Bless their little algorithms Google has come up with a lovely little addition to their already very good Google Keyword Tool. As with all things Google the Beta will now be subjected to ridicule by all those in the competing software markets. Naturally enough it will have some glitches to start but I hope that over time they fix those because as a tool it simplifies a lot of the annoying stuff in the standard Google Keyword Tool.

A Picture says a 1000 Words.

Whilst this may be true a video can do even more. So with that in mind there are two parts to this video tutorial. Part one shows you what the new Google Keyword Tool look like and we take it for a ‘test drive’.

So What is New in the Google Keyword Tool?

In short the tool drops search terms together. This is no doubt aim squarely at those who struggle to get Adwords Campaigns together. Obviously with the success of Google Adwords comes the problem that if you have Trillions of advertisements running how can the little guy ever get his or her advertisements found. By simplifying the Google Keyword Tool so that it in effect groups like searches it will make it simpler for those less familiar with Keyword research able to establish a group of like terms. In theory this should allow a smaller advertiser to get their ad campaign to work.

That said a Google Adwords Campaign can work miracles once it is set up correctly. We regularly run a campaign for a local repair company that netts them over $2000 a month for a spend of less than $150 a month. That is a massive ROI in any advertising medium. So if you are in the right business and you work with a company that knows what they are doing the returns can be exquisite!

That said in some industries Adwords is less successful. Which is why you need to work closely with a company who will run trials so you don’t simply waste thousands of dollars. Trials may cost as little as $5 a day and may only run for 5 days.

Finding Better Keywords.

Obviously the new Google Keyword Tool is designed to help you find better keywords which in turn will bring more targeted traffic to your site which in turn will lead to more sales (notice I said Targeted Traffic). The problem everyone seems to come up against is even with a great keyword tool it often seems like all the good Keywords are taken.

That is sort of true and also not at the same time. In the second video we go through one simple way you can use the Google Keyword Tool to in effect spy on what you competitors are doing. By matching your keywords to exact long tail keyword phrases it is possible to get your pages to rank very quickly even if the competition appears to be very high.

As you can see the video shows just how to find a search term or keyword and how if you learn to use the Google Keyword Tool in a slightly different way most others use it you can find the edge to ranking in areas you may not think possible. Of course all the good research in the world is not much use if you don’t use it wisely or don’t know how to SEO your page properly in the first place.

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

This Tutorial for WordPress is all about teaching any new WordPress user to not only write a page but also how to put it in a form that Google can understand what your information is all about.

Having a successful Website requires two things:

1. Good information.
2. Someone to read it.

As most people and small businesses do not have $1000’s to spend it is important that you help Google to help people find your website.

So in our first video (see below) we will run through the basics of setting up a page. If you want to know more about exactly how all this works there is a full Tutorial for WordPress on exactly how to set up a page properly on our page called LEARN SEO BASCIS.

Tutorial For WordPress – Video 1:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUbGEF5UESY

]

Now for those of you who are wondering about Keyword Winner here is a great tip: For less than $100 it is the best plugin you can buy if you are serious about saving time and money. I bought it myself and don’t set up a website without adding it to my list of plugins.

For more details click here to find two more videos explaining just how Keyword Winner works.

Alternately follow the link below:

In the second video in this Tutorial for WordPress we go into more detail on what should appear in the body of the article which should be of most interest to you readers / customers but equally needs to continue to keep Google informed. The basics are pretty simple:

• Write some content.
• This can either be product information, something about a topic of interest to your customers or something that you need to remember.
• For example let’s say you need to remember what brands you stock then do a post “Best Brand Widgets”. You might include the sizes, colours, minimum quantity orders, delivery times etc.
• This information not only means you have a permanent record for all of your staff it also becomes a time saving way to answer your customer’s common questions quickly and completely.

As a general rule writing your content in either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Notepad is easier as you have the spell checker to use. Apple Pages seems to work quite nicely also. Just remember do not add anything like ‘bulleted lists / headings / subheadings’ as these can become scrambled when you copy and paste them into WordPress. Once you have finished all that you want to write then watch the second video and watch how we go about making it ‘Google Friendly’.

