10 Ways to Keep Your Website Safe After Google’s Latest Algorithm Changes

by EricHammer on April 4, 2012

56258 9055 10 Ways to Keep Your Website Safe After Googles Latest Algorithm Changes

Well by now you’ve probably heard that The Big G has struck again. Google has been rounding up the ip addresses of various blog networks and deindexing then systematically. Whole businesses have been decimated and people in the SEO community are running scared. However, you needn’t be worried because I’ve got some great ideas to help you weather this latest storm.

Forget Public Blog Networks

I know I’ve written about places like Linkvana and Build My Rank in the past, but the past is the past and this is the present. Time to forget about trying to game the system by using these kinds of networks and move on to new ideas. Now I do know that several of these networks are in fact still around, but I’d recommend that you stay away from them for the foreseeable future. At the very least, wait until the dust settles and we can see where the state of SEO stands.

Consider Your Own Network

One great way to counter The Big G is to look into creating your own network. Yes, it’s expensive and yes, it’s a pain to keep it up, but the fact is that if done right, your own network would be pretty much bullet proof. The way you do this is to shop for aged domains at places like Go Daddy auctions and then set up hosting on different services and always either with privacy enabled or under different names.

The idea here is to basically create a network of anywhere from 5-20 sites which you personally own and which have different footprints all over the web. Again, you need to be careful to make sure they cannot be noticed as all belonging to you. The ideal way to do this is to use different hosts (i.e. Hostgator for one, Bluehost for another, Dreamhost for a third, etc.)

So called SEO hosting which attempts to use different IP addresses is not the best approach because all the IP addresses can still be traced to a single provider, which advertises that they offer such services, making such sites vulnerable to being deindexed.

It’s Not Illegal

By the way, I should point out here that if this all sounds extremely sneaky, it is. You are in essence trying to fool Google into believing that you have lots of people interested in your websites when in reality you may not have such a following.

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Most of SEO is like that — an effort to game Google’s system in one way or another.

However, one thing that’s important to realize is that even though this may sound sneaky, it’s 100% legal. You will never go to jail for using sneaky SEO techniques like these (although some forms of black hat SEO are actually illegal and can land you in jail). Now, if Google catches you doing this, they could choose to deindex you, but that’s not illegal either.

Consider the Lily White Route

In a perfect world, Google doesn’t want anyone to do off site SEO. The process of link building is by its very nature a method of gaming Google’s system to make your site appear more popular than it actually is. That’s why Google has been deindexing all these blog networks — because they were artificially inflating the number of “votes” for given sites.

If you want to be completely lily white however, you may want to do what Google asks — basically do on page SEO and write killer content which naturally attracts links. The best ways to do this are either to be funny or to be controversial. All those godawful boring videos where someone drones on for thirty minutes about how wonderful their product is are never going to attract links naturally.

On the other hand, if you were to make something which makes people laugh, they’re likely to share it with their friends and eventually get you the links Google actually wants you to have.

Consider Content Curation

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about content curation, which seems to be the latest craze in site building. Basically, the way this works is that you gather snippets from news stories on other sites and link back to them. You do need to include your own high quality content as well, but this is basically what the newspapers do — they’ll grab snippets and link back, sometimes adding their own bit of commentary to a breaking story.

You do need to be careful though about content curation. It should be done in a very transparent way and it should be a supplement to your regular content, not a replacement. However, if you do it right, from what I’m reading, it seems that Google will index your site faster since you are providing a useful and relevant service to their searchers.

Consider Article Marketing

No, I’m not talking about the old bum marketing method. Those not familiar with that method should count themselves lucky since it hasn’t worked for years. Links which come from article directories tend to be pretty much worthless and you need tens of thousands of them to make them useful. However, article marketing in the way that it was originally intended is alive and well.

In essence, article marketing involves seeding very high quality articles out to various websites and newspapers which include links back to your own website. The idea is to provide the very best stuff you can (this is the kind of thing that quality writers typically charge a few hundred dollars for it — I personally charge $149 for such articles, which is extremely cheap).

