The following article has been written by Jurgen Mennel, one of our fellow Melpie members.
Please read on to get his thoughts on positive thinking and find out more about the product he has created.

Do you want to be successful in Internet Marketing?

I only started in Internet Marketing 9 month ago when I came across The Warp Speed Program. I was pretty excited about it and joined up straight away. I am considering myself very lucky because my Wife is also into it and so we share a passion together. We registered a company and got started. It has been a very steep learning curve so far and by now I believe we know the basics about it all. Having said that, starting an Internet business from scratch when you know hardly anything about the topic can at times be very frustrating. Throwing in the Towel crosses ones mind at times. In those times it is very important that you keep believing in your success and that you clearly see and feel you can do it. You must get those negative thoughts out of your mind!

Now that’s where positive affirmations come in. Simply said, your inner voice will create certain outcomes in your life. Thinking positive thoughts will get you positive results. If you think in a negative way and if you look for all the problems in a certain situation then you will attract a bad outcome. So if you want to be successful it is very important to think positive thoughts. You must align your thoughts with the desired outcome. A proven way to do that are positive affirmations, the way you talk to yourself, your inner voice. Take control of your inner dialog; think positive thoughts, see yourself succeeding and it’s just a matter of time before you do.

Nice in theory right. You see, I discovered the idea of positive affirmations a long time ago but I had trouble making them work for me. No matter how intense I focused on my affirmations in the morning before I left the house, my busy work schedule always got the better of me. During the day I focused on anything else but my affirmations. I simply forgot them during my hectic work schedule. Sound familiar?

 That’s where my Invention comes in. The brand new ReflectAffirm® Cards are a proven way to keep you on the right track. Every time you sit in your car you will have your positive affirmation right in front of you. At times you will find yourself reading the affirmation consciously and that’s great but what’s even better is that your subconscious mind will pick it up all the time. It will imprint the positive affirmation in your mind.

You can download pre-printed ReflectAffirm® Cards on my new Website which is great to get you started. You have also got the option of individualizing your own ReflectAffirm® Card right there on the Website or even download the software that allows you to create as many of these positive messages as you want.

Here is an example of how it displays in your windscreen. Of course the message can be anything that empowers you!

So, if you got a car and are driving it at times then this tool is worth its cost in gold. It will keep your mind on track and enforce the positive message.

So go ahead and check out the website here. http://www.reflectaffirm.com

I have also written an eBook on Affirmations which I give away as a Bonus to anyone who purchases a ReflectAffirm® product on the Website. As a MELPIES member I will give you that for FREE either way. All I ask is some feedback on the Website and of my ReflectAffirm® Idea.

Send me an email here admin@reflectaffirm.com

I wish you all the best in your Internet marketing efforts. Keep those thoughts positive and you will be successful!

All the best

Jurgen

In early May, Ray and I attended Gail Bottomleys sneaky workshop in Melbourne.  As I have been doing this gig for quite a while, I didn’t learn anything new on the day. However, I should point out that I spent a lot of time in my early days sitting in on Gail’s webinars and learning a lot.  In any case, Gail did an awesome job teaching all the newbies in the room about how to get a website up and running.  She even had some new tricks to show at her latest workship.  Ray also learnt a lot about building a wordpress website since his focus has been on auto-responders and tracking in Google analytics.

In any case, what I like about Gail is that she takes everything in her stride. She is a patient and very endearing.  She certainly knows and understands the Internet Marketing gig and can answer virtually any question thrown at her. This is no mean feat.  She even copes with the occasional tear from some students who get a little frustrated when things don’t work out quite right. I seriously recommend Gail Bottomleys workshops if you are just starting out.

Gail Bottomley teaches a different model to Brett McFall.  While Brett’s program focuses mainly on creating your own product, Gails program focuses on affiliate marketing. Personally I prefer the affiliate marketing model – well at least when you are starting out.  This is because there is a lot of information to learn and absorb and I believe it is best to focus on the core skills of keyword research and how to search engine optimize your page properly before you go out and create your own product.

