This weekend, I’ve been taking some time off and went skiing in Austria (Hochzillertal) together with Joerg, a buddy of mine (he has nothing to do with Internet marketing, though). It was a great trip and we had excellent weather over there. I had to take the easier slopes because Joerg isn’t that experienced in skiing and I didn’t want to let him ski all on his own all the time:

But I took one of the more difficult slopes at least twice so I could get a little more speed and have some more fun since I really love skiing.

It had really been time to take another vacation even it was just for a weekend. It’s of no use to keep working and working and sitting in front of your PC all day long. Besides that, I’m really getting overweight because of not being active enough. But I am working on melting some of my pounds again but that’s another story…

The point I’m trying to make is: Don’t lose sight of why you are building your business. You’re certainly not building your business in order to slave away like if you’re an employee again. Have something to look forward to – something that helps you to break away from your business. And I don’t mean watching TV or playing video games. Get active and cultivate some hobbies of yours. Make entries into your calendar for private things you’re looking forward to.

If you have a wife/husband and children, don’t neglect them because you are trying to build your online business. Most of the times, working 18 hours non-stop won’t get you anywhere near success. You need to work smarter, not harder! Only spend most of your time on revenue generating activities instead of reading dozens of salesletters for the latest “must have” products or lurking into forums without posting anything.

You need to know WHY you are building an online business. Is it because you want to be financially independent or because you want to be able to spend more time with your family or on activities you love? Whatever it is, don’t lose sight of it and for every 20 days you work, take at least 1-2 days off without any distractions. Do not get in front of a PC at all during that time. If you have a business which is flourishing and you think you can’t leave your business for even 1 day, then you’re doing something wrong.

Hire someone to take care of your customer support. Don’t be the person who is responsible for everything. Outsource everything that can be done by others so you can be stress free again or at least reduce your stress. One of the great advantages of a web based business is that these kind of online jobs can be done by anyone with a computer so the person you’re hiring doesn’t even have to live in your own city…

Simply have fun again and enjoy life. It is too short to just waste it in front of a computer!

Let me know what your opinion on this issue is…

Check out this video…

Warm regards,

Colin Klinkert CEO, ColinKlinkert.com	&	Frank Bauer CEO, Add2it.com

P.S – Check these member ads out:

P.P.S – Why not add the code to your site so you too can earn credits? Instructions Here

We thought so…

Yeah, true… that was a silly subject because EVERYONE and their brother would like more traffic.  But it must have worked as you are reading this blog post. 

We wanted to quickly draw your attention to a video about using Viral Marketing and Web 2.0 techniques to bring in heaps of traffic and income… something else almost EVERYONE wants more of!

Check it out…

http://vur.me/presents/VMvideo

Anyways… back to work on new features at ViralURL for all of us.

Hope you enjoy the video and e-course,

Colin Klinkert CEO, ColinKlinkert.com	&	Frank Bauer CEO, Add2it.com

P.S – Check these member ads out:

P.P.S – Why not add the code to your site so you too can earn credits? Instructions Here

You’re a blogger and most likely, you are constantly hearing about pinging or blog and ping. The thing is, you don’t know what it is and what it can do for your blog. Well, that’s fine because a lot of bloggers don’t quite understand pinging. In this article, I will explain what pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging services are.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the process of telling tracking services that a site has been updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans blogs for updates on a regular basis. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog, it is reported back to the pinging service’s site. You can almost think of ping services being just like search engine spiders – both scan sites looking for information, and both report that information back to their specific site. The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog posts.

Why is pinging useful for your blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t read your blog before will also see the ping and perhaps think “Hey, there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check it out”.

Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a ticker on the left or right side, or top of the page. The ticker is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now you know what pinging is. But which websites offer pinging…?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some of them right now.

Pingomatic.com

This one is usually the standard ping service which is listed in your blog interface. It pings several ping services at once like e.g. Blogstreet, IceRocket, Moreover and Weblogalot.

Weblogs.com

Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blo.gs

Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo and has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messenging services like AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com

Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their blogrolls (updates) through a web-based interface. Recently
updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site. Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is best to ping/sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged.

A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors because not only will you get direct visitors from these services but also valuable backlinks. And since these sites have a high authority with the search engines (meaning, most of them have high Google Pagerank), you can get easy and automatic backlinks from authority sites.

