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Monday, September 8, 2008

Refinance - Are You Considering Refinancing

Homeowners who are considering re-financing their home may have a wealth of options available to them. However, these same homeowners may find themselves feeling overwhelmed by this wealth of options. This process doesnt have to be so difficult though.

Homeowners can greatly assist themselves in the process by taking a few simple steps. First the homeowner should determine his refinancing goals. Next the homeowner should consult with a re-financing expert and finally the homeowner should be aware that re-financing is not always the best solution.

Determine Your Goals for Re-Financing
The first step in any re-financing process should be for the homeowner to determine his goals and why he is considering re-financing. There are many different answers to this question and none of the answers are necessarily right or wrong.

The most important thing is that the homeowner is making a decision which helps him achieve his financial goals. While there are no right or wrong answer to why re-financing should be considered there are, however, certain reasons for re-financing which are very common. These reasons include:

Clipping journal mortgage payments
Consolidating existing debts
Inhibiting the bulk of comment expended on top of the way of the loan
Repaying the loan swifter
Attaining equity faster

Albeit the reasons scheduled higher than are not the only justification homeowners could consider re-financing, they are one or two of the most general reasons. They are included in this essay for the objective of achieving the reader consideration. The reader may catch their mortgage re-financing plan fits into one of the higher than goals or they may suffer a altogether many alibi for wanting to re-finance.

The pretext for wanting to re-finance is not as innate as locating this pretext. This is as a homeowner, or yet a financial advisor, will knowledge a challenging epoch ascertaining the wise re-financing choice for a homeowner if he pulls off not absorb the goals of the homeowner.

Ask in addition to a Re-Financing Counselor-at-law
As a homeowner has figured out why they demand to re-finance, the homeowner should accept as true that appointment in addition to a re-financing adviser to decide the appropriate refinancing strategy. This will possible be a strategy which is financially disturbance but is likewise as well geared to briefing the requires of the homeowner.

Homeowners who sense as albeit they are especially anyways passed through in the subject of re-financing could agree skipping the alternative of consulting plus a re-financing counselor-at-law. Except, this is not recommended as even the certain educated homeowner may not be aware of the newest re-financing selections being offered by lenders.

As soon as not analyzing all the options may not seem adore a big deal, it can knowledge a eminent impact. Homeowners may not yet be aware of mistakes they are causing but they may here of friends who re-financed under similar conditions and acquire spare luck-filled language. Hearing these scenarios can be rather hurting for a few homeowners above all if they would submit to backed up considerably spare while re-financing.

Consider Not Re-Financing as a Viable Choice
Homeowners who are believing re-financing may get hold of the individualism of evaluating a total of a lot of re-financing alternatives to decide which selection is advantageous but these similar homeowners may not absorb they should moreover carefully believe not re-financing as an option.

This is steadily referred to as the "do nothing" choice for it refers to the conditions which will exist if the homeowner completes not make a variation in their mortgage environment.

For each re-financing possibility felt, the homeowner should find out the forecasted magazine commission, bulk of information paid during the course of the loan, per annum in which the loan will be entirely repaid and the portion of moment the homeowner will knowledge to remain in the dwelling house to recoup finishing up expenses connected along furthermore re-financing.

Homeowners should similarly establish these values for the novel mortgage. This can be incredibly helpful for comparison purposes. Homeowners can match these responses and always the sensible possibility is somewhat evident like these numeric calculations.

Save for, if the help does not abandoning a apparent cut solution, the homeowner may taste to assess secondary features to style the wise possible election.


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Friday, August 22, 2008

Subversion Is Not A Dirty Word

Subversion is a topic that can mean many things, but basically has a simple definition. To subvert is to cause to undermine, to cause the downfall of or to overthrow something. To subvert is to basically cause some kind of anarchy, or in the eyes of some, bring on an uprising. It depends on your point of view. In the world of computing, subversion refers to open source software, a revolution by some peoples standards and bloody minded anarchy from another point of view.

