Do you find that your Contact Form 7 form is not working anymore?

For a few years now I’ve been using Contact Form 7 on almost all of my WordPress sites and haven’t had any issues with it. A couple of days ago, one of my website visitors said they couldn’t submit a form; once they clicked the ‘Submit’ button, all they saw were spinning arrows that went on forever.

Sure enough, when I tried it myself (on a couple of different web browsers) I got the same problem!

Normally you can update your version of WordPress and the plugin itself and that might solve the issue. I tried that but it didn’t help.

Next, I did a search on Google for this particular problem. A few results came back, mainly forums. There was a few different suggestions, but after trying all those, the problem still hadn’t been resolved. Frustrating!

The only thing I could do was look for a different WordPress contact form plugin. After searching and testing different plugins I found a perfect replacement… Fast Secure Contact Form.

The first good sign about this plugin is that it has been downloaded over 2 million times. The more plugins a download has, typically the better it is.

Next, Fast Secure Contact Form is very easy to use but at the same time is highly customizable. This is rare!

Also, I needed a contact form plugin that would allow users to send me attachments. Fast Secure Contact Form has this capability.

There was only one downside to this plugin, and it is a big one; it won’t successfully process a submission if someone enters “http://” into one of the fields. It took me hours to figure that out!

To get around this, I’ve put a little warning next to fields were users might enter a url, and asked them to leave out the http:// and paste rest.

From the time that I found out that Contact Form 7 wasn’t working, until I could make the replacement with Fast Secure Contact Form, it took me two whole days! This was particularly frustrating because I hadn’t made any changes to my site when Contact Form 7 stopped working.

If you’re using Contact Form 7 and you’re having similar issues to mine, my recommendation is to not try to fix it. Go and grab the Fast Secure Contact Form plugin from WordPress.org and swap over to that.

What are some of the characteristics of a good trainer, a good coach, or a good leader? Here’s some that I came up with…

• passion
• generosity
• compassion
• honesty
• energy
• focus

Are leaders just born with these qualities? No! We all have them within us but we have to learn to develop them. A leader is someone who knows who they are and lives life to the fullest. Do you believe you have greatness inside of you? You do. Can you be a leader? Yes!

What’s been holding you back in life is that you’ve been settling for ‘good’. I make a good living, I have a good job, etc.

You were born to be GREAT. You don’t have to be shy about that.

The Difference Between Good and Great

The difference between a good teacher, trainer and coach and someone that is great is this one word:

Ruthless

• ruthless passion
• ruthless generosity
• ruthless compassion
• ruthless honesty
• ruthless energy
• ruthless focus

One of the most important characteristics of a leader is honesty. Great leaders, trainers and coaches are honest. They are honest with those around them but, more importantly, they are honest with themselves.

Another essential attribute of a leader is focus. A leader knows where he is going and, therefore, can lead others. They have a vision and help others to see the vision.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, you already are a leader! We all are. Each of us influences others in one way or another.

The real question is, do you want to be a great leader? I hope that you do. Here’s why…

Great leaders are the happiest people in the world. They live life to the fullest and leave behind a legacy that lasts forever. Wealth and fame disappear like a flame in the wind, but the legacy of a leader inspires people in all ages.

Do you know what you want?

Most people don’t get what they want because they don’t know what they want. It’s all about clarity.

The sad truth is; most people don’t know what they want. There’s a dialogue in the classic fairytale, Alice in Wonderland, that applies to many…

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

A lot of people have no objectives. They’re playing the game of life without any goals.

When it comes to your online business, how much do you want to be earning per year? $100,000? $1 million per year?

Learn to systemize your business so you don’t have to be there. When you have financial freedom, and time freedom you can then change after people’s lives.

Unfortunately we’re taught the rat race plan that keeps you tied up and unhappy, i.e. get an education based on a high-paying job. And what happens next? You work 40+ hours for 35 years and then if you’re lucky you can retire and then share your gift with the world.

But what happens when you retire? You’re killing the golden goose. It’s so sad when retirees have to struggle to feed themselves or feel like they’re a burden to family or to society.

