Category Archives: General

John McAfee’s Guide To Help You Get To Your Destination

John McAfee’s Guide To Help You Get To Your Destination

I personally find John McAfee a fascinating, genuine and humorous character who enjoys life and truly believes at this time in his life, his god-given mission is to do anything it takes to “wake people up”, as he puts it, to the tyranny of governments and miracles of technology – Blockchain and Cryptocurrency which will free the people from the shackles of centralized institutions. I came across a blog written by John McAfee with his attempt to guide you through the checkpoints of Central America. He posted it in 2012 and tweeted it today in the hope it may help anyone traveling to join the protestors in South America. He certainly is a character and I had to have a little chuckle to myself as I read through the following…

  

The McAfee Central America Travel Guide

As all of my close friends know, I have not always been a teetotalling, drug-fighting citizen.  Prior to 1983, I was a synthesis of a corporate manager and drug dealer.  The drug dealer eventually won out, and for a period of time, that was my only occupation.  Well ….. taking the drugs that I sold also became a principal occupation.  This is not a secret, I tell anyone who asks, even the press.   Not many in the press reported much about it until Josh Davis’ eBook came out.  I am not ashamed of my past.  Our collective pasts make us who we are.  In 1983 I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and gave up alcohol and drugs entirely.  My exceptions are coffee, which some classify as a drug, and, occasionally, cigarettes.  Not proud of the cigarettes, I know they are bad.

During my drug-dealing days I became adept at those talents required of a successful drug dealer: clandestine travel through the Third World countries that produce and transport the goods; dealing with corrupt officials; dealing with drug lords and drug traffickers; successfully passing checkpoints; bribery, and in emergencies, the methods of escape.

I am a firm believer that all experience can be a valid teacher if a person listens to experience with unclogged ears.  Since it is a Saturday and I’ve had a tiring week, I will take a break from the task at hand and use what little I have learned to assist travelers that might appreciate the rewards of traveling off the beaten path in third world countries. It should also assist anyone engaging in questionable activities.  If a person does not directly harm another, then I try not to judge.  You might call this McAfee’s Travel Guide:

In order to make the most of your travels, you need to first understand that, throughout much of the Third World, there is a smoothly functioning “system” in place that has evolved over centuries. From the First World perspective, it is a “corrupt” system, and indeed, at the higher levels there is no other word for it, and this blog’s purpose is to remove the brutality and horror of such high-level corruption.  

At the lower levels, however, the system contains an element of grace and humanity, and this lower lever is all that most people will ever encounter.  You might still call this lower level “corruption”, but that’s not a helpful word if you want to acquire the most effective attitude for dancing with it. I prefer “negotiable”. It focuses the mind on the true task at hand when dealing with officialdom and removes any unpleasant subconscious connotations. So if you can view the following tools and tips as negotiation guidelines it will help bring the necessary smile to your face when the situation requires one.

Press Credentials

The most powerful tool a traveler can possess is a Press card. It will allow you to completely bypass the “documentation” process if you have limited time or limited funds and don’t want to deal with it. I have dozens stashed in all my vehicles, in my wallet, in my pockets, in my boats.  You might ask since I claim to be an upstanding citizen, why I would need such deception.  It is because I am one of the few white men who chose to live part-time in the interior of the country.  I was one of only three white guys living in the district of Orange Walk, for example. I have cars and enjoy driving and I travel frequently.  Not a day went by without having to go through a “checkpoint” of some kind.

 

I am paranoid about being caught without one when I need one. They have magical properties if the correct incantations are spoken while producing them. A sample incantation at a police checkpoint (this will work in any Central American country):

(Spoken before the officer has a chance to say anything) – “Hi, I’m really glad to see you.” (produce the press card at this point). I’m doing a story on Police corruption in (fill in country name) and I would love to get a statement from an honest police officer for the story. It’s for a newspaper in the U.S. Would you be willing to go on record for the piece?” You can add or subtract magic words according to the situation. 

