Saturday, July 17, 2010

How Pete Cashmore Grew Mashable Into a Top 10 Blog

Pete Cashmore founded Mashable in 2005 as a one writer blog. Today, Mashable employs more than 30 people and is one of the biggest and most profitable blogs in the world. Mashable’s numbers are simply staggering. Over 10 million readers per month, over 2 million followers on Twitter and 230,000 fans on Facebook, plus millions in revenues. Mashable is a perfect example on the growth potential of blogging. And guess what? He did it with a blog that doesn’t talk about making money online!

So, how did Cashmore do it? Well, all you aspiring bloggers and would-be media moguls better get ready to take some notes. In this four part interview with Bloomberg Venture, Cashmore discusses Mashable’s origins and how he’s managed to scale his small business into a thriving player in the large world of technology, blogging and media.




View the Original article

Friday, July 16, 2010

Why I just sold all of my possessions (and killed my Facebook account)

I’ll admit it. I’m a bit weird. I always have been. And maybe you are too, and that’s what makes us “special.” Or at least that’s what our moms always told us. I like doing “experiments” on myself. I think it’s a great way to grow as a person and to learn more about yourself — which can help in one’s personal or business life.

I once read how Leonardo Da Vinci slept only about 3-4 hours a day by taking short 20-45 minute naps throughout a 24 hour cycle. Many years ago, I tried my own sleep experiment after I found myself pulling a lot of “all nighters.” I decided to go every other night without sleep. So I would stay awake for stretches of 30-35 hours straight and then crash for 9-12 hours. I got a lot of work done by doing this.

And I was able to do this for about 3 months straight – sleeping only every other night. There was only one problem… it put me in the hospital. It had weakened my immune system and I ended up with a bad case of vertigo. Horrible, horrible stuff. I was basically DIZZY all day, everyday, for about 2 weeks until it finally went away. So I, obviously, went back to a normal sleep schedule and refused to pull “all nighters” anymore. I had bad insomnia for a long time but eventually got over it. If you’re pulling all nighters and going without sleep, I recommend you don’t. It’s just not worth the damage it can do to your health.

But I’ve done many other “full immersion” types of experiments on myself over the years, and most of them didn’t have bad health results – thankfully. My point is… you can learn a lot about yourself if you take yourself out of your normal comfort zone and really ‘challenge’ yourself by trying little experiments and personal challenges.

AND I’M DOING IT AGAIN.

Check this out. I just finished selling (or giving away) all of my personal possessions. Not too long ago my life consisted of a massive 6-bedroom house (with many rooms I never even went into!) and 5 cars. Yes, FIVE cars. I’m a car guy, what can I say.

I had accomplished what many consider to be the “American Dream.” I had the huge house and all the toys. The Lamborghini, Ferrari, BMWs, a Rolex collection, an expensive wardrobe, amazing furniture, a massive home theater, a 1,000 gallon saltwater aquarium, the works.

And now I have NONE of it. And I’ll explain why in a moment…

Here are some “quick facts.” For the first time in over 20 YEARS:

I don’t own a car.I don’t own any furniture.I don’t own a TV.I don’t own any books.I don’t own a huge closet full of clothes.

AND…

I don’t have a HOME. Not a house, or apartment, or anything.

By now you’re probably thinking, “John, what the hell are you doing!?” I decided to do all of this because I wanted to do a new experiment on myself. It’s a challenge of MINIMALISM.

If you haven’t yet heard about minimalism, or read anything about it, you should. Not only can it (I believe) improve the quality of your life but it can also make your business a lot more profitable. Minimalism is essentially focusing only on the 3-4 most important things in your life (or business) and ELIMINATING THE REST.

There many opinions on minimalism and how to apply it, and some approach it differently. Do some Google searches for “minimalism” and you’ll find lots of great blogs about it. It’s really a growing ‘revolution’ of sorts.

I don’t agree with everything he teaches, but a decent book you can read is The Power Of Less by Leo Babauta; and he’s someone with 6 kids. That will get you started. Everyone will have their own take on minimalism. But I’m willing to bet you can benefit from it.

WHAT I HAVE LEFT…

So you’re probably wondering, if I got rid of all that stuff, what the heck do I actually have left? And how will I live? Here’s a full list of the only things I now own:

A small 28L backpack (that holds everything below)5 t-shirts (4 short sleeve, 1 long sleeve)1 pair of jeans1 light jacket2 pairs of shorts1 pair of running/trek shoes5 pairs of boxer briefsAssorted toiletriesClothesline & large ziplock bag (for washing clothes)1 MacBook Pro 15″1 64GB Wifi iPad1 iPhone 41 Livescribe Pen & small notebookMy passport & credit cards

THAT’S IT. That’s all the ’stuff’ I own. ALL OF IT. Here’s a photo of my backpack (with everything in it) except for my 15″ MacBook Pro which is in the photo next to it.



View the Original article

Landing Page Case Study - Invoice Bubble

July 15, 2010 in Landing Pages

Rounding out my landing page coverage, I'd like to share some insights from a page in the wild that does a nice job incorporating the principles we've been discussing here. 



View the Original article

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Tweeting for Beer at The Austria Vancouver Club

Yesterday, I was at the Austria Vancouver Club for its annual summer festival. Located in Richmond, the Austria Club is a place for Austrian nationals to hang out. It’s also a place where time stands still. The average age of club member is like 100

View the Original article

How To Put Your Email List On A Diet

One thing John stresses that every blogger should do is create an email list. And for good reason as it’s how he makes the bulk of his earnings every month (if you don’t have an email list then sign-up for an Aweber account now). But, an often over-looked aspect of having an email list is the clean-up.

Unless you follow a proper diet and exercise, as you grow and get bigger your body will store unwanted fat. The same can be said for your email list. As your subscribers list gets bigger it starts to collect unwanted fake or non-existing email addresses and subscribers who are generally uninterested or didn’t realize they signed up for your newsletter (yes, this happens even though they confirmed).

There are many reasons to put your email list on a diet:

It can save you money

View the Original article

Friday, July 9, 2010

Who Wants Tickets To The Yonex Canada Open?

The Yonex Canada Open 2010 happens at the Richmond Olympic Oval from July 13 – 18 and I got tickets to all the games! I’m really looking forward to this because I have yet to step inside the Richmond Oval. For those who don’t know, the Yonex Canada Open is a badminton tournament that attracts some of the best players in the world. They’re playing for over $50,000 in prize money.

36 Tickets Up For Grabs

If you live in Vancouver, or plan to visit between July 13 – 18, and want to check out the games, reply to this post with your best reason on why I should give you a ticket. I have 36 tickets to give away. If you want a 100% sure thing on getting a ticket, come to this week’s Dot Com Pho. Everyone showing up will get tickets to the Open.



View the Original article

The Blog Profit Camp Ultimate Package

I opened Blog Profit Camp with a $500 bonus review offer. The first 50 students who registered got a free review on this blog. As you can imagine, that came and went in a heartbeat and the offer is no longer available. However, I have a decided to extend the offer for the Ultimate Package.

$941 of FREE Bonuses

is the best blogging deal on the Net. You get $941 of bonuses for FREE, including:

Squeeze Theme to make custom squeeze pages (sells for $197)Squeeze Camp 12-week course on making money with squeeze pages (sells for $147)Sales Page Theme to make customer sales pages (sells for $97)Review on JohnChow.com to kick start your blog (sells for $500)

The $941 is not “made up” value either. That is the price people pay if they want to buy the items separately. But you can get it all for FREE with . To take advantage of this offer, you must registered right now. Registration will close this Friday at midnight.

Blog Profit Camp is covered by a 30 day money back guarantee. Try it for 30 days and if it’s not everything you hoped for, send me an email and I’ll refund your money, no questions asked. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Order now.



View the Original article

Thursday, July 8, 2010

How A Dream Killed My Blog and How I Revived It With a Goal

550 days ago I had a dream. I dreamed that I was going to make a lot of money online. How I caught it, found it, or came by it I do not remember – and it does not matter. I got it and I was going to do something about it.

The dream turned into obsession. Every mouse click and keystroke was aimed towards the dream. Hours turned to days which turned to months in pursuit of this dream.

A blog was created. Posts were written, ads were up. All the usual forms of attracting traffic were employed. Joining forums, writing articles, socializing with other bloggers.

Everything was in place. Everything that was suppose to be done to make my dream come true was done.

430 days ago my dream shattered. I do not why it came on that particular day. It just did. On that day the dream died. Not without reason of course, for the last couple weeks I was averaging 20 visitors a day and earning an equal amount of pennies.

I quit. Like a cheated lover, I never wanted to see my blog again.

For the next few weeks I stewed. How could this happen? All those hours spent on the stupid thing. All those hours spent thinking about it, devoting all my mental energy on it. Even the dog suffered – walks in the park were shorter. All for what? 20 visitors and less money then what I find every month in-between the couch cushions.

I cursed the dream and its siren song.

