Web Money Blog

A new place to get a cheap website

Nathan Hulls — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:23:08 +0000

So I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth. I have been busy devising plans to take over the world and recently come out of hiding to launch a brand new business!

Firstly, my apologies for not writing any blog posts recently, it sure has been a crazy time. Aside from developing this new business in the time I’ve been in hiding, I’ve moved house twice, built a new house and now just getting everything set up in my new home office, when I get a chance I’ll post some photos.

Secondly, the new business… drum roll please…

The new business is called http://www.WebsiteCo.com.au - the best place online for Australian Small and Medium Businesses to get a cheap website set up. Its a template based, Do It Yourself, website creation service where from just $97, you can create your own website, choosing from hundreds of professionally designed templates. Using our fantastic and easy to use content management and content creation system you can create your own site, add text, add images, integrate paypal buttons, add video or audio, image galleries, members areas, email forms and so much more.

A blog post really doesn’t do it justice but I really wanted to touch base with you all and also send out a bit of a spiel for WebsiteCo to get some feedback, so please go check it out and come back and leave me some feedback.

Also as this blog is all about how to make money online, I cant go without letting you all know about the website affiliate program, for those of you who are into affiliate marketing, you can make up to $250 per referred sale, and I am on the look out for more gun affiliates to help me spread the word and partner with me.

So what’s news in your world? Please leave me some comments and tell us all what you’ve been up to over the past few months.

I trust you’re all doing well and I will endeavour to get back to a more regular schedule of blogging.

Profits are better than wages!

If you found this post valuable and you want to learn how to develop a make money blog, dont miss the next one, enter your email address and get future blog posts delivered right to your email box - subscribe to my blog feed AND you’ll receive 5 FREE Money Making Ebooks

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The Launch Of A New Online Business

Nathan Hulls — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:15:38 +0000

So this post is just a really short and sharp one… Amongst life being totally crazy with wedding plans, building a house and all of the fun stuff which comes with that I have been working on a side project which has been evolving for about 5 years now.

The concept of the LogoCo service and website began about 5 years ago and was birthed as an idea, and has now evolved and is positioned to become the leading logo design service in Australia.

Standing in a noodle box store in Adelaide, South Australia, an idea was downloaded into his mind about the need for a full service logo design company, which was professional, easy to access for small businesses around Australia and ultimately affordable for the sole operator start up business owner.

The concept of ‘logo in a box’ or ‘brand in a box’ as it was initially branded, was that through an easy to navigate website, small business owners could identify a package or ‘box’ which suited their requirements, their taste and their budget and included everything that they needed to present their business in a professional and creative manner.

Brand in a box was birthed and over the past 5 years has grown and evolved to service small businesses across Australia, providing them with professoinal custom logo design services, and affordable business stationary printing.

More recently because of the demand in the market and the growth we have encountered we have been able to expand our human resources to over 50 logo graphic designers, providing each business with unique logo design concepts from multple graphic designers.

With growth comes change and in order to reach an even greater market online we have rebranded ourselves as LogoCo.com.au and here we are today.

Image Investment Group and LogoCo.com.au is a 100% Australian Owned private company providing Australian small business owners, entrepreneurs and organisations with professional custom logo design services.

Because we operate 100% online we can offer our services to the Australian business market at highly competitive prices making it affordable for even the smallest business to have a high quality and professional custom logo designed for them.

We are so confident in the work of our Graphic Logo Designers that we offer a 100% Satissfaction Money Back Guarantee.

So please check out the brand new www.LogoCo.com.au website and I’d love to hear your feedback.

I trust you’re doing well and kicking goals with your own online businesses.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be talking more about the LogoCo website and business model and how you can develop your own online business using this same model.

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Internet Marketing Etiquette - Dont Be Mr Bonehead

Nathan Hulls — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:48:30 +0000

Hey folks, this blog post begins and is prefaced with a warning…

This topic is one of my pet hates, so if I start getting on my soap box dont let me scare you off, its just that its something quite close to my heart. Also with that being said, I dont profess to have it all worked out and pretend that I’ve never broken any rules of Internet Marketing Etiquette but let me say this I do my best and am always open to be corrected.

So…

My reason for todays post is that over the past few weeks I have had a number of encounters with Internet Marketers from the city of spam in the land of rude and obnoxious.

Strong words I know but let me paint a picture for you.

You’re at a party, people are in their groups, having conversations and quite happy to be enjoying each others company. Some people are familiar with the others in the group but there are a few new faces and they’re enjoying conversations about varied topics and subjects.

Then along comes Mr Bonehead, from the city of spam, in the land of rude and obnoxious, waltzes into the middle of your circle and without so much as an introduction says something to the effect of:

“Hello there people, come over to my group, my group is great, it will change your life and you’re wasting your time here in this group.”

He then slips out of the circle as quickly as he came and moves on to the next circle of people, while the previous group are left in the wake of his whirlwind of obnoxiousness.

Hmmm interesting…

So firstly, what would you think of such a person at your party?