Don’t worry about having to actually interview the officer. No sane police person would talk to a reporter about perceived corruption while at the task of being perceived to be corrupt. He will politely decline and quickly wave you through. If you do find the rare idiot officer who wants to talk, ask a few pointed questions about his superiors and it will quickly awaken his sensibilities. He will send you on your way.

The press card is powerful but has risks and limitations. Do not attempt this magic, for example, at a Federale checkpoint in Mexico on a desolate road late at night. You will merely create additional, and unpleasant work for the person assigned to dig the hole where they intend to place you.
 

Documentation

Documentation is the polite word for “cash”.

 

The real art of producing documentation is the subtle play of how much to produce. In some countries, a policeman makes less than a dollar an hour. At a checkpoint, a policeman will usually share his proceeds with the other officers lounging by the side of the road and with the police Chief. The Chief will get about 25% in countries like Colombia and Panama, so if there are three officers total, then a ten-dollar contribution will end up with about $2.50 in each person’s pocket – a good take for someone making about a dollar an hour in legitimate salary.

Nothing irks locals more than someone who produces documentation in excess of what is expected. It ruins the system for the rest of the population. The Police begin to expect more from everyone, and the populace is then burdened beyond any sense of reasonableness. I might mention that checkpoints for any given location in most countries are set up no more than once a week, and frequent travelers reach accommodations with the authorities so that they are not unnecessarily burdened to the point that they are single-handedly putting the policeman’s children through school. The police are, by and large, honest people with hearts, and few truly abuse the system.

So to give more than is reasonable is a crime against humanity. The following are some hard and fast formulas that I have learned from trial and error over the years:

Documentation is inversely proportional to traffic density – the higher the traffic, the less you pay, the lower the traffic the more you pay. This is simple economics: The police must make their personal quota from whatever traffic there is.

If you stop at a checkpoint and there are four or five cars in line, you can be assured that less than a couple of dollars will be expected from a Gringo. Smart folks carry a half dozen cold cokes and beers in a cooler in the backseat and simply reach around, grab one or the other and hand it out the window with a smile. In the late afternoon on a hot day, this will be received with far more appreciation than a few small coins. If you hand a cold drink to all of the officers, you could easily talk them into giving you a protective escort to the next town.

In low traffic areas, in addition to having to pay more, you will also entail more risk. It’s never good to travel lonely roads in Central America unless you are very experienced or closely wired into the authorities. However, if you’ve come down to do a dope score or are determined to visit sweet Crucita in some remote village and have no other choice, then strictly adhere to the following:

Do not get out of the car, even if ordered to do so. Your car is your only avenue of escape. It’s a ton or more of steel capable of doing serious harm to anyone foolish enough to stand in front of it, and once underway is difficult to stop. The checkpoint police in Central America never chase anyone down, in spite of years of watching U.S. Television and action movies. It’s too much work, plus they could have an accident. It’s not worth it for an unknown quantity. And they won’t shoot unless you’ve run over one of them while driving off. It makes noise and wastes a Round that they must account for when they return to the station – creating potential problems with the higher-ups. Not that I recommend running. It’s just that outside of the car you have lost the only advantage you have.

Smile and, if possible, joke. Say something like: “I’d like to stay and chat but I’m in a hurry to meet a girl. Her husband will be back soon.” This will go a long way toward creating a shared communion with the officers and will elicit a shared-experience type of sympathy.
Don’t wait for them to talk. Take the initiative. Have your documentation ready as you pull up and simply present it to the nice policeman while beginning your patter similar to the above, or whatever patter is comfortable for you. Never hand cash directly. Slip it in inside your insurance papers, or some other paperwork relating to your car or your journey, with about an inch of the banknote discretely sticking out. I use a Cannon Ixus 530 setup manual with the front and back cover removed. It’s small, light, and looks like it could be important paperwork for almost anything.

Remember: 50% of the police who stop you in some countries can’t read. This is a powerful piece of information for the wise.

Once the officer has removed the banknote, which will be immediate, reach out and retrieve your laptop manual (or whatever you choose to use), smile, wave and drive off immediately without asking permission, but slowly, without looking back. Doing the job and leaving quickly without appearing to hurry off is the key here. Don’t give them enough time to assess you.
The above is a failsafe formula for back roads of Central America if adhered to explicitly. Expect to part with at least 20 bucks. If, on approaching the checkpoint, you judge the police body language to be insolent or agitated, change the twenty for a fifty.