The problem with dreams is that they spawn out of every place except reality. They create a pretty picture, but do not show you how to paint it yourself in the real world. Make a lot of money online is a great dream. But how to make a lot of money online – the dream will not tell you.

Dreams are Vague, Goals Are Specific and Measurable

Dreams are good for poets to ponder and psychologists to probe. But for bloggers they only lead to disappointment. I don’t need a dream – I need a goal.

A goal is something you can touch. A goal has a beginning, a middle, and a end. A goal has a means. Dreams only have an end. With dreams you only see the end but you do not see the path towards it. With dreams there is no way to tell how close you are to achieving it. 120 days after the dream materialized I had made no progress towards turning it to reality. That is why the dream died.

Goals have a end and more importantly a middle. With goals you can see how close you are to achieving it. You see progress.

An example. I abandoned my dream of making a lot of money online. Too fuzzy and vague. Instead I made a goal. My goal: be on position 1 on Google search results for ‘make money website’. Sounds like a crazy dream but it is not.

Unlike a dream, with this goal I know exactly where the end is – position one. I know exactly where I am now – position 702. I can check my progress – do a search for ‘make money website’ and see where I am. I know what I need to do to reach my goal – optimize my blog for ‘make money website’ and get quality backlinks. The more optimized the blog and the more backlinks the higher up I go. Maybe in a couple months I will be in position 650 – progress.

Specific Goals Allow You To See Progress

The advantage with this goal is that I can see progress. With a dream like make lots of money online there was no perceivable progress – and that was really discouraging.

By having a goal that allows you to see the progress you are less likely to be discouraged. You are less likely to quit and have your blog die.

Some more examples of measurable goals:

Get 1000 RSS subscribersGet 1000 visitors a dayGet 1000 Twitter followersBe in position 1 for specific keywords

As you can see these goals are very different then having dreams like have a successful blog or make lots of money online. With these goals progress can been seen every time a there is a new subscriber or a twitter follower.

I have forgotten my dream. Now I focus on goals that allow me to measure their progress. So long as I keep moving closer and closer towards my goal I am happy and my blog will not die.

Roman runs a blog call How This Blog Makes Money. It shows how this blog makes money.



View the Original article

Friday, July 2, 2010

I need your help - seeking successful landing pages

July 1, 2010

One of the most challenging aspects of web-based marketing is creating a landing page that converts well. Most web-oriented entrepreneurs find themselves intensely interested in learning what works and what doesn't because a good landing page often tips the scales toward success or failure. 

Of course one solution won't work for all applications, but there are principles we can apply, and examples we can learn from. I'm going to touch on some principles in an upcoming post, but I'd like to share some of your proven examples too.

If you have a successful landing page, and are willing to share how you created it, why it's successful, and share some stats to back it up - please drop me a note (email link over in my sidebar, or find me on Twitter.) I'll select some of those and share their story here on WorkHappy.net so we can all learn together.

Don't be shy.

-Carson

--

View the Original article

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Finding Future Trends with The Internet Time Machine

written by Michael Kwan on June 28th, 2010

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of NowRelevant. All opinions are 100% mine.

We looked at The Internet Time Machine back in April and found it to be a great tool for doing niche marketing. The Internet Time Machine allows you to find risk-free profitable niches before anyone else does. This gives you that “first mover” advantage.

Developed by NowRelevant, a search engine that gives you everything you want to know about your topic for the past two weeks, the Internet time Machine allows you to know today what people will buy tomorrow. Having this information can be invaluable.

Finding niche product to promote can be a very time-consuming ordeal and many new affiliate marketers give up because it just takes too long. What they’ll end up doing is promoting the same offers everyone else is promoting. The only problem with that is there’s so much competition and they can’t compete with the big guys.

The Internet Time Machine eliminates the time-consuming work for you by presenting the niches that are rising in demand but not in supply. How does it do that? The service collects data from over 40 million sources worldwide every 24 hours. In doing so, it can find new niches and trends before anyone else. Niche marketing is one of the most profitable method for making money on the Internet. The key is finding that profitable nice before anyone else does and the Internet Time Machine can be a great help in that regard.

Finding the Relevant and Rising Trends

The Internet Time Machine offers three separate but related utilities. One finds the most recent mentions in the last 24 hours, the next searches for potential trends, and the last is the core trend analysis.



View the Original article

Monday, June 28, 2010

How To Have Money Freedom, Time Freedom and Location Freedom

I’ve just released my newest eBook call Living The Dot Com Lifestyle: How To Have Time, Money and Location Freedom. Living The Dot Com Lifestyle details the rules and methods I use to live anywhere in the world and have money come in even when I am not working.

Last year, I spent over 100 days traveling with my family and during those 100 days, I made more money than I’ve ever made before. Living The Dot Com Lifestyle explains how I did it.

Best of all, the new eBook is FREE!

To get your copy of Living The Dot Com Lifestyle, all you have to is download my last eBook, The Ultimate Blog Profit Model, which is also free and explains how I make $500,000 a year from blogging.

If you’ve already downloaded the Ultimate Blog Profit Model, then you should have received an email from me with the download link for Living The Dot Com Lifestyle: How To Have Time, Money and Location Freedom.

If you haven’t got your copy of The Ultimate Blog Profit Model yet, then go sign up now and get both eBooks, plus another bonus eBook!

Chance to Win an Apple iPad Just For Downloading

You can not lose with this deal. It won’t cost you a single penny and just for downloading the eBooks, you’ll be entered into a draw to win an Apple iPad! I’ll be drawing the winner in the first week of July. Go get it now!

Download The Ultimate Blog Profit Model and Living The Dot Com Lifestyle



View the Original article

Sunday, June 27, 2010

5 Blogging Myths That Are Killing Your Blog

As with all myths, there is always a little bit of truth behind them.

That is exactly why myths spread and survive, even if they aren’t true. Myths are especially destructive to our mindset when we aren’t even aware that they occupy our subconscious thoughts. We hear them once or twice and inadvertently end up believing them, even if we haven’t had time to really logically analyze if they make sense.

Which of these Blogging myths are hiding in your subconscious mind?

Myth #1

View the Original article

Dot Com Pho – The Opposite Edition

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Winners of the 2010 Affiliate Summit East Gold Passes

Here are the ten winners of the 2010 Affiliate Summit East Gold Passes. These passes are worth $549 each and entitles the winners admission to the Affiliate Meet Market, Exhibit Hall, Keynotes, Sunday educational sessions, access to all recorded session videos, PowerPoint presentations and Affiliate Summit Social Network.

It was tough deciding who to award the passes to because there were so many good entries. However, after going over the submissions at yesterday’s Dot Com Pho, I’m please to announce the following winners:

Joshua DenneyAdrian ChildersCharles FlaumVincent WoonChristina ErlSimon BunkerOleksly ShevchukevhchJames ThompsonDarren DemersHarshad Ghodke

Congrats to all the winners. I will be sending each one of you an email with the instructions on how to claim your 2010 Affiliate Summit East Gold Pass. I’ll see you guys in the Big Apple!



View the Original article

Vancouver Internet Marketers Meetup Is Tomorrow

I will be the featured speaker at tomorrow’s Vancouver Internet Marketers Meetup. I’m putting my PowerPoint slides together right now and I’m really looking forward to it. Originally, we set the RSVP limit at 75 but we blew right passed it. Instead of turning people away, J Lounge made their main room available to us so we can accommodate 25 more people. At the time of the post we’re one RSVP away from a sell out. I’m pretty sure that spot will be taken in a little bit and then we’ll be back to the waiting list.

I’ll have nametags for everyone and the J Lounge has agreed to provide us with a discount on food (20%) and give us a beer special so come hungry/thirsty. No charge for this event so just show up and be ready to learn and meet other like minded people!

The meetup is set to start at 6:30pm and John will begin speaking at 7:00pm We are expecting almost 100 people so you’ll want to arrive early to do some networking and get a good seat.

I will have copies of my new book, Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul, available for the sale during the meetup. The price is $15 and I’ll be happy to sign it after the presentation, which will be on how to launch your own product on the Internet. Josh Rimer, the organizer of the meetup, told me that he’ll be steaming the presentation live at JoshRimer.com so all those who can’t make it to Vancouver will be able to tune in at 7PM PST and watch it. See you tomorrow!



View the Original article

Vancouver’s First Cupcake Challenge

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Sunday, June 20, 2010

5 More Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog From LinkedIn

Today I want to show you 5 more ways to get traffic to your blog with LinkedIn. Before you do that make sure that your LinkedIn profile is optimized by reading our previous post: 5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog From LinkedIn.

Once you’ve got your profile optimized, you can come back here and check out 4 more ways to drive traffic to Your Blog From LinkedIn:

Method #1: Get the Right Positioning

With any of the techniques that we’ll be sharing it’s important that you take the time to start building a solid profile on LinkedIn. If you don’t have a solid profile setup in the first place then you’ll be missing out on new business and opportunities.

