[Build Great Backlinks] Triple X Niche Case Study Update: Expenses Report

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Last month we mentioned that the Triple X Niche Case Study was now live on ViperChill. If you missed the launch then a quick summary is that three people will be tackling the same industry with three different approaches. I (Glen) am only allowed to focus on social media. Diggy (my SEO business partner) is only allowed to focus on SEO and Mr.V (a beginner to making money online) is allowed to do anything he wants.

When we originally planned the case study we each had a $1,000 budget in mind. After a lot of feedback however this was lowered to $500 for the first two months of the project; November and December. Many of you have been following the case study closely on the forums and I’m proud to announce the threads have been viewed over 40,000 times with over 30 case studies being shared there.

[Build Great Backlinks] 20 Mistakes Bloggers Are Still Making

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Today I’m going to cover some of the biggest mistakes bloggers are still making.

Most of these fall under the category of “structural” or “conceptual.”

Chances are, if you're a novice, you're guilty of at least a couple.

Don't stress, this post will set you on the right track to becoming a more successful blogger.

But be warned…

You may find yourself compelled to throw out some posts, or even move your blog in a new direction altogether.

Mistake #1: Not Getting Your Audience

One of the biggest mistakes bloggers are still making is not identifying their audience.

Many get the topic and have the facts, but don’t connect with anybody.

As bloggers we have to understand the problems our readers face and empathize with them.

Literally feel what they feel and see through their eyes.

Once you do this, creating engaging posts that solve problems and answer questions is a breeze.

Aside from interacting with readers comments and installing Google Analytics, asking questions with a survey plugin like YOP Polls is great for identifying demographics.

You can even step the look up a notch with a service like Survey Monkey.

With the free version you get up to 100 responses and 10 questions per survey… and it’s easy to set up.

Mistake #2: Not Choosing a Strong Niche

Another big mistake that bloggers make is trying to be everything for everyone.

You can't underestimate the benefits of strong focus.

Having a tightly defined and clear mission, makes you much more likely to gain a strong and passionate following that’s incredibly valuable.

Being passionate and excited about whatever it is you’re blogging really presents itself in your writing.

Mistake #3: Covering Too Much

A lot of bloggers want to appeal to a broad audience, so they write about a ton of topics.

You might be thinking, “well, that’s doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.”

The issue is, the blog can get a little too bloated and easily lose connection (and trust) with the reader.

Mistake #4: Inconsistency

This is one of the greatest factors of an unsuccessful blog, both in publication frequency and quality.

The hard part is these “elements of success” can sometimes seem like opposing forces.

Creating great content doesn’t typically take 5 minutes, which is a problem for those of us accustomed to instant gratification.

Ensure quality content on a regular basis by simply adhering to a publishing schedule.

Base your blogging on routine, not on whenever the muse comes to visit.

Don’t put out a great first post and follow it up with rushed crap. You’ll lose readers quicker than it took to write your lackluster content.

Mistake #5: Lack of Commitment

Not committing to blogging is another big mistake.

A lot of people get into blogging, and think it will have an instantaneous impact on their business – most receive a rude awakening.

You should plan on writing at least a couple posts per week for the first six months. It’s not likely you’ll experience overnight success.

But don't get discouraged and quit because…

“Anything in life worth having is worth working for." –Andrew Carnegie

Mistake #6: Quantity Over Quality

Your readers don’t want quantity, they want QUALITY!

Internet users want solutions to their problems with easy to digest information.

It WILL take you some time to research, write, and edit a good blog post…

Otherwise, a quick Google search would offer “good enough” information for your prospect.

Do yourself a favor and set your blog apart with unique content!

Steve Kamb of NerdFitness.com does a great job of making his content stand out in a VERY competitive industry.

Mistake #7: Writing For Yourself and Not Your Audience

Even if it sounds fun to share what's on your mind in the moment, if it doesn't help your audience, don't post it.

You can’t be selfish. You need to leave that to your readers.

They want information that’s helpful to them.

Recognize your audience's selfishness and feed them.

Indulging yourself doesn’t help your reader, which doesn’t help your blog.

Mistake #8: Making Your Blog About You

Remember, your audience doesn't care about you unless you're a celebrity.

Write blog posts that are entertaining, topical, and/or useful.

Unless you’re somehow directly relevant to how useful, interesting, or good your blog posts are, don't make it about yourself.

Mistake #9: Poor Writing

A blogger's job is to find and retain readers.

When you have more readers, you have an opportunity to help more people and make more money.

With this in mind, there’s one SUREFIRE approach to turn away new readers…

POOR WRITING.

Always proofread before posting. Use spell-check and review your readability statistics in Microsoft Word.

Take time to research the concepts, facts, and ideas in your posts.

Remember, your focus should always be helping people – especially if you plan to profit.

