Just imagine…
You’ve heard about the blogging phenomena making the rounds lately.
And you’ve even thought about setting up your own blog.
But perhaps the biggest question you’ve had sofar is:

“What on earth shall I blog about?”

But don’t worry, you’re not alone.
And there’s some good news for you as well…

Not many people know what they want to blog about when they’re just getting started.

And that’s why Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick have just created a special X-Factor Strategy video that shows you how…

If you’re in any doubt as to what you should be blogging about, this X-Factor strategy video will get you off to a great start.

The video is an elaboration of one of the X-Factor strategies inside Yaro and Gideon’s report - The Roadmap To Become A Blogger, which has already been downloaded 8,789 times in the last week!

It looks at a little-known feature of the socialmedia giant Facebook, and shows you how to use it to your advantage and uncover multiple exploitable niche areas.

You can watch the whole video, without paying a cent or even giving away your details, over here:

xfactor-facebook video

Just go ahead and watch the video…It really wont cost you a thing, and it even comes with a full transcript that you can print out and follow along while you watch the video.

It’s a no-brainer - just go and watch it now:

xfactor-facebook video

If nothing else, you’ll get to know how to make friends with people from all over the world at the click of a button. And that could be very handy when you’re doing research for your new blog project.

Robert

You will also have heard of the expression, “If you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re probably right”

If you think constantly about recession and believe you will be adversely affected by it, you probably will! If you think you won’t…..well you know the rest!

Below is a well known story with a powerful message, which does the rounds from time to time -well worth catching up with it again.

The Hot Dog Vendor

There was this elderly man who had a profitable little business selling hot dogs on a busy street corner in a major city. He wasn’t particularly well educated, but he sold great hot dogs and his customers loved him.

During the early morning rush hour, he’d wheel his mobile hot dog stand to position it near the exit of the central railway station in town. A year ago he’d added a bacon and egg roll to his range and sold scores of them to this breakfast crowd every day. At lunchtime, he’d move his stand to a popular park where he had lines of regulars.

In the afternoon he’d be back at the station entrance and then later most nights he knew a great spot near a nightclub where young patrons rushed him off his feet. He had even installed special lighting and a flashing neon sign. Even people driving by would stop.

He’d worked hard for years and done well enough to put his only son through university who later became an accountant with a large accounting firm.

One day his son warned him that a recession was on the way. The old man asked his son what this meant. Being an educated man his son gave a very detailed explanation of how the recession would severely impact everyone in the community, particularly small business people like his father. There would be enormous unemployment; people would not be able to afford to spend money as they did now. He painted a gloomy picture of the future and warned his father that it would be wise to cut back on his expenses and “tighten his belt” financially and prepare for the worst. The old man didn’t know much about the economy or interest rates, but he trusted his son. After all, he was an educated man. Recession mentality kicked in…

The old man began to cut back on the quantity of sausages and bread rolls he bought. He didn’t want to get caught with stale rolls as business began to drop off. But it was hard to judge and some days he actually ran out of sausages and rolls earlier than he normally would. So he went home early and spent more time worrying about this recession that was coming

Soon he knew that what his son had said was right. He noticed that his takings were indeed falling. This depressed him more and so he tended to get out of bed later each day. After all, why get to the station so early when obviously more people would be eating at home rather than spending money on breakfast in the city. He decided that his bacon

and egg rolls were too expensive for most people now. After all, they were twice the price of a hot dog, so he cut them from his menu and his sales continued to plummet.

Wow, his son was right, this recession was hitting hard!

He decided to save more money and not replace the batteries that powered his neon sign and lights at night. Now because he was in the dark, fewer people bought from him and soon he decided that it wasn’t even worth his time setting up at night. Eventually he decided to sell off his equipment and his trolley. He was in luck though because the young woman who bought his trolley didn’t seem to know how bad business was, or how severe the recession was going to be. He managed to unload the trolley for more than he thought he would get. Now day after day he stayed at home, depressed, and occasionally his son would visit him and they would discuss how bad the recession was, and how lucky the old man had been to have an educated son who had warned him in advance about this terrible recession.

So what’s the moral of this story?…………………….

Recession mentality starts in one’s own head. If you believe that a recession is coming and that times will soon be tough, then they will be for you. Like the old man in the story, you’ll start to change your successful behaviour patterns and replace them with less resourceful habits. You’ll sleep in later. You’ll take longer lunch breaks, make less phone calls and go home earlier.

But it needn’t be that way…

If you are a follower of Neale Donald Walsch known for his marvellous ‘Conversations with God’ series of books, you will want to hear what he has to say about the two candidates for President of the USA. 

Have a listen to find out why…http://mail.finerminds.com/cgi-bin/arp3/arp3-t.pl?l=29&c=143857

I urge you to listen to this interview and pass it on to friends - it is vital for the future of the world that the best man wins this election!

Well, If you have been working with the LOA for some time you will probably have a Vision Board with pictures of things you want. You might also have affirmations written large as well. Both ideas recommended by one of the stars of that movie.