The main point here is that you want to appear “open for business” by setting up a profile that clearly defines how you help others. That way you’re more likely to get higher click throughs and interest in your blog.

The very first thing to do is to become an open networker which means that anyone can send you a message and invite you to connect. This is really important as some of the default settings on LinkedIn don’t always allow others to contact you. Make sure to change your profile settings so that you’re an open networker so that you appear “open for business.”

Method #2: Add More Connections – Groups

This should be something that you’re doing on a daily basis. You want to continually make an effort to go out and connect with other people in your industry on a regular basis. Some of these people will be your clients while others will be people you can network with in your industry.

The point here is that the more Connections you have, the more eye balls you get on your profile. So when you post an update or publish a new blog post, more of your connections will see it.

One way to Connect is just by interacting with others in your industry in Groups. You can post your questions and even reply to others. The more you participate in these groups the more likely you will get noticed. As you get to know others in the group, you can ask them to connect.

Method #3: Add More “High Profile” Connections

If you go to My Network and see Network Statistics you’ll see how many connections you have. In addition, you’ll see how many people are in your 2nd and 3rd Tier of Connections. Each time you add new connections, you increase your exposure to your Connections as well as to the people you connect with.

To increase your Connections and your 2nd and 3rd Tier Connections make a point of connecting to people who have a high profile. These could be other blog owners or anyone who is a person of influence in your industry and has a lot of followers.

They might not know you from a hole in the ground so here’s an easy way to Connect with them on LinkedIn. It’s always a good idea to include an introduction message so that these high profile connections know who you are.

Let’s say you want to connect with John Chow. You could do that by introducing yourself and saying, ” Hey John, I’ve been an avid reader of your blog and Newsletter for over a year. I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. Your name.”

This is much more effective than just using the default message because now John has an idea of how I came to find his profile on LinkedIn.

Method #4: Add Your RSS Feed to News Groups

Another simple, but really effective way to get more people to your blog is by adding your blog articles to Groups. If you took our advice from our previous post, you’ll have joined 5-10 Linked Groups by now.

Each time you join one of these groups, you want to add your article to the Groups News section. Now you can join up to 50 Groups on LinkedIn so the more groups you join, the more articles you can submit and the more often users will be viewing your blog posts.

Method #5: Use Answers by Thinking Outside of the Box

There is a section in LinkedIn called Answers. This is a great place to get more exposure to your profile by answering other peoples questions. We mentioned this in our previous article, but here’s an even better technique to get more exposure to your LinkedIn profile.

It’s by asking your own question. And the way you can do this is by thinking of a question in your industry that will attract attention and interest. As an example I have a personal growth blog so I asked the question:

“If you Don’t Believe in the Law of Attraction, does it still work?”

This question generated a lot of interest and got a lot of answers.

When you use this technique properly, you get a lot of people commenting and submitting answers to your question. And the more people that answer your question, the more eye balls you get on your profile and the more traffic to your blog.

Steve and Hani are the creators of Blogging for Coaches. Discover 5 Tools that will Rapidly Build Your Coaching Business and Create a Waiting List of Clients Faster Than Ever Before

View the Original article

Dot Com Pho – Switch On Edition

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Friday, June 18, 2010

7 Easy Tips To Grow Your Email List

I came across this amazing video from my friend Gideon Shalwick on . In the video Gideon shares seven methods he used to help build a huge mailing list. As we all know, the money is in the list. Fully 2/3 of my blog income comes from my list. Anyone who is not building a list is leaving a ton of money on the table.

List building is so much easier today than it was when I started. Services like Aweber has pretty much automated the entire process. And best of all, it’s way cheaper today than ever. You can start you list with Aweber today for only $1 for the first month and Aweber will even guarantee the dollar. If you can’t make your dollar back after a month, send Aweber an email and they’ll give you a full refund. I never had that when I was starting out!

Aweber provides the infrastructure to host your list but it’s still up to your to grow it. These seven list building tips from Gideon will help you do just that. Make sure you watch the video all the way to the end because Gideon reveals a really big secret there. Can you guess what it is?

Click Here To Download FREE Report



View the Original article

Internet Marketing Conference = Lame Ass Award

I heard from Tech Vibes that the Internet Marketing Conference (IMC) was coming to Vancouver so I made a proposal to speak at it. Everything looked fine at first. The keynote was being delivered by Guy Kawasaki. I figured, great! I get to connect with Guy again and make fun of his Hawaiian shirts.

I got an email from Lennart Svanberg, the producer of IMC Vancouver, asking me how I would help market the show. I replied back stating what I would do to help them out. He emailed back saying I was in and in a later email, asked me to make a 30 second video about me speaking at IMC.

I did the video and email Lennart the link and asked him for some full access tickets to give away (I was thinking 10). I figured this was a reasonable request. After all, I wasn’t charging IMC to give my presentation and they didn’t have to pay my travel since I live in Vancouver. Just for comparison, my trip to Affiliate Summit East in New York in August is fully sponsored and ASE still gave me ten gold passes to give away. I got back the following email from Lennart.

Great work John.

I’m giving u 1 Full Access Pass (for all three days) plus 2 tickets to the day you’re speaking IF u do the promotion you’ve promised.

So consider it a deal, I will just get back to u with exact details on how much promotion we expect in return.

Looking forward to meet u soon,
Lennart

It’s clear to me that Mr. Svanberg has no idea who I am. If he did, he would have never worded his email with “IF” in all caps and “how much promotion we expect in return.” I was going to speak at IMC Vancouver. Now I’m not. Lennart needs to realize that it is not an honor for me to speak at IMC. It’s the other way around. Congrats Lennart. You and your Internet Marketing Conference just received my Lame Ass Award.



View the Original article

The Secrets To Social Media Marketing

Charlie Cook, the man who wrote The New Profit Rules, is back with . Charlie has assemble eight social media experts to teach you exactly how to leverage the power of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook for make more money for your business.

So here’s how we developed this program. Recently I had a Tele-Seminar Event where I put each of these 8 experts on the “Hot-Seat” and had them reveal strategies, formulas, tips and tricks that their clients have paid large sums of money to discover.

Each one of these training sessions is about an hour long and you can listen to them in their entirety on MP3 for each of the eight training calls.

In addition to these eight MP3s you’ll also be getting eight transcripts of each interview so you’ll have all this information at your fingertips.

List of Speakers and Topics

Carrie Wilkerson – Where To Focus Your Social Media Marketing To Rapidly Expand Traffic and ProfitsJan Vermerien – The Quick and Easy LinkedIn Tactics For Building Your Online Network of Hot Contacts and LeadsPaul Dunay – How to Use Facebook to Attract New and Repeat Business and to Grow Their Annual RevenueJack Humphrey – The Fastest Way to Attract More Prospects to Your Business With Your BlogRyan Healy – How to Create a Killer Blog That Builds Credibility and ProfitsKyle Lacy – The Top Ways to Use Twitter to Dominate Your MarketWarren Whitlock – Advanced Twitter Marketing Strategies Guaranteed to Boost Business RevenuePerry Lawrence – Video Marketing Made So Easy Anyone Can Do It

I’ve been listening to the MP3s for the past few days and so far, it’s been really good and extremely informative. I especially like the ideas Jack Humphrey presented for using a blog to attract prospects to your business. The video marketing module from Perry Lawrence was also very good.

Because everything is in MP3 format, you can load it into your iPhone/iPod and play it whenever you want. For me, it’s generally at the gym when I’m on the elliptical trainer. A PDF transcript is included for those who like to read. In addition to the main eight speakers, includes a bunch of free bonuses. There’s a 65 page eBook on how to profit from social media plus six other social media money-making resources.

Social media is one of the driving forces behind my marketing strategy. It’s also one of the most cost effective because it many case, it doesn’t cost anything. All boggers, Internet marketers and business people need to learn and use social media and is a good place to start. In addition to the free bonuses, Charlie is offering a $100 discount on his program. is also backed by a 100% Money-Back Guarantee. it’s worth checking out.

Download



View the Original article

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Shift to URL Shortening with Conversion Tracking

URL shorteners are all the rage, especially given the character count restrictions in places like Twitter. Some of these URL shortening services offer some statistics and metrics, but LinkShiftr takes it to a whole new level.

Over the course of this review, we’ll take a look at some of the features that set LinkShiftr apart from the competition. All the affiliate and Internet marketers out there should probably pay attention.

What is LinkShiftr?

According to the developers, LinkShiftr combines some of the best elements of URL shorteners like bit.ly and combines them with the higher-end capabilities of a service like Tracking202.

The net result is a comprehensive service that is “designed to help affiliates make better campaigns in less time.” Among the key features included in LinkShiftr are easy link rotation, split test optimization, cloaked links, variable passing, and conversion tracking across platforms.

One Shortened URL, Multiple Destination

After signing up for an account with LinkShiftr, you can access the user control panel. From there, you can start “shifting” your URLs.