They would be shouted down, kicked to the curb and never invited back.

But yet there are people just like that, doing exactly that, online, everyday without so much as a thought or hint of how rude and obnoxious it is.

If you’ve been a subscriber for any length of time to this blog you will know how much importance and emphasis I place on relationship.

In marketing just as much as in life, relationship is the key to success. If you are not building genuine relationship with your prospects and your customers before you present them with any form of offer, you will not have any sense of rapport or trust in their eyes for them to attach to your offer.

So here are my keys to Internet Marketing Etiquette:

1. Dont Be A Jerk - Do The Ground Work!

Pretty simple I think… but lets define it. A jerk in the real world is someone who simply considers themself and doesn’t put any thought into the people around them.

When you’re marketing online, your focus should be on your market. Not on making money, not on making a sale, not on finding a prospect, not on making appointments or making a pitch. Focus on people, people buy from people, and again unless you build relationship, trust and rapport you will have no market and no customers, AND NO BUSINESS!

Unlike our Mr Bonehead, an informed and educated Internet Marketer, knows that its important to treat people online, the same way you would treat them in the real world.

Dont treat them like a commodity, or just another friend in your facebook account, or just another follower on your twitter. Each and every person is just as real and deserves just as much respect online as they do in the real world.

So… Dont be a jerk - do the ground work! Build relationship, offer and create value, identify the issues of your market, and provide a solution.

2. Two Ears and One Mouth - Learn To Listen

I think that because the internet is typically a text and type driven medium, people have decided that the ‘two ears and one mouth’ concept no longer applies, well I guess, to an extent from a reality perspective, we do have two hands and two ears, so we can type as much as we listen…. WRONG!

Be willing to listen to your market, to the people you’re building relationship with, more than you pitch, sell or offer.

You will be amazed when you begin to ask your market questions how much information they will provide you and what’s better, its FREE!

Your market can provide you with valuable information at no cost, which could benefit your business no end.

I am in the process of building a new online project, but before launching it, I’ve spent a few weeks asking people for feedback on the site design, the pricing, the packages, the service. Essentially these people may be my customers, so they know what they’re looking for, why not ask them, and give it to them!

To many business owners, online or offline, think they have the great idea and run off without consulting with their potential market.

3. Build Your Business Online - One Person At A Time

When you focus on sales, or prospects, or cash flow, your business becomes a heartless machine.

I’m of the opionion as Zig Ziglar puts it - “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

As an internet marketing professional even though your vision or outcome in the end is to build a passive income, and create freedom for you and your family, the only way you will get there is to build your online business one person at a time. Help as many people as you possibly can and you will see the money roll in.

People are people whether they are online or offline. Values should not change. Things like; respect, manners, integrity, openess, trust and truth, should not go out the window just because you have the benefit of annonymity and they wont physically grab you round the neck if you rip them off or tick them off.

When you focus on building people, and creating value, identifying need and providing solutions you will discover that the amazing universe that we live in has a fantastic way of rewarding those who approach life in this way.

So, that’s my little soapbox session for this week.

Dont be a jerk or a Mr Bonehead, be sure to build your internet business in a way that displays utmost integrity and you will see success follow you.

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How To Increase Website Traffic Using Facebook

Nathan Hulls — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:02:47 +0000

G’day folks… I hope you weren’t too shocked yesterday after my reappearance back here at Web Money Blog, after quite a few weeks of silence. But as you would have read life has been busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking competition.

So I have decided I’m going to attempt to write as frequently as possible and attempt to write shorter posts, rather than spend hours each day pouring out my heart.

In saying that I only ever want to provide the high value content to you my wonderful readers. I’d hate to waste both yours and my time, so here we go, hang on for the ride!

How To Increase Website Traffic Using Facebook

This simple strategy to increase website traffic is also good for building your social network on facebook, building rapport with potential customers, and also helps with positioning yourself as an expert, but for now we’ll just focus on this as a traffic generation strategy using facebook.

Its really quite simple…

To build your facebook friends - if you are using facebook to network with likeminded people and also to attract visitors and customers to your website, you should be fishing in the right ponds.

Start by browsing through facebook groups which are of interest to your target market.

If you are in the Make Money Online niche, then browse through groups which are about making money online. If you’re in the Make Money Blogging niche then browse through groups which are about blogging. And quite obviously these groups will be full of people who are interested in the topic of your niche and your niche website.

Then begin to add these people as your new friends, requesting their friendship, but lets not be rude! Would you walk up to someone at a cocktail party and simply hold their hand or put your arm around them without saying hello and introducing yourself? Well the internet should be no different.

Facebook allows you to type a short message to the facebook user you are requesting friendship. Type something short and simple like ” Hi, I see that you are interested in ………….. I always enjoy connecting with likeminded people and i’d be interested to hear more about what you do. Regards Nathan Hulls - http://www.WebMoneyBlog.com”

Within that short message is my top secret, ninja strategy to increase website traffic using facebook…. did you miss it? Its so sneaky, and so tricky and completely stealth that I bet you didn’t even pick it up. Okay so i’m giving myself way too much credit, but just incase you’re not sure what I’m talking about, the simple addition of my web address (including the http:// so it creates a clickable link) will increase the number of visitors to your website each day! And if you’re smart and you have an opt-in you will not only have them as your facebook friend then you will have them join your marketing funnel and potentially become a raving customer.

