Friday, 29 December 2006

How ONE Article Brought About $2,677 Plus 1,400 Subscribers…

December 15th, 2006 by tuksdrr

When I broke into the internet marketing & niche site business I made a boatload of mistakes. I spent money on software that was just plain rubbish. I tried buying traffic. I joined safelists that no-one was reading and got hoodwinked by people selling useless, repackaged leads.
I suffered. But for every ten things that I tried that would blow up spectacularly in my face, there was one gem that I would use time and time again, over the years to generate tonnes of traffic, suck in genuine subscribers to my newsletter and make more than a few sales. It more than made up for all the duffers.


Article marketing was that one gem – and I want you to understand the importance of writing & submitting articles as a long term internet marketing strategy. I also want to warn you of the common mistakes that budding article marketers make (and it costs them dear).
Want an example of the pure POWER of article marketing? How’s this - just one of my articles, posted a few years back has generated over $2,500 in sales, gets tonnes of visitors to my website and is building my opt-in list automatically even as we speak. And do you know what? It’ll keep doing so for years down the line.

It was an article about property auctions in the UK and it pointed to a simple $19 eBook on how to buy real estate at auctions (one of my first ever projects online). It was a good article and it got picked up by a couple of publishers. Before I knew it…
- I had a long term traffic stream coming in from the websites of these highly ranked real estate websites. They were sending me some major targeted traffic – people who found my article subject interesting and wanted to know more about article marketing.
- A lot of the people who were coming in via my free article were better qualified prospects than just about ANY other source of traffic. Because of that, it meant more people signing up to my newsletter and a bunch of sales.

And it wasn’t just that – my own website benefited from the backlinks it enjoyed to high ranking article directories and the real estate sites that published my stuff.
Now don’t get me wrong – the traffic doesn’t come in GUSHES but it comes REGULARLY and continues over the period of weeks, months and years. This constant, desirable traffic converts into the very things that we all desperately want and need - more people signing on to our newsletters and more people buying our products.

The best part? It’s 100% FREE. Now, do you understand why the most successful internet marketing experts such as Willie Crawford have a solid system in place for marketing their products through submitting articles? The question is, how do you get your articles to the hundreds and even thousands of potential directories, newsgroups, publishers and portals? How do you keep track of the many new portals that are appearing daily (some high traffic)? How do you KNOW which sites are worth spending your time submitting to?

If you read the sales page of some of the plethora of article marketing courses & software products available you would be forgiven for thinking that it’s a breeze. Not so. Let’s now look at some of the REAL PROBLEMS that you’ll experience when marketing with articles:
- Software? Useful but not the “Click & Forget” solutions the developers would love to have you believe. In the past, I’ve used article submission software myself (in fact I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on this type of software over the years). It can cut some of the workload compared to manual submission but don’t let the energetic sales pages of these software types fool you. It’s not about clicking a big blue button and then popping off for a round of golf while the software gets your article into hundreds of directories. Software programs have some serious limitations – a lot of the directories they list get out of date and you’ll miss out on a lot of additional places to submit to if you use this technique of submission.

- Whether you’re submitting manually or via software, you’ll need to compile a list of high traffic sources to submit your articles. The best way is to use the Alexa traffic toolbar to rank the best-ranked traffic sites and ignore the ones that are not drawing in much traffic. The problem is that there are almost a countless number of potential places to submit your articles. This type of research can take many days in itself.

- TIME is the biggest problem. You’re not going to like this but to get even one article out to a fairly high number of directories/newsgroups/portals can take several hours (you could work full time for a day and only submit to a couple of hundred places). If you want the best results, you really need to submit your article to a HUGE amount of places. The fact is most people just do not have that kind of time available and so miss out on one of the best sources of free long term traffic in the world. What a terrible shame. That’s it for today - don’t forget, ten of my subscribers can pick up a branded copy of “Article Click” that’s branded (with your link) to some high paying affiliate programs. Check it out.

