Success With Marc

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I just added these quotes to my facebook profile.

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” ~ Aristotle “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life he imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” ~ Thoreau “I gave a talk last year; some student at Harvard asked me, ‘Who should I go to work for?’ I said go to work for whoever you admire the most. I got a call from the dean about two weeks later. He said, ‘What are you telling these kids? They’re all becoming self-employed.’” ~ Warren Buffett

They’re three of my favorite quotes about the mindset that leads to an abundant life.

The last one by Warren Buffet has become even more meaningful to me.  I left my current corporate job that I’ve had for the past five years.  It was a huge move for me and daring in some ways. I am now faced with the goal of creating a new life for myself.  The decision is filled with possiblity and uncertainty.  It’s exciting!

Technorati Tags: aristotle, success mindset, success quotes, thoreau, warren buffet

Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase

Here’s a great Firefox Add-on for your blog. It’s called Zemanta and it’ll speed up your blogging tremendously.  Zemanta provides relevant content from the web as you write your posts. It gathers content, pictures, and videos with immediate tagged links created between your posts and others sharing related conversations.

The images and related links were provided as I typed this post.  All I needed to do was click on them, and they were instantly added. You can even add your Flickr account to instantly have access to those pics for your blog posts.  Very cool, and very easy!

Here’s the link to download Zemanta.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hands On With Zemanta - Your Blog Writing Concierge?
• Firefox update - Get more out of browsing from Firefox

Technorati Tags: blog tool, Blogging, firefox, firefox add-on, zemanta

Today, I want to let you know about two internet marketing tips that are related to EzineArticles.com.  The first tip is to use the EZA Twitter Directory to discover other marketers who you can follow on Twitter.  EZA has set up an author directory listing authors who have signed up to have their Twitter followers notified whenever one of their articles is published.

Here’s the cool part! You can click on the link next to the author’s picture and see the titles of all of his or her articles published.  If you like the the type of articles written, you can click the twitter link and choose to follow.  I did this for Jeff Herring, and discovered that he wrote about article marketing, and now I’m happily following his tweets.

Jeff is the source for the 2nd tip.  If you write a lot of articles as part of your marketing strategy, then an easy way to get people you know or meet to read them is to get a domain name that is forwarded to your profile page at EzineArticles.com. Jeff suggests something like “ArticlesByYourFirstName.com”.  This will give that person access to all your article links, your blog links, and your social marketing links just by entering ArticlesByMarc.com .  I think this idea is awesome, and just another reason that Twitter is an amazing marketing tool.

If you like this second tip, I get all my domain names at GoDaddy.com. I usally pay $9.95 per year, but there’s a button link to the left where you can get the domains on sale for $6.95 per year.

So, there’s two good marketing tips. I hope that you find them useful..

Technorati Tags: ezine articles, internet marketing tips, twitter

If you’re like most internet marketers, you spend some time working on your site search engine ranking. There are plenty of reports, books, and experts on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) right now as more people compete to rise to the top of the search engine rankings. Type ‘SEO’ into Google and you’ll see 39 million pages dedicated to that keyword!

A lot of buzz about Don Crowther and his presentation at BlogWorld Expo 2008 hit the blogs and Twitter this week.  Unfortunately, I didn’t attend the event, but if the participants attending his seminar walked away with what I’ve learned from him this past week, then it must have been a highlight of the conference.

I received my package from Stompernet.com last week, and I’ve enjoyed many of the articles in their magazine publication. However, the one that truly stands out for me is Don’s article about the anatomy of a site search engine ranking.  SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) is a critical part of online success as a marketer, or any business for that matter.  SEO, or knowing how the search engines decide which pages get ranked at the top, is what a lot of us want to know and invest money or time trying to figure out.

I won’t cover the entire article. It’s rich and jam-packed with a full 3 pages on SEO tips.  I’ll cover some basics in the hope of getting a dialogue started in the comments.  Let me know what you think and what tactics are you using to achieve high search engine ranking.

Don breaks down search engine engine criteria into two groups:

• On-page factors which you control
• Off-page factors controlled by others.

Let’s focus on what we control first.  Don lists 16 things that we can do to our sites or posts to improve rankings.  I’ll share 4 of them.  I don’t want to risk infringing the copyright  with Stompernet. Here’s a hint: I included most of the other tactics within this post if you wish to look for them. I’ll update about this page’s progress in the rankings in the next few days.

1. Use keyword rich title tags - Make sure that your title tags have your keywords. Your title is shown at the very top of your browser. Don’t leave it blank, or only have your company/site name up there.
2. Write long copy - Don’t write short posts for all of your pages. The average page at the top of Google’s ranking is about the size of a good article. Search engines love content. I heard someone once say that text is great spider food.
3. Have clean URLs - Get rid of the ? and & in the page URL.  Many time the search engine spiders stop at the symbol and ignore what follows in the URL.
4. Add new content daily - This one is difficult to do, but vitally important. Content gives more for the search engines to index. Create one quality content rich post a day that targets a specific keyword everyday.

