This past week it seemed that "the fates" were out to get me. I still work a 40 hour a week job as an electronics technician where I service and develop automated welding equipment. I do like my job which is a blessing in itself but I aspire to become a full time internet marketer so I can have the freedom that comes with financial independence.
Since joining Alex Jeffreys coaching program I have found renewed vigor and have become super dedicated to succeeding. I get up 2 or 3 hours before I go to work in the morning and sometimes stay up very late at night working on my internet business. I do this because a large portion of my weekends is dedicated to family although lately I have shifted more time towards work. (thank goodness my wife has been supportive)
This week it seemed like everyday something would happen to keep me from being able to spend any time working on my online stuff. As the week progressed I found myself becoming very stressed out and irritable. Then Thursday evening I had a "moment of clarity" and realized that I was breaking on of my mentor's golden rules.
Alex Jeffreys has been saying from the very first day "Don't chase money…let money chase me". What he teaches is that if you concentrate on providing value and quality content, the money will come to you. If you spend all your energy chasing the latest get rich quick program you will get no where.
OK, so what does this have to do with what happend this week?
Alex Jeffreys has been holding contests with cash prizes to help motivate all of the students to take action. During the last coaching module he announced a cash prize of $1000 to the first student to get his blog listed #1 for the search term "Alex Jeffreys".
I am pretty good at SEO, so I was pretty pumped about this contest. Now, throw in the fact that my wife broke her finger and has been out of work for 2 months and I decided that I HAD to win that contest. I make a decent living with my electronics gig but missing my wife's paycheck for 2 months, especially around Christmas, made things a little tight financially.
Back to Thursday night. Keep in mind I have been obsessed with winning this contest. I spent the whole weekend using Web 2.0 sites and commenting on blogs to build backlinks and got my listing from 26 up to 14. I was on a roll. So far during the work week I have not been able to do squat towards winning the contest and this is frustrating the hell out of me.
I get home from work and take a shower. The wife has to run some errands so I cook dinner for me and the kids. After dinner, the kids are watching TV and playing in the living room so I go upstairs to my office (an oversized walk in closet) and get ready to "go on the attack". Since I have started with "daily did sheets" and what not, when I fire up the computer, it's "game on".
About 20 minutes into it, I here a commotion downstairs. OK, I always here a commotion downstairs but this one had a different tone to it that made me jump up and run downstairs. My 3 year old daughter was messing with Snoopy, our beagle, while he was eating (she tortures that poor dog) and he bit her on the lip. It only took a glance to see that she was going to need sutures.
My wife was still out with the car so I gave her a ring and she hurried home and we went to the emergency room. I still haven't figured out why they call it an emergency room, because the few times that I have had the pleasure of visiting such a place, I always ended up waiting for hours. I was not dissappointed this time either. We arrived at about 7:30 PM and left about 12:30 AM. The end result was 3 sutures and a prescription for anti-biotics.
Now I am normally very calm and collected in situations like this where my wife tends to be a little on the panicy side. (Is panicy a word?) After we had been waiting for about 2 hours, she noticed that I was really agitated. More so than normal. She kept asking me what was wrong. When I finally calmed down enough to think on it, I realized what the problem was.
I was ticked off because I felt I was wasting my time, when I should have been at home working on my computer. It wasn't because I was all upset about my daughter getting hurt, I was stressing about that contest and winning that $1000.
That is f****d up! But it's the truth. I'm not going to try and sugar coat it. I had become obsessed with winning that stupid contest. But here is the irony of the whole matter. My Google listing actually slipped back to the 3rd page! I looked at the date of my last blog post and I had not made a post in 6 days. I didn't respond to any of my comments either.
Because I was chasing the money, I neglected the basics and it caused my listing to slip back in the SERPS. The search engines like quality content that is FRESH. I would have been much better off if I had just made a good, relevant blog post every day. Even if I had made a blog post every other day, I would have helped my cause more than I did. I deviated from my master plan and I paid the price.
Don't get caught up chasing the money. Make your 90 day plan and break it down to monthly and weekly plans. Then execute those plans and don't let anything distract you. I just checked Google and I am about to slip back onto the 4th page. I am currently at number 29. I am going to quit worrying about the contest and get back on track with my original plan.
The first thing I am going to do is make sure I make a post at least every other day. Today I am going to do the videos on how to set up a PLR product to use with a JV Giveaway event. I said I was going to do this last week and I have had people asking about it. Shame on me for letting those people down. The video will be up today.
I am also putting together an ebook about JV Giveaways that I will be giving away. Hopefully, I can finish that up this weekend. I also have a couple of killer ideas for the video contest that I am going to be working on. I am also going to continue working on my review page for Alex Jeffreys coaching program that I have started to continue to add value and content to this blog.
Filed under Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program by 
If you haven't heard already, Harry Harris is putting together a Alex Jeffreys Coaching Class of 2008 video. You need to go on over to http://harryharrisblog.com and leave a comment letting him know that you want to be in his video.
You will need to submit a photo and your url. Harry has created a nice video for you to watch with some cool tips on how to get a photo with a caption under it and some other things.
I have been totally obsessed with being the first one to get my blog listed number one for "Alex Jeffreys" keyword, so I haven't worked on my JV Giveaway videos at all. Sorry about that. I am bound and determined to win that $1000. Right now I am only 14 spots away.
In the mean time, get on over to Harry's blog and let him know you want to be in the video.
This ones for you Harry…"May the force be with you."
Filed under Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program by
Last night was bonus module number 1 for Alex Jeffreys coaching program. The guest speaker was Maria Andros, the Queen of Video Marketing. Maria was very enthusiastic and gave us a tremendous amount of information in the short hour that she had.