One final tip before you ‘copy and paste’ your article is to check and make sure you have included your Keyword or Keyword Phrase throughout your article. In this case the keyword phrase is: Tutorial for WordPress. There is no hard and fast rule to how many times this phrase should appear but in an average article like this one our keyword phrase Tutorial for WordPress should appear about 6-8 times per 500-600 words. And don’t think for a minute it can simply be written out like a spelling. Google understands ‘context’ to a degree so that means it will not accept the keyword appearing 10 times in a list.

The other thing you want to try and do is mix round the words and use part of the phrase where possible so on this page our forth paragraph we have written: “So in our first video (see below)….” we could have easily written: “So in our first video tutorial (see below)….” In this second training video I will go through more examples of just how we reinforce our keyword phrase to Google in such a way that most readers would barely notice.

So watch the second video ‘tutorial’ now and as always if you have any questions leave a comment or send us an email. Your question may well be the same one many others need answered.

Tutorial For WordPress – Video 2:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6B3BGyBF2U

]

Remember as we said at the start of this Tutorial for WordPress if you want to add a new page the process is the same as what we just did for the post. The only other ‘fatherly’ advice I would give you is to hire someone to double check what you have done for a while until you are sure you have it all correct. Unfortunately most people don’t have the software to do most of the essential research you need to do to properly SEO a WordPress Post or Page. So you can either spend hours doing it the old fashioned way or hire an expert who can act as your coach.

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

I don’t know about you but when it comes to blogging and website design I love the whole thing. The thing I HATE is link building and that is where Auto Traffic Buddy comes in.

Making money online is the ultimate aim of most websites, blogs or Facebook eCommerce Fan pages of course, but producing a website with great content that people like to come and visit and hopefully get to take away something they didn’t know is, to me, what the Internet is all about.

What I am not a big fan of is Google and Facebook using things like (ha, ha) ‘link’ and ‘likes’ to scale how important or otherwise a website or Facebook page really is. In the case of Facebook many larger corporations are simply running competitions for things ‘like’ (not really that funny the second time) motor cars to get more ‘Likes’. The simple premise is that the more ‘Likes’ you get the more popular the fan page is when in reality it can easily be manipulated if you have an advertising budget.

For its part Google uses links to establish whther a site is popular. This preference has lead to a multi-billion dollar industry springing up to automate the system and Google trying its best to keep that business from ‘controlling’ the way its search engine ranks sites. The problem with link building is that as anyone who trys will tell you it is tedious ‘stupid’ work that really stops you from doing the creative work Google wants to rank. So a program such as Auto Traffic Buddy is designed to do the stupid repetitive link building automatically.

The principle behind Auto Traffic Buddy is simple:

1. Add the software to your website.
2. The link building is done for you.
3. You get back into writing great content.

Well I did say it was simple!

So why do you need Auto Traffic Buddy or something similar?

Well most people follow the same sort of progression:

• Build a blog.
• Learn some SEO
• Get some SEO rankings
• And then it all stops
• without building links you website either will not progress up the list or will be overtaken by those who are building links

By just building your website properly from the ground up you can get it to rank pretty well particularly if you use clever software to help you find a Niche Market  to help you find the right URL. Problem is that getting  your SEO right takes you to the top of the tree and that is where the ‘big boys’ play. These guys are serious about the number 1,2 & 3 spots and they will do anything to get to or protect those 3 spots in an organic search because they know that is where 85% of the customer clicks occur. If you get into any one of those spots you can be certain someone else wants what you have.

Now the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc) and social networks (Facebook, Myspace etc) would like you to keep writing interesting content and hope that this information gets picked up, spread around the Internet and is eventually found by their ‘spyders’ which then give you a ‘gold star tick of approval’ for your content and record a backlink for that information to your website. Unfortunately this is not ‘Disneyland’ and not everyone plays by the rules:

• any article in the public domain that is any good will be ’scrapped, copied and spun’ hundreds of thousands of times and if it is your content you will not get one ounce of credit.
• search engines won’t rank articles with spun content so if there are too many spun articles that are just like your you won’t get a backlink even even if you wrote the article it in the first place.
• companies set up workers in third world countries to build links and likes by the thousands.
• automatic linkbuilding software produces tens and even hundreds of thousands of links in a few days.

Why is Auto Traffic Buddy different?