People don’t really want to be rich, they want financial freedom to be able to share their gifts with the world. Warning: if you’re not growing, you’re dying. We are just like the rest of nature.

So, what is financial freedom to you?

Financial freedom is the ability to live the lifestyle you desire, without having to work or rely on anyone else.

How can we have income without working? Passive income.

Are we taught passive income in school or at home. No. We’re taught to go out and get a job.

Can you earn passive income that will give you total financial freedom? Yes, but you have to be willing to give up your story. Your story are the excuses that you give yourself when you don’t achieve your goals.

To win the money game means to be making enough passive income to live the lifestyle you desire. You know you’ve achieved financial freedom when your passive income is greater than your expenses.

It all starts by having a vivid image of what you want to achieve. Write it out; make a statement to yourself. Say it out loud. Believe and make specific plans to achieve it. You can.

Can you make money selling Amazon Kindle ebooks? Absolutely!

In fact, I didn’t realize just how it easy it was until I a friend of mine, Ty Cohen, revealed to me that he was making well over $30,000 a month from it… as a side business!

And it really is super easy. Look, I know almost every way there is to make money online; Adsense, Amazon and Clickbank SEO sites, email marketing, CPA offers, viral videos, product launches, etc but none of them comes close the simplicity and power of making money publishing ebooks for Amazon’s Kindle platform.

Here’s some of the advantages of selling Kindle ebooks:

• 70% commissions
• Don’t have to drive traffic. Google loves Amazon Kindle ebooks. Use your keyword in the title of your ebook and you’re good to go!
• No customer service. Amazon handles all the ordering, refunds, etc
• No capital required. You can write your own ebooks, or if you don’t want to do that, hire someone to write them for you
• No other fees. Creating a publisher account and uploading ebooks is totally free
• No ad copy skills required. You don’t need a sales page to sell your product
• No technical skills required. If you know how to write up a Word document, then you’ve got what it takes

3 Steps To Making Money Selling Amazon Kindle Ebooks

Here’s the 3 steps you need to take to start making money selling Kindle ebooks:

Step 1: Keyword Research

When searching for a keyword to base your ebook on, pick keywords that have a combined Global Search of 10,000 to 100,000.

Titles are so important. Create your title after a specific keyword. This is awesome for SEO but make sure it makes sense.

Google loves Amazon.

When creating your title, use title enhancer prefixes. These title enhancers will typically answer the question people have in their minds. Here’s some good examples:

• How to
• Quickest way to
• Fastest way to
• Easy ways to
• Tips to
• Ways to
• Cheapest way to
• Best way to

When researching possible keywords and niches, do a search for “how to [keyword]“, e.g. “how to garden” and see what comes up in the results.

Step 2: Create the Content

Content is king. Always put quality of content over quantity of content.

Don’t like to write or don’t have the expertise on a particular topic? Hire others to create the content for you. You can hire retired English teachers, stay at home moms, out of work bloggers, and others that love to write.

Step 3: Publishing Your Ebook

Here’s what you need to do to publish your Kindle ebook:

Amazon signup url: kdp.amazon.com

After you’ve signed up for your account you can upload your ebook. Enter your Title and your Description. The Description should explain what the reader can expect to accomplish by reading your book. Be honest and straight-forward. Use good ad copy and as much of the 4000 words available as possible.

Select English as the language.

Always select “this is NOT a public domain work…”

Don’t use Private Label Rights (PLR) material or public domain material because Amazon don’t like it.

Pick highly relevant categories only.

Don’t use general keywords like “health” or “weight loss”. Instead use “women’s health”, etc

After your Title, the second most important element in selling your ebook is your cover. Not a Photoshop expert? You can hire someone at fiverr.com to create it for you cheaply.

Use .doc file type to upload your ebook.

Stick with Worldwide Rights.

Pick 70% Royalty. Most ebook snare sold between 2.99 and 9.99.

$8.97 is a great price point. $2.99 doesn’t sell more than the higher price points. $8.97 is better overall return.

Set price points at other currency at same price (after conversion).

That’s it! You’re now an ebook publisher.

