Just Do It Newbie - It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect!

This is a post from the Warrior Forum that I came across and I believe that is fits perfect with the spirit of this blog. I named this blog, because so many failures out there have the same problems and inaction is one of those problems that leads to most newbie failures.

“What would you say is your unique secret to success Mario?

It’s by far, taking imperfect action!

A lot of people, some of them my friends now, started at the same time as I did and most of them either gave up or they still jump from method to method not being able to make a full time living with IM. Some still haven’t made a single dollar online.

The only main difference that there is between me and them, according to their feedback, is that I was and I’m willing to take imperfect action while they try to make everything perfect and they wait until they are ‘ready’.

If you look at my products or my marketing you’ll realize that basically non of my stuff is perfect, and I mean nothing. My website, fan page, download page, blog – they’re all not done and I still have them out there generating business and leads for me.

When I learned about local marketing I just went after it without a website in place going to networking events and telling everyone what I was doing while others where busy buying WSO’s about it and telling themselves that they are not ready – so within 3 month I got clients and money while they were still ‘planning’.

My first WSO was a disaster when it comes to product delivery and product creation but I still put it up and buyers where patient with me because I made clear that it’s my very first WSO. That WSO generated 3k in the first month while my buddies where still reading WSO’s about article marketing telling themselves they are not ready yet to launch something.

My first live event was a risk too, I never did one before and I still decided to do it. The marketing was horrible, I only had 1 month to promote it and didn’t know how to do it but I just stuck with it and got 60 people to show up at $500 per person.

It’s my willingness to take imperfect action – I think that is my secret to success and I encourage you to try the same. ‘Good’ is often good enough, so don’t try to make everything perfect, just go for it and get results!”

Are You A Worker or an Entrepreneur

Here is a great post from Josh Spaulding about what the difference is between a worker and an entrepreneur. You can see the original post by going to his blog here.

In November of 2004, while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany, I created my first website. It was a tourist info site on Germany. For the next three years I worked to get that site ranked in the SE’s and I also worked on many other sites and ventures with the ultimate goal of making a living online. That was a good thing, nothing wrong with that…I see it as working your way up… you just have to do it, but for all of those years it was a JOB. Although I knew there was huge potential online, I never thought of myself as a business person, so I kept my expectations low, to the level that as long as I can eventually pay my bills with it, it’s a success.

Fortunately after a few years working part time online while serving in the military I did finally get my IM income to the point to where I could pay my bills with it, barely. But as time went on I started to realize more and more than although I’ve never thought of myself as a Entrepreneur or business person, I was exactly that! That was my “tipping point.”

There should come a time in every IM’ers online ventures when they hit that same tipping point and start to see the bigger picture…the bigger opportunity that is the infant Internet… yes, it’s still very much an infant!

But the question for those who haven’t reached that point yet is, do you want to keep working a JOB or do you want to become an entrepreneur? If you just want to pay the bills, you might as well just get a job. At least then you have more stability… that’s how I see it anyway. But I don’t think that is what any IMer wants.

So how do you go from an Internet Marketing worker to an Internet Marketing Entrepreneur?

The first step is to learn the basics of the business… learn SEO, email marketing etc. You don’t have to be making loads of money in each, you just need to know the techniques and their markets… just learn the basics. That is the “work” we all have to endure before we get to our tipping point. The next thing is to decide whether you WANT that tipping point or not. I’m guessing you want it!

One thing I learned about life while in the Army is that almost everything that is challenging, whether mentally or physically, can be accomplished if you truly set your mind to it. So if you don’t believe you are an entrepreneur, or at least have the potential to become an entrepreneur, then you will never become an entrepreneur because you will not possess the mental confidence required to become one.

So what’s the difference anyway?

To me, the primary difference is in what you devote your time and resources to. If you’re constantly working to write and publish articles to get your site(s) ranked in google… creating sites to earn a little adsense income… etc. etc. then you probably have a worker mindset. If you’re constantly coming up with new ideas for software, applications etc. and you’re looking to outsource everything you possibly can… also thinking about automation (so one project doesn’t tie you down, but brings in residual income,) then you’re on the entrepreneurial track.

This all seems like fairly basic stuff, but I’m writing about this today because as I watch conversations and updates on facebook, twitter, blogs etc. I see 9 out of 10 Internet Marketers (if not more) who are completely focused on working for a living and very few who are focused on becoming true Entrepreneurial business people.

Of course it is nearly impossible to filter out all of those who are still in that required learning phase, but just by evaluating the overall mindset, I believe there are more IMers who are looking for a JOB than there are who are looking for a solid business opportunity.

Google Panda Update - Top 15 Most Important Things To Know

Here is a great article I found by Alex Wayo on the new Google Panda Update that just recently came out. It explains some good practices to follow in order to keep Google happy with your websites. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

21After Google released it's Panda update I saw a lot of horror stories of how people were losing all of their rankings and traffic. Spammy links do not work like they once did.

After Google released it's Panda update I saw a lot of horror stories of how people were losing all of their rankings and traffic. Spammy links do not work like they once did.

New filters are in place and certain SEO methods have become obsolete. Only marketers who can learn how to adapt and change will survive in this game. Posting articles on EzineArticles is not going to get your rankings like it used to.

The fact is you've got to "feed" the Google machine what it wants if you want to keep in the SEO rankings. Love 'em or hate 'em, right now, Google controls search – there is no denying that – and if you want to be in the game, you gotta play by their rules.

And in this issue I would like to share with you the most important issues to this particular algorithm change – the most relevant factors I've seen in the past couple months.

It just so happens, however, that the goal of this Panda update was to improve quality and so if you follow these suggestions the likely outcome is that you'll have a better site for your users in the process and that, after all, is what Google is really after anyway.