One of the biggest challenges to any automated or human system when it comes to link building is where to place your ‘content’ so that you have a link which points back to your website. Any high Page rank website that allows comments or article submission is targetet by BILLIONS of would be linkbuilders. The search engines can easily see who is not being too particular and so they either ignore the links totally or assign them little or no value. Where Auto Traffic Buddy comes in is that they owners of the system select who is allowed into the network and who is not. In short if you have 10 quality sites that is 10 more that go into the mix rather like a ‘club’ of sorts and the ‘riff raff’ is porhibited i.e. no spammers, no autoback link indexers tryig to build 10 000 back links per day for an individual site.

In short:

• you write an article.
• Auto Traffic Buddy takes a snippet of the storey.
• Syndicates it to dozens or even hundreds of other content rich websites.
• No spinning, no rewriting the article a dozen times just write and post the article.
• Links are also created for all other pages and posts.
• Even the old pages and posts which means your whole site gets a SEO boost not just the ‘home’ pages.

Naturally enough if I didn’t use Auto Traffic Buddy myself I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. For anyone wanting to simply concentrate on content writing, like me, then this is the ‘MUST HAVE’ tool for you!

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

Affiliate marketing is very simple to get into when you are working online from home. All you need to do is:

1. Pick a subject your are interested in and know a little about.
2. Type that subject into the Google Search Engine followed by the words ‘affiliate program’.
3. You will find a list of suppliers who would like you to help them sell their product.
4. If you have a Facebook page and some friends then you are ready to start. 

For example say you are like my wife and want to use the best quality ‘Department Store’ cosmetics. Simply type in ‘Cosmetics affiliate program’ to the Google search engine and let the suppliers SEO find you. In no time you will find a list of companies like these guys. The fancy ‘adds’ you see are all given to you by the supplier for free so as to make your job of selling as simple as possible.

In fact there is almost a range of ‘Banners’ for your to select from e.g.:

All offering slightly different sales perspectives and sizes.

All the code for the pictures and the links to the supplier and the links to ‘crediting your bank account’ are all supplied by the seller. All you do is copy and paste the code they give you to your Website or Facebook page.

There is just one thing you need to do first before you start and that is buy some of the products yourself to make sure they are what the supplier tells you they are. As soon as you feel comfortable that you have found a genuine supplier then you can be up and working online from home within a few minutes.

There is no shame in starting small. Most people who look at working for themselves in any capacity start small and grow over time. In starting small you can afford to make mistakes and see what works and what doesn’t work for you. As you learn then you can grow. The only other requirement if you are going to seriously take on working online from home full time is to make sure you have the discipline to put in a little work every day and look for simple, inexpensive ways to learn from experts.

I have been working online from home most of my working life I can honestly say I have been lucky. If you want to see how a really good affiliate works then just click on any of the pictures on this page. The products are first class, thier delivery times are spot on and you save a fortune buying direct.

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

When you read a little you will find hundreds of thousands of people selling one type of Google SEO Tool or another. Whilst some of these tools are very good and very inexpensive many others are just a rehash of the Google Webmaster Tools or the Google AdWords Tool.

If you just want some commonsense advice then the best place to get that advice is from Google themselves. For those of you who do not know Matt Cutts heads up Google’s Search Engine Optimisation Team. If you like he and his team are ‘writing the rules’ Google uses to rank websites and pages. So here from the ‘horses mouth’ are the basics you need to know:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GK0aQrCDEo

The simplest Google SEO Tool to use is the Google Keyword tool.

The Google Keyword and AdWords keyword tool are interlinked. Basically the main difference is the AdWords tools gives you an estimate of how much you are likely to have to Pay Per Click (PPC) if you want to buy an add and have that add displayed by Google at the top or on the right hand side of the searches. As far as an SEO keyword tool goes both are very easy to use and very powerful if you know how to use them.

Regardless of which Google keywords you think will suit your advertising and no matter what Google Keywords tool you use the basics are the basics:

1. Use the keywords that people using and don’t get caught trying to be too fancy. Remember over time different generations will use different terms so your keywords may need to be adjusted. For example a surf board may be referred to as a surfboard, board, longboard, mal, stick or ‘sick stick’. The keyword you use needs to be the same keywords being used by the customers you are targeting.
2. Company names are usually not the best to use as your website URL and unless you have a lot of money to spend on advertising better to use a ‘keyword’ related URL. For example www dot surfboard dot com is easier to rank than www dot fredssurfshop dot com if you want to target surfboard sales specifically.
3. There are certain specific products that are worth paying for because they will save you time and money. Three I use all the time are:

• Niche Profit Classroom
• Keyword winner
• Search Engine Submitter

But one of the best peices of information you can buy is an eBook that has been updated regularly for years now.

