I really did, the simple thought of it made me cringe.

I’ve been formerly trained as an electronics engineer and went down that path because of my love to design and build things. Which includes software and hardware and I still enjoy it but now I am contracting, if I take a day off, I don’t get paid.

Plus I’m a bit of a night Owl, late to bed and late to rise. Probably because it’s more quiet here once everyone goes to bed and I can concentrate better. It also gives me more contact time with my partners in crime in the US. I’m in Australia, in case you didn’t know.

Now it’s really since the advent of the Internet that my stance on marketing has changed. What I like about the Internet is it’s social aspects. I love yakking and I can vent my “creative” side via blogs etc. Actually I was talking to a mate of mine who said he loves to write.  So of course, that sparked me up and off I went dazzling him with how he could set up a blog and get writing… But I do have a tendancy to go overboard when I start talking about my favorite subject, that being the Internet.

In fact I love to write about a range of things and while I keep this blog as my central playground, I do have other blogs about other topics where when the mood takes me and the content suits, I can rush over and get what’s in my head onto a blog and annoy people silly enough to read it.

So where does marketing come into this? Well I have the veiwpoint, that if you love writing, the internet gives you the platform to become a writer and as a side effect, depending on the subject material, you can monetize your website and earn a few dollars. While that’s not actual marketing, it is in it’s most basic form. Creating content that people can find, learn from or just get enjoyment or at the other end of the spectrum, think you are complete nutter… but if you can have say, affiliate products, programs related to your site or just adsense even, you may make a few dollars.

You’ve probably gone hunting (surfing) for information on something and then come across a website… It’s strange where you can actually end up… and you may have clicked an adsense ad, or looked at some book promoted on the site and ended up buying it. It’s something I do… If it’s answering a question I have and it’s going to offer me a solution, I’ll spend a few dollars to buy it. We live in a consumer market after all!

So when you do any of those tasks, you’ll be giving the website owner, from whence you purchased or clicked, a “bit of coin” in their pocket. You’re happy, hopefully, and the website owner is too.

So really thats marketing as a side affect.

Then there is the deliberate, lets build a website to make money from… Hmm, yeah for some strange reason, unless it’s something I’m passionate about, doesn’t get my all that excited. My “button” if you can call it that, is learning all the “stuff” you can do on the Internet and showing others how to do it. Which often comes about from someone saying in conversation… “I want to do “this” or “that” but I have no idea how to… And if I know it, they’ll get to hear about it. If I don’t, I’ll go and find out, if I have the time.

I know I keep drifting from the topic, but when it comes to marketing, I’ve probably digested as much information as you can. So it’s up there in my head. The problem is to marry that with what I love doing, that being Teaching.  I’m also probably a bit “mind zapped” by what I’ve seen on offer before. Some has been really good , in fact exceptional as I’ve written about on here… But some has been crap.

So I’m not doing anything really new, but my main aim is not to teach marketing, it’s to help people get over their issues that stops them from doing their marketing…

Anyway, with all the programming stuff, which I’m naturally attracted to and combine that with marketing, I’ve got a few ideas to play with.

I’ve also really turned off from just chucking out – money sites. Ok, so I’ve got a mental issue about those things. I’ve bought so much rubbish over the years and ended up super dissappointed (strange why I’m even still doing this) I don’t want to be the perpetrator of being that “someone” who is going to give someone else those kinds of experiences. And I have to admit, I’ve fallen for the shiny things and then gone out telling the world about them only to find out later they weren’t so shiny once you looked really deeply. I never said I was a saint!

Which is why I really used to Cringe at the thought of marketing. But what is it really? My version of it is to provide people with quality services/products and by using marketing as way to get those people in need of an answer to see my offers and make the exchange. I get paid, and they get what they were looking for.

But for a very long time, I never “asked for the money”. Which I’ve since been told is due to some kind of “non deserving” attitude. Which is crazy. I mean when I’m working for someone, I’m happy to get paid for my time. It’s what we were brought up to do. Sheltered behind the walls away from customers. You don’t think of your boss as a customer. Which is strange when you think about it.

They (the company) had a need. You came along and said “hey I’m your Man ( or woman)”. They took you on. You do your job and get paid. Simple!

Then why is it so hard when I’m dealing direct or indirectly with a customer online.  I am getting my head around the concept. I kind of blame the education system that teaches you to be a slave than an entrepreneur. Gee I even spelled that correctly the first go!

So I can talk you ear off ( cause I’ll re-explain anything you’re not getting a handle on – I’ve never had very long classes to make sure someone in the room understood  what we were talking about – have I? Well everyone else in the room sure ends up understanding. Poor folk, but they hang around for hours on end lapping it up)  and make you do the tasks needed so you “got” whatever it is we were talking about.

Since I’ve been following a few actually successful people who have their heads on straight and seem to know exactly where I’m coming from and how I should be getting to where I want to go, things have definitely opened up. My whole view on marketing has changed. Besides the marketing itself, what’s sparked me up is all the measuring you should be doing. The name for that is “metrics”. So simply, if you send out a bunch of emails promoting something actually useful, it’s kind of helpful to know how many people read them and how many ended up either subscribing your list and who ended up buying or not buying.

