them. Hell, we don’t ask phone numbers from girls, instead, we ask for their emails. And don’t forget the limitless opportunities that “Adult Friend Finder” brings us. And even some media giants are predicting the end of newspapers, and again, the reason is the internet. We live in a quite awesome age if you ask me.

Just think of it - internet has now become the leading source for most people on this planet, it has become pain in the ass for most press media corporations, and it has developed several multi-billion industries such as Affiliate Marketing and p0rn.

The internet was “created”  by Leonard Kleinrock and few assistants who began tests on what was soon to become the Internet. About forty people gathered in Kleinrock’s lab at the University of California, Los Angeles to observe twp large computers, fifteen feet apart send test data to each other across a gray cable.

This was your short history class of internet. And again, you didn’t use any physical books or encyclopedias, you used internet to acknowledge it.

Affiliate Marketing Rules Have Changed…

It is pretty clear that Google’s goal is to suspend as much affiliates as possible. We know how tricky and fraudulent most of the CPA offers are. It is a real nightmare for the customers who sign up to those offers with their email or even worse - credit card.

Basically, what this means is that you can say good-bye to the promotion of trial-type offers, many zip/email offers and of course a great portion to make money online products. Many affiliates believe that this kind of step of Google was made because more and more people are reporting to FTC about unwanted credit card charges, annual or monthly billing and so on.

From now on you should promote the best offer/product out there that you really believe in, and that it will help the people. Also you can say “bye” to one-page review type landing pages. There is no way how Google will allow you to promote a product with that kind of landing page anymore.

Your landing page must now have some sort of of good quality content.

Moneyac’s Way Of Doing Landing Pages

I also was hit by the angry hand of Google, and few of my landing pages lost the quality score from 9 and 8 to 1. I got my lesson, now it is time to regroup and start a new strategy. To avoid the b!tch slapping by Google, I now make my landing pages with the help of Wordpress. Easy, pretty, clean.

I use one-column wordpress themes, I make a new niche-related header for each offer/product. Since Google requires you to have couple of pages of good quality content, I use the above the fold navigation bar that 90% of wordpress themes have to make each page as an article. Simple and easy. Mostly I add 5-6 ~400 word articles, rewrite them from other sources or just hire a freelancer. The landing page itself (the page where the customer will land after clicking on my ad) has some minor information about the product or offer, and it is followed by a link or a banner (depends on the niche).

I use Wordpress because I’m actually a bit of noob with coding and designing, in the meantime wordpress is easy to modify. Also don’t forget to add other additional pages such as - “Privacy Policy”, “About Us”, etc.

In a nutshell to avoid Google’s slap you must:

• Avoid “free trial” offers
• Avoid scammy “make money online” products
• Totally avoid make money online products that have “Google” in their name, such as “Google Cash Tree”
• Be careful with zip/email offers, Google isn’t yet slapping them, yet promote only those which you feel that will benefit somehow the customer
• Make good quality landing pages, with actual content. Not hard at all.
• If Google slapped or stopped showing your campaign - get over it, don’t try to promote the same crap again, this will only get your account raped and banned.

Also Yahoo has announced that they will not allow to promote zip and “trial” offers anymore.

Oh, and the sh*t could get interesting as Yahoo and Microsoft have signed a deal to battle with Google. These are indeed interesting times to be an affiliate.

Even if you’ll try to search for keywords via google.com while located in UK (for example), you still won’t get the desired results, as you’re IP is located in UK, so again, you’ll mostly find the top websites are with .uk domains, and the Adword Ads that are targeted to UK traffic not US, thanks to Google’s Geo-Targeting.

So how do you get “real” search results that are useful? Read further…

How To Check Google US (or any other country) Search Results If You’re Not From US (or any other country)

Basically to do this you have few options:

1st option

You can use several proxy servers. To make Google think that you’re actually from the country that you have chosen to be from. This works, but not always. During my experience using proxy servers to make Google show me the desired country’s results (in this case US) whenever I select a different proxy server, I get different results. Can you get some objective results by this? I think not.