By way of example, we created a product early on when we first started the Warpspeed program. We even outsourced it and spent around $1200 on getting our ebook written by an elance writer.  We even followed instructions on how to find products with low competition and high traffic – the problem was that the product we selected was not a viable market that was willing to spend money.  This was an expensive mistake.  In my mind, why go out and buy an expensive Harley Davidson if you don’t have a license to drive it.

Essentially, I went back to the basics and learnt the correct skills and used affiliate marketing as a vehicle to perfect and hone my skills. Thats why I like the way Gail teaches.  She covers some pretty critical steps in her sneaky workshop and I think this is Gail’s core area of expertise.

However, since then I’ve learnt even more advanced techniques since joining James Schramko’s program.  This has been a positive step as I can honestly say that I have made much more money on James program than what I had done previously.

Whats the difference:

For a start, the content James teaches is cutting edge and up to date.  This has helped me progress much faster and I have pretty much unsubscribed from most other Internet Marketers email lists (although I still affectionately love to hear from Gail as well).

James is actively involved in his community. He holds weekly / fortnightly webinars. He posts and responds to questions on the forum on a daily basis.  Would you believe he even flew directly to Melbourne from Sydney this week to spend a night and get to know his Superfast Results forum members?  That’s commitment.

His forum has experts in virtually any field you might be interested in – from Pay per Click advertising, Search Engine Optimization, WordPress, Getting traffic , buying and selling domain names and even flipping websites.  At US$97 a month it is the best value around.  Since working with James we  have broken new barriers and boundaries.  Apart from making more money, we have:

• Become an expert author on Ezine articles
• Ran our first webinar
• Organised our first workshop
• Implemented powerful RSS streams of traffic
• Increased the number of visitors to our site
• Set up a paypal button that links directly to our autoresponder account
• Achieved a page 1 ranking in Google
• Got put on a private affiliate program
• Streamed video from ez3 (yes – I was nearly in tears with this one)
• And are currently putting together out first proposal to help local business with our Internet Marketing skills

How you benefit?

Our key focus is on helping other Melpies get through their stumbling blocks.  We know from experience that there are many.   This means you get the benefit of everything I have learnt and implemented.  We have been through the blood, sweat and tears.  You also get to benefit from finding out the latest, cutting edge information. For further information  on what courses and workshops we are holding visit Effortless Internet Marketing.

We should also point out that while we are members of Brett’s program, we are not affiliated to Brett’s program. Whilst Brett McFall encourages local meet-ups, he does not endorse the content in them. Hence any information and advice that we provide based on our own knowledge and experience.  This is not disimilar to the Warpies forum where a variety of people other than Brett McFall who offer their advice and opinions in the forum.

Keyword research is one of the most important things you can do as an Internet Marketer.  Finding the “right” keywords is pretty critical as good keywords are the foundation to any website and pay per click campaign.  Researching and locating the right keywords helps you identify market niches that you can dominate as well as help you get your website found by google.  Unfortunately, I have seen far too many websites that choose poor keywords or keywords with high competition which they don’t have a hope of ranking for unless they are planning to spend the next few years trying to build back links to their site.

Fortunately there are tools available that make the process easier.  Aside from using Google Keyword Tool, I have used both Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai. Let me make this clear, both tools are pretty good.  Micro Niche Finder is useful but sometimes I have trouble moving it between computers whereas I don’t have that problem with Market Samurai. Also I find that Micro Niche Finder takes me longer to do my keyword research. Data gets posted in a queue and I find that sometimes this takes time to come up.

Keyword research need not take longer than 10 minutes. Market Samurai makes the somewhat boring but essential task of keyword research quick and seamless. The software is also made by local Melbourne lads so I like being about to support the local economy. However, what I really love about Market Samurai is that not only does it help you find the right keywords, it also helps you check out your competition, analyze your page rank, find and publish content as well as find available domain names.

