They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s also true that some pictures are worth thousands of dollars. Many bloggers will tell you that it’s a good idea to include a relevant picture with most of your blog posts, but the average blogger cannot afford to pay the expensive royalties for high end photos.

Sure, you could just jump into your favorite search engine and pull out some pictures that way, but you could just as easily run into all sorts of copyright issues should you take that route. Thankfully, there is an equally easy way to get pictures that is 100% legal and 100% free. It’s called PicApp.

Discovering a World of Free Photos

Some of you may already be familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and how it protects the copyright of digital content found online. If you chose to pull and use a protected image from a website without the right permission, you could run into a whole world of legal issues. That’s why PicApp could be a more suitable solution.

Going through the PicApp library, you will find literally millions of photos at your fingertips. These premium pictures come at no cost to you, thanks to special agreements that PicApp has made with the copyright owners. The pictures come from Corbis, Getty Images, and other similar sources.

By using a picture from PicApp, you agree to the terms and conditions. For example, you must link back to the PicApp site each time.

How Does It Work?

To get a better sense of what PicApp is all about and how it works, watch the brief video overview embedded here.

You can browse through the photo galleries, view the most recent uploads, and so forth. Naturally, you can also perform a search based on your chosen terms. For example, here are the results I got when I searched for a picture of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

Integration with WordPress Blogs and More

When I click on any individual image, I am provided with more information, like the date and location, as well as the important code options for embedding image in a blog. Here is the pop-up that I got on an image of Roberto Luongo at the poker table.

The “image code” is regular HTML and should be compatible with most blogging platforms. It also contains a brief snippet of Javascript, search engine optimized tags, and a link back to the image page on PicApp. You can also define your alignment settings and choose from the three available sizes.

Here is a live example of an embedded image using this method. You can also choose to download the new PicApp WordPress plugin for your self-hosted blog.

Underneath the standard image code is a special shortcode for WordPress.com blogs. This is a more recent development and it is one that has been highlighted on the official WordPress blog.

One of the key differences is that you get a photo slideshow underneath the embedded image if you use this method instead. This can provide extra value for your readers, since they can view all of the related images from PicApp right from your blog.

An Invaluable Resource for Bloggers

Many bloggers seem to think that they are immune to any copyright infringements. They think that they can get away with using any kind of “borrowed” content that they’d like, but this is just as illegal as software piracy.

If you want to avoid any legal gray areas, the powerful image resource from PicApp seems to be just the ticket. You get access to millions of licensed photos and none of them will cost you a penny. They’re all high quality too, but you are restricted to maximum width of 500 pixels. The WordPress integration, both for WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org blogs, is quite good too.

CLICK HERE TO GIVE PICAPP A TRY

Yesterday, Google showed off their new Chrome OS. The new operating system is sure the put the fear of God into Microsoft. Chrome OS is a complete paradigm shift, where you no longer have a desktop. Instead, everything is in the cloud. This has been the direction I have been heading with my business for the past year. I store very little information or programs on my desktop now. My email is handle by Gmail, my documents are stored on Google Docs and ZOHO, my photos are stored at Flickr, my videos are on YouTube and Vimeo. It seems that Google thinks this is a great idea as well and that’s where Chrome OS comes in.

Chrome OS does away with the desktop. The entire operating system is pretty much a web browser that looks a lot like Google Chrome. The first Chrome OS powered computers will be netbooks but Google hopes expand into laptops and desktop computers as well. The main advantage for using the Chrome OS in a netbook is the speed. Chrome OS is lean, mean and super fast, able to boot up in just seven seconds. Little Atom powered netbooks that run too slow in Windows will fly in Chrome OS.

When you think about, Chrome OS makes a lot of sense. Most people use a computer to get on the Internet. With more web apps being developed everyday, there are very few reasons to get on the desktop. As a blogger, I pretty much run everything from a web browser. I log into my WordPress admin to make a new post, I use Hootsuite to update to my Twitter, etc. The first Chrome OS netbooks should hit stores late next year. The follow video explains Chrome OS in plain English.

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It’s not exactly what you think is, despite the explicit mention of getting rich in its title. I’ve reviewed a number of different “systems” that are designed to help you make money online, but you’ll learn over the course of this review that Inner Wealth Awakening is a different beast altogether.

Rather than giving you an exact blueprint as to how you’ll go about raking in that cash, Inner Wealth Awakening is about providing the “resources necessary fro you to define, design, and refine your life.” What does this mean and why should you care? Let’s find out.

Awakening to Discover Inner Wealth?

There is an interesting phenomenon that you can observe among the mass populace. Many people who are struggling to make ends meet believe that having more material goods will make them happy. Among wealthier people, however, you find a good number who say money is not the answer and that they could be just as happy with less. Ironic? Perhaps.

It is with this basic observation that we find the core of Inner Wealth Awakening. Rather than focusing on “outer” wealth, Tristan Bull aims to help you find “inner wealth” in the form of inner peace and happiness.

The idea is that once you achieve inner wealth, your “outer wealth will rush into your life faster than you can imagine.” This is based on the Law of Attraction, the premise on which The Secret (movie and book) is based.

The Five-Step Program

While you could surf around the main site (and the free training center) for information, the core comes from the 5 Step Secret Underground Formula, a digital product that “will teach you exactly how you can be wealthy in every single area of your life.”

Based on my early impressions, I hardly think that there is anything particularly “secret” or “underground” about the strategies described in this product. In essence, it is an expansion on the Law of Attraction, trying to help you minimize negative thinking and maximize positive thinking.

For me, one of the stranger things about Inner Wealth Awakening is its combination of different kinds of spirituality. After downloading the package, you’ll be told to listen to the main audio file. This is an interview that Tristan conducted with Daniel Taylor, a man who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and managed to transcend his harsh childhood.