Of course, the list below is far from being complete but I just tried to emphasize some really important points that matter most.

1. Is Your Content Unique?

Have you been posting spun content on your site for filler? If so, please stop now. In fact, stop yesterday. If you only have a small amount of it you should schedule that content to be re-written.

Don't delete those pages, you want to maintain larger sites for more presence and authority. So if at all possible I recommend rewriting the content and keeping the page rather than deleting it.

However, if you have a lot of content here, you may want to consider another tactic and that is making sure all of the duplicate stuff is in a separate silo. By that I mean that it is all grouped together on a sub-domain or specific category or directory structure. Ideally, however, you want to rid your site of duplicate content.

2. Size Matters… How big is your... CONTENT?

Keep in mind that content is the bamboo the Google Panda just loves to eat. You want to give it what it wants.

Do you have large 1000+ word rich content posts? If not, you should. We routinely make 2000+ and even 3000+ word posts and we find them to be very effective landing pages.

Large posts that have various sub-sections (keyword themed sub-sections with H2 and H3 tags) and loads of content are simply great for your site. It doesn't mean that you have to make all of your content that way – in fact you shouldn't because you want a natural mix.

But having large posts is one of the secrets of an authority site. Before you go and respond with dozens of authority site examples that don't have large content posts, yes, I know there are hundreds of them. But the goal here is to get authority as quickly as possible and large blocks of rich, quality unique and well written content can really help you along in that quest.

Then, of course, there are the other big advantages of large articles – they tend to get more natural links and they certainly get more long tail organic keyword traffic. The fact is that size matters and the more content you have on that page the more keywords Google can find you for and the more relevant your page appears to be to the topic.

3. Does Your Content All Look The Same?

In other words, if your site is a blog and you purchase blog posts, for example, to maintain the site they are probably all written at 250 or 300 words or something like that. It is not natural to have all of your content fit into one nice size like that and creates a footprint that is easily detected. So, make sure that you mix it up.

As mentioned above, throw in some big posts but you can also throw in some quick and short announcements or news posts as well.

The real key here is natural and varied.

4. What is the Content Footprint of Your Site?

This is another way of asking how many pages you have in the Google Index – this is often a strong indicator of authority and you want to evaluate your site in that regard. Remember that when you evaluate your site, do so relative to (a) your niche and (b) your competition.

So, for example, let's say you start with your sitemap.xml file and determine that you have 73 pages. Then you check to see how many of them are indexed and you come up with 59.

FYI, yes, you can do this via a simple site:domain.com in Google as well, but I don't really like that number because it tends to be skewed (high) since it takes into account things like Tags and such.

Now, how does that compare to the top 10 sites in your niche for the keyword that you are targeting? Do they have 113 pages, or do they have 10,000? This is just one factor of competitive analysis so I'm not suggesting it is in any way conclusive, but it is something you should consider in your niche and keyword select (along with a dozen or more factors).

5. How Much and How Frequently Are You Posting Content?

As you should know by now, the Panda wants to feed, so keep that bamboo coming! Google loves content – fresh content and quality content. So when you assess your site and its content footprint, earnestly spend some time considering what type of content needs you have and map out a game plan for addressing them.

If you need to get a 100 posts added to your site to increase your footprint, then transform that into a budget and a timeline. Can you do it in 1 month? In three months? What is realistic – pick that and map out a plan, set your publication frequency and get rolling.

6. What Does the "above the fold" View of Your Site Look Like?

This is something that has picked up significance in Google in past months and this recent Panda update. This item kind of goes hand in hand with the next one about how much advertising you have on the site, but it really is all about the user experience.

Now, just in case you're not familiar with the phrase "above the fold", let me take a minute to explain. It dates back to newspapers. An article that was above the fold was an article that was above the middle of the page fold mark where a person would see it as soon as they looked at the front page (or, more precisely, the top half of the front page).

In online terms, above the fold is a bit different because the page height is not fixed like a newspaper, so it does not mean the top half of the page, but rather it means the portion of the page that is visible when the browser is maximized to full screen resolution. So, it's a bit of a mess because what is above the fold for you on a 15” screen running in 1024 x 768 mode is not the same is what is above the fold on a 24” screen running in 1920 x 1080 mode. But you get the idea.

Now what Google wants to see is that your site has a lot of textual and relevant content to the topic searched on above the fold. Let me show you an example to clarify. Based on how bad this is you would think I spent 20 minutes looking for it, but in reality it was the first search I did and the third result on the page. It's a perfect example of terrible design and one that Google Panda is likely all over.

The only content that is above the fold at all is four small lines of text on the left in the Table of Contents for the post. Now, here is the second page down:

Honestly, it's not a lot better, but at least it has some content. So, in this example the site design has absolutely no content above the fold and even on the second page it's buried on the bottom half of the page.

What I recommend is checking your site in 1024 x 768 resolution and seeing what is showing up above the fold. Here are a few items you might want to consider changing:

• Shorten up the vertical height of your site header. Many times it is excessively thick and is pushing the content too far down the page unnecessarily. Often times just some minor site redesigns can tweak this pretty easily.
• Re-Evaluate ad placement. This can be more complex, but still, if you haven't got real content on 50% or more of your above the fold real estate then you need to make some changes.
• Look at the vertical spacing. Sometimes just due to CSS and such, there is too much white space above the Title, for example. Or too much blank space below the menu.
• Can you move anything out of your header? Perhaps you have all of those social media buttons up there, or a search box, or a banner ad – whatever it is, look to simplify.
• Look for any other thing that is pushing your content down on the page and consider revising it.