It’s a kind of science! So with my fascination with the techy stuff, I’ll probably get sidetracked coming up with more scripts etc. But you’ve got to realize alot of this stuff is already out there. It’s just knowing where it is and them working out how to use it. And this is why it’s very important to have a network. In my network, I’ve got some very good “sniffers” for want of a better word. They are very good at finding things I have no clue about. Things I wouldn’t find in a blue moon. So please, network with folk interested in what you want to do.

And find mentors, people who have already done what you want to do, and learn from them. This doesn’t apply to only marketing, it applies to any interest or occupation. Many minds make light work of learning what you need to know and helping put it into action. I’ve written on here about the “mentors” I’m now following after tailing behind some that were good to some real shockers, even one that I’m hoping is going to have a room mate called Bubba in a small room with a door he don’t have the key for.

Ok, well I think I’ve bored you enough in this rather disjointed rambling. What was it about again? Oh how I used to hate Marketing… Well it’s something that gives you a whole lot of options… I’m rather keen on being one of the folk that gets paid when I’m not actually working. Work hard once, get paid for sometime down the track.

It’s so very possible to do, and when you see how some are doing it and who those folk are, gives you even more hope! Never think you’ll never make it! You will.

Whoops I went on a little bit further…I had better get to doing some work now I’ve got this off my chest!

Cheers

Tim

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Brain Fog probably isn’t a new term, but it’s one I use to describe that condition where you know where you are and where you want to get to, but the “How to”, the bit in the middle, is really unclear. Just like being in a Fog!

At the moment, I’m in the middle of caressing Mike Filsaimes Butterfly Marketing Script into a new membership site, incorporating a Forum and a few other little things I’ll be adding. So I can see the Big Picture, but at the moment when it comes to deciding how to tackle incorporating the Databases ( of course I want the one login to let the members have access to the Forum etc) it’s a bit foggy upstairs in my brain.

The reason I’m building this membership site is to help others overcome those Foggy Brain Moments. It’s going to be my platform for dumping all the stuff I have learned and am still learning into a format anyone can understand. ie – Help dispel the Brain Fog. In fact I’ll be showing how to defeat the brain fog on the site.

So what causes Brain Fog?

It’s a combination of things, but can be best described in two ways.

1. Not having a Clue what’s required and
2. Not having a method in which to describe the steps you need to take

How to overcome Brain Fog

I apologize for this not being an over enlightening description, it’s just some thoughts for you to consider.

What is needed is a way you can start bashing out ideas. It’s kind of like mapping out the steps. Now, even though we have all these wonderful software programs available to us, you still cannot beat the old Pen and Paper to get the ball rolling.  Afterwards, I like to fire up my OpenOffice Writer, create a document, give it a meaningful name and save it in a location where I’m going to find it again. So in the document I note down the things I’ve just written in my notebook and just start blasting, giving no thought to layout, headers, bolding, pretty text fonts… Those are distracting and you can go back afterwards, during the clean up process to sift through the points and put them in some order.

DON’T worry if you repeat yourself. If you catch yourself thinking, I’ve just written that, shake it off. Many times you’ll be saying the same thing but slightly different because of some thought you had, that proceeds it.  You can filter these things afterwards during the Clean up Stage.

Ok a brief example.

Say you want to build a website and you’ve never done one before.

The 1st step would be – Why do I want to build a website in the first place?  That will help you know what the websites content is going to be about.

How do I create a Website? Oh no – Brain Fog alert….. You can search Google and find out, there are lots of great tutorials and guides on how to build a website. So this would be a research phase. Note down the various options… Do you actually want to learn how to do it yourself or do you want to pay someone to do it for you.

How do you want it to look like? What do you want it to do as in navigation or features like a Forum etc? For this stage I find it really useful to just write lots of sentences that start with “I would like it to….” or “If someone does <this>, then they can do <that>” changing <this> and <that> for the actual actions. And again, just blast and not worry about repeating yourself.

So Research and Write and get the facts.

From there you can make some sort of decision or if you are still suffering from Brain Fog, go find someone to talk about it with who builds websites.

Or you can come along to my new website once I’ve got it into a reasonable state.

You can sign up now for free, but there isn’t too  much to see there at the moment as we’re still putting the pieces together. It’s because I’m suffering a bit of brain fog at the moment that I’ve written this post to give me a few minutes to sit back and to also do what I’ve just been talking about. You could say this is a very simple “blast” about how I’m going to get over my Brain Fog moment.

Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping is s a great way to quickly get your thoughts out on “paper”, well your the screen on your PC, and move them about easily into some logical order at the end of it all. At first it’s little daunting, but like with anything, once you get into the swing of it, it becomes quite natural.

There is a Free MindMapping Tool which isn’t as super sophisticated as the higher priced alternatives, but most of the time you’ll never need those features, let alone use them.

The program I’m referring to is called FreeMind and it’s freely available ( and it is free ) and will run on any operating system (which I always appreciate).

A simple Mindmap I created

Click on the image to see a larger version

I just created the sample for this post in about 15 minutes. Which included playing with the export tools. You can save it in Flash so it’s interactive in that you can close and open the nodes on the webpage. That’s neat! I’ve just saved it as a jpeg file here.

So you can create links to internal programs and documents and launch them, a feature I really love as you can tie things together nice a quickly. Of course you can link to other Mind Maps, so you might have a master map that you link to your sub maps.

There are a lot of graphical symbols you can use and assign to mean what you like. I always like to add a little legend when I am doing that, as you can see on the image. There isn’t a lot that it cannot do.