The reason that these work is because they are not the usual junk fodder which you find on most article directories. These kinds of articles are super high quality and typically follow a magazine style of writing. They involve doing interviews with real people in the industry and providing something both entertaining and interesting. In other words, instead of writing based on whatever you find online, you actually interview people and write it up based on those interviews.

This works because you provide free, high quality content to major sites, newspapers and ezines. These are places that will put your article (with your link) in front of 50,000-100,000 targeted buyers and don’t mind that it’s not unique to them. They aren’t looking to rank for the content. They’re looking to provide their readers with good, high quality information and will pay for it with a link back to your site. Think of it as guest blogging on steroids.

One of the best resources for doing this kind of article marketing is the Directory of Ezines, which lists ezines in specific niches which will be happy to publish your articles (if they’re good enough of course). Another resource which may be useful is the Writer’s Marketplace. While that guide is designed for writers looking to get paid, it does list thousands of niche magazines and newspapers you may be able to syndicate your writing to.

Look to YouTube

This is a method I recently learned about which I absolutely love. It’s very cheap, though not free and it actually has massive potential. The best part? Google’s search engine has nothing to say about it (though Google does own YouTube as well, so do be careful not to completely piss of the Big G).

youtube logo 10 Ways to Keep Your Website Safe After Googles Latest Algorithm Changes In essence, this method allows you to get links to your website from videos on YouTube.Now I know what you’re saying — I know how to do this already. I make a video, I upload the thing to YouTube and boom! I’ve got a link. Buzzer sounding right now! Ehhh! In reality, that’s an old method doing things which relies again on Google and their finicky ways. A better method is to rely on direct traffic.

In essence, what you do is, you go to YouTube and hunt down videos which are already popular in your niche and which don’t happen to have any links attached to them (yes, they do exist and there are many of them). You then contact the owner of the video and offer them a small fee in exchange for posting your link onto their video.

Again, your goal isn’t to get ranked this way (though a link on a popular video should help with rankings as well). Your goal instead is to get direct traffic directly from the viewers of that video who will see your link listed below and click it to see more information. You can then send them to your website, to your affiliate page or your squeeze page. It’s simple and it works, though it can be a pain to hunt down the right kinds of videos.

Look Again at PPC/PPV

Another often overlooked traffic source is PPC and PPV advertising. The reason these things are often overlooked is that people tend to think that they’re really expensive. They’re not though — the fact is that if you target lower competition keywords, it’s possible to get clicks for as little a penny a piece.

I’ve read a number of guides on this, but the basic philosophy is kind of similar to bum marketing. Rather than targeting highly competitive keywords, you look for long tail, lower competitive keywords which actually have more buyers anyway.

As I’ve explained many times in this space, long tail keywords often work better because people tend to be more likely to make a purchase through such keywords. After all, you are more likely to buy a Sony Erricson Arc S II if you search for “Sony Erricson Arc S II review” than if you searched for “cell phone review” or even “cell phone.”

Don’t Forget Solo Ads

Yet another super cheap source of traffic is the solo ad. This is also often overlooked by people for the simple reason that they don’t realize it exists. There are billions of websites online, including hundreds of millions of blogs, many of which are pretty popular, with good PR rankings and decent traffic. There is simply no reason whatsoever why you can’t advertise on these blogs.

In fact, you can often buy ads for a pittance because the blog owner often didn’t create their blog expecting to make a profit. If you do find a good deal though, try to lock in the price for at least six months to a year as really popular blogs are likely to see prices go up as more people notice them and start looking to buy ads.

While the easiest places to buy such ads is on blogs which specifically offer ad space (i.e. they have something which says “advertise here”), the cheapest deals are often to be had at blogs which don’t have such ads because this means that the blog owner hasn’t yet thought about how much to charge for such ads.

Look for CommentLuv Blogs

Another great way to get some good Google love going is to look for blogs which work with CommentLuv. I’ve written about this service in the past from the perspective of being a blogger, however from the perspective of SEO, this can be pure gold. When CommentLuv is fully implemented, it can actually allow you to get links from the home page of a popular website.

The catch of course is that owners of CommentLuv enabled blogs tend to be more worried about spam than others. This means that they’re going to check your comment closely and will insist on real, quality comments rather than the spun junk that so many people like to put out there.