2nd option

While doing your search via Google you can use this code with your search - gl=US. In the field where it says “US”, you can add any other country for example - “CA”, “AUS”, “UK” or whatever. This helps, but not always, as still Google sees that you’re not from the region you’re doing the search trough. Also this makes it quite frustrating and consumes much time.

3rd option

You can actually move to the country you want the results from, in this scenario - USA, then again you must be thinking: “Are you frigging serious?”. Don’t worry I still have the 4th option which you possibly will like more.

4th option

The best method so far that I have found is to use the Google Global FireFox Extension from RedFlyMarketing.com. This little FireFox plugin is quite nasty bastard. It fools Google, so it thinks that you’re actually from the country you’re doing searches for. In the default options it provides such countries - US, UK, AUS, Canada and Ireland. But fear not, with few clicks you can add whatever country you like to the list, and woolaah - you’ll get the same results as the people that are actually living in the country get. Good to check your competition in SEO and PPC Ads. So far I have found it perfectly accurate. Not only it provides the countries you wish, but also you can geo-target it to even states and cities. Simply genius. Get the plugin here.

Hope this helps.

The reason why I haven’t posted anything here is that one really close person had some very serious health related (nerve system illness) problems, and almost the past two months I have been traveling with the person across all Europe to different countries visiting different doctors, clinics, and hospitals doing all the required procedures. From Germany to England, from England to Ukraine, from Ukraine to Iceland, from Iceland to Norway and so on. It has been really depressing and exhausting. It’s really quite stressful to visit all the doctors and listen how they say:” This could help maybe, but try to visit that doctor instead”. Each time when you hear that sentence, the beam of hope slowly fades out.

Not only experiencing all this madness makes you depressive, but also all the traveling as well. Luckily, at the moment everything seems fine, thank god. I want to say specials thanks to the doctors and staff at The University of Bristol Institute of Clinical Neurosciences, UK who were very professional and kind.

Anyway, not only all this “travel” has made me exhausted emotionally and physically, it also took a nice chunk of money. Of course in moments like these nobody counts money, as the person besides you has no price tag. During this period my internet business has suffered quite badly. My unsuccessful  CPA/PPC campaigns have wasted tons of money as I didn’t monitor them, also this blog has suffered quite a lot. But I don’t worry about it much, it will all come back as I did it with my knowledge, and I will be able to repeat everything that I did.

During the this kind of “shock therapy” to your business and yourself, you learn quite many things, and look at them from a different view. The things I learned, that you should also know and learn, if you haven’t done that.

• Always leave some money reserves that you can access fast in case of emergency. Luckily, this time I had some money saved. You can’t predict what may happen in near future to you or to your close people.
• Hire some trustworthy and professional assistant if your internet business is growing. Assistant during the times when you must leave all your stuff in one moment can save your butt. I have no assistant, that’s why my business suffered so badly.
• If you must help someone, do that with all your focus and energy. Business is just business, health is way more important. Without health all other things have no meaning.

I am focusing back on my business and this blog, and I will continue to write posts. Feels good to be back.

All the best.

Lets Talk About Your Habits…

Lets first see what other famous and successful people have to say about habits.

“A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them. ” Frank A. Clark

“Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of.” Unknown

“First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you.” Rob Gilbert

How Habits Influence Your Internet Business

I also have my bad habits that I am trying to fight right now, because they are taking away a great deal of productivity. For example, I know couple of habits that I share with many internet marketers.

For example every morning when I turn on the PC I automatically without any thinking, I visit couple of forums - digital point forum, warrior forum and few more. Yeah, it is great to find out what’s going on in the internet marketing world, because as we know, then internet is changing uberfast and it’s really hard to follow everything that is happening. Then again forums are one of the biggest time wasters known to an internet marketer. I have had days when before I wanted to complete my daily goals, I visited a forum. It’s all great and fun, but later I realized that I have just spent 5 hours lurking forums, reading, etc. Not only that my time was wasted, I also didn’t complete none of my daily goals, and the biggest pain in the ass after a long session lurking forums is that I had a massive information overload. My head was full, I just couldn’t do anything to complete my daily goals. Try to read warrior forum for example for 5 hours straight, and you’ll get the idea how I was feeling.