So there you have it folks, the top secret ninja stealth way to increase website traffic using facebook.

Just a word of warning, dont add more than 50 new friends per day as facebook can quickly ban you for spamming users.

Other than that… its a great way to build your website readership, build your database and build your targetted facebook friend base.

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Sorry!

Nathan Hulls — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:13:30 +0000

Hey gang…!

I trust this post finds you health, wealthy and wise, loving life and filled with optimisim!

First things first - SORRY!! I’m really sorry that i’ve been really slack over the past month, but I do have reasons (not excuses) why I haven’t been posting regularly.

Firstly - In just 5 weeks and 3 days I am getting married!! As you may have seen my cheeky little button to the right for ‘Honeymoon Donations’ its my virtual wedding wishing well, so if you’ve found any of my posts valuable please feel free to drop me a little token of your appreciation.

So yes, that’s all very exciting, and keeping myself and my fiance Kate, very busy.

Secondly - We’re building a new house for us to move into early next year as our very own ‘love shack’. For those of you outside of Australia, our government has an awesome ‘First Home Buyers Grant’ which is available as the name suggests to people who have never previously owned or built their own house.

Where we live in Victoria, the total grant is $36,500, of ‘Money for Jam’ which is more than 10% of the cost of our new home and land, so who could pass that up, but it finishes at the end of this month, so we’re busy working with our builder selecting colours and fittings to get our contracts finalised before the 30th of September.

Thirdly - and probably most relevant to the readers of my Make Money Blog a few weeks ago I was approached by a good friend and Austrlaian internet marketer to be a part of a team of Internet Marketers here in Australia to build a very exciting online business.

If you are interested in online business, and you’re looking for just the right business to get involved with then you might just want to check this one out.

It is a Global Online Business in the booming area of Personal Development and Business Development. It was founded by Brian Tracy and a number of other world leading authors, speakers and trainers, and is basically a membership portal with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth of leading edge personal and business devleopment training videos, audios and ebooks.

What’s even more exciting about this business is that it has a ‘Marketers Subscription’ for motivated marketers or entrepreneurs like you and me, where we can not only benefit from the content but build our own Passive Income Streams by promoting both the customer subscription options and the marketer subscriptions.

The business is called iLearningGlobal and is less than 9 months old and with under 15,000 members worldwide truely is a ground floor opportunity for anyone who is interested in building their own home based business online.

One of the leaders in our team, Eric Allen, is a founding members and after introducing only 39 other marketers to his team, is earning over $30,000 USD per month, and the potential is unlimited.

Anyway… as part of my involvement with the business we’re building a ‘Success Team’ where we’re training and mentoring any marketers who join our team for FREE! So my reason for sharing this with you is that I’d love to talk to anyone who may be looking for an online business like this one, where they can tap into and leverage the success of names like Brian Tracy, Jay Abraham, T Harv Eker, Mark Victor Hansen and more, and rather than do the hard work of building the website, developing content and continually having to update content, you might be looking for a great business that you can just promote, and sit back and reap the benefits.

If you’d like some more information check out http://www.tinyurl.com/successteam and if you want some more information either on the commission structure, or what I mean when I say Free Mentoring for our team members.

This thing has almost got me more excited than my wedding, but it really is one of those ‘Once In A Life Time, Ground Floor Opportunities’

I’d be happy to chat to you more about it, so please feel free to drop me a line, talk to me on skype (nathan.hulls) or just send me an email.

So that’s where I’ve been over the last few weeks… What have you been up to? What’s news in your world?

Please leave some feedback and comments to let us know what you’ve been up to…

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The Strength To Fly | Mindset Monday

Nathan Hulls — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:47:14 +0000

For our mindset monday this week I want to take a short lesson from the butterfly.

As humans we have a tendancy to move towards pleasure, and avoid pain. Nobody naturally moves towards or is motivated by pain.

However often while in the middle of a challenging situation, we do everything we can to escape and avoid the challenge we are faced with.

Learn From The Butterfly

Our lesson to be learnt today is learnt from the process the butterfly goes through to break free from it’s cocoon to begin its new life as the amazing new and transformed creature.

As we know the butterfly begins its life as a caterpillar and then begins the process of metamorphosis by spinning itself a cocoon where it will live in darkness while the processes of change take place.

This process of change takes the caterpillar into its new form, however…

When the butterfly is ready to break free from its cocoon, if it were to be helped by a human or any other external assistance, it would not develop the strength it needs to spread its wings and fly, as it was created to do. Without this struggle, the butterfly would not develop and would end up dying, falling short of its destiny.

If the butterfly is left to undergo this time of struggle, to build and develop its strength, to break free from its confines and the things which hold it back from achieving its destiny, it will naturally develop the strength it needs to spread its wings and fly!