View the Original article

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Some Make Money Online Book Reviews

Here are some reviews of Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul, the book I co-authored with Michael Kwan. The book has done very since its released, reaching number 1 on the Amazon.com home based business category within two weeks of going on sale.

I want to thank all the blogs that reviewed Make Money Online. Your feedback has been invaluable and I would use it if I ever decided to write an update, which I doubt. Publishing my first book has been an amazing and sometime frustrating experience. The main thing I couldn’t stand was the slowness of the process. I like working at Internet speed but the book publishing industry is still stuck in the stone age. Anyway, check out some of the reviews.

Mark CancellieriMori TherapyCash SherpaKatanavilleA dogyQwertymash.comFree Money Finance.comRichard GravyTim LindenBlueverse.comInternet Upside.comExactweb Marketing.comWordful.comCharles LauZac JohnsonBlogging Tips.comD3so.comSkip The Scams

I have decided to extend the book review contest until the end of this month to give time for my international readers to enter. All blog posting reviews of Make Money Online will be entered into a draw for an Apple iPad. The winner will be drawn in the first week of July at Dot Com Pho. One thing for sure, your chances of winning an iPad from a review is much better than trying to win one by downloading my new eBook. Over 10,000 people have downloaded The Ultimate Blog Profit Model since going live.



View the Original article

Win A Gold Pass To Affiliate Summit East 2010

The Affiliate Summit East 2010 happens August 15 to 17 in New York city and I have TEN Gold Passes, worth $549 each, to give away to ten lucky John Chow dot Com readers. The Gold Pass gives you admission to Affiliate Meet Market, Exhibit Hall, Keynotes, Sunday educational sessions; access to all recorded session videos; PowerPoint presentations; and Affiliate Summit Social Network.

To enter, all you have to do is explain in the comments why you should be awarded a Gold Pass to the Affiliate Summit East. The better your comment, the higher your chances of being a winner. Please only enter if you actually plan on going. If you are selected, you must attend. The pass is not transferable and cannot be resold because it will have your name on it. I am only giving away the passes. I am not paying for your travel or hotel. I might be doing some kind of Dot Com Pho event which all winners can attend.

IMPORTANT – please note the following:
You must notify the recipients that they cannot be transferred, and the pass codes become invalid in the event the conference sells out.
Also, anybody registering for a complimentary pass who neither checks in at the conference or cancels will be ineligible for future complimentary passes.

The winners will be announce this Saturday, June 19 during Dot Com Pho. This should give you enough time to book your air and hotel if you need it. I know I have lots of readers in the big apple that want to go to the Affiliate Summit but can’t afford the cost of the pass. This is your chance to go! Good luck and enter now!



View the Original article

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Struggling With Your Blog? Try These Three Simple Tips

It’s hard building a successful blog! You can have great content and post often–follow all the rules of the top bloggers–and still not get the traffic, visitors, and sales you deserve.

There are three big rules to a successful blog that many up-and-coming bloggers miss. In this post, I will share them with you…and show you how to implement them quickly!

Rule #1: Get a real email autoresponder service before it’s too late.

Many bloggers make a critical mistake: They only put RSS subscription icons and/or Feedburner email subscriptions on their blogs. Let’s break down each of these and look at why these will severely hamper your money-making abilities with your blog:

RSS icons: Most blog readers still don’t know what RSS is or how to use it. Unfortunately, even with the advent of Google Reader, RSS still isn’t mainstream.

Even for technical blogs, I still don’t recommend RSS as the primary option. Why? If you’re offering products to your audience, you want to create urgency. Email does that–people consider email that shows up in their inboxes more urgent, and often take action immediately. RSS is a more passive method; many blog readers don’t read their RSS subscriptions every day. If you’re selling products or doing a limited-time sale, an email subscriber is worth far more than an RSS subscriber.Feedburner email subscriptions: It seems like a great idea, doesn’t it? You can just plop a piece of code onto your site and Feedburner will automatically email your subscribers your latest blog posts.

Unfortunately, Feedburner suffers from many of the same issues as RSS. It can take up to 24 hours to send the email, which means if you’re holding a 1-day sale, your Feedburner email subscribers may miss out. Also, you can’t send separate emails (other than the automated ones) to your list. If you want to remind your list that a sale is ending, or to get in on a product before it’s too late, you have to write a blog post instead…and then wait up to 24 hours for Feedburner to mail it. It’s a bad solution, and one I regret ever offering on my blog. (I still have hundreds of Feedburner subscribers “stuck” on my list, who aren’t on my Aweber list.)

I recommend Aweber for any serious blogger. Sure, their solution costs money. But you will make plenty more money with it…so much more than you pay for the solution. I pay Aweber about $66/month for my 5,500

View the Original article

Spam: Where It Comes From And How To Escape It

In 1936, long before the rise of the personal computer, Hormel Foods created SPAM. In 2002, the company will produce its six billionth can of the processed food product. But that mark was passed long ago in the world of Internet spam.

Who Cooked This!? (How did it all start?)

The modern meaning of the word

View the Original article

Friday, June 11, 2010

Over 7,000 eBooks Downloaded In Less Than 48 Hours

Less than 48 hours after launching my new eBook, The Ultimate Blog Profit Model, over 7,000 downloads have been registered. I really wasn’t expecting this much of a flood. Then again, the eBook is free and downloading it does enter you into a draw to win an Apple iPad. I guess I underestimated people’s desire for free stuff.

How To Create Your Own eBook

I’ve received quite a few emails from readers asking me how to make an eBook. I wrote The Ultimate Blog Profit Model using Pages for Mac. Pages has an export function that allows you to export the file as a PDF. It even features advanced options like password protecting the file (which I didn’t do) to preventing copy and paste (which I did do).



View the Original article

Make a Wish Foundation 24 hr Online Fundraiser

Two nights ago, I was a Vancouver Tweetup to network with local Twitter users. There I met Anthony Caridi of KasuFunding.com. Anthony had a great vision. His goal was to run an online social media campaign to raise funding for the Make a Wish Foundation.

Make a Wish is a great organization that grants a child’s wish every 40 minutes. Most of these children are very ill and many are suffering from life threatening illnesses. Their stories are both heart warming and gut wrenching at the same time (read some recent wishes here). Being a parent myself, Make a Wish is a charity close to my heart.

I’ve started the ball rolling with a $20 donation. I ask you to do the same and use your social network to spread the word. The goal is not to have a few big companies cut big checks. The goal is for all of us just to donate $20 and invite a friend. Through the power of our online social networks, blogs and Twitter accounts we hope to prove that a whole bunch of little contributions by a large community can make a huge difference. Click through below to learn more:



View the Original article

5 Things To Watch Out For When Buying a Site On Flippa

There are many marketplaces to purchase new and existing websites to add to your portfolio, and no marketplace is quite as popular as Flippa.com. Its a great place to search for valuable websites that you can add to your Adsense or affiliate marketing portfolio. However, there are a few things you need to watch out for, and without further ado, here they are.

Will You Actually Make What They Say?

Don’t be a newbie and get all dreamy about sites that make a good amount of monthly income. They might have the stats to backup PAST earnings, but how sure can you be that you will make that much? Be sure to read where the past traffic was coming from. If it came from private email newsletter blasts, you of course won’t have access to that. So my tip is to make sure that the majority of the traffic is coming from the results of SEO optimization and backlinks.

Duplicate Sites

Be on the lookout for duplicate sites by using tools like copyscape.com to check for duplicate content. Sometimes sellers can argue that the website is part of a PLR resale, and while that’s perfectly legal, I prefer not to buy those types of sites. I go for sites made by individuals who want to sell with the intentions of trying to flip it for the full value of the original site, or just letting the website go and they rather see it in better hands.

Know How The Site Will Be Transferred To You

Most likely, the website you are trying to purchase will be eventually transferred to your own hosting account, and that’s fine. But from my own past experience with Flippa, be sure that you will receive 100% of the content. There are two scenarios that I want to mention. The first is simply getting all the actual website content that you purchased. Sometimes by mistake, they might not include all the files, especially if it’s a big site your buying, and you might not even realize that those few pages were missing. The other scenario really bugged me. This was when I bought a Wordpress site that had all these fancy automated Plugins that required all these customized SQL databases and whatnot. The website that I bought was supposed to bring in fresh new content to my website every week, but never really worked. When I tried to get the seller to help me out, he never replied.

Additional Fees

More important than anything else I’ve mention (and should be the #1 thing to analyze when you find a seller) is to note the additional fees that you might incur if you buy a site. Each sale is unique because of the price, the different methods of payment, transferring fees by the seller (if you don’t know how to transfer it yourself), and so on.

Why Are They Selling It?

Before you do all your who what where when, you need to understand the why. Why is this seller willing to let go of their website? If it’s a completely new website that you’re buying for cheap, then it’s probably because you’re buying a jump start site that’s already made but now it’s your job to build traffic and maintain it. When it comes to the sites that are already making money, this question really comes into play. Why would someone be willing to let go of a comfortable and passive profit stream?