Mistake #10: Not Using Provocative Headlines

Engage your readers with compelling headlines.

Everyone’s more excited to check out a blog post when it has a provocative headline.

Make people want to read your stuff with seriously enticing headlines.

Here are 11 great examples of provocative headlines:

• Don’t Even Think About Blogging Without Reading This Report!
• Amazing New Discovery Kills Kitchen Odors Quick!
• Why Some People Almost Always Make Money Online?
• Is The Life of a Child Worth $1 to You?
• 7 Reasons Income Diary Readers Live Better
• Free Book Tells You 12 Secrets of Incredible Sex
• Why Some Foods “Explode” in Your Stomach
• The "Friendly" Health Advice You Should NEVER Take
• The Strange Breathing Technique That Improves Your Posture
• Thousands Now Play Who Never Thought They Could
• Lose Weight While You Eat (10 Foods That Actually Burn Calories)

Mistake #11: Blogging on Your Own

Learning to adopt skills from popular journalists, digging up stories and interviewing others from my industry has enhanced my writing skills and opened many doors.

A lot of bloggers think they have to do everything themselves.

And I was guilty of this too.

Thing is, this puts a lot of weight on our shoulders and drains creativity.

Expand your reach by emailing other bloggers from your industry and asking them for interviews and to exchange guest posts.

Mistake #12: Adding to Information Overload

Don't just publish content for the sake of publishing content.

Try to create something unique and compelling.

Make sure every post has a lot of value, and doesn't just contribute to the clutter that’s already out there.

Mistake #13: Too Much Self Promotion

Go outside your own products, services, and company and talk about other necessary subjects to offer solutions to your readers’ issues.

This builds trust, and shows you really care.

Besides, you can't solve everybody’s problems.

Mistake #14: Not Connecting With Your Audience

A lot of bloggers just publish their posts and forget about them.

Looking at your comments, responding to them, and sincerely engaging with your audience, will help build strong relationships.

Mistake #15: Not Thoughtfully Responding to Comments

One of the most blatant mistakes a blogger can make is not taking time to respond thoughtfully to comments and interact with users.

Show your readers some love and respond to them.

Let them know you’re a real person that truly wants to improve their lives.

Make it clear by going beyond the initial response and following it up with engaging comments of your own.

Mistake #16: Not Promoting Your Blog Posts

To my disbelief, I see many bloggers not promoting their stuff. 

Once the article goes live, they’ll jump on Facebook, put a link on the fan page and that’s it.

Then you have those who go overboard and promote too much…

You have to strike a balance, getting your posts the attention they deserve without driving your followers crazy with self promotion.

Ideally, you want people sharing your content. Your traffic will go up once your stuff starts to get shared on social media.

You’ll achieve this by consistently writing engaging content geared toward solving your readers’ problems.

Mistake #17: Not Becoming Part of the Community

One of the most limiting mistakes bloggers make is trying to do everything alone.

There are a lot of dedicated, passionate writers out there who would like to help you craft a community blog around the great content in your niche…

This would accelerate the growth of your site with additional promoters and give you a greater social circle to utilize for exposure.

Resources like Blog Catalog can help you find other popular sites in your niche.

And communities like BlogEngage are awesome for the exchange of feedback and links by like-minded bloggers.

Mistake #18: Not Engaging Other Bloggers in the Industry

You want close collaboration with other bloggers in your industry.

You could even try to form a blogging group in your local community and start or join a group on Facebook.

The sky’s the limit.

Don't think of your blog as a separate entity, acknowledge it as part of a larger community – collaborative partners can only help your site.

Think of your blog as one of many and link up with others for the benefit of your audience. You’ll destroy yourself trying to cover everything your niche has to offer alone.

Mistake #19: Not Sharing Your Expertise

Sharing your talent and expertise with other bloggers and websites builds trust, reputation, and credibility.

The quickest way to develop a community on the Internet is to share information.

Your readers can and will come from other authority blogs.

Get your foot in the door with the best blogs in your niche by doing guest posts, commenting on their stuff and asking to do interviews.

Mistake #20: Ignoring Keyword-Rich Titles to Appear Clever

A lot of bloggers choose really clever or catchy titles, but they don't think about keywords.

Keywords can make a big difference to the search engines – especially for the long term.

Choosing a keyword-rich title can make the difference between your post living on and fading into nothingness.

You DEFINITELY want a catchy title, just make sure it’s relevant to your message.

We live in the age of information.

On a daily basis we’re exposed to more ideas, blog posts, and news stories than we could ever consume.

That said, time is a limited resource for most people these days.

And with an abundance of mediocre and regurgitated information, treating your readers' time with respect is critical…

Remember, the best way to respect your readers’ time is by delivering great content on a regular basis.