Sounds like I need to do a little video on how I use it. So try it out, it’s very simple to use and intuitive. You just need to play with it a little bit. The main point is, you create a “Thought” and you can simply drag and drop things on the page. It’s so easy to move things around. So after your initial brainstorming, you can get serious and categorize things. It’s kind of fun to use.

So it’s back to the writing out my ideas for me.

I’m trying to decide on the neatest way to incorporate my members scripts Database with the Forums Database and drawing the relationship diagrams etc. It also helps to be wide awake, but just going through the process of getting what’s in your head out onto something like a piece of paper, a document or drawing, helps you sort things out.

And once you go through this pain the first time, it’s all  been worked out and documented. So next time won’t be so painful. In fact it will be a base to build upon and what once cause you Brain Fog will be like a bright sunny day and you’ll get done what it is , you set out to do!

Oh and I’ve just blasted all of this out, so if it reads like a jumble of ideas and thoughts, that’s how it is. I’ll come back later and do the Clean up. But I do have to get back to my website building. So hopefully you’ve gotten a little bit out of this.

If you have, I’d love to know. If you haven’t , I’d also love to know. Simply leave a comment and I’ll reply back.

Ok I’m off to clear my Brain Fog!

Cheers

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Here’s another project I’m working on after one of those moments where I “put down the keyboard” and let the brain have a rest, then it always wonders off to somewhere.

So after a little brainstorming or daydreaming, I came up with this phrase “The Things You Find Online” , more like an exclamation than something someones going to type into a search engine, but it’s a theme and I like Themed sites.

So this is another site where I can post about anything interesting I find online that isn’t Internet Marketing related. There are other folk out there!

In fact , I’ve put up a post trying to put people off IM, as it might look all bright and shiny, but if you aint in the right frame of mind or you get hooked up into the “Buy This, This is the answer you’ve been looking for….” cycle of product buying, you’ll be making someone rich and it won’t be them ( the person buying the stuff). I know, I’ve done it myself and even the seasoned business folk can fall victim to the cycle of buy buy buy….

I’d hate to think how many others I’ve made rich by buying into their promises. Hmmm, might be the way we have to go to get to that point to realize it. Nah, I don’t think so! If I can stop anyone from getting off on the wrong foot, I will.

Anyway I wasn’t intending to get on my soapbox about the IM traps for the newcomers and how hard it is to get off the Merry Go Round.

Back to the subject, yes so, http://www.TheThingsYouFindOnline.com has risen from a whim and a little planning and we’ll see where that goes.

I’m actually looking for contributors, so if you are interested there “is/will be” some information regarding that on the site. It never hurts to ask!

The WordPress Theme

One benefit of creating a new website , is that I do it all from scratch. Call me mad but each time I do, I find new things and each time it gets better. Although that is from a personal perspective. How it serves it’s purpose is another matter, but I do like all the shiny bits behind the scenes.

So as I was looking for a template, like I was doing it for the very first time ( kind of sounds like a Madonna Song , strange…) I stumbled upon this one..and I’ll plug it as it’s useful, well I think so anyway It’s called Graphene theme by Syahir Hakim. Its available within your WordPress admin area when you are adding a new template. Got to love WP and being able to do everything you’d ever need to in the Admin.

I’m kind of liking the rotator on the home page that cycles through the posts… Which is a little useless until you write some posts for the site. It’s more of rotating Post preview which I have no idea on how that will affect the sites SEO performance but it does give the visitor something a little different and it’s  not overly annoying… Is it?

I’ve not made any changes to the theme as such. I have added a number of plugins though, some new ones to the “usual suspects” I install. I suppose you’ll want to know what they are… Dear me.. remember I’m still playing with these so these are not what I can really recommend. I’m just seeing what they can do. ( I’ve still got some silly ones on this site.)

Ok, we have in no particular order, ok well it is alphabetical, the following plugins.

WordPress Plugins I used on the site

About Me 3000 – It’s a widget that basically pulls up your profile. Useful for showing off the many contributors the site will have. Yes that is a HINT!

Comment Rating – Let’s your visitors rate the comments on your site. I had seen something like this used on http://saltydroid.info/(warning there is a lot of language used that might offend some – it even borders on my acceptance level but I found it a good read as it related to something I was researching…)

Cool Author Box – This shows the authors BIO including Gravatar , if you have one, on each post/page. It needs a little tweak in its styling ( I think ) but I’ve left it as it is.

Hikari Enhanced Comments Gives a little style to the comments. It’s by no means the only option out there for this.

SEO Ultimate – This is a Must Have. In my experiments this has made a huge difference in Search Engine Rankings as it lets you add the required SEO stuff each page should have. Works on single posts and pages and makes the Search Engines give more meaningful information, hence the improvements in rankings. Again there are other plugins available that do the same kind of thing. It’s what you like I guess.

And that about wraps up the plugins at this point in time.

Phew, I wasn’t planning to ramble on about WordPress plugins, but there you go!

In Summary

Ok so I’ve got a new website – “Big Woopty Doo” you might say.

The main thing when you are creating websites, with the plural meaning more than one is it’s a good idea to write out a procedure as you go. Just to make sure you do not forget the little things. So if it’s a task that you’ll be doing more than once, even if you do do it once, its a great idea to write out the steps.

