The Most Destructive Illusion about Success

By Michael R. Norwood, D.C., C.C.N.

Have you ever put your heart and soul into a project, just to see your very first attempts to make it succeed miserably fail?

If you have, you are no different than most other successful people.

Despite that we all are attracted to the "overnight success stories" we see on television and in the news, for most people, these stories can ultimately be more disillusioning than inspiring.

Rather than fortifying us for the long and bumpy but ultimately joyous and successful journey ahead whenever you launch a new endeavor, having the image that it's all going to happen overnight for you very likely will be your undoing.

Famed success coach Brian Tracy summed it up beautifully by saying:

"The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people fail many more times than unsuccessful people."

I personally experienced the wisdom of that understanding right after my first book was published. Like many authors, I envisioned hundreds of bookstore customers lining up for me to benevolently sign copies for them.

I'm afraid to say, it didn't quite happen like that.

I was living in Atlanta at the time and arranged my first signing at The Phoenix and Dragon - the largest spiritual/inspirational bookstore in the city.

The store was celebrating its 15th anniversary and had authors scheduled to appear throughout the three-day event.

I was scheduled Sunday at 5 p.m. - the last day and time slot of the celebration.

Brimming with anticipation, I was put into a private signing room in the beautiful store, and . . .

. . . for the next hour and half, had little more to do than to read my own book, and wonder for what purpose in the world I had felt so driven to spend four years writing it.

Despite a nice sign placed outside the room exhibiting images of both me and my book, "The 9 Insights of the Wealthy Soul," not a single customer entered the room.

As each minute passed, I became increasingly anxious.

Do they not like the title? I wondered.

Do they not like the book cover?

Do they not like . . . what 'I' look like?

After 90 minutes of this torture, I was absolutely distraught.

For the four years writing the book, I had felt a sense of mission and purpose like never before in my life.

Had God just been fooling with me?

Working a full 8-9 hour day in my holistic clinic, I had lived on a strict regimen during the four years of getting into bed by 9:30 p.m., so I could quiet my mind and feel a sense of surrender before turning out the lights at 11:00.

I would sleep with that silent potentiality, so I could wake up at 5:30 in the morning and have two pristine hours of writing before heading into my clinic.

Before I ever began each session writing, I would close my eyes for 10 minutes, and end my meditation whispering, "God, please grant me the words to touch just one person's life."

I truly was inspired, and despite my ascetic lifestyle, I knew that's what I had to do to maintain the grace in my words with which I wanted my readers to eventually be touched.

Now, sitting there alone at my first book-signing, I wondered if my entire life wasn't just a big joke.

I watched the minutes agonizingly tick by on a clock on the wall. At 6:25 pm - just before the store's closing - defeated, I began to get myself ready to leave.

And at that moment, just when I couldn't feel any worse, a middle-aged couple walked in the room.

Trying to regain my composure, I managed to hide my emotions and introduced myself.

The moment I shook their hands, I felt something shift inside me.

I began to give them a summary of my book:

"Well," I started hesitantly, "It's called 'The 9 Insights of the Wealthy Soul.' And it's a story of a WWII pilot, my dad, and the lessons he was giving me in wealth accumulation while he was facing a terminal illness. And each lesson in the story becomes much deeper lessons about life and death, and finding the greatest spiritual meaning anytime we are facing our greatest adversities."

Both the man and the woman's eyes were now glued on me. I felt a tingle go up my spine. There was something different about the way they were looking at me that I couldn't quite identify. But I didn't know what else to say. However, additional words were unnecessary.

The couple turned to each other, and the husband nodded solemnly to his wife. She then told me, "I think we'll get the book."

My heart began to pound. But instinctively, despite the impulse to jump in the air, click my heels and wring their hands to thank them for being my first readers ever and saving my life, I realized the woman was trying to say something else.

"The reason we're buying it," she said hesitantly, "is . . . our son committed suicide two years ago." She took my hand. "Maybe your story will help us get over it."

I felt my eyes glisten. I was speechless.

In that moment, I knew if I never sold another copy of the book, my four years of writing it had served its purpose.

My prayer to God of asking for the words to touch just one person's life had already been answered.

And though I would have many more years of challenges until my book did start to be bought in the thousands, this couple's story was all the motivation I needed at that point to keep me moving ahead.

And now, having heard thousands of similar stories both told to me at book signings and emailed to me by gracious readers, I have become more motivated than ever to keep on reaching people and hearing their stories.

So now, what's your story, my friend?

Regarding your own goals, did you have a similar illusion as I did of how easy you believed success was going to be in achieving them?