Over the course of the interview, we get mention of Jesus Christ, The Secret, Freudian psychology, Buddhist philosophy, and more. At one point, Taylor mentions “psychoanalysis in a meditative state,” talking about how a neglected son can grow up to seek the “loving of his mother” through the dysfunctional relationships he has with women.

The idea is that these negative experiences can lead to negative thoughts that continue to have a profound effect on our lives, both consciously and unconsciously.

Going Beyond “The Secret”

Going through the rest of the downloadable package, you get a workbook, two bonus audio files (Inner Happiness Now And Forever, Stop Surviving and Start Living Today), a bonus report (Limiting Beliefs and How to Change Them), and a guided one-hour meditation MP3 file.

Before I got my start as a freelance writer, I worked as an English writer and editor for a Buddhist meditation society. I don’t consider myself to be an orthodox Buddhist, but I was exposed to some of the basic practices of this society, including meditation.

The guided meditation of Tristan Bull’s secret system, to me, is mostly focused on relaxation. It has some elements of Buddhist meditation, getting you to focus on the breath and different body parts, but it also has some elements of transcendental meditation, getting you to “let go” and allow the positive energy to engulf you.

How Much Does Enlightenment Cost?

It seems a little ironic that we are told by Inner Wealth Awakening that we should stop focusing on material wealth and start focusing on inner peace, since they’re obviously out to make a buck or two with the 5-Step Underground Secret Formula. It’s wording that seems better suited to the “make money online” realm and not really the realm of self-help and spirituality.

While I believe that positive energy attracts more positive energy, I’m not at all convinced that inner peace leads to buying “any house” or traveling all over the world. But these are “guaranteed” on the sales page for the 5-Step system. Further still, the regular price of $97 has been slashed for a “very special recession price” of $47. At least, there is a money-back guarantee.

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR INNER WEALTH AWAKENING

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Aweber just made it a whole lot easier to create an email sign up form. Yes, Aweber already had a web form generator but their new one is out of this world. It will allow you to create professional looking email sign up forms with just a few clicks of the mouse. The new Web Form Generator gives you the same sort of powerful design customization that you would typically find in web design software. You’ll drag and drop. You’ll point and click. You’ll have complete control over the feel of your forms, and you’ll make better-looking ones than ever before.

Better Popover and Lightbox Animation

Do you use “hover” style forms (like the Lightbox I use) to grab visitors’ attention and lift your opt-ins? You’ll love the updated animations used for these new forms; they’ve ditched the Windows95-looking blue bars at the top and smoothed out the fading and sliding motions.

Dynamic Thank You Pages

Want to use video on your thank you pages to increase confirmed opt-ins, but don’t have the time or equipment to make it happen? You can use Aweber’s video thank you pages to provide precise instructions to each new subscriber on how to confirm. The video even show them exactly what your confirm email looks like in their specific email program (Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Mac Mail, etc).

Try Aweber for Only $1.00

If your blog doesn’t have an email list, you are leaving a ton of money on the table. My mailing list is the number one reason why my blog makes income that it does. Aweber is the best email service I have ever used. Their feature set is beyond anything else in the industry and this new Web Form Generator just put them another light year ahead.

Aweber offers a $1 trial account for all new customers. The account is just like a normal Aweber account and includes unlimited email campaigns, newsletter, broadcasts and follow ups. It’s a great way to test drive Aweber to see what it can do for your blog. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If you find that email marketing is not for you, contact Aweber within 30 days and they’ll give you the $1 back.

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Want to know the secrets of making money with WordPress sites, but don’t know where to begin? You could certainly ask for advice from moguls, but wouldn’t it be more interesting to enlist the services of someone with mythical powers.

That isn’t quite the case with WordPress Mage, but you’ll find over the course of this review that there may be more than just smoke and mirrors to this system. Instead, it promises to offer you the “forbidden science of click and profit.”

It Starts with the Spellbook

When you think about a mage, you probably think of some elaborate cloak and maybe a mighty staff of some kind. Since a mage is a practitioner of magic, it makes sense that he could be the proud owner of a powerful spellbook too. The same can be said about WordPress Mage.

In short, WordPress Mage is designed to be a comprehensive package that will guide you toward making money online. Hitting up the spellbook, you’ll find a series of PDF files with lessons, downloadable content, tutorial videos, and a number of online resources.

Beyond this, you’ll find a series of other “mages” along the top of the page. These can help you with finding the right domains, targeting the right keywords, populating your sites with the right ads, acquiring the right content, getting indexed in the right places, and so on.

Domain Tools, PLR Articles, and More

The training material, in the form of videos and PDF documents, are a good place to start, but you want to get started with some real money making tools, right? WordPress Mage is broken into two types. With Adept Mage status, you have access to the online tools like the Domain Mage.

From the Domain Mage, you can look up a series of $5 expiring domains. These can be valuable to you, because they may already have PageRank, age, backlinks, DMOZ listing, and so forth. For a little more money, you can look into the domain auctions. There is also a backlink checker to give you more information about any given domain.

A blog is worthless if it doesn’t have any content, so WordPress Mage also includes what it calls the Articles Mage. This seems to be a massive collection of articles on a huge range of topics, including everything from business to food, recreational sports to travel and leisure.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that these are all PLR articles, so they’re not exactly unique and there’s a good chance that someone else is republishing them elsewhere too. It’s up to you to decide whether using PLR content is a good idea or night.

Upgrading to Master Mage Status with Three Paths

The developers of WordPress Mage will tell you that there are three possible paths that you can take with the product. However, in order to make use of any of these paths, you’ll probably need to upgrade from Adept Mage to Master Mage status.

After that, you can choose to:

• Download the plugins and add them to an existing site.
• Use a fresh install of WordPress Mage on a standalone domain.
• Use CP Mage to create several new websites in minutes.