Tuesday, 19 December 2006

Q&A: How to cope with jerks at work

Incendiary co-workers can kill workplace productivity
Thomas Hoffman


December 12, 2006
(Computerworld) -- We've all worked with them at one time or another: people who are disruptive, abusive or otherwise demeaning or mean-spirited. In short, they're jerks. Incendiary co-workers are more than a workplace distraction, however. Indeed, a growing body of research is being conducted in the U.S. and Europe that examines the impact bullies have on productivity and financial performance. Computerworld's Thomas Hoffman spoke yesterday with Robert Sutton, the author of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, which is scheduled to be published by Warner Business Books on Feb. 22, about his inspiration for the book and some of the lessons that managers can draw from it. For excerpts from that interview visit http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005880&intsrc=hm_rfavs

15 Things Apple Should Change in Mac OS X

Two of our top operating systems editors sound off
Scot Finnie and Ken Mingis (Computer World)


15. No Date Display

14. Widgets Can't Be Placed on the Desktop.

13. Inconsistent Use of Context Menus.

12. Documents and App Instances on the Dock.

11. Managing Window Size.

10. Accessing Applications.

9. Backspace and Delete Keys.

8. Printer Setup.

7. Inconsistent User Interface

6. Laptop Screen Dimming.

5. Managing Finder's Columns View, Problem No. 1.

4. Managing Finder's Columns View, Problem No. 2.

3. Managing Finder's Columns View, Problem No. 3.

2. Finder's Hobbled Cut Command

1. Dynamic Finder Refresh.

Reader Peeves

Some readers have already sounded off about their Macintosh pet peeves, and here are some of things they picked at:

1. Over-protective Shutdown Error Trapping? When I shut down, I want to shut down....

2. Renaming Isn't Easy. The process of renaming files....

3. Secondary Mouse Button. My number one pet peeve is that Macintosh notebook....

To read the entire article vissit http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9006104&pageNumber=1

Monday, 18 December 2006

Apple Denies i Tunes Sales Slump

Apple has rejected a report that music sales through its iTunes Store have slumped by 65 per cent since January.

Spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said that the figure, from research firm Forrester, 'is simply incorrect'; sales are up 75 per cent on 2005 and Apple, with six per cent of the market, is now the country's fourth largest music retailer.

Apple's share price fell by 2.9 per cent yesterday following the
publication of Forrester's findings which were based on an analysis of 2,791 US debit and credit card transactions between April 2004 and June 2006.

Forrester also warned that to read too much into the figure would be premature.
'With only two years of full data, it is too soon to tell if this decline was seasonal or if buyers were reaching their saturation level for digital music,' Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff said. 'During the previous year, iTunes revenue fell after the holidays but rose significantly in May.'
Bernoff added that as Apple is known to make very little profit on iTunes sales, any fall in revenues will not have an impact on the company's overall financial performance.
'Only Apple knows just how much profit there is at the end of the day on a $1.98 credit card transaction for two songs, but with transaction costs, hosting costs, and the wholesale price of the songs, there's not much margin left,' he said.


Apple has always maintained that from its own point of view the iTunes Store's main role is to sell iPods, and there is certainly no sign of a shortfall there: analysts expect Apple to exceed the 14 million sales it managed in this quarter last year.

Bernoff said that it is the record industry, not Apple, that should be concerned by any fall in digital music sales, which have clearly failed to curtail unauthorised methods of music distribution, such as p2p sharing and the copying of friends' CDs. He said that record labels need to find other sources of revenue from downloads, such as ringtones and DRM-free MP3 sales.


Simon Aughton (Computer Buyer)

Friday, 8 December 2006

Digital Radio won't Improve in the UK


Future Stuff

Tom Dunmore
Gadget rumours, tech hype and idle speculation
All blogs
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Digital radio won't improve in the UK

The new, high-quality flavour of digital radio - which uses the AAC+ codec - looks unlikely to come to the UK in the next decade. This is something of a shame for the audio purists who argue that DAB sounds worse than FM radio - but not such bad news to the 5 million Brits who have already bought a digital radio.

The problem stems from the fact that the UK was early to market with digital radio, and opted for the MP2 format for compressing radio signals. MP2 is a close relation of MP3, and has been with us for many years. It sounds alright, as long as the broadcast bitrates are relatively high - ideally 192kbps. Unfortunately, many digital radio stations in the UK broadcast at 128kbps. So while digital radios have many benefits – a large variety of stations, easy tuning, lack of interference – they can sound thin when compared to a top-class FM tuner with decent reception.

Which is why some countries, including Australia, are adopting a new flavour of DAB that uses the AAC+ codec. This is a variant of the iPod's favoured format that been optimised for low-bandwidth applications and will - I suspect - sound better than MP2. The new format will be supported by digital radios coming to market next year.

Unfortunately, none of the UK's 5m digital radios are currently compatible with AAC+, and according to my contacts at PURE Digital, that means it's highly unlikely that the broadcasting regulator Ofcom will allow any channels to switch codecs in the foreseeable future. Even the UK's remaining radio multiplex licence (which is up for grabs in 2007) will likely go the old route – although there's an outside chance it'll feature a mixture of codecs.