This is especially true when your links can be found on popular so called “TAG” pages. A tag is similar to a keyword. So ping as many many of these services as possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

P.S. You can enter a list of websites to ping e.g. within your WordPress interface. You can find it listed under “options/writing”!

Everyone with a website wants to be listed on Google. After all, it is the most popular search engine in the world, used by millions of people every day. It’s the doorway between you and thousands and thousands of visitors who will flock to your website once they spot you, and isn’t that the main purpose of putting up a website?

Although getting listed isn’t the only thing required for you to get visitors, you also want to achieve a good rating, a high ranking (preferably in the top 10 results for your chosen keyword) which will put you in the spotlight and which will give you the opportunity to get noticed. But perhaps your site is brand new on the block and maybe you think it’s too small to be picked up by Google. Relax – that isn’t even an issue, just sit back and look at all the options you have.

First of all, let us clear out a fundamental point: There are, as you probably know, two ways of doing things, namely the right way and the wrong way. Now, although the wrong way is clearly wrong, it is of some importance that you know it thoroughly so as to avoid it completely.

Following is, to put it mildly, the avoidable way of trying to get listed on Google:

Google provides its users with a way to put their URLs in queue for crawling at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Now the utter failure of this method probably has a little to do with the mechanics of the process. You see, once you have typed your website’s address into the space available there, it is simply put in a queue (behind oodles and oodles of other pages) for the GoogleBot (a software program designed to follow links on websites) to, well, crawl.

Anything can happen after this. For one, your site might not get crawled at all, or suppose it does get crawled (which in itself is about a million in one possibility) it might take weeks and it probably won’t even be indexed by Google (!). So ultimately there’s no telling where that URL of yours will end up going. But I am guessing wherever it goes, it won’t go anywhere near the first few pages of search results… So in other words, this way is a complete waste of time! No one has really ever benefited from it and if you ask me, no one ever will.

And now the more likely way to get listed by Google and the other major search engines.

If you want to climb up to that coveted spot on the Google search engine then simply “piggyback” on the popularity of another site. Once you add your URL to some other (popular) site, it might get a chance to be spotted by the GoogleBot and followed upon.

That chance of getting the links followed will be your golden ticket into Google. And the better the site that your link is on (e.g. high Pagerank and/or lots of high quality content), the quicker it will be followed. Nowadays, to get indexed quickly and ranked well, it’s all about having backlinks from other sites…

Backlinks from Web 2.0 Sites

So, here’s what you can do, you can either put up your URL in a queue together with something like a million different sites or you can use a little sense and put it up on a few popular sites which will provide you with the sort of traffic even a couple of a dozen others won’t. Pick a few popular sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com or Propeller.com (solid Web 2.0 sites) to plant your flag into, and soon you’ll sink your teeth right in to Google itself…

I know what you are thinking: You are probably wondering just how you will manage to get these larger sites to list you on their sites and in the course grudging me for putting you on the same chase yet again. But don’t worry – I promise it’s not as hard as it sounds. Just write some newsworthy article and submit it to these sites.

Or use a different type of Web 2.0 sites altogether: The social bookmarking sites. You can easily list your URL together with a description on sites like Del.icio.us or Blinklist, Furl, Del.irio.us and dozens more. Just create an account with these sites and you’re ready to submit your URL. Most of these sites have a high Google Pagerank and are crawled on a daily basis. This will get you into the search engines quickly. And not just into Google but into all the other popular search engines, too.

Backlinks from popular Forums

A different way to get backlinks is to join a few discussion sites and forums and get involved in discussions about topics related to your website theme. When making a post, you can put up your hyperlink along with your signature line which is a completely legitimate way of getting traffic to your site. That is to say as long as you are contributing something useful to those discussions.

Warning: Don’t try and get prompt results by pulling smart tricks like typing in your hyperlink and adding a spammy GO HERE! caption. That won’t help you earn anything apart from a good whack from the moderators of the sites. Think of a good headline for your site and use that as the description for your signature line along with your URL.

Invest some time in this and really participate in the discussions. Once you’re doing that, you will earn the liberty of sharing your URL with others. Try to use your main keywords for your link text as it will improve your search engine positions for these keywords (e.g. like this: Car Repair Guide – do not click it – it’s just an example!)

If you have a certain feel for writing and you are proficient with words then you have an advantage over others like yourself. Believe it or not, you can put this talent in line to work on your behalf.