• Goals completed that day - zero.
• Knowledge gained that would help me to complete my goals - near zero. Mostly the information was useless for me, or I already knew that.
• Productivity that day - none
• Money made that day - zero.

And this result occurred because of my not-so-good habit.

Visiting forums is fun, and sometimes useful if you find the right information. But then again, I suggest you only to visit forums after you have completed your daily tasks and goals. Do that when you have completed everything that you planned.

The other mass time waster - email. Yeah, we all mostly communicate trough emails, we talk about new Joint Ventures via emails, we talk about advertising via emails, we get some hefty cool offers from other marketers and people via email. Email indeed is essential for our businesses. Then again it’s a massive time waster. When you think you have just replied to every email, you click the “Send/Receive” button of your email browser, and woolaah - you have another 5 new emails. it takes for you ~40 min to reply to them, you click the “Send/Receive” button again, and holy cow - 6 new emails. The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.

My advice is only to reply to emails after you have done your daily goals. I suggest you to read the received emails, but don’t reply to them if they’re not urgent. Just reply to the really urgent ones - for example if your mother in law is asking when she can come and visit you. In this kind of situation the faster your reaction is, the better. You know - you’re sick, or you’re going out of town, the usual “mother in law stuff”.

One more email time waster - email subscriptions. I believe we all have them, and the irony is that most of the emails that come from the people you have subscribed to receive the free report are pure crap. Most of them try to sell you something, and fill up your email box. Not all email marketers are like this, but most of them are. Just unsubscribe the email lists that don’t provide anything valuable to you.

Making New Habits and Dropping The Old Ones

I have read some great books about human’s psychology, because marketing is a great part of psychology, and according to some psychologists - you must avoid the habit that you want to drop about 10 times. To make a new habit - you must do the thing for 30 times in a row to make it as a habit.

For example - if you want to drop the email checking habit each morning, you got to avoid it 10 times. Which means, you will have to avoid the email checking 10 mornings in a row. After that your mind will not try to automatically pursue the habit. It’s going to be hard to drop a habit, especially the ones that you have been doing for months or even years. But each morning when you turn on your PC you have to remember and force yourself not to check the emails, after 10 mornings or so you won’t have to think about it, the habit will be out of your subconscious mind.

To make a new “healthy for your business habit” - you have to do the thing for 30 times in a row. Let’s say you want to create a habit that will lead you to write a new article every day. For 30 days you have to force yourself to write a new article each day, if you have successfully done this, after 30 days your subconscious mind will accept that as a habit, and it’s going to become your routine. And after these 30 days you will create a new article every day without forcing yourself much.

WARNING: If you’re trying to make a new habit, you must do the action 30 times in a row. If you want to create a new article each day. you must force yourself to write for 30 days in a row. If you’ll miss one day to do that, you’ll have to start the process all over again to acquire the new habit.

This is the power of habits. It really influences your business, your character and your success.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” Aristotle

What’s your say? What do you think about habits? I would be happy if could  share your habits by commenting.

Should You Reply To Every Comment?

The Golden Middle Path

Replying to each comment is little bit exhausting, not that it’s physically hard, but that you always got to think what to answer. Sure if the commentator does indeed provide solid content via the comment, then it’s good for SEO, and will hopefully improve the discussion, and this will cause more and more people to join the debate. So should you really answer to every comment? I have been doing that - answering to almost every comment, sure the reader maybe feels noticed and respected if the author replies to the comment, then again I can’t think much of what to answer to a comment that sounds like this: “Great Post”.  Sure, you can say “thanks” or whatever, but will that do any good? Maybe…

Then again, you should always write your post in such a way that it would encourage people to participate in the discussion. Give some very clear questions to your reader, ask for the reader’s opinion and point of view. Negative comments are actually kinda cool, negative comments mostly cause massive discussion and debate, I have seen this especially happening where the blogger shows his/her earnings and such. And if you’re a forum lurker then you have probably spotted that those threads which have negative replies and where the opinions don’t match are the longest ones. This is because it attracts attention, then again, on your blog you should avoid falme wars. Negative comments that actually contain some healthy criticism are great and may improve you and your blog.