These five tips were meant to keep you alert of some things to look out for, not to push you away from buying these websites. Some websites on Flippa.com can be extremely valuable, so don’t get discouraged, and make sure to take note of these five tips before you get ready to buy.

This post guest blogged by Hemal Patel.



View the Original article

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

How I Made $500,000 From Blogging

Hot on the heels of my new Amazon.com best selling book, I have written a new eBook! And unlike my paperback book, my eBook isn’t going to cost you anything because I’m giving it away for free! You can download it here.

The new eBook is call The Ultimate Blog Profit Model and it details the business model that I used to enable this blog to make over $500,000 last year. My first eBook, Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com, has been downloaded over 200,000 times and helped tens of thousands of bloggers worldwide to increase their traffic and make more money. If you like my last book, you’re going to love this one.

Not only is my eBook free but just for downloading it, you’ll receive one entry to win an Apple iPad. You really can’t lose on this deal. You get a free eBook detailing how I make over $40K a month from blogging and you’ll get a chance to win an Apple iPad as well. Enjoy!



View the Original article

Monday, June 7, 2010

5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog with LinkedIn

I was introduced to LinkedIn in August of 2009. I’ve been using it almost obsessively since then and it’s been my third highest source of traffic for my blog since I started using it.

Why Linkedin?

LinkedIn is a smaller version of Facebook specifically for business owners and for people in career transition. LinkedIn currently has over 65,000,000 professionals, but here’s what’s really interesting.

According to Quantcast, the average household income for over 38% of Linkedin Users is over $100k per year. That means that a big chunk of LinkedIn Users have money to spend. That’s great news for your online business.



View the Original article

Friday, June 4, 2010

Shopify featured (briefly) on 37signal's "profitable and proud" series

June 3, 2010 in A blog post, An interview

Over on the 37signals blog they've started a "Profitable and Proud" series where they highlight companies who've bootstrapped to profitability with revenues over $1mil. They started last week with a WH favorite, Campaign Monitor, then today (before revoking the "P&P" status) they profiled Shopify (another fav). 

Here are the gems I found from today's interview:

This comment surprised and intrigued me:

Our hiring is based on the assumption that there are fundamentally two groups of people in the tech industry: there are left brained science type programmers who can write amazing amounts of complicated code with ease; and then there are the right brained creative types. While left brained programmers may be 2-3x as fast when writing code, the right brained programmers can use their creativity to come up with elegant solutions that only require 1/5th of the work. Based on this understanding, we hire the creative types.

And this struck me as a great litmus test for new offerings/features:

When you build your product ask yourself

View the Original article

How To Pick The Right Affiliate Marketing Software Solution

Successful affiliate marketers know that performance tracking is one of the keys to making big money with affiliate programs. However, finding the right software solution to use can be extremely difficult because of the sheer number of choices available. Fortunately, Ace Affiliate is here to help with another one of their patented inforgraphics.

The Affiliate Marketing Software Solutions Review inforgraphic is interactive – you select the features that you require and the inforgraphic will show you all the solutions available. For example, if you just need software to track your affiliate campaigns, it will display those. If you want a hosted solution that will allow you to start your own affiliate network, it can show you the software that will do that as well. The inforgraphic makes it extremely easy to compare all the various affiliate marketing software solutions. Give it a try and tell Ace what you think of it.

With the vast amounts of affiliate software that are becoming available, one would assume that choosing one would be as easy as point and click. After all, with so many options to choose from, how can you go wrong? However, if you’d like to get the absolute most out of your software, you’ll need to look a little more closely. You’ll need to learn the numbers, understand the stats, and compare each piece of software to all the others around it. Or, you could just check out this infographic. We’ve assembled all of the best affiliate software available, and compared their stats in language anyone can understand. All you need to do is decide what you want from your software, and browse through the options. You’re sure to find what you need.



View the Original article

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Facebook Ads Guide Review

Ever since Jonathan Volk launched his Facebook Ads Guide, I’ve been getting emails from readers asking for a review. I have gone through everything in the guide plus all the bonus materials and I have to say it’s one of the best guides on Facebook advertising that I have come across. Then again, this really should not be surprising. After all, Jonathan Volk is one of the biggest Facebook affiliate marketers in the business. In the past ten months, he has average nearly $4,000 per day of income from Facebook.

The guide itself is not a long read. You should be able to get through it in an hour or so. There is no fluff at all. Just straight to the point facts and ready to use tips. The section on “Upper Hand Techniques” is where the real gold is. Here, Jonathan details the techniques he uses create over 1,000 facebook ads in five minutes and generate thousands of dollars in Facebook income everyday.

Upper Hand Technique 4: Ask!
There is an email at Facebook setup specifically for advertisers like us. This email is affiliates

View the Original article

8 Email Deliverbility Tips To Break Through Spam Filters

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses



View the Original article

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

How To Use The Power Of Forums And Google Alerts To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Forums are an efficient option to gradually get hold of quite a few long-term traffic to your website, on the other hand, the issue is that with forums, it may be way too straightforward to spend all day posting and rapidly it turns into a huge waste of time. Suddenly, you might be spending eight to ten hours each day posting on forums and just forming at first 15 to twenty clicks. How do you utilize all of the forums have to provide, how do you get a few of that visitors once more for your site without it taking all day? And the solution is to mix Google Alerts and forums. Google Alerts is a service that lets you display keywords that Google indexes on the internet.

For instance, you run a blog that talks about online gaming, and if someone mentions online games somewhere or they point out a selected game like Poker and you want to go and say, “I have Poker right here free of charge,” that’s an excellent feature. Correct? And it’s really time-consuming to each and every single day to search Google. As a substitute, do arrange a Google Alert. You arrange a Google Alert for the word “Poker”, and if any person mentioned the phrase “Poker” anywhere on the web, you may bounce in and respond to that.

With Google Alerts and forums, you’ll be able to merely reply that give the simple rapid answer, you might be able to provide analysis for improvements to make a brand new website, and you can also overcome well-liked objection other people have and are asking about on these forums. With the Google Alert, you put up alerts for “Poker” or possibly even your web page’s determine or your exact name. That manner, if anyone mentions them in any place, you can also bounce in.

With Google Alerts, you are able to set either an immediate alert or a once-a-day alert. You probably have a game to your website that may be highly regarded comparable to Poker, then you definitely can set a Google Alert for that to only email you as soon as possible. If there are hundreds of recent pages on Google with that word, you’ll only be notified as soon as possible and you may click on one easy link, go to the discussion board, and provide your response. I’d be putting inside the phrase you might be looking for plus the phrase “forum” throughout the Google Alert. It’s an easy means to leap in and no longer essentially have to freak within the forum frequently, simply go where you might be needed.

Next, you can conduct a research to improve the site itself. If any individual is complaining about the website online about the way it does that almost all internet sites don’t grasp over, then you can glance into changing up the tool or outsourcing an improvement in order that it shops a prime score. That may be how you can research enhancements to your existing products.

Another use for Google Alerts and forums is to overcome a typical objection. As an example, any individual might be posting on a discussion board, “I want to be a part of this game, but I don’t need them to start out promoting my address or sharing it.” If any person is citing that, then you’ll be able to jump in and say, “Effectively, that may be what other people most often think, however, I’m using this service that does not permit me to share and that is the proof, therefore, your email address is totally safe.”

They usually would offer you concepts for things to add to your autoresponder pre-sells or your sales page, simple problems going guess despite things in position, people don’t learn all of the pieces you write. It’s always a great idea for us to go to forums. If any person mentions a specific sport or online games or your website, particularly you can answer their objection and get further individuals be mindful of your website while disarming their objections.

That is how you mix Google Alerts and forums. Arrange Google Alerts for issues inside your website online, your niches, your identity, or your blog particularly the phrase “forum.” That way if it’s mentioned anyplace on the internet, you’ll be able to get notified, you’ll be able to jump in and send a simple solution, research an improvement in your site, or triumph over an objection to get them into your site.

Gary David is a full-time Internet Marketer that specializes traffic building. Learn how you can use the most advanced web 2.0 websites to drive maximum amount of traffic possible to your website. Find out exactly how you can start driving traffic today.



View the Original article

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

First Ever Freelance Camp Vancouver a Complete Success

The first ever Freelance Camp to be held in Vancouver last Saturday was a complete success. The sold out event attracted freelancers and entrepreneurs from all over the city to The Network Hub in Downtown Vancouver for a full day of “unconferencing.”

The sessions were divided among three rooms. Attendees could choose which sessions to attend. Subjects range from being a “solopreneur” to handling the stress of working alone. The only time everyone got together in the same room was during the lunch session where Michael Kwan and I gave our presentation on the 8 ways to make money online. Lunch was provided by Mr. Happy Pho.