It is likely with the third path that you’ll have the most to profit from WordPress Mage. That path creates websites that come pre-populated with content (via the Content mage and Posting Mage) and monetization (via the Affiliate Mage), so you can make as many as you’d like. You can literally have hundreds of monetized sites in a very short amount of time. The Affiliate Mage makes money by inserting keyword targeted ads from Overstock, eBay, and other similar sources.

So, Is WordPress Mage Really Free?

When you go to the main page for WordPress Mage, you’ll be told by Gregory Jacobs that he believes information should be free. He says that he could easily sell the Mage Blueprint (and seven training videos) for $497, but he wants to give it to you for free.

That much is true. However, you are only given a 60-day free trial of Adept Mage, after which you’ll be on the hook for a $27 monthly charge. And Master Mage? I couldn’t find the pricing information, but I did learn two things: it consists of a one-time charge and it is only available in limited quantities periodically. The next opening sounds like it’ll be on November 23.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WORDPRESS MAGE

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My friends at Unique Blog Design has a release a new eBook call Squeeze Pages 101 that will teach you how to create email grabbing squeeze pages. You can download the eBook for free at http://www.squeezetheme.com/101.html.

What Is a Squeeze Page?

For those who don’t know, a squeeze page is a special kind of landing page designed to capture the email address of the reader. Squeeze pages are the most effective method for building a big email list. If you’ve watched my video on how I make $40,000 a month by blogging, then you know that the emailing list is a big part of it. Using squeeze pages has helped me build a huge mailing list.

Squeeze Pages 101 will show you step-by-step everything you need to know to get a squeeze page up and running. The free eBook is being used as promotional tool for the pending launch of Squeeze Theme, a new system that allow the creation of squeeze pages using WordPress.

Download Squeeze Pages 101 for Free

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I’ve done many reviews of tech gadgets in my time but I have to tell you, the GPS Tracking Key Pro by LandAirSea is definitely the most evil device to date. The GPS Tracking Key Pro is a passive GPS tracker. You place it somewhere in the car (preferably hidden) and it will record the vehicle’s travel history. This is prefect for the jealous wife who thinks her husband is having an affair. With the GPS Tracking Key Pro, she’ll be able to see if he really came home after the meeting or made an unscheduled stop along the way.

While busting cheating husbands maybe one use of the GPS Tracking Key Pro, companies with a vehicle fleet may find a better use for the tracking device. Chances are, if the employees knew there was a GPS tracker in the car, they won’t be so quick to use the company car for personal business or drive 113.7mph down the interstate.

The GPS Tracking Key Pro is barely bigger than the two AA batteries that powers it. The device can operate up to 80 hours on a battery cycle, depending on daily drive time and battery type. It can also be connected to the vehicle’s main power supply. The unit comes equipped with a motion detector which will put the tracker to sleep mode after two minutes of non-movement. The tracker records every second, within 2.5 meters’ accuracy:

• Speed
• Address of stops
• Duration of stops
• Time en route
• Arrival Addresses
• Direction of vehicle

The data is stored to the tracker’s flash memory and downloaded via USB using the LAS Past-Track software package, included free with the GPS Tracking Key Pro. There are three data viewing options: a daily text log, route display over animated digital street map or route display on satellite imagery with Google Earth interface.

Personally, I don’t have much use for GPS Tracking Key Pro other than hiding it in Ed Lau’s car to see what seedy places he goes to on a Friday night. However, I can see myself asking LandAirSea for their Victoria GPS Tracking System. Unlike the GPS Tracking Key Pro, which is a passive tracker, the Victoria is an active real-time tracker. If I was at a big event or hiking in the woods, I can put the Victoria in one of Sally’s pockets and then I won’t have to worry about losing sight of her. Should something happen, the tracker can tell me where she is within 2.5 meters in real-time.

At $399, the Victoria isn’t cheap but for the piece of mind it can bring a parent, it maybe worth it. If you’re a jealous wife who just wants to spy on your husband and don’t need real-time tracking, the $269 GPS Tracking Key Pro maybe all you need. Who knows, you might even bust him for murder!

Back in July, George Ford was arrested in Chenango County for the death of a 12-year-old girl. Ford was charged with reckless endangerment. However, authorities discovered there was a global positioning system in his car. The device is called a tracking key. Ford’s wife put it in his truck, because she suspected he was having an affair. Based on the information taken from the tracking key, Ford was charged with murder.

GPS Tracking

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As some of you many know, I recently joined a new pay per tweet network call Ad.ly to see how they compare to Sponsored Tweets. The early results has been pretty amazing and I think every Twitter user should jump on this.

I knew that Ad.ly was well funded and had signed a lot of big celebrity tweeters commanding a very high tweet rate. What I didn’t know was that they’ve been getting some nice payouts for even the small time Twitter users. While my 50,000+ followers may seem big, it’s really small compare to a celebrity like Kim Kardashian with over 2 million followers. Still, Ad.Ly was able to get me $1,000 for my first tweet!

The tweet was already written by the advertiser so all I had to do was hit accept and Ad.ly did the rest. $1,000 for hitting a button! While $1,000 tweets maybe few and far between, the average rate Ad.ly has been getting me has been much higher than Sponsored Tweets. The second tweet Ad.ly got me was for $200.

Like Sponsored Tweets, Ad.ly is free to join and you have total control over what ads you accept and reject. You can also set your own price. However, Ad.ly will try to sell your tweets at the highest price they can get for it. And if an advertiser wishes to make you an offer, ad.ly will present that to you as well.

If you are already signed up for Sponsored Tweets then you should sign up for Ad.ly as well. After all, it’s better to have two companies working for you than one. It will be a race between the two to see which one earns me more this month.