Open source software started off life as something known as free software, this term was intended to express the software in terms of freedom. Free like a bird, not free like a buy one packet of biscuits and get one free packet offer. Unfortunately this was not how it was viewed. Plenty of computer software was around that cost no money, and so a free software movement has connotations of belonging to that group. The Subversion movement was not trying to overthrow a commercial industry by putting a money-free spanner in the works, it was aiming to do something that not even the anarchistic gratis software was offering. Freedom of movement; freedom of distribution; freedom of modification; even if not free from cost.

The biggest gripe that computer software users have with the standard versions of software available is that it is closed to modification. Some programmes by certain industry big boys do not work with certain operating platforms, or will not speak to other programmes that are run on a users system. There are also the distribution issues. Computer software can cost a small fortune, and once installed on a computer, cannot be used on another machine. This is fine to some extent to prevent a sale of one disk becoming the only copy used by a whole town; but if you have a large household it is a pain.

Nowadays there is more or less a computer for every member of the household and with wireless access, all computers can be running online at the same time and so frequently are. To buy a copy of some of the most prominent brands of software for each computer is a costly business.

The idea of open source software is to enable modifications be made to a programme to render the product more compatible. Or if a user sees that an improvement can be made to enhance the functionality of the product overall, then these changes can be implemented and distributed. This is not meant to be a venture that undermines the commercial viability of software manufacturers, although the availability of such programmes is said to have reduced revenue by around 60 billion US Dollars a year. It is a point of view that if these companies that have been affected had not tried to monopolise the market in the first place and over charge for such product by embracing software freedom then subversion would not have such a large affect in their market.

Subversion is about allowing a freedom for users and potential improvement of prigramnmes they wish to develop and use. The folks against it claim that open source has a greater risk of security breaches due to flaws, and that there is no incentive to patch a programme. The advocates fight back saying that although the flaw rate is higher, the discoveries are far quicker as generally, it is known what the flaw is. In closed source, it is claimed that the problems are not usually noticed as they arise. And finally, open source users have a far quicker turn around on patches, because these glitches are found more easily and the users have access to the code to rectify the problems they find.


About the Author

Shaun Parker is a leading sofware expert with many years of experience in the computer industry. Find out more about

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Setting Up an Answering Service or Call Capture Service for Your Investing Business

With all of our marketing efforts, whether signs, ads in the newspaper or flyers; we have all the calls go to a special toll free number which goes to an answering service. There's no way I could create a machine to handle all of these calls that come in.

I created the script for you to give to your answering service so they can ask several key questions and that way you'll know the answers ahead of time and the answering service will e-mail every lead to you that called in with the answers to those key questions.

Remember, some people may not answer all the questions; and that goes to show that it is very important not to ask too many questions and get too personal on the first call. But by asking a few key questions, you'll know whether you need to return the phone call.

To save lots of time and effort, I'd suggest using either an answering service or a call capture service to handle the leads that come in, especially if you still have a full or part time job. The biggest difference in the two is that with the answering service, the caller will always speak to a live person instead of a voice mail. With call capture, the caller's phone number is always captured whether they leave a message or not. With call capture, you can set up multiple mailboxes and give the caller options when they call. This is great if you are buying, selling and renting houses.

By using my scripts that have been proven over time, you'll be able to spend your time on the leads that are truly prospects and not suspects. For example, you get a call from a seller that has a $100k house, they owe $95k, they're current on payments and there's no circumstances that force them to move very soon. This call can simply be deleted from your email inbox and you never have to spend any time on it. WOW! What a time saver.

Say this same person calls your ad but instead of the call going to an answering service or call capture number with a detailed script, they call your cell phone and leave a message. Then you have to spend time returning the call, building rapport, getting them to like and trust you and then you find out that you can't buy their house. What a waste of time and effort. Now multiply this times ten to twenty calls a week.

Let's break down the benefits of each method.

Answering Service: The main benefit is that the caller gets to talk to a live person. You get less hang ups with this method. If you are buying, selling and renting then you can give the answering service multiple scripts for each type of call. You need to have the service email the calls to you as they come in. This is very important. Remember that, until they get you on the phone, they will continue looking for someone to help them.