What’s your say? Do you like when the blogger responds to every comment, or you, as a blogger - do you respond to every comment?

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”

Vince Lombardi

“Impatience never commanded success.”

Edwin H. Chapin

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude”. -

Thomas Jefferson

“They can because they think they can“.

Virgil

“Try not to become a man of success but a man of value”. - Albert Einstein

“To find what you seek in the road of life,
the best proverb of all is that which says:
“Leave no stone unturned.”".

Edward Bulwer Lytton

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it”.

William Arthur Ward

“If you would create something, you must be something”.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Every artist was first an amateur.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

Epictetus

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable”.

Seneca

“What ever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Napolean Hill

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there!”

Will Rogers

“When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
when he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worst, that
You Must Not Quit.”

C. W. Longenecker

“Never Give Up”.

W. Churchill

“Winners never quit and quitters never win”.

Anon

“If an individual sets an achievable goal and never gives up, they will either achieve their goal, or die trying.

If a civilization sets an achievable goal and never gives up, they will achieve their goal.

What shall we do?”.

Matthew Keith Groves

“You say this is a computer for ordinary people? Why would an ordinary person want a computer?”.

Hewlett Packard executive to Steve Wozniak regarding Apple prototype

“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength, but through persistence”.

Buddha

“Who dares, wins”.

W.Churchill

“If you think you’re beaten, you are

If you think you dare not, you don’t;

If you’d like to win but you think you can’t,

You can almost be certain you won’t.

If you think that you’ll lose, you are lost,

For out in the world you will find

Success begins with a person’s will;

It’s all in the state of the mind.

If you think you’re outclassed you are;

You’ve got to think high to rise.

You’ve just got to be sure of yourself

Before you can win the prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go

To a stronger or faster man;

But sooner or later the person who wins

Is the person that THINKS they can.”.

- Anon.

“If think you can’t, you’re right. If think you can, you’re right”.

Ken Hatton

“Don’t think “problem”, think “opportunity”“.

Unknown

Life is “trying things to see if they work”

Ray Bradbury

“Vision without action is daydreaming, and action without vision is a nightmare“.

Anon

“Things do not change; we change”.

Thoreau

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit“.

Aristotle

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways at the last minute, champagne in one hand, strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO - That was Fun!” Live life to the fullest”.

Anon

“Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right“.

Aldous Huxley

“Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it“.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity”.

George Patton

Hope you’ll do any good with these.

ShoeMoney’s Free Course

First things first. Shoemoney has released  12-week long internet marketing course for free. It includes things such as affiliate marketing, SEO, website making, PPC and other useful things. Shoemoney is known for some outstanding internet marketing successes so I think it’s going to be “healthy” for your business to at least take a look in that course, it’s free after all. And the course is not only for newbs,  I think experienced internet marketers will find their own gems as well. Sign up for the course.

World’s Oldest Blogger Has Passed Away

World’s oldest blogger - Maria Amelia Lopez who is 97 years old has passed away. Maria got all this world’s attention when her grandson set up a blog as her birthday present when she was 95. She mostly was doing video posting, instead of text. The blog’s language is Spanish, so if you have any knowledge in Spanish then you can visit her blog at amis95.blogspot.com R.I.P.

Google’s New Algorithm

I know your first thought reading the headline was “Oh noes, not another new algorithm from Google”. Nah, don’t worry about it. This algorithm is going to be for the employees.

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

I guess Google just wants to algorithm everything that they can access to.