Backlinks from Article Submissions

Write a few well researched, well planned out articles about topics which might appeal to your target market (do some keyword research first to see which keyword phrases have the least competition in the search engines). As in the previous method, there are no shortcuts here and nothing, absolutely nothing, besides quality content will do you any good. Try and act smart, don’t simply copy & paste text from elsewhere or simply try to get away with a badly done job and you will be at the receiving end of a royal brush-off from readers and editors.

Writing an article is really not as hard as it sounds. Since it’s about your main interest, a little research wouldn’t really cost you much time or labor. Record your results, go ahead and experiment with a few situations, come up with hypothetical situations to explain particular problems and provide your analysis or solutions for them. Once you have done a good job (and believe me when I say you will know when you have done a good job), proudly provide your own name and hyperlink of your site at the end of the article.

Then submit your article to the big 3 in article marketing:

EzineArticles.com

ArticleDashboard.com

More4you.ws/articles

By having a backlink from one of these sites, not only will you get indexed quickly, it will also help you to get ranked better. You can submit the article to more sites, but not always is more better. If you’re doing too many submissions too quickly, your site could land in the “Google Sandbox”. This means that you won’t get listed for at least 6-8 months and then Google will re-evalulate your site and see if it’s one of the “good” sites or rather a spam site.

Conclusion:

If you want your site to get listed in the search engines quickly, you need to get backlinks from popular websites. These links can be from Web 2.0 sites (incl. blogs), forums or article directories.

What about reciprocal linking? Well, the times for making use of that kind of 2-way linking strategies are almost over. The backlinks still count to some extent but reciprocal linking is seen as a “scheme” by Google which is used to manipulate the pagerank of the participating websites.

Therefore, if you want to get backlinks from directly related sites, it should be done as a 3-way linking. Meaning, site A links to site B. And site B in turn links to site C which is also owned by A. This way, the search engines can’t see this direct relation between the participants. And better than doing this on a separate page would be if the link would come from within the content of an article.

The higher the number of sites you are added to, the better your chance of getting your website link known. But be careful: You need to spread out your submissions over time. Doing too much too quickly can get your site banned aka getting hundreds of backlinks over night are signs of a spam site (especially if these links are all using the same link text for the URL).

As your popularity increases, so will your chances of getting high search engine positions in Google. Good Luck!

Congrats if you are reading this, it means you are most likely an RSS subscriber to more4you.ws/ as we are not promoting this offer outside of this blog post until you have had a chance to see the offer. I wanted to give you the first chance to secure your advertising spot whilst the prices are still crazy low!

Here's the scoop – I am launching a brand NEW blog that will be the center of my branding efforts. I will be making daily posts (sometimes more) about Viral marketing and general web 2.0 and current events.

The Blog is: http://www.ViralKing.com 

I am going to be promoting it and also with my new product coming out in 10 days it will link to the blog in the footer on each page as well as the fact that every cent of income from the blog for the first few months will be spent on advertising it!

So not only are you getting an amazing chance to lock in a laughably low advertising spot, but all money will be used to promote the blog (plus a lot of my personal savings) meaning that it will grow fast and really reward those who act fast.

Even those taking advertising up at these low prices, I can’t guarantee that they will stay low (even if you go on Autobill, which with this awesome offer you really must!) but I will keep it at these low prices as long as I can. Demand is selling fast so be quick. Check out the ads options here:

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As you can see, we have sold some spots already, and they will go very fast! Secure your Text Ad Spot for a very cheap $15 a month, this is Site Wide and your link will appear on every page!

Grab yourself a 125*125 Banner Ad for $50 a month, these too are site wide on the right side bar (very limited spots so act now)

Blogs like JohnChow Sell their Banner Ad spots for $500 a month and upwards! Here you can lockin your spot at a 10th of the price.

http://www.viralking.com/advertise/

Looking forward to having you with us and seeing the value in becoming an advertiser as our first advertiser did (read this)

Think back a bit… Not too far – about two years. In January, 2006 we saw one of the biggest and most successful Internet Marketing product launches this niche has ever seen – for a product that has been responsible for changing the way more people do business on the internet than any other product to date. And that includes me!

Jogging your memory?

Yes! I am referring to Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing Software and Home Study Course. And yes! It’s changed MY life and the way I do business online as well.