While you're hoping to find easy stuff, sometimes a more major site redesign is in order. You need to have your primary content on at least 50% of the above the fold real estate. If you think about it, it really makes sense from a user experience standpoint and you can probably understand Google's perspective on this one. You will likely have a better overall user experience by going through this experience.

7. Ratio of Information to Advertising on the Page

This is very similar to the above item, only this relates not to the content on your page but rather the advertising. It's not uncommon to have a banner image and big blocks of Adsense on your site, but you've got to be careful about their placement and just how much vital real estate that they are using.

Let's pull up this screenshot from above again only this time let's focus on the ads above the fold.

8. Hide Your Affiliate Links

Google doesn't like to see a site full of affiliate links as it makes them suspicious of whether or not you're a spammer. So you need to cloak your affiliate links so that they don't appear so much like affiliate links. This also can help your affiliate sales conversions as well as customers generally don't like to see them either.

So a link that might look like this:

http://merchant.com/cell-phone/?affid=1234

Ends up looking like this instead:

http://www.mydomain.com/cell-phone

Now, both of those links will take you to the same location, but the former is ugly and just screams "affiliate marketer" while the second doesn't.

9. Make Sure to "NoFollow" Outbound Paid Links

This is something that Google has always been on the lookout for and something that you should have heard of or seen by now, but you should still double check it.

The theory behind this is pretty simple. They don't want you selling Page Rank and a DoFollow link passes Page Rank. I'm not so sure how much of that is really even important nowadays with PageRank Sculpting getting much less attention than it used to, but still it's a Google requirement that shouldn't be ignored and can have big, negative impacts on your site.

10. Don't "NoFollow" All Outbound Links

This is important as well. You don't want to just try to save time and effort by simply converting all of your site links to 'NoFollow'. That makes you look like you're trying to manipulate PageRank and hoard it – Google doesn't like that.

This is a holdover from the earlier days when PageRank had more of an impact on the SERPS than it does today. PageRank sculping is still practiced today, but much less so. And you have to make sure you're following the rules and not setting off any red flags.

11. Make Sure To Have Outbound Links to Authority Sites

Google wants to see that you are a part of the community – the larger community that forms the Internet. That means, do you participate in it or do you try to hoard traffic for yourself? It also touches on the issue of giving credit where credit is due.

So if you're using another reference as the source article for your blog post, it doesn't hurt to drop credit to them and make a link for reference. In fact, it helps. This shows Google that you are trying to give your customer the best possible answer even if that means that further research may be acquired elsewhere – and that's normal. No one has all of the information or is the expert in everything.

The Internet is made up of sharing and links are just that – a form of sharing. Google wants to basically see that your site plays well with others.

The other aspect of this that helps with your authority is that by citing credible sources it makes you credible as well. A spammer is not going to tell you who they swiped their illegitimate content from, but a quality journalist always cites their sources.

Do you have to do this in every post? Is there some fixed rule of how many links you should create? No. There are no hard and fast rules like that. You just need to assess your site and ask yourself some of those Google checklist questions (the ones directly quoted from Google) and see what makes sense from your standpoint. And, observe your niche and competitors. What are they doing?

12. Make Sure You've Got the Relevant Disclosures

You need to check out your site and make sure you have all of the relevant disclosure pages, such as your Privacy Policy, DMCA Policy, Anti-Spam Policy, Terms of Use, Earnings Disclosure, Affiliate Agreement and others such as your About Us and Contact Us pages.

13. Are You Acting Like a Spammer?

Sorry, not trying to insult you here, but sometimes you may be doing things you don't even realize that are sending off the wrong signals and that is something you've got to be cognizant of. Most of these tactics are old and have long since been abandoned, but I still come across them on many sites almost daily.

• Don't Use Hidden Text – What is hidden text you ask? This is an old tactic where spammers would create a long list of relevant keywords for a site and then make the text white in color and super small so that it wasn't even noticed and shove it way down on the site below the footer or something.
  The point is that the text isn't visible and not providing any value to the user, it was simply a strategy for trying to manipulate the search engines.Don't do this. It is super easy from their crawler to spot and you can get penalized for this type of behavior.
• Don't Use Images When You Should Use Text – This is the spam tactic of taking duplicate text, for example, that you don't want Google to see and putting it into an image instead. We still see a lot of this today. With CSS you can easily overlay text right over the top of fancy graphical backgrounds and such, so there really is not much need for this.
  One of the places we see this tactic used a lot in the Internet Marketing space is with Testimonials. Many sites use images for their testimonials instead of text because you can be sure that marketer is likely using that exact same testimonial in several places, endorsing several products and he or she doesn't want you or Google to know that.
• Don't Put Text or Images Off the Page – With <div> tags and page definition we have seen various sites that want to hide their links by putting them into the page source so that the crawlers see them but in a location that they physically do not show up on the page. So below the boundary of the page, or so far to the right of the page they'll never be displayed, etc…

As you begin to reverse engineer your competition you'll start seeing this behavior. You'll see that site A is getting a link from Site B, but when you go to site A to find that link you can't. So then you do a 'view source' to view the raw HTML behind the page and you uncover these hidden links.

Google has been very clear about this stuff – do it and you'll pay the price. It's frustrating when you find this on sites ranking above you – trust me, I've seen lots of competitors doing less than ethical stuff and seemingly getting away with it. All I can tell you is that karma will eventually get them.

14. The Formula is Becoming More Balanced

The fact is that Google's algorithm is becoming more and more sophisticated and less easy to "game" than ever. Will there always be away? Of course there will.

There will always be a place for SEO and Linkbuilding, but you do have to step up your game. And that is precisely what Google wants.

Here are just some of the recent shifts that show you that you need to up your game.