What that means a long wait for British audiophiles - and a long life for your current digital radio. Such are the pains of early adoption...

Published 12 December
Stuff.tv blogs.

Nokia N95 on track


Nokia have just added the Technical Specs for the Nokia N95 on the N series website.

It's GPS. It's a photo studio. It's a mobile disco. It's the world wide web. It's anything you want it to be. Explore the internet with 3.5G ease. Navigate the world with interactive maps and purchasable local city guides. Download your favorite music tracks. And capture it all with 5 megapixel clarity and Carl Zeiss optics. Experience the true power of multimedia computing with the Nokia N95 multimedia computer.

Technical Specs:

General Operating Frequency

• WCDMA2100 (HSDPA), EGSM900, GSM850/1800/1900 MHz (EGPRS)


• Automatic switching between bands and modesDimensions

• Volume: 90 cc
• Weight: 120 g
• Length: 99 mm
• Width: 53 mm
• Thickness (max): 21 mmMemory Functions

• Up to 160 MB* internal dynamic memory for messages, ringing tones, images, video clips, calendar notes, to-do list and applications

• Memory card slot supporting up to 2 GB microSD memory cards* Changes to product details are possible without prior notice. Application offering may vary. Dynamic memory means that the available memory is shared between dynamic memory functions. When any of these functions is used, there is less available memory for other functions which are also dependent on dynamic memory. Power Management

• Battery: Nokia Battery (BL-5F) 950mAH
• Talk time: up to 160min (WCDMA), up to 240 min (GSM)*
• Stand-by time: up to 215 hours (WCDMA), up to 215h (GSM)** Operation times may vary depending on radio access technology used, operator network configuration and usage. Displays

• Large 2.6" QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) TFT display with ambient light detector and up to 16 million colorsUser Interface
• User Interface: S60 3.1
• Dedicated Media Keys
• Multimedia Menu
• Active standby screenCall Management
• Contacts: advanced contacts database with support for multiple phone and e-mail details per entry, also supports thumbnail pictures and groups
• Speed dialing
• Logs: keeps lists of your dialed, received, and missed calls
• Automatic redial
• Automatic answer (works with compatible headset or car kit only)
• Supports fixed dialing number, which allows calls only to predefined numbers
• Conference call
• Push to talk (PoC)Voice Features
• Speaker independent name dialing (SIND)
• Voice commands
• Voice recorder
• Talking ringtone
• Integrated hands-free speakerMessaging

• Text messaging: supports concatenated SMS, picture messaging, SMS distribution list
• Multimedia messaging: combine image, video, text, and audio clip and send as MMS to a compatible phone or PC; use MMS to tell your story with a multi-slide presentation
• Automatic resizing of your megapixel images to fit MMS (max 300 KB size depending on the network)
• Predictive text input: support for all major languages in Europe and Asia-PacificData Transfer*
• WCDMA 2100 (HSDPA) with simultaneous voice and packet data (PS max speed UL/DL= 384/3.6MB, CS max speed 64kbps)
• Dual Transfer Mode (DTM) support for simultaneous voice and packet data connection in GSM/EDGE networks. Simple class A, multi slot class 11, max speed DL/UL: 177.6/118.4 kbits/s
• EGPRS class B, multi slot class 32, max speed DL/UL= 296 / 177.6 kbits/s*Actual achieved speeds may vary depending on network support.Connectivity
• Integrated wireless LAN (802.11 b/g) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)
• Integrated Bluetooth wireless technology v.2.0 EDR
• USB 2.0 via Mini USB interface and mass storage class support to support drag and drop functionality
• 3.5 mm stereo headphone plug and TV out support (PAL/NTSC)
• Nokia PC Suite connectivity with USB, Infrared and Bluetooth wireless technology
• Local synchronization of contacts and calendar to a compatible PC using compatible connection
• Remote over-the-air synchronization
• Send and receive images, video clips, graphics, and business cards via Bluetooth wireless technologyJava Applications
• Java MIDP 2.0, CLDC 1.1 (Connected Limited Device Configuration (J2ME))
• Over-the-air download of Java-based applications and gamesOther Applications
• Personal Information Management (PIM)
• Advanced S60 PIM features including calendar, contacts, to-do list, and PIM printing
• Settings Wizard for easy configuration of e-mail, push to talk and video sharing.
• Data transfer application for transfer of PIM information from other compatible Nokia devices.
• Wlan wizardDigital Services
• Java and Symbian applications available from Nokia Software Market