Success by choice, not by chance.

-David Aston

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David Aston
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Great Backlinks] The Ultimate Guide to Making Online Video Tutorials

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Teaching a concept or process through a video tutorial is one of the single most valuable types of online content. It’s an easy and effective for your audience to learn a new skill. Video tutorials are sure to attract new followers and convince your current one’s that you’re serious about providing them the best content possible.

Creating a quality video tutorial doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s actually possible to create an adequate tutorial in ten minutes, no video editing required.

I’ll teach you how to do that below, but I’ll also give more in-depth information for those who are re­ady to dig in and really create a top-caliber video. That means how to prepare for your video, tips on recording, getting your audio right, and how to best edit, upload, and publish your video online.

You can jump right to the beginning of the guide by clicking here or by using the table of contents above.

Example of a Video Tutorial

I made my first video tutorial a few weeks ago for PopUp Domination. I learned a lot through the process and it inspired me to write this post for you. You can watch that video tutorial here.

If you want to learn more about PopUp Domination, go to the official site. Or you can read Josh Dunlop’s recent post on the 10 different ways that he uses PopUp Domination.

Expert Video Advice:

Throughout the article, I’ll be sharing exclusive advice from Gideon Shalwick of Rapid Video Blogging. He’s had huge success through video tutorials so I’m really happy to be including his insight in the article.

All of these Gideon Shalwick quotes are from Income Diary’s own book of interviews with top online entrepreneurs, Web Domination 20.

Now, onto the guide.

 

Before You Press Record

Know Your Stuff

The first step to making a good tutorial is to know all of the ins and the outs of the subject you’re teaching. Hopefully, you’re already an expert on the process you’re teaching. If not, you should probably run through it a few times to make yourself as knowledgeable as possible.

I also suggest looking around on forums and blogs to see what problems people are having commonly and the types of questions that they are asking.

Write a Bullet-Point Script

I don’t recommend writing out the entire script of your video, because it’s better to be in the moment and to sound natural (this is called an ‘extemporaneous’ delivery). But having a few key bullet-points in front of you on a piece of paper or electronic device can help make sure you don’t miss anything important and remind you what’s coming up next.

Create a Clean Environment

Keep in mind that if you’re recording your computer screen that may include recording your desktop background, programs you have running, browser windows you have open, your bookmarks, and more. Before you press record, make sure that your computer’s display looks professional and won’t show any overly personal information.

 

Choosing Video Recording ‘Screencasting’ Software

You can spend your time downloading and installing any number of free screencasting options. But I tried this and was met with unacceptably low-quality video. If you’re absolutely set on using free software, then the highest ranked free screencasting software (according to Wikipedia’s comparison) is VirtualDub.

But in my experience, you get what you pay for. If you want the cream of the crop, go with $299.00 USD Camtasia. Personally, I chose the $49.95 Snagit and I couldn’t be happier. It’s easy to use and it has all of the options that I wanted (plus a few more).

If you’re not ready to part with real money, both Camtasia and Snagit offer free trials. Download one for a month through the links above, make a few tutorials with it, and then you can decide whether or not to invest with a purchase.

Audio Recording

The Right Mic

With Snagit, you can record your voice through your computer’s microphone simultaneously. This is an easy way to do it, but the audio quality may be thin and full of static. If you speak loudly and clearly, your audio will likely be okay.

If you’re going to be doing this a lot, you’ll probably want to invest in a quality USB microphone, like the Yeti. Gideon offered us microphone advice for the professional:

"My microphone that I currently use with my Canon 60D is a wireless microphone from Sony, the UTX-B2. So that plugs into my camera and then I can have a very nice, little, wireless lapel mic on me when I record the videos. They're a bit more expensive, $700 bucks or so."

And the budget-conscious beginner:

"You don't need to start with the UTX-B2. I actually used a $30 Audiotechnica microphone that I got from an electronics store. It provided near professional quality audio and the only drawback was that it was not wireless. It came with a four meter cord. You don't need to spend a lot of money to get a great result."

An Optimized Acoustic Environment

Turn off any fans, heaters, or other devices that produce ambient noise.

Also look out for flat, uncovered walls and hardwood floors that may create harsh, reverberant echoes. If the room that you’re in is producing too much reverb, you can cover the floors with rugs, the walls with blankets or paintings, and place pillows or comforters in the corners.

Or simply record in a different room with better acoustics.

The Sound of Silence

After you’ve finished recording your voice walking through the video, record about 30 seconds of dead silence. When you’re editing the video later, you may need to separate parts of the voiceover and you can use that "white noise" to fill in the gaps without the audio cutting out entirely and distracting the viewer.

Background Music

There’s a variety of sites online to find licensed music for free in the creative commons. I’ve had good luck with ccmixter.org and that’s what I used to find the background music for the PopUp Domination tutorial video.