Bottom Line

Look, for all that there are lots of great ways to deal with the latest Google changes, there is one way which is sure to always work. That’s to keep on writing truly great content and keep up with the rules that Google wants you to follow.

While there are ways to “game” the system and they may not be illegal, the fact remains that Google is still one of the largest players in the business and they do tell you what they want from websites they’ll rank highly. So why not just give them what they want and make lots of money while doing so?

Tagged as: algorithm changes, blog networks, Google, seo

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10 Lessons Bill Gates can Teach You about Making a Boatload of Money

by admin on April 3, 2012

Bill+Gates+%25283%2529 10 Lessons Bill Gates can Teach You about Making a Boatload of Money

Getting into business is one thing and making money from it is another thing altogether.  You must have surely come across stories of people who lost all their money on entrepreneurial schemes and then had to get back to work. Then there is the chilling story of the failed entrepreneur who was unable to find a job…..

Do these scenarios scare you? Are they coming in your way of pursuing your passion? How do you make sure your business gives you more than a comfortable lifestyle – a luxurious one? In other words how do you make a boatload of money from business?

There is a saying “Seeing is believing”. If I were to offer you advice on making money, you would not probably give it a second thought (except perhaps to do the exact reverse of what I suggest).

But if you were to receive advice from Bill Gates, it would be a different matter altogether. Here is a man who built his business from scratch, created one of the strongest companies in recent times, became a billionaire at the age of 32 and remained at the helm of ‘World’s Wealthiest’ lists for years on end. Surely all of us can learn from his methods and techniques, because obviously he has got it right.

Well, here it is then:

 

10 Lessons Bill Gates can Teach you About Making a Boatload of Money

  1. Identify Your Passion

Identify your specific area of interest so that you are motivated to work on late into the night (literally and figuratively) to ensure success.  It is possible that you may discover your passion by accident as did Gates.

In 1968, Bill Gates’ school Lakeside, purchased a state of the art computer. Young Bill Gates could not keep away from the machine. He and a group of like–minded friends would spend hours creating programs for the computer by trial and error. Bill Gates later said that “he was fascinated by how perfectly the code was executed by the computer. Thus he discovered his passion, which eventually led to the founding of Microsoft and made him the wealthiest person in the world.

Remember when something is your passion, working on it is no longer just a ‘job’.

 

  1. Dare To Make Unconventional Choices to Pursue Your Passion

After graduating from Lakeside, Bill Gates enrolled into Harvard. He kept working software codes all through his time at Harvard and when there was an opportunity for a commercial business venture with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) for developing software for the new mini-computer Altair 8800, Bill Gates didn’t hesitate to drop out of the prestigious institution.

This was a risky decision. What if the venture had not succeeded? But not taking the risk would have meant loss of the opportunity.

Be prepared to make difficult choices if you want to make money as an entrepreneur.

 

  1. Be Quick To Spot Opportunities

When Bill Gates read about the Altair 8800, the new mini computer to be launched by MITS in the Jan 1975 edition of Popular Electronics, he instantly identified an opportunity for a possible business venture.

The ad in Popular Electronics which Bill Gates interpreted as an opportunity

We can safely say this was the crucial point from which the idea of Microsoft emerged and soon became multimillion dollar reality.

Always keep your eyes and ears open. You never know when an opportunity will pass you by.

 

  1. Be Confident About Your Abilities

The story goes that Bill Gates contacted MITS chairman Ed Roberts and said that he and his partner had been ideating and creating BASIC interpreter program for the Altair 8800. While in reality, except for the idea that such a program could be developed, not even a single line of code had been written.

They were asked to come in for a demonstration. Gates and Allen created the program within a few short weeks and the subsequent demonstration was a huge success and became Microsoft’s first commercial deal. Microsoft was officially founded a month later.

Though I am not advocating you lie to your customers, the take home here is a confidence in your abilities to make good on your promises. If you are unsure of yourself, the consequences will not be pretty, and you know that.

 

  1. Have an Overview of the Industry

In 1980, IBM approached Bill Gates for development of an operating system for their upcoming PC. Gates knew that the 86DOS operating system had been developed by Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for hardware like a PC. Rather than work from the scratch on development, Gates entered into an agreement with SCP and became the sole licensing agent for 86-DOS, adapted the software specifically for the PC and had the product delivered to IBM as required.