Even after two years, it still amazes me how many new sites launch using the software, and how many marketers still credit Mike’s course for their success.

If you recall, the entire package launched at about a thousand dollars, that’s what I spend back then.

Then it went up to it’s current price of $1497.00. Even though this is WELL worth the investment, it was out of reach for many people, maybe you too?

Now, if you are one of those people that would LOVE to get your hands on this package, but can’t afford the current price, then I have some great news for you!

It seems Mike has a small stash of “slightly damaged” copies of the package… you know, stuff that maybe fell on the floor and got the CD cases scuffed, or maybe bent up the manuscript cover; things of that nature.

If you don’t mind that kind of thing, then there’s a way I can get you a copy at a drastically reduced price – like about 46% off the $1497 price tag.

Would saving $700 excite you? Click here!

Why would Mike let them go for almost half off? Well, to be honest, he wouldn’t feel right about calling a scuffed or bent product new. At the same time, this helps get his very powerful package into more hands, creating more success stories he can point to.

But personally, I could care less. What it means is YOU get to save $700 and get it for less then I personally paid for it!

Like I said – it’s the deal of the year.

Was it worth the investment for me? Let me share with you the result of just my last site created with the Butterfly Marketing Software and following Mike’s teachings…

It’s the site you know very well… I created it together with my partner Colin Klinkert, the ViralURL.com System.

It generated US $124,435 in sales within the first 84 days. A great extra income stream.

And that’s just my last site created with the Butterfly Marketing Software. I am sure you can see now why I and many others are so excited about it.

And the best… as we implement the strategies and techniques Mike teaches in the manuscript as well as on the CD’s of his home study course, the results are getting better and better as you can see on our Alexa graph…

Speaking of the audio recording CD’s… they are fantastic. I have listened to them over and over in my car. Especially the recordings with Rich Schefren, Mark Joyner and Michel Fortin are pure gold.

Click here to grab it for yourself before Mike runs out of discounted copies!

‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

		Frank Bauer CEO, Add2it.com

P.S – I almost forgot… Mike also pays the shipping charges for you. Whether you’re in the US, or anywhere else in the world – it’s covered.

P.P.S – As if the package value isn’t enough… Mike also throws in almost every product he has ever created as an unadvertised bonus. If you added them all up, you would pay more than what you’re getting this entire package for… http://viralurl.com/presents/BFdiscount

Let’s say we’ve just signed up as an affiliate for a popular product. Now what?

How you approach this is going to depend on where you are coming from.

1) You might have an existing website and you’ve just discovered affiliate marketing and would like to implement this on your website. You already have your market and traffic. Maybe… Unless you’re just starting out. Then you need to find traffic…

2) You may have a site or several different websites and you want to start fresh and build a new website just for affiliate marketing…

3) You want to do affiliate marketing, but you don’t want to build a site… YES, that can be done!

4) You’re just starting out and you want to do affiliate marketing and build a website or landing pages to promote the programs… OR you want to build 10 or more websites.

Those are just 4 scenarios… One thing you have to be careful with online is that many people will try to sell you on ONE way of doing things. They will convince you to drop everything and go in their direction.

STOP, you don’t need to do what the herd is doing!

Everyone is unique and has a different set up and background… you can build from where you are. It’s not what you got or want that will make you a success, it’s taking massive action! So take what you have and go from there… you don’t have to start over; you don’t necessarily change directions… just add another dimension.

Unless of course you realize that you are in a hopeless situation… then just follow your gut. If you think the time and money would be better spent in another direction, then end it…

Again, this is all dependent on YOUR situation. This is not a one size fits all internet. And therefore every “guru” can only give you a plan on what has worked for HIM. It’s bad advice to do exactly the same if that’s not a market you like or are knowledgeable in!

THE BEST PLACE to be in is where your passion is… working in markets that you are passionate about will give your campaigns and efforts more energy… and you will most likely find it easier and have better results!
OF COURSE learn and emulate what the successful people are doing, but don’t get consumed with the “you gotta do this” hype… once you’ve decided what to do, focus.

The traffic that you get to your pages with affiliate programs need to be as targeted as possible to your content and your content should match your affiliate programs or vice versa.