Dont Run From Struggles

To apply this analogy to our lives, if we run from hard situations and prefer to hide ourselves away from confronting issues in our lives, we will not develop the physical and mental strength we need to be the very people we were created to be.

Often I see kids who have been given everything they ask for, and end up having no sense of value for what they have. The same is true with life and success. I’m not saying that we should look for struggles, or hope to have struggles in our lives, but rather, when they do present themselves be prepared to push through with an attitude of understanding that they will produce strength, patience, endurance and wisdom.

These struggles can allow us to create our own success toolkits, which we can draw on at other times in our lives, filled with widsom to overcome adversity.

We are all faced with the opportunity to run from adversity and struggles, or face them with an attitude that as we move further along on our success journey, climb higher on the mountains of success, the path will become narrower, the air will become thinner, the companions will become fewer, and the trail will become harder - but the view from the top will be well worth it!

On a closing note… the bible says in James

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

So consider it joy when you face trials, knowing that your trials, as you go through them and come out the other end will develop your faith, your belief system, your attitude, your outlook on life, and this will develop perseverance, the ability to push through, go higher, go faster, go longer, go further!

I’d love to hear from any of you who have stories of perseverance to share with the other readers, please leave comments and I’d be happy to share them in future posts as well.

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Simple List Building Secret | Explode Your Database

Nathan Hulls — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:33:23 +0000

Just last week I watched a great webinar with Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss, called Social Media Money System, where they talked about the power of social media networks such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, and how when leveraged properly they can really help you not only build traffic to your websites or blogs, but also work towards helping you build your list with targetted followers.

Now you may have heard all of the news stories about Perry Belcher and how he got one of his online businesses shut down for making untrue claims in his advertising, and if you want to see the stories, you just have to do a search on YouTube for Perry Belcher Arrested to see the news stories. Anyway, he’s pretty open and honest about it all, and I’ll be honest I am still a little sceptical and unsure about who’s telling the truth, but with that all said, he is one talented and smart internet marketer, so I’m more than happy to take the good and leave the bad.

So that leads me to my own discovery of a powerful little List Building Secret which I pretty much stumbled upon through my own efforts integrating my social media networks to build traffic to this blog and my desire to teach more and more people how to make money online.

As I’ve discussed in the past, and I’m sure you’ve all heard it a thousands times before, the money is in the list, and we all know that even if you had a list of 100,000 people with permission to email them, there’s more power in a smaller targetted list, than a massive random list.

Social media networks such have twitter, have allowed everyday internet marketers and even newbies to access what I’ll call the ‘public lists’ of the internet marketing gurus like Perry Belcher and Ryan Deis… By the By, their little Social Media Money System launch which came from their webinar last week, which sold out in the first day, would have landed them a measley $1.7Million in sales in just 24 hours… Just a little something to wet your appetite.

So back to Twitter - if you haven’t got yourself a twitter account because you just cant work out how it could benefit your business, or you just dont have time to tweet, let me start by saying GO AND SIGN UP FOR TWITTER NOW! And as you read on I have no doubt by the end of this blog post that you’ll do it…

My Simple List Building Secret - Leveraging Twitter and Another Secret Site

As I was saying, twitter allows you to view the ‘public lists’ of anyone you want, so if marketers like Perry Belcher have done the hard work to attract people who are interested in making money online, or someone who is particularly famous in your particular niche, they will have a large following of targetted followers. By simply viewing their twitter profile on www.twitter.com and clicking on the link that says “Followers” you can view their whole list of followers!

Pretty powerful huh?

So there’s a ready made list…

Say you’re running a blog about Car Insurance - funnily enough I have one right here - Car Insurance Scoop (its just one of my little side projects which i’ll shed some more light on in the near future). You want to drive traffic and build a list of people who drive cars right? Well do you think there might already be car insurance companies on twitter who have done some hard work in building a following, and maybe even because of the size of their brand they have followers who are particularly interested in cars and car insurance.

Using http://search.twitter.com or a site like http://www.buzzom.com you can search for keywords used in user profiles or tweets. Then when you find a profile which has a large number of followers, view their profile, then click on the “Followers” link.

Now you can start building your own list of targetted followers…

But how do you get them following you and subscribing to your list?

I’m glad you asked…

A lot of twitter users are using 3rd party services and applications to do automated tweets, and automatic Direct Messages when someone starts following them.

The service which I am currently using is called Tweet Later - This service allows you to do a number of things and has both a free and a paid subscription, but for the purposes of my list building strategy you’ll only need to sign up for the free membership.

So here it is…

List Building Secret - Step 1

When you have your Tweet Later account all set up, log in and add a new Twitter Account, this is done by simply selecting Twitter

Then adding your twitter username and password:

And further down on that same screen - here’s the simple list building secret.

Add an Auto Welcome message, which includes a link to your website or blog. Make sure this message is welcoming and inviting and not just a blatant spam message to get them to click on your link, but if you’re targetting the right audience and you can present yourself as an expert in the field, or passionate about your niche then they’re going to want to check it out for more information about you.