Whilst Micro Niche Finder does similar things I don’t find it as intuitive to use and I find it takes me longer to use the tool properly. If you don’t know what you are doing you can blow up your search results from Google so you get nonsensical data. Market Samurai has easy to use filters – you just need to tick a box. The training videos also explain everything you need to know in plain simple English. You can try it out for your yourself to see how powerful it is. It is also one of the tools that is used by Ed Dale from the 30 day challenge and used by James Schramko from Fast Web Formula.

Download your free Market Samurai evaluation version

A few months ago I joined an Internet Marketing Coaching Forum that has taken my Internet Marketing knowledge to a new level.  The forum is jam packed with live webinars, quality training videos and a vast array of web page builder tools.  I have learnt a multitude of different business models outside of just creating my own product – from affiliate programs, CPA, Domaining, as well as selling your Internet Marketing knowledge to offline business. What I love about the forum is that it also weekly webinars that feature guest speakers or question and answer sessions.

The forum is very active and there are resident experts on WordPress, SEO and Consulting that will help move you to a new level. Any question you have can be covered off by one of the experts. You can have access to a serious range of affiliate products not available to the public.

The forum is a paid membership forum and is invitation only. Anyone wanting to join the forum and take their Marketing to a new level goes onto to a waiting list until an opportunity to join becomes available. It is worth getting yourself on the waiting list but in the meantime you can check out the main blog and grab some great content.

Phew, another busy day. I’ve been working on my presentation for our next Melpies Workshop tomorrow. It’s going to be big. We will be focusing on traffic and I will be revealing some sneaky tips and tactics that I have been learning about from a top affiliate Internet Marketer. He only makes rare appearances on the speaking circuit and tries to avoid the pitchfests. Learning with him is like riding a bike effortlessly – not like the previous course I did which was like Internet Marketing on training wheels!

We are expecting a slightly smaller crowd tomorrow as a few of our regulars are away. Unfortunately, I can’t promise to deliver all the content to those that don’t come. Last time we have away a PDF of the presentation. This time we are rewarding commitment.

Speaking of commitment, we went out to dinner with some fellow Internet marketers on Wednesday night and met up with this really switched on young guy named Ricky J. His enthusiasm was infectious – to be honest he blew me away. Turns out he is a friend of Steven Essa – Voted Best Speaker at the Perth WIS in February this year.

His focus and dedication to succeed at Internet marketing was clearly evident. He then proceeded to advise us that he lived in Albury and had driven 4 hours just to make it to dinner, then he was driving back home. Now that’s a BIG effort.

Through a simple chance meeting (all we did was put ourselves out and go to dinner) this guy has motivated us and renewed my enthusiasm.

We learnt a valuable thing – sometimes you just need to make the effort and things can happen. It’s not all about the Internet!!

At our last Melpies Meeting on Sunday 7th February, we covered of keyword research.  Keyword research is one of the most critical pieces of the puzzle in achieving success online.  In fact, research is the foundation of any marketing program. Do this wrong, and you will struggle to get the right traffic and traffic that converts.

Some tips covered at the meeting included:

• How many sponsored ads are displayed – are there buyers in the market? If so this is a good sign as it means your market is commercially viable.
• Consider the competition – if there are millions of search results it is going to take a very long time to rank very highly in google. Ideally you want less than 30,000 search results.
• Think laterally and use related keywords
• Use long-tail keywords that are 3 or more words long- these are more targeted
• Be relevant. Put yourself in the mindset of the buyer. Consider what would you type into Google if you were looking to buy something. For example, if you were looking for advice on how to save money to go on a holiday, you wouldn’t be searching for the term “cheap weekends away”  – a buyer typing in this term is most likely going to be looking for locations where they can have a cheap weekend away.
• Use buying terms – words such as cure, stop, fix all suggest that the searcher is looking for a solution to a problem. You can bet if this is the case, they are more likely to be in a buying mind-state.  