Personally this has not worked for me - perhaps because I forget to look at the board often enough!

If you have this problem and especially if you are not getting the changes to your life you were hoping for, you just might want to take a look at Mind Movies, which you can find here at this link

http://www.tinyurl.com/6yfkpu 

The clever thing about Mind Movies, in addition to playing like an ordinary video, is that they can play continuously on your computer screen behind anything you are working on - bit like a faint water mark - subliminally in fact.

So, instead of just looking at your Vision Board/Mind Movie once or twice a day -it plays subliminally all the time you are working at your computer.

Making your own Mind Movie is so easy with the tutorial videos that anyone, and I do mean anyone, will be able to get one up and running within a very short time.

Take a look at my first attempt which I have put on YouTube http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVeO66fymU and that is a first for me too! Then check out the Mind Movie site.

Enjoy

My line of work is in petroleum and has been for about 31 years now. So here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every litre.

Here are some tips from the industry….

  
Only buy or fill up your car in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all Service Stations have their storage tanks buried beneath the ground. The colder the ground the more dense the fuel. When it gets warmer petrol expands, so buying in the afternoon or evening, then your litre is not exactly a litre. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the petrol, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products play an important role. A one degree rise in temperature is a big deal in this business but the Service Stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.
 
When you are filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages; low, middle and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimising the vapours that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapour return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes into your tank becomes vapour. Those vapours are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.
  
One of the most important tips is to fill up when your tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is, the more fuel you have in you tank, the less air occupying its empty space. Petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine. Petroleum storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between petrol and the atmosphere, so it minimises the evaporation. Unlike Service Stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every litre is actually the exact amount.

DO NOT FILL If there is a fuel truck pumping into storage tanks when you stop to buy, UP. Most likely the petrol/diesel is being stirred up as the fuel is being delivered and you might pick up some dirt that normally settles on the bottom.
  
Hope this will help you get the most value for your money. Remember to always fill your car when the tank shows ‘half’. Always fill up in the early morning. Always fill up in slow mode.
  
 Notes from a driver…. I tried early Saturday morning before I came to work. $30.00 from 1/2 tank filled up my car. Usually it is $55.00. Amazing…..this has got to be the most useful e/mail I have received all year.

Accustomed as we are to branding pervading our lives from the Coca Cola Cup to the ambulance that rushes us to hospital on the fateful day that we require it, the media has chosen to brand events throughout history. This is especially so for those financial events that have punctuated our existence over the last 100 years or so. The Gold Standard, the Great Depression, Decimalisation Day, Black Wednesday, and I am sure there are more.

I am concerned that we do not miss the opportunity to allocate ownership for the current financial downturn that has us all looking for our parachutes, in the light of fading economic comfort, increasing unemployment and the likelihood that the next 12 months will put us back into post war style austerity.

It is, after all, the bankers who, through their careless, greedy and self-centred investments have broken the rules on prudent money management and exceeded their brief as guardians of our savings and our economic prosperity.

I propose and I hope many will agree with me that we should call this period economic instability ‘The Bankers Recession’.

Let us all hope that having got us into this state, they find the courage of their convictions and the balls to get us out of what is likely to be a prolonged and probably the most disillusioning period in Post War economics. Why should we all suffer for their selfish greed.

Let us hold them responsible and publicly remind them of their actions, in history, through the brand, “The Bankers’ Recession”. 

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

This is the most important chapter in the book where Ann takes over 4 pages to explain the problem with so called proven systems which have an inbuilt failure rate of 90%+ and how she developed her own system which has revolutionized the way MLMers build their businesses.

The system she developed is described in her ebook.the Renegade Network Marketer

I also wrote a blog post entitled It’s the System, Stupid! you might want to take a look.

Because this is the most important chapter in the book I cannot do it justice by trying to summarize here so if you haven’t already downloaded the free ebook all I can says is “You must be st….d!!!”

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If you apply the system Ann devised you’re business will take off like never before - just click on the link below and grab a copy now:-

Aren’t you just sick to death of this one?

Don’t you just want to throw up when some big shot stands up on the stage and says you’re not successful because you just don’t have enough belief - or you just don’t have a big enough ‘why’.

If you believe this stuff you buy so called inspirational CD’s and DVD’s, you go to every meeting, and you cut out pictures of cars and houses and stick on every surface in your house and car to motivate yourself. You think positive. You go to the annual conference because you are told that you will be motivated when you hear all the big stars telling their stories.  And you are pumped up and excited and raring to go - you just can’t wait to get home and get stuck into your business again!

External motivation is like a drug - you get the ‘high’ at the time but a few days later when the realities of life kick in…….well, you know the rest.

It’s too easy to tell someone that they just aren’t motivated enough; in fact it’s a cop out!

External Motivation isn’t the solution - a good Marketing Plan is the only answer.

If you are one of the 5% who have stuck with your company for more than 12 months - you obviously have the belief, you just need that effective marketing system.

The best motivation comes when you begin to get results from you marketing efforts!

Ann discusses this subject in three and a half pages. To read it all go get the FREE ebook now and enjoy!