It’s been quite some time since I made a post on this blog. In truth I’ve been very busy offline and have only just started getting back in the saddle as it were.
My reading materials have been very oriented toward self improvement of late and I have been reading a lot on “The Law of Attraction” - you’ve probably heard a lot about it via “The Secret” [I have watched it and it is a very interesting DVD btw, worth a watch or three].

Anyway, long story short - I managed to get embroiled in a forum thread which had been started due to a misunderstanding about the way blogging/RSS and syndication works (and alas some erroneous finger pointing took place). Naturally I chose to set the record straight but in trying to do so was met with a lot of suspicion and negativity.

The more I tried to explain my reasons (which I thought were pretty obvious - but I guess the meaning of the message is the response you get), the more it seemed to set various “opinions” off [Funny how so many people are long on opinions and very short on facts…]

I guess whatever state my thoughts are in right now would seem to indicate more positive thoughts are required though! Ahhh, the law of attraction gone mad…

Moral of the story:

a) Law of Attraction skills are a work in progress…
b) If someone has misrepresented/wrongly accused/offended you online - let it ride, it ain’t worth it, your intentions no matter how honourable can all too easily be misconstrued.

May your God go with you,

Tom

PS: Speaking of good reading material btw - I thoroughly recommend you check out Steve Pavlina’s blog (if you haven’t already done so).

Tags: self-improvement, selfesteem, relaxation, motivation, self-help, self esteem, time+management, achievement, confidence, goalsetting

A couple of years back, I bought the John Reese monster course Traffic Secrets. Not to everyone’s budget at $999 a pop that’s for sure, although if you’re interested I can arrange $250 cashback (when your guarantee expires) if you purchase through my affiliate link.Even if you’re not interested, the above sales letter by Michel Fortin is just about as good as it gets!. Read it and take notes.
Anyway, I’m rambling, a new course has launched by Sameer Khan and from what I’m hearing it’s a good investment and a fraction of the ticket price above.

It has to be good…

Why does it have to be good?

Well, he’s using a copy of my eBook Adwords Power Tips as a bonus so that shows impeccable taste

Click Here For More Info On Search Engine Traffic Secrets.

Here’s a quick preview of some of the features of the course:

Search Engine Traffic Secrets Revealed consists of over 130 pages of in-depth information on

1) Search Engines

2) Strategizing Your Keywords And Links

3) Submitting To Search Engines

4) Using eBay As A Search Engine Accelerator

5) Achieve Higher Rankings with Press Releases

6) Blogging Your Way for More Traffic

7) Auto-Pilot Blogs & Podcasts i)Auto-Updating Blogs

8) Instant Quality Traffic (Paid)

9) Special Report: Free Traffic

10) Special Report: Performance Traffic

11) Special Bonus: Viral Marketing

12) Special Bonus: Buzz Viral Power

Plenty in there to keep you chewing - only if you do go and get it, please do me a favour and apply each and every bit of it, there’s nothing worse than having tons of bought eBooks on your hard drive gathering dust (I should know…)

All the best,

Tom

Technorati Tags:
search engine traffic secrets, traffic secrets, john reese, michel fortin, sameer khan, sales letter, good investment, adwords power tips

Perhaps you are someone who is Internet aware and want to get more income through affiliation with monetized websites and referring others to them, correct?

Affiliate programs work like so: You earn commissions when you send individuals to sign up, use a service or buy a product with the website you promote.

There are 3 basic types of affiliate programs found in the Web. These are:

1. Per-Click Affiliate Program - The money you receive depends on the number of clicks
generated by your website. The typical payment for such program ranges from US $.01-$.30. This is the lowest among affiliate programs because “clicking” can be generated easily and is susceptible to fraud.

2. Per-Lead Affiliate Program - Payment usually come from “sign-ups” your website generates. When visitors enter their e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other information, you will be compensated. Since generating sign ups are more difficult
than clicks, the range of payment is from US $.10-$5.

3. Per-Sale Affiliate Program - These are the most popular affiliate programs. Also called a “commission” program. You will be paid on the sales generated from your efforts. Commission percentages range from 5-15% for physical products and 25-75% for digital products - depending on your agreement and the type of product sold.

As an affiliate, you need to consider the following:

- Determine your target market before your product. If you know there are ready made customers, finding suitable products is easy.