Now Google has stopped punishing the “trademark bidders”. Ahh.. yes, now you can actually bid on trademarks legally. I know some affiliates that have been trademark bidding, but they had to watch “over their shoulder” all the time because if G found out that you were bidding on trademarks - you were punished.

You want to compete with Apple ? Now you can do that. Want to compete with Coca-Cola and bid on “Coca-Cola” ? You can now do that as well.

Get your campaigns ready as this rule will set place on 4th June. The trademark bidding is going to be allowed in most countries - UK, USA, Canada, etc. Here is the full list of countries in which trademark bidding is allowed from now on.

Affiliate Marketing - Free Keyword Goldmine!

It’s everything about the keywords. Keywords is the fundamental corner stone of the internet. Keywords - it’s everything we need to make money online. Every search that is made on internet starts with a keyword. It doesn’t matter if it’s a product a person wants to buy, video the person wants to watch or some general information, it’s all about the keywords.

Now I bet that every affiliate marketer once or even more has dreamed or thought about getting some “sensitive” information about keywords from the mighty G. How cool would it be, if we would have some “VIP” access to the G’s server that has the information about the keywords that are used daily, which is standing somewhere in a basement’s darkest corner guarded by the British SAS 25/8. Indeed, access to that metallic bastard would be a “wet dream” come true for an affiliate marketer. Just think about the information overload you would get.

Back To The Reality

In reality we know that you have a bigger chance to make $3million in 24 hours as most of the MMO books claim than having access to that G’s server box. But what if… but what if we can actually have a small fraction of that information TODAY, RIGHT NOW, FOR FREE, STRAIGHT FROM GOOGLE ? Ahhh… well now I think I just have raised some curiosity with those bold claims.

Okay, Chris, Cut The Crap Already and Say What You Have Planned To Say !

Well, recently (couple of days ago) Google introduced some free tool. Then again, I didn’t notice it till today, because I wasn’t actually searching for that kind of tool, as I never thought Google would give out so much information for us - the money makers. The tool was standing in front of me for the whole FREAKING TIME, yes just right there in front of my eyes bouncing around and saying: “Hey mate you wanna make some cash? Check this tool out! ” Of course, I was too blind to spot it.

The Tool is called “Search Based Keyword Tool” and it’s made by Google. At first look it looks something like the Google AdWord Keyword Tool, but it’s not. It’s far better than that.

You see that this tool actually shows you the most searched keywords in various and different categories and niches. Basically Google has sorted most of the most searched keywords in most popular categories of the internet. It’s amazing ! With little brainstorming and research you can set up your PPC campaign in few hours and start making money ! Or you can do some SEOing. Anyway, I have added some pictures to show you how you can actually benefit from this tool. Look and be amazed !

You can click on the images to get better view of them. I made them smaller for the sake of smaller monitors.

This is where the little maggot has been hiding, in front of my eyes !

Here you can enter your desired keyword and search for it. You can also put in your website to see the most popular keywords for your website. Nothing special, but the real deal comes ahead.

Here you can see different variations of your keyword, then again, nothing special, as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool does that as well. On the left side you can see some other categories for your keyword.

And this is my fave part ! Here you can click on any category and sub-category and see the most popular and searched keywords. This is the real deal. I mean, it’s all sorted out for you. Google has done it for you.

As you see, if you really will use the great potential of this tool, then you can find “low hanging fruits” in each and every category and niche. Longtail keywords are the really great ones. Find your desired keyword, brainstorm some different variations of it on the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, and you got some nice set of keywords ready to make you money. Many people probably won’t see the potential of this, but it really has big potential, believe me. Then again, maybe there is another tool like this, doing the same thing, then again, I don’t know one yet, and this is actually Google giving you out the keywords in each category for free ! If you don’t trust the results from the tools that Google has made, then I don’t know what you can trust.

This is actually the stuff that many $97 eBooks would give ya’. I mean it’s all here, for free, on this blog, on The Moneyac’s blog, now just go out and make some damn money ! Once more - the URL for the tool - Google Search Based Keyword Tool