Note that no business can survive in isolation in the market. There are several opportunities for collaboration within the industry which you must utilize to make the most of your business.

 

  1. Quality Control is Paramount

As Microsoft grew and there were professional programmers in place, Bill Gates was never disconnected with what was happening with his company’s products. He reviewed (and sometimes even revised) each line of the code. He did this not because he did not trust his programmers, but because he took a personal responsibility for the quality of the products delivered to customers.

As your business grows, make sure that there is no compromise on quality. And always be in touch with your products. They are going to earn money for you.

 

  1. Give the Customers What they Want

Microsoft has always been at the forefront in identifying the latent customer needs and then offering the next version of Windows that addresses that need. Since the launch of Windows 3.0 in 1990 (which was their first successful product), we have seen how the software has grown to add value to customers’ lives.

People don’t buy a product because it has a great tagline or because it costs less. They buy the product because it solves a problem for them. Once you have this figured out, the money will flow in.

 

  1. Don’t Give Up

Though it sounds like a cliché, it is actually true. Windows 1.0 was not a great success, while the next version 2.0 did moderately well. Bill Gates persisted and developed Windows 3.0 with a graphical user interface and that was the turning point for both Bill Gates and Microsoft.

 

  1. Think Ahead and Don’t be Discouraged by Detractors

Bill Gates had figured out early on that the future of operating systems is graphic interfaces. The idea was quite revolutionary at the time and was not very well received. Critics said that the graphic user interface codes would be too complicated to execute and would slow down the system. But Microsoft was not discouraged and continued development efforts in this direction and released the Windows 1.0 in 1985. The rest we know.

For the business to succeed and make money, you have to look ahead. Have faith in your vision and that should silence detractors.

 

  1. Act on Customer Feedback

Bill Gates famously said once “Your unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”. If your customers are not happy with your product, you had better change it to their preferences if you want to remain in business. The Windows Vista fiasco was one such example.

 

The ‘not very warm’ reception to Windows Vista pushed Microsoft to address all issues in their next version – the Windows 7 and also fast tracked the development time. Windows 7 was launched less than 2 years after Windows Vista.

From what I have read and researched about Bill Gates and Microsoft, these are some of the lessons that I thought were relevant for making money. What do you think? Is there something I may have missed? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Tagged as: bill gates, bill gates success, how to be like bill gates

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7 Tips a 10 Year Old Child Can Give You about Marketing

by EricHammer on March 26, 2012

Photoxpress 8252881 7 Tips a 10 Year Old Child Can Give You about MarketingBack when I was ten years old, the world was a much simpler place. Cell phones came in brief cases, an iPhone was a phone you had your eye on and marketing often meant putting together a simple flyer on my dad’s copy machine.

However, for all that times have changed radically since the 1980s, things have also stayed the same. Moreover, if you ask a ten year old about how to do marketing, whether it was then or now, they’re likely to offer you some great advice. Like this:

Embrace Technology

I used a Commodore 64 computer to type up my homework soon after I retired my electric typewriter with the LCD screen. I also built my own IBM-XT compatible computer. Why? Because I understood that these things were the wave of the future and I was right. By knowing about these things, I had a head start on building up a business.

These days, asking a ten year old kid about the hottest new trends in technology is still a great idea. Your ten year old can probably run circles around you on the computer and she can probably tell you everything you could possibly need to know about how to use that technology to get the word out about your products.

Of course, if you don’t happen to have a ten year old handy to ask about it, just check online to see what the latest trends are and try to use them (Pinterest for example is the rising star online, though not so much with the kids). You can also look at places like Google trends and even some popular Facebook pages. Go and search for pages which match you niche and which are popular and you can see what people are talking about.

Ask about Santa

Your ten year old kid may well still believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny (well, maybe not – depends on how mature he is. But a five year old almost definitely would still believe in it). Now I’m not telling you that you’ve got to believe in Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. However, believing in yourself and your ability to get things done is important.