If you’re looking for a great (and super easy) way to make money online from home, that is truly automated and residual, then I don’t know of many better than this strategy. And because Amazon Kindles are selling like hotcakes and growing in popularity exponentially, this opportunity will be hot for many more years to come.

If you’re serious about making money selling Kindle ebooks, then I highly recommend you check out the webinar I did live with Ty Cohen (who makes $30k+ per month with this method). You can watch the webinar replay by clicking here.

Here’s a scary subject line I just saw in my inbox today:

“Your Aweber Account Has Been Flagged”

It’s every email marketer’s nightmare!

Over the past few years, I’ve heard of quite a few Internet marketers having their Aweber autoresponder accounts suspended for various reasons. This is the last thing I wanted to happen to me.

It’s a big hassle moving autoresponders, especially if you have multiple lists and optin forms all over the place!

I opened the email expecting the worst, and this is what I saw…

The message was this…

Here at Aweber we take our customers security seriously.

According to our daily reports we believe that someone with a different IP was trying to access your account without a valid permission.

our security system has detected an unusual activities on your account earlier,

for your own security we flagged this case to be high risk.

In order to solve this problem and establish a new secure environment on your account,

please follow the instructions in our secure hosted web by clicking the link below

http://www.awebercomplaints.com/users/flsa_reset_aff_password.htm?ra9tocp3n2vg3xq2r7s8haapqhhh&email=johnlagoudakis@gmail.com&action=resetpassword

we usually give a maximum of 7 days to our customers to respond to our security warnings

if no action will be taken from your side in the next 7 days your account will be temporary deactivated for future.

if you believe you are receiving this message by mistake please contact our account security department
for more information regarding this case

AWeber Communications, Inc
Account Security Department
Mike T
MikeT@Aweber.com

Fortunately, I’ve been around a while and could tell this was a fake email. There was a few things that rang the alarm bells:

• Aweber (or any other company) won’t respond to a suspected security risk by sending you an email with a “reset your password here” link. This is an obvious phishing scam. A phishing scam is one that tries to capture your login details.
• Gramatical errors. Many of the sentences don’t begin with a capital letter.
• Non-official domain. The link in the email points to an unofficial Aweber domain (awebercomplaints.com).

In short, this message is an Aweber scam. It is designed to get your Aweber login details so that the scammer can access your autoresponder account and steal your subscriber lists.

Whatever you do, don’t follow the instructions in this email!

Want to be sure that your Aweber account is not at risk? Contact Aweber support directly and ask them to verify the status of your account

If you’re reading this post, it’s most likely you are an email or Internet marketer. Right now I’m running a webinar that reveals the email marketing strategy that I use to make a full-time income online. You can register for my webinar here.

Want to learn how to set up Amazon niche sites? There’s a very simple 5-step formula that you can follow that will guarantee that almost every site you set up will be an online ATM machine!

Before I get into this formula, let me briefly explain why you want to be promoting physical products…

If you go to Amazon’s website and browse through all the many different categories, you’ll see that they have millions, and tens of millions of products, in EACH category! With that many products to base a niche site on, you’re not going to have any problems with finding something that doesn’t have a lot of competition.

Another reason you want to be promoting physical products is because the market is HUGE. In 2010 Amazon did $34 billion in sales, and that number is growing exponential each year.

A third reason is that there are a massive number of buying keywords you can target.

The Amazon Niche Site Formula

By following the simple 5-step formula below, there’s no reason why you can’t start making money online right now from your Amazon niche site. Here’s the formula…

1. Pick a Good Product

• Pick something that is popular, that people are already buying online. Don’t be afraid of competition
• Pick something that people search for specifically, eg brand, model number

2. Keywords

• You want to pick a keyword with high volume.
• Low SEO competition
• Buying intent. Buying keywords convert extremely well. E.g. buy, code, store, overnight shipping, price, color keywords, price, size keywords

Keyword research is the most important part about building your site.

3. Content

• Use WordPress platform for SEO
• Unique content
• Regular content (Google’s Panda update requires it)

4. Backlinking

• Rss aggregators
• Web 2.0 properties
• Bookmarking sites
• Article directories
• Press releases
• Profile links
• Blog networks

Blog networks work extremely well.