For the price of a cup of coffee this Google SEO Tool  tells you just about all you need to know on what sells and how to sell it. When the time comes for you to advertise your products or services just use these same basic principles. Read through the eBook and you will come up with dozens of simple ideas that you can apply to your own products use the ideas to promote products and make money on line even if you don’t have your own website.

So remember the best Google SEO Tool is a little time and research combined with a whole lot of common sense.

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

Too many people just allow a nice comment to appear on their site with little or no thought given as to why that comment was posted. Increasingly webmasters are trying to save time using blog auto comment software to build back-links faster and in greater numbers so as to rank on Google.

Google has already let it be known that links should be relevent not just numerous.

So when you find a comment on your website immediately treat it like any email or or a letter in your post box and ask yourself one simple question:

Is this a blog auto comment or one written by a real person who genuinely liked your site? Then go and check who or what actually wrote the comment and decide for yourself if you would be happy to help them with their advertising by allowing a link from your site.

Here are two very simple guidelines you can use to decide:  

1.  Would you normally help promote ’junk mail’?
2. Are you happy to have your site improve the search rankings for a ‘porn site’ or ‘viagra’ online supplier?

In the Internet world big companies or those with good advertising budget are all looking to build back-links. As your website climbs the ranks in Google and the other search engines, more and more of these ’sharks’ will appear asking for a link with nothing more than a ‘nice comment’. With that in mind here is the second question you need to ask yourself are the people or machines leaving comments on your website the types of companies or websites you wish to promote? To find out all you really need to do is click on the link to the person or company who left you the comment. If you take that action you will probably find that a lot of ‘great’ comments are coming from people and companies you may not wish to deal with. For example:

Squeeze pages:

• For those of you who are not sure what a ‘squeeze page’ think of it as either a single page website that acts as an advertisement.
• You basically use a template and fill in the blanks. I can tell you from experience it is far more cost effective to buy a good template program than try to build them from scratch.
• They are primarily used as a way for online marketers to build up there mailing lists.
• Usually these pages offer some sort of free information or publicly available software.
• Sometimes it is their own software and sometimes it is a program that you can get for free if you know where to look.
• The aim is to ‘squeeze’ you into providing your name and email address in exchange for a free offer.
• Not all of the ‘free’ giveaways are rubbish.

By way of example I once was sent an email to a ‘squeeze page’ for Niche Profit Classroom. The free offer was a 5 day course that promised to show me how niche marketing was the best way for smaller Internet marketers to get going on the Internet.

• The offer was genuine and if you click here you will see what I mean.
• Every day for the next 5 days I was sent a new and very professional video presentation that stepped me through how to set up a niche website.
• After 5 days I knew exactly how it was done and could have simply taken the information and been on my merry way.
• When Adam Short sent me his offer after the fifth day I knew how his software worked
• How I could apply it in my own situation
• Why it was going to help me future my on line business

Naturally I bought the program and have been a member ever since. For those of you interested in seeing just how a professional campaign operates just clink the link below. You don’t have to buy a thing just sit an watch what it is they do as it is very professional and informative.

Click Here for more information on Niche Profit Classroom. I use this program every few days. It is extremely likely that you found this website because I used this program to SEO my site from the get-go!

Auto Blogs

• Are as the name suggests generated by computers.
• In general you use a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress to build a website.
• The software then writes the articles and often generates the blog auto comment which it then sends round the Internet.
• The selling pitch is you simply push the button and let the software do the rest while you count the money.
• Most often these sites are very easy to pick as the articles often read poorly or simply make no sense at all.
• The blog auto comment is also very strange and that is often the first clue.

For a working example of how to get started on Auto Blogging ant take a look at the video. For what it is worth I don’t know whether this software does what it claims and I have no affiliation with its suppliers it is simply an example of what is out there. Who knows it may be the one in one MILLION that actually works. Buyer be ware!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOug5X-FWF4

Personally I have no desire to assist these types of blogs are they are not providing my readers with any kind of useful information and chances are they are stealing pages and information from other sites or simply spinning their own material for hundreds of sites.

Self Promotion

• All link building is really a type of self promotion.
• In fact if you want to really learn about SEM (search engine marketing) you can learn how and make it into a full time ‘work from home’ career.
• The main thing I look for is that the site requesting the link has content that is useful and does it discuss topics I would like my website to be associated with?