If something goes awry and the above, for some reason, has not worked, then pretend stupidity. Ask them to repeat everything they say and act bewildered. If ordered to get out of the car, smile broadly and simply drive off. Again – slowly.

If drugs or other contraband are planted in your vehicle by one of the police while another has your attention (a very common occurrence), understand, above all, that there is a zero probability that you will be arrested, unless you add to the “offense” by pissing someone off or otherwise acting unwisely. The intent is to scare. Under no circumstances deny that it is yours. Say something like “Damn, I thought I left that at home”, or “That’s the second time I’ve been caught this week.” This will show them that you are a good-natured player and will probably negotiate. Denying ownership of the contraband will be seen as confrontational – an attitude that brings high risk when dealing with Third World authorities. The “documentation”, however, need not be much. 

They have chosen an approach to make a living that is universally considered by the locals as “not fair play”, and they should not be unjustly rewarded for it. Sure, they did go to the effort of distracting you, and someone had to go to the trouble to plant the dope, so they deserve something, but $5 is the maximum you need to pay. If they ask for more, then you can safely become indignant. They will shut up. The locals won’t tolerate police that takes too much unfair advantage of the system, and your obvious awareness of the correct protocols will alert them to potential trouble if they push things.

If you actually are carrying contraband, of any kind – drugs, guns, Taiwanese sex slaves – whatever, and are caught, then the actions that you take within the first few seconds of discovery will have a profound impact on the rest of your life. The reality is: You have been caught. The officers have options:

1. Arrest you and charge you, where you are likely to confess to other people about exactly what you were carrying and how much – thereby limiting the policemen’s ability to make off with much of the cache. Or:

2. Come to some arrangement with you that is mutually beneficial and that does not include your demise or create any undue risks to the officers’ jobs or safety.
Option 2 is obviously preferable. To anyone not fond of prisons, that is.

Your first order of business is to assess your situation. If you are in a town or even near one with reasonable traffic driving by, then the chances of your demise, or incurring harm to yourself, are virtually nil if you keep your wits about you. If you are on a lonely country road, and there is only one officer, or even two, your risks could be high, so you will be handicapped in your negotiations.

On your side, you have the option to go to jail and tell your story to lots of people, which generally restricts the officers’ abilities to make money on the encounter. The higher-ups will take it. On their side, they have guns and threats. Ignore the threats. You are fully cognizant of the fact that their sincere hope is that some accommodation can be reached that enriches their pockets and allows you to leave the area without compromising them.

So — first things first. Smile. There is no circumstance under which a smile will handicap you when dealing with authorities.

Be friendly in your speech and immediately and fully acknowledge your situation, and theirs. This puts them at ease and sets the framework for negotiation. Be polite but firm. Let them know that they will not be able to walk off with your entire stash, and do this early on. It creates more reasonable expectations in their minds. If your contraband is drugs, offer them a small hit while talking. It re-enforces, subconsciously, the idea that the dope is your possession and that they are partaking due entirely to your goodwill. If you are transporting sex slaves, then I must say first that I cannot possibly condone your chosen occupation, but offering each one of the policemen a taste of the goods may well seal the deal without any additional cash thrown in.

It’s important to be firm without any semblance of hostility. If the policemen tell you, for example, that they are going to confiscate all of the goods, then, with an apologetic manner that implies an unfortunate certainty, say “I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible”. Shake your head sadly as if you had divulged: “My mom just died”. And this is the point to present them with an absurdly low offer. If you are carrying 20 keys of cocaine or a half-ton of marijuana, then offer them $50. Alternatively, you could offer them a one-ounce bag of the weed or a gram or so of the coke. If it’s sex slaves, tell them they can look at the bare breasts of one of the least attractive women (in parts of Southern Mexico, this might actually be sufficient).