5. Good Conversion Tactics

• Stay relevant to your keyword
• Clear call to action above the fold, e.g. “Click Here To…”
• Promote one thing per page
• Don’t have Adsense ads on your site
• Get them off your site ASAP
• Test different merchants for best conversions (very important)

Someone that I know that has been making a lot of money with Amazon niche sites is Sara Young. I’ve known Sara for over a year now and have a lot of respect for her as an Internet marketer.

She’s a stay-at-home mom of 7 kids. She is excellent at building little niche sites and is now helping hundreds (if not thousands) of people to make money online.

Recently, we did a live webinar together where she revealed in detail the formula outlined above. You can watch the replay of this webinar by clicking here.

At the end of the webinar, Sara makes a very special offer for those that would like to be mentored until they’re making at least $1,000 a month online with their niche sites.

This is extremely valuable content. I encourage you to watch the webinar right now. You’ll thank me for it

Here’s the link again:

How To Make 6 Figures From Ugly, Little Niche Sites

There are a lot of people bragging about how much they make publishing ebooks and reports to Kindle…

But to be honest with you, with numbers like these its REALLY easy to make a great living with Kindle:

*  7.1 million Kindles sold in 2010

*  12 million Kindles expected to be sold in 2012

*  For every 100 print books sold, Amazon sells 180 Kindle books

*  Amazon has sold 3x more Kindle books this year then they had at the same time last year

So as I said above, when you have massive numbers like those above, its no wonder that people are easily raking it in with Amazon’s Kindle…

In fact there’s a guy I know who went from 0 to $20,000+ a MONTH just by publishing content to Kindle and this guy is;

*  NOT a Guru
*  NOT a well known name or “expert”
*  NOT an “Internet Marketer” (In fact you probably never heard of him before)
*  NOT a writer (in fact he can’t stand writing and failed English 101 TWICE!)
*  NOT for hire (He has worked with some of the biggest names in IM and says this will be his last webinar… After that he goes back to quietly making money on Amazon

And he is STILL making a lot of money publishing content to Amazon’s Kindle platform (In fact if “HE” can do it… I KNOW that YOU can)

=> Kindle Cash Flow!

How? By following his “easy to duplicate” systems and I finally got him to share with “Us” (You and I) how he does it all…

Whatever you do, watch this webinar replay in which my “Buddy” Ty Cohen will share all of his “Secrets” that have allowed him to do so well with Amazon’s Kindle.

Go now:

=> Kindle Cash Flow!

Most of us start our online business because we’re in need of another way to make money. Maybe you hate your job or it doesn’t pay you enough. Maybe you’ve been laid off and can’t find another job. There’s many reasons why people look for ways to make money online.

This desperation to make a living online can be a great motivator but it can also hurt you at the same time. Here’s why…

Every successful business (and yes, a mom or dad working online from home IS a business) focuses on providing a solution to a problem. If a business focuses on anything else (e.g. making a profit) it won’t work.

Think about it, would you be willing to part with your money if the product or service you were trading it for didn’t fulfil a specific need. 

You might say to me, “Well, what about impulse buying?” Impulse buying fulfills emotional needs we have, such as the need to be happy.

Also, we don’t just buy a specific item based on how much money it costs. When you want to buy something don’t you look for the product or service that will give you the best deal? 

How much you spend is not the biggest concern, but rather that you’re getting value for your money. You want to know that you’re going to be taken care of.

Why am I talking about all this? If you start an online business thinking about how much money you can make you’re not going to be successful because you’re not going to be thinking on the same level as your potential customers. 

If you don’t understand the mindset of your potential customers, you won’t market to them in the right way. 

If you don’t market to them in the right way you won’t have a successful business.

Let me give you an example…

Have you ever been to a shopping mall and seen the following; two hair dressing salons, side by side. One is full of customers and everyone is busy and talking and smiling, while the one next door is empty, quiet and gloomy?

Why are the two businesses achieving vastly different results? Both businesses have the same fittings, equipment and capable staff. 