So for example if I am building a site promoting better health and how to look great it may well be appropriate to allow links to fitness and diet programs. I could also include a ’Viagra’ squeeze page but for me to advertise medications there should be a more professional approach and a greater degree of relevance between the websites.

Simple rule of Thumb: Treat every comment as a Blog Auto Comment.

If you take that philosophy the every time you receive a comment on you blog click on the link and read some articles from the ‘auto blog comment’. If the site matches your standards then leave a comment like this:

Thank you for leaving a comment on my website www.repairmyappliance.com.au . I am glad you found the information useful. I see your site has some great content and I am happy to help you with you link building program. I am sure my readers would be interested in the information on your site so if in the future you wish to collaborate on a couple of posts with me I would be more than happy for the assistance. 

In leaving a comment like this you are in fact helping to build your own links to sites you know are good and share mutually acceptable standards. Link building in this way may save you ever needing to use an blog auto comment and also means you will comply with what Google is trying to achieve (Keeping Google happy is a very good thing to keep in mind).

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

I did an artcle on just how much the Yellow Pages Directory has shrunk in the past 12 months. Telephone search engines are trying to compete with the big boys like Google, Yahoo and Bing but these services are ‘free’ to use and if you have your own website or use a directory service often free to list in.

The telephone directory companies say that in part the ‘reducton’ in size is the result of a reduction in wasted space in each new publication. In part it is due to companies pulling out of the traditional ‘Printed’ telephone book. With those aged under 35 claiming to never use a printed phone directory it is not hard to see where the traditional ‘phone’ book is headed.

This morning comes the news that now the White Pages has also ‘shrunk’ by reducing the print size they are using.

According to the television report: “Extensive research has shown that people didn’t like the larger heavier books”.

What I don’t understand is just how the ‘researchers came to the conclusion that this was a good option?

1. Logically the most likely sector of the community to still use a printed directory are those that grew up with one i.e. the elderly.
2. As an Optometrist I know that, more often than not, those people who struggle to read small print are the elderly.
3. The elderly are the least likely to use an on line telephone search engine. Finding Google is hard enough for many and you need Google to find the telephone search engine in the first place!
4. It is very unlikely that those under the age of say forty-five (the age at which your eyes start to change and cause many to require reading spectacles) would use a printed directory when they can simply use a computer or ‘smart phone’.

The pragmatist in me knows that the cost to print and distribute a phone directory is quickly going the way of the traditional newspaper.

The cynic in me says that if you make the directory too difficult to read, the last remaining portion of the community using the directory on a regular basis will be forced to give up doing so.

The nett result is there will be no more ‘need’ for a printed phone directory so the companies can ‘righteously’ claim there is no need for them to keep printing one at all. On the plus side all those companies that currently don’t understand how to make a website are going to need to learn how in a big hurry. They are also going to need to work out how to be found by the search engines (including telephone search engines) very quickly as well.

Maybe this is a little too much ‘conspiracy theory’ but it seems we are all heading towards using online telephone search engines … like it or not!

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

Orkut vs Facebook is really a showdown between Google and Facebook

Orkut, Goggle’s version of Facebook, is now a part of Google+.

But get this:

• It was launched by Google in January 2004.
• Was designed and named after a Turkish software engineer.
• Is huge in both Brazil and India.
• Ranks well behind Facebook and Myspace in the US. 

All very interesting stiff no doubt if, like me, you were born in the 60′s. No doubt the kids of ‘Gen Y’ have already passed some sort of judgement over the whole system and at present it is in somewhat of a holding pattern in places like the US. But remember India has over 1.2 Billion people being second only to China in that statistic. Brazil has over 30 million in its top two cities so being top of the social network pile in those two countries alone make Orkut a real competitor.

Then there is the rumblings over Google+ and where and when it will have an impact.

Long storey short for those not addicted to Facebook, Ortuk is a lot more straightforward to setup, use and if you are so inclined market than Facebook is at present.

No doubt when Google+ is released it will all be part of the integrated package that Google+ promises to deliver (i.e. Cloud storage, Cloud documents,Social media, Emails all rolled into one neat package) One of the biggest changes that Google+ is proposing is that for the first time you will be able to separate your social activities from your business activities and sports from hobbies etc.