If your voiceover is difficult to understand for any reason, then you may want to consider skipping the music altogether. In any case, keep the volume down so that it doesn’t distract from what really matters.

Cleaning Up Audio

Cleaning up noisy, static-filled audio is easier said than done. You can use advanced software like ProTools or capable freeware like Audacity, and they all have ‘noise reduction’ tools and equalization, but the truth is that it’s usually impossible to cut out static or noise without also cutting out important frequencies of the voice itself.

For that reason, I recommend most people just try to get the best audio quality to begin with and don’t count on any audio editing magic to bail you out.

 

Recording the Video Tutorial

If you know the process that you’re teaching and you’ve familiarized yourself with your screencasting software, recording the tutorial should be a piece of cake. Just press ‘Record’, then walk your viewers through the process.

Striking the Right Tone

It’s good if you can be personable and maybe crack a joke or two. Your personality can make your video stick out and encourage people to feel the type of personal connection with you that will get them to want to come back for more tutorials.

But if you’re taking a lot of time with your humor and theatrics you’re just going to frustrate your viewers. For a video tutorial, I would rather have someone be dry and to the point then overly colorful. Of course, the best option is to find the happy medium.

Recording a Video So You Don’t Have to Edit

When you click ‘Record’ with Snagit, they give you a three second countdown before it starts recording your screen. That’s enough time to switch windows to the screen you want to start the video with. In most cases, that can simply be the software or web page that you’re going to be instructing the viewer on.

If you want to get really fancy, you can design a special title screen to welcome your viewer and inform them about what you’ll be teaching. In that case, you can make that image your desktop background or have it up in a photo viewing program.

This is the welcome screen for the PopUp Domination video that I designed in Adobe Photoshop. I used graphic design that had already been made for PopUp Domination’s website in order to give it a professional, branded look.

If you like, you can make another such image for the conclusion of your video. With Snagit you can press Shift+F10 and exit the video promptly without any wasted seconds at the end.

Regardless of whether you use special screens for the beginning and ending of your video, if you go through the process clearly, quickly, and you don’t trip over your words too much, you can record a video that is completely functional without having to do any further editing.

If you want to add text or interactivity to the video, you can add those through YouTube annotations. I recently wrote a guide on how to use YouTube Annotations if you would like to learn more.

Nevertheless, if you want the highest quality of video tutorial, you’re probably going to want to do some basic editing.

 

Editing Your Video Tutorial

Choosing Your Software

As with screencasting, there are a bevy of video editing software available, both free and paid. In fact, most computers come with perfectly capable video editing software and many screencasting programs (such as Snagit and Screenflow) also feature video editors tailored to the needs of someone editing a video tutorial.

For WebDomination 20, Gideon Shalwick walked us through his process of selecting video editing software:

"I started with iMovie, worked my way through to Final Cut Express, and I ended up settling with ScreenFlow.

"Once I started using ScreenFlow, I thought, "Why bother with Final Cut?" ScreenFlow did everything that I wanted it to and it was much easier to use and gave me amazing results.

"Even to this day, if I want to get a video done really quickly, just something with simple cuts and very simple editing, I use ScreenFlow. Just record, get it on ScreenFlow, export, upload, done. It's just so good."

I use Adobe Premiere to edit my videos for work and you can get a free a trial of that through Adobe’s website. But generally the more advanced video editors have a higher learning curve and they won’t provide casual video editors with anything that they really need for most videos.

Edit to Save Your Viewer’s Time

One of the principle benefits of editing your video is using transitions to save your viewer’s time. If there’s a process that takes a while in the middle of your video (like a loading screen or an upload) then you can simply cut that part of the video. It’s also a good opportunity to fix slip-ups or pauses in your speech.

Adding Text to Guide Your Viewers

By going through the process and talking to your viewer, you can convey most all information necessary. But if you want to help the learning process further, adding text is a great way to add further clarification for your viewers.

I added text at the top and bottom of the PopUp Domination video tutorial with a template that I created in Adobe Photoshop. The text on the top tells is like a header, identifying the larger goal we’re accomplishing in the video. The text below identifies the individual step in the process that we’re currently completing in the video.

Branding and other design elements add to the professionalism of your video and help your viewer to remember your name. As you can see, I incorporated the PopUp Domination logo directly into the design of the text bars.

Outsourcing Editing

Hiring someone else to edit your videos for you can result in a more professional video and free your time up to focus on other activities. Gideon Shalwick put in his time editing videos himself but he explained to us that he now mostly outsources:

"Currently, I don't do much editing myself anymore. My business has progressed so well now that I can afford to have a team of video editors to do all my editing for me. That's really helped me take my business to heights that I couldn't have even imagined. My videos look so much more professional now than I could have ever even tried to do on my own."

