Last night an unexpected thing happen to us, my youngest daughter Elai was scratch by a stray cat near her neck. As soon as my wife realized the incident she started to freak out. This created a lot of tension in the house. Tension that made also my eldest daughter to cry even louder than Elai. You could just imagine the environment (three girls freaking-out, oh man… ).

I on the other hand called my mother and asked her if she could take care of Jeth (oldest) as we rush Elai to the nearest hospital for anti-rabies. Then I called the different clinics within our area and asked if they administer anti-rabies, luckily I found one in just a few calls. Then the rest is history… she got injected and were told to come back for follow-ups.

What did I learned from this experience? In business it is the same with family life… there will be a lot of surprises to come. There will be times that when you expect that everything is running smoothly an untoward incident will happen that is beyond your control.

You might be ranking high in Google search for a certain keyword then the big G changes its algorithm and you finally found yourself on the 5th page. Or worst your website got deface due to a security hole in your CMS. Instead of freaking out you may want to remember the following points:

1. Be calm. It is much easier to think and make decision when the mind is calm. In emergency cases Paramedics always stay calm so that they can assess the situation and make appropriate decision.

2. Damage control. Do the first necessary solution. For example if your site was defaced, you may want to closed your hosting temporarily or change the index page asap. It is much nicer to see a 404 Page than a porn page.

3. Ask an expert. Seek the help of experts in the problem that you are encountering. First it will be much faster to solve the problem, second it will be more concrete since they have already experience it. If you cannot afford for an expert seek solution through web forums or community. It is more probable that someone has encountered your problem and may offer quick solution.

There will always be unexpected things to come, accept it as challenge so that the next time we encounter it we will be more prepared in dealing with it.

More power.

James
“Live life today. the purpose of life being alive.”

You might already heard on the news, radio and most likely on the Internet, almost every activist on the planet are calling the heed to being green.
Being green is becoming earth friendly.  This means using things including gadgets, appliances, even hair sprays that are eco friendly.  More and more companies are already trying to make products that are earth riendly.  Solar panels for your home, rechargeable solar iPod, chargers for your Notebook computers, etc.  The treehugger.com reports that the solar power industry is growing amazingly.  Excerpt of the news:

“The salmon-pink Financial Times reports today that the solar equipment industry is on a path to grow amazingly fast: From 20 billion dollars last year to 90 billion dollars in 2010. “Profit growth is expected to accelerate even faster, as costs are contained, pushing margins up to nearly 60 percent.” These high profits hopefully will mean more capital investments into production facilities and R&D (which will help further decrease costs), and more companies entering that sector.”

This means that the demand for renewable sources of energy is increasing not
only for the businesses but also for home use.

Well, the bad news is that there is still not yet many affiliates program to join in this booming industry but some of the Internet Marketers are already positioning their domains to this industry.

Take a look at this  posting from digital-forums:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=137302

Should you invest now or wait?  Depends on you long term goals.  First mover have always the first hand.

more power.

James

If you are a newbie marketer like me, you easily get into the hype of the “get rich quick, retire early” tactics to buy their eBook.  The retiring early scheme is one of the best tactics to entice readership for those who want to earn a living online.  Average people would easily fall into this hype because everybody looks forward to a vacations galore, shopping spree, and other rich lifestyle.

Reflecting on this scheme made me realized as to too why rich people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and others didn’t retire early even though they have more than enough for a hundred years.

Bill Gates, becoming one of the richest man in the world did not retire early but instead he stayed with Microsoft and keep on developing their products.  Warren Buffet on the other hand continues to buy potential businesses increasing more value to Berkshire stockholders. 

Perhaps “retiring rich and early” should not be the main goal but doing the things that one is enjoy doing will be the basis of richness or fulfillment, of course monetizing the things that one is enjoy doing is another topic to blog about.

Cheers and more power to our success!

Why am I writing an article about outsourcing? Because presently outsourcing is one of the most important factors in any business. Not only in a large brick and mortar businesses but it can also be applied to small or starting internet marketers like us.

So what is outsourcing? Outsourcing is defined as a method of hiring an outside service provider to perform specific tasks for you. To put it simply is giving to another person the work that you should be doing.

For example you own a shoe factory in the United States ideally manufacturing the shoes should also be made within the office but you decided to outsource it to china. Why would a business give away their competency to another establishment? Here are some of the benefits:

1. Cost. Sometimes outsourcing a job to another business is much cheaper because the production and investment cost is much lesser than setting up a department. Outsource businesses have already invested in their competencies unlike setting up another department for the production. Secondly and obviously the labor cost of china is much cheaper than that of the US, at least in mass production.