They will be taken aback at your offer, but it will place any unreasonable expectations they may have in a stark perspective. As a rule of thumb, if you are near a populated place, you will ultimately settle by parting with an amount of cash equal to about 10% of the wholesale value of the goods. On a road with infrequent and unpredictable traffic, maybe 20%. If you are on a desolate road, especially if the body language is not comforting, you may have to bite the bullet, give them the entire wad, plus your car, and ask for a ride to the bus station. Don’t expect the police to accept the drugs or contraband as payment if you are near a populated area. They would obviously be seen transferring the goods to their vehicles. If you are not carrying sufficient cash, then you are unprepared, and shouldn’t be doing shady deals in Central America.

Never display fear or hostility. Smile throughout, and crack what jokes you can.

Name Dropping

Knowing the name of the country’s Police Commissioner and Armed Forces Chief, and the Chief of Police for each county or town you will be driving through can be very helpful. Knowing all the mayor’s names will not hurt any either. Name-dropping is a powerful tool in the Third World, especially for gringos, if used appropriately. Telling a cop in America that you are friends with the mayor or the police chief will seldom help you avoid a traffic ticket, and may even increase the charges. 

In Belize, offending the Police Commissioner will immediately get a policeman fired, with no repercussions to the Commissioner, and, depending on the offense, may even get the officer “erased”. So it gives an officer serious pause when you say: “The drugs belong to Commissioner (insert name). I am delivering them to a friend for him”. 

If spoken with authority and condescension, they can have a dramatic effect. No policeman in his right mind would try to validate the story. Resident Gringos, for odd reasons, are prized as friends by wealthy and prominent locals, so it would not be out of the question to be close with the Country’s Police Commissioner. If the cop asks any specifics, like, how you know the Commissioner, pull out your cell phone and say: “I have the commissioner’s number, why don’t we call him and you can ask him yourself.” You need to have solid self-assurance, or at least some large cojones, to pull this off, but in a tough situation, this can work miracles.

A small amount of research is necessary before using this approach. You need to know, for example, whether the police commissioner is really dealing drugs (almost all are). Every local inhabitant in the country will know this information (there are no secrets in the Third World). The policeman will certainly know.

You don’t have to be doing something illegal in order to use the name-dropping approach. When a friend of mine first moved to Belize, two policemen stopped him late in the evening while he was driving a golf cart across the bridge to San Pedro’s North Island. Before he could provide the proper “documentation” for a bridge checkpoint, one officer harshly demanded his drivers’ license, which he provided and then shut up. The officer’s attitude was not in harmony with a normal checkpoint situation. While he stared at my friend’s license, the other dropped a bag of weed on the back floor of the cart. (he didn’t smoke weed by the way.) When the first officer “discovered” the bag my friend said: “I hope you won’t tell the Commissioner about this. He’s a very close friend of mine and I wouldn’t want him to think anything bad about me.” The first officer divulged that they were only joking by planting the weed. He apologized and waved my friend through.

Generally, the tactic of planting drugs on people is only practiced in heavily trafficked tourist areas. The police in tourist areas are handicapped because tourists generally don’t “pay their due” to the police, or to any other functionary. Tourists consider it “corrupt” to have to pay policemen to do their jobs or to pay them in order to have the freedom to drive down the street on checkpoint day. The police, therefore, are forced to resort to unethical means in order to make a living in these places. I understand this well, yet some character flaw in myself won’t allow me to reward someone who plants drugs on me. My friend feels the same.

Gifts

Gifts occupy different strata in the system of negotiation. They are used when some future consideration is required, or after an official favor has been provided. Gifts can be small or large, depending on the circumstances and the wise person will have an ample supply ready for any event. I operate seven small businesses in Belize.  When I first opened them I refused to acquiesce to my business manager’s advice about gifts. I naively assumed I could skate by without them.  I was wrong, I finally allowed the guy to stock up on resources so that he could do the job I was paying him to do:

Now… to be fair to the authorities ….. I have no way of knowing whether these “gifts” were actually given to the authorities.  For all I know the business manager that I hired started his own retail outlet somewhere and is still living off of the proceeds. It’s difficult under certain circumstances to get at the facts.