Call Capture: Call capture is basically a very sophisticated voice mail system that captures the caller's phone number when they call. It works even for non-published and caller ID blocked numbers. Is this great or what? The other great thing is that you can set up multiple mailboxes and give callers options based off of their particular situation.


About the Author

For more articles and a 10 part e-course on how to create your own Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine! plus over 50 training audios, simply go to www.LarryGoinsFreeOffer.com where you will gain instant access


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Saturday, September 15, 2007

How To Make Every Ad Dollar Accountable

3 More Ways to Make Money On eBay
Software improvements

I am a strong, enthusiastic advocate of direct marketing. For most businesses, small or large, direct marketing consistently delivers the best results for dollars spent. We need to begin with an understanding of direct marketing versus other types of advertising, promotion and marketing. Let's talk first a little bit about the others.

There is institutional advertising. This type of advertising is often intentionally used by big corporations and blindly copied by smaller ones. It essentially says to consumers and/or to stock holders here we are, here's who we are, here's what we do and we're nice guys but it never asks anybody to buy anything or to take any action. It's image building.

Some examples you're probably familiar with include the Goodyear Blimp flying over football games, the IBM TV commercial seen during the Sunday morning news programs and during some sports telecasts, most bank advertising, Time Magazine's signs in airports, this is all pure institutional advertising.

Advertising agencies, consultants and the media love to sell you this type of advertising because there is no possible way to measure its effectiveness. Is it working? Is it paying for itself? Who knows?

The next slightly more sensible approach is what I call 'Non-Measurable Response Advertising.' This type of advertising is trying to sell something but is still basically unaccountable for its results. TV commercials for a particular brand of car fall into this category. The intent of those commercials is to get you interested enough in that car to go to the show room but there's really no way to tell how many people who came to the show rooms this week we're influenced by those commercials.

Would they have come anyway as a result of the dealers own newspaper ads? Who knows? Many smaller businesses get trapped using this type of advertising. Appliance, record, clothing, department stores all run sales ads - here's what's on sale come on in. But they have no means of determining how many people became because of the ads versus how many might of come anyway or how many came from an ad in one media versus the same ad in another.

They can guess. They can take this weekend's higher traffic less last weekend's traffic and attribute the difference to the ads but it gets worse. They advertise the sale via the newspaper, two radio stations and flyers. How do you tell what works and what doesn't? Again ad agencies and the media like to sell this type of advertising because it's difficult for the advertiser to measure the results.

Another type of marketing is public relations and publicity. There are firms who you can retain to prepare press releases and articles about your products or services and your company and work at getting them placed at various media. These firms may also arrange interviews and talk show appearances. Although you can measure them by how much actual exposure they get for you it's generally difficult to then measure how much business came from the exposure. Also in this category is the sponsorship of everything from a little league team to an Indy 500 race car or a golf tournament.

All three of these types of marketing probably have some place in a businesses total marketing plan. It is my firm belief, however that these methods are grossly and deliberately oversold to clients by media and professionals because of there resistance to results measurement. It is also my opinion that most businesses, the owners of small businesses and the executives of large companies stupidly waste outrageous sums of money on these non-measurable marketing options.

I would much rather see money spent where the results can be definitively and accurately measured so the changes can be made to develop successful response levels for every dollar spent.

Dan Kennedy, http://www.dankennedy.com/


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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Many Happy Returns

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KieAnn Brownell considers herself a serial entrepreneur, which means she’s always on the lookout for new business ideas. After running her family's wholesale floor-covering business, Columbine Carpet in Greenwood Village, Colo., she decided the time was right to transition from carpets to cakes. After learning that more than 700,000 people celebrate a birthday every single day, Brownell set up her latest venture, GoCakeGo.com, which allows customers to order distinctive birthday-cakes-in-a-box.

"My roots as an entrepreneur go way back to when I was nine. I used to check movies out of the library and charge my friends admission to watch them.

"I first started thinking about some kind of cake business back when I was in college at the University of Colorado. I knew that there was a market sending cakes to kids away at school, but this was way before the Internet, so I kind of just filed the idea away.

