davtom.net
Chasing the dream… and finding out exactly what that means
Chasing the dream… and finding out exactly what that means
Aug 25th
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Google.
They are of course the most popular search engine in the world at this time, yet I still get frustrated by some of the results I get from them, especially when I’m looking up programming terms.
Google AdWords wants too much money for some of the phrases I would like to use to send traffic to my web pages, yet since we are talking about Google, they don’t tell you how you can improve your quality score for landing pages to reduce the fees you pay.
I also find some of the things they say very arrogant.
Yet, they do some good stuff, and one of the things I’m going to talk about today is something that I haven’t seen any of the “usual suspects” promoting. Probably because there’s no money in it.
My favourite feature from this service at present is that once I have confirmed that I own a web site, which you do by uploading a file to your host or adding a meta tag to the head section of your web page, it gives me details of the keywords that I rank for on that site. It also gives me the number of impressions I am getting for the keywords I rank for in any given period, and it gives me click-through rates for organic listings.
Not only that, but the click-through rates are also presented in a tabular form, where you will see what the CTR is when your site ranks top, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th to 10th, 2nd page, or 3rd page or lower. It also tells you the number of impressions you got at that ranking level during the period, and the average position you held during that period.
Armed with this information, you can then go about optimising the relevant pages of your site for the given keyword, if it’s worthwhile to do so. You can make that decision by looking at the volume and estimating the number of clicks per unit period you would get if you optimised for that keyword.
What’s really great about this is that you can get all this information for free, without violating Google’s terms and conditions by scraping their results. It’s a good companion to Google Analytics, but it goes further.
If you want to make more money, use Google Analytics to find out what pages of your site and what keywords make you money and what the conversion rate of those pages and keywords are (and you can even do this for AdSense now), and optimise the keywords that are getting you conversions.
There’s a lot more stuff, too. You can see the external links to your site that Google knows about, and what pages they link to. You can see the anchor text that people are using to link to your site. You can see the most common keywords found on your site. You can see what your internal link structure is like. You can see how many Google subscribers there are to your feeds.
You can submit sitemaps, and find out how many of your pages are indexed. You can check your robots.txt file. If you’re moving a site, you can tell it about the change after you’ve set up your 301 redirects. You can speed up or slow down the rate at which Googlebot crawls your site content.
Google even scans for malware, and any detections will be shown in Webmaster Tools. I am told that it may even tell you how to remove the malware if your site has been hacked.
It can also tell you generally how fast your website is, and suggests ways of improving the load speed.
This is basically Google’s SEO toolkit, and perhaps that’s what they should have called it. I like it, and I thought I should tell you about it, just in case you weren’t aware of its existence.
Aug 9th
From: Dennis Becker
Are you spending countless hours trying to make a success with Internet Marketing? Do you wonder if the “gurus” who show you their bank account statements are really pulling in those numbers, or are the photos doctored? Have you bought the e-Books, the CD/DVD courses, the reports, and spent more than you’ve earned? … You’re not alone, but you CAN break away.
What kind of income are you looking for? What have you tried already? How frustrated have you become? What are you willing to do to break away from your J.O.B., or maybe to just get some extra income so that you can pay down your debts, get a nicer home or car, or give your family what they deserve and you so desperately want to provide for them?
For less than the cost of a single dinner for 1 at a cheap (really cheap!) restaurant, you can learn how to give yourself and your family the lifestyle you and they are so deserving of. What will it take? An extra $50 a day? $100 a day? $200 a day? $500 a day? I reached that level, and more, and I’ll teach you how to get there, if you’re willing to take action, starting today.
How much time are you spending now chasing success? If you’re like millions of men and women with dreams of using their computers to generate full time or part time income, you’re ending up earning less per hour than the U.S. minimum wage. And some (like I was for almost three years) are actually losing money.
What if I told you that I believe that I can start you on the path to internet marketing success today? Would you be interested? Would you be willing to read my story? Would you believe that in October 2005, I was most likely even more frustrated than you are now, about this whole Internet Marketing business.
Let me tell you, I tried it all. The cost of the courses and the monthly expenditures on the paid membership sites were no object. I wanted it so bad. You name it, if someone said it worked, I bought it, I bought into it, and I tried it. Every new scheme I tried started out with high promise, and was recommended by someone who supposedly had made a fortune using those same techniques. But not me.