2. The second advantage of outsourcing is that the main business can concentrate more on the marketing aspect of the service or product.

What does it got to do with with small or starting internet marketers like us? Well if your main specialization is copywriting, designing a website might slow down your business or if you are good in developing website scripts and templates, writing a sales letter might stuck you up staring at the computer (well, there are some individuals that have mastered both ways, selling and making products per se). That is where outsourcing comes in, you can outsource some of the job like web design, copywriting, search engine optimization…etc. Outsourcing some of these jobs will help you concentrate more on developing your product niches and earning money online.

Where to find outsourcing provider? Here are some of the websites that let’s you find freelance outsourcer.

www.elance.com
www.scriptlance.com
www.guru.com

Just a reminder, if you decide to outsource make sure you review the outsourcer’s profile and portfolio.

If you want a comprehensive reading on what is outsourcing you may download the free ebook below.

http://www.myworkathometips.com/free-stuff/myworkathometips-outsourcing.zip

Other recommeded reading:
10 Steps to being a successful copywriter.

Ghostwriters from the Inside-Out 

In my previous article I introduce how to earn without spending a dime, however if you prefer to have a much higher profit then you should invest (time and money) by having your own domain name and hosting account.

One advantage of having your own domain is that the search engine can indexed your site faster unlike when you are hosting on a free domain. Secondly, if you are paying for your hosting account you can have more control over the scripts that you will installing.

Here is the breakdown of your initial investment:

1. Domain – $10.00 per year

2. Web hosting – $3-5 dollars per month.

3. WordPress Blog system – free

4. WordPress Plug-ins – free

The prices shall vary since there are a million domain registrant on the Internet.

In getting your own domain and hosting account, you may want to consider the Top companies in the industry:

1. Hostgator.com
2. bluehost.com
3. www.GoDaddy.com

Remember to get a hosting plan that supports PHP scripting. WordPress only runs on PHP environment.

How to choose a domain.
Register a domain that has word according to your niche or website. For example if you will be establishing a website for children’s wear you can choose the following domain that has your keyword in it.

www.childrens-wear.com | www.childwear.com

If you domain is no longer available you can add a filler in the domain eg:

www.mychildrenswear.com | www.yourchildrenswear.com

Why is the keyword important in your domain? For the reason that it will add more points in your search engine optimization.

Install WordPress
The next thing to do is install WordPress on your server. You can go to WordPress.org and download the latest release. I will skip the installation of WordPress into your web host, you can find a lot of reference at the WordPress website. If you still need further help in installing you may visit their help section.

Once you have installed WordPress, go to the admin area and log-in to your account. Then go to the option menu and changed the Title and Description of your blog.

Include your primary keyword in the Title Tag while write your secondary keyword in the description area. Note that blog directories will reference your blog according to your title and description.

Post Content
Start writing post in your blog. You should populate your blog with as many “quality” content as possible. Put contents according to your target market. For example if you will be targeting on computers do not include contents about medicines. You may get some of your content from article directories like www.ezinearticles.com

Just remember that majority of the contents that you have put into your blog is not duplicated. Search engine will rank your site lower than that of a site having an original content. Always create value for your readers.

Put in the plug-ins.
Download the following plug-ins to optimized your WordPress system. The plug-ins listed are free or under the GNU License.

FireStats – Tracks your visitors.

Google Sitemap Generator - Create a sitemap of your website.

SEO Title Tag – optimizing your Title tags

Ultimate Warrior Tags – create additional tags from your content.

Sociable – easily create buttons for your social bookmarking sites like delicio.us and technorati.

Refer to the respective website for their installation instruction.

Apply for your Google Adsense account
Now you have set-up your blog you can now apply for your google adsense account. In applying just go to http://www.google.com/adsense.

The approval of your account varies, sometimes it may take from 2 days to 2 weeks. Or Google may even decline your application if the website does not conforms to their standards.

Put your Adsense code in your blog
There are two ways to put your adsense code to your account: using the Adsense Deluxe Plug-in and using the 3-column lay-out of http://www.sapiensbryan.com/

I used the 3-column lay-out. It is much easier to change the Adsense code than using the plug-in, besides the code blends more with site that can lead to higher CTR.

Know your stats and feel free to experiment on your ad placement.

This conclude the tutorial on how to earn with Google Adsense using WordPress. But you should not stop here there is still a lot to learn: driving traffic to you website, tracking your performance, link building, etc. I will be posting articles on those areas soon.