Yes, that makes it a procedure. A procedure to implement, to complete a project. Procedures and Projects – the two things that go hand in hand and is the mainstay of any good business or endeavor.

Sounds like more soapbox stuff.

Then you’ve got to remember where you put them, but that’s a topic for another post.

I’ll let you give your eyes a rest now.

Till next time, be good, have fun and get something done!

Cheers

Tim

Handy WordPress Tip

By default the WordPress Editor is only 10 lines in height. If you like to ramble on like I do it’s a good idea to make it bigger, ie more lines to see.

You do that in the WordPress Admin area – go to Settings -> Writing and at the top is a box where you can set the number of lines. By default it is 10 and I like to make it 40, cause I write lots, but you can set it to whatever you like.

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What is PHISHING?

It’s the illegal activity where very unscrupulous people attempt to  steal your login and credit card details.

That’s the simple explanation. How they do it is very devious and almost clever, which is why it’s something you need to be very wary of.

No Financial Institution or Membership site will ever ask for your details.

Now you may have come across emails pretending to be from some bank asking you to click on a link to be taken to a website to fill in your details on the pretense that something bad will happen if you don’t. If you are ever in doubt ( and I highly suggest that you are ) call the bank or whoever it’s pretending to be from.

I’ve seen emails from my own bank, from Paypal and even from Facebook, telling me somethings wrong and it needs my immediate attention. Just go to this site and log in…. Umm, yeah right!

Rule 1.

Never, ever give your login details, credit cards details from a site you’ve been sent to from an email.

Always check the website address that appears in the link if you are tempted, it’s the dead giveaway.

I’m going to go into a lot more detail later on about this because it does catch people out and it’s not because they are stupid. It’s because they are trusting and the “aholes” that do this make it look as legitimate as they possible can. I can easily understand how people try to do the right thing when asked. It’s just they are being asked by the wrong people.

Rule 2.

It pays to pay attention. I’ll be showing some actual images later on to explain what goes on. But sometimes you can glance at the website link and it’ll have the words or the institution in it making it look legit. If you look a bit harder you’ll see there are a few extra little bits attached that is actually a different website to the one you think it is.

Rule 3.

If you are unsure, ring the bank or whoever it is from.

If you have an issue with a bank for instance, they are more likely to ring you or send you a letter. Even then, be wary. Its still a good idea to call them back on a number you know is there’s. I love it when I get called up and I have to prove to them who I am…. What proves they are who they say they are… Gee am I getting paranoid? Well, unfortunately, there are those out there that simply love to take money from who ever they can. So I’d rather call it being cautious.

Like I mentioned, there is a bunch more I want to write about this. It’s not a good feeling to get conned. I fell for it once by ending up at some website where I actually purchased something and gave my credit card details. When the alarm bells finally started ringing, I looked into the site a little more and found the other things missing that screamed it was a scam. So I had to quickly cancel my card…

That’s another topic on making online purchases…

Just always keep this question in mind.

Why are they asking? It should keep you a little more vigilant. But they do know how to get you to panic… with subjects like “Your Funds have been frozen….” and other subjects designed to put the wind up you and make you take action.

There are ones like…. We’ve not been able to deliver your parcel… Someone wants to send you money… and I could go on and on…

So keep those eyes open, don’t be quick to fill in anything and if you are unsure, make a phone call to whoever it is… Which isn’t dumb as you’ll be alerting them to someone sending out these emails.

You could write a book on this…

So I’ll come up with some more, but my real intention was to make you aware of this. If you’re pretty new to the Internet, you are more likely to fall for this. Again , its not from being unintelligent. These are clever people and they know what works and if you have your guard down, then you might just fall victim to it.

So please, take care out there. While the Internet is in general, a great place where we can do lots of amazing things and meet  lots of amazing people and share this and that… there are those few “bottom dwelling blood sucking…<add your own words here>” persons whose only intention is to rob your blind.

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DIMDIM has been bought out by salesforce.com and the news is that all the existing Free DIMDIM users have lost or will loose their accounts.

Just reading over the FAQ on the DimDim Site suggests that there will be no new accounts, upgrades etc available. Monthly accounts will remain until March 15 and Yearly subscriptions will remain until they expire ( please check the FAQ on the DimDim Site for updates).

So what is a good Alternative to DIMDIM.

If you are an existing DIMDIM user looking for an alternative, there is always GVOConference.

I’ve written about this on other posts and it’s now one of the most feature packed, easy to use and cost effective means to hold your Online Meetings or Training Sessions.

The main key benefit is that it flash based. So it will run on any web browser on any operating system. This means it’s not tied to “Windows only users” like so many of the other alternatives are. It also means there is no software to download or install for your guests. Just give them the link to put in their browser and they can access your room.

Get Your Free Demo Account.

You can get a Free Demonstration account with GVOConference to see if it fits your needs. There is a detailed users manual, a very good quick start guide Video showing all of the rooms features plus a number of other videos covering each aspect in more detail.

It has a very easy to use setup system with a large number of options available so you can really tailor it to your needs.

So if you are still looking at a Free Online Conferencing program, this is a very good alternative. Yes, it costs under $10 USD per month so it’s not Free as such, but it’s not going to make a dent in your wallet. With the benefits of using a conferencing program such as GVO Conference, it makes sense to at least take a look at it.

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There is a long story to this so please bare with me.