If you decide to go this route, you can create the tutorial yourself and outsource the editing or you can hire the entire tutorial created, as Michael did when he recruited my video service.

Wrapping Up

Choosing a Video Service

There’s no shortage of ways to get your video online and for the most part they all work fine. But if you want your video tutorials to be found and viewed freely by as many people as possible, YouTube is the way to go. Gideon Shalwick explains:

"Really it's all about traffic on YouTube. That is the short answer. Last time I checked, YouTube is the second biggest search engine, after Google. Three billion views a day is pretty impressive. Personally, I can't really fathom the number three with nine zeros next to it. It's just incredible."

Uploading & Optimizing

There’s a host of things you can do to optimize your video so that it will show up in more sources. That’s not really the subject of this article so I’ll be brief.

The title is the most important part for SEO, but it’s also important to fill in the keywords and description area. You can use the list of bullet points you created earlier to fill in the description area in a breeze. Don’t forget to add a link to your website in the first couple lines of the description area so that people will be able to click on to your site.

Make an Accompanying Blog Post

If you really want to do it up, write a blog post that also walks through the process and embed the video at the top of it. Now you’ve created a complete educational resource that’s likely to be favored by Google’s search engine spiders.

That’s a Wrap!

You can rest easy knowing that every day someone, somewhere is learning thanks to the time you spent putting together a quality video tutorial. That’s a pretty cool feeling.

If you want to learn more about video, you can check out my articles on the top YouTube channels, profiles in viral video marketing, and my 21 ways to dominate YouTube.

Check out this website if you want to create great videos using Screenflow.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Making Online Video Tutorials appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

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Nick Scheidies
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[Build Great Backlinks] 10 Prosperity Conscious Principles for More Business Profit

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This post is part of our MoneyLove series. In part #1, we talked about why you should love money. In this article, we'll talk about how to get more of it.

A Moneylove Approach to Playing Larger and Winning Bigger

Doing is being.
To have done's not enough.
To stuff yourself with doing — that's the game.
To name yourself each hour by what's done,
To tabulate your time at sunset's gun
And find yourself in acts
You could not know before the facts.

The above is just the first part of Ray Bradbury’s poem, Doing Is Being. Ray showed the poem to me before it was even published in the early 1980s, sitting under a tree among the rolling seaside hills at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference, where we were both members of the faculty, though he was one of the celebrity keynoters and I just taught some classes in nonfiction writing.

I loved the phrase, “To stuff yourself with doing.” As I have found true with so many creative geniuses, Ray had a grand generosity of spirit, and gave me permission to use the poem in my book, Psychological Immortality, even before his own poetry book containing it was released.

It struck such a deep chord in me because I always believed the best teaching came through developing experiential techniques. I pioneered a lot of these in workshops I led for the adventurous Association for Humanistic Psychology. I also taught them to other authors who were brilliant speakers or counselors, but didn’t think in experiential models. People like Louise Hay, Mark Victor Hansen, and Wayne Dyer.

This is why I think so many of my Moneylove ideas have stood the test of time, and new ones I am regularly creating still have impact in the world. Though I call the following list, 10 principles, they are really action-oriented strategies, all requiring that someone adopting any or all of them, do something or change something they are doing. It doesn’t even really matter if taking one of these specific action steps is the right or ideal one to explore. Just the taking action itself is shaking things up, transforming the equation, “to find yourself in acts you could not know before the facts.” To do, and therefore to be.

1. Start Immediately

Nothing dissipates a great business idea like delay. The most promising prosperity-producing business plans can scatter like smoke through too much pondering and indecision, or talking about it. I am not suggesting that you have to start big, or do it all overnight. Rather, baby steps are often a good way to build the momentum to manifest your dream results. It's important that you begin doing something that will serve your specific idea and start putting it into a physical form. This may indeed become a false start, so don't expend too much energy on it initially, but create some kind of movement toward what you envision that idea becoming.

This is not a brand new idea. At the very beginning of Moneylove, I quote pioneering psychologist, William James, who said that to change one's life you must "start immediately." And even though some scholars dispute whether the famous "begin it now" quote originated with Goethe, it certainly predates James: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

In a similar vein, one of my mentors and friends, Bob Schwartz, founder of the School for Entrepreneurs at Tarrytown, New York, used to say that a major factor in business success is what you do "when the rubber hits the road." Even the most luxurious, high-powered car won’t get you anywhere with a burned-out starter.

2. The Law of Subtraction

This is simply to focus on being more discerning, more selective, more aware of what really matters. In other words, being more discriminating in your choices.
There is so much stuff pouring out in this era of instant access to just about everything, so much information bombarding us, we have to make a much more intentional, concentrated effort to pick out the truly valuable and worthwhile from all the clutter.