• Age is not as important. I didn't say it's not important, I'm saying that it is not as important as it once was. We saw many sites that were holding page one rankings for years just because of their age in the niche that suddenly dropped off to page #2 or page # after Panda. Why? Because although they had solid age, they had let time pass them by and were no longer in touch with their competition in terms of site design, content, links and other aspects of site authority. Bottom line is that the age of the site a ranking factor has definitely been depreciated – not eliminated, but certainly de-valued.
• EDU and GOV links have been downgraded. This is something that hasn't gotten a lot of buzz, but it is true. The Government and Educational sites lobbied pretty aggressively with Google to devalue the edge that their links had been given in the past. Why? The reason is that they were just sick and tired of being bombarded with all of the spam comments and knew that if their links were devalued there wouldn't be the same incentive for spammers to keep pummeling them.
• Link relevance is becoming more important. While "relevance" is still largely irrelevant, there has been a small step toward that direction of getting more relevant links within your niche.

15. Google is Forging Ahead with Social Marketing

Google has been slow to use social marketing because they haven't had a good solution. Maybe Google +1 will succeed where Google Buzz floundered, who knows. But what we do know is that Google is clearing laser targeted on Social Media and this is not something new. This actually began with the Caffeine update many months ago, but all signs are indicating that this trend is only growing.

With the Panda update, Google admitted that they compared the ban lists that people can create in Google Chrome (their browser) to the results of the algorithm change. That statement was a very curious one because it really revealed a lot. They are basically saying that they're using their Chrome browser for market research and that it is very likely that they may use that feedback directly within the search algorithm at some time in the future.

That's it for now! I hope that you have found this article to be informative and useful. Remember that SEO is a fluid not a solid – it is constantly moving and changing. Our goal is not only to learn how to do backward analysis, but also identify forward moving trends so that we can be well prepared for tomorrows rounds of algorithm changes.

And as always, work smarter not harder!

-- Alex

Just Do It - You Have Value To Offer

Here is a post that was made by Josh Spaulding. He is one of the internet marketers that I follow and highly respect. He is down to earth and just makes sense. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

You Do Have Value To Offer

Just a short one today on two things that held me back for a while when I first got started online… things that I believe hold many others back… the fear that your product, website or whatever it is you’re working on, won’t meet the expectations of your target audience and the belief that you don’t have much value to offer.

If it’s an ebook it may not be long enough and people may complain about it. If it’s a website it might not look professional enough. If it’s a service you might not present it in a professional way. These are just a few of the worries people have when getting started.
If you’re teaching people how to make money and you’ve only made $100 then you shouldn’t be teaching people how to make online, right? WRONG! There are millions of people out there who would LOVE to learn as many ways as they possibly can to make $100!

If you are one of those people, stop, right now! As the Nike slogan goes “Just do it!” Just do your best and concentrate on providing value!

If there was a line of 100 people in front of you and you sat down with each and every one of them I guarantee there is AT LEAST one thing you could teach them that they didn’t already know. That one thing may be small, but I bet you have many of those small things and I bet there are thousands, maybe millions of other people out there that are looking for that little piece of info as we speak.
Understand that you DO have value to offer! It may not be valuable to one person, but it IS to someone and most likely thousands or even millions of people. Once you understand and truly believe that take action and don’t worry about getting it perfect. As long as you’re providing value things will eventually work out! Once you have started providing that value, in whatever way you choose, THEN you can start learning how to improve on how you do it.

That’s it. Just a short one.. This post is a perfect example. Some people will read this and think “Duh, come on Josh.” And others will think “hmm, he has a point.” =)

A Post From Andrew Hanson On Narrowing Your Focus

Andrew Hanson is someone the I have been following for a while. He always has great content that is actually helpful to people. He is one of those down to earth online marketers that believes providing value to his subscribers.

In his article he focuses on keeping your focus narrowed down to one or two things in order to get better results. It reminds me of the saying "Jack of all trades but master of none". What this means is if you focus on a bunch of different things you will know a little bit about all of those things but you won't be truly successful at any one thing.

Anyway, enjoy the article:

Through our different products & memberships, through events & through meetings in person, I get a chance every year to interact with a lot of people who want to start, or want to rapidly grow their online businesses.

These are people with dreams, people who envision something better for their life, even if only in small ways, and they want a business online to be a vehicle for that.
The sad part is that most of these people don’t make it. Those dreams never become a reality. Some do, but most don’t.

It seems almost a cliche to write an article on the most common reasons for people not reaching their goals in online business. But at the same time, it’s endlessly relevant and important. If you’re reading this post I’m guessing it’s because you want to make more money online this year. And if that’s you, I know there are things you’re doing that are hindering your progress toward that goal. There are also things you aren’t doing but could be, that might accelerate your progress.

These are some of those things that if you change them in 2011, you just might look back on it as being YOUR year:

1. Narrow Your Focus

I started out in business so young that I didn’t have enough experience to demonstrate to me the power of consistent concentrated effort. I kind of thought – personal development background and all – that if I just took BIG ENOUGH action, it’d work. Now that I’m so old and experienced (note sarcasm) I’ve come to really appreciate that most things get achieved with consistent, small amounts of progress that come about through CONSISTENT, FOCUSED action.

Widely spread focus means slow results. Tightly focused action means faster results.

Practically this means that if in 2010 you worked on 5 projects or 5 websites… in 2011 you’ll cut it down to 2. If you follow 5 different gurus, unsubscribe from all but 2. If you monitor a handful of forums, cut it back to 1. If you have 5 social media accounts, cut it back to 1. If you’re focusing on 5 different online business models, cut it back to 1.

Keep your best 1 or 2 of everything and commit all your energy to them, at least until you can afford to outsource on a bigger scale. You’ll think you’re losing out on “opportunities” but you’re not. You’re gaining ground on the opportunities that currently aren’t getting enough attention.