Favors, likewise, are part of the system. They have no negative connotation, and they require gifts whose magnitude reflects the magnitude of the favor.

One common “favor” that is considered questionable is to gift an officer in the armed forces to provide armed support for a drug deal, a revenge raid, an armored car heist, or any similar function. It’s a very common occurrence but it’s deemed to be morally sketchy by most of the populace. The reason for this, I believe, is the sense of unease created by the image of highly organized, insolent, largely illiterate men with fully automatic weapons catering to the whims of anyone with spare change. 

The general consensus is that the system of “negotiation” should stop at the gates of the military. The military should uphold the system, not practice it, as my friend and philosopher Paz once said. This is no more illogical than policemen as “officers of the peace”. The fact that SWAT teams exist and every policeman carries a gun and is trained in violent tactics, should alert us to the fact that practicing peace is not the means of choice for maintaining peace.

Written and Posted by John McAfee, November 24, 2012

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams 

A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

 

 

 

Link Building Tools List

Link Building Tools List

Anyone involved in Internet marketing knows that link building tools are an essential part of success. There are many such tools on the market. These kinds of programs will continue to grow as long as incoming links are so important to the life of your online presence.

 

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Here are just a few tools that can help you out:

1. SEOmoz Linkscape

SEOmoz Linkscape is a backlink tracking tool. If you opt for the free version, you can see how many unique links you get to each page of your website, as well as the rank of the page and of the overall domain. The paid version allows you to analyze other websites as well, such as those of your competitors. You can see how many links they get, the quality of the links, and the keywords that they are targeting, all of which is very useful in your own campaign. 

2. Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo Site Explorer is a well-known and popular free tool. It allows you to determine the number pages within a domain that are indexed by SLURP, Yahoo's own search engine crawler, and analyze relevant data regarding inbound links. You can also export the results you find useful into a TSV (tab-delimited file).

3. Majestic-SEO

With Majestic-SEO, you can track link information for any domain, whether it be your own, or your competitors or other sites. If you do own the domain (and you can verify it), you can get more detailed data which includes aspects such as unique links and anchor text. Similar to SEOmoz, this comes at no cost if you are taking a look at your own site and you can purchase credits to get information from other websites. Some of the data provided is downloadable, and this tool offers a "daily update" feature with an updated journal of new inbound links.

4. Raven

Raven supplies a complete set of link building tools including a Links Manager that helps you manage the link status, contacts and tasks related to each link. Another popular feature of Raven is that it automatically alerts you if any changes have occurred on an active link. For examples, if the no-follow attribute was added, if the anchor text was changed, if the rank changed, or if the link was removed. Reports and data can be generated and downloaded. 

5. BuzzStream Link Building

BuzzStream Link Building is one of the costlier packages and its main focus is to supply tools that help automate redundant tasks in relationship building, not just link building. Distinguishable features include finding contact info, tracking email, Twitter automation, managing link prospects, monitoring backlinks for anchor text, no-follows, banned words and outbound links, general tracking activities, tracking conversions, and more. The management and conversion tracking elements of BuzzStream are what makes it unique in the list of link building tools. 

There are many more such as these to be found, both free and paid, and the number available continues to rise.

BUT The Very Best Resource… 

for building links and establishing a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy is MARKETHIVE. Check it out NOW!

Maxwell Jacobs is the Owner of http://SolutionsforHomeProfits.com. Check us out anytime for marketing tips and a free subscription to our cutting edge newsletter. 

9 Effective Tips on How to Advertise on Other People’s Thank You Page

9 Effective Tips on How to Advertise on Other People's Thank You Page

Posting a comment on another person's thank-you page may have no effect on your website at first glance but you know how first impressions can be misleading. And in this case, what you see first isn't what you get. If you want to generate traffic for your website for free, you can do so just by saying "thank you" on other people's websites.


Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Tip #1

Identify who you can thank because the more people you thank, the more inbound links you get. First, check your sales invoices and determine which of your paid customers have websites of their own. You'll pay a visit to each and every one of them soon. If you have suppliers, distributors, retailers, joint venture partners, and other types of business associates, you'll have to visit them, too. How about other Internet marketers who occasionally visit your website? This is the time to profit from a little bit of give and take between each other.