- The next step is to concentrate on a topic for your website you are strongly interested in. It is better to concentrate on a small area then work around it. After doing this, select affiliate programs closely related to your theme and link them.

- If you are serious in generating more income in lesser time, find out which are hot in the market at the present time. Become adept and well informed in one of these and make sure you link it with affiliate programs suit the theme/topic.

- Try to also consider products which sell well and have a high demand in the Internet. Such products include bargains and coupon sites. Aside from these, information products such as white papers and digital devices give high commissions and good profit margins.

According to an Ernst & Young study computer related gadgets, gears and devices are the most bought items in the market with 40%, followed by books at 20%; travel is 3rd with 16% followed by clothing at 10%; music has a share of 6% and gifts and investment have 4% each.

- Get your own domain name for your website which is unique and memorable. A domain name gives an impression that you are a serious professional.

- Create newsletters you can distribute around the Internet to remind visitors of your website’s presence.

- Make sure you offer good, if not, the best products and services. Quality first or your reputation will suffer.

- Look for affiliate programs paying good commissions, an obvious but oft overlooked issue.

- Track your promotions. These should provide you real time information in determining
which working program you should concentrate on more. Traffic is a valuable commodity, you need to know where you are sending yours and how much it is making you.

- Sign up with companies that offer residual income commissions but be wary of the conditions and stipulations that are stated in affiliate agreements.

- Go easy on promo banners and links and make sure that the affiliate programs you placed share a common theme with the site. Visitors will be turned off when they see a sea of banners and links in the site. Keep your site themed.

- Research companies before signing up with them for affiliate programs. Ask for references and contact them.

Should you be interested in affiliate programs, you can check out sites such as ClickBank (www.clickbank.com), LinkShare

(www.linkshare.com/new) and Commission Junction (www.cj.com). Visit sites such as http://www.refer-it.com/ and

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/ for directory listings and reviews.

One website you absolutely must visit is AffiliateExponent.com

All the best,

Tom

Technorati Tags:
affiliate revenue model, affiliate programs, earn commissions, popular affiliate programs, commission program, bargains, coupon sites, information products, profit margins, affiliate agreements

Found an interesting blog entry detailing this PDF download.

Customer Service is a huge issue in any industry. It is interesting how the company highlighted in the report use the metaphor of a milkshake an an insistence to look for alternatives to the word “No”.

All the best,

Tom

GrabACoffee.com - Free eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness
SelfHelpTips.com - Your #1 Resource for Self Improvement
PDQProspects.com - Prospects To Customers

Technorati Tags:
customer service, free ebooks, self help tips, grab a coffee

What is it?

“Podcast Generator is a free PHP script released under GPL that lets users upload media files via a web form and automatically create rss 2.0 w3c-compliant podcast feeds. It also features a web administration and a dynamic web page displaying new podcasts.”

http://podcastgen.sourceforge.net/

All the best,

Tom

GrabACoffee.com - Free eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness
SelfHelpTips.com - Your #1 Resource for Self Improvement
PDQProspects.com - Prospects To Customers

Technorati Tags:
free podcasting resource, podcast generator

There is a saying by Henry Ford that rattles around in my head henever I hear the term:

It goes:

My son loves to hear that one. NOT! as his generation would say - he’s 10 now but when he becomes a teenager, I’ll have to duck his right hook I reckon!

So what are these self limiting beliefs?

A belief is a fundamental aspect of who you are, it shapes what ou do and how you think of yourself. We all have our own individual beliefs which may be at odds with the way the world round us actually sees us.
Have you ever thought:
“I can’t do that” or
“I’m not good enough to do that”
only to be told by your friends and colleagues how much they believe you can!?

For the full article, click here…

All the best,

Tom

GrabACoffee.com - Free eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness
SelfHelpTips.com - Your #1 Resource for Self Improvement
PDQProspects.com - Prospects To Customers

Technorati Tags:
self limiting beliefs, free ebooks, wealth, happiness, self improvement

I recently read about a certain website looking for poetry submissions (this is a very big website in the Poetry genre - and from the looks of things there are plenty of copycats). A lot of people are crying foul and indeed out and out calling their tactics a poetry scam.

