How would you like to work less and earn more?  I am going to assume that the answer to that question is “Of course I do you, Mark, you doofus.” In that case you need to get organised. I don’t really do new year resolutions  as my view is why wait until new year to do what you should be doing now. But I did resolve to get more orgainsed and streamline my business.

Step one was to stop being chained to my PC.  Upto now I’ve spent 99% of the time working on a desktop pc . My first purchase of the new year was a wireless enabled laptop. Small enough to be portable and big enough to give me a full sized keyboard with enough  processor and ram to run all my apps.

Next I wanted to be able to synchronise my emails between both my desktop and my PC . After trying several tools and solutions I settled for using google apps. I have google apps set up to retrieve all my mail from the various email accounts I have. To access these mails i just need to browse to mail.mydomainname.com and it’s all displayed for me. I can reply using any of my email addresses so don’t confuse google apps with gmail.

Google advetise google apps as a premium product costing $50 a year per account but  you can get a personal/non profit account for free by following the link for non profit organisations at the bottom of the page.

Next  drain on my time to be tackled was checking all the rss feeds I usually read everyday. Here I chose to use Netvibes which allows me to add any feed I want to view to a dashboard. I can now just log into one location and get all the news and blog posts I need.

I used to spend quite a while logging into various affiliate accounts , adsense and clickbank to check my stats, all this is now done by statsjunky,  I can also use Clicky (getclicky.com) to monitor site stats in real time. Both of the above programs can be used with your cell phone or iPhone.

So what does all this streamlining mean, well  I can monitor my businesses easier and react to changes. For example i found that one site was getting a lot of visitors searching for a specific keyword. I have now created a standalone site around this keyword.  How long from finding the keyword to the site being up? 1 hour. The great thing was that I was sat in a cafe while Allison did the weekly shopping at the time.

I am actually writing this article at the local golf club while waiting for lunch to be served.  Mathias who is visiting me for some one to one mentoring is working on his new blog at the same table (I think I have a new Convert!) This was taken just before i posted this..

Writing this Blog post

I am not suggesting that you get rid of you desktop and start working from starbucks , however start to make small changes that help you to manage your day to day routines. I have now got to the stage where I can go anywhere with wifi or internet access and work . Believe me it’s much easier to work sat on a beach than staring at the same 4 walls everyday.

Well I’ve got the the end of January before I felt the need to have the first rant of the year.

I got an email from someone who is just starting out in internet marketing having been made redundant, she was persuaded by an email from a “guru” to pay almost $500 for a product that would show her how to create a long term income. Unfortunately this lady didn’t even know what ftp was.  Now for once I don’t hold the guru 100% responsible for the situation (shock!!) I am big on personal responsibility at the moment but this does show that you need to be aware that sometimes no matter how good a product sounds it may not be suitable for you.

There are two distinct type of internet marketer that you come across in the internet marketing niche.

Type one is what I like to call the “List Whore” these are guys whose whole focus is selling stuff via their mailing list, often they can’t even be bothered to write the emails they send out and just use the ones that the creator of the product had written for his JV partners. Avoid these unless they actually give good information that you can use.

Type two is the type I call the “Sharer” these are guys (and girls) who maybe create their own products, and have blogs and try to spread the knowledge they have accumulated over the past few years. You’ll very rarely find their blogs or products being promoted by the list whores. I have had personal experience of trying to get a product promoted by the List Whores and they are usually happy to promote your products if you fulfil one of the following criteria,

a) You are prepared to sell your product at an outrageous price so that they get a decent commission
b) You have a big list and agree to sell their next product no matter how bad it is.  (This is the IM equivalent of a circle jerk!)
Needless to say I didn’t get WordPress Goldmine promoted by many of them!

Now at this point someone is going to write a comment below and say that I am just jealous of successful marketers, not so. You can be a successful marketer without selling your soul and peddling crap to your lists, just look at Frank Kern, love him or hate him for being an uber cool  guitar playing surfer  dude ,he constantly supplies good useable products and great advice.

So what should you look for if you are going to follow a marketer…? I am open to suggestions here but this is what I think.

If they create products they should produce books and products based on what they do. Not all people worth following or reading create products but they are still worth following for the insights they can bring.

They should only recommend products they have tested and used and found to be useful (I think I only found 3 or 4 products worth recommending last year)

They should be approachable and happy to spend time answering your emails (as I write this I have one of my forum members sat next to me having 3 days of one to one mentoring  let’s see Andrew Fox do that!!)

They should be realistic in their expectations,

So how do you find these good guys, here are some recommendations for you to help you get started. Go to these guys’ blogs and have a read, if you like them then bookmark the blogs.

