All you have to do is send us an email telling us what YOU think your website’s biggest problem area is… and be sure to include your site’s URL so we can check it out for ourselves.

This contest closes on Sunday, November 15th at midnight — so make sure you enter right away!

The lucky winner will receive a detailed web page analysis valued at $500.

So… tell us: Where do you think your site most needs improvement? Is it the headline? The call to action? The copy? The buying process?

Email us at questions@marketingtips.com with the subject line “Site Review Contest” for your chance to win!

And don’t forget to include your site’s URL.

Good luck!

People often ask me what the difference is between a success and a failure. For me, the answer is simple. A successful person knows how to set goals and work to achieve them. An unsuccessful person doesn’t.

The payoff for setting goals and making plans is being able to choose the kind of life you want to live. So why do so few people set goals? I think that there are five basic reasons why people don’t set goals — and thereby deprive themselves of the successful life they could be leading:

Reason #1: They’re not serious

Whenever I speak with a man or woman who has achieved something remarkable, I learn that the achievement occurred after that person decided to “get serious.” Until you become completely serious and totally determined about your goals, nothing really happens.

Reason #2: They don’t get the importance of goals

Many people don’t understand the importance of goal-setting. We find that young men and women who begin setting goals very early in life invariably come from families in which the importance of goals is emphasized. The discussion that takes place around your family dinner table is one of the most powerful formative influences in your life.

If your parents didn’t have goals, didn’t talk about goals, didn’t encourage you to set goals, and didn’t talk about people outside the family circle who had goals and were moving toward a higher level of achievement, then you very likely grew up with the idea that goals are not even a part of normal existence. This is the case for most people. And for many years, it was the case for me.

Reason #3: They don’t know how

The third reason people don’t set goals is that they don’t know how to do it. One of the greatest tragedies of our educational system is that you can receive years of education in our schools and never once receive a single hour of instruction on how to set goals.

Yet we find that in certain schools where goal-setting programs have been introduced since first grade, young people become excited about goal-setting — even if the goal is only to increase the scores by 5% or 10% over the course of the semester, or to be on time every day in the course of a month. Children become so excited about achieving goals that by the third or fourth grade, they love to go to school. They get the best grades. They are seldom absent. They are excited about themselves and about their lives.

So encourage your children to set worthwhile and realistic goals from an early age.

Reason #4: Fear of Rejection

The fear of rejection is caused by destructive criticism in early childhood and is manifested, in adulthood, in the fear of criticism by others. Many people hold back from setting worthwhile goals because they have found that every time they do set a goal, somebody steps up and tells them that they can’t achieve it, or that they will lose their money or waste their time.

Because each of us is strongly influenced by the opinions of those around us, one of the first things that you must learn when you begin setting goals is to keep your goals confidential. Don’t tell anyone about them. Often, it’s the fear of criticism that, more than any other single factor, stops you from goal-setting in the first place.

So keep your goals to yourself, with one exception. Share your goals only with others who are committed to achieving goals of their own and who really want you to be successful and achieve your goals as well. Other than that, don’t tell anybody about your goals, so no one is in a position to criticize you, or to discourage you from setting your goals.

Reason #5: Fear of Failure

This is perhaps the most important reason of all… People don’t set goals because they are afraid that they might fail. In fact, the fear of failure is probably the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life.

The primary reason you fear failure is simply this: You probably do not understand the role that failure plays in achievement. The fact is that it is impossible to succeed without failing. If you wish to fulfill your potential, you have to be willing to risk failure over and over and over, because there is no way that you can ever accomplish worthwhile goals until you have fallen on your face so many times that you have eventually learned the lessons that you need for great achievement.

Setting well-defined goals enables you to channel your efforts and focus your energy toward something that’s important to you. Goal-setting gives you a target to aim at and enables you to develop the self-discipline to continue working toward your target, rather than becoming distracted and going off in other directions.

To learn more about how you can radically improve your life through goal-setting, please accept my free report, Goals!

The report breaks down my proven goal-setting process into easy steps that will help you achieve the life you want faster and more easily than you ever imagined.

To download the report, please click here now.

… Thanks to success coach Brian Tracy for a great guest post!

 Only three days left until kids will hit the streets in crazy costumes, looking for candy. We predict you’ll see the usual ghosts, vampires, ballerinas, princesses and tinfoil-covered robots running around, along with a few Batmen, a couple of Harry Potters, and maybe a Transformer or two.

But what if you’re not exactly a kid anymore — except at heart, of course — and you’re looking for the ultimate outfit for a friend’s party? What if you’re taking your kids door to door and want to get into the spirit of the night with a costume of your own?

Maybe you’re looking for something a bit more creative than what you’ll find marked down for quick sale at the drugstore (an hour before you’re supposed to wear it!)

Well, if you’re the least bit Internet or tech-geeky, the Internet has plenty of creative ideas to help you be a Halloween standout.

Check out some of our favorites below:

• A crazy collection of Facebook-inspired costumes (via Mashable)
• Dress up as the Twitter bird! (via Alltop)
• A geeky costume round-up (via Wired)
• Wanna be an iPhone for Halloween? Here’s how! (via Mashable)

And don’t forget to carve a geeky pumpkin for your front porch (via WalYou).