One of the best explanations of this came over a hundred years ago from Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, when he had Holmes explain to Watson his own particular take on what information to take in and what to leave out:

"The mind is like an attic, you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out."

What a beautiful way of expressing the problem of information overload. Essayist Lance Morrow, also did a great dissertation on this subject, in Time magazine, saying:

"The mind takes its shape from what it holds, and therefore, Zen-like, sometimes grows more graceful because of what it has kept out."

And so it is true, that it is often what you subtract that is as important or even more so than what you attract.
And this brings me to one of my favorite affirmations, which many people have used as a guideline to help decide what to let in and what to keep out:

"If it doesn't bring me profit, pleasure, or knowledge, it isn't worth doing."

If you simply make a list, with headings for Profit, Pleasure, Knowledge, and put down all the things now happening in your life, all the things you are now paying attention to, and seeing where they fit in this trio of categories, you would begin to get more of a sense of what belongs in a successful, dynamic life and what doesn't. How many of these things actually fulfill two or three of the criteria? Obviously, your life is more dynamic and creative and has more potential when more of the things you do give you profit, pleasure, and knowledge.

3. Your Ninety Day Trial Period.

This is a take-action strategy that many coaching clients have credited with quick and powerful results in their creative and financial lives. In this whirlwind life many of us experience, with so many choices, so many ways we can be in the world and use our various skills and talents, it is essential to set certain boundaries, and this is an easy one that seems to work well for everyone who tries it.

Very simply, whenever you have more than one important choice–and this works in your professional life as well as your personal situation–you pick one of those choices and commit to giving it your all–your total focus, energy, and time for the next ninety days. In most such activities or projects, ninety days is enough time to know whether this was the right decision for you. If it still feels right after ninety days, you keep doing it. If you can see that it is not nearly producing the results you expected, let it go and move on to your next choice. If you are applying this to a creative activity, there's a good chance that you might have wasted a year under the normal circumstances of deciding whether or not it works for you. With this strategy, you get to check out four projects or decisions in that same year.

4. More Than Their Money's Worth

This is such a basic marketing concept that it often amazes me why people don't adopt it as their personal credo. When I first started marketing myself as a speaker and workshop leader, and then started producing my prosperity audio program, I always had as my main foundational tone the idea of giving my audience, "More than their money's worth."

And here's an important part of that–don't tell them that is your intention until you deliver their first order and they can confirm you are indeed delivering something more valuable than the amount they are giving you. IncomeDiary.com is a great example of taking this even further. In chats with Internet entrepreneurs and bloggers, time and again, these online masters have almost awestruck regard for Michael Dunlop and what he has done by starting out giving huge amounts of valuable free information. It isn't complicated, but it is brilliant. By building personal relationships with the best and brightest bloggers and online marketing masters and content providers, Michael has been able to give away what many other bloggers and entrepreneurs charge for. Talk about giving people more than their money's worth!

5. Your Next Big Thing

When I met Wally Schirra in the green room of a television talk show in the mid-1980s, I think astronauts were a bigger deal than they've become in recent years. As one of the original 7 Mercury astronauts, Wally was as big a deal as there could be in that realm.

So I asked this American space hero a pretty obvious question: "After soaring to the heights of space, wasn't it a big letdown to come back down to earth and eventually become a businessman?" Wally laughed and said he did get that question a lot, usually accompanied by arched eyebrows. He said he had always thought he would like to try some kind of business venture once he retired from space. He said his father, also a pilot, told him when he was very young that one should always know what they wanted to do next after achieving their primary dream. Wally also told me that he was the only one of the original 7 astronauts who had a clear idea of what he wanted to do once he retired from the space program.

So what about you? Do you have an idea of what you might want to do next if and when you reach your current major aspiration?

It's a simple matter of saying to yourself, "When I get there, I know where my next "there" is. Knowing what you will want to do next after finishing with what  you are doing now is a tremendous source of inner peace and invigorates one’s sense of purpose.

6. Your Powerful Voice

In terms of speaking out to the world and your actual physical voice, whether you want your audience to learn something from what you are saying, or buy something you are selling, a strong, clear, tonally pleasing, well modulated, and consistent voice can make a huge difference in how your message is received by others.

Many studies have shown that in the corporate world and most other professional realms, the man or woman with a pleasing, strong voice has a big advantage.

And here's the good news. Your voice is not a locked-in physical attribute. It is an instrument, and can be trained to be much more effective and attractive. It just takes a basic course, many of which are available online, and daily, steady practice. The results will come fast and it can be a lifelong practice that will produce many personal and professional benefits.

I put both the writing voice and speaking voice under the same heading because they do have an impact on each other. The best writing comes when the writer is able to speak directly into the keyboard as if he or she was having a conversation with the reader. I always encouraged students in my writing classes to "Speak through your fingers." Clarity, individual style, and a pleasing rhythm are major factors in successful writing and speaking.