Fun facts and photos from the very first Freelance Camp:

From 1pm

View the Original article

How To Make Over $1 Million with Facebook

If you read my recent post about the top 1000 most-visited sites on the Internet, you know that Facebook is number 1 with 570 BILLION page views per month. That is mind blowing number and it’s easy to see why Facebook will make over $1 billion this year. However, did you know that you can grab a piece of that money?

My friend and fellow super affiliate Jonathan Volk has just released his new eBook on how he generate over $3693.21 PER DAY using Facebook Ads. That’s over $1.3 million per year! You may remember Jonathan from his free Affiliate Marketing 101 guide. Jonathan’s new eBook will show you step-by-step how to tap into the power of Facebook and make more money than you ever dream possible.

This is a legitimate guide with a legitimate way for you to learn how to make money on Facebook – the same methods Jonathan and I both use. Most of the time when “Gurus” launch a new product they leave out some of the important information. Not so with Jonathan. He has made every effort to include EVERY bit of detail about making money using facebook. No secrets are left out.

As part of this grand opening, Jonathan is offering his new guide for only $79. But you have to get it now because the price will go to $97 on Thursday. Even at $97, the guide is more than worth it. Jonathan back his guide up with an 8 week no questions asked money back guarantee. You have nothing to lose and a million bucks to gain.



View the Original article

Monday, May 31, 2010

Zac Johnson Is Giving Away 10 Copies of My New Book

My friend Zac Johnson has purchased ten signed copies of Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul to give away to ten lucky readers. To enter, all you have to do is download Zac’s new eBook, Six Figure Affiliate Blogging. The eBook is free so entering this contest won’t cost you anything.

Zac will draw the ten winners at the end of this month. You have until then to enter. Your odds of winning is based on the number of people who download Zac’s eBook. Good luck!

If you really want a signed copy of my book and don’t want to leave it to luck, you can buy it directly from me for $20 plus $3.99 flat world wide shipping. Please include your name and shipping address plus any special dedication you want me to sign onto the book. Then you can be like Kevin Delaney and take a photo of yourself and the book and enter my iPad contest.



View the Original article

Free Lunch At Freelance Camp Vancouver

Freelance Camp Vancouver is an opportunity for freelancers, entrepreneurs, independent business owners and individuals to come together to learn from one another, connect with opportunities by expanding their network, and finding answers to some of the questions enabling them to expand their business, start their business or develop additional income streams.

It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. The day will consist of sessions proposed by attendees and the schedule is created on site the morning of the event. Michael Kwan and I will be doing a lunch time session on how freelancers can make money online. Lunch will be provided by Mr. Happy Pho. Waves Coffee will be supplying the coffee.

Every attendee of Freelance Camp will also be receiving a .tel domain worth $19.99 courtesy of WebNames.ca. The Network Hub will provide all freelancers at Freelance Camp one free hour of meeting room use

View the Original article

Do You Like The New John Chow dot Com Logo?

A few people have noticed that my blog is spotting a new JC logo. I have some pretty sharp eye readers because the logo was barely up for an hour before the first comment came in. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I want to ask what you think of the new logo?

I actually had the new logo for quite awhile but just haven’t put it up on the blog until now. The first time the logo was shown was on the custom made John Chow dot Com poker table. What took me so long to put it up on the blog? Well, I just never got around to it.

Now that the new logo is up, I am really liking it. I think it’s time to turn the new logo into a John Chow dot Com T-shirt! Who wants one?

Old Logo



View the Original article

Friday, May 21, 2010

Some Photos of Make Money Online Readers

Here are some photos of readers who have purchased and read Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul. You can see the full gallery at my Flickr page.

If you purchased a copy of Make Money Online, then please send me a photo with you and book so I can include it in the gallery. Not only will this make you famous but you’ll also be entered into a contest to win an Apple iPad. Right now, the chance of winning is pretty good as there are less than 40 photos in the gallery.

You can buy Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul direct from Amazon.com or any major book reseller like Barns & Nobles or Chapters. Prices range from $10.85 at Amazon to $19.99 at the Richmond Chapter store. If you wish to have a signed copy, you can order it direct from me for $20 plus $3.99 flat world wide shipping. Please include your name and shipping address plus any special dedication you want me to sign onto the book.



View the Original article

Teching It Up At The Seattle 2.0 Awards

Tonight, web entrepreneurs, “wantrepreneurs”, investors, journalists, startup aficionados and one Dot Com Mogul gathered at Elliott Hall at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in downtown Seattle for the Seattle 2.0 Awards.

The sold out event celebrates the best of the Seattle tech and startup community. Like Vancouver, Seattle is a mecca for new technology startups. So much so that Tech Crunch founder, Michael Arrington, recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco just to be part of it.

Technology startups have been the birthplace of some of the biggest changes in our way of life this century, from how we buy houses to how we manage our family photos, from how we entertain ourselves on the web to how we run our businesses.

Seattle 2.0 Awards recognizes the best of the best from the tech startup scene in Seattle as judged by the people who know best, their peers, on an unique and remarkable event.

The award started with a keynote with Jonathan Sposato. Then the awards were handed out in categories ranging from best CEO of a startup to best entrepreneurial blog. After the awards, there was an open networking session with plenty of food and drinks. Overall, it was a grand old time and I was left wondering why there isn’t a Vancouver 2.0 Awards. I know the tech scene is big enough in Vancouver to do one.

Congrats to all the Seattle 2.0 Awards winners. And congrats to Neil Patel for almost winning the Best Entrepreneurial Blog category. If it was up to me, I would have given you the win.



View the Original article

Thursday, May 20, 2010

5 Things John Chow’s Cluttered Blog Taught Me

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Register Now for Social Media Marketing 2010

Are you fed up with social media conferences that tell you twitter is great and you should be doing it? If you want to hear what the real experts are up and learn through case studies then Social Media Marketing 2010 is for you.

Kicking off in London at 9 am on the June 17th Social Media Marketing 2010 is billed as Europe’s leading social media event will bring together some of the finest social media minds to discuss the latest campaigns, techniques and theories for achieving viral marketing success.

From blogging to video-sharing, Flickr to Twitter, social media marketing is delivering impressive returns. The question is: are you making the most of it?

Speakers include Chris Brogan & Brian Solis (via video), Mat Morrison, Andrew Walker, Charlie Osmond, Richard Sedley, Murray Newlands, Luke Brynley-Jones, Sue Keogh and Nadeem Azam will help you get answers. Follow on Twitter #SMMUK10

Register with code JohnChowbloggingking to get a 10% discount.

Limited Early Bird tickets still available at http://www.socialmediamarketing.co.uk/



View the Original article

Want to Buy Thousands of Digital Products?

There is a lot of money to be made online and many different ways to make it. However, many of these strategies can be very time-consuming, expensive, or both.

Instead of developing your own products to sell on the Internet, it may be more worth your while to consider a service like that offered by InDigitalWorks. Serving as the subject of today’s review, InDigitalWorks markets itself as the number one MRR and PLR source.

Does it live up to expectations? Do they charge so much that you’re better off outsourcing your product creation elsewhere? Let’s take a look and find out.

Accessing Nearly 4000 Digital Products for Resale



View the Original article

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Vancouver International Children’s Festival At Vanier Park

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Steak Party At El Gaucho With The Boys From UBD

I’m in Seattle so the boys from Unique Blog Designs decided we should go for some steaks. I never say no to steaks and when Nate Whitehill of UBD recommended we check out El Gaucho, I was all for it.

El Gaucho is a high end steak house located in Seattle’s Belltown area. This restaurant caters to the executive set in a see-and-be-seen atmosphere. When dining there, you can expect to see tables of Seattle’s powerbrokers closing the big deals in an environment similar to an old-fashioned supper club. The multi-level dining room is spacious and upscale, a fitting environment for those with big expense accounts. El Gaucho is the first restaurant I’ve been to that has cigars on the menu. I guess that’s what you order after closing the big deal.

In addition to the cigar menu, El Gaucho has some of the most awesomely huge bottles of wine that I’ve ever seen. Be warned however, they come with an awesomely huge price tag as well. The steaks are not cheap either. They range from $50 to $65 each depending on the cut. The steaks are Angus Prime and extremely tender. However, my 26oz Porterhouse came a little too charred in a few areas.

El Gaucho offers a nice selection of side dishes to compliment the steak. We sampled some scalloped potato, grilled cream corn and mashed potato. Appetizers include escargot, oyster on the half shell and spicy tenderloin Diablo. Dinner closed with fruits, nuts, cheese and a pure cane sugar root beer float.

Overall, El Gaucho is a fine restaurant but extremely expensive. The dinner bill for four came to a disgusting amount. I’m not going to tell you how much it was because I don’t need any of those “You know how many poor people you can feed with that amount of money?” comments. I will just say that you better be living the Dot Com Lifestyle if you want to party it up at El Gaucho.

If you wish to experience an every better steak house with better prices, check out Daniel’s Broiler. It’s still my favorite steak house in Seattle.