Find out more here…

All the best,

Tom

GrabACoffee.com - Free eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness
SelfHelpTips.com - Your #1 Resource for Self Improvement
PDQProspects.com - Prospects To Customers

Technorati Tags:
poetry scam, self help, poetry submissions, free ebooks, self improvement

I mentioned how I upgraded this edition of Wordpress to V2.0.3.

Unfortunately it has had an unwanted side-effect:

Users can register to post comments, but alas they cannot post them due to access permissions. This is of course unfortunate and I am looking into a solution. The fact of the matter however is there is a lot of information/misinformation available on the support forums.

It could take a little time…

The galling thing about this is the upgrade process went without a hitch, no error messages and all appeared well from the admin point of view.

It’s funny how even though Wordpress is free (and I’m a strong advocate and believer in Open Source software), you still feel irked by things going awry.

(Note to self - Must be more tolerant re software development! - lol).

Will update this blog as and when I find a fix so you don’t go through the same hoops as me.

Why is this important I hear you cry? Simply because I can’t hear you “cry” - if you can’t comment, I don’t know what you want to say.

All the best,

Tom

[Update: Tried out the advice listed here, alas no joy as yet]

GrabACoffee.com - Free eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness
SelfHelpTips.com - Your #1 Resource for Self Improvement
PDQProspects.com - Prospects To Customers

Social Bookmarking Tags:

Del.icio.us, Jots, Furl, Spurl, Blinklist

Technorati Tags:
wordpress upgrade problem, open source software, health, wealth, happiness, self improvement, prospects, customers

Just a very quick note to let you know I have constructed a new eCourse for the legendary “Master Key System”. You can sign up right now by visiting the following link:
Click Here For The Master Key System eCourse

All the best,
Tom
GrabACoffee.com - eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness
SelfHelpTips.com - Your #1 Resource for Self Improvement
PDQProspects.com - Prospects To Customers

Distributing your blog posts across the blogosphere is an essential part of “getting noticed”. I have collated what is a pretty comprehensive list of ping services you should look to include in your ping list.

True you can ping an aggregated source (like pingomatic) and your posts should be picked up far and wide eventually.

But why wait?

Wouldn’ t you rather have your posts streak across the Internet sooner rather than later?

I know I would.

This blog is driven by Wordpress and I have just found out automatic pinging doesn’t necessarily take place using the update services facility. The Wordpress forums show an old bug (allegedly fixed) where ping URLs must end in a trailing slash.

So, I’ve added the slash to the list below and fingers crossed, this post should be pinged across the net very quickly indeed.

The “Full Ping List”:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://1470.net/api/ping/
http://api.feedster.com/ping/
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php/
http://api.moreover.com/ping/
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping/
http://bblog.com/ping.php/
http://bitacoras.net/ping/
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC/
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php/
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc/
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt/
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc/
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc/
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php/
http://ping.myblog.jp/
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.blogg.de/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php/
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php/
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2/
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx/
http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz/
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2/
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b/
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php/
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2/
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2/
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates/
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1/
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php/
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping/
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi/
http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.imblogs.net/ping/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud/
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php/
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php/
http://www.rssfwd.com/xmlrpc/api/
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

All the best,
Tom

PDQProspects - More Prospective Customers For Your Business
SelfHelpTips.com - Self Improvement Resources
GrabACoffee.com - eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness

Is “Tag and Ping” the next big thing?

I first got the heads up a couple of days ago from Jack Humphrey (of Powerlinking fame) on “Tag And Ping” (not to be confused with Tagged.com btw).

If you remember blog and ping and all the hype surrounding it last year, this seems to be the 2006 equivalent. The Internet Marketing community still seems largely unaware of the method (other than a select few) but given Sean Wu is about to unleash Tag And Ping - The Next Generation of Blog and Ping on the general public in a few short days, it will no doubt be a matter of months before the new system spreads like wildfire across the internet marketing community.

Like Blog and Ping, Tag and Ping will in all likelihood suffer from abuse but given folksonomies and social bookmarking are firmly establishing themselves on the internet with they myriad of services springing up, it is highly likely this technique is here to stay.

I have already updated this blog to reflect much of the advice dispensed by Sean (see the Technorati Tags, Directory Tags and Social Bookmarks at the end of each post) and look forward to seeing what happens with this - the internet’s next big thing.