I guarantee with an intense feeling of conviction that if you do this in 2011, you will make more money than you ever have before.

2. Believe In Yourself (Eww…)

That sounds tacky, I know. What I mean is this:
Instead of asking “Is this right? Should I do this? What about this?”…
Just do it. Do it and learn for yourself. Try. See if it works and if it doesn’t, move on and try something else. So many people who are trying to start or grow their online business have so much hesitation, so much concern that they might get something wrong. Newsflash: You’re going to get things wrong. Forever. Your mistakes will never end no matter how successful you become. In fact the more successful you become, the more mistakes you’ll make. Get used to them. Let them be a part of your life. Love your mistakes. Trust yourself and be persistent and mistakes will become irrelevant.

3. Take A BIG Step

I don’t know what your goal is, but if you’re trying to get to a point where your online business sustains your life, keeps you and your family safe and secure and fulfilled for the rest of your life, it’s not going to happen with only baby steps. A baby is a good analogy actually. When you start to crawl, you can get around fine. You could, theoretically have the benefit of movement if all you ever did was crawl. But at some point, you have to take a BIG leap forward in your progression. You have to stand up. It’s unknown, it’s scary, you’ll fall down at first if you do, but if you don’t, you’ll only be crawling in your life, and in your business until. You’ll keep crawling forever.

There’s often one action that represents this big leap. For some people it’s quitting their day job to pursue online biz full time. For some people it’s making one big uncomfortable investment in their business that they want to pay off after time. Maybe it’s finally hiring a second person for your business to scale things up. For some it’s just stopping learning and pulling the trigger to start that first website.

Whatever it is, there’s a big, bold piece of action that you could take this year that would make it a turning point in your business. Think about what that is and make this the year to freakin DO IT.

4. Remember What Worked

Alot of us working online have had at least one success. You made a sale with something. You got some adsense clicks with something. You got some opt ins with SOMETHING.

Often – particularly in online marketing where we are distracted so easily – we forget about the things that we’ve done that have created success. Maybe it wasn’t a success as big as we envisioned, so we cast it aside. I am a perfect example of this.

At the start of my business I did a lot of things wrong, yeah… but I also did a couple of things right. They worked and it was great, but for a number of reasons, other things took my attention, some things seemed to make me more money in the short term, so I forgot about what I’d done initially that created success. Recently I remembered how cool those old things were, started doing them again, and had a huge boost in our revenue.

In 2011, stop to have a look back at the things you did in the past that worked. And when I say worked, I don’t mean, made you a million dollars. I mean every time you generated a single website visitor, ask “how did I do that? Could I do that again but better with the extra information I know now? Could I do that in a different market that might be more profitable?
Could I do that but monetize it in a better way?”

You know what I mean? We all have SOME success that we can point to, analyze, and try to replicate and improve. I believe most of us know more than we think. More than we give ourselves credit for.

5. Feel Your Goal Feelings Now

There’s one thing I know for sure. If you can’t feel happy, grateful, fulfilled, excited, secure, proud or whatever it is you think having a successful online business will make you feel NOW… then you won’t feel it when you have your “big success” either.

If you’re reading this post, you have things you can feel happy about now; things you could feel grateful for now; things you could be proud of now. And if you can’t acknowledge that fact, more money in the bank isn’t going to make a difference. Incidentally, neither is more free time.
Happiness breeds happiness.

Enjoy your journey. Get excited about it. It might be frustrating at times but it’s going to be the story you tell when you make it big! I remember many years ago, driving home from a stupid “all nighter” work session at about 6am, just totally wrecked, but thinking “When I’m a success, I’ll tell people about this”. And I do.

That’s all my friends.

2011 is going to be a big year for me and I hope for you too. I can’t wait to see your progress, and I can’t wait to share with you mine.
To your success!

What Is Stopping You From Being Successful

What is stopping you from being successful? You might be surprised to find out the true answer.

Here is an email that I received from a Chris Rempel. He is a down to earth online marketer that has some real world advice that has helped me out in the past. I always take a look at his emails because there is usually some good content there. This email is no exception. It deals with the struggle that most people have online and definitely is the issue that I have and have known about for some time. Just because you know what the problem is doesn't mean you know exactly how to solve it. But this speaks to me in volumes so I am putting it on the blog.

This is a long email.

And for anyone who struggles with the simple act of actually
"getting stuff done" (like I do) - this is well, well worth
the read.

Stay with me - and prepare for a shock to the system...


How to Actually Get Out of a Rut and See Results:
-------------------------------------------------

I think it's safe to say that feeling "stuck" is a common symptom
when you're trying to get things going online.

And I'd also bet that - 9 times out of 10 - the challenge really
isn't about "the task".

Sure, lots of people struggle with things like getting traffic,
etc. But that's really more of a side-effect than the actual root
cause of WHY we get "stuck".

Unfortunately... it's a bit more complex.

I've received literally hundreds of emails from people over the
years expressing that "if they could only get more traffic", or "if
they could only find the right market" - or whatever - then
everything would work out. The dream would become reality. If only.

"IF..."

That's one dangerous little word.

You see - and I'm saying this as somebody who still struggles DAILY
to get stuff done, make progress, etc. - the REAL problem when
we're "stuck" is NOT that we don't know what to do. Hell - most of
the roughly 30,000 people reading this right now probably know
enough to teach a college course on Internet Marketing.

(Not kidding - that's the truth).

Instead - and pay very close attention here - the REAL Problem is
this:


***********************************

We Don't Believe In Ourselves...

So We Mask That Weakness With a Scapegoat ("IF Only _____")...

...Because Dreaming is SAFER than Trying

***********************************


I think that will resonate with a lot of people reading this.