Off page factors is all about the links, that is all about the incoming links.  I’ll cover some of that information within the next week.

The basic take-away from Don’s article on SEO is to write great stuff that people want to link to, and your site search engine ranking will climb quickly.

In the meantime, there are definitely ways to structure your site and pages to help things along!

Technorati Tags: search engine ranking position, seo, serp

From time to time I’ll feature a successful internet marketer who’s got it going on. For my inaugural post at Success With Marc, I’m featuring Lynn Terry at ClickNewz!

I once watched LisaNova do a send-up of Twitter on YouTube a few months ago that was pretty funny.  It left me thinking that Twitter was kind of a joke, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to know the answer to “what are you doing?” throughout the day.  That’s especially true for those moments when my answer would have to be “I have no clue”.

How things have changed! As a marketing tool and educational funnel, Twitter is remarkable for brand building and making connections. 

I’ve made great connections at Twitter, and it’s where I came across Lynn.  She’s an experienced, successful marketer with a fresh and friendly approach to doing business online.  I’m devouring everything on her site and gaining a lot of value in marketing strategies for affiliate marketing, since my focus in the past has been network marketing.

Lynn shares freely and truly helps other internet marketers go to the next level. As an example, take a look at a post where Lynn lays out exactly how she makes money online in a given month. She shares actual examples of ways she earned money that month through…

• Passive income through product websites
• Product reviews
• Warrior Forum special offers
• JV partnerships
• Affiliate promotions
• Creating and selling her own products

I encourage you to head over and enjoy ClickNewz!

Thanks Lynn! You embody the definition of the success mindset and conversation marketing.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, clicknewz, lynn terry, success mindset

I’m a Tony Robbins fan. Sometimes I think he tries to pack too much information in a single message, but mostly he is right on describing why we do what we do, and how successful minds work to achieve great results.

Here’s a video from his appearance at TED. You may have seen it already. That’s okay. I suggest watching it again. I get something new each time I view it.

In the video, one of the things Robbins talks about is how choosing to think about something or ourselves leads to emotions and feelings. These feelings drive the actions we take leading to either positive or negative results.

It’s a theme that you’ll see over and over on this blog. To get successful results in our lives, we must start with our thoughts. Focus on your thinking rather than trying to change the result.

The video is very good. I’ll warn you about the language. Robbins throws out some f-bombs and others.

Technorati Tags: success mindset, tony robbins, why we do what we do

photo by jaki good

So, I’ll continue this Lou Tice series with the principles around changing your beliefs and releasing your potential. Let’s start with a foundational quote from Lou:

“We act and behave not in accordance with the truth, but the truth as we believe it to be.”

Some children hold back their academic abilities because along the way they began to believe it’s not good to look smart.  Or, a man gains wealth and loses it, because he believes that money doesn’t make you happy.  The truth may be that the little girl is smart and the man can be wealthy and happy, but it doesn’t matter.  You see, we ALWAYS act and behave in accordance with the truth as we believe it to be.

Change your beliefs and you change the way you run your life. Your beliefs are the key to releasing your potential. What you believe about yourself, your business, and your friends and family determine the results in your life.  Like eating junk food leads to poor health results, eating junk thoughts which lead to junk beliefs will give me poor life results.

Lou Tice says,

“The quality of belief that you hold in your mind, detemines the quality of life you have around you.”

If you want something, and you believe, “There’s no way.”, well, guess what? Your subconsious mind blocks out the way.  Your results come from your beliefs.

So, believe it or not…we get to choose our own beliefs. In our mind, it’s only true if we believe it to be true. This is powerful.  I don’t have to believe a truth or someone else’s truth. In fact, T. Harv Eker points out in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind that if a “truth” builds you up or moves you forward, then believe it. If a “truth” holds you back or tears you down, then don’t believe it.  There’s a lot of power in changing beliefs that don’t serve you so that you can release your potential.

If you have trouble changing a limiting belief about yourself, begin by setting an end goal. Don’t worry about “how” you’ll achieve it, just set the end result of something you want to achieve.  Then  work on unconditioning yourself and building your self-efficacy. You’ll be changing your beliefs, and opportunities will begin to happen everywhere.  Our perceptions change and we see new things when our beliefs change. So, as your beliefs change and you go toward your goal, you’ll begin to see the answers to reaching your goal.