View the Original article

Saturday, May 15, 2010

ThinkTank 2010 Is Coming

Have you ever been to a conference and though the information they gave during the sessions weren’t really of much use? Instead, you found that most of the really productive stuff were at the parties and after hour event, where you can do face to face networking with the big names in the business. Well, ThinkTank is just that – one big after hour event that happens to last for three days.

ThinkTank is three days, on the beach, in a tent, and in restaurants and bars around the area in Del Mar, on the edge of San Diego. It is a get together of a few dozen of the top internet marketers, entrepreneurs, SEO’s, Domainers, and Web 2.0 guys in the world. ThinkTank happens on Thursday, September 17 at the ocean front, where everyone will get a chance to meet each other, discuss their current projects, goals and areas of expertise. After that it will be a nonstop three days of fun in the sun, surfing lessons, crazy fun activities, and nonstop networking, problem solving, strategies of success, and oh yes, drinks.

This is a big event, for big kids who like to have fun. Don’t be surprised. Don’t come expecting to be lectured to, or led by the hand. This is an event for THOSE WHO ALREADY KNOW what they are doing, and are looking to network with the best of the best. Admission to ThinkTank is by invite only and cost $3,000. Invites will be going out soon. I look forward to seeing you at ThinkTank 2010.



View the Original article

Friday, May 14, 2010

[Video] The “$2 Per Hour” Power Formula

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

How To Turn An Apple iPad Into an iPad 3G

The new Apple iPad 3G comes out in the US at the end of this month. It cost $130 more than the WiFi only iPad plus you have to pay for a data plan that cost $14.99 to $29.99 a month. That means a 16GB 3G iPad with an unlimited data plan would cost $1,288.88 for the first year of ownership. That’s a pretty hefty price to pay over the $499 WiFi only iPad. However, If you already own an iPhone, there is a way to turn a WiFi only iPad into a 3G iPad.

For Jail Broken iPhones Only

The magical app that pulls this off is call MyWi. MyWi turns your iPhone into a 3G wireless HotSpot. When you’re at a location with no WiFi and you want to surf the net with your WiFi only iPad, just fire up your iPhone, turn on MyWi and log your iPad onto it. Your iPad will be connected to the Internet using the 3G of your iPhone. Since the iPhone becomes a wireless HotSpot, any other WiFi enabled device can log onto it and use it. MyWi offers 40bit and 105bit WEP security to prevent others from accessing your WiFi HotSpot. Since my iPhone goes wherever my iPad goes, it’s like having an iPad 3G for the price of an iPad WiFi. Plus I don’t have to pay for an additional data plan.

The main problem with MyWi is it’s not available at the iTunes store (and probably never will be). You need to jail break your iPhone in order to get it. Jail breaking an iPhone isn’t that hard to do but it can be intimidating if you’ve never done it before. The program I use to jail break my iPhone is call PwnageTool. Once your iPhone is jail broken, you’ll be able to download and install MyWi. The rest is extremely easy. MyWi cost $9.99. This a very small price to pay when you consider the savings you’ll get over the cost of a 3G iPad with data plan.

The following video shows the MyWi app in action. For the step by step on how to jail break the iPhone, check out this guide at iClarified.com. Thanks to Gary Ng at iPad In Canada for the refresher course on iPhone jail breaking.



View the Original article

How to Kill Your Blog with Bad Marketing

By now we all know that in order to make money from a blog all we need is good content coupled with good traffic. It’s funny how these two simple things really aren’t that simple at all. In fact, we struggle with this every day. We struggle with providing good content and most really don’t have an idea on how to get traffic.

In John Chow’s monthly income report, he always emphasizes that to make money with blogging you need to have a good traffic. That is still the case today. Although it is entirely possible to make money with traffic that is not as big as with this blog, the general conclusion still, is you need good traffic.

This is where the need of marketing comes in. We have to get noticed so we have to market our blogs competently. That’s the only way to get a good amount of traffic. That being said, we as bloggers try different ways to market our blogs, some are unconventional, some are unique and most are obsolete ones. The problem with this is sometimes it brings more harm than traffic. This is what I call bad marketing.

What is Bad Marketing in Blogging?

Bad Marketing happens when you promote your blog for all the wrong and ugly reasons. Because of the nature of the internet, we sometimes tend to

View the Original article

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Dot Com Pho – Return of The Regulars Edition

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Limited Invite – Join EWA Private Network

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

How to Create Compelling Content that Ranks Well in Search Engines

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger has create a new 28-page white paper called . Personally, I think SEO is for the birds but the report is still worth a read because Brian Clark really knows his stuff.

The cool thing about the report is it’s completely free to download without any kind of email opt in required. As a matter of fact, here’s the direct download link. Some of the highlights of the white paper include:

Why SEO Copywriting Still MattersHow Search Engines WorkWhy You Have to Spoon Feed Search EnginesThe 5 Essential Elements of Keyword ResearchHow to Create Cornerstone Content That Google LovesFive Link Building Strategies That WorkFive Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO CopywritingWhy Writing for People Works for Search EnginesHow to Make SEO Copywriting Simple

Download



View the Original article

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Learn How to Make Money Online

Making money online can seem like a daunting and overwhelming venture for people new to the industry and even seasoned veterans can use a little more guidance from time to time. Providing you with valued instruction across this entire spectrum is Internet University by Super Affiliate Twins.

The online course serves as the subject of today’s review and we’ll be taking a look at the information being offered, whether or not it’s useful, and how much this guidance is going to cost you.

Going Back to School

Internet University is designed as an ongoing course in how to make money developing and running websites. It goes through many of the different avenues you can take, from email marketing to media buying.



View the Original article

How To Make Money with Twitter on Your Birthday

So today is my birthday and I’ve been getting a ton of Happy Birthday wishes on Twitter, IM, Facebook, etc. While I would have loved to reply to each birthday greeting personally, it was impossible because of the sheer volume. What I did instead was sent out the Twitter tweet at top of this post.

The tweet was made in fun and I didn’t really expect anyone to take it seriously. However, some followers actually fire up their PayPal account and sent me money! So far, I’ve received enough for a really nice big night out on the town. I want to thank to following people who were kind enough to take my tweet literally and send me money on my birthday.

Bob Jones
Zac Johnson
Shoemoney
Jonathan Volk
Bob Buskirk
Neil Patel
Nate Whitehill
Ruben Orozco
Alex Shalman
Tyler Cruz
Isabella Mori

To those who sent me a Happy Birthday wish, I thank you. To the people above, who sent me money as well as a Happy Birthday wish, I thank you for the big birthday night out! Who would have thought you can use Twitter to make money on your birthday?



View the Original article

Monday, May 10, 2010

Step By Step Guide – How To Be a Six Figure Blogger

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Sources For $300 Per Month Full-Time Workers

My friend John Reese just posted an amazing video about outsourcing. The video is called Instant Leverage and it’s absolutely free to watch and filled with tons of outstanding information. If you’ve been try to make it on your own all this time, stop it because success is a team effort and no one can do it all by themselves. This is where outsourcing comes in.

Here’s some of what John shares in his free video:

Web sites you can use today to find people to hire for $300/month full-time.The magical “not-an-iPad” device that turns ideas into auto-pilot cash flow.A special task you can give anyone to find out if they’re a ‘good’ worker.Why you should avoid outsourcing firms at all costs. (How John lost over $100,000.)The inexpensive software John calls his “money-making delegation machine.”And much, much more!



View the Original article

Dot Com Pho – Everybody Is Late Edition

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Friday, May 7, 2010

How To Install An Invisible Shield On An Apple iPad

The Apple iPad is a beautiful object to behold. However, it’s not very well protected. The surface is nice and smooth but can also be easily scratched by keys, coins, etc. While you can use a protective case or sleeve, I prefer a lighter and more invisible solution. The Invisible Shield protects your iPad with a layer of 3M protective film that is virtually indestructible. One installed, no amount of keying, scratching or Dremel can put a hair on it.

Many people have trouble installing the Invisible Shield. Even iPad experts like Gary Ng of iPad In Canada can’t do it right. He had to cut tiny slits in each corner to compensate for the curvature of the iPad’s corners. Talk about being a total amateur.

To show easy it is to install an Invisible Shield, I created a little video of me adding the shield to my iPad. The install process takes only a few minutes. The key is not to be afraid to spray your iPad with a ton of solution. Do it right and you won’t have to cut any slits into a corner.

The finished product looks just like a normal Apple iPad. You can’t tell there’s a shield on it. In addition to offering awesome protection, the Invisible Shield creates a higher friction surface. I no longer feel the iPad will slip out of my hands. Also, glare from the glass seems to have been reduced with the shield over it. Overall, the Invisible Shield a great protection solution for the Apple iPad.

The Invisible Shield is available direct from Zagg.com or at most major consumer electronics stores like Best Buy or Futureshop. The full coverage Apple iPad kit sells for $39.99 (use coupon code iphoneinca to get 20% off). That’s a small price to pay for knowing that your iPad can now withstand an Dremel attack.