In other words, just like your kid has faith that Santa will show up with presents to put under the tree every year, you need to believe that you will be able to do what needs to be done. I’ve often said that being a successful entrepreneur means being able to learn from and handle failure in an effective way. That means that you accept that you may well fail at a particular task, but ultimately, you’ll treat it as a learning experience.

In fact, many successful entrepreneurs were failures in their early efforts and only later managed to find their way to success. Even someone like Steve Jobs, one of my childhood heroes, was once considered an abysmal failure and has been. The thing is, he never stopped trying and never stopped believing in himself. So while you may no longer buy into the Santa story, you should at least believe in yourself.

Do Your Homework

How often have you told your kids that they need to do their homework before they get to watch TV? Okay, maybe you don’t have kids (I don’t), but you still know what I’m talking about. We humans tend to be a lazy bunch and we would prefer not to have to work hard and instead be able to play all day long. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. As a kid, you had to do your homework or you would get into trouble and as an adult, you also need to do your homework or you’ll get into trouble.

So what do I mean by doing your homework? Well for starters, before you begin a new business, take the time to do the research. Find out what your competitors are offering and what they charge. See how saturated the market is before you decide to just jump into it head first. And do your keyword research. Assuming this is an online business, you’ll want to be optimized for keywords so that your SEO works well.

Now that you have your business running, your homework is just beginning. That blog of yours isn’t going to update itself. Your customers won’t show up at your website just because you pray to the gods of late night TV while you munch Doritos and drink a frosty can of Bud.

You need to do the work to get people to your website, which means that you build backlinks, you do SEO, you do the work of getting your name out there and you do the best job you know how to do. In other words, don’t just do your homework – aim for getting an A from the teacher. Don’t forget – the kids who get an A from the teacher often end up being the ones who make the most money in life.

Revel in Snow Days

As a ten year old kid, I and all my friends absolutely lived for the snow day – that day when the heavens dumped so much snow onto the ground that New York City (I grew up in New York) would shut down and we’d have a day off. We’d go out and make snowmen, throw snowballs and even try making makeshift sleds.

Now I’m not literally saying to look for snow days and hope you get out of going to “school” (i.e. working). Instead, what I’m saying is that you should enjoy those rare unexpected moments in life.

Whether it’s a sudden opportunity to get into a business which you didn’t think you might ever be interested in or it’s a chance at an actual snow day where you can take off one magical day from work and enjoy spending the time with your family, be prepared to do so. Don’t just fall into a rut and say that you’re not going to take advantage of these things because falling into a rut and not taking advantage of opportunities is the way that losers end up whining that they don’t get anywhere in life.

Try to Make Friends with the Popular Kids

I know it’s incredibly shallow of me to say this and I apologize a thousand times over to every single kid who has ever been bullied. I’m not literally saying that any kid should be so shallow as to think that their sense of self-worth needs to be attached to someone else’s coat tails. In fact, I believe exactly the opposite (I’m also a former school teacher and always despised the so called “popular” kids who would pick on a weak kid and torment him or her).

Now, that having been said, I did bring this up for a reason. Even though I believe this is the absolute wrong practice to follow in school, I believe this is very much the right practice to follow in life and especially online. In essence, you want to follow the trend setters and grab onto their coattails.

These are the big names in websites, the people who have already made it. They have something to teach you and they have name recognition to offer to your new business. So look for links from these places and look for opportunities to do joint ventures and to get yourself involved with them in any way you can. You can then ride their coattails to the top.

Be Yourself

Okay, this may sound like the antithesis of the advice immediately above, but I assure you that it isn’t. Well, not exactly. You see, just as there are many kids who try to ride someone else’s coattails to the top of the popularity ladder in school, there are also the kids who don’t care if they come off as sounding weird as long as they get to be themselves.

Now I’m not saying you have to be weird, though being funny does help a lot if your goal is to build yourself up and make some real money online. However, even as you are riding the coattails of someone else who is super popular all the way to the top of the rankings, you also need to consider how you will make yourself into an individual.

The fact is that neither Google nor your visitors will really want to see an exact copycat of whatever it is that someone else is doing. They’re going to want to see your new spin on an old concept so that you can then wow them and let them feel as if you have a reason to be noticed too. This means that you should be yourself even as you are trying to use others’ popularity to rise to the top.