So you should NOT have people looking for televisions coming to your computer store…

How successful you are really depends on the market you are in and how you are doing compared to your competition. If you have a competitive market like mortgages or school loans (OR Internet marketing for that matter!!), then you need to buckle down because it will be a battle and you are probably going to have to spend a lot of money to make money…

ON THE OTHER HAND… the best thing to do is to start from scratch and research markets to find niches that you can tap into. A niche is simply a market that is maybe unique or on the outer fringe… You can often break down a large market into smaller markets fairly easily.

These niche markets will probably get less traffic, but you will also have less competition.

This is where keyword research comes in. An excellent tool to research with and one I highly recommend is NicheBot…

When we’re talking about niches, normally the best niches are those that have little competition in Search Engines or in Pay Per Click Advertising… People search using keywords and keyword phrases. Find the right keywords that people are searching for and you will find a lot of traffic hitting your website… For search engines, that is FREE traffic!

So you use the tool above to find those niches. You plug in a keyword and it will bring up all kinds of results for people that have searched for that word or words in the last month AND it will also give you results for related or similar words and phrases AND it will show you how much competition there is!… cool stuff; check it out…

One last thing before I go… YOU can do well without a website. Many people are still doing this… there were recent changes to a policy at Google that put a damper on things a bit, but it’s still alive and well… it’s called Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and allows you to drive people to a landing page or sometimes (in niches where you don’t want to build a list) to a merchant straight away.

Well, I gotta go… I am currently working on several products for the German market. Yes, I finally got started doing things in german – most importantly building a list. It’s something I’ve been preaching for a long time…

People everywhere around the world are looking for a way to generate an income from home – so if your first language is not english, why not create an info product in your native language?

Stay tuned for some more great info to come! And remember… “Action is key!”

If you want to know more about getting focused, taking the right actions and simply getting the key concepts of Internet marketing right, then get a copy of my Revenue Blueprint. It will help you to take the RIGHT actions so you’ll not waste months of your time…!!

Hi,

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Again, you can pick up for free by clicking this link!

'Whatever the mind can conceive and believe... it can achieve.'
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Frank Bauer

Owner of More4you.ws

Do you even HAVE a strategy for your business?

From my observations, I see a lot of people online that are moving forward without much of a strategy. Or they are stuck using other peoples strategies and don’t develop their own based on their needs and abilities.

It is very important to understand that those that are teaching you things online, are doing what they know or have been successful with themselves. It is not necessarily the path for YOU or the only path you should take…

You need to know what YOU want:

• What market do you want to be in?
• What business do you want to be in (e.g. selling physical products, info products or just publishing content)?
• Where will your income come from (what’s your frontend/upsell/backend/recurring product)?
• Who will be your target customers and where do they hang out?
• Which methods will you be using to build your list (you ARE building your list, right…?)?

Key strategy: Diversify your traffic sources I use a combination of strategies but the most important one is to focus on list building – this way, you’ll never get stuck for traffic… and I strongly use the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

I just saw a guy the other day freaking out because Google was wiping out his business… He fell by around 400 visitors to his website per day which crushed his income.

Why? Because he had all his eggs in the Google basket! Google is the type of animal that can make changes that don’t make sense, have no ryme or reason, and simply just happen. You may think you have control, but you don’t.

That’s why you must diversify. Have a strategy that takes into account these type of things… Don’t do just one thing… Let me rephrase that… You can do one thing, but make sure that you are covered within that one thing.

For instance if you depend on Google Adwords for 100% of your income, that’s fine. Just make sure that you are not doing just one thing within that. Make sure you are not in one market or are driving traffic one way.

Things are changing rapidly

Things are in a continuous state of change online. You must brace yourself for that change. Make sure you have a strategy and you aren’t just mesmerized by some opportunity and you lose sight of the big picture.

This is a business not just a way to make some quick cash… it can be, but generally I think most of us want to have long term results and not live on the edge…

So have some sort of strategy in place for your business that insulates you from the environment. You should have a short term, medium and long term strategy and goals. Where do you see yourself in 1 month, 6 months, 5 years?

How are you going to get there – what are your personal/business goals?

There are things I do to make money now, but there are also things that I am building now that will blossom in the future or offer long term stability.

Just sit down for a few minutes and write down some of your goals and what you want out of this business. After you know what you want and have taken into consideration the environment, map out how your are going to get there… every single detail.

If you do this, you will not only find financial stability over the long term, but you will find peace of mind.

===================================================

Let me know what you think by making a comment on this post.