Sign up for Ad.ly | Sign up for Sponsored Tweets

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A new blog is created somewhere in the world every 13.5 seconds. Alright, I totally made that statistic up but I am sure the number of new blogs started daily is HUGE. Let’s imagine something for a second. Every single blog you read both big and small, all had a starting point. I don’t know about you, but thinking back to a time when John Chow dot Com, Problogger or Copy Blogger didn’t exist seems a little odd. It’s hard to imagine that the big boys were at once where all of the beginning bloggers are currently.

However, over time their blogs grew, became popular and eventually their hobby blossomed into something much more than just a pastime. Now I am no blogging guru and I am surely not at the level of John or the others but I have learned a lot in my blogging experience over the past year. My website turned one year old in October 2009; when I look back I am just amazed at how much it’s grown and developed into something I never imagined it’d be.

Here are a few things I’ve learned throughout my blogging experience that I think we all need to take a second look at sometimes.

Writing First, Design Second

After I first picked out my domain I began theme shopping. I probably spent an entire month before I settled on something and I only settled because my web guru said I either “pick something now or forget about blogging altogether.” I settled on a nice little premium theme from WooThemes with a bit of customization added for kicks.

I actually moved some content over from an older blog I had started on a Wordpress.com domain and then began writing fitness articles. It was slow getting started but I picked up some momentum rather quickly. The main point is that I wrote first and worried about design second. I left my original design up for about six months and just focused on content. Then once I had more content, more readers and an idea of where I wanted it to go with all of it, I then decided to hire a designer.

Once I knew I wanted a brand new, custom design I immediately bought the Thesis theme as I knew there were some really awesome designers out there using the framework. Not only is Thesis great out of the box in terms of SEO, it’s highly customizable and easy to hack and snip CSS when warranted. I ended up locating a great designer and getting exactly what I wanted with the overall look of my website.

My main point is this. Never start with an elegant, fancy theme. Never start off by paying a designer two to three thousand dollars on a blog you haven’t even started working on yet because chances are very high that you will not stick it out. Focus on content first and once you are serious about continuing, then look at a premium design.

Forget About Structured Posting Frequency

This is something I researched ten times over when I was getting started. How often should I be posting? I read so much information about how you must stick to a strict schedule when updating your blog; if you failed to stick with your schedule, it would cause reader attrition, lack of interest, blah, blah, blah. Then I also read that in order to be successful you must post frequently, as in three to five times per week. Some blogs were posting multiple times daily. How was I to keep up? I was getting overwhelmed but I also found other blogs that were posting only two times per week, some only once per week and still humming along just fine.

I decided to just do my own thing and post bi-weekly for a while. For some time, I always posted on Monday and Thursday. Then I thought about something. I started thinking about all the blogs I read. I asked myself, “Do I really care whether or not JoeBlogger posts on Tuesday instead of Monday?” Of course, my answer was no and I am sure everyone agrees. All I care about is that JoeBlogger posts quality content, period. As long as he does just that, I maintain my subscription. Now of course I would rather it be more frequent than not but I don’t get upset if he doesn’t post every third day.

The bottom line is that it really makes no difference how often you post as long as it’s updated fairly often (don’t leave your blog dormant for months at a time). If your stuff is good, your readers only care that you hit publish, not when.

Keep On Keepin’ On

I would say the two biggest challenges beginning bloggers face is making it past your first 90 days and getting your first 100 subscribers. I know I struggled with the first 90 days because I often got out of the writing habit, felt like I had no direction etc. It was then when I had to go back to my blogging plans to get back on track. Yes, I developed a plan; it included what I wanted to write about and how I was going to go about producing the content. Planning, especially in the beginning is crucial to succeeding long term.

Building up your first 100 subscribers seems like the most daunting task. I find that many people set a really steep goal of having “x” amount of subscribers by a certain date and find they fail miserably. The main reason is because they are so new to this blogging thing that they haven’t really learned how to promote their blog just yet. They may have all this great content but no one is seeing it. Building up subscribers takes time but as you get more exposure the subscriber count climbs faster than it did in the beginning. Keep on keepin’ on.

Writers Block

It happens to the best of us. There really isn’t a whole lot you can do about it but just accept it and be ready to cope. What I used to do is have three to four articles written in advance; this way if I get behind or can’t think of anything to write about that weekend, I still had content to post. This was when I was still worried about rigid posting frequency, which we now know doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme.

My number one tip for dealing with writer’s block is to always be ready to take notes of some kind. I find I am always getting ideas for articles in the craziest places. In most cases, I usually just pull my phone out to save a quick note and then write a more detailed outline when I get back to my apartment.

Great Content, as Always, is Key

I figured I would save the best for last. If you suck at writing and/or your content is subpar your chances of building a popular blog are slim. People always want to read something that is coherent, useful and oftentimes entertaining. They want value and quality as opposed to most of the run-of-the-mill websites online today. If you cannot produce great content, then nothing else I have written matters because content is the lifeblood of your blogging.

So how do we create great content? There are a few ways.

• You must know what you’re writing about. People would laugh at me if I started a blog on golf because the first article or two would make absolutely no sense. I know nothing about golf. I only know that a golf ball is small, plastic and bounces on the cement. Other than that I know zilch, nada, absolutely nothing. There is no way that I could create great golf related content.
• You must really enjoy what you are writing about. I suppose you can call this part of the equation passion. If you are not passionate about what you’re blogging about, people will notice and will often get turned off because your writing will just seem like any other dull website.
• You must be proficient at writing in the language you intend to blog in. This goes back to readability, coherence, grammar and even style. People like easy reads. People enjoy reading something over a cup of coffee. I personally like to read for relaxation. There is nothing more frustrating than reading something that is actually pretty good on the content and information part but terrible on the grammar and syntax side. It’s a turn off and you easily lose credibility.

While I am in no way an A-list blogger, I believe any beginner can start here and get just as far as I have without many issues.