Well, maybe I'm wrong - but I know it sure resonates with ME. Over
the years, I've come to see that "inner struggle" as my TRUE
challenge.

When a project goes stale, or runs out of steam... it's not because
I "couldn't find the right keywords". Or "get enough traffic".

Those are things that are easily quantifiable (and in many cases
"copy-able"), and it's just a matter of doing.

Instead - when something flops, stalls or gets "STUCK"... it's
because I've internally CHOSEN things like escapism, distraction
and "reactive action" (ie. checking emails all day, checking stats,
etc.)...

...as opposed to actually doing very simple, fundamental things
that drive results.

(And that's another "nugget" takeaway from this - the big results
are from "boring" fundamentals. Content, links & list-building. Not
"tricks", "hacks", "secrets", etc. That's basically just ebook
fodder in this market.)

Okay, so...


***********************************

How Does Somebody Overcome the "Inner Roadblocks"

And Embrace REAL RESULTS Instead of SAFE DREAMS?

***********************************


That is - quite literally - the million dollar question.

It's very similar to dieting/exercise. It ain't no secret, folks.
Eat less + exercise more = Guaranteed Results.

(And it's not really even that hard to do.) The tough part is
summoning the inner resolve - the WILL - to act.

But why is the WILL TO ACT so freakin' hard!!??

I honestly don't know.

Maybe it's just one of those human-condition things.

But I DO know that over the years, I've only found ONE strategy
that always seems to work when I encounter this sort of "mental
rut"...

...and it's very, very simple.

Now, because of that, be careful not to underestimate the power of
what I'm about to share. Actually TRY doing this, and you'll be
amazed at the mental clarity it produces...


Going Nowhere? Get Yourself a Hammer & Nails...
-----------------------------------------------

If you know my "success story", you know that it was actually
(initially) an accidental wave of results, which then basically
ignited an intense wave of motivation and drive within myself to
essentially repeat the same, mundane, "boring" process over and
over again.

With the result being that I generated 6 figures in about 6 months
time, and by the end of that year I was routinely seeing $1K/day in
net affiliate commissions.

And what always went through my mind as I was eagerly pushing out
sites, doing basic link-building, basic content creation, etc. was
- really - just how straightforward it all is.

"IT'S JUST LIKE BUILDING A DECK"...

You get your supplies, your hammer, and some nails, and then you
just nail it together piece by piece.

Until it's done.

And that's all there is to it.

Pure simplicity in action. There's no "secret searching". No
"discovering the way".

Just build a damn deck, and when you run into obstacles, Google
your way around them. Not hard.

WHAT'S HARD IS BRINGING YOURSELF TO DO IT.

And the only thing that has worked for me, over the years, to stay
on task and maintain progress is to revert my thinking back to
"Building a Deck". Forget about the inner doubts. The "fear" of too
many options. The subtle negativity that says "don't try too hard
in case it flops".

Forget "magic formulas". Forget "wishing really hard to be
successful so that the universe will unlock the magical success
vibrations in your direction", etc.

JUST BUILD A DAMN DECK.


-------------------------


Building "Decks" has opened a lot of doors for me.

It's actually pretty mind-blowing.

But everything I've done that has produced real results - and I
mean EVERYTHING - has been the result of what was initially just a
few days of "production mode". Making a plan based on simple,
common-sense observations. Getting domains, getting content,
getting links, etc.

Building my proverbial decks.

Scouring forums hasn't made me a single dime. Neither has
daydreaming. Nor has complaining, wishing, whining, etc.

But my little "decks" always work.

That's what works for me, anyway.

And this simple, single "adjustment" in mindset every time I get
myself stuck has worked wonders.


-------------------------


Now - here's a question...

"Do you think this area of REAL challenges is covered enough for
internet marketers?"

(My guess is you said "no").

If that's the case - be sure to check this out:


>> http://www.thelazymarketer.com/unstoppable/


This is sort of like the "Bible" of "Build a Deck" thinking. And
it's produced by a marketer who I can truly call a good friend (we
normally spend hours each month on the phone talking shop), and I'm
continually inspired by him.

He's the online millionaire who is BLIND FROM BIRTH.

His name is Matt Wadsworth, and he is the definition of Unstoppable.

For those who would appreciate this kind of "real life" training
from a REAL marketer (ie. doesn't make their living as a "Guru"),
then this has my highest recommendation.

Matt is the real deal, folks.

And what he's developed here makes my "Build a Deck" principle look
like a footnote.

Well worth your time to check out:


>> http://www.thelazymarketer.com/unstoppable/


-------------------------


Okay... long email.

Wheww!

Well - hopefully that struck a chord with some folks.

And more importantly - maybe it will inspire even just one person to
dump the "noise" and embrace the raw simplicity of doing things
that get results.

Just like building a deck.

Plain, simple - and life changing.


All the best, Anthony


Cheers


Chris Rempel
TheLazyMarketer.com
AffGenie.com
MAKODominator.com

Internet Marketing From An Affiliate Marketer's Perspective

Here is a post that I liked from an affiliate marketer that is fairly new and successful to the Internet Marketing arena. The post is very good and I highly recommend checking it out. You can find the original post at:

Everything I’ve Learned About Internet Marketing So Far…

Hello Hello! It’s Dan, the Deadbeat Super Affiliate.

I’m on a blogging kick this week, so here we are again…and thanks for coming back :)

OK…to the point. It’s been about a year and a half since I got started in this internet marketing game, and since then I’ve had multiple 5 figure months (profit) – but to be honest with you, it’s been one hell of a roller coaster. I’ve also learned a lot along the way, and that’s what I want to share with you.

First I want to address the mental and emotional aspect of making money online because it’s very important.