It’s all about the mindset of the business owner!

The owner of the successful business understands that their business exists to provide a valuable service. They understand that they are there to serve and provide the best value in the marketplace.

By virtue of them being at the head of the business, this vision and understanding permeates through every part of their organization.

Simply changing the way you think will change the results you achieve. If not happy with what you’re achieving in your business (or any part of your life), start to make a change today by changing your mindset.

January 2008 is a very special month for me… it was when I finally broke the shackles of my full-time day job and began my full-time, work-from-home, internet marketing career!

About nine months earlier, I had stumbled across affiliate marketing, in particular making money with CPA offers, and using Google Adwords to drive targeted traffic to the offers. Later on I discovered that I could make even more money driving this targeted PPC traffic to specific Clickbank products.

So, I set my goal to build up my affiliate marketing business to be able to quit my day job and it became a reality.

Everything was going sweet for about a year or so… I was even awarded exclusive membership into the Clickbank Apex Elite group – reserved for the top 100 Clickbank affiliates in all the world! But then a big bomb was dropped on me in July 2009…

The Google Adwords team suspended all my PPC accounts… indefinitely!

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Overnight my income dropped by over 50% (literally), and soon all my other PPC campaigns at Yahoo and Bing also stopped producing any income.

But there is a good side to this otherwise disaster. I had a backup plan.

You see, I knew the writing was on the wall. Countless other affiliate marketers were having their Google Adwords accounts suspended so I knew that I had to have a different business plan in place.

There was one thing that I saw was working very well for the experience internet marketers, and I kept hearing over and over again that I needed to do this to. I decided to take action, and am so glad that I did.

Today, I still work from home making a full-time income online, but I’m much happier and secure. You see, I don’t have to keep watching over countless PPC campaigns and wondering if I will make any money tomorrow. Also, I spend much less time on my business with this new model than I used to before!

My new business model, I truly believe, is the BEST way to make money online.

What is it? I reveal EVERYTHING in this exclusive webinar presentation, including how to get started from scratch yourself. Nothing is left out.

Register for free right here.

I don’t know how long I’ll be running these webinars so I recommend that you get in now while it’s still available. Register here.

Recently I attended the National Achievers Congress in Sydney. The first speaker on the first day, of the three day event, was motivation expert and life coach, Anthony Robbins.

Anthony talked about a lot of things over the 4 and a half hours that he was on stage but one of the things that stuck out to me most was his thoughts about ‘standards’.

He said that “We always get what we MUST have – not what we ‘should’ have. We all live by our standards.”

A good example of this is people’s income. If you have a job that pays you $40,000 per year then that is your standard. If it was a MUST for you to be earning $100,000 per year, then you would find a way.

Anthony went on to say, “Change your MUST and you change your whole life.”

If you and I are to look around us, then we can judge our own standards. Don’t like what  you see? Then there’s only one thing that needs to change. You!

Jim Rohn was one of the most successful business persons of the 20th century. In a live recording, he reflected on his life and said that during his first 6 economic years he was in debt and behind on his promises. Then, the second 6 year period of his economic life he became a millionaire!

What changed? Was it a change in government, less taxes, a new job, a pay rise, a more supportive family, etc?

No, it was none of those external things. Only one thing changed. Jim Rohn changed. His philosophy changed and he took the same resources he always had around him and became a millionaire.

Success in inside every one of us. What success means to you and me is totally different, however, whatever your definition of success is, you CAN achieve it. But it must start with you. It has to be a MUST in your life.

If you haven’t decided what it is you want to achieve out of life… start right now! The last thing you want to happen to you is to get to the end of your life and wonder what happened to the time?!

Get out a piece of paper and write what it is you want to achieve by the end of your life. Do you want to have happy family relationships? Do you want to own your own home? Do you want to be able to play the piano? Do you want to have traveled the world?

Whatever your goals are, write them down. Look at them and decide that they are a must in your life and that you will achieve them. This is the first and a very important step.

If something is a must for you, then you will find a way to do it. There is a popular saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. This is very true. Just by identifying your goals and committing to yourself that you will achieve them, a door will be opened for you.