This post was written by JC of JCDFitness.com, a No-BS Approach to Looking Great Naked where he writes about all things fitness related.

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Sponsored Tweets has released their API into the Twitter community. This will help Twitter services earn money off their user base and help tweeters in the Sponsored Tweets network get more paid tweets.

If you operate a site that displays different Twitter users (Klout, WeFollow, Spymaster, etc.), then chances are you might be interested in our API. Our API allows you to query our service to find out if a Twitter user is in our system and, if so, will return you information about them. Our hopes are that you can use this to put a “Sponsor Me” button by those users. This button would link to the users profile page on Sponsored Tweets, allowing an advertiser to hire them. You can earn a portion of the money any new advertisers spend in our system!

The new API could add up to a nice revenue stream for the bigger Twitter services like WeFollow and Klout. I’m sure a good percentage of their users are members of Sponsored Tweets. By displaying a “Sponsor Me” button next to those users, WeFollow and Klout could earn 5% of whatever the advertise spends on Sponsored Tweets for the next two years. I think I will add the API to Twitter Follower. To use the API, you must be a Sponsored Tweets tweeter.

For Twitter" style="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmouseover="self.status='Follow John Chow on Twitter';return true;" onmouseout="self.status=''">Twitter users who are already members of Sponsored Tweets, this will help get them more exposure for their profile which could lead to more sponsored opportunities. Sponsored Tweets is becoming one of my most profitable income sources. If you haven’t join yet, then you should seriously consider it. Sponsored Tweets does not cost anything to join and you are under no obligation to run any tweets that you don’t feel comfortable with. You have total control over which tweets you accept and which ones you reject. The only requirement is your Twitter account must be at least 120 days old.

Sign Up for Sponsored Tweets

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This week’s Dot Com Pho achieved a couple of firsts. For the first time ever, Ed Lau was the first one to show up. We thought that was amazing but it was eclipsed by the achievement of a one guy to one girl attendance ratio! Whoever heard of a dot com meet up where there are just as many girls as guys?

We decided to go to Pho Thai Hoa this week because Ed really like the subs there. However, he never ordered one. The location is central for everyone so we may hold more Pho meet ups there in the future. All attendees got a copy of Broke: The New America Dream. For the 1 guy, 1 girl edition of Dot Com Pho, we have Ed’s tip on being a lazy ass, Pho menu #29, beautiful girls and the return of the Twitter shout outs.

Anyone is welcome to join us for Dot Com. Follow me on Twitter to find the time and location of the next one.

When your blog is already highly trusted by Google and has over 50,000 subscribers, it would seem that anything you say is instantly popular. For example, Shoemoney had free internet marketing guides, as does John Chow– and anything they put out immediately gets a ton of traffic. But what if you’re starting from zero? It’s a catch-22.

Consider the case of Keith Wilcox, a stay at home dad turned professional blogger just two months ago. He had zero experience blogging before, doesn’t have programming experience, but does know a lot about parenting, home schooling his kids, and fitness.

Consider Velina Lujan, a Boulder massage therapist whose business was struggling, after suffering a yellow pages rip-off. She put her site on wordpress, too, wrote articles, and started driving traffic.

Here are the steps they both followed– brand new to blogging– to start getting enough traffic to make a living. Not a crazy, superaffiliate lifestyle, but one that a normal person could sustain– one that is possible for you, too!

Are you following these simple steps that they did?

• They put up a wordpress site, which takes all of 5 minutes to do. Go to wordpress.org or use one of the many free or almost free hosting sites that can one-click install your blog. We don’t have to go into all the reasons why wordpress is great for SEO– it just works.

• They wrote about a topic they know DEEPLY– in this case, parenting issues and how to do a great massage. Keith put up Hooked on Phonics video reviews, as he is good in front of a camera, while Velina wrote articles on Boulder elder care. If you don’t like to write, but enjoy making videos– do that. If you prefer doing podcasts, ditto. Just start creating great content about something you are passionate about, since odds are that it will be expert content that others will want to read and share with friends.
• They connected with similar users: Most bloggers stop at the above and wonder why they don’t get traffic. Keith spent days assembling the Top 115 daddy bloggers on the web and attracted attention from those site owners. He developed relationships with these folks– and started exchanging posts between each other. Those guest posts back and forth demonstrated to Google that he was a trustworthy site, like the ones that he friended. If you aren’t connected to these other guys, Google will think you’re a spammer.
• They began reaching out socially: Velina tied in her Facebook profile and added 157 friends. Granted, she doesn’t have thousands of friends, but the ones that are there are good quality and drive traffic to her site– especially clients that are repeat customers. She also started doing some Facebook advertising, setting up geo-targeted campaigns– and this was much more effective than traditional Google AdWords PPC, which is quite expensive in the United States.
• They did not SPAM: Meaning no fake content, no paid links, no cloaking– just good old fashioned networking combined with solid information. The results grow over time and you build great reputation with the search engines and human users.

Sounds like magic? You’d be surprised (or maybe not) how many people WISH that they could be successful, but don’t actually take steps to do it.

How much effort does it take?

• For a niche that is low in competition– such as for the term “unnecessary baby products“– 100 blog posts should be enough to start to get you traffic– so that’s just one blog post a day for 100 days, and each blog post will take you only 15 minutes. Can you do that?

• For a moderately competitive niche, maybe “alaska garage sales“, you need perhaps 1,000 posts to get to rank on the first page of Google or Yahoo!.

• For a term like free ringtones, that’s ultra hard– you might need 10,000 or 100,000 posts and links to be competitive. That’s the area where social media, linkbaiting campaigns, and large teams come into play.

But if you’re just one person and you don’t need more than a couple hundred dollars a day, winning on low competition terms– to dominate your small niche– should be more than fine. I wish you the best fortune on your blogging journey!