In the beginning

It was about, oh, 7 or 8 years ago when my web host at the time went belly up and left me needing to go through that painful task of finding another web hosting company.

Back in those days, there were a lot of companies offering hosting of one form or another,  most of which are no longer with us.

I had stumbled across a company called Kiosk in my travels prior to this and so I took another look. Even back then they had the trial offer which was $1 for 30 days so I signed up to take a look.

Now one of the things that caught my attention was the fact that they held a lot of online conferences where we’d all end up attending and get absolutely swamped ( I mean that in a nice way ) with information from anyone in the room.

To me it was heaven! I was able to learn from some successful marketers and also add my own two cents worth to those who’d  listen. Through all that I made many good friends that I still work with on a regular basis to this very day.

A group of us even “broke away” and started up our own mentoring website. Which is still going and where I get to amaze everyone with my PHP and Database knowledge and we get up to all sorts of fun projects. That’s been going for over 3 years and it’s got a regular following. Not forgetting the other mentors who teach website design and ebook creation and a whole range of good stuff. Ok I’m a little biased but it’s great knowledgeable group of great people.

Anyway, The conferencing software that was being used was “someone else’s” and the number of folk attending these webinars was quite large which meant the cost was quite high for the hosting owners.

So they decided to develop their own conferencing software! Which they did and it was called HotConference.

Now that allowed the ordinary marketer a very affordable platform where they could invite people along and share their programs or courses and hold group sessions.

There were many companies and business using it. I’d sign up to some conference and guess what they were using… It was amazing who was using this software. It was quite a broad spectrum.

But there were a few drawbacks. For one, it would only run on Windows which was frowned upon by the Linux and Mac users. The cost at the time was very affordable, but over time many more conference programs have popped up like GotoMeeting, which I also use and quite like.

There was a push to make Hotconference multi platform, which means to make it so it can run under any operating system. Porting the existing windows based program to other formats was obviously out of the question. So the next way to achieve this was to go Flash Based so it can run in a Web Browser…

It’s been a while coming and a lot of work has been done to get the bugs out but now it’s pretty solid.

The price though was still a bit high and I think a lot of people either moved on to other things or started using other , slightly less expensive programs. Not by much though…we are talking a few dollars difference.

To the present day.

So here we are… The new GVOConference is now released and it’s going rate is $8.97 USD per month per room. Now that is affordable!

It is a major drop in price and one that makes it just about crazy not to use if you are wanting to hold your own online conferences to promote your business or opportunity or like me – invite people along to teach them what you know.

There are a lot of conferences going on at GVO to demonstrate this software. So if you are interested I strongly suggest that you click on the link and get the invited to the next conference call which will show off all it’s features and give you a feel for it.

If you have never seen or heard of online conferencing, I especially urge you to attend. It just gives you so many more options to get you in front of others as a group and give a presentation or just chin wag.

If you just want to chin wag you could always just use Skype. But that is only good for text and voice in small groups and it also depends upon how Skype is feeling at the time. I do use and like  Skype too.

It is a great and affordable service to add to your marketing toolbox.

So  sign up for your Free 7 Day trial and give it a good testing out.

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Here’s an interesting little snippet I came across when checking out some of the comments on one of my other blogs.

Comment Spammer “Try Hards”

On the odd occasion when I have a pretty good idea that a comment is Spammy, I sometimes check out their site to see if they are legit or not. After all, I like to be fair!

But I do wonder about the “Try Hard” Spammers. Give it up! ( this is aimed at the spammy Try Hards and not you)  I manually approve the comments on all my blogs and if you’re writing crappy comments, they aint going to get accepted!

The Borderline Cases

Apart from the blatantly obvious Spam comments, you do get some that have you thinking… is this “Fair Dinkum” or are they just “having a lend of me”. ( excuse the Aussie Slang)

Things to look out for…

1. The comment doesn’t quite fit the post they’ve commented on. While I do love being told my Blogs are creative and a great to read and they’ve been searching all over the Internet and found the answer on my site, as much as I love to have my ego massaged, it still aint going to get accepted.

2. The URL they leave. Again these are sometimes obvious as to their intent. Mainly being Cheap or magic pills sites… Instant Deletion. But you do get the odd ones that look innocent. So I check them out. More on that later as I’ve just checked out a couple of site with some interesting results.

3. Strange Names. You do get what looks like real peoples names, but if you comment on my blogs with some marketing slogan or some I cannot even write on here. Good bye to you too~

4. Weird Email Address. If they look weird, why aint they using their name or something recognizable. I love those you get like bob@…. and their name is Dorothy something or vice versa. Get it right will ya!

5. I think there was a number 5 but the doorbell rang and I’ve kind of lost my train of thought.

Anyway back to the story.

I was checking out some of these “links” people leave.

One was a non existent URL. It came up as Not Found so I checked it to see if it was available, and lo and behold it was. Someone just did a little finger dance on their keyboard and made something up. I was thinking of accepting the comment, registering the domain and pointing it back to one of my site. But I thought that’s not real honest, so I didn’t.

The next was the one that really inspired the initial spark to this post. Again and I checked out the site, it wasn’t there. So I looked it up and found it was registered. Now it was a marketing related link, and while it wasn’t really relevant to the post it was commenting on, I still went to look up who it belonged to.