Despite that illusion, are you continuing to take one small but enthusiastic step ahead at a time?

And by doing that, have you also discovered that not only are you gradually changing your own life, you are changing others' lives, as well?

Don't let your dreams be destroyed by shallow illusions.

The greatest of lives are made all in the same way:

One challenge . . . one hurdle . . . one step . . . and one small victory at a time.

Rahsia Buat Duit Dengan $M$

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 7

Unleashing The Awesome Marketing Power Of Blogs With RSS And Pings

By now, you know what blogs are, how they work, how easy it is to create them, and how varied their applications can be. You have been equipped with the basics that would allow you to compete in the Internet marketing field, armed with your trustworthy web log.

Well, being competitive and being dominating are two different things, dear friend. Read on, as we’re going to discuss a super strategy that will boost your commercial campaign.

Have you heard about the fantastic Blog/RSS combo? RSS is an abbreviation for Real Simple Syndication. To put it simply, it’s like email, but your feeds would be delivered straight to the recipient’s desktop. This has eliminated the danger of spam. Before RSS, Internet marketers who have establish their own mailing lists were always afraid that their messages, which are carrying their offers, fail to reach the target reader because they are filtered out as spam. That ceased to be a problem with the advent of RSS, as messages don’t have to pass through a filtering system. Slowly, but most definitely surely, RSS is becoming the industry standard in electronic message delivery.

But what has this got to do with blogs, you might ask?

A lot!

You see, blogs can generate their own RSS feeds. These feeds are the messages that you could deliver to your recipients. Your blog entries can automatically become your RSS messages, saving you a whole lot of time and financial resources, and providing for you some stable traffic.

But that’s not all, of course. Here is the mighty Blog/RSS combo that could get your website indexed in a matter of days! The steps below are for those who are using blogs to promote their main website.

1. Download Wordpress (www.wordpress.org) and an RSS feed generator.

2. Set up the Wordpress software according to the configurations found at Top 10 Tricks For Wordpress to allow your blog entries to be generated as RSS feeds.

3. Set up an account with my.yahoo.com and my.msn.com . Yahoo and MSN, of course, are one of the leading search engines today.

4. Publish good quality entries for your blog. Include links to your main website, or you could even use your affiliate links.

5. Generate these entries as RSS feeds and send them to your MyYahoo and MyMSN accounts.

6. Go to www.pingomatic.com . One of the tools available there is a pinger that you could use to inform the search engines that new content has been added to your blog.

7. Ping the search engines.

8. The search engine spiders would thereafter prioritize your blog whenever a relevant search is
made.

9. Repeat the process.

10. Watch your page rank rise!

The beauty of this strategy is that the search engine spiders would always be made aware that your blog is being constantly updated. Search engines like that. This is why the search engine spiders would give a particular preference to your blog every time a search is made that is related to the subject of your web log. And since your blog contains links to your site or to the affiliate program you’re enrolled in, and since these links are unilateral, the activity in your site would increase and so will its value when it comes to search engine positioning.

The result? Your site will be indexed in a matter of a few days!

This is just one of the many strategies you could learn from Top 10 Tricks For Wordpress Do check itout and discover a world of potent tactics that could spell the difference between success and failure in this type of marketing campaign.

Blogs are relatively new tools in Internet marketing. Though they are popularly used in this day and age, not that many people are aware of their commercial worth. So hop aboard the blogging bandwagon, dear friend, and experience all the benefits it could bring to your business.

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 6

Blogs And AdSense

Google AdSense is undoubtedly the most popular Pay Per Click (PPC) program in the industry today. By enrolling your site under the said program, AdSense would display a series of ads on your pages. You stand to earn every time a visitor of your clicks on these ads. They don’t have to buy anything, mind you. They just have to click on the ads and nothing more. These ads are by no means random. They are contextually relevant, meaning, they are assigned based on their relevancy to the subject of your site.

Could a blog substitute for regular sites when it comes to making money through AdSense? Yes Sirs and Madams, blogs can also be provide an additional income stream through AdSense! In some aspects, a blog is a more efficient tool for this purpose.

There are three determinative factors for the success of a site enrolled under the AdSense program.

1. The Cost Per Click (CPC) that is carried by the ads assigned to your site.

2. The number of page impressions, or simply put, the amount of traffic that passed through your site. If you’ll garner a lot of page impressions, you have a better chance of acquiring a lot of clicks.

3. The Click Through Rate (CTR), which is the number of clicks your ads would get per the number of visitors who get to load your pages. The higher your CTR, the higher you stand to earn.

