Still trying to pull myself together after yesterday’s crash. Can’t seem to focus as much as I want at the moment. But still striving forward.

At the moment I’m reading a book called “The Richest Man Who Ever Lived” by Steven K. Scott.

A very good read. Interesting stuff, where it talks about diligence.  It’s the second time I’ve read this book and it seems I learn more the second time round.

I would recommend you to get a copy and read it. Contains very wise advice that you can apply to your [tag-tec]online business[/tag-tec] and personal life. It’s written very well so you won’t fall asleep.

Talk to you tomorrow when I hope I have a clearer head.

I just had a car crash this morning with my wife.

After dropping off my daughter to school and on the way to drop off my wife, a huge truck  with a long container switched changed lanes and hit my car’s rear right.

My car spun around in a circle, smashed against a wall, spun around again and ran on toward the bushes on the other side.

I was alright with small bruises and cuts to my arms. My wife had cuts to her eye lid and big bruises on her cheek.

This happened at the highway at 100 km/h. I am very glad to be alive.  Had there been cars coming behind while I was spinning, I would have been dea.

The first things that raced across my mind was holy shit, am I going to die, what’s going to happen to my kids, I still haven’t achieved what I want yet.

After this incident, I promised to myself that I’ll spend more time with my family, reach my online business goals as fast as I can, and waste less of my time.

There are several things which I have put off from doing. Mainly due to reasons such as I’ll do it when I have time, I’m not sure what other people will think etc…

I take this as a wakening call. Life is too short to waste. Make the most of it everyday. God bless all the casualties in China and Burma.

Internet marketing businesses have daily tasks? I thought it was a set and forget system. That’s what auto pilot income means right. You’ve read it in most internet marketers’ books and sales letters.

That version of the [tag-tec]internet marketing[/tag-tec] story, sells.  The true version stinks. The truth is it requires work. If you spend the time on the work, it will pay you back later on.

I had a shower this morning and realized that I haven’t been to the gym for over a year now. Last year I promised to go every lunch time for half an hour. But till this day now, I haven’t been once.

If I had stuck to my own promise, and went for the past year, I’m sure I would have a leaner body by now.  I can start today or tomorrow, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s been a year wasted already.

Looking back, I could have spent that half an hour at the gym, no problem.

That’s the thing with everyone. We look back and say to ourself we could have done it, but for some reason we just didn’t do it at the time.

For today, ask yourself what internet marketing tasks can you do to improve your business. Let’s say that you really have no mood to do anything today and only have 10 minutes to spare. Pick one of the following to do:

- Go to someone’s blog and make a decent comment pointing back to your website

- Write an article for 10 mins. You can go back to it tomorrow. At least you started off writing a new article

- Go to several websites and ask if you can be a guest blogger. You can schedule your  guest post later on.

- Go to your old blog postings and see if you can make a comment to an external blog and do a trackback for it. Using TrackBoost is a good idea.

- Go to a forum and make one or more helpful postings.

- Read up on SEO and mark down anything you can use to improve your SEO

- Go to your PPC campaigns and change something to beat your control

- Browse on the internet for 10 mins and note down any ideas you have which you can use later on. eg. videos, articles, products etc…

The main point is, you can do something using just 10 mins of your time. These tasks add up in time. You’ll also make yourself feel better because you’ve worked on your business. Internet marketing has many daily tasks. It doesn’t mean you have to deal with all of them. Just do something today.

Sometimes after working for 10 mins, you’ll get in the mood for working and may continue for an extra hour. I’ve done this loads of time.

With my online [tag-tec]internet marketing[/tag-tec] business, I’m always quite busy throughout the day. I continuously find ways to automate my work, outsource if possible and find software or devices which will [tag-tec]save time[/tag-tec] with my tasks.

If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that I used to be in the IT industry prior to working full time as an [tag-tec]internet marketer[/tag-tec]. However, that doesn’t mean I know everything about the latest IT devices. I’m saying this because I’ve stumbled across something which has saved me time and frustration.

Here’s the story.

I have my personal office which I share on the same floor with other people who have their own offices. About 10 rooms per floor. Sometimes I want to blast my music louder, or go on Skype to speak to my peers. So what do I do?

I’ll kneel down and go to the back of my PC, disconnect my speaker cables from the back, and then plug in my headset. After I’m finished, I will kneel down again, disconnect my headset cables from the back of my PC, plug in my speaker cables after looking for it for half a minute since I’ve got so many things hooked up at the back.

I can tell you it’s frustrating.