This post was guest blog by Dennis Yu.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Considering that you are reading John Chow dot Com, I’ll go out on a limb and say that you’re probably interested in making money online. Each of you may bring a slightly different skill set to the table. Some of you may be interested in affiliate marketing, others in freelance writing, and others still in professional blogging.

One of the biggest hurdles that you will face with any endeavor is the inevitable learning curve. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just start making money right away? That seems to be the idea behind Websites for Sale World, which serves as the subject for today’s review. From this site, you can you grab a wide range of turnkey businesses that require no prior knowledge or expertise.

Get Started with Turnkey Online Business

While its name may lead you to believe that you can buy individual websites for the purpose of making money, Websites for Sale World is actually a membership-based site that grants you access to all the resources all at once.

Available as a UK version or a US version, Websites for Sale World offers “all types of turnkey packages ready to start making money.” This includes not only the raw website files themselves, but also information on how to earn money from Clickbank, AdSense, Amazon, eBay, and so on.

My initial reaction to Websites for Sale World was not a positive one. It seems to be completely lacking in any of its own branding, not offering a unique logo or header image at all. The rotating banners at the top lack in professionalism and the same can be said about the site in general. A simpler, cleaner layout could work wonders.

Types of Sites for Sale

Navigating a little further down the main page, you’ll see the different types of websites that come with a membership to Websites for Sale World.

These site templates, like the ones for Amazon or online travel, come pre-populated with products and services for sale. The sites are meant to be completely turnkey, so you can start making money right away.

According to the documentation, the sites will update themselves too, so you only need to focus your attention on driving targeted traffic to your site. Naturally, you’ll need to provide your own domain and hosting too.

Flipping Ringtones and Wallpapers for Profit

One example of the available websites for sale in this “world” is the ringtones website. From this site, you have the opportunity to sell ringtones, wallpapers, screensavers, games, and other mobile content. You can check out the live demo to get a better sense of what you can expect.

The layout is relatively easy to understand, but it makes me feel more like I’m looking at a simple landing page or a parked domain page. The profitability can be good, though, if you manage to get the right traffic to the site.

As an example, Websites for Sale World says that you can sell a cell phone wallpaper image for £3.00 to earn a commission of €1.38. Expanding this example to include 110 sales of various mobile products each day, they say that you can earn a profit of €47,772 a year.

How Much Does It Cost?

To go along with the eight turnkey websites (and counting), Websites for Sale World also offers a number of bonus items to go with your paid membership.

There are SEO tutorials, monetization tutorials, “free software to help you in building your websites,” information on website flipping, a list of over 2000 wholesale suppliers, and e-books on building an e-book empire and making money from ClickBank.

Interestingly, joining the membership network is not a monthly subscription. Instead, joining Websites for Sale World comes at a one-time cost of £149 through the UK site. Alternatively, you can hit up the American site and pay $246.

CLICK HERE TO TRY WEBSITES FOR SALE WORLD

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

I have been blogger for almost a year. Over the past year I have learned that to be a successful blogger you need an amazing amount of self discipline.

When you are starting out enthusiasm drives you. At the beginning you will be spouting out content machine gun style. Ideas will automatically form in your head. You sit down at the computer and write and before you finish the post a new idea will form. Post after post with no problems. The first 10 posts come easy.

Then one day you sit at the computer and your fingers don’t move. Your mind is blank. Putting your elbows on the table you rest your head in your hands waiting for an idea to come. Nothing happens.

You try to remember that idea you had while waiting for bus. Or the post you completed in your head while taking a shower. But what seemed like a good post at the time now seems like drivel. You want to write, but you can’t.

So what do you do?

Most likely, if you are a beginning blogger, your next move will be a mistake. Like Odysseus without beeswax in his ears, you will be lured by the Siren’s song. Odysseus was wise – he had himself tied to the ship’s mast to avoid temptation. But as a new blogger you are not wise – you will be lured and you will succumb.

With nothing to write and nothing to do, you will open an internet browser window and check your blog stats. How many new visitors, how much AdSense revenue, how many affiliate sales. You go through the routine of checking all your stats and like always, nothing has changed. Same as it was 10 minutes ago – no new visitors, no AdSense revenue, and no affiliate sales. It has not changed in the last 10 minutes, the last hour or even since yesterday. The sad fact is that it will not change for a long time.

You have a problem. You are addicted to checking your stats. Every time there is a lull, every time you find yourself with a moment of idle time you check your stats. Over and over again. Like a pigeon repeatedly pecking at a button hoping for a pellet, you check your stats.

There Is No Point Checking Your Stats

For at least the first month of your blogs existence there is absolutely no need for you to check your stats. Your blog is virtually invisible and only a very few people (your mother and best friend) visit.

After the first month you probably have enough content to start promoting it. You do the standard stuff: comment on other blogs, frequent forums and article submissions. At this point it is enough to check your stats once a week. On a day to day basis not much will change – why do you need to know if you had 12 visitors today or 15? All you need to know is that the average for the week was 13.

Of course, this does not apply if you are the first to discover that Micheal Jackson is alive and you have video footage of him in your living room. Since this is bound to be a good post with lots of visitors your stats should be checked daily. But for most cases, weekly is fine.

It is not until at least six months, when you have page rank, subscribers, and search engines send you traffic, that you need to start checking your stats on a regular basic. Only after you have a presence on the internet is there any chance of a surprise with the number of visitors, AdSense clicks, or affiliate sales. First six months – you do not even need to bother checking your stats (OK, once a week is fine).

So what is the big deal? What is wrong with checking your stats first thing when you wake up and then after your shower and then while you drink your coffee and then while your word processor is loading? This small ritual might seem harmless. But it is not.

Productivity Loss

The biggest issue is the the amount of time you lose. If you are addicted to checking your stats you will be checking them all the time. Everything will be an excuse to check your stats. Staring at a blank page – check your stats, cannot think of the right word – check your stats, do not want to do promotion – check your stats.