I don’t want to sound like a self-improvement “guru”, but if you don’t have the right mental and emotional fortitude, you will fail online. I can tell you this with 100% certainty. Here is what you should know:

* Making money online is an emotional roller freakin’ coaster – there are going to be times when you feel defeated, when you feel like you want to give up, and when you feel like everything you have built has been a complete waste of time. There are also going to be times when you feel like you are top of the world when you make those big sales days. While yes, I no longer struggle as much with this feeling, it’s still there, just a lot more feint…and I truly believe this feeling will never go away until I have at least a couple million dollars stashed away in the bank.

In fact, just the other day I contemplated for a minute or two that it would be so much easier to just give up and go back to college and finish my degree…because let’s face it…it is so much less stressful knowing that all you have to do is go to your job every day and you will be OK. But that’s not who I am…

And when it comes down to it, once you get locked into that corporate mindset, your dreams slowly get sucked away from you. Sure, you can make a good living as an employee. My father for example, makes REALLY good money as a senior electrical engineer for GE. To the tune of around $140k/year. That’s more money than I make right now, but my income level is not set. With my business, I have the potential to make whatever I want. Sure, it takes time…and hell, I may even screw up a time or two and lose some money, but there is no limit to what I can achieve income wise. I also know that if I continue to work and push my business, even if I fail miserably 10, 20, or even 30 times, EVENTUALLY I will hit a winner and be set for life.

* Your success lies in you, not the product you buy or the guru you follow – I know this sounds cheesy, but YOU determine whether or not you will be successful. I have heard a TON of excuses from people why they don’t make money online: “I’m waiting for guru x to launch his new product then I’ll finally start making money online”. Epic fail. The only reason you aren’t making money online is because YOU are too lazy. YOU are looking for a magic bullet. YOU are relying on someone else to make you successful. The only way you become successful with this whole make money online game is if YOU put in the work and take responsibility for your actions.

I don’t mean to sound condescending in any way here, but I am tired of hearing excuses. I don’t care about your sob story about why you can’t make this work because there are no excuses. One of my online friends is a single mom of 5 and she is KILLING it right now online. She just pulled off a 6 figure launch last month and I don’t doubt for a minute that she will have a 7 figure business in no time. If she can do it, YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE.

* Also, learn to identify the “too good to be true” feeling – I remember vividly when I created my first product about starting your own web hosting business. While I was creating it, in my head I had this delusion that I would have a $10,000/m business from this product. WRONG. In total, I think that product sold maybe $5,000 worth of copies before I realized it was a dud. The fact is, in this day and age, you won’t become rich after you ‘launch’ your first product. Realistically, we’re talking 6, 7, 8, or even 10 products before you finally get to where you want to be. Sorry if I am stomping on your dreams here, but you need to know what to expect. I wish I could explain this feeling better – it’s almost like this: In your head you have two voices. Once voice is the strongest and overrides the other. The strongest is the voice that says “You’re going to be rich!!! it’s right around the corner! Just launch this product and you are going to be set!!!”. This voice is so strong, that it overrides your weaker, more realistic voice which tells you what is most likely going to happen (not becoming instantly rich, but making some money to make the project worthwhile). I think a better example of this is during a situation where you feel like you are about to get mugged. Before the situation, your subconscious is setting off warning bells: “hmmm…those three guys up there look like they are up to no good you shouldn’t proceed”. But then you have your main voice which is overriding your subconscious because it doesn’t want to come to grips with what is really going on. It makes you blind: “No, it’s OK. They are just standing there hanging out. You are making too much out of this…keep walking you idiot! They won’t mess with you”. You continue to walk, and end up getting mugged. You look back at your thoughts, and kick yourself for not listening to your voice. In the martial arts, we training to identify and trust our subconscious voice…you should learn to do the same with your online ventures.

Alright, enough of the mental crap, let’s talk about tactics – ways to make money online.

* When getting started with MMO, just do something – If you aren’t making money online yet, just pick a method and stick with it until you are making some sort of income. I hear a lot of people talking about how they are afraid of doing the wrong thing and because of that end up doing nothing. Forget about doing the right thing…just make some freaking money first. You will naturally figure out the right course of action as time goes on.I recommend you start out as an affiliate for physical products until you get some good cash flow and experience under your belt.

* Do not go after the big idea – Above I said it’s important to just do something when getting started. However, I don’t mean go after big dream ideas. For example, say you have the idea for ‘the next Facebook’, yet you’ve never made a real business online before. This is chasing a dream. You need to realize something…sites like Facebook and Twitter are rare – so rare that I can literally only think of about 20 sites or so like that. Your chances of making a site like this successfully are worse than winning the lottery. Heck, I will even say it’s impossible unless you have years of experience and a team of people backing you

* After you figure some stuff out, I suggest you focus on making your own products and services – If you want any real longevity in the MMO world, you need to have your own products and services – no exceptions. Here’s why. When you create a product, you build a business. When your product is good, people start talking about it. When that happens, your business and brand starts to build. Imagine a snowball rolling down a hill. It starts small, but gets bigger and bigger as it rolls down the hill. As an affiliate, it’s VERY hard or nearly impossible to replicate this effect. Maybe in the Internet Marketing niche space, but no where else can you do that.

* Make a monthly continuity program - I’m not saying you do this right away. Wait until you understand how things works. Then focus on building up monthly continuity. After my upcoming launch, my focus is going to be on building up my monthly recurring and also creating niche businesses that I can sell small $5-$10/m memberships in. Here’s why memberships are important. With every new customer, your income levels build on top of each other. People also forget about monthly memberships. I signed up for this local gym – it was like $20/m. I went THREE times. I ended up paying for that damn thing for like 2 or 3 years…costing me somewhere around $500 before I finally went and cancelled the membership. My own fault, their gain.