All the best,
Tom
PDQProspects - More Prospective Customers For Your Business
SelfHelpTips.com - Self Improvement Resources
GrabACoffee.com - eBooks for your Health, Wealth & Happiness

Would you like a domain name which could potentially be worth thousands, maybe millions of dollars (all for the price of registration @ $8.95?)

I’ve been scanning blogs, forums the news and article directories for 2 months now and yesterday I found what I was looking for…

The news went public.

You may think all the great dot com domain names have been long since gone - and you’d be right - kind of…

On March 7th, Perry Marshall, Jonathan Mizel & Glenn Livingston released some information on a new technique to improve your advertising effectiveness. They witnessed stellar results.

They also asked their customers to refrain from telling all and sundry for obvious reasons. Well, the cat’s out of the bag now (I saw an article with the info published yesterda) and I have had this step-by-step eBook explaining what you need to do to get yourself a great domain name.

Waste time now and you can be sure your competitors will not - Get over to GrabACoffee.com for more info.

Happy domain name hunting

All the best,
Tom

MarketingSherpa have just released an excerpt from their ECommerce Benchmark guide. It makes for very interesting reading:
Benchmark Summary - Click Here

You can get an insight into the winning strategies you need for web ecommerce.

In the first graph alone you can see PPC is the biggest traffic source for high growth internet companies, the other biggie (although a reiteration of fundamentals rather than anything else) is how closely the leaders monitor (i.e. test and track) their own performance.

More to come…

All the best,
Tom
GrabACoffee.com

What follows is a list of human emotions, it will always be an abridged list due to the inadequacy of language expression (in other words - I’ll add to it when I find more lol). Refer to this information when you need to find empathy with your copywriting.

A fun resource to help check your writing out (at least short headlines) is found here:
www.aminstitute.com/cgi-bin/headline.cgi

Feeling Guilty?
ashamed
undeserving
sentenced
judged
damned
convicted
condemned
remorse
contempt
disgrace
villain

Feeling Confident?
assured
sure
certain
positive
balanced
grounded
brave
proud
safe
stable

Feeling Happy?
elated
thrilled
smile
cheerful
delighted
glad
pleased
humour

Feeling Lonely?
empty
abandoned
void
hollow
nothing
aloof
distant
alone
sunken
desolate
bleak
withdrawn
detached

Feeling like c*ap?
rejected
worthless
shy
timid
useless
unimportant
ignored
left out
humiliated
pathetic

Oh Woe Is Me…
dejected
depressed
melancholy
sorrowful
glum
forlorn
low
dismal
blue
down
gloomy

It’s Behind You…
tense
anxious
condcerned
scared
insecure
afraid
nervous
worried

For more information - please refer to the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions

All the best,
Tom

GrabACoffee.com

There are lots and lots of “gurus” on the net these days.

It’s hard to see the wood for the trees. I hope I never have the term “Guru” associated with my name (after all it is a four letter word) and now has predominantly negative connotations.

Instead, “professionalism” is what’s called for - that doesn’t mean the person you look to is “perfect”. What it means is they have “walked the talk” rather than “talking the walk” - sure they’ll make mistakes, provided they’re honest about it you’ll learn even more.

Rather than blindly following the next leading light on the Internet and clogging up your RSS feeds and inbox with autoresponder offer after autoresponder offer, make sure you gauge quality delivered.

What you derive in terms of value is the true measure of an Internet Marketing Professional, not how big their list is or how much money they earned (with blanked out cheques attempting to establish credibility).

The constant delivery of useful information (can be paid, can be free) is the mark of a true professional.

Something we all should strive for.

Who are some of my favourite Internet Marketing Professionals? Well there are quite a few, but to keep things brief I’ll nominate just 3 for now:
1. John Delavera
2. Jason Lewis
3. Paul Myers

All the best,
Tom

GrabACoffee.com

Why am I doing this?

Two websites - two main thrusts:

Self Help
Business (Self Help)

1 Blog - Centralization - Easier for me to have a single point of administration, and hopefully not a single point of failure!

More to come very soon.

All the best,
Tom

I must confess to being absolutely all over the shop recently - now, instead of just one site to maintain, I thought I’d heap an extra dollop of work on top and instead work concurrently on 3:

GrabACoffee.com
PDQProspects.com &
of course this one.