CPCs are a given. If you’re dead set on a subject for your blog, then you will just be attracting a certain group of ads. But if you wish to make a blog for the primary goal of making money online, then you have to choose the right keywords before everything else.

Basically, your blog would be assigned certain ads based on the keywords prevalent in its entries. There are some keywords that would attract ads that pay high, and there are those that would attract ads that pay low. The trick is in finding the high paying keywords around which you will create your blog.

Here are some tips that could help you find those keywords with relative ease:

• Create an account at adwords.google.com . Adwords, of course, is the advertising partner ofAdSense. When you become a member, you could take a peek at how much the going rates arefor certain keywords.
• Visit www.adsensearena.com . This is one of the very few sites that give information about highpaying keywords for free. It would rather be kept a secret by those who have discovered it, sotreat this information with care, dear friend.
• Subscribe to my newsletter via This Link . Keyword rates change frequently, and there are times when I do send out the newest batch of the hottest keywords to my subscribers.
  

The number of your page impressions really depends on the traffic that you would be able to generate for your blog. Blogs would have an easier time with this because, as we’ve previously discussed in past lessons, search engines love them. But of course, this is not set in stone. If your competitors, for example, are also using the blogging strategy, then you’re all in equal footing. To get the edge, do try David Pankhurst’s special report on How To Conquer Your Niche With Wordpress. David would share some absolutely mind blowing techniques that would tremendously boost your blog’s page rank through a simple manipulation of the Wordpress software. Check out this once in a lifetime offer at Top 10 Tricks For Wordpress and you will be delighted with what you’ll see.

Increasing your CTR is an entire subfield in itself! There are a plethora of strategies dedicated for this purpose. We have discussed some of these tactics in my newsletter, as well as my own blog at Blog URL . These include the choice of ad design, the placement of the ads, and the colors to be used, among other things. I’m telling you, dear friend, increasing your CTR has become a science of sorts in recent months!

In the next lesson, we will discuss some really advanced strategies that would blow you away, to wrap up this course about blogs.

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 5

Blogs And Niches, Or, How To Make A Blog Its Own Business

In the previous lesson, we have discussed how blogs can help you generate traffic for your main website. But what if you don’t have another site? Or what if you want your blog to be your main website, the exclusive carrier of your moneymaking ventures?

This can be done, of course. Such is the versatility of web logs.

Standalone blogs are best utilized for online businessmen who have decided to pursue what many people call as nicheing. Yes, the word is ungrammatical, but it is a term that many Internet marketers have come to embrace with fondness. Nicheing involves the creation of many sites that cater to particular niches. Niches, of course, are very specialized markets, most of which are so obscure that they do not garner the attention of businesses, hence creating high demands with low supplies. The purpose of nicheing is to find these markets and provide for their needs. These enterprising businessmen would earn through the following ways:

• Creating and eventually selling products that aim to serve the said niches.
• Selling existing products that the said niches need.
• Providing for information that the members of the said niches can access for free, and enrollingthe site that contains the information in a Pay Per Click (PPC) program like Google AdSense.
  

Regardless of what path the businessman would decide to take, he should first create a site that would serve as the repository of his commercial methods. Niches can be very rewarding. Since there is but a few competitions in the field, your search engine placement is sure to be higher than usual. Traffic would also be at a sustainable level since the members of a niche have nothing else to visit. This would mean a greater possibility for a sale, if you’re selling a product, or a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) if you’re enrolled in a PPC program.

Now, making a site can be quite cumbersome. You have to deal with the aspects of web design, graphic creation, and content writing among other concerns. What more when you have to create numerous sites for numerous niches?

Thankfully, blogs would make things a whole lot easier for you. Every businessman who has attained success with nicheing can attribute the same to their proper exploitation of blogs. Whereas it would take you a couple of weeks to come up with 10 websites, it would only take you a couple of hours to come up with 10 blog sites. The sheer convenience and ease of web logs have made nicheing a very potent business model.

Blogs can very much substitute for a regular website, dear friend. As we have previously discussed, high quality content is, ultimately, what will drive traffic to your site, and this kind of content can easily be carried through a blog. Also, you don’t have to change the entire page whenever you want to update your content, as you would with a regular website. With blogs, all you have to do is to write your update in a designated box and press the publish button. Of course, different blogging software have various features, but none comes more loaded than Wordpress (www.wordpress.org).

Blogging is the way to go if you want to create, and maintain, several niche sites. And Wordpress is the weapon of choice for most Internet marketers. To fully realize the potentials of the medium, therefore, you should be able to exploit all the features that Wordpress does offer. Again, David Pankhurst’s excellent report on powerful Wordpress secrets (Top 10 Tricks For Wordpress will help you excel in this area).