The big promise is that Google+ will allow you to integrate more than one group at a time or exclude certain sectors at will and all with only one password. No longer will we need separate accounts for every task (e.g. Facebook, emails, Live chat, Twitter ….). Now won’t that be a blessing for those of us who just struggle to remember their own telephone number …. what it’s tricky!

So Orkut vs Facebook – which is better?

Really both present different but attractive advertising opportunities.

In the case of Google if you want a change in career then SEM is going to become even larger than it is today. What is interesting is that you can learn SEM techniques from home at your own pace and all for a fraction of what it cost me for my university degree. What’s even more amazing is it takes far less time and you can actually earn more than I can from my university degree!

But let’s not forget Facebook for an instant because it has over half a billion subscribers and over 39% of those admit to checking their Facebook page every day, when they first wake up! So for businesses and those wishing to tap this huge market. Because Facebook is seen as a big world wide ‘thing’ based in the US few small local businesses ever believe that they could profit by knowing how to use Facebook as a part of their marketing. Facebook is ideal for small local business as friends want to deal with friends and that is what Facebook is all about.

We will all watch on and wait to see what comes from the Orkut vs Facebook war. But one things for sure: Both sides are spending astronomical sums of money and seem unaware of the fragility of the Global economy!

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

Rather a friend of mine who knew I did a modest amount of share trading asked me about the latest secret system into a Forex Trading Tutorial Program that just happened to have found its way into his email in tray. If you want a comprehensive Forex Trading Tutorial then follow this link. Like all things in life the best software and training programs generally find their way to the top because a lot of epoel buy them and they then tell their friends. This is one such program.

Now back to the main article. Please remember I am not a Forex Trader and I am not trying to say Forex Traders don’t make great money but here’s some things to consider:

Part one of any Forex Trading Tutorial is that trading in any market is largely about Risk minimisation.

• In very simple terms go and get 50 small pebbles and put them into 2 piles of 25.
• Now toss a coin.
• For every head you toss you collect 2 pebbles from the first pile and place it on the second pile.
• Every tail you toss you have to take one pebble from the second pile and put it on the first pile.
• Tossing a coin is a random event with about a 50:50 outcome. Within about 10 minutes you will have all the pebbles in one pile.
• Any system that is right 50% of the time (that infers it is wrong 50% of the time) can therefore make money providing you manage risk!
• Good computer software can really save you hours of very boring analysis and gives the edge to get the ‘pebble’ in your pile.

So the theory is very simple if your Forex trading system is right 50% of the time and wrong 50% providing you keep the maximum loss below the gains you will make money.

Many risk strategies are easy enough to understand also:

1. If you have $30 000 to invest never use more than 33% of you capital in any single trade.
2. So if you have $30 000 then each trade uses $10 000 of that capital.
3. Set a ‘stop’ at 3% below your initial investment (i.e. at $9700).
4. If your position goes against you  (i.e. once you have lost $300) your position is sold immediately and you are said to have been ‘stopped out’.
5. If you position goes with you then you move your stop up (initially to $10 000) to cover your initial capital and then follow it up with a set of stops that follow along just behind the new highs.
6. Eventually you will be ‘stopped out’ as one of your trailing stop losses, as they are called, is tripped and your position is sold.
7. Now lets say that your system is no better than pure chance (i.e. 50 : 50) for every two trades you make one of them will lose you $300 but one of them will make you $500-600.

This all sounds very simple and it is. However, inevitably people behave like people and start second guessing all they have learnt in their Forex trading tutorial system for one of three main reasons:

1. The have a long losing streak (ten losses in a row means you will have lost about $3000 right (10 x $300)? WRONG!!! If your starting capital is $30 000 and you take 33% for your first trade and you lose 3% then your final capital is $29 7000. When you take you next position then the position you buy is one third of $29 700 not one third of $30 000. So you new position is $9900 and your new stop loss is $9603. That means a loss of $297 if your second trade goes against you. Regardless of the exact amount 10 losses in a row has people second guessing their system.
2. The second mistake people make is they ‘get on a roll’. They start seeing winning positions get stopped out as the price retreats on the way up (prices almost never go straight up) and their stop is triggered. This makes them angry and often they will jump back into the trade despite the fact that their system does not identify it as a good position as the price has already gone up from when they first bought. Worse still people start to try to fiddle their trailing stop losses to ‘stop being stopped out’. Instead of taking the guarantee of 5% they fail to protect the capital or the small profit in an attempt to get greater rewards.
3. Finally and usually most fatally people decide they are good enough to use ‘leveraged products such as Options’ . A leveraged product allows the buyer to take their $10 000 and buy a ‘product’ (options, currency, contracts etc) that may be leveraged 10 times the initial $10 000 used to buy the product. In short if you lose 3% you actually lose $3000 in a single trade. So if you trade using leveraged positions then you need to adjust your stops to match your leveraged position. In simple terms your stop would be set at $99 700. That means you have margin of error of 0.3% which means you will get stopped out a lot.