Well I told my frustration to a shop assistant in an computer mall here in Hong Kong. She said “Why don’t you get an adapter? You can connect your speakers and headset at the same time. Switch off your speakers when you don’t need them and put on your headsets when you’re ready to Skype.”

I was amazed. I asked how much it was, expecting to pay something like HK$200. It turned out to be HK$8. Which is about US$1 !!! I was floored, man.

Here is the device.

For those of you who know about this device, you’ll think “Damn man. I thought you were an IT person. You should know that.”

Well you should know that you cannot assume because a person has many years of experience in a particular industry, he will know everything. This is why a lot of people don’t do anything or create any good content.

The thoughts that will cross their minds are “Everyone knows that. It’s nothing new. If I know that so would everyone else.”

You can teach an expert new things. Don’t underestimate what you know. Some people are willing to pay for what you know. You’ll be surprised.

Hell, I don’t know the name of this device. I just call it my “audio adapter”. The number of minutes this US$1 has saved me will add up over the years. Damn, if only I had asked someone earlier.

This “Top 10 [tag-tec]Blogging Checklist[/tag-tec]” is basically 10 things I tick off when posting to my blog. It keeps me organized and prevent mistakes. This is part 2 of the post which I originally created at

http://trafficbeast.com/blogging/checklist-for-blogging/

Enjoy.

Top 10 Blogging Checklist

1. Any global news I can tie in to the post? Recent news are searched heavily so there’s more chance of your post being found.

2. Any related ideas from this particular blog post? If so, jot them down to remind myself for [tag-tec]blogging[/tag-tec] in future.

3. Any past posts on my blog that I can place a link to. This will improve internal linking.

4. Any ideas on articles I can write on that I can link to this post?

5. Know what keywords to use in the post. They should appear in the title, opening sentence and and of paragraph.

6. Check if the keywords are tagged. Check Technorati tag link.

7. Any way to improve the title of the post to make it more appealing?

8. Spell check & grammar check the final post.

9. Can the sentence on my “Optional Excerpt” be improved so that my RSS readers will click on it.

10. Use [tag-tec]Trackboost[/tag-tec] or Utility Poster to find blogs I can link to and comment on, to build back links.

11. (Sorry I can’t count) See if there are any opportunity to add humour to the post.

Using this checklist of 10 or 11 things, I can put my mind at rest for the day, at least for blogging.

[tag-tec]Video Article Marketing[/tag-tec] is one of the techniques I discuss in my book Article Marketing Strategies. You can use videos as a call to action in your resource box of your articles.

If you wrote an article on pregnancy, your resource box can be something like:”Visit the website www.I love pregnancy .com to see videos on what to prepare for the birth of your child”

The click-through rate for resource boxes like this will be sky high.

The reason being that people love videos and generally prefer them to reading articles. No matter if they’re adults or kids, we all prefer watching rather than reading.

It surprised me that not many readers of my book was using the technique. It turns out the excuses were:

1. I don’t think it’s worth the effort (ie. they’re lazy)

2. I don’t know how to create videos

Let’s ignore the first batch of readers. If they read my book on [tag-tec]article marketing[/tag-tec] and implemented a few strategies then they are probably doing quite well already. However, there’s no reason not to take your marketing to the next level.

If you’re the second type of reader then I would advise you to get a copy of Camtasia and learn how to use the tool. It should take around 1 hour to know it features and begin making videos.

We’re not dealing with superb production here. We’re talking about creating a few Presentation slides and with you talking on the microphone. Once you are comfortable using Camtasia, you can start doing other advanced stuff such as adding background music, text effects etc… But at the start, you only need the bare minimum to start your video article marketing.

Download the book Article Marketing Strategies if you haven’t already at

http://www.trafficbeast.com/ebook

[tag-tec]Selling online[/tag-tec] requires techniques and business sense just like in the retail environment we live in. Here’s a story yesterday which hits this home.

My wife’s been quite annoyed lately. Nope it wasn’t me. She needs to have one of her wisdom tooth took out. So she visited 3 dentists near our area. The first one cost HKD1,100. The second one cost HKD1,000. Both places looks professionally furnished and the receptionists were very helpful.

Still she thought it was quite expensive and visited a third dentist. The decorations in this place was also nice. Clean and friendly. However, the receptionist was the dentist himself.

Feeling a bit strange my wife approached the desk nevertheless and asked about the price. The dentist had a quick look at my wife’s tooth and said HKD400. Yipppeee…a hell of a bargain compared to the other 2 dentists.

My wife said thanks and ran out. She chose the 2nd dentist.

Her choice was solely based on price since none of them were recommendations from friends. So why didn’t she choose the cheapest dentist?