Keyword research is a simple process but it is amazing how  many people get it wrong. We did a couple of case studies of some websites and found that many had some fundamental flaws. Some of the keywords used were too broad, the headings did not match the keywords. The PPC ad campaign for the website was also not specific to buyer needs and used different search terms to the rest of the website.

The process of finding the right keywords is relatively simple.  It can be done manually by looking within various Google tools or it can be more automated by using a Micro Niche Software program.  The good thing with software, is that you don’t have to go looking in various places to do your research. Your searches are automatically saved so you can refer back to them at a later time.   If you would like to find out more about Finding Niche Keywords, then check out these free videos of the software in action by clicking on the above link.

While working this website and planning our next meeting, Ray mentioned that we really needed a form on this website so we could get members to register their attendance. The concern was that attendences at our meeting have been rapidly growing and the seating capacity at our venue is limited to 24.  Despite my very limited knowledge on creating forms I said “no problem.”  I then googled event registration form and I found the plug-in I needed to and promptly installed it.

It took a little bit of time to get the hang of it but essentially I’ve done it. The plug-in I found was called Event Registration.  Its a nifty little tool and it is also free. The plug-in is quite good and could be great to use if you were holding an event that you wanted people to register to. It even integrates with PayPal so if you wanted to charge for your event you could. This could be especially useful for any niches you might be interested in promoting.  The good news is that the plug-in also has the flexibility to allow you to register people for free. This was great news for me as since the venue at our next two meetings does not cost anything.

The only tricky thing was working out how to display the registration form.  In any case I had to create a new page, find the html code for the form and then paste it into the html tab of the page I had just created.  Once this was done, my form was ready to go.

The only downside to the plugin is:

• You need to register your name, address and phone number.  There does not seem to be any way of changing this within the plug-in.
• It does not integrate with your autoresponder account
• The email comes directly from my web-hosting account so it is not the email address I normally use.   It looks weird and a little like spam as it displays my hostaccountname@box441.bluehost.com. I have not found a way to customise the email address.

The plug-in therefore is limited in some respects.   Now I can see that if you were holding an event that you suddenly had to cancel or there was a change of venue this would be useful.  However, if you were holding an event like we are doing this could be a right royal pain.  Some people may not want to give out their personal details – they might just want to attend. For our purposes, I just want to register Melpies members to our meeting as the room only holds 24 people. Given we had about 14 or 15 people at our last meeting and the numbers have been rapidly growing we needed to know how many people were coming.

So apologies in advance for those who register – I really don’t want your address and contact details but the plugin itself makes it compulsory to put the details in.  The good news however is that we have a registration form.

This is just another reason why I am so in love with WordPress. There are so many plug-ins that I really can’t see why anyone would need to spend any money on having a website built for them.  There is just about a plug-in for everything imaginable.

Recently I stumbled across a video featuring Matt Cutts from Google speaking at a WordPress event. So I devoted 45 minutes of my time to watch the video. It was well worth it.

The good news is that Google loves WordPress.  Matt outlined that there were surprisingly only a few things one needs to do to search engine optimize WordPress. He recommended five plugins that he thought were essential for WordPress. Scarily I only use two of them. The plugins are:

• Akismet
• Cookies for Comments
• Enforce www.preference
• Feedburner Feedsmith
• WP Super Cache

I should qualify that the plugins he outlined above did not include some other plugins that I also consider essential – such as the All-in-One SEO plugin. However, it depends on your point of view. I noticed Matt uses the Thesis theme – a theme that I use on all but one of my websites (this one!). Thesis is already jam-packed with SEO features so using All-In-One SEO is probably less relevant.

The video is quick and fast paced.  You need to pause it a few times to fully understand it and sometimes there are bits about Google Tools that he glosses over that I understand but can’t find in Google Tools.  Typical though – I don’t really find many of the Google Tools very intuitive to use.  In any case, some of the tools he recommended were:

• Webmaster console at google.com/webmasters
• Google Analytics
• Feedburner – its very quick but he gives a quick tip on the best way to use this
• Google Website Optimizer
• Adsense (some tips on how to use within your site)

It is well worth the watch. Depending on your level of experience some things might go over your head but I wouldn’t worry too much – the video is engaging and the fast pace means you will be moving from one thing to another pretty quickly.