See New - Mobile Photography and Video Imaging and Video

• Up to 5 megapixel (2592 x 1944 pixels) camera, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens, MPEG-4 VGA video capture of up to 30 fps
• Direct connection to compatible TV via Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-64U, included in box) or wireless LAN/UPnP
• Front camera, CIF (352 x 288) sensor
• Video call and video sharing support (WCDMA network services)
• Integrated flash
• Flash modes: on, off, automatic, redeye reduction
• Rotating gallery
• Online album/blog: photo/video uploading from gallery
• Nokia Lifeblog 2.0 support
• Video and still image editors
• Movie director for automated video production Mobile Video
• Video resolutions: up to VGA (640x480) at 30 fps
• Audio recording: AAC stereo
• Digital video stabilization
• Video clip length: limited by available memory
• Video file format .mp4 (default), .3gp (for MMS)
• White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
• Scene: automatic, night
• Colour tones: normal, sepia, black & white, negative, vivid
• Zoom: Digital up to 10x (VGA up to 4x)Mobile Photography
• Image resolution: up to 5 megapixel: (2592 x 1944 pixels)
• Still image file format: JPEG/EXIF
• Auto focus
• Auto exposure - center weighted
• Exposure compensation: +2 ~ -2EV at 0.5 step
• White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
• Scene: automatic, user, close-up, portrait, landscape, sports, night, night portrait
• Colour tone: normal, sepia, black & white, negative, vivid
• Zoom: Digital up to 20x (5 megapixel up to 6x)Camera Specifications
• Sensor: CMOS, 5 megapixel (2592 x 1944)
• Carl Zeiss Optics: Tessar lens
• Focal length 5.6 mm
• Focus range 10 cm ~ infinity
• Macro focus distance 10-50 cm
• Shutter speed: Mechanical shutter: 1/1000~1/3 sNokia XpressPrint solution
• Transfer photos directly to compatible printer or kiosk via Bluetooth wireless technology, memory card, wireless LAN (UPnP) or directly to PictBridge-compliant printer via USB cable.
• Built-in application is quick and easy to use; no installation, no fuss
• Order prints online
• Find out more about
Nokia XpressPrintNokia XpressShare solution
• Easy sharing of captured photos and videos directly from the gallery or straight after capture
• via e-mail or Bluetooth wireless technology while retaining full image quality or via MMS with automatic resizing of 5 megapixel images to fit MMS
• Two-way video call capability
• Video sharing for one-way live video or video clip sharing within the voice call
• Find out more about
Nokia XpressShareNokia XpressTransfer solution
• Transfer and organise photos and videos between your device and compatible PC
• Deletion or resizing of the images and videos transferred from the device. Resizing means you can carry a large collection of photos and videos on your device and full quality versions are stored on the PC
• Gallery view of photos and videos transferred to PC
• Find out more at
www.nokia.com/xpresstransfer

Hear New - Mobile Music Music Features
• Digital music player - supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A with playlists and equalizer.
• Integrated handsfree speaker
• OMA DRM 2.0 & WMDRM support for music
• Stereo FM radio (87.5-108MHz /76-90MHz) with Visual Radio support


Do New - Mobile Computing and Connectivity Navigation
• Built-in GPS E-mail
• Easy-to-use e-mail client with attachment support for images, videos, music and documents
• Compatible with Nokia Wireless Keyboard (sold separately)Browsing
• Nokia Web Browser with Mini mapDigital home
• Play video, music and photos on home media network - compatible TV, stereo and PC over WLAN/UPnP


Availability: First Quarter 2007

Nintendo Wii


The new Nintendo Wii the all singing, all-dancing, all-arm waving fun-gasm goes on sale in UK today.

Quite a few people were waiting for hours to get one.

Here's the link for review

http://www.t3.co.uk/reviews/games/gamecube2/nintendo_wii

Welcome

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope to share with you everything I come across that will help you.

"You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock - the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneeding trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. " Deutronomy 28: 3-6

My interests are in the Internet, Mobile Phones, PDA's, Digital Cameras, Business Opportunities, Computers etc. I hope to add all the latest information about all this and share information about how people can succeed in their Business Opportunities. There is a lot of hype on the internet and I hope to bring information from the real experts who can help you to set up a proper business on the internet and make money.

I am willing to hear from all those who have succeeded in running internet businesses who can share their techniques, how they failed, how they learnt through their failures and how they succeeded.

I am also open to suggestions as to what you would like included in this blog.

Blessings.