“… start making money with this method now …”
Dennis Becker’s 5 Bucks a Day strategy is brilliant in its simplicity. This is something that ANYBODY can (and should) put into practice IMMEDIATELY. I am dead serious when I say that you don’t need any additional skills to start making money with this method NOW. Whatever you already know how to do, no matter how insignificant you think that knowledge is, is enough to start TODAY. This information can be effectively put to use with absolutely any skill set, and no matter what your experience level, this information put into action can create incredible financial returns.
John Rogers, www.15xROI.com, Washington, USA
5 Bucks a Day (a.k.a. “5 Bucks a Day, Jr.”) is the story of how I finally realized not only my initial lofty income goals, but more. It isn’t about a new scheme or skill, so much as it is about a mental approach. 5 Bucks a Day is best described as a strategy. Once you understand the strategy (the same day you read 5 Bucks a Day for the first time), your life might change the same way mine changed when I envisioned this strategy for the first time.
The strategy is not “black hat”, “gray hat”, or “white hat”. The strategy is not something that will get you banned by the search engines. The strategy is not software or hardware. The strategy is not difficult or complicated. The strategy is not something that will require you to upgrade your computer, or your operating system. Best of all, the strategy is not expensive to learn or to implement, either in terms of time or of money.
The strategy is something that can work regardless of whether you intend to earn your income through affiliate marketing, merchandise sales, setting up AdSense sites, running eBay auctions, writing and distributing articles or press releases, or whatever other methods you use to market yourself or your sites. The strategy could be used for offline income generation as easily as online (though my background and the examples contained in the report are all online projects).
In fact, the strategy is something so simple that you’ll be frustrated that you didn’t think of it yourself. Or maybe you did, and just didn’t do anything about it!
“… help me break through to the next level …”
I’m in the same boat you were – this method of thinking is REALLY going to help me break through to the next level. The problem is that so many people “learn” the wrong way to do things from the start (me included), and build on that bad foundation (which I did). Honestly, I’m printing this off and going to read it ONCE A WEEK to make certain I change my methods and ways of thinking about my business. Thank you for this!! My advice – if you are thinking about purchasing this: Do it, print it, and sit down and read it. Put it under your pillow at night and absorb it through ESP. Don’t let it sit on your hard drive for all eternity!
Dave Gammage, Kansas, USA, www.TheHBL.com
Although I would guess that every reader of “5 Bucks a Day” will implement the strategy in a different way, I’m going to prime the pump by divulging my first project. Just days after the ah-ha moment that defined the strategy in my mind, I had implemented a project that made not just $5 a day, but over $38,000 profit in a 2-month period of time. Granted, that was unusual, lucky, can seldom be recreated, but it happened because of some specific easy to learn skills, and a mental strategy that caused me to be in the right place at the right time. How long did it take me to implement that particular project? About 2 hours.
Can you do the same thing? I can’t guarantee anything specifc (see the disclaimer below), but I can put into your hands, 5 minutes from now, a strategy that worked for me, and I’m fairly confident that it can work for you if you have the dedication and passion for success that I had.
“… almost could not sleep all night …”
Dennis, I bought and read your eBook last night and almost could not sleep all night thinking about it. It hit my sweet spot on the head. I am sure many of us are in the same predicament and I am grateful that you took the time to write about your experiences and how you got out of the slimy pit of “lack of success” many of us have dug for ourselves. All I have to say is: Awesome and Thanks!
Mike R., Springfield, Virginia, USA, www.Essential-Oils-for-Health.com
Are you curious yet? I’m not going to tell you any more about the strategy, you’ll have to read the report for yourself. There is very little fluff in 5 Bucks a Day, Jr., you’ll be able to read it in a single sitting. It’s short enough to encourage you to read it multiple times. Simple as the strategy is, there are some nuances that you’ll want to make sure you don’t miss, so multiple readings is recommended. If you want a large number of pages, sorry, go buy the latest and greatest $497 course on DVD.
If you’ve already tired of the hype that fills your email inbox every day, tired of spending money on new courses every week or month, tired of failing to make any progress, all I can say is maybe, just maybe, 5 Bucks a Day is for you. It worked for me, in fact it worked spectacularly for me. Plus, if you’ve read the testimonials above (all freely given, I assure you), you see what it’s done for others. Is it right for you? There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?
Thousands have ordered the original 5 Bucks a Day report, and paid a much higher price. In fact, if you go here to our main web page, you’ll see that price and what they get for their money. One thing included with the full strategy is access to our members forum and all the bonuses inside.