"Then, in 2004, it came back to me. I started doing some research and found out that something like 5,000 people search the Internet for birthday cakes every single day. I figured that was enough to qualify as a business opportunity. And while it’s not 100 percent recession-proof, you know everybody has a birthday every year and everyone from kids on up loves cake. And unlike cookies or flowers, a cake really does inspire a celebration.

"Once I realized how big the market was, I started looking for wholesale bakers. I was an accounting major and had no interest in doing the baking myself. So we lined up a few wholesalers who supply us with frozen cakes and then we ship them via FedEx within 24 hours to kids away at school, elderly aunts, and siblings that live in other cities. Our real market is with remote relatives. It really is a business that connects people, and not only the sender with the recipient. When someone receives one of our cakes, they can’t help but invite around them to share.

"Part of our goal is to build a brand with our distinctive lime-green boxes. Along with the cake, we include plates, napkins, forks, a cake server, candles, and confetti. It’s really a party in the box -- everything you need for a spontaneous celebration. We also have our 'Party Online' component, where you can invite people to email their best wishes for the birthday boy or girl for a virtual celebration. When the person opens their e-card, they get to enjoy all the messages their friends have written to them. It's just so much better than just getting a phone call.

"Our real turning point came in January when DailyCandy featured us. After that plug, our page views jumped from 600 to 62,000. Now we’re ramping up and delivering about 1,000 cakes a month, at a selling price of about $70.

"One day I hope someone will see a lime-green box in an office or a dorm room and say, 'Hey, whose birthday is it?' And, to try to build that brand, I wear lime-green clothing every day. It gives people in the Denver area something to chuckle about."


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Banner ads just don’t work … so they say!

How To Make 22 Million Dollars A Year From A Clubbing Website
Mind improvements

If you ask me, this is a huge fallacy – I currently have web ad placements returning over 800% ROI. Imagine being handed eight bucks for every dollar you spend! So obviously it would take a lot to convince me that web media doesn’t work.

But not all web media is created equal. As a responsible web marketer, you can’t listen to what they say. You have to find out for yourself! And this means testing.

As a smart direct response marketer you need to allocate time and money to testing not only ad copy, ad layout, offers and prices. You also have to test media. Because in the web marketing world your media is your traffic driver … the catalyst that brings potential prospects to your doorstep.

Web media can be many things … and unfortunately it’s not quite so cut and dry.

Come closer my child …

To start, we’ll break web media down into two categories. The first category is the more passive of the two … in that these ad types require the prospect to come to the site to be seen.

Passive categories consist of:

Banner Ads

I’m sure everyone knows what a banner ad looks like. They are all over the web and come in many shapes and sizes. Banners ads are sold by the impression on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis so the larger quantity of impressions you can buy the more potential prospects will see your ad. Banners tend to have a lower CPM in comparison to most other web media.

The key with banner ads is to create ad copy that is compelling enough to get the prospect to click away from the site they’re visiting to check out what they know to be advertising.

We’ll talk a lot more about banner ad creation strategies in upcoming issues of In the Net Trenches, but suffice it to say most online big brand advertisers are doing it all wrong.

Sponsored Headlines

Sponsored headlines are one of my favorite ad positions and can work very well for a product that is topical or newsy … such as ones in the financial or health markets. Sponsored headlines typically appear on more news oriented sites and simply mimic a headline that might appear on a website for a news story. Often, they are relegated to a section of a website that is classified as advertising, special offers or sponsored offers.

The power of a sponsored headline is that it is static for a specified period of time, so it is not shown on an impression basis … this means they can get huge amounts of viewership depending on site traffic. And because sponsored headlines look like news headlines, they are often mistaken for website editorial and so they have much higher click through rates than banners.

Sponsored headlines are typically sold on a flat rate basis based on how long they run – such as per week or per month. But note: some sites may actually classify their headline ads as a text ad.

Text Ads

Text ads tend to be the smallest ad size on a site and the cheapest. They are often relegated to the bottom of a page like a classified ad. They tend to have the look and feel of a Google pay-per-click ad and can usually be found in groups. As the name implies, they consist of all text. Some text ads will also allow a small image to be displayed next to the text.