This auto welcome message will be sent as a Direct Message to new followers twitter accounts when they start following you.

List Building Secret - Step 2

As we have previously discussed, begin to research industry leaders who are on twitter and already have a large following. Seek them out, and begin to follow their followers.

The strategy behind following their followers is that, many people now use an autofollow system, whereby the automatically follow back people who follow them.

With a large enough percentage of these people following you back you will be building your own follower base.

Twitter does however have restrictions on how many people you can follow each day, and once you reach that you’ll have to wait until the next day to follow more people.

When you reach 2000 followers there is also a follower/following ratio, so its no good if you’re following 2000 people but only 250 are following you.

A simple strategy for building your twitter followers quickly and balancing out your follower/following ratio is by using a site like http://www.buzzom.com which allows you to “Flush” out people who you are following but are not following you back.

Here’s a sneak peak at a daily routine for building your twitter followers:

1. Go to a targetted list of followers - of an industry leader (eg Perry Belcher)

2. Follow as many of their followers as Twitter will allow you to in one day

3. Wait 24 hours

4. Go to http://www.buzzom.com and flush out the people who did not follow you back and return to step 1.

List Building Secret - Step 3

The main impact this will have will be to increase traffic to your website or blog, so for us to achieve the ultimate, which is to have them graduate from being a twitter follower to a subscriber on our database, we need to have a compelling offer. Something which is motivating enough for them to give us their name and email address and give us permission to contact them. An example is a free 7 page report on “Secrets to ….” in your niche market, or like I have done here, offer free Ebook downloads.

The positioning of your optin is also key to increasing your opt-in rates. If you’re targetting an english reading audience, at the top of a right hand side bar is the best position, as it is above the fold, and our brain is used to reading left to right, meaning our eyes automatically go there.

Another great place to position an opt-in is at the beginning or end of blog posts, particularly popular ones which are receiving good amounts of Search Engine Traffic.

So there you have it folks, a simple list building and traffic building secret to build your online business and make more money! Perry Belcher actually says that he averages about $1 per subscriber per month, so there’s some good motivation for you to get off your butt and start building your list!

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Is Your Niche Profitable? | 3 Keys To Market Research Online

Nathan Hulls — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:01:56 +0000

So often I hear people speak about how amazing it is to be able to turn your passion into profits, and get paid to do, or speak about or teach or train others in what you love, and how the internet has made it possible for anyone to make a full time living out of any old passion.

Whether that may be knitting, public speaking, internet marketing, golf, swimming, wine, food, whatever…

Dont get me wrong, I am all for turning your passion into profits, I even created a facebook group recently to gather people together and teach them how to do that! Turn Your Passion Into Profits - Facebook group

But I have some bad news…

If you’re the only one in the world who is passionate about your niche or topic, then its going to be pretty hard to turn that passion into profits… not impossible, but just plain hard work, and I’ll be honest, i’m not a fan of hard work. To create profits in any market you need to have A MARKET…

So one key element before launching out into any business project, is the dreaded topic of market research, we must gain an understanding of whether or not there is actually a market for a product or service within your particular passion.

The three key elements of our market research online are:

1. Volume of people

We can easily find out whether there are many people who are interested in our passion and our chosen niche by doing some simple keyword research.

Since Google has cemented its position as #1 search engine commanding over 80% of all global searches, we can quite safely conduct our market research using Google’s Keyword Research tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool will allow you to type in keywords and keyword phrases, specifying a particular region, or the entire world, and it will return the results of how many people search for that term of phrase per month, and whether or not its trending up, down or sideways.

Now specific figures will be different for each person, because if you’re able to sell a $1000 product or service to your market you’re going to need less volume than if you’re selling a $17 product or service.

So gauge whether or not you think there is much of a market by researching whether or not people are searching for your specific keyword phrases.

2. Commercial Value

Even though you may have discovered that there are 100,000+ people searching for a specified keyword within your niche each month, that doesn’t automatically mean that you could make money from it.

The way we can ascertain commercial value within your niche is to see whether or not companies are paying money to advertise.

If companies are paying money to advertise then they are obviously confident that they will receive a return on their investment.

Google Keyword Research tool also will give us the CPC or cost per click, advertisers are paying for traffic in google with the sponsored listings.

The higher this CPC value the high the commercial value of your market and your niche keywords.

3. Market Competition

We may have discovered our passion has a huge following, and high search rates, and also has a high commercial value, but lastly we need to work out whether or not this market already has massive competition.

Competition isn’t always a bad thing, but particularly when you’re starting out in internet marketing it can be frustrating to spend a lot of time developing your business and waiting for the results.

To determine our levels of competition we can see how much competition there is within Google Adwords, in our keyword research tool, but another way of determining competition in our market is to type one of our primary keywords into a google search and see how many competing websites are displayed in google search results.

In the top right of the screen Google will display a figure for how many webpages are listed for that keyword.