Instead of doing productive things – things that actually help your blog, you are checking your stats. True, to view your stats only takes 30 seconds, but if you multiply that by the 30 times a day you do it then it is 15 minutes lost everyday. If you have a full time job and a baby on each arm 15 minutes is an eternity. Every minute counts, minutes spent confirming that nothing has changed really cut into your chances of having a successful blog.

To increase your productivity – do not check your stats. Simply assume that you have no new visitors, no AdSense click and no affiliate sales. Not only will your assumption be correct, but you will save 15 minutes a day.

Demoralizing

Ancient Greeks did not understand the concept of zero. They asked, “how can something be nothing”. Endless debates ensued about whether zero should be considered a number.

For the first few months as a blogger you will wish that zero never become accepted as a number. At the beginning you will see zeros everywhere and every day. Zero new visitors, zero new subscribers, zero AdSense clicks, zero comments.

Seeing zeros all the time is demoralizing. Especially after spending your Saturday night writing what you consider a great post. You wake up in the morning and jump to your computer, check your stats and see nothing but zeros.

The more you check your stats the more zeros you will see. I do not care how strong your armor, those zeros will get to you. You will start to feel like nothing you do makes a difference. Every time you think something should happen, nothing does. Beaten by the zero stick over and over again, 30 times a day will leave you bruised and battered. If you don’t stop checking your stats you risk being defeated by the number zero.

How To Kick The Addiction

A year of blogging has taught me one very important lesson. If you want to be productive, if you want to give yourself a chance to succeed you need to quit your stat checking addiction.

Do not have a shortcut to your stats on the desktop. Do not have them bookmarked. Do not let the browser store your username and password for easy access. Make it difficult to check your stats.

Set a specific time to check your stats once a day (or once a week) and stick to it. You will be tempted many times a day to break your rule but don’t. Remember – nothing has changed, it will only waste time and it will be a zero. By checking once a day, you minimize your wasted time to 30 seconds and are disappointed only once.

I am free from my stats addiction and it feels great. A year ago I would of checked my stats at least three times during the writing of this post. Now, a year wiser, it is the middle of the afternoon and I am proud to say that I have not checked them today.

Forget your stats and start doing something productive.

This was a guest post by Roman from How This Website Makes Money.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

My friends at Unique Blog Designs, the design agency that created the WordPress theme that powers this blog, is about to release an incredible new tool that will help you quickly build your email list and further systemize your online marketing. It is called Squeeze Theme and it is coming out Tuesday, November 24th. I was given a sneak preview of the theme and I have to say it’s pretty damn awesome. I plan to use Squeeze Theme to power a new site I’m working on.

Squeeze theme is a premium product that will sell for $147. However, Unique Blog Design is running a promotion right now that will give you 50% off Squeeze Theme if you purchase Affiliate Theme between now and Tuesday, November 17th. That’s right – you only have one week to take advantage of this promotion, so don’t miss out.

The Easiest Way To Create Affiliate Niches Site with WordPress

For those who don’t know, Affiliate Theme is an affiliate website building tool for WordPress. More than 2,000 people are using Affiliate Theme to quickly build and profit from affiliate websites. The themes makes it extremely easy for anyone to create an affiliate niche site using the WordPess blogging platform. Instead of using WordPress to create a blog, Affiliate Theme uses WordPress to create an affiliate site! It really is a genius idea.

If you’ve been wanting to get into affiliate marketing but hesitated because you don’t know the first thing about creating an affiliate landing page, then you should definitely check out Affiliate Theme. If you’re already an affiliate marketer, then Affiliate Theme adds one more tool to your affiliate marketing arsenal. Some of the features of Affiliate Theme include:

• Customize your Affiliate Theme with incredible ease! Change the color, fonts, call to action buttons, and even page layout! A highly-modified Theme Options panel allows you to choose between six unique layouts.
• Build and modify your Affiliate Theme in minutes! Adding personality and branding to your affiliate web site is key to its credibility. With over 30 pre-made backgrounds and 30 pre-made headers, and the ability to change every tiny look and feel of the theme with a simple click, you’ll be able to create excellently branded sites in a few minutes.
• Photoshop-like color picker allows you to instantly change the colors! Affiliate Theme made switching colors insanely easy. No need to play with HEX codes, or switch between programs to choose your colors. Even if you want to use a specific HEX code, just copy and paste it in.
• Helpful, comprehensive Affiliate Theme Resource Center and Support. Unique Blog Designs know how important it is to have clear, concise instructions when working with web tools. That’s why they’ve created an incredibly comprehensive Resource Center. On top of that, they’ve interviewed more than 10 top affiliate marketers to pick their brains and give you huge money making ideas.

To give you an idea on how easy Affiliate Theme is to use, watch how simple it is for Josh from Unique Blog Design create an offer landing page from Azoogle Ads.

If you’re already an Affiliate Theme owner, you will get the 50% discount when Squeeze Theme is released. If you’re not an Affiliate Theme owner yet, then you need to check it out now. It’s easiest way to create money making affiliate websites. Don’t miss out on this opportunity. Unique Blog Design has NEVER offered this large of a discount before on any of their themes before.

Buy Affiliate Theme and Receive 50% Off Squeeze Theme

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Move over Bellagio fountain, you just got pwned. The Dubai Fountain can shoot water 492 feet up in the air! Everything about it is off the scale big. It was built for $217 million by WET Design, which is the same company that created the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel. The Dubai Fountain’s 900 foot long water show uses 6,600 lights, 50 colored projectors, and hundreds of servos, all computer controlled and synchronized with music to offer a show that would make Las Vegas envious.