Keeping Looking Forward

As a ten year old kid, I dreamt of the day when I would be a grownup and I also dreamt of the day when I’d graduate to junior high school and then high school, where the “big boys” were. As an adult, I try to always find things to look forward to even though I know that I no longer have the aspiration to become a “grown up” and I’m not particularly looking forward to the next major stage in my life (retirement, which is still distant, but as a middle aged man, it’s basically the next step).

On the other hand, just like the 10 year old kid who had dreams about the future, I still do have dreams about the future as well. I still have plans for myself and I know what I want to do with my life and my business. As a business owner, you should be making plans for your business and looking to “graduate” to the next “grade” by growing your business each and every year.

Best of luck to all of you and thank you for taking the time to stroll along memory lane with me while I looked back at childhood.

Tagged as: business, make money online, Marketing, marketing tips

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10 Warning Signs that You are Becoming an Online Marketing Addict

by admin on March 26, 2012

increase website traffic 10 Warning Signs that You are Becoming an Online Marketing Addict

Incredible though it may seem, there are people who still believe that love makes the world go around (I personally know a few). But those of us who are practical know that the right answer is green. Not the environment silly, but dollars. And we meander through life trying to identify the best opportunities for adding to the good old bank balance.

But making money takes time and efforts and getting rich is not easy.

Having said that, you have to admit that the opportunities available today for making money are far more than a few years back, thanks to the internet. The internet is inundated with money making schemes that promise riches beyond dreams. While this is good in itself, the icing on the cake is the accompanying claim that ‘you don’t have to work hard for it’.

This practically amounts to having the cake and eating it too (icing and all). This is an offer surely no one can resist. So you can hardly be blamed for spending time on online marketing efforts in an attempt to earn money online.

cash 10 Warning Signs that You are Becoming an Online Marketing Addict

 There are several schemes available for earning money online

But the question is, are you overdoing it? Unknown to yourself, you may have turned into an online marketing addict spending far more time and money on online marketing than any return you can ever expect. Like any addiction, it creeps on you slowly and before you know it you are hooked. And like any other addiction, the best way to get out of it (if you want to, that is) is to identify the signs and admit that you are one.

Find below 10 warning signs that you are becoming an online marketing addict.

 

  1. You feel happiest when you have signed in to a new online marketing scheme

You look at a new online marketing scheme as a fresh opportunity that has been given to you to make good the past losses you may have suffered in the online marketing arena. You have a glazed look in your eyes while explaining to anyone who cares to listen why this is THE scheme you have been waiting for all this while.

 

  1. You have created a separate email account for subscribing to online marketing alerts

You just cannot afford to miss any new online money making method or technique and you want to be informed of it at once. But when you found that your email inbox was getting overcrowded, you decided to create a separate email id just to receive latest online marketing alerts. It is a different story that this inbox is overcrowded too due to sheer number of sites you have subscribed to.

But you are at peace knowing all of them are ‘important’ and need to be read and you don’t have to ‘waste’ time filtering the mails.

 

  1. Your Friends and Relatives Complain you Don’t Respond to their Emails

Refer point no.2. You obviously don’t have time to read through personal emails.

 

  1. You Cannot Resist the Power of NOW

The word NOW, displayed on any online marketing site has an almost hypnotic effect on you.

order now 10 Warning Signs that You are Becoming an Online Marketing Addict

Are you unable to resist the lure of NOW?

When the site tells you, ‘order NOW to avail the best prices’ or ‘Buy NOW while stocks are available’, you just have to comply. Because if you don’t you know you will be haunted by a guilty complex that you let go of good thing and this opportunity will never ever come back.

 

  1. You Have a Master List of Online Marketing Keywords

You have spent so much time online searching for the best (and not so good) online marketing schemes that you know precisely which keywords to use to get the best results. And being the large hearted person that you are, you have put these together in a master list that you constantly update. This is for helping others who are interested in online marketing. You obviously don’t need the list as you know everything on it.

 

  1. You Know Your Credit Card Number by Heart

While lesser mortals have to refer to their credit cards to punch in the number to make an online payment, you have your credit card number memorized. Could it be due to the fact that you have used it so often while paying for the online marketing products, that the number has become etched in your mind?

credit cards for people with bankruptcy 10 Warning Signs that You are Becoming an Online Marketing Addict

Do you know your 16 digit credit card number by heart?