Even the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser gets a tribute:

(And though it’s not Halloween-related, we loved this iPhone wedding cake over at Mashable.)

As you can see, there’s definitely no shortage of great geeky Halloween ideas!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Check out Jeff’s answer below:

“While working a 9-5 and trying to spend quality time with my family I manage to squeeze in at least 5 hours per day online.

Most of that time is spent working on my online business. Keyword research, PPC, SEO, Twitter, YouTube, article and writing. I spend most of my time marketing and maintaining the site. I wish I had more time to just market and not have to worry about the site as much.”

Sounds like he has all the qualities of a successful online entrepreneur!

We contacted Jeff to get to know him a bit better…

How long have you had your site?

I’ve had my site BerkeyCleanWater.com since May 2009.

How did you learn how to start and run an online business?

I learned how to start and run an online business from lots of reading, listening, learning. However, I really acquired the meat of my education from IMC. In 2008 I ordered “The Insider Secrets” and worked with Geoff D. in the Internet Entrepreneur Club forums.

What Internet marketing strategies are working best for you?

Believe it or not, good old SEO is working best for me right now. Content, content, content. Writing relevant articles and producing videos related to my niche is serving me well. I’m running PPC but just started two weeks ago and things are slow. I’m also trying to leave my link on relevant websites and using social sites such as Twitter to get the message out.

And, finally, how did you find our blog?

I found your blog by becoming a Twitter follower of “The_IMC_Team“.

Congratulations, Jeff! You’ll be receiving StartUp every month for a year. And thanks for being a part of the conversation at our blog!

If you’d like to check out Jeff’s prize — our brand new online magazine, filled with news you can use to build your own online business — we’ll give you 10 days free access.

Click here to get started!

It’s about an uber-organized career thief who fences his loot on eBay using the persona of a middle-aged shopaholic named Barbara.

“Barbara’s” listings are highly descriptive, full of benefits, and loaded with personality – just the style we teach in The Insider Secrets to Selling on eBay…

… “Nice MESSENGER bag from IL BISONTE. BLACK LEATHER bag in very excellent condition. Another bag that I just had to have, much to my husband Gerry’s chagrin — and I did use it for a while — but not for very long and the bag is in very excellent condition. I haven’t used it for a long time and it is time for it to move on to someone who will use it and enjoy it. A bag like this will never go out of style and IL BISONTE just continues to make beautiful and practical handbags, as I’m sure you already know. It opens with a zipper across the top of the bag and there is a nice zipper compartment inside… “

Who could resist?

Matthew Dicks says the character’s eBay alter-ego is an homage to his mother-in-law: ”My mother-in-law… is an eBay PowerSeller and the techniques and listings described in the book all come straight from her.”

Well, she’s got the salescopy down cold, so it’s no wonder she’s a PowerSeller!

Something Missing is a funny character study of a good guy who does bad stuff… but very, very well.

(By the way, even though we like the book, that doesn’t mean we encourage anybody to unload stolen goods on eBay. Just so we’re straight…

Got any other examples of fictional characters who illustrate smart marketing concepts (eBay or otherwise)? Tell us!

When you’re readdressing your on-page SEO there are a few things you need to remember:

• The spiders determine what your site is about by looking for keywords in your text and in the HTML code behind your site.
• Your keywords need to relate to the content on the page.
• Spiders automatically follow links between pages, which is why it’s important to get links pointing to your website from other relevant sites. The links from page to page within your site can also help the spiders.
• Spiders are attracted by new content. Once your site has been indexed, they will return whenever you update or add something new.

To make it easy for you to quickly check your on-page SEO, here’s a handy list you can work through. Tick off what you’ve done and make a note of what needs to be addressed so you can start bringing those spiders back to feast on your content!

• My website is peppered with keywords and synonyms.
• My top-performing keywords are in key positions on my web pages, including all of the following:
  • My domain name
  • My title tag HTML code
  • My headlines and subheads, complete with proper <h> tags in their HTML code
  • My web page content — where they’re often bolded or italicized
  • The source code behind my images — both image tags and alt text
  • The anchor text on links to my other pages 
  • My description and keyword meta tags
• I have a well-organized XML sitemap (If you don’t know where to start to build an XML sitemap, try the free generator at: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com.)

Remember, the more traffic you get, the more sales you can make — so taking a little time to update your on-page SEO can mean more than just better search engine rankings

Well, give us an inside peek at your day-to-day online existence as you build or run your online business.

We’re wondering about what the average e-commerce pro is up to on the Web each day. What chores take up the bulk of your time? Are you spending more hours running your business, or promoting it?

Please take a moment to share your answers to these five quick questions in  our not-terribly-scientific survey:

1. How many hours do you spend online each day?

2. What are the tasks that occupy most of your time online each day (emailing, researching, working on your website, news reading, talking to customers, eBay selling, blogging, Twittering, instant messaging, etc.)? About how many hours a day or week do you spend on each task?