“I don’t need to know the how. I need to set the goal, and then I need to work on unconditioning myself inside. And as I do, opportunity happens everywhere.” ~ Lou Tice

Technorati Tags: changing beliefs, releasing your potential, thought patterns

One additional market research tool is Google Blog Search.  I’m finding many useful ways to use this free Google tool.  The first thing to know is that it does not limit its results to Blogger or .blogspot blogs. All blogs are included in the search results.  You can also look for results in languages other than English.

So, the first use of this market research tool is obviously just for fun.  If I want to know what people are writing about a hobby of mine like theatre, I can get all the latest blog posts about my interest in the stage.

Then, the market research or niche research possibilities are very good.  If I’m looking to set up a money blog about a blockbuster movie for 2010, then I can type in Mighty Mouse and see if I can get a jump on the competition.  (I’m not doing a Mighty Mouse blog, but…)

I can also research keywords and see how other blogs in my niche are optimizing for those keywords (or not).

Finally, I can put in my keyword for my blogs and see how I’m ranking against my competition among other blogs.

The Google Blog Search lets you sort by recent posts, within 1 week, within 1 month, all posts, etc.  What’s really cool is that you can do an advanced blog search by keywords, long tail keywords, negative keywords, blog post titles, blog authors, blog urls, and date ranges.

I love the free stuff from Google!

Technorati Tags: blog search, market research tool

When Lou Tice begins a training event, he usually uses a quotation to help people discover where they’re at and where they can be.

“Change the way you think, and you can change the way you run your life.”

So, the first step in changing the way I think is to assess my potential and what I believe about my potential. In other words, when I ask, “Why do I underlive my life?”, I’m also asking, “What is my potential?”. I’m not really talking about my potential in terms of my nature or my knowledge. Instead, I’m really talking about my potential in terms of my inner desire, my goals, and that part of me that drives to be better every day.

Emotion is the important factor in realizing this part of our potential, according to Tice. We can have the desire to do something, and we can have the ability, but sometimes we can’t seem to release ourselves to do it. So, what is holding us back? Answering that question is the key to living our potential.

And, living your potential is to have high self-efficacy. Self-Efficacy is essentially to make something happen.

My daily life consists of ways to develop my power to bring about the results that I want in my financial life, my love life, my social life, my spiritual life, and the person who I want to be. I look at a problem or a goal and ask, “Is this bigger than me, or am I bigger than it?”

The Lou Tice course material helps people to to grow bigger than those things in front of you, and to take on even bigger goals and aspirations. Dream Big.

Two important principles:

You let yourself want what you believe you can cause.

Your inner efficacy controls the size of your dreams.

Technorati Tags: lou tice, potential, self efficacy

One of my absolute favorite tools for doing niche research is SEO for Firefox. It’s easy to use, gives tons of useful information, and it’s FREE! The primary function of this useful Firefox add-on is to give you a range of data to get an over-all picture of your niche competition in search engine results.

SEO for Firefox sits in the status bar of the Firefox browser, and one click can turn it on or off. It’s recommended that you keep it off when surfing the net, and only have it on when doing market research. When it’s on the search engines are being pinged, so as a courtesty toggle it on only when you need it.

One of the features I like is I’m looking for a highly ranked site or blog where I can leave a useful comment with my link. SEO for Firefox will tell me if the links on the page or comment section are “no follow” links by highlighting them in red. If I see the red highlight over the links on the page, I may still leave a link for some additonal traffic, but I’ll also know that I’m not getting any link juice.

The main use of SEO for Firefox is for search engine results. For example, after typing in a keyword in Google, the tool will pull all types of useful data to help me determine if I want to pursue a particular niche. Here’s what I’ll learn:

• PR - Google page rank
• Age - date that page was first indexed
• Links - estimate of number of links pointing to domain
• .edu and .gov links - estimate of number of .edu and .gov links pointing to domain
• .edu and .gov page links - estimate of number of .edu and .gov links pointing to page
• Page links - estimate of number of links pointing to a page
• del.icio.us - number of times the URL has been bookmarked at Del.icio.us
• Technorati - number of total links to a site from blogs
• Alexa - rank based on web site traffic
• Cached - shows number of pages from site that are indexed by Google
• dmoz - shows number of pages from site listed in DMOZ
• Bloglines - shows number of subscribers to site in Bloglines
• dir.yahoo.com - shows if site is in Yahoo! directory
• WhoIs - link to look up whois data for the domain

You can customize the tool to give or leave out information, and you can also access tools like Google Trends, Google’s keyword research tool, and more.

It’s very cool and time-saving to sit down and get a good picture of the niche competition and an idea of what kind of work it would take to dominate Page One of the search results.

To start using SEO for Firefox, you first need to be using the Firefox browser (and I’ve recently found that it also works on the Flock browser).

Download the Firefox browser here…

Then, you can download the SEO for Firefox at SEOBook.com.

Happy researching!

Technorati Tags: firefox, seo