Call me weird but if I see a site that’s down, I’ll try to find out a contact email and let them know. I’ve had people call me and let me know about issues on the odd occasions I’ve had them with some sites. Nice huh!

Anyway, what I saw was something I’d never seen before and sparked my curiosity.

Note: This Domain Name is Suspended.

Scary huh? This was the message I saw in this guys WHOIS info. Now everything looked legit. He had a real name, address but the contact email did appear dodgey. Maybe that is why!

Now the reasons for this, (from my brief research so feel free to enlighten us if you know more on this) can be due to either…

1. The registration renewal fee has not been paid. Possibly..

2. The registrar has had complaints and suspended the domain. After all he’s probably been Comment Spamming too many Blogs and got someone annoyed.

3. Registrars will email your contact email address asking to confirm your details are up to date. This is a legal requirement by ICANN for registrars to perform. So if he was asked… Although I sometime reply to these emails, I do check my details and I must pass the test. So sounds like his email address might be the issue. Could have bounced, who knows. (no I’m not going to email him to find out.)

It’s No Secret!

If you play by the rules, everyone will be happy. If you don’t…

And the “rules” as they apply to acceptable behavior in regards to websites etc, are not real hard to follow.

It’s a blatant attempt to get backlinks.

I know everyone talks about how wonderful backlinks are… but I’m still funny over them. And everyone is trying to get backlinks on other peoples blogs. Hence why the Comment Spam in the first place… It gives these gooses ( or they think it does ) more credibility. Really! How nice that they think my blogs will do that for them!

And if they do make an appearance on your Blog, and they are blatant crappy spammy websites, they’ll drag your site down in to the mire with them. And you don’t want that.

So be vigilant. There are steps you can take to prevent this happening to your Blog, which I’ll have to leave for another post. I’ve just been informed that some friends and a bottle of whiskey are making an appearance in a few minutes.

Google themselves have an interesting slant on Backlinks. Check out their Website SEO guidelines and have a read. There’s some good info in there. What it all boils down to is “Make your site Interesting and useful to someone and we’ll give you lots of Google Love”. Hmm well those are my words, not theirs, but they would have said that if they thought of it!

Jut before I forget – one note on Google and SEO tricks and Backlinks etc…. Humans from Google do perform manual checks on websites… It’s not all automated, you aint battling against some clever script you can outsmart… So don’t even try. I mean, the whole purpose is to give some helpful advise and make it worth your time reading my rather long, all over the place at times blogs…

Feel Free to Comment too!

Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear your views. But if you are going to try and sneak in a Spammy Comment, don’t be disappointed that you never see it. Also remember I have to manually accept your first few comments before the will magically appear… So don’t fret if you don’t see them straight away. You’ll still be able to edit them etc if you make a mistake…

There’s another topic for a post.

My Rules

Simply: Be a human and Make It a Relevant Comment or It’ll get shown the Trash Can!

Ok the door bell has rung and my mate and Johnny Walker have arrived. So take care , happy blogging and commenting and have fun.

I even hope you learned a little on the way!

Cheers

Tim

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This has been a rather enlightening and also a little embarrassing event.
Enlightening because, if you use your WordPress SEO Plugins properly they do actually work. And I’ll show the results to prove it.

Embarrassing, because I didn’t do the right thing.

I was looking for my listing on Google.

In my last post, I wrote about Curtis Andrews excellent video course (I’m not biased ) on his Affiliate Income Blueprint.

I’ve also got more in to the habit of seeing how things are going. So I jumped into Google and typed in the words for that post. That being “Affiliate Income Blueprint“, without the quotes.

I discovered that it did get listed on Google, the very next day. BUT I had to go looking through a number of pages. And there it was, on about page 6.

Then my jaw dropped.

I was going to take a screen shot of the entry and I’m a little annoyed I didn’t. I was waiting to get onto Curtis’s Webinar and it came on as I was doing this…

(Curtis and IIA are about a whole lot more than just showing you the “Hows” . Curtis clearly demonstrated he’s all about the “Whats” and “Whys”, without which the “Hows” wont get you anywhere. Something to keep in mind! )

So I’ll have to describe what I saw on Google.  I’m still in shock over what I saw.

The Title of the listing had nothing whatsoever to do with the keywords. It was Something completely unrelated about another post. Obviously I had filled in the SEO details on that Post.

The Description was a summary of the last 3 post titles, all in a row…Which included the words,  “Affiliate Income Blueprint” but with the other stuff it made no real sense… I’m actually surprised it even got a mention on Google at all.

And the Link…..

Well it was the link to the post of this wrong title, as you’d expect. The wording in the Title and link didn’t even get a mention in the description. It’s an interesting side affect.

The AHA Moment.

Or the “Gee I’m a goose” moment.

Ok, it was blatantly obvious that the title etc were a lil screwed. So how do you fix that! It didn’t take too long to figure out – “hmm might help if I put the relevant information in the bit that the “All In One SEO Pack” plugin allows for.

So I did and saved it.

That was yesterday.

So today…

Well I sat down and got to work and wrote some stuff and thought – “hmm I wonder how those changes went.”

How about Top Listing on the 1st page of Google. Not bad huh!

Google Results for Affiliate Income Blueprint

Click the image above to see a larger version you can read.

The above image has not been doctored or manipulated in any way ( except for being scaled) . It’s what Google was displaying for me.