7. Be Open But Very Picky

This principle was actually inspired by a novelty button I once bought that said in big, bold letters, "I'M AVAILABLE," and below in smaller letters, "BUT VERY PICKY." At the time, I was a member of The Inside Edge, a leadership support group that met early Tuesday mornings at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My fellow board members included Jack Canfield, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Stuart Wilde and the membership consisted of workshop leaders, authors, movie people, musicians, and a lot of smart, successful, beautiful women. I got the button to wear at meetings, and only a couple of weeks went by before a beautiful woman named Jessica, who was intrigued by the button and the fact I had the nerve to wear it, approached me. We started dating and ended up in a very lovely relationship. The experience got me to thinking that good things come to us in all areas of our lives when we follow that mantra, "I am available, but very picky."

8. Compliments as a Powerful Prosperity Resource

As we go through life, we receive many compliments. These can become a powerful motivating force in your life, and tell you all you need to know about your perfect path and purpose. One of my personal favorite strategies and one that I get a lot of compliments on from readers, listeners, coaching clients, and workshop participants is my Compliment Bulletin Board. Whenever someone pays me a compliment, either professional or personal, that feels especially good, I ask them to put it in writing and sign it. I keep my board in a prominent place in my office, as well as a copy on my computer desktop.

I actually just received an email with a compliment from one of my Moneylove Club audio subscribers: "I feel my life has already taken a turn for the better." I will print and pin it, but in the meantime it resides on my desktop. There's something I like about that phrase, "A turn for the better." My subscriber is a professor and writer and her simple compliment has already provided an energy boost as I am recuperating from a case of food poisoning which had dramatically slowed me down this past week.

A turn for the better. A direction we can all aspire to, wouldn't you agree?

9. Say What You Are Going to Do and Then Do It

I got this phrase from my friend, Maria Nemeth, Ph.D., author of The Energy of Money. I find Maria's work a perfect complement to my own and she has become a mentor and this has become a core phrase in my life. She says, "Making and keeping promises moves you along your path.

My life has definitely taken a turn for the better since I activated a decision to always say what I am going to do and then actually do it. An important piece of this is to only spend time with and do business with people who meet this same high standard. It sounds simple, but in execution, many people fall by the wayside. There is such a temptation to take on more than we can faithfully execute with so many choices and temptations out there,

I don't like the phrase "I can't afford it." when applied to one's money situation, but the one place I do use it in bolstering my own prosperity consciousness is to say to myself, "I am moving toward always saying what I will do and then doing it, and can't afford the energy or effort to spend time with anyone who isn't doing the same." A life filled with broken promises in either direction is simply a broken life.

10. Leave Room for Surprises, Opportunities, New Adventures

To my way of thinking, there is a hierarchy of success. It is a high level indeed to be doing work you love doing and feel is important and rewarding. However, I reserve an even higher position for those who can always answer with a resounding "Yes!" the question, "Have you left room in your life for something or someone new and wonderful to show up?"

Warm and prosperous regards,

Jerry

Free Audio–Available Here and Now

Rare and fascinating insights into bringing a lot more money into your life this month are found on a 40 minute audio Jerry is giving away. It’s called “Maximum Money in Minimum Time.” On this free audio, exclusively available to readers of this post. you’ll discover how Jerry has helped thousands throughout the years become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Now he wants to help you…

Please Note: If you get an Already Subscribed notice when submitting this form (because you have joined Moneylove previously) then email Jerry direct on jerrygillies@gmail.com and Jerry will send you the Audio Link.

Special Note:
This eight week series of exclusive Income Diary articles by Jerry Gillies, author of Moneylove, continues next week with 50 Powerful New and Provocative Prosperity Quotes.

The post 10 Prosperity Conscious Principles for More Business Profit appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

You may view the latest post at
http://www.incomediary.com/10-prosperity-conscious-principles-business-profit

Build Great Backlinks
Jerry Gillies
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Great Backlinks] How We Use ManageWP to Protect & Manage Our WordPress Sites

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When our websites go offline, I receive a text, letting me know that I need to do something about it.

This text saves me thousands of dollars every year.

I’ll tell you how I set this up shortly, but first, let me tell you about one of the most important things about running an online business….

Uptime. You have to make sure that it’s always online.

Servers go down due to heavy loads, so quality hosting is incredibly important. But it’s not always as simple as that.

Just this week, one of my site was hit with a DDoS attack, which meant that it was taken down for a considerable amount of time.

For those of you who don’t know, a DDoS attack is when your website’s access routes are hit with a bots attempting to try as many different passwords as possible.