Tip #2

Determine where to say thank you. Not all websites have "thank you" pages, but almost all websites will allow you to interact and say your piece. For those without "thank you" pages, look for the page that allows you to comment and at the same time enjoy considerable traffic.

Tip #3

Now, it's time to start writing your thank-you message. Personalized messages always work better, but it's understandable if you sometimes don't have the time to customize each message. During these instances, it's better to create a thank-you page for each group. Have a generic thank-you message for your customers then create a separate one for your colleagues, suppliers, and so forth.

Tip #4

Remember to identify yourself. If your personal name carries weight in the Internet then by all means, use your name when posting a thank-you message on another website. But if you're not that popular yet then it might be better to use your business name or include it at least with your personal name. This will help people remember you more.

Tip #5

The first line of your message must be short but sweet: it explains why you're saying thank you. Customers are obviously thanked for their support and patronage of your products and services. Don't use flowery speech. Go straight to the point but be sincere.

Tip #6

Your second line must include mention of your products or services as well as your desire to provide more aid or support. Going back to our sample thank you message for customers, your second line could appear something like this: "I hope that Product X will be able to help your online business run more smoothly". 

Tip #7

Use the third line or sentence for any additional information you feel is pertinent to the person you're thanking. If there is none, then you must proceed with inviting the person and indirectly, the other readers, to drop by your website. This is where you post your website URL as well for your latest updates. If you already have a new promotion running, this is also the place to mention it.

Tip #8  

If you're asked to provide a link to your website then yes, of course you should post it as well.

Tip #9

Never forget to include targeted keywords in your thank-you message. You might have to be a bit tricky doing that, but those keywords can help make your thank you message optimized to improve your search engine ranking.

Good luck with your inbound marketing efforts.

Maxwell Jacobs is the Owner of http://SolutionsforHomeProfits.com. Check us out anytime for marketing tips and a free subscription to our cutting edge newsletter. 

Understanding WordPress Traffic

The New Fuss About WordPress Traffic

Understanding WordPress Traffic

If you're getting 1,000 visitors per monththat's a sufficient amount of traffic. Not only is it less difficult to check traffic within WordPress, but additionally, it saves you time as you don't need to return and forth between dashboards. It's important to not forget that traffic to your site can and will fluctuate. You're getting a lot of traffic, but the erroneous visitors. Besides generating traffic, social networking may also be used to make new thoughts and expand your knowledge.

wordpress traffic

The Foolproof WordPress Traffic Strategy

In case you have access to 10 different phone numbers than you will want to set up 10 distinct emails. You can readily get the info about your blog as soon as you install it on your WordPress blog. A fast google search of what's my IP address will inform you of your existing address. The list continues, but however you opt to go about it, be creative and informative.

Every blogger would like to increase their site traffic by adopting different strategies. For a WordPress blog, it's also very significant to optimize your blog in line with the related search phrases. Apart from the mentioned above, you may also try out giving away free e-books or articles in addition to classified ads. You may also write articles on other websites provided that you place a little resource box following your article. The terrible news is that, as a result of its popularity and the no-bullshit temperament of the website, it's extraordinarily tough to breakthrough.

Integrating newsletter by means of your blog is a fantastic suggestion to bring more visitors to your site. So to raise traffic you will need to sure your site must load fast in few seconds. Among the scariest situations, you're able to run into while managing a site is a sudden drop in traffic. Eliminate the strain of having multiple browser tabs open to looking at your site traffic. Before using WordPress for a high-traffic website, you have to make sure the website is prepared to deal with higher traffic volumes. Plan out your internet website and think about who you're marketing to.

WordPress Traffic

After you work through the join process you will get a telephone call or text message with a validation code. You can find big quantities of traffic on your website by employing the next methods. There are hundreds and hundreds of WordPress plugins that let you add social sharing buttons.