Note: I should point out that the link on this post to the Thesis theme that both Matt Cutts and I use is an affiliate link. If you click on the link and purchase the Thesis theme, I will obtain a commission from the sale.  I don’t recommend this product lighheartedly – I use this myself and and only recommend products that I believe are worthy of recommending.

While working on setting up this website, I stumbled across this great WordPress theme that I found which is really very flexible and is FREE.  The theme is called Semiologic and I am using this theme on this website.  What I love about it is that you can change the colour using skins which are located in the appearance section of the semiologic once you download the theme to WordPress. You can also change the number of columns which is something many wordpress themes won’t let you do.

You can also get your own headers to put onto the theme if you want to (instructions on how to do this are on the website).  I haven’t bothered to create a header and upload it for this particular website but it seems simple enough. If you aren’t an expert at creating headers, you can either the leave the site as is like I have done or pay someone to create a header for you.  The good thing is that at least you have the option of putting your own branded header on there.  This feature might come in handy later on.

As you get good at using this theme, there is an option to buy the Pro version which actually has sales letter templates as well!!! Quite handy if you are into affiliate marketing or are creating your own product to sell. However, the free version is very good and a lot more flexible than most of the themes I have used so would be quite fine to use and worth getting a feel for and playing around with.   I have spent many hours trying and testing out lots of WordPress themes and  I can honestly say that there aren’t many that are flexible as this.  The only other theme that I have found that is as flexible is the Thesis theme and I have used this to create all my other websites.

(Note: The above link to Thesis is a sponsored advertisement.  The owner of this website uses Thesis and also Semiologic and thoroughly recommends both of these products).

One of the subjects touched on at our last meeting, was web hosting. Having the right web host is essential when deciding to set up  a self hosted WordPress website.

There are lots of hosting companies out there but not all are going to be suitable for an Internet business.  There are a number of things the newbie needs to look out for. If you are looking to run an Internet Based Business it is important that you start out on the right foot.

First of all, you want to make sure your future host provider operates on a Linux rather than Windows platform. This is because Linux generally runs faster and performs better. In addition, the majority or scripts and systems out there are written for Linux.

Second, look out for how much disk space you can have on your website. Watch out for hosts that provide limits. It may not be a problem when you are starting out but as you add more content, you don’t want to have any disk space restrictions.

Third, find out if you can get unlimited bandwidth. In the early days the amount of bandwidth on offer may not be a problem but as you get more traffic, it could become one so it is better to ensure you have unlimited bandwidth. You should bear in mind that videos and images can use more bandwidth and you should also assume that you will eventually get lots of traffic to your website.

Fourth, look for an up-time guarantee and a money back guarantee. You want the up-time guarantee before you sign up and you will also find that most quality hosts will offer a money back guarantee. Remember, a website is your piece of real estate so you want to make sure it is up and running at least 99.9% of the time.

Fifth, look for a hosting provider that has My SQL databases. Make sure that the host allows you to have several of them.  This is useful in the event you decide to change hosts.

Sixth, it is also a nice if your web host has php.  What is php – essentially it is simple scripting language that will enable you to run WordPress and other programs easily.

Other things to look out for in a host in include:

• Free set-up (watch out for those hidden fees)
• 24 hour support

I personally use Blue Host and have several websites that are hosted here.  The service has been fantastic and the cost to host these websites is quite minimal – only $6.95 per month.  Another good option is Hostgator. Although I haven’t personally used Hostgator, I know a number of people who use it and love it and it is also rated very highly by people in our group.

(Note: The above links to Hosting Providers are sponsored advertisements for Web Hosting.  The owner of this website uses BlueHost and is comfortable recommending it).