Our site was hit with 195,000 hits in just a few minutes, from IP addresses from all over the world, and although we’ve put systems in place to prevent this from happening again, our website was still down for a considerable amount of time.

And this is where ManageWP comes in.

No matter how safe and secure your server is, there will come a time where it’s going to go down unexpectedly. And you need to ask yourself, what systems do you have in place when it does?

Your website isn’t making money when it’s offline.

Do you have customers who log in to your website, who will be annoyed when it’s not there?

How many sales are you going to lose out on?

How important is it to you to get back online quickly?

When our DDoS attack occurred, we knew about it, and could deal with it right away – even though I’m not always on my site.

How?

Because I use a service called ManageWP, which lets me know as soon as it’s down. This ultimately minimises downtime and loss of income, as I can deal with it straight away.

ManageWP is a service for managing WordPress sites, which, among other things, will notify me through text whenever one of my sites is down.

That means that I don’t have to be tied to my computer at all times, but I also don’t have to be worried about uptime of my websites.

If I get a text, I go and find a computer, or I talk to Michael, and one of us will sort it out.

If you run an online business, this is an absolutely essential tool – no excuses. You simple can’t have down time on your website. Even if your site only goes down once every six months, you need to use this.

Sometimes when I’m away, I will go a couple of days without viewing my website, and without a service like this, I wouldn’t know if my site was even online.

And that’s just one of the features I like about ManageWP; it does a whole lot more too.

WordPress Management

If you run multiple WordPress sites like we do, then you can use this service to manage all of them at once.

Updating Every Site At Once

For example, in our dashboard, it tells us if we ever have anything that needs updating, and if we do, we can update it from there. It will also notify us via email if we want it to.

It’s important to keep everything up to date for security and performance reasons.

How I Manage Comments For All Sites, In One Place

We can also keep track of, and reply to recent comments, on all of our sites, in one place.

Publish Content Across Multiple Sites

You can write posts, publish drafts, and post content to multiple sites, all from within the ManageWP dashboard.

Traffic Alerts

Do you sometimes get a bit slack when it comes to checking your Google Analytics traffic? What if someone refers a few thousand people to your website – how long will it go unnoticed for?

With ManageWP, we have alerts set up for whenever there’s a spike in traffic, so that we can take advantage of these great opportunities.

Whether one of our posts has gone viral, or we’ve being hit by bots, we will know immediately.

Automated Backups For Peace of Mind

You back up your sites regularly, right?

Because you should do. We’ve actually had to use a backup before, but fortunately for us, we backup regularly.

We use ManageWP to schedule regular backups, to keep our content safe and secure. When it’s finished backing up, we have it download the backup and store it in our Amazon S3 account; that way our bases are covered.

You can also sync you backups with Dropbox, FTP Email, and more.

Site Cloning and Deployment

On ExpertPhotography, we’re bringing out a done-for-you blogging service where we build websites for photographers, and this feature is going to be huge help.

It allows us to create "template" websites with pre-installed themes and plugins, which can be used again and again for new sites. Then take advantage of our website cloning tool to quickly and effortlessly deploy these sites in a production environment.

It takes 95% of the work behind setting up a website and does it for you.

I honestly believe that ManageWP is worth the $4+ a month fee for the uptime notification alone, but features like this put it over the top.

SEO and Analytics

ManageWP include powerful SEO analysis tools without the extra costs. You can use this information to know where you stand, and use it to improve your search engine rankings.

There’s also powerful keyword research and ranking tools built right in so that you can know which words your sites rank well for, and identify the other areas where you can improve.

You can also integrate your Google Analytics right there into the dashboard so that all of the vital information that you need is right there where you want it, without having to browsing through loads of separate Analytics accounts.

Increased Security

ManageWP use state-of-the-art encryption and security standards that go above and beyond what WordPress offers, to ensure that your sites are protected to a high standard.

You can also integrate with Securi.net so that all of your sites are free of malware and other harmful viruses. With these tools, you can easily check the health of your sites, and if there are any problems, you can quickly fix them.

Great, Flexible Price

It’s actually remarkably cheap to manage your websites, with all of these amazing features. If you have five sites or less, and you want to professional plan, you’ll only pay $12 a month.

And the more sites you run, the less you’ll pay per site each month.

And of course, there’s a free trial too.

14 Day Free Trial

This is a service we use every day in our business, and believe that you should too.

Try it for yourself, for free, and see what you think. You’ll have access to all of the paid features for 14 days, and then after that, if you choose not to upgrade, you’ll still have access to basic features.

Start taking proper care of your websites by clicking on this link today.

The post How We Use ManageWP to Protect & Manage Our WordPress Sites appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

You may view the latest post at
http://www.incomediary.com/managewp-protect-manage-wordpress-sites

Build Great Backlinks
Josh Dunlop
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com