Or perhaps it is just that you have a great memory. The latter is most likely, what say?

 

  1. You are Running Out of Space to Store your Online Marketing Products

Your room (or spare room or garage) is getting full with products that are shipped to you after purchase. Ideally, you have to sell them (or distribute or promote) to earn money (and free up the personal space). But you are so busy researching and studying the next big online marketing idea that you tend to overlook this tiny detail and never get around to it.

 

  1. Your Spouse Refers to the Computer as the ‘Other Woman/Man’

Given the limited time you spend with the family, your spouse (after substantial relief that you are not having an affair over the internet with some exotic foreigner) makes snide remarks about computer snatching you away. While you convince the spouse that you are doing this only for the family (you are earning money for them, right?), you are secretly pleased that your spouse actually misses you.

computer addiction 10 Warning Signs that You are Becoming an Online Marketing Addict

If the girl in the picture above reminds you of “you”, we have bad news for you.

 

  1. You become Philosophical about Life and Failure

You find yourself making philosophical comments about how life is not always about winning, but the fact that one has tried his or her best. This could be related to your inability to make money on most of the online marketing schemes you dipped your hands in. But what is funny is that this philosophy does not seem very attractive while dealing with your son’s poor school grades!

 

  1. You Become an Expert Niche Writer

In that rare moment, when there is no new online marketing scheme to occupy your attention and you don’t have any personal mails to respond to (probably because people stopped emailing you a long time back), you may get an inspiration to blog about your online marketing experiences.

Given your in-depth and personal knowledge in this area, the words will flow in an uninterrupted deluge, producing a highly informative blog post. And before you know it, you may get so many hits and views that you become an expert niche writer with followers hanging on to your every word and even consulting with you before making any online marketing decision.

And we know highly popular blogs are great revenue earners.

So is this a positive effect of your online marketing addiction? Perhaps, but there is no guarantee that will happen to you, is there?

Did you recognize any of these signs in yourself? Are there any signs I have missed? Or do you feel there is really no such thing as an ‘online marketing’ addiction. Anything and everything, let me know by way of your comments.

 

 

 

Tagged as: computer addict, marketing addiction, online marketing addict

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10 Principles You Need To Follow to Make a 6-figure Online Income

by EricHammer on March 23, 2012

sean38l 10 Principles You Need To Follow to Make a 6 figure Online Income

I’m going to share a massive secret with you right here and right now. You want to know how to make a six figure income online? Don’t be a jerk. Yep — that’s it. You can continue to read because I’ll share lots of other useful ideas, but that first one is by far the biggest and most important thing you can do if you are determined to make real money online.

Really — Don’t Be a Jerk

Think about this for a moment and you’ll realize why this is so vitally important. Sure, you could come up with some kind of killer idea and sell it to people online, but if you act like a complete jerk and don’t support your customers and or don’t stand by the people who helped you, then you’ll ultimately find that you’ll be a failure.

You may succeed in the short term, but in the long term, you’ll find doors increasingly being shut and you’ll find that you can’t sustain that six figure income for long (if indeed you ever got there to begin with). Okay, so that’s my golden rule. Now, here are nine other really useful ideas which really will help you to make that six figure income online:

Be a Lifetime Learner

Just because you left school behind long ago doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything left to learn. The fact is that the world is constantly changing around us and the online world is changing even faster. If you are determined to earn that six figure income online, then you really need to be the sort of person who finds new ideas fascinating. Otherwise, you risk being permanently left behind when things change.

By the way, being a lifetime learner has other advantages too. I explore this more fully in another upcoming blog post about being a great writer, but the fact is that if you constantly keep your eyes open and learn new things, then you are that much more likely to come up with great ideas for products and ways to sell them.

Plus, lifetime learners also tend to stave off senility more because they exercise their brains so that when others have started to forget things, they’re still sharp because their minds are used to learning new things and constantly needing to stay sharp.