This will give you a final indication as to how much competition there is in your particular passion market.

This is a great place to get started, before you start forking out money to have websites built and you put your time into building a business.

That being said there are always going to be occasions when new ideas, and passions create a market which didn’t previously exist, so dont let this put you off from developing your own ideas into a successful business.

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The Breeding Ground For Success | Mindset Monday

Nathan Hulls — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:37:03 +0000

Welcome to another episode of Mindset Monday - if you hadn’t guessed I’m very passionate about working with people to build the right mindset for them to succeed as the mind is often the only thing which stands between an individual and their success. We often fall short of our goals, but fail to see the blockages which exist in our mind.

Long before Arnie was voted in a governor he said this:

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it-as long as you really believe 100 percent. ”

“I don’t mind.” - is a common phrase in society today, but there are too many people who don’t mind. As the scriptures say “A man who is double minded is unstable in all his ways.”

A person who ‘doesn’t mind’ doesn’t dream, and people who don’t dream will find themself drifting along with the crowd. To follow the crowd may mean to miss the mark for your own life. You cannot live out the dreams of another, and similarly no one else can live out the success of your life. If you don’t, no one else will. No one else can be you, so be you to the best of your ability.

When you start believing in yourself then you will begin to hit your straps and find the groove in your own life success. Your life wasn’t destined to be mediocre. Mediocrity is accepted as the norm in society today and anyone who succeeds is considered special. Let me tell you, ‘you are special.’ You were not created for a life of mediocrity, nor to simply sit back on the lilo of life floating on a river or mediocrity. Your life was created with a purpose. More than to be guided by society, but you have the opportunity to rise up and guide society.

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”

-Vincent T. Lombardi

The mind is the powerhouse for success.

Your mind can be the difference between a potential success and a success.

Each and every person is unique. Not another person who has, does or will live on this planet is the same. Therefore you have unique dreams and desires, unique ideas that lead to a unique life. However the extent to which your life is unique and inturn a success is determined by your mind. While you are unique its still possible for you to choose to follow the crowd with your actions, the way you dress, the music you listen to, the words you speak, and the success you achieve in your life. Alternatively should you choose to follow those desires and dreams, planted in your heart, you have the opportunity to be the causal factor of a dramatic change to the world.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way, but without a will, you wont!”

The Matrix - Break Free and Create Your Own Success

I love the movie ‘The Matrix’, you may have seen it, let’s look at the Matrix for a second as an analogy for you living out your life of succes.

In ‘The Matrix’, Artificial Intelligence created a computer construct (The Matrix) of OUR present day world and, through a hardwire directly into the brain, fed it to us humans who were, in reality, kept in incubators and used for their energy output as a power source for the Artificial Intelligence. In other words “reality” existed ONLY in our minds. Everything we “experience”; everything we “do” - it’s all just a dream!

Neo was presented with the opportunity to break out of the Matrix. An opportunity to reject what everyone knew as being normal, and step into his own reality, a destiny that was determined by his own desires and dreams.

As long as you believe in yourself, as long as you have faith in yourself, as long as you can dream the dream, then you have the ability to live out your dreams.

We are all faced with the exact same opportunity as we continue to ‘choose our own adventure.’ We all have the opportunity now to determine in our mind that we will no longer go along with the crowd. No longer follow the ways of society and accept mediocrity as our level of life, but rise above, take the action that needs to be taken in order to see our dreams become a reality.

It all begins in the mind. The piece of meat between your ears that has the ability to think, make decisions, and retain knowledge. That’s where the rest of your life begins, in your mind! Just as ‘Arnie’ so aptly put it, as long as you can ‘envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it-as long as you really believe 100 percent.’ As long as you believe in yourself, as long as you have faith in yourself, as long as you can dream the dream then you have the ability to live the dream.

Make A Conscious Decision

It takes a conscious decision. Neo had to decide in his mind if he would continue to live in a world where no one questioned why things were the way they were, much like a world without dreams. His other option was to break out of the matrix and live in a world where he was in control of his own destiny and the destiny of others around him. He chose his ‘own adventure.’

Do you see things as they are and ask why?

Or;

Do you see things as they could be and ask why not?

The mind is where your dreams begin. You must know and understand that your mind is the breeding ground for the adventure you choose to take on. The ability to cultivate, feed and allow your dreams to grow is imperative. A narrow mind will suffocate your dreams. The dream is only the beginning, but the ability to dream is essential.

Feed your faith and your doubts will starve to death.

Have you heard of the GIGO principle? It’s a well-known principle in the IT world where programming is concerned. It’s simple; the principle states “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” It’s the same with your life. To be successful, and to have a successful mind you must feed it with success. Think successful thoughts, feeding the faith within you.

Your future is determined by … what you see it can be … what you want it to be … and what you make it to be.

Field of Dreams - Your Mind

Consider your mind to be like an empty field, where you have the opportunity to plant any seeds that you want. Plant seeds of success and you will reap a harvest of success. Plant seeds of failure, doubt and fear and that’s what you will reap.