In the next lesson, we’re going to discuss how you could efficiently integrate the Google AdSense
program into your blog, and make it a passive income generating machine.

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 4

Creating A Blog That Would Promote An Existing Website

If you belong to any of the following groups, then this lesson is for you.

• You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for the same. The website could be serving as an online store for your enterprise.
• You need a venue wherein you could promote your affiliate links.
• Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolledwith a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.
  

Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online fulfillment.

You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won’t mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman would fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who would get to visit your site, the more potential clients you could have.

And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:

1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at www.wordpress.org

2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely
educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.

3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your
affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant’s site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.

4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.

5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the
attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However,
there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject.
You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it would be able to outperform its
competitors in the search engine rankings. There is a very effective way to do this, but as much as I would want to share it with you, I am barred by copyright laws. Instead, let me give you a lead to something that you would not regret. David Pankhurst has prepared an exclusive and thorough report that you could get from Top 10 Tricks For Wordpress. This piece contains amazing strategies that you could use on Wordpress that would guarantee your blog to top the search engine game, and stay there for a very long time. Quite frankly, the knowledge you could derive from this very vital resource is cutting edge, and it would be the only weapon that you’ll ever need to leave the rest of the pack behind.

6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.

7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers.

8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love changing contents, so publishing new entries would greatly increase your blog’s page rank, and consequently, your main website’s traffic.

9. Accepting links from other related blogs would also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this would provide for an added stream of visitors for you.

10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site for the Google AdSense program. This would give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in the next lesson.

Blogs are excellent promotional tools for your existing business. Use them well and you will harvest the rewards in a matter of weeks.

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 3

How To Set Up A Blog

As we have mentioned in the previous lesson, the ease by which you could set up a blog is part of its appeal. This is why it has exploded in popularity ever since it was introduced almost a decade ago. Blogs have an intuitive interface that anyone would be able to immediately comprehend and manipulate.

But even the simplest things have their secrets, and often, the people who know them are the ones who derive the most benefits. Blogs, despite their easily accessible features, can also be exploited through some steps that not a lot of people know about.

But first, let’s tackle the basics. How do you go about in setting up a blog?

First, you have to decide whether you want your blog to carry your business message on behalf of your enterprise, or if you want it to carry the business itself. The former would require a pre-existing site and a pre-existing business, both of which will be promoted by your desired blog. The latter would require a specific niche that you could target, thus assuring a solid market which your blog would cater to. These would be discussed more in the coming lessons.

There are two ways by which you could establish your own blog site. Let’s take a look at them.

1. If you’re a complete newbie with things like this, it would be easier for you to just sign-up in any of the many blog services out there. It’s just like signing up for an email or a forum account. Just fill up the details, verify your email address and you’re all set to go. These blog sites allow you to customize your pages, and subsequently, to publish your entries almost immediately after writing them down. Try to check out www.blogspot.com and www.blogger.com as they are the most popular free services in the blogging world. The problem, however, with these free blogging sites, is that they would not seem professional enough for your potential clients. If you want to make your blog site the primary hub of your business, then it would be better for you to consider the next option instead.

2. You could avail of a blogging software, which is basically just like an HTML editor, albeit specifically designed for blogs. With these tools, you could create and tweak your blogs online and simply upload them to your web host server under your own domain name, just like how you would an ordinary website. It’s funny to think that you have to pay for most of these blogging software, but the best one, bar none, you could avail of for free. That’s right. Wordpress is slowly becoming the industry standard in blogging software technology with its multitude of amazing features and dedication to functionality and aesthetics. You could download the program from www.wordpress.org and most certainly, you won’t regret the few megabytes that would be added to your hard drive.

Regardless of what option you decide to pursue, you will realize how convenient and enjoyable blog publishing can be.

But again, to come out on top of every field, you have to possess knowledge that other people don’t have. In the coming lessons, we will discuss some amazing strategies and fantastic secrets that you could use to realize the full potentials of blogs.

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 2

Exploiting Blogs To Explode Your Profits

Allow me to make one thing clear before we proceed, dear friend. You cannot make money from your blog alone. You cannot make money just by writing down your entries and publishing them for all the world to see. Such would be a wrong assumption, and anyone who would claim otherwise would just be taking you for a ride.

When people say that you could earn from blogging, they mean that blogging should be used as a carrier of a business message. A supplement, if you will, of a moneymaking machine that is already in place.