Jennifer Ledbetter – PotPie Girl  http://www.potpiegirl.com (ok Not strictly one of the Guys but well worth reading)

Dennis Becker  http://www.5bucksaday.com/index.php

Chris Pearson  http://lostballinhighweeds.com/

So thats it for this post, got some new studio equipment arrived today or tomorow so my next post may be a video post…until then good luck

I want you to read this post then spend a few days thinking about what I am saying to you. Don’t immediately dismiss it as impractical consider it, weigh up the pros and cons and decide if it’s something you think you could do.

Before I discuss my idea with you lets consider the cost of a few things….

Eban Pagan Get altitude seminar..$10,000

Tony Robins Seminar $2595

Earn 1 K a day Seminar $595

This is My idea…

Imagine living in an community where all around you had fellow internet marketers who were spending a year living and breathing internet marketing. sharing ideas and knowledge , working on collaborative projects, outsourcing work to each other, brainstorming, creating businesses and motivating each other.  How much of an income would you be able to generate in that environment?

But don’t forget you need the  lifestyle elements  tennis, golf, swimming pool, gym and sauna, mountains, sea breathtaking views and great weather most of the year great restaurants and the shopping rocks.. .  The perfect life work balance.

Sounds like an expensive dream doesn’t it, what if I said you could live this dream for around $1000 – $1500 per month. When I say live I mean just that. Apartment costs are included food is good and cheap as it eating out.

Next month I am moving close to Marbella in Southern Spain a penthouse apartment is going to cost me €700 per month. The apartment is on a gated community with all the facilities I mentioned above. There are several Apartments available in the same development.  For a while I’ve been thinking about the possibility of an Internet Marketing Community (no not like Waco!) Just like minded marketers living in close proximity sharing ideas,  resources and supporting each other and their families…..

Spend sometime thinking about the possibilities and the lifestyle

Like the Idea???  Want more Info? email me at admin {@} income-academy.com

One of my favorite marketers Chris Remple has recently released a new product about targetting the #1 in MSN. Frankly from the experience I have had of MSN I can’t see the point of this. I checked last months stats for some of my sites that rank #1 in Google, Yahoo and MSN the traffic from those sites are as follows.

Google 711

Yahoo 69

MSN 67

and for those of you interested..EzineArticles 691

All search engines like sites to have a keyword related domain name so if you are building a site about “Solar powered widgets” then by getting a site containing the keyword you will stand a much better chance of ranking at #1 in all the search engines. 

You also need to ask yourself if you target MSN and use various methods to get to #1 will those methods that you use have a negative impact on your Google Ranking? For example 3 years ago I used a service called link vault that posted my links to random sites and in return my sites displayed related links on them.  of the 9 sites i tried this on 7 of them were de-indexed from google. Sure I had #1 in yahoo and msn but the traffic didn’t make up for 50% of the traffic I lost. 

It’s a fact of life for interent marketers that Google brings you a vast majority of your traffic if you rank well in google. As you can see from my stats  above over 10 times as much. Now I don’t know about you but i’d rather spend a few extra hours a week getting higher rankings in google than getting easy rankings in any other search engine.

Happy Columbus Day.

It’s difficult to know how to treat the topic of  Christopher Columbus, 4 Voyages to find a westward route to China and the Indies without success. He was returned to Spain in chains, He only just managed to avoid being a victim of the Spanish Inquisition. His crews were responsible for introducing syphilis in Europe and Small pox into the west indies which wiped out hundred of thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet he is still celebrated as discovering America.  Whereas John Cabot who actually discovered (well re-discovered to more precise) North America is largely ignored.

Ain’t history a bitch!

Maybe it’s the spirit of Columbus that we should be celebrating. The courage to go where no one has gone before, The Self belief that he had that he was right and he would find a way through to the Indies. The ambition to follow a different path to everyone else. The motivation to sail across the Atlantic time after time in search of a dream.

If we could just capture a small part of that kind of motivation we would be much closer to success. I was writing a blog post over at www.focusedachievement.com/blog about motivation and I was really struggling to explain how it felt to be motivated. I finally settled on it being like a child at christmas unwrapping lots of new toys but that still doesn’t really capture it.

To me motivation is something tangible I can feel it it’s like a coiled spring inside me. It’s a physical feeling but it’s hard to explain how it feels.It’s inextricably linked to my desires and dreams without them there is no motivation

Have you ever played bingo and were just waiting for 1 number to come up  or had a lottery ticket where your first 4 mumbers have come up and you are waiting for the next one.  Or maybe been playing poker and the last card is about to be turned over and you need a card for a flush. That feeling of expectation and fear is a little what it feels like to me.

Identify your dreams and you will unlock all the motivation you need to drive you towards success. It might take you a while to work out exactly what your dreams are. I really thought I wanted nice cars, motorcycles and a big house. But it wasn’t what I really wanted, it’s only in the last year since i’ve really started chasing my dreams that I now know what it is a I want.

What is it?   I’ll reveal it all in a few months time when I actually achieve it.

Get Motivated.