She gave us a run down of some of the do's and don'ts of using videos as a marketing tool. Things like:
- making sure you put your url in the description
- making sure you put your target keywords in the description
- making sure you use tags
- always introduce yourself
- always have a call to action
- ask people to comment on your video
- smile, don't be too serious
That is just a few out of a long list.
Videos have taken the internet by storm in the last couple years. Maria is right when she says that "Old School" marketing tactics don't work any more. Video and social marketing is the future of making money online. All you have to do is look at the popularity of sites like YouTube to know this is true.
I have been telling myself for the last 2 years that I need to start implementing videos in my marketing strategy and haven't done squat until recently. Luckily for me it is not too late. I announced a few weeks back that I was going to have a Camtasia marathon to create videos while I still had the free trial available.
Well, life and the holidays kind of got in the way, although I did make 5 videos. My free trial had just run out but after listening to Maria last night, I knew that the $300 for Camtasia is nothing compared to the money that it will make me down the road. So I went ahead and got my key.
Alex sweetened the pot last night by announcing another contest. There will be 2 $1500 prizes payed out after Feb. 5th. One for the most creative/informative video and one for the video that generates the most traffic. So I have decided that I am going to win one of those prizes. That will pay for Camtasia and then some.
I got a new flip video cam for Christmas and I plan to put that to use as well. I might even upgrade to a high def flip cam if I win one of those prizes. You know…I was thinking…The most creative video probalby stands a good chance to be the one that generates the most traffic.
$3000 would be sweeeeeeeeet!
Especially since what I have in mind is probably going to be a lot of fun. I have to say that I have seen one video that I enjoyed by a fellow student of Alex Jeffreys. Check out Dave Dunn's blog and watch the intro video. Dave takes advantage of his "newness" to making videos and turns it into something hilarious.
He is doing exactly what Maria couldn't stress enough last night.
"Just Be Yourself and Have Fun"
Now all of this great information raised some questions about tags and keywords. Maria explained longtail keywords a little but really didn't have the time to go into any detail. Luckily, I have a Hub page that I created about 4 or 5 months ago that explains all you need to know about Long Tail Keywords.
Take a look I think you will find it very helpful. I show you how I do my keyword research. If you like it please take a minute, give me a thumbs up, and click on the share button to submit it to Digg, Mixx or Stumble Upon.
Filed under Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program by
Here is a good technique that all you students of Alex Jeffreys coaching program can use for traffic generation. Article marketing is a very effective way to create a lasting stream of steady traffic and create some powerful back links. If done properly, you can also create multiple listings in the search engine results for your targeted keywords. Here are some tips that will make your article marketing efforts the most effective.
- Create a really good article of about 500 – 700 words long that has a keyword density of around 3% for your target keyword phrase.
- Try and use the keyword phrase in the title of the article, the first sentence of the article, and in the last sentence of the last paragraph.
- Use the <strong> tag and the <i> tag on the keyword phrase at least once each.
- Create 3 variations of this article so that they are at least 30% unique. This will avoid duplicate content issues.
- Manually submit one to Ezinearticles.com and link to your website using your target keyword phrase as the anchor text if possible. (You are only permitted links in the authors bio. Your article will be rejected if you do not follow guidelines.)
- Use the second article to create a Squidoo lens. Title of lens should include keyword phrase if possible. Use body of article for one text module and use the summary for another text module. Module titles should include keyword phrase or slight variations of keyword phrase. You can use as many links as you want in your lens. Remember to try and use the target keywords as the anchor text.
- Use the third article to create a Hub page. Same rules apply like Squidoo except Hub pages will ban your Hub if it is overly promotional. You are not permitted more than 2 links to the same domain. I usually only put one link to my blog and then one to my Squidoo lens. You can also put a link on your Squidoo lens back to your Hub page. That way they give each other a little link love.
Once you have these 3 things in place you want to create a few more variations of your article to submit to all the other article directories. An easy way to create multiple variations is to write 3 or 4 variations of each sentence in the article. Then use different combinations of the sentences to create new articles. I know it sounds like a lot of work but the results will be worth it.
If you submit the same article everywhere. You might get a couple listings in the search engines, but if you create multiple variations and distribute them with slightly varying headlines, you will dominate the SERPS for a long tail keyword phrase.
Now submitting these articles is very very time consuming. There is software that you can use but don't get just any piece of junk article submitter. The best free option out there is Brad Callen's Article Submitter. I have tried others and take my word it's the best. When you click on the link you will be directed to the sales page for the Platinum version which is fully automatic and about $165. To get the freebie, click on the blue navigation bar where it says Article Submitter.
Filed under Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program, Article Marketing, Internet Marketing Tools by
Happy New Years to everyone and especially my fellow students in Alex Jeffreys coaching program. 2009 is going to be the year that we make our dreams come true. That is of course, for those that take action and follow Alex's instruction. I am really looking forward to meeting everyone at the workshop in Vegas.
I have been so busy with other things that I have fallen a little behind. I have been transferring more things from my daily task list to the next day that I should be. That should change now that the Holidays are behind us. I am going to keep this one short because I am a little hung over. I think I will take a nap and some Advil and see how I feel in an hour or so.
Meanwhile, I wanted to make sure I shared a piece of last nights celebration with you. I have a little video of the fireworks display that was put on in West Palm Beach. It was also a good excuse to use my new Flip Video recorder that my wife got me for Christmas 
We Americans do love our guns and explosions!
Filed under Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program by