This moneymaking machine can be your own home business if you’re trying to sell your products or if you’re peddling your services for some potential clients, or it can be an affiliate program you’re enrolled in and you need to promote your affiliate links, or a host for the Pay Per Click (PPC) program you joined so that you’d be able to increase your earnings. Regardless of the business model you chose, a blog would most definitely help you maximize their profit and meet their goals, and fast! But you must first have an existing business, this fact is undeniable!

Now, how could you exploit a blog to boost your business’ earnings?

The answers are as plentiful as the many potentials of web logs, dear friend. Let us take a look at them:

• A blog can serve as your business’ official website. This is a very convenient option for businessmen who are not that well acquainted with the intricacies of web design. A blog is very easy to use, and it is just as easy to update. You don’t have to spend countless hours polishing it up, as the system is very serviceable, efficient, and even fun to use.
• If your business already has a website, a blog can be set up to complement it. Search engines loveunilateral links, and by posting entries on your blog which contain links to your business’ officialwebsite, you will be giving the search engines what they want. Likewise, you will be generatingadditional traffic for your site through the visitors who would get to see your blog.
• Blog entries are compatible to another emerging Internet marketing phenomenon: Real SimpleSyndication, or RSS feeds. Use them together and you’ll have a lethal combination that wouldhave your site’s page rank rising in a matter of hours! We will discuss this in-depth in latter lessons.
• Blogs have their own linking network. This has led to many instances of blogs garneringthousands of visitors in a matter of hours after it is put up. Imagine how much traffic you will beable to generate then after a few days!
• Search engines love blogs! We’ve mentioned this in the previous lesson, but we have to repeat itfor emphasis. Search engines love blogs! This is the primary appeal of web logs for Internet marketers. Blogs can actually accomplish what many search engine optimization (SEO) tactics cannot!
  

In the succeeding lessons, you’re going to learn how to set up your own blog as well as some secret, and powerful, techniques that you could use to fully harness the potency of this medium.

MAKING MONEY WITH BLOGS, Day 1

A Brief Introduction To Blogs

Internet marketing is a continuously evolving field. Everyday, people are discovering something new that could help them increase their earnings. Novel uses for items that people once thought were just for fun have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for many online businessmen.

One of the most important “discoveries” in recent months is the use of blogs to generate some income for the user. More and more Internet marketers are hopping aboard the blogging bandwagon, as they have realized the power this medium wields.

But what are blogs and how do they exactly help us make money online?

A blog is the colloquial term for a web log. Originally, it was meant to be a journal, or a diary if you will, where the user can post his thoughts about certain issues, the happenings of his day, his likes and dislikes, and similar ideas.

Setting up a blog is quite easy. There are many blogging services out there that offer user-friendly interfaces and free hosting to boot. Let me digress for a bit, and I apologize in advance. Though free hosting is well and good, leave this for blogs that are more personal in nature. If you wish for your blog to earn some dough, seriously consider getting a domain name and a reliable web hosting service for it.

It’s the more professional route to take. After all, if you expect your clients to spend money on your home business, you must spend some money for them as well, albeit, not as much as what you want to get in return.

Blogs have always been popular among casual Internet users. They are very easy to get into. Just jot down your thoughts and you could publish the same with the click of a button. There is no need to change the source code of the site. There is no need to upload your pages every time you update them.

Blogs do that for you automatically.

Additionally, your readers can reach you with ease as well. Blogs have an instant comments feature that adds a new level of interaction between the author and his audience. There is no need for cumbersome emails as your visitor can leave a message as soon as they read your entry.

Also, blogs can easily create a network of sorts. Linking is not only provided for, but encouraged. On the menu bar of every blog site, you’d find an area reserved for links. What does this mean? You’ll have thousands of visitors in mere hours after posting!

Most importantly, however, is the fact that search engines adore blogs. Nay! Search engines LOVE blogs. For some reason that we could only speculate on, the prominent positions in search results seem to be saved for appropriate blogs. Many say that this is because of the constantly updated content that changes the pages’ source codes, which eventually pings the search engine spiders. Others claim that it’s a built-in factor in the search engines’ algorithms. Regardless of the reason, it cannot be denied that blogs have better chances of attaining a higher page rank in search engine results.

With everything that’s going for it, it was just a matter of time before Internet marketers would be able to exploit the power of blogging. And today, online businessmen from all over the world swear to the potency of blogs in carrying out their business messages, and in some instances, in carrying the business itself!

In these series of lessons, we’re going to discuss how you could harness the potentials of blogging, and how you could make them work for your home based business and for better profit.