There are traders who used leveraged positions to trade a Billion dollars a session just to make $150 000. I personally know one individual who lost $20 000 going to the toilet.

The real issue is not the trading system but whether you have the discipline to follow your system when it continues to fail or has a run of wins. In the same way you can toss a head 10 times in a row and it can come up with 10 heads in a row the same can happen with any trading system. Mentally you have to accept that losing is part of winning and that no matter how many times a trade does not work the way you wanted you are not right or wrong because you cannot see into the future.  There are not too many people that can do that.

People I know who trade every day have computer programs designed that just say ‘buy and sell’. All you have to do is press the button. Still they will tell you they try to out guess the computer system. That is where the whole system changes from a system into gambling. Gamblers make casinos rich … casinos don’t generally make gamblers rich.

World markets (stocks, Forex etc) ultimately run on the emotions of humans. If something sparks fear it can change the world in minutes. Look at the AAA rating downgrade in the US last week and what happened and is still happening. Volatility like this is great for trading systems because you need movement (up or down) but is is also why you can’t afford to stray from your system. So many things happen round the world you cannot know so it is not whether you were right to buy or sell based on the information you have the only thing you can do is buy when you system tells you to and then put in your stops to get you out if the market goes against you.

Think of it in terms of mountain climbing: ‘Going up is usually harder and slower than coming down’. Set stops or risk hitting the bottom!

For a lot of people wishing to learn how to trade, using a stock selection software program is a lot safer way to start off.

Ultimately any Forex Trading Tutorial should warn you that leverage is your greatest friend or you biggest nightmare!

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation

In 2004 Facebook started now it has 750 000 000 registered users.

Ok so I have probably been a little brief but let’s ‘face’ it 10 years ago there was nothing now there no place on earth Facebook does not reach. To advertisers that is all they need to know.

For business owners the main thing to understand is that over the next 10 years Facebook will become a major marketing tool for all businesses big and small. If you watch TV commercials closely you may notice that many larger companies are already running competitions wherein all you have to do is go to their Facebook page and click the ‘Like’ button to win a significant prize (e.g. a car). 

So what is so important about the ‘Like’ button? Simple ‘Like’ on Facebook is the equivalent of ‘Back links’ on Google. The more ‘Likes’ you get the more popular your Facebook page is. Facebook themselves are going to use these numbers to create their own Facebook search engine ranking. Advertisers will advertise on sites that have a great ranking.

But it is more than that. Facebook is far more personal than Google. If a friend recommends to another friend that they should go take a look at another Facebook page then the probability is much higher that the friend will do just that because the question of trust has been removed.

So how does this all work in the real world?

Well let’s just say you were lucky enough to have a fantastic skiing holiday at the wonderful ‘Candlelight Lodge’ in Thredbo. And let’s say that establishment has a web site that is hooked into their personal Facebook site. If the owners of the lodge get my family to like them on their Facebook site then each time they do a post on their web site it goes to our Facebook pages. Now their post may be something as simple as a special offer for a discounted weekend of ski accommodation or a special mid-week package which could be written up in just a few minutes.

Now I admit I’m not much of a Facbook fan but my kids are all into Facebook. One daughter has a couple of thousand friends many of whom she has skied with all over the world. Imagine that by simply getting a few Facebook ‘Likes’ from one family a business suddenly has access to a few thousand potential new customers! Now let’s say you have 1000 guests per season and no doubt they too have friends and family who like skiing and you can see just how quickly a properly co-ordinated web site and Facebook page can astronomically increase a businesses’ bottom line.

No longer are we looking at Facebook History we are looking at the Furture of Facebook and a new era in Internet marketing.

Bsmart - Web design & search engine optimisation