Moving forward, I am using this blog as a master blog for both PDQProspects.com and SelfHelpTips.com.

PDQProspects.com related posts will all go below the Business category, business as usual for all other categories.

Watch out for a lot more blogging…

All the best,
Tom

Arrrrgggghhhhh!

How often do you suffer from Technology Overload and Stress!!!

I have just found out from one of my subscribers (a big thank you to you Frank) that my blog posts were not visible using Internet Explorer. A bit of digging around and I found the problem - without getting too technical, I omitted a tag in a header.

Right that’s as technical as it gets.

No matter how hard you try, you have to accept that to err is human. I guess I’m just as human - perhaps even more human than the next guy by that definition! The above example is just one of the frustrations SelfHelpTips.com has thrown at me since it’s launch a couple of months back.

Personally, I have put together the entire site you see - this explains why it’s in places a little rough around the edges - lol. But seriously, I couldn’t draw a circle without a compass but that didn’t stop me getting this website up and running.

It’s not my first site, it’s not my last either - I’m in a constant state of flux learning new things - be they technical, mind, body or spirit related. I suppose if I sat down and thought about it all too hard I could easily become overwhelmed with “the mountain” there is ahead, and the sharp incline already behind.

I’m sure you can identify with this, let’s face it there are times in all our lives when we think we cannot surmount a given obstacle. The trick of course is to perservere and continue, keep the momentum going and make sure that momentum is taking you in the right direction.

It’s soul destroying to find you have busted a gut for months only to be further away from your goals. Here speaketh the voice of experience, but that’s another story…

Speaking of goals, how are you getting on with the goal achievement course?

Keep at it, I promise it’s worth the effort.

So no matter what obstacles you currently face, keep the destination in mind and make sure you reward yourself along the way - it can be a lonely long road with no end otherwise!

If you’re having one of those days with technology overload like me, remember there’s always tomorrow…

“May your God go with you, whereever you are”

Wishing you the best of success,
Tom O’Brien
Editor
Self Help Tips.com

Or as I’d normally write it “Alkalise to Energise”.

I am running through the Anthony Robbins “Get The Edge” course right now. One of the sessions deals with “Energy” and the focus of that particular CD is to do with your diet.

You are what you eat after all.

There are some pretty incredible stories on the CD demonstrating the benefits of a high alkaline diet - particularly if you up the ante by detoxing for at least 3 days and superhydrating yourself with high alkaline drinks (Wheatgrass is one of the core constituents).

So, duly inspired, I went to my local health store and purchased a bottle of “Green” alkaline drink. Upon first sniffing the concoction, I was brought straight back to where I grew up - next to my house was a cornfield and I could smell it straight away.

I thought I’d have a hard time drinking it but to be honest it didn’t taste that bad at all.

It’s been a few days now and I can tell you, I do have more energy - I haven’t gone the whole hog and “detoxed” but instead have supplemented my diet (normally pretty good) with the drink - and lots of water.

Verdict:
Highly Recommended.

May your God go with you, whereever you are.

Wishing you the best of success,
Tom O’Brien
Editor
Self Help Tips

I’m writing this piece not as a New Year’s resolution - the timing is coincidental.

You see, we all have our foibles and ‘getting up’ has been one of mine recently - whereas I used to get up at an early hour, of late I have slipped into the shady underworld of the duvet darkness…

Yes, it’s nice to have a lie in, being all toasty in bed whilst the world awakens to a chilly or more often than not chilly and wet start here in the UK.

But I’ve decided to change my course and arise early - 0630 or earlier on weekdays and 0730 or earlier on weekends. And I’ve got to do this 25 out of the next 30 days - more on that later.

Why am I telling you?

Simple.

It’s a matter of committment, every little bit of extra pressure exerted on me will help me achieve this goal. I’ll post back in here over the coming month to see how the tally is progressing…

Why 30 days? Well we are creatures of habits - if you can establish a new habit for 30 days, you are very likely going to keep that habit going - this information has been known for several decades dating back to the early Space program with NASA. I’ll touch on that in another post in due course.

Why 25 out of 30?

Ahh, good question - I’m only human after all

Wishing you the best of success in 2006,
Tom O’Brien
Editor
http://www.SelfHelpTips.com