I decided to offer a stand alone version of 5 Bucks a Day for those that want to get started on the road to success without a larger financial investment. For many, the book will be all they need.
If at a later date you decide you want full benefits of membership, you’ll be able to upgrade by only paying the difference in price between the then current fee and your purchase price here, so you won’t lose a thing.
I’m confident that 5 Bucks a Day will do for you what it’s done for so many others, and I’m making it easy on you to get started to the success you’ve only dreamed of so far.
The book is virtually the same in both cases. With 5 Bucks a Day, you receive follow up bonuses and attention by way of our membership site and forum, with the Jr. version, you’re not entitled to that service. That’s the only difference at this point. If you just want to read the book at this point, and find out what everyone is talking about, this is a great deal for you. You can join the membership site later if you choose to, after you’ve seen what the strategy can do for your income.
Ordering is simple, easy, and guaranteed. The price? Unbelievable but true, no, you don’t have to pay us 5 bucks a day, all we’re asking is:
Why $19.99? Why so little? Why so much?
I’m charging $19.99 for this report, not more, not less, for the following reasons.
Remember, when you purchase “5 Bucks a Day, Jr.” for only $19.99, you’ll own one of the most talked about reports that’s come out in the last 6 months (go ahead, do a search with your favorite search engine for 5 bucks a day and you’ll see what I mean).
Make a life changing decision today, order “5 Bucks a Day, Jr.” What do you have to lose?
Jun 30th
The 4-Hour E-Commerce Site Training Webinars was a 4-week course that I ran in February 2010. People paid to be on this course. It was aimed at people who can work computers and the web OK, but are not necessarily web publishers.
I intended to sell the recordings, but since WordPress has now moved on to version 3.0, I do not consider that the content is saleable any longer. However, I still think it is of value. It’s just that you would have to do some things differently from how the course describes it. You could either obtain the versions of the software used in the course (not recommended because of potential security issues) or you could use the current versions and change what needs to be done.
Here is the first webinar recording, Start Selling With WordPress (106 minutes approx):
The mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-1.mm (right click, Save As) – you will need FreeMind to use it.
The HTML version of the mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-1.mm.html (right click, Save As; or save it when the page has loaded)
Republishing code:
<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”480″ height=”390″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”src” value=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8gerOGQA” /><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”480″ height=”390″ src=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8gerOGQA” allowfullscreen=”true”> </embed></object>
Here is the second webinar recording, Terms Of The Trade (127 minutes approx):
The mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-2.mm (right click, Save As) – you will need FreeMind to use it.
The HTML version of the mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-2.mm.html (right click, Save As; or save it when the page has loaded)
Republishing code:
<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”480″ height=”390″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”src” value=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8geujLQA” /><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”480″ height=”390″ src=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8gerOGQA” allowfullscreen=”true”> </embed></object>
Here is the third webinar recording, Plugin Paradise (117 minutes approx):
The mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-3.mm (right click, Save As) – you will need FreeMind to use it.
The HTML version of the mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-3.mm.html (right click, Save As; or save it when the page has loaded)
Republishing code:
<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”480″ height=”390″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”src” value=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8geyVKAA” /><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”480″ height=”390″ src=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8gerOGQA” allowfullscreen=”true”> </embed></object>
Here is the fourth and final webinar recording, Advanced Technology (111 minutes approx):
The mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-4.mm (right click, Save As) – you will need FreeMind to use it.
The HTML version of the mind-map is here:
4-hour-ecomm-site-4.mm.html (right click, Save As; or save it when the page has loaded)
Republishing code:
<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”480″ height=”390″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”src” value=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8gey5YwA” /><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><embed src=”http://blip.tv/play/hex8gey5YwA” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”480″ height=”390″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>
What now? Well, I do webinars on other topics as well that may be useful to you, and the best way to be informed about those is to sign up to my mailing list. You will find a form at the top of the right-hand column that will allow you to do that.
You have the bulk of the course here, but there were some additional bonuses included in the commercial version of the webinar series, which were as follows:
I have bundled these together as a package that I call the 4-hour E-Commerce Site Companion, and you can purchase it directly from this page. You will get access to a ZIP file that contains all of the products which is approx 195 megabytes in size.
There was also a copy of Paul Counts’s Traffic Generation and SEO Course awarded for successful completion of one of the challenges. That is available here. The price rises each time somebody purchases it up to a limit. I highly recommend the course, which is excellent value; please see the sales page for details.