The fact that the Dentist himself was the reception made her feel a bit uncomfortable already. Nevertheless, she gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the receptionist was out for lunch etc… However, notice that the first impression this gave my wife was not a comfortable one.

Next the price was far too cheap compared to the market. It was LESS than half the price of the cheaper dentist. Immediately, the thoughts that raced across her mind was “This guy is desperate for customers. Either he’s a very new Dentist who needs the practice or he’s hardly got any customers due to bad word of mouth”.

I seriously doubt that Dentist will survive very long with the current situation he’s in.

Study this story. It applies to selling online with your own business a lot. The first impression your visitors have of you is very important. Make your website look professional. Don’t save money on this if you’re not a good web designer. Have someone to do it for you. If you want to [tag-tec]make money online[/tag-tec], at least spend some money on it.

Look at the graphic header on my internet marketing blog. It was done professionally because I can’t do a good graphic header to save my life. A good graphic header needs talent and I don’t have it.

Once your visitors have a good first impression of your website, it makes selling online a lot easier.

Next is the price. Everyone loves a bargain but if the price of your product is way below the market price, you’re going to lose the customer. You get what you pay for. Prospects know that. But sometimes there are bargains to be found. If it gets ridiculous like in my wife’s case, the quality and service will assume to be inferior.

To improve your performance on selling online, base your price slightly below the market rate. Also if possible, give reasons for it.

The way this dentist can gain more customers, is to increase his price and maybe explain next time why he’s the receptionist If he told my wife the price was HKD900 instead of HKD400, I’m quite sure my wife would have made the appointment on the spot.

The make money online market is the same as a brick and mortar business. Have you thought about increasing your price to improve your selling online?

Article marketing is one of the activities where I spent the most of my time on. It’s one of the most rewarding and satisfying thing I do.

Here are 2 of the recent articles I’ve written.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Starting-An-Online-Business-on-a-Shoestring-Budget&id=1128249

http://ezinearticles.com/?Google-AdSense—Where-To-Place-Google-AdSense&id=1135516

I enjoy [tag-tec]article marketing[/tag-tec] and I hear too many people failing at it. I’ve spoken to several people who have reported their problems when carrying out the strategies in my ebook Article Marketing Strategies which you can download at http://www.trafficbeast.com/ebook

It seems the underlying reason is they hate writing. They do make an effort to learn how to do the techniques but at the end of the day, they hate the task and don’t think it’s worth it.

Note that these are not the ones that say article marketing doesn’t work. They do believe it works but they just don’t like writing.

If they’ve honestly tried to do article marketing and have this hate for it, then I agree don’t do it. Either outsource your article marketing tasks or write an article only when you have a great idea for one or when you have the urge to write one.

The places where you can do the outsourcing are at http://www.odesk.com or http://www.guru.com These are 2 places where I’ve got decent work from.

Internet marketing is a enjoyable job. Actually everything you do should be enjoyable. Lift is short. Live life to the fullest.

Mothers Day in Hong Kong is a time when all decent restaurants are full. It’s impossible to get a table for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Unless you have bookings way in advance.

The people in Hong Kong are crazy with “dim sum” restaurants on Sundays. With [tag-tec]Mothers Day[/tag-tec] being on a Sunday as well, I’ll be surprised if I don’t need to wait for at least 2.5 hours and get rushed service!

For restaurants in Hong Kong, Mothers Day means a shit load of traffic for them (physically!) throughout the day. It’s like a launch day in the online informational product world. I wonder if there’s a way to get that traffic and [tag-tec]make money[/tag-tec] with it?

I just rang my mum in the UK and realized that Mothers Day is not the same as Hong Kong. Hmmm…..I was sure it was.

A quick Google investigation and I found that Fathers Day was the same in both countries and not Mothers Day. Now wouldn’t I’ve looked foolish if I emailed everyone and reminded them of Mothers Day?

Before you email to your list, always be cautious of what you say. Did you know that some people don’t celebrate Christmas and are actually embarrassed if you mention Christmas celebrations to them?

Lesson learned? Always speak to people using “Global Language”. We are from different parts of the world and don’t share the same habits, holidays or slangs.

By the way, Happy Mothers Day to those that are celebrating it today

I came across a very interesting video in YouTube. This is good [tag-tec]video marketing[/tag-tec] Funny, interesting and viral. If you can create these type of videos, you’ll definitely get viral traffic.

He’s also made up a pretty good headline. However I would have probably got a voiceover for the recording.

The script which is not very clear on the video is:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable=’true’; document.designMode=’on’; void 0

He could have improved his video marketing by having better resolution and more zooms. Nevertheless, the idea was cool.