View the Original article

How To Use PPV To Make Money Off Email Spammers

If you have an email account then no doubt you have received email spam. While everyone hates spam, the sad fact of life is they still make a lot of money for the spammers sending them. Here’s a little PPV/CPV trick you can do to make money off the email spammers.

The next time you receive spam in your inbox, copy and save the links. Then check out what kind of offer the spammer is offering. Generally, it’s in the lose weight, greater sex, better you niche. Find a similar offer from your favorite affiliate network and target it using a PPV network like DirectCPV.com. When it comes time to enter the keywords, use the URLs given by the email spammers. This will trigger your offer when an adware user clicks on the spammer’s link.

Email spammers send out millions of emails everyday and those clicks can provide a nice amount of inventory in which to serve your PPV offers into. It also a pretty evil way to make money off the spammers because you’re popping your offer over theirs.

If you don’t understand a word I just said, don’t feel bad. You can read my article on how to make money with PPV/CPV is here. You can also read a DirectCPV.com case study here.



View the Original article

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Going To The Playboy Mansion – Are You On The List?

margin:1px;font-size:6px;line-height:8px;height:8px;background-image:url('http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-polls/images/default/pollbg.gif');border:1pxsolid #c8c8c8

View the Original article

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Review Make Money Online And Win an Apple iPad

Michael Kwan and I are giving away not one but TWO Apple iPads as part of the promotion for our new book, Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul. That’s right. Just for picking up a copy of our new book, you can be rocking and rolling with Apple’s newest magical and revolutionary tablet. Here’s how to enter.

1 – Take a Photo with The Book

I’ve created a photo gallery of readers who have purchased Money Online Online. If your picture is in the gallery, you’re entered to win a 16GB WiFi Apple iPad. To add your photo, simply take a picture with you and the book and email it to johnchow

View the Original article

Saturday, May 1, 2010

What If You Bought Apple Stock Instead of The Apple Product?

Back in November 11, 1997, Apple released the Apple PowerBook G3 250. The then state of the art notebook cost a whopping $5,700. Expensive yes, but it made you the envy (or laughing stock) of your friends for awhile. Today, a PowerBook G3 isn’t good for much more than a paperweight.

What if, instead of spending that $5,700 on a new Apple product in 1997, you put the money into Apple (AAPL) stock instead? If you did that, you wouldn’t have a paperweight today but you would be sitting on over $330,000 of Apple stock!

Kyle Conroy has put together a little graph showing what would have happened had you purchased the AAPL instead of the many products Apple launched over the years. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.

Last month, I made a post saying I purchased a large block of Apple shares when the iPad went on pre-order. I picked up those shares at an average price of $224.

Last Tuesday at 9AM, I purchased another block of AAPL at an average price of $245. At 5PM the same day, Apple announced record breaking earnings that blew everyone away. The next day, the stock went to $260. Apple closed at $270.83 on Friday.

While I am really happy Apple iPad owner, I am an ever happier Apple shareholder. My advice: buy the product and the stock!



View the Original article

Are You Scared of Success?

A few years ago, I held a contest to give away two passes to Shoemoney’s Elite Retire. Those passes cost $5,000 each. The only requirement to enter was to write a blog post explaining why I should give you the pass. You would think a contest offering this kind of prize would draw hundreds, if not thousands, of entries. However, less than a dozen people entered.

Before Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, Shoemoney held a contest to give away an all expense paid trip to the show. The winner would get the most expensive show pass, flight, hotel and $2,000 of cash to bet on a game of Blackjack. To enter, you had to write a blog post on why you should go, have your post selected as a finalist and then get people to vote for your entry. Again, you would expect tons of people to enter but, like my Elite Retreat contest, only a handful of people entered.

When the question came up on why we got so few people entering our life changing contests, I came up with the follow conclusion: People are scared of success.

You Can’t Be Scared of Failure. You’re Already Failing

I hear the argument many times that says most people won’t try to succeed because they’re scared of failure. I would argue that they’re failing already and I don’t see them being scared of it. Otherwise, they’ll do something to avoid it. What they’re really scared of is not failure. They are scared of success and all the “problems” that it brings. Yes, success can bring some huge problems and I would say the biggest one that makes people scared of success is, “What would my friends think?”

It really didn’t surprised me one bit that the winners of the Elite Retreat contest were Zac Johnson and Gyutae Park, two already successful bloggers and affiliate marketers. It also didn’t surprised me that the winner of Shoe’s Affiliate Summit contest was Lyndon Reid, another successful blogger and affiliate marketer.

I had a friend who once said, “The person who least needs it is always the person who wins it.” and it seems to apply here. Zac, Gyutae and Lyndon doesn’t really need to win those contests to be successful but they won because no one else entered. People did not entered because most are used to having excuses for failing and going to an event like Elite Retreat or Affiliate Summit would remove all those excuses. No more excuses mean they now have to succeed and that scares of the living daylights out of them.

So, while you will see hundreds and thousands of people enter a contest to win a free iPad, the instant the prize becomes something that can drastically alter the chance of success, the only people who enter are the ones who already successful.



View the Original article

Friday, April 30, 2010

How to Make Money Creating E-Books

One of the keys to having a successful career making money online is to generate income even when you’re not working. That’s the critical difference between a regular job and being an Internet entrepreneur.

While it can be challenging and time-consuming to publish an actual book, the ebook market can be considerably easier to crack. Even then, the process can seem daunting and confusing from the outside. Can you make money from writing an ebook?

Helping you achieve this goal is Ebook Profits Unleashed, an e-book on how to make money writing and selling e-books. Go figure. Over the course of this review, we’ll take a look at what this e-book has to offer and whether it’s worth the asking price.

Who Is the Author?

There are many people out there who claim to be experts when they have no real knowledge at all. While it’s possible that author Jesse Regan has the experience and skills to create successful ebooks, he doesn’t really “sell” this in the “About the Author” section of the ebook:

Jesse Regan is fun loving, positive thinking family man who truly believes that anything is possible with the right mindset and a whole lot of action. In his spare time he enjoys rock climbing, biking, skiing, weightlifting, hunting, fishing, reading self development books and spending as much time as he can with his loved ones.

Personally, I think the section is better served by telling us why we should trust and believe the guidance being given by Regan. At this stage, I’m much less interested in his biking and fishing habits.

Make Money Writing and Selling Ebooks

So, the core product is called Ebook Profits Unleashed and it gives you a step-by-step guide on how to create a successful ebook. It has been written in such a way to be accessible even by newbies.



View the Original article

The 10 Commandments of Affiliate Marketing

Ace Affiliate has done it again. You may remember Ace from their previous “trilogy” of helpful infographics that explained affiliate marketing. The first was the Affiliate Review Report Card. They followed that up with the Affiliate Marketing in Plain English chart then Affiliate Marketing: Choosing The Best Model For You. Now, Ace has release what I feel is their best infographics yet: .

There are a lot of factors that make an affiliate marketer successful. Affiliate marketing is different from traditional marketing because an affiliate will only be paid upon the user taking action. The action may be purchasing a product or signing up a for a service. With affiliate marketing however there a some rules that can help a budding affiliate marketer head in the right direction. Below we have provided some commandments for affiliate marketing that will your keep your business in line for success.

While I think it’s cool that Ace put these 10 commandments on a scroll, I believe the original 10 commandments were on two tablets. Anyway, if you want to make big money in affiliate marketing, then obey these 10 commandments!



View the Original article

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Making Money

What would you do with that kind of passive income rolling in each and every day?


Buy a new car?

Get a bigger house?

Take your family on the vacation you have been dreaming about?

Invest for the future?

Give to the charity you have been meaning to help?

Website Conversions

Reading through this (quite long) discussion about conversion rates and found these nuggets inside:


They recommend having a refer-a-friend program.

Aaron: What type of traffic converts best?

Karl: Existing customers convert very well, as do visitors from refer-a-friend programs.

I’ve had mixed success with this myself, it’s very audience dependent (and works better with women than men), but it’s not hard to set up and when it works, it’s free traffic. I’ve had the most success with a program of incentivizing the referrals. It’s a bit harder to set up, but can be significantly more productive. An example I’ve had good luck with is: “Refer 5 friends and be entered in a drawing.”

They also touch on the value of giving your site extra credibility by using press mentions.

While working on a weight loss website that generates $5 million/year, we noticed that the company had a fantastic press testimonial that wasn’t prominently displayed on their website. By moving this information “above the fold”—and reformatting it—we managed to create an overnight 67% increase in sales.

Happy Quote (on being unbeatable)

March 15, 2010 in Happy Quotes

Long ago we abandoned the idea of having a life’s work, a calling; those that still do their work from that sense of calling or vocation, will be unbeatable.

- David duChemin, world & humanitarian photographer, best-selling author

--

View the Original article