The Dubai Fountain is located next to the recently finished Burj Dubai, which happens to be the world tallest building. This just adds one more reason for me to take a trip to Dubai. Here’s a video of the fountain in action.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Have you been watching as your stock portfolio tanks into oblivion? Is it at all possible to make money in this market when everyone seems to be losing value, laying off employees, downsizing operations, and declaring bankruptcy?

One of the biggest keys to financial success is finding a way to make a buck under even the worst of circumstances. One strategy that many people have tried is short selling and just like conventional stock trading, there are certainly techniques and tactics to maximizing your profits through shorting. Short Screen, which serves as the subject of today’s review, is designed to be a robust tool with short sellers in mind.

Sell High and Then Buy Low

Let me start out by saying that I am no stock market expert, but I am somewhat familiar with what short selling is all about. Under normal circumstances, you’d probably be on the lookout for stocks on the rise. You buy them while they’re still low and then you sell them when they’re high. That’s how you turn a profit.

Short selling still adheres to the “buy low, sell high” mentality, but it reverses the order of the steps. What you do is “sell” stocks (that you do not own) at today’s higher price with the promise that you’ll “buy” them at a future date, ideally at a lower price. Instead of looking for stock prices on the rise, you look for stock prices that are destined to plummet. You look for companies about to declare bankruptcy.

What is Short Screen?

Offering tools and ideas for short sellers, Short Screen is a website that will help you find the stocks that you should be shorting and the ones that you should be avoiding. The main information is based on the Altman Z-score model, which describes how “distressed” a stock is.

Short Screen offers three main areas: message boards, screener, and calculator.

The Free Message Boards for Everyone

The only real area of the site that is readily available to members and non-members alike is the message board. This is where your fellow stock traders can post their tips on which stocks could be on the rise and which are about to fall.

One of the more recent examples is the post for Domino’s Pizza. You can adjust the stock chart for a number of different time periods and premium members can rate the “tip” on a five-star scale. If the average rating drops below two stars (with an adequate number of total votes), the post gets removed from the site.

Screener: Who’s About to Go Under?

Possibly the most valuable tool on Short Screen is the Screener. Here, you can find the fifty most distress stocks based on the Altman Z-Score or Z”-Score. For maximum profitability, you can also adjust for the minimum share price.

In the screenshot above, Verisign looks like it could be in for a world of hurt. The computed score is -21.6585. This scoring model is said to be about 72% accurate in predicting bankruptcy up to two years in advance and about 80-90% accurate for a one-year timeframe.

By using the screener, you can determine some of the best candidate for your short selling endeavors. This sure beats trying to work out the score on your own for the thousands of different stocks available on the market.

Calculator: Researching Specific Stocks

While the screener can point you toward (at least) 50 candidates for your short sales, you may be interested in the Z-Score for a specific company. I used the Z-Score Calculator on Short Screen for Motorola (MOT) and got a score of 2.0348.

This is in the positive and it looks like the stock has been on a steady rise for the last few months. I guess the introduction of the Motorola DROID with Verizon is helping those guys out, so it’s probably not a good idea to short sell Motorola at this point.

Making Money from the Losers

You have many options when it comes to stock trading research tools and it seems that short selling utility can be a valued addition to the mix. The calculator is handy, but I think it’s the screener that could really help you turn an imminent loser into a winner for you.

A premium member’s account is $14 a month, but you can recoup these costs through your short selling profits and through the Short Screen affiliate program. This pays a 15% recurring referral commission and the people you refer get a 5% discount on the membership fee.

CLICK HERE TO BECOME A SHORT SCREEN PREMIUM MEMBER

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

My buddy Aymen will be doing a sit down tomorrow with Internet superstar Shawn Casey and you’re invited to sit in. The chat start tomorrow at 5PM Vancouver time (8PM EST). Only 10,000 seats are available and will be given out on a first come, first served basis. You can try to grab a seat for the webcast here.

Aymen is the most successful Super Affiliate I have ever met and the cool thing is he now lives in Vancouver so I get to meet him quite often. For some reason, Vancouver has been attracting a lot of Super Affiliates lately. Must be the weather or something. Anyway, Shawn will be asking Aymen to reveal his 7 simple steps that anyone can use to generate more money online — and be paid in virtually any currency, from anywhere in the world.

You may think there is no way Aymen can fill 10,000 spaces for the webcast but I know he will because this is being promoted by all the big names in the affiliate marketing game. If you want to see what the hype is about, go reserve your seat now.

The Shawn Casey and Aymen Webcast

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

This morning, the mailman dropped of a box with over 40 Broke DVDs in it. Needless to say, I’ve never been this broke before. Broke is a movie by Michael Covel on how America went broke and who’s to blame. It’s a really good movie and I enjoyed it a lot.

Michael Covel traveled 75,000 miles in the making of this film. He did face-to-face interviews with financial gurus; from Nobel Prize winners to professional poker players to fund managers. From big Wall Street names to real estate agents to ordinary citizens, Covel asks the critical questions: how did we get here and what can we do about it?

Broke: The New American Dream also cracks down on the media influence upon money decisions. It nullifies media hype and Jim Cramer propaganda. It takes a hard look at the state lotteries and draws remarkable parallels to the Social Security system. Most importantly, this film is about hope. We don’t have to behave like sheep and we don’t have to go ‘broke.’ Active and mindful audiences will discover that there is a way out.

Who Want To Be Broke?

While I’m sure no one wants to be broke, I bet many readers will want a copy of Broke. Well, you’re in luck because I’m got to give all these copies away. The first five copies are going to the readers who beat me in that Halloween Slot game. The next batch will go to everyone who shows up to this week’s Dot Com Pho. It may not be as nice a gift as Apple giving us new Macbook Pros, but it’s better than nothing!

If you want a copy of Broke but can’t make Dot Com Pho, then simply reply to this blog post. I’ll draw a few winners this Friday and announce them at Dot Com Pho. Good luck!

Broke – The New American Dream

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!