These are the results for Jan 1st 2010.
Google Results
Search Term: Affiliate Income Blueprint  – returned results= 254,000 – Position 1
Search Term: “Affiliate Income Blueprint” – returned results= 23,100 – Position 1

Reasons: Relevancy? Probably. I don’t write wondering how the search engines are going to respond, I just write. I do check to see what they think though. You don’t need to perform any “tricks” to get ranked. You just need to write. Well there are a few rules to follow but they are really about writing proper html, ie using a relevant Title and Description. It’s all it took to go from the dark depths up to a nice position.

At the moment it’s actually outranking the site where the course is available from!

The Moral of the Story

There are a couple of points.

1. Make sure you follow up on things and check to see what they are doing. By not knowing your results, you can’t make any changes to improve or fix things. And you won’t get that warm fuzzy feeling seeing that what you’ve done is working.

2. On Any website, it is important to have the relevant Title and Description, and possibly the keywords.

So after this little revelation, I had better go and check all my other posts.

Note: Of course the results I’m getting today could change later on. Also it appears that the keywords are not highly searched for. The point of the whole exercise is to demonstrate, if someone does type in the keywords, they’ll find it.

Take Care

Tim

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Umm yeah, I’ve not yet reviewed Weeks 1, 2 and 3. I’ve watched them and I’ll write about them soon as I really do have to go over them again.

What is the Affiliate Income Blueprint?

The Affiliate Income Blueprint is a part of Curtis Andrews InternetIncomeAcademy

As you might have guessed its a series of videos that take you from finding a potentially profitable niche, to keyword research – to see if it is, to creating articles ( Curtis outsources his and shows you how to do that) , right up to creating the website, putting in all the pages, optimising it for SEO and publishing the site.

Week 4

Week 4 has been the whole “build a website and publish it” deal. Doing it down and dirty using Kompozer (there are also a number of videos in the members area specific to using Kompozer)

Including a bunch of neat SEO tips and “must do” items I never thought of doing ( I do now) bringing the whole thing to 13 videos. These are not short – you get to see Curtis do every single step. So for someone who has never built a website, you’ll definitely be able to whip one up after watching these.

But, using Kompozer, building single pages is a bit old fashioned. I’m not saying that is bad. In fact it was refreshing to see it being done the old way. It took me back to the days when I was starting out. Then something happened and I wanted to automate the world…and got lost in programming. Hmmm.

Anyway, Curtis has a great teaching style which will sit well with most folk. He’s not rushed at all, so its unlikely you’ll miss anything. And it’s not boring. Even for something rather repetitive, it was still interesting to watch.

So I’m still happy to recommend InternetIncomeAcademy to anyone starting out. I’m still enjoying being a member with the community that are very  supportive and it’s fresh and constantly changing.

There is more than this.

I’ve still not had the chance to completely go through everything else yet. There is something there for everyone and if you’ve not gone down the track of finding hosting, remember that it’s included in the membership.

Learn to build sites and host them, for the one small monthly membership fee, for about the same price as hosting alone. Still not bad value.

You get shown how to create a website header graphic

Oh and you get to learn how to create a Website header using The GIMP, including installation, a quick lesson and bingo – a header is born!

Personally I prefer InkScape. I use both, but I find that InkScape lets more do more of what I want like website template layouts and headers, buttons etc.  Both are pretty neat for being Free programs. So the graphics you end up creating,  you can save and put them straight on the website.  I use The GIMP mainly for screen captures and resizing images. It’s grand for doing that. Anyway, that’s for another post.

Week 5

This is the week everyone is hanging out for. This will be the Site Monetization Part. So adding in the Affiliate products to go with the articles will be fun to see. This is one of Curtis’s main money earners on the internet. So it’ll be interesting seeing firsthand, in Curtis’ laid back teaching style on how he implements this.

Remember that these are handcrafted websites, not one of these Auto Generated Blog -article scrapping, you need shitloads of them to earn a few dollars from them and then fearing they’ll get Google Slapped at any moment.

Why handwrite a Site when you can Mass Auto Blog

Those auto blogging, mass generated sites are not the way to go. They are junk sites. What is better? One quality site that actually serves as purpose and gives value to the person visting it. or flybait sites, hoping someone will land and click an ad or buy some product from the site.

I guess the people who do that kind of thing would say – Stuff tying your own fishing fly and standing in the river to catch a few quality trout. Just get a few sticks of Dynamite and blow the river up and get a few dead fish. Umm yeah, probably won’t be any more fish after that happens fellas. Sounds like there could be a moral that little story.

There are also many folk doing better than the mass site builders. More work ( oh no ) but a better much more stable return. And I’m getting kind of sick of those junk sites and yes I do have a couple myself so I’m not so lillly white.

There is always a bright side.

If you are an article writer  and these mass sites end up picking up your articles, there might be a sunny side to it for you. Might be, I’m not sure how it affects any BIO links back to your sites if they are appearing on these kinds of sites. Although I am hearing people report that they are getting good PR on some. But it’s a gamble. It’s an interesting point I’ll have to bring up with the gang and get some feedback on. Your feedback is also welcome, so feel free to put in a comment about it.

I think I’ve opened a can of worms on this.

Anyways its that time of the evening again so I’ll leave you with it. Take care and all that good stuff and I’ll be back again with more ravings.