3. Are you active on social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)? Which ones take up most of your “social” time?

4. Are you spending more time online simply running your business, or marketing it?

5. Do you wish you were using your time online differently? What tasks would you like to spend less time on — and what do you wish you were doing more often?

Just leave your responses in the comments section below — and feel free to add any other thoughts along with your answers. All the commenters who answer our questions will be eligible to win a FREE year-long subscription to our new StartUp online magazine. We’ll announce the winner in a week.

StartUp is designed to give busy online business owners — and folks ramping up to start online businesses — a quality dose of the information and inspiration they need every month. Every issue includes:

• must-know Internet marketing how-tos
• up-to-the-minute e-commerce news and strategies
• a case study from a successful online business
• guidance from some of the top entrepreneurial minds on the Web
• potential niche markets that we’ve discovered… and that you might want to investigate further

Click here to get 10 days’ free access to this month’s StartUp, featuring an in-depth audio interview with a time management expert!

… and don’t forget to share your answers below. Thanks!

The rules aim to protect consumers from:

• unrealistic expectations
• unverified results claims
• paid endorsements disguised as editorial content
• endorsements that don’t tell the truth

Here are the basics:

Testimonials

Testimonials turbocharge your marketing. If you can quote happy customers who have achieved great results, it’s almost as powerful as somebody recommending your product to a friend.

And of course you always want to quote the happiest customers who have achieved the greatest results.

Until now, all you had to do was add a disclaimer saying “Results not typical” and you were within the law. Now you need to:

• Verify that the person giving the testimonial has actually achieved the stated results
• Verify the typical results a consumer can expect to achieve, and state them (e.g., “Most consumers will save $20 – $35 per month using this product.”)
• Verify that the testimonial still stands if you make a change to the product being endorsed

That means it’s still okay to use testimonials that boast about spectacular results as long as you also make it clear what the average results are. Check the FTC’s official guide for examples demonstrating what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Endorsements

This one is a much bigger can of worms.

Endorsements are a highly effective way to get word out about your product or service. People in a buying frame of mind seek out good reviews and recommendations on other sites before they make their decision.

So smart online marketers offer free products for bloggers to try… or put their products in pay-per-post programs where bloggers get paid for reviewing them… or get their products mentioned on their affiliates’ websites.

That way, they get word of mouth PLUS links back to their site (which are invaluable for search engine optimization).

Now the FTC wants anyone endorsing a product on their own website to “disclose clearly and conspicuously” when they are being compensated for their services.

The spirit of these rules is to ensure that anything that appears as a spontaneous endorsement actually reflects the true opinions, experience, and beliefs of the person doing the endorsing.

If there’s a chance that that person’s opinions, etc. might have been swayed by money, free product, or other considerations, then they must disclose.

However, there are so many gray areas in here it’s almost impossible to figure out what “compensation” is. If a blogger gets a freebie and writes about it, is that compensation? Depends on the value of the item, how often this blogger is given free samples, and how the blogger got it for free in the first place.

How about affiliates? Looks like they’re covered by this:

“When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed.”

AdSense advertisers? Social media posters? We can think of lots of other cases that might lie in that gray area, and don’t appear to be covered in detail in the full-on 81-page document. Still, if you think you might be affected, better read it.

Who’ll be affected most? “Review” bloggers and affiliates, seeing they’re the ones who have the clearest and most consistent relationships with producers.

How will this change affect you? Let us know what you think about it.

… But where can you go to find good images that you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for?

Well, if you’ve wasted hours checking out all the “free stock photos” sites on the Web — which never seem to have the image you’re looking for — or you’ve explored Flickr for non-rights-reserved images until your eyes are crossing, here’s some great news:

Google and Yahoo have both introduced features that make it easier for you to find images that have been specifically labeled for commercial reuse. (Read this post to learn about rules for using photos.)

Google hasn’t yet included the search option in its regular interface but you can try it out by clicking here.

If you want to do the same kind of search on Yahoo, click on the “Advanced Search” options and then click on “Creator Allows Reuse” box in the new “Creative Common License” option. Right now, only Flickr images are supported with this filter in Yahoo, so let’s hope they will expand their offerings in time.

It’s definitely worth your while to try out both search engines and see which delivers the best image results. Then come back here and tell us what you’ve found!

Since Microsoft released Bing in June, the new search engine has outperformed many people’s expectations. Unlike the ill-fated “Live,” Microsoft’s last attempt to introduce a search engine to go up against Google, Bing has been steadily gaining ground on its mammoth competitor.

In fact, comScore has reported that Bing captured 9.3% of the search market share in August, which is a 4.5% jump over its performance in July. And when Bing fully takes over for Yahoo search, that number is probably going to continue to climb.

But let’s not forget — Google still controls the lion’s share of the market, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon, especially with Google Wave waiting in the wings.

So what do you think? Does Bing present a real threat to Google’s monopoly on the search market? Or is it always going to be a mouse nibbling at the crumbs left behind by the elephant?

Talk among yourselves, folks… we’re interested to hear what you have to say.