* It’s better to focus on ONE niche at a time (once you find one that works) – I highly recommend instead of going broad and work in dozens of niches, you build up one niche business at a time. You can start this right away as an affiliate. For example, build a network of golf review blogs, opt-in pages, products, etc. Then once your business is mapped out, move onto another niche.

* Pick a niche you actually like and know something about – I’m starting to see now that in the long run you are WAY better off working in niches that you are passionate about. Here’s why. When you have a high level of knowledge in a niche, it creates a barrier of entry. It also helps you build a brand for yourself because you create quality stuff. Another goal for after my upcoming launch is to completely develop my new martial arts business. I just exposed my niche to you…but it doesn’t matter. Know why? Because I am a martial arts fiend. I have spent the last 6 years training my ass off, and through that training I have A LOT of valuable knowledge that I can share. Knowledge that no internet marketer out there can compete with (Ok…there may be a couple out there, but very very limited).

Now look…there’s an exception. You may be passionate about a niche that no one likes to spend money online…or you may be passionate about something that doesn’t have a lot of interest. I will use my father’s passion as an example. If you remember, I told you that he is an electrical engineer. Well, online there isn’t much of an interest in a topic like this because it is so specialized. So if you were trying to sell a product or make a business around training other electrical engineers, chances are your audience would be so small that it wouldn’t be profitable. However, if my father were to make a consulting service where he consults with contracters, it could work if he were to charge $2,000, $5,000, or $10,000 for his service (when low volume, make up for by price point). This is something you need to figure out for yourself by doing extensive niche research.

* The fastest way to make A LOT of money is to build relationships – Looking back at all the money I’ve made online, the majority has come from building relationships. With all the time that I’ve spent slugging it out on forums, blogs, and search engines, I’ve made the most with simple relationship building. It’s very easy and almost happens naturally as your business progresses – but you do need to work at it. Just recently I have been mingling with all the top Internet marketers out there – and it’s actually been a lot of fun and much easier than I thought. But you need to realize something. You can’t just one day get up and do this stuff. You need to have assets, and you need to have something of value you can provide.

* Provide value, and the money will follow – I know this has been said 1 million times already, but it’s true. I have tried both routes. Sure, you can create crap content (IE: You are lazy) and you will make some money in the short run. No doubt about that. However, you will find that if you create shitty content, you are always fighting upstream. You have to force this crap down peoples throats on a constant basis or else it will fall out of the spot light. However, if you create great content, it’s like moving down stream. When your content is good (and by the way, that means anything: video, articles, blog posts, products, services, etc.), people are more inclined to take notice of you, to pass the content to their friends, to spread the word on social networks, etc. When this happens, your search engine optimization work also becomes significantly easier because you don’t have build 10 million backlinks in order to trick Google into thinking it is good stuff. All that will happen over time as people read your stuff.

Here’s what I’ve learned about the Internet Marketing niche in particular

As you have noticed, one of my passionate niches is Internet Marketing. I’ve learned a lot over the passed 4 months or so about this niche. Here is what I’ve learned:

* Do not trust anyone – A lot of the bigger affiliates will lead you on – “Yeah, if you promote for me I will hit your launch hard!”. You run the promotions for them, and when it comes time for them to reciprocate, they disappear and ignore your emails. I’m not saying they are evil people – in fact I understand fully what is going on. I know it’s impossible to mail for everyone, and even if they planned to mail for them with full intent, something comes up: one of their top partners decides to do a launch during your launch week so they are obligated to help them instead of you. Maybe they decide to launch a product to their list during that date instead. Things come up. Anything can happen. There’s really not much you can do about it either – it can happen with smaller affiliates also. It’s very common thing to happen in this business.

* Some top dogs are scammers – I am not pointing fingers here, but I’ve found that some of the industry leaders in this business are borderline scammers and have no regard for their customers. I’m sure at one point they had good intentions, but once you reach that level it’s like “ah f*ck it! I have a ton of people who owe me favors so why don’t I just throw together some shit and make them promote that to their lists. I can easily make a couple million with this.”

* A lot of the leaders don’t have business sense - A lot of the gurus come from non-business backgrounds: former office workers, garbage men, janitors, etc. Because of that, they don’t understand customer service, business ethics, providing quality, etc. It’s all about making a lot of money now, and not worrying about building a long term business. IE: Screw the customer out of their money and do it as many times possible until they catch on. I’m not saying everyone is like this – but expect no courtesy in this business.

* Look out for people who use pen names – More often than not they are using a pen name because they know the product is shit and that it will hurt their real brand if they launch it under their real name. Not always, but most of the time.

* Respectable marketers are in the few

* Don’t take product claims literally - this is a huge mistake. People buy products because they think “this guy is making $10,000/m with this method, so by buying this method and working it, I will make $10,000/m in no time”. Here’s the deal. Don’t buy a product if the income claims are the reason why you are purchasing it. Purchase it with the mindset of not really making the money they claim they are making, but more so how the techniques in the product can help push your business further. Think of it as education, not something that is magically going to make you rich.

Phew! Done. That’s it! I recommend you read and re-read everything I have wrote above. I am giving you the truth about this whole make money online thing. No sugar coating, no hype, nothing. Just realistic expectations. If you don’t believe in what I am telling you right now, you are in denial. The quicker you realize that and come to grips with the real reality of making money online, the quicker you will finally start to make something out of all the time you’ve spent on the journey so far.

If you liked this post, please share it with whoever you want! Link your blog to it, post a link to it in forums, add it to your twitter and facebook status! Anything you can do to help is much appreciated!

Talk soon,

Dan Brock