Your mind is where you develop your beliefs and your world view.

Just for a minute do some soul searching, ask yourself a few questions:

What do you believe about yourself?
Do you believe that you deserve to be successful?
Do you believe that you have what it takes to be successful?
Do you believe that people around you are committed to your success?
What do you believe about success?
How will you know when you achieve success?
What is your greatest fear?
Where does that fear come from?

As we journey through life, often seeds which we have not planted ourselves take root and rather than producing a harvest which creates success, we end up growing weeds which attempt to choke out our success. When we have negative words spoken over us which we take on and rather than ripping them out before they take root, we allow them to take hold by meditating on them, and giving them our attention.

Things such as fear, doubt and negativity are all examples of weeds which just have no place in our mind, but unless we understand that we have the ability to remove them and replace them with new positive beliefs and empowering thoughts we often just let them grow until they overpower the success we’re trying to harvest.

Really quickly as I finish, here are three simple steps to ensuring that your Mind, the breeding ground for success, is producing the right harvest:

1. Take Ownership Of Your Mind and Your Success

Mind your own business! Your success is your business! Your attitude is your business! Your life and where you take it is your business…

So take ownership of where you are at with your life and where you are headed.

If you are not where you want to be, identify the reasons you are where you are, and work out what you need to do to begin the journey to where you want to be.

If your field of dreams is full of weeds and not producing the desired harvest, begin some heavy digging, remove any undesirables and start over, but dont you dare play the blame game, you are in control, and although there may have been circumstances which were out of your control, which can be attributed to your current circumstances, its now up to you to take ownership, take control and begin to journey to your desired destination.

Take ownership!

2. Be Very Protective About The Seeds You Allow To Be Planted

You have the power to choose which seeds are planted and take root in your own mind.

While we dont have the power to stop certain seeds from being thrown out and scattered, such as other peoples opinions which they so graciously share with us, negative words spoken over us etc, we do not have to allow them to take root. As simply as dismissing them from our mind and not dwelling on the thoughts, as well as replacing negative thoughts or words with positive thoughts and the opposite we can take control over the seeds which are planted in our mind.

Your voice is the most powerful voice in your life, so start using it. Dont allow other people to have the most dominant voice in your world.

As well, be very careful about the seeds you allow to be sown in your mind through what you watch, and what you listen to… the media, newspapers, television, music etc.

Be deliberate about the seeds which are sown and take root in your mind.

3. Be Quick To Pull Out And Replace Disempowering Thoughts And Beliefs Which Try To Take Root

Just a you need to be careful abut the seeds you allow to be scattered or planted, if you have any disempowering beliefs or negative beliefs about yourself, about your ability to create success in your life, be very quick to remove them before they become hardwired into your belief system.

I have written about the power of confession and empowering thoughts before, but very breifly, your confession has the ability to create and cement beliefs in your mind and your heart.

On a physiological level, words you speak, must begin as a thought in your mind. You cannot speak without first thinking about those words. And after you speak, you hear those words you have just spoken, therefor you again are forced to think about what you have just said. Double Whammy!

To create new empowering thoughts and beliefs begin to speak out positive confessions.

If you follow these 3 simple steps you will be well on your way to a harvest of success!

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SEO Basics | The Art and Science of Search Engine Optimization

Nathan Hulls — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:17:41 +0000

This week I spent 2 hours consulting a not for profit on SEO basics and its amazing how just a small amount of knowledge in the basics of search engine optimization can go a long way.

This company is a reputable Australian company, with a Google Page Rank of 6 (which is very good for a company who knows nothing about SEO), yet they were only getting 1000 to 2000 unique visitors per month, for keywords which had quite low levels of competition.

The jury is still out as to the results they will get after just 2 hours of SEO basics but I would dare to commit to atleast double that traffic within a month or so after implementing some of the onsite search engine optmization techniques and strategies I taught them.

So for newbies to internet marketing, blogging and making money online, its really important to get a basic understanding of SEO in the early days as your build your website or blog.

What is SEO and How Does It Relate To Me?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is both an art form and a science which involves techniques and strategies in how you publish your website and web content to gain the attention of Search Engines (like Google) to assist with driving traffic to your website.

Now understand that SEO and search engine traffic should be just one source of traffic for your online business, never rely on one source of traffic to build your online business, as I’m sure you’ve all heard it said “Dont put all your eggs in one basket”.

Search engines can be quite temperamental, and if they make a change which takes you from #1 to completely disappearing from their radar and you’re totally reliant on Search Engine Traffic then your business could be in trouble, so while its important to focus on SEO and optimizing your website and content for Search Traffic, dont let it be your only source of traffic.

Google Search Engine is really the big daddy amongst a myriad of search engines, with over 80% of the world wide search traffic. So in most of what I’ll cover in this post, we’ll consider that we’re Optimizing for Google Search.