Cheers

Tim

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Way back in late 2009, I got wind of an interesting offer, called the League Of Extraordinary Minds. This was a set of 9 Panel discussions from the world leaders in the offline and online business world discussing a range of topics pertinent to being a successful person in business. We all want to be one of those! Don’t we?

This program and the panel discussions were being run by Rich Schefen and Jay Abraham.

I’d written some past posts on this at A League of Extraordinary minds and A League of Extraordinary minds – 2nd Session

I’d upgraded and…

The original taped discussions were free, but you could get the transcripts and also one of Jays big priced tagged courses as part of the upgrade fee and then there was a smaller monthly fee afterwards. So after getting the initial audios and transcripts and the course… Hmm dunno what happened to that course… Like most things you get, you tend to look at them and they are in one eye ball ( or ear as the case may be) and out the other…

I’ve been receiving a thick A4 Report in the mail from Rich (and Jay on occasion and not forgetting Todd Brown) which I always enjoyed reading. Both Rich and Jay know their stuff and , well, it can be a bit confronting. So again while it was a great read, I obviously absorbed every word and implemented the actions to take… Or did I? Old habits are very easy to slip back into!

About Rich Schefren

Just a quick intercession here in case you’ve no idea who which Rich Schefren is…

Pick a high profile, successful Internet marketer out of the hat and the chances are, they’ve been guided in some form or manner by Rich. Rich is one of those guys that can stand outside of the small worlds we get ourselves into and see the big picture. Then he can show you the path out of your “small world” and move you out in the universe! In other words, he’s a very savvy marketer Offline as well as Online. I can say that because of his latest report, which he described me to a Tee and showed me a way out of my crippling thoughts and habits . But more on that later.

I’ve heard snippets of what Rich teaches from others, but they’ve been in isolation. Rich brings it all together!

If you go to any of Rich’s sites you’ll see who his success stories are, both individuals and corporations. If you get to read or listen to any of Rich’s material you’ll see for yourself.

So the latest report shows up in my letter box.

That familiar A4 Envelope made another appearance, and they seem to do that more often than actually they do! It felt like I’d only just got one the other day… Anyway , this one was thick and heavy. Which made me wonder – oh boy what’s he written this time.

Now I must just re-iterate, that like the majority of people that subscribes to a magazine or newsletter or whatever, you end up looking at it, putting it down, and acting like it never happened. Or is that old age kicking in… Well this report kind of explains why that happens and more importantly, how to stop it…

So I opened it up – 100 pages full of stuff. Has Rich gone Mad? Now with this report, Rich took the time to sit down and write this masterpiece, and I have to note that he hadn’t planned this. It was a “I woke up at 3am with an urge to write about….” instead of completing the report he had already started. Luckily for us he woke up at 3am!

This was the wake up call I badly needed!

In a nutshell, this report is about all the things he’s picked up from working with his personal clients. That includes those things that cause people to fight and resist improving their business, to those that simply take the given advice on board and make huge leaps forwards. I raised a smile when he stated that all his new potential clients had to read and do the exercises in this report before he’d work with them. I can see why!

Now I’m a typical hater of doing the exercises when asked to. But I have to take my hat off to Rich because one of his examples was about someone who spent time reading “self improvement” books and not doing anything with them. Instead he just got the warm fuzzy feeling that he’d read them. Sound familiar?

Well it did to me and plus the fact “hey this is Rich Schefren taking time out of his business to write this amazing report and I’m paying pennies for it.” So I gritted my teeth and did the soul searching and answered the questions. Ok they might not be quite right, and Rich guides you on how to best tackle them, but the thing is – I did them! One up for me! And I know for fact, well I feel it in my gut, that Rich deliberately and I should add – expertly planned it that way so I would!

So I’ve gone back into my Founders Club Members Area.

What’s it now, nearly 14 months worth of content in my Founders Club Members Area and I hardly ever went there. Well now I’m playing catch up. Now that it’s finally hit me that I’ve been bypassing a wealth of information, I’m devouring the stuff. My thinking has changed – finally! And I can start moving forwards with the right thinking instead of all the gobbledygook you get fed and conditioned by these other so called Gurus. They give you small chunks of the big picture which makes it nearly impossible to find true success.

When you have the ear of one of the worlds most successful and I have to add one of the worlds best teachers who holds nothing back and makes you cringe cause he knows what bad habits and bad thinking you have, then you’ve got to listen. If you don’t you are going to get stuck in your “small world” and never get to play in the universe and be a success! Period.

This is your opportunity to find out.

This is your opportunity to let Rich get inside your head and steer you on the right course. He’s got a special introductory offer where you can access a number of the modules available to any Founder Club Member.

I’d really take a look at this, because you are getting some of the best marketing advice and strategies available today.

So you can Start Learning from Rich Schefren Right Now!

It’s amazing what you can miss when it’s right under your nose. Luckily for me and the other Founder Club Members, that Rich wrote this report for us. It should be compulsory reading for anyone considering starting and continuing to run a successful business, Online of Offline!

There are No more excuses!

All the best

Tim Brownlaw

And seeing as it’s now become Christmas Day here- a very Merry Christmas to you and yours from myself and my family. 2011 is going to be the big year, last year should have been! Now I can confidently say, if it isn’t, we’ve not been doing the right things. If you want to know what the “right things are” go here and take up the special offer – right now.

I hear slaybells – I had best go before Santa breaks in! Does Santa know whose birthday it is, I wonder!

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