Text ads are typically the least expensive web media available. They are sold on an impression and a flat rate basis. They are most often static -- which means they have the potential to get very high viewership.

I will stress that text ads can be a mixed bag as far as performance. The benefit is they tend to look like editorial and because they are in-expensive it may take far less to make them break even.

If you love him set him free …

The next category tends to be more active in that they are pushed out to the prospect.

Active categories consist of:

Newsletter Sponsorships

Newsletter sponsorships or newsletter ads are found in a company’s e-newsletter or e-zine. The e-newsletters are sent to the websites opt-in subscribers by e-mail. The ads appear within the actual newsletter issue. Ads can take the shape of a banner ad or a text ad depending on the newsletter.

Newsletter ads are often limited to one ad sponsor per issue. So there is far less competition for attention in an e-newsletter. Plus, with only one ad sponsor per issue you get a measure of implied endorsement from a company that your prospect may already trust or even be doing business with.

Open rates tend to be higher for e-newsletters than for other types of paid e-mail. But the downside is you are in competition with the e-newsletter editorial, so it’s important to have interesting and compelling copy to entice the reader to click away from the newsletter.

Newsletter ads run the gamut in pricing from extremely cheap to extremely expensive and are typically sold on a CPM (cost per thousand) or flat rate basis.

Newsletter advertisers can expect to have the majority of their ad responses within about 48 hours of the newsletters delivery. But, e-newsletters tend to hang around in prospects inboxes and I’ve seen orders from newsletter sponsorship ads as much as 3 months later.

E-Mail Marketing

There are two different types of e-mail lists – response and compiled.

Response e-mail lists tend to be the most expensive of all the categories we’ve covered today and the most effective. They are also one of my favorites and the closest to direct mail.

Response e-mail lists are made up of customers or opt-in subscribers that have all responded to a specific offer. They have either purchased a product, opted-in to receive an e-newsletter or to receive special information from one particular business.

Response e-mail lists are sent from the list owner to the prospect on behalf of the advertiser, thus are immediately recognizable as being from a company the prospect is familiar with. This makes these prospects warm to your offers.

Compiled e-mail lists tend to be dirt cheap in comparison to response lists. They are made up of broad categories of people across specific demographic or psychographic categories. Since prospects often don’t know how they ended up on a specific compiled list, e-mails can easily be mistaken for SPAM. This makes these prospects very cold.

Low cost and mass quantity are the key to making compiled lists work in your favor.

E-mail lists are typically purchased on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis but some compiled lists are also sold on a CPA (cost per action) basis.

One key to making e-mail marketing work for you is getting prospects to open your message. Subject lines are an extremely important factor in e-mail marketing and should not be an afterthought in creative development. We’ll spend more time on subject lines in upcoming issues of In the Net Trenches.

One huge benefit of e-mail marketing is that it’s virtually instantaneous -- you will start seeing response immediately and the majority of orders will come in within the first 24-48 hours. Also like newsletter sponsorships, e-mails tend to hang around in your prospects inbox for some time and I’ve seen responses continue to trickle in months later.

Clayton Makepeace, www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/


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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Top 10 Ways to Peeve Your Website Visitors

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How did peeves become pets? Don't know. Don't really care. But all of us have our pet peeves when it comes to surfing the net for information.

Here are the top 10 according to many surveys:

1. Pop Ups

Pop ups come in many flavors: entry pop ups, exit pop ups, delayed, small, large, multiple, Flyin, scrolling, always on top, browser stopping, surf interrupting, must be cleared to move on, viagra, and the ever popular porn.

Except for an occasional squeeze page to get a free ebook or report, web surfers HATE pop ups.

So why do they continue to litter the Internet landscape? Simple. They work.

2. Extra Software Needed to View Site

Don't blame Canada. Blame Adobe.

Adobe made the Acrobat reader a must for viewing PDF files mainly because:

- It solved a need. Every page now printed out the same regardless of which printer or operating system was being used. It could even be made interactive for form completion.