Other search engines include:

Yahoo!
MSN / Bing
Ask.com
Business.com

SEO Basics

There are essentially 4 elements to the basics of SEO:

Keyword Research
SEO Copywriting
Link Building
Onsite Search Engine Optimization

SEO Basics - Keyword Research

We have looked at the basics of Keyword Research in previous posts, when talking about optimizing blog posts for SEO and also optimizing for Google Adsense.

For general SEO, its important to do your keyword research as there’s no point guessing which keywords you think you should be targetting for Search Engine Traffic.

In conducting your Keyword Research start by creating a list of what I call Core or Root keywords.

Single keywords which you believe are relevant to your target market and the products or services you’re offering, and the topics your website covers.

Once you have a list of 10 to 20 core keywords open up Google Keyword Research Tool, make sure you have selected your targetted country - eg, Australia, United States, All countries and territories, and enter your core keywords into the keyword research tool one at a time and press “Get keyword ideas”.

This keyword research tool will then return results of which keywords and phrases people are actually searching for, when searching for topics related to your chosen keyword.

There is a drop down which is titled “Choose columns to be displayed:” Select the option “Show All”.

The keyword results will allow you to see the following:

Estimated Ad Position
Estimated Av. CPC
Advertiser Competition
Local Search Volume ‘month’
Global Monthly Search Volume
Search Volume Trends
Highest Volume Occurred In

The main columns you will need to take notice of are:

Local Search Volume

This column will give you the figure for how many people searched for the specific keyword, in your targetted location in the previous month.

If the column returns “Not Enough Data” it simply means there has not been a significant enough amount of search traffic for that keyword to register.

Search Volume Trends

The search volume trends give an indication, month by month of the trend of that specific keyword. For our research purposes we want to target uptrending and sideways trending keyword terms, as opposed to down trending keywords.

Keyword Research Tips

When identifying keywords to target for your SEO there are a number of elements you need to consider:

1. Develop a List of Long Tail Keywords

From the core keyword, the keyword research tool will list related keywords and keyword phrases.

The more specific a keyword, or keyword phrase is to your topic, business, service or product, the more effective your search traffic will be, and ultimately more profitable your business will be.

Its much better to rank well for a specific keyword phrase which has lower levels of search traffic, where the keyword is a ‘buying keyword’ or a much more specific keyword phrase eg ‘how to make chocolate cakes’ rather than ‘cakes’ - even if the core keyword has 100 times as much traffic.

2. Target Medium To High Traffic Volume Keywords

From the “Local Search Volume” column we can identify medium to high traffic volume keywords in your target market.

I personally consider medium traffic volume keywords anything over 1000 searches per month.

3. Research Competition For Search Terms In Google

Once you have your list of longer tail, keyword phrases with medium to high traffic volume, start to search on those terms in Google (make sure if you’re targetting google worldwide that you’re on google.com and searching the entire web, rather than just your country of residence).

When Google returns their search results, have a look and see how many other websites you would be competing with, on the top right of the search results page Google will tell you

“Results 1 - 10 of about 17,100,000 for keyword . (0.31 seconds)”

You ultimately want to identify medium to high traffic keyword phrases which have low to medium level competition.

I would consider low level competition anything under 100,000 websites, so aim for under 1,000,000 competing websites.

SEO Basics - Copywriting

The writing of your pages website copy should include a combined focus on writing relevant and informative copy, which making the use of the keyword phrases you have identified in your Keyword Research.

Its often good to write your website copy, or blog posts first and then go back over them to see how you can incorporate your identified keyword phrases.

DO NOT: stuff your copy with keywords, making your website copy obviously spammy and hard to read.

DO: Use plural, singular and ‘ing’ versions of your keywords and keyword phrases

DO: Mix up the locations of your keyword phrases - headings, paragraphcs, links etc

DO: Use semantically related words and phrases

A good format to use for SEO Basics Copywriting is:

Tell the reader what you’re going to tell them - Introduction
Tell them - body
Tell them what you told them - overview/conclusion

SEO Basics - Link Building

Google sees links which come from other websites to yours as a recommendation for your website.

The more people you have recommending you, the more impressed Google will be with your website and believe that what you have to say is more valuable than websites which have less links.

There are a number of linking elements including:

Page Rank of the linking website
Link text used in the link
Position of the link on the page of the linking website
Reciprocal linking
Paid Linking
Subject Matter of Sites Linking To You

SEO Basics - On Page Optimization

SEO Copywriting is writing the body copy of your website pages to be optimized for Search Engine Traffic, for your selected keywords.

You should use the same optimization structure for your website pages as previously discussed in Optimizing for Adsense Ads.

To properly optimize a page for SEO using the long tail keywords you have identified you want to target you must position the keywords on each of your website pages in targetted positions.

Rather than religiously following percentages here’s a good method to follow for onsite or on page SEO basics:

Use in first paragraph
Use in last paragraph
Use it every time you can naturally
Bold it at least once (not everytime)
Italicise it at least once (not everytime)
Try to include it in headings
Use related keywords and longtails throughout your content

Do that, ignore exact percents, and you’ll be fine.

Woah… this post escalated real quickly didn’t it… a lot longer than I first intended.

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