Finally, if you think this content has been useful, please let other people know about it! You can send them to this page, or you can publish the video recordings directly in your own web pages if you wish. I have applied a Creative Commons non-commercial, no derivatives licence to the video content. By non-commercial use, I simply mean that the content should not be sold. You can sell advertising space around this content as you wish.
I will answer any comments as time permits. Thanks!
Jun 26th
I’ve learned a lot about myself when I posted the Mindset Rant. This may in fact become a turning point for me. There are several points I now wish to make, which seem to me to be the most important. Again, the hope is that they will help people.
What am I doing about mindset?
I’m going to refocus my efforts on areas that I believe will work for me. For example, one of my weaknesses is organic traffic generation. I’ve seen a lot of products that tell me how to do it, and I know the basics of how to do it, but I tend to fall down at the actually doing it point. Actually, if I can do that, then I can set up a load of high-quality advertising websites and have done with it. Plenty of money to be made there.
I also need to work on myself. I clearly have self-esteem issues, and I do have a tendency to procrastination that I must work on. I stumbled upon a resource that I think will probably be rather useful in helping me work on these issues, which is the following:
http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org/
It’s basically a free, online e-book, apparently taken from a published work, that takes you through many of these issues and discusses them. One of my problems is that I am somewhat in limbo, having reached a certain plateau in my life. I have achieved most of the things I want to do with my life. I need to work out what person I want to be, and this transcends internet marketing completely.
Please feel free to comment further. I will be reporting on my progress in this blog. Again, that is in the hope that this will help others.
Jun 17th
I’m going to post today about mindset, and exclusively about mindset. I’m not going to sell anything with this post. I want to encourage a discussion through the comments.
If you’re like most people in internet marketing, you already know countless ways of making a successful business. Yet very few people accomplish a successful business.
Why is that?
I saw a video of a seminar recently where somebody was talking about mindset. I’m not going to reveal the identity of this person, but the gist of what he was saying was that if you’re not already making tons of money out of internet marketing, you’re just playing around on a computer.
He’s wrong, and in fact, he angered me with some of the points he made.
I don’t make tons of money out of IM. I hope I will, of course, in the future.
I make quite a bit of money out of two products that I released. Keyword Transformer and Limited-Time Offer Script. So why am I not releasing more products like these?
Damned if I know.
I make some money out of selling advertising space to Google through blogging. All of the traffic on the two sites I’m thinking about is organic, and one of these has potential to become very large, with a few tweaks. So why am I not working on that?
I don’t have an answer for that.
So I must be broken in some way. This is in fact the conclusion that I’m coming to.
My mind is stopping me from succeeding. Or, at least, enjoying the level of success that I would like.
While I’m not flitting from opportunity to opportunity any more, or at least I don’t believe I am, most of the products that I have launched don’t make me money any more, except for the software products that I have authored.
This doesn’t mean I haven’t put in many hours getting new products created. That’s what made me angry when watching the recording of the seminar speaker I mentioned. I have not been squandering my time, “playing with my PC.” It’s just that the efforts I have gone to have not produced the results I desire yet.
And while I’ve tried some self-help products, there seems to be a great deal of waffle in this area that’s totally unbelievable.
I’ve seen people talk about the “Law of Attraction,” so I did some research. As I understand it, the basic idea is that you imagine your life to be as you want it to be, and then, somehow, magically, it all comes together.
Sorry if I scoff, but there’s no way on earth that me imagining that I live in Buckingham Palace is gonna cause a cheque to come through the door, payable to me, with enough money written on it for me to buy out the Royal Family. Or even enough money for a can of Coke.
I looked at “The Secret” on amazon.co.uk. There are plenty of comments that basically state that the product has caused its authors and distributors to find joy and the level of success they desire, but virtually nobody else.
These products could be the way for me to succeed, but if so, then I simply won’t succeed, because there’s no way that I could possibly believe in them.
I’ve tried self-hypnosis works. I’ve tried a “Mental Bank” idea that was fielded to me, even though that seemed like hocus pocus. Well, it didn’t work for me; that’s for certain.
Some of this stuff may have helped me to some extent, but I’m not at the level I want to be.
I was re-reading Dennis Becker’s 5 Bucks a Day ebook the other day. The basic principle is that every week, you should try to come up with a project that will provide you with a profit of $5 per day, on average. If you give yourself two weeks holiday and manage 50 of these in one year, at the end of that year, you will have an income of $250 per day. $91250 per annum. Or £61684.58 per annum, in my language, at the current exchange rate as provided by Google a moment ago.