- Adobe gave away millions of the free readers before publishers adopted the new PDF format as a standard for ebooks.

Acrobat users now demand PDF files in most instances where ebooks used to have various formats including "exe". Hackers have made downloading exe files from unknown sources an unsafe activity.

As standard as Acrobat now is, the same is not true for Flash, Shockwave, Deja Vu, and a host of other add-ons with various degrees of support.

I don't need to sit through a 2 meg Flash intro when what I want is information. Apparently, many others agree. You can add Flashblock to your FireFox browser and decide for yourself when to allow the Flash to load.

3. Dead Dead Dead Links

Nothing hacks me off faster than finding a spot on anchor text link that goes nowhere.

It's like having you mouth water over a menu special only to have the kitchen say they have run out.

4. Registration Required to Visit Site

Some sites think their bytes don't stink. They think you should register and login to see anything beyond the home page.

What they are doing is asking me to get married before the first date.

What's in it for me?

In this Internet day and age, a company and site has to build trust before a random visitor is going to cough up a name and email address.

Show me a little leg first.

5. Slowwww Pages

If I have to wait more than 4 or 5 seconds to begin viewing your site, I am gone - never to return.

If your servers are slow, find a new ISP.

If you loaded your pages with Flash, MIDI, audio, video, or other files that load with the page, dump them. Put up links instead. Let the visitor choose if they want to read or watch the video.

6. Outdated Content

One huge advantage of the web is the ability of bloggers and other Drudge wannabes to bypass traditional media and post news online instantly.

If you have not updated your website in 14 months, what does that tell me about your company. Certainly, you are less than a cutting edge solution for my problem.

7. Bad Navigation

Web designers prefer dazzle over function. Function is boring. Who wants a simple text link when a pop up Javascript navigation bar impresses the client?

I do.

So do the search engines.

Every web page needs recognizable, underlined text links on every page, preferably top and bottom.

Don't make me waste time trying to find the internal page I am really looking for.

8. No Contact Information

Poor contact information is a binary pair of bad navigation. How many sites have you been to where you cannot find a phone number, a street address, or even an email address? Plenty.

I think it's sweet that you put up an email contact form on your site, but I prefer to use my default email compose screen. Every web-based email form is different. I don't want to waste time learning to use your form when my email client works fine.

What are you hiding?

9. No Decent Site Search Tool

There is no excuse for this one. If you have a large website with dozens or hundreds of pages, give me an internal search box to find what I need.

Google and Yahoo! and many others will give you the tool - free - to put on your site. Use it.

10. Disabled "Back" Button

I don't want a website to dictate how I experience their site. I am a guest on your site. I don't need to come back to your page when I hit the back button. That's why I hit the back button in the first place. You don't have the information I am looking for.

In a similar vein, I don't like to see other right click functions like "view page source" disabled. I don't need to steal your HTML code, but if I want to, disabling right click will not stop me. I might want to see how you achieved a certain formatting effect. If I am impressed, you can bet I'll be back.

Pet peeves take many forms online. No list like this is complete, but any webmaster that can avoid these 10 major annoyances is a hero in my book.

I look forward to visiting your site.

About the Author: Charles Lamm is a retired attorney who can be reached via email at focus@clixforbrix.com. His articles are posted on his blog at: http://www.virtualjoefriday.com.


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Saturday, September 8, 2007

Ego Blogging and the Money Idol.

How To Be A Better Animal Or Is Capitalism JUST A SCAM?
Tips And Secrets In Diets

Something about the blogosphere lately has been bugging me. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is because it’s not a black and white problem and I’m an active participant and proponent of at least part of what I see as the issue.

Blogging as we know it today evolved from online journal writing, a very reflective and personal thing to do centered around one individual’s life. Back then it was expected that a “weblog” would focus mostly on the person writing it and consequently, unless the person led a very interesting life or had a gift for writing, only a small handful of people would read it - perhaps friends, family and coworkers.

Today blogs have become much more than journals, yet many of the blogs we idolize are very ego-centric. Often popular blogs are driven by the personality of the author. While most blogs are not necessarily talking about a person’s personal life, often “life” is the muse for topics, even if they are skewed for relevancy to a certain group of people, a target market.