A WordPress statistics plugin is a crucial thing for your site. It's extremely hard to find the ideal WordPress plugins since there are over 29,000 plugins offered in the WordPress plugins directory. Some of the greatest WordPress plugins are those which make social sharing and SEO simpler. There are many WordPress plugins that may help boost traffic and user engagement on your site. WordPress includes lots of plugins that you may use for a proper search engine optimization of your pages. WordPress is continuously optimized to minimize the number of database requests necessary for regular operation. WordPress has powerful features that let you automate the procedure for generating new visitors to your site or blog.

Things You Won't Like About WordPress Traffic and Things You Will

In some instances, you observe organic reductions in traffic. The quantity of traffic you should become also is dependent on the degree of interest in what you do. You should observe no activity dependent on the preview post URL.

Definitions of WordPress Traffic

It is possible to add insight in internet forums of your specialty. There's a whole lot of advice on ways to get visitors to your site. Our day-to-day writing prompts can provide a jump-start, too. Have a look at the Discover to locate bloggers who share your interests. If you wish to make money, you need to work for it, and you will need to do lots of effort to attain effective and positive popularity of your site. Craigslist accounts are likewise a feature and it'll detect whether it is needed before the creation procedure. Don't forget, you'll need to visit each email account which you've set up and click the link that Craigslist sends to every email account to activate each individual Craigslist account.

The Pain of WordPress Traffic

Alternately, when you have any questions at all about the above-mentioned ideas to improve traffic (or about building traffic in general), don't hesitate to ask. Bearing that in mind, one of the very best things that you can do increase visitors to your website is split test your headlines. One of the best methods to improve website traffic is to compose your blog based on the search engine preference or algorithm and for that utilizing search engine optimization is a powerful technique. You will understand a location where you are able to log in. Finally, should you need to focus more time and energy on marketing, you can seek the services of a group of experts to handle the technical elements of your WordPress website. If you're unfamiliar, you should have familiar. For instance, attempting to keyword for something like dog shampoo is going to be a little harder.

Corporate America Advice from Sergeant Luther Rizzo

My favorite comedy television shows growing up were Cheers and MASH.  I admit I watched way too much TV at the time.  I should have been studying more.

The quote below is just so perfect for today’s work environment.  Just change Army to Corporate America and it applies.

This is from Season 8 Episode 25 called “April Fools”.  It first aired on March 24, 1980.  It is hard to believe that was almost 40 years ago.

I worked with a hardworking man once.  He was passionate about his job.  He would come in early and leave late.  He would work weekends.  One day his boss told me in casual conversation the bosses didn’t liked him because he smiled too much.  I don’t know how anyone can succeed with such negativity.  It makes me think of this quote.  As long as you are miserable they are happy.

Have a great weekend!

Alan
Alan Zibluk
Bethany, CT
http://alzibluk.com

 

Singing Doll Comforts Elderly Woman with Alzheimer’s

This is my mother Joan Barbara.  Music therapy works.

This is Day 1195 for my wife and I as her primary caregivers.  My wife is the one who found this singing doll at a Goodwill store in Ohio.  She is also the one who recorded this video.  My wife rocks.

We have had some difficult times with her.  Still this is one of the better moments.

Alan Zibluk
Bethany, CT
http://alzibluk.com

Part 4 – 5 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging 5 part series

 

4. Want to Improve Yourself?

Once you actually start, you will realise that blogging has the ability to improve your language and communication skills (especially if you are blogging in a language that is not your mother tongue). This happens automatically as you start reading and researching your post topics.

The more you write the more you'll find yourself checking for grammatical and spelling errors and trying to get the message across more effectively. You also learn how to entertain and perhaps even coax readers through your writing.

Sidebar: To help with this you can try Grammarly. Grammarly is free and it helps ensure everything you type is easy to read, effective, and mistake-free. Grammarly also has browser extensions for Chrome, Safari and Firefox. 

Blogging also gets you connected to a range of new people from various countries, with different cultures and backgrounds. Who knows, you may even form relationships if you communicate with them through the comments section. 

It is really quite exciting watching more and more people subscribe to your blog, post comments, ask questions and just start interacting with you and other members. As you get good responses to your posts it will positively impact your self-esteem which will consequently improve your life.