That would be a pretty good income for me. Let’s say that it would take me four years, because I can’t afford to risk my job yet. Shouldn’t be too hard, should it?
So why is it?
As I said, I wanted to provoke a discussion. So what I want you to reply with is your thoughts.
Have you solved the problem for yourself? Excellent! Let us in on your secret. It might work for some other people too.
Have you got problems similar to me? Do you know a sure-fire way to succeed, but something’s holding you back? Write about it. Maybe somebody can suggest something.
Note: If you want to link to a product with an affiliate link in the comments, or your own product, I don’t mind. Just disclose your connection with the product when you make your link.
This will be fascinating.
Jun 1st
Jun 1st
May 9th
I don’t know how long this offer will last, but if you want to speed up your Windows PC then you can get last year’s version of TuneUp Utilities for free. Follow this link to get it:
http://www.tuneup-software.co.uk/promo/idkuktuu2009
I have used the software myself, and it seems pretty good. I think it will improve the performance of my Windows XP netbook.
I haven’t tried it on a Vista or Windows 7 PC, but I know it works OK for XP.
It looks like it usually sells for about $30.
You need to provide your email address to get it. Obviously, this is what they’re up to. They want your email address so that they can send marketing stuff to you. This is no big deal. You need your real email address to receive a link to a website that will provide you with the download link and a product key to unlock the software.
I am not affiliated with the sellers and I will not benefit in any way if you take up this offer.
May 5th
I’m going to host a webinar soon showing me setting up some new split testing experiments.
I’ve decided to make this webinar free. Feel free to tell others who may be interested about this.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/519540704
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
System Requirements:
PC-based attendees: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000
Macintosh®-based attendees: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer
The webinar is provisionally scheduled for Wednesday 12th May 2010 at 23:00 BST (UK local time).
If there are any questions about what is to be covered, or if you want to make sure something is covered, please add a comment here. Thanks!
Apr 23rd
If you have just the one computer, you have a problem. You have got no easy way of doing backups (except maybe to an external hard drive, USB or other memory stick, or recordable DVD or CD media).
If you have multiple computers, you can solve that problem easily by copying your important files between them, but then a different problem manifests itself. If you work on projects on multiple machines and you “hot desk,” you may not have the files you’re working on on your current computer. Also, you have to make sure that the important files are copied in both places.
There are a couple of solutions to this. If you’re running with a Windows PC, there are two applications that allow you to synchronise the contents of your folders. This means that the two folders will have exactly the same contents. It is handled by performing operations on the remote folder periodically to ensure the same files exist on both sides with the same contents.
For Windows PCs, there are two applications that handle this. SyncToy is free software from Microsoft that can perform this task.
Karen’s Replicator will do the same job, but it also allows you to set up a schedule, and keeps details of its history. It is free for non-commercial purposes; a relatively cheap licence is available if you want to run it in connection with your business; and there exist a number of other programs that come with that licence.
These are fine if you run Windows all the time, but there is a solution that works on other platforms, including Mac and Linux. You can even access your files via an iPhone.
It stores a copy of your files on secured servers on the internet, and then when you make any changes to the folder that you set up to synchronise, those changes will be copied to the server on the internet. They will then propagate to any other machines that you have connected to the service on which you have set up a similar folder.
The service is intelligent enough to know that if your computers are on the same network and powered up and running at the same time, they can talk to each other to synchronise the folders between them, and the transfer does not have to proceed across the internet; this saves time. Of course, the files are still copied to the servers on the internet, regardless.
The transfer over the internet takes some time, depending partly on the speed of your internet connection (BroadBand recommended). This is not good for copying huge quantities of data, unless you’ve got the time to wait for it. For tens of gigabytes of data, it could take days! But for smaller quantities, and especially if you’re working on a project, it’s a good service.
The service is positioned as a backup solution as well. Again, if your backup needs are light, then it’s likely to be good for you. If you have a lot of data that you wish to back up, you’re better off getting a hard drive big enough to handle the data, and using one of the software-only solutions described above.
The service is called DropBox, and at the time of writing it is free for up to 2Gb of data and has subscription options to allow you to use it for up to 100Gb. If you use the link below, you and I will get an extra 250Mb on our accounts for free!
Click here, sign up for DropBox and get an extra 250Mb for free now!