Take the Time to Enjoy Life

No, this isn’t just a question of not overworking and never enjoying the fruits of your labor, though that’s important too. The fact is that the human body can only handle so much stress at any given time and if you are constantly pushing yourself to do more without ever allowing yourself to rest, you will eventually find that the quality of the work you are able to do will deteriorate.

 

So take the time to enjoy life once in a while so that you are able to stay sharp for work (not to mention that if you do earn that six figure income and never give yourself the opportunity to spend the money, then there would be little point in having made the money anyway).

Don’t Fear Failure

As I’ve said in the past here, Thomas Edison famously showed off notebook upon notebook of ideas which failed in his efforts to create a practical electric light bulb (he didn’t actually create the electric light — that was done years before. He just made a way to create one which was practical with a soft light).

When asked whether or not he ever felt discouraged by having failed so often, Edison said “of course not — I was thrilled to have found 2,000 ways not to make an electric light.” I’m paraphrasing a bit, but the point here is this: if you want to succeed in anything in life, then failure is likely to be part of succeeding. The question is whether or not you are able to pick yourself up and get back to work after you find that the idea you are pursuing just isn’t working.

Try to Help Your Customers, Not Yourself

This kind of goes back to my golden rule — don’t be a jerk. In essence, if you really want to make money online, thinking only about how you can make money is not going to do the job. You want to think about how you can help your customers. When your customers are getting the help they need, they’ll gladly pay you for it. However, when they sense that you don’t care about them at all but only care about their money, they’ll walk away and look elsewhere for the help they need.

Never Leave a Man Behind

This is the motto of the US armed forces and it should be the motto of everyone who wants to make a six figure income online. This again goes back to what I said earlier — don’t be a jerk about stuff. By shafting people and leaving them behind to take the fall, you’ll ultimately find that you are just shooting yourself in the foot. Few truly successful people are able to stomp on everyone forever. Eventually, they simply run out of people to stomp on.

Don’t Burn Your Bridges

I know — it can be immensely tempting to tell your old boss exactly what you think of him when you leave your job and finally start working full time on your Internet marketing business. Or to tell that difficult client why you hate his guts and wish he would just drop dead. However, this is never a good idea. Try to remain calm and end things as diplomatically as you can.

You never know when you’ll need to call that person, either to offer them your services as a consultant or to ask them to help you out with something they know something about but which you know nothing about.

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

Nobody likes double speak. It just makes it that much harder to get things done. Now I realize that there are those who think that by lying to people they’ll get ahead in life, but I am a firm believer that telling the truth is far more important than that and will have its own rewards.

Plus, when you tell the truth and you make sure that you are clear about what you mean, you are more likely to get the results that you want from your employees since they are able to better understand just what it is that you need done. So take the time to tell people what you’re thinking (although do be diplomatic about it) rather than hiding or assuming people understand your hidden meaning. They often don’t.

Keep Your Personal Situation In Mind

If you really can’t afford to drop an extra $500 to buy into the latest and greatest craze that you happened to have seen online, then don’t do it. Don’t just say “oh to heck with it — I’d be crazy not to get in on this.” You need to keep your own situation in mind. Plus, by doing so, it’s likely that you’ll have second thoughts about rash decisions that you may otherwise make.

It’s also useful to remember that you need to be concerned not just with yourself but also with the people that you love. If you have a family to support, do you really want to be dropping your kid’s college tuition money on a bet? So yes, take risks, but be sensible about it.

Put Time Aside to Meet New People

Yes, your business is important and yes, you need to ensure that you spend time building your business. However, meeting new people (i.e. networking and also meeting people who may have other ideas for making money) is also an important part of actually building that six figure income.

After all, you can’t make money if you don’t have customers and if all you ever do is sell to the same people over and over again, you’ll eventually find that they’ve purchased whatever it is that you happen to have for sale and have no desire to make any additional purchases from you. So do take the time to network, meet new people and get yourself out of your comfort zone once in a while. You never know after all where that next big idea will come from.

Bottom Line

The bottom line though is that it all comes down to my golden rule — don’t be a jerk. If you treat others with dignity and respect and try your best to do the right thing, they’ll reward you by buying whatever you happen to have to sell them and they’ll even thank you for it.

Tagged as: business practices, good business, make money online

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