For example, my blog here is about Internet business and blogging and many of the posts I publish draw on my own experience in these areas. This article you are reading right now is exactly that - I’m writing this as a result of my recent experience reading other blogs.

The blogosphere is personality driven, so it’s natural to expect that the people with the biggest personalities, the most interesting stories, unique talents and/or some form of celebrity, are at the top of the A-List of blogs. There’s nothing wrong with that on the surface, but what I do see as a potential problem is what we value and what concepts we raise to ideals to emulate.

Money As Motivation

I remember the first time Darren Rowse published how much he was earning from his blogs and the subsequent buzz that spread online about the potential for income from blogging. Since then many bloggers have revealed their earnings and continue to do so. I did exactly that for my March 2007 blog earnings.

With the obvious interest in the topic “making money online” many bloggers have launched blogs focused on it, some make money, some chronicle their journey of making money and may not make any yet. The focus is squarely on how to earn more and how to get more traffic so you can earn more. Again, there is nothing wrong with that per se, the problem as I see it, is how much energy we give to the topic and how we idolize certain people who have achieved something we want to achieve.

Will Money Make You Happy?

There’s a very old question that most people feel they know the answer to - Will money make you happy?

I don’t think money specifically can make you happy, but certainly it can buy freedoms that contribute to happiness.

The problem I believe is better defined in the reverse - does a lack of money make you unhappy?

I think for many people that last statement is true and we thus wake up each day with money as a key motivator, not the only motivator of course, but certainly a major one given society’s current structure.

If you have read my previous article - The Key To Happiness - you know that my belief is that happiness is simply a choice, but for the sake of this article I’ll assume that you may conceptually understand that, but have difficulty putting it into practice 100% of the time, which sums up my experience too.

Where’s The Value?

If you presently read blogs that talk about making money, or any blog where the author spends a lot of time focused on their own life, make sure you stop and ask yourself whether reading the blog contributes to a goal you currently have and whether you leave that blog having gained an insight or something you can actually action and benefit from.

What it is you admire about the blog and blogger and why have you have decided to offer them a portion of your life - a fraction of the time you have available in a given lifetime? That’s a hefty price to pay so you better be clear on why you are there and what you want from the relationship.

Many blogs offer very little value beyond entertainment, essentially a distraction from what you really need to get done. Entertainment is great, but often times entertainment is procrastination. This is an especially important point for all you workers out there surfing the web in an attempt to get through yet another “boring day”. Something needs to change.

At some point you have to consider how long you are prepared to read about how successful someone else is, how much money they make or the ramblings of X number of mini-me bloggers also attempting to replicate the success of A-List profit bloggers. What exactly is in it for you or are you there to simply help that blogger make more money by being yet one more visitor adding to their traffic count?

Focus On What’s In It For You

Watching others achieve what you want to achieve will not help you unless you actually take away a lesson and apply it. If you currently read bloggers that spend most of their time rambling on about how good they are, or how much money they make or what they last had for dinner, or how amazing their traffic growth rate is, and you walk away feeling feeling depressed because you can’t seem to make any money or you are simply “passing the time” you are not moving forward.

As you are about to finish reading this article you can ask yourself - What did I learn? How can I change my behaviors for the better as a result of this article from Yaro?

My hope is that you will start to make better use of your time and challenge every blogger you read to benefit YOUR life.

I may end up losing some readers as a result of this article as they realize that Entrepreneurs-Journey.com doesn’t specifically offer them any value given their current situation and goals. That’s fine, what’s important is that you read this article, have an insight and take a step that leads to enhancing your life and making you happier.

Remember, money as a purpose in life is a false idol, as is worshiping people who are fixated on making money. Monitor your feelings and gravitate towards what works for you and what feels right. There’s nothing wrong with making money and being motivated by it, just remember that it’s not the only reason to do something, there should be a deeper motivation and purpose - a reason why that makes sense to you, a way it can help you and a way you can use it to help others.

[Via - Yaro Starak]


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