Stay tuned for Part 5!

 

Melody Christie

Where life takes me..

Click here to start blogging & connecting with amazing people from all over the world!

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

Scaling Your Value with MarketHive

Scaling Your Value with MarketHive!

If you want to provide value in ways that scale, you ought to think about scalability when choosing the format for providing your value. Some modes of providing value scale much better than others.

The Mindset of Scaling

Basically you want to consider these three questions:

  1. What is the value I’m providing and to whom?
  2. What would it look like for 100 people to receive similar value simultaneously?
  3. How can I continue to provide value while I’m sleeping?

Let’s begin with the first question. Suppose you’re currently working as a hairstylist. You provide value by cutting and styling people’s hair. And suppose you currently serve one client at a time, so your income is determined by the number of clients you serve and how much you charge your average client. Maybe you sell some products on the side as well.

You can increase your income by becoming more skilled or by improving the way you market your services, so you can charge more per client. But your income is still largely determined by how many clients you can get into your chair. Scaling beyond a certain point becomes difficult.

Now let’s try the second question. You couldn’t personally perform hairstyling services for 100 people simultaneously, so you’ll need help to provide this much value at once. You could recruit 100 stylists, perhaps by opening a very large salon. Then you could invest your time in marketing and advertising, both for clients and stylists, and it’s easier to scale these activities than it is to scale styling hair. This might take some investment of course, but if you received a share of each stylist’s revenue, you could scale your income by hiring and training more stylists. Eventually you might need to branch out to other regions and open more salons too.

There are other pathways of course, but the key is that someone or something else needs to be doing the haircuts. You have to break free of the limitation of performing each haircut yourself. Instead of doing the haircuts, you need to be responsible for making the haircuts happen, which is a more flexible and expansive way of thinking about providing value. If the value has been received because of what you’ve set into motion, you’re still providing it.

What about the third question? If you want to provide haircuts even while you’re sleeping, you could open a 24/7 salon and have stylists working there at all hours. Or you could offer franchises for your salons. Or you could create courses or training programs for stylists or for other salon owners. If you make your training available online, then people could take your courses anywhere in the world, and people could be learning and using your methods to cut hair even while you’re sleeping.

Digital Scaling

Putting content into digital form is a major scalability breakthrough that allows you to create something once and then leverage it to provide value to people again and again at near zero cost.

The advantage of putting value into digital formats like text, audio, video, images, or software is that you’ve eliminated some major barriers to scalability. In particular, you’ve decoupled the delivery of your value from your personal time.

Going back to the hairstylist example, if you create a blog, video, ebook, or online course to help other stylists, then there’s no effective limit on how many other stylists can receive your value, even while you’re sleeping.

The main difference here is in mindset. By asking different questions, you end up with different solutions. The main focus is on how to provide value to more people. Today that focus is likely to lead you to the Internet eventually. The Internet is humanity’s great scaling mechanism for providing value globally.

How to Scale

A good first step in devising scalable approaches is to stop doing things that don’t scale well. At least stop doing them in the ways that don’t scale.

For the hairstylist that means to stop cutting so much hair because cutting hair yourself doesn’t scale well. Put more time and energy into figuring out how to make good haircuts happen. For instance, book slightly fewer appointments, and spend the extra time working on the scalability challenge.

Sometimes a good scalable source of value is a small pivot away from the non-scalable work you’re already doing. For instance, suppose our stylist is a great conversationalist, and suppose she noticed that she gets better tips than her coworkers, perhaps 20% better on average. And suppose she notices the pattern that hairstylists who can carry interesting conversations while cutting hair are typically getting larger tips from their clients.

She could create a course to teach other stylists to become better conversationalists. She could put that course into a digital form, such as audios or videos, and offer it online. And the tangible benefit she can offer is to help stylists increase their tips by up to 20%. How much would 20% more tips be worth to a stylist over the course of a year? Even if it’s just a modest 5% increase, how much would that be worth? She can price and promote her course fairly based on the real benefit she’s providing. Her course could be worth hundreds of dollars to the right people, so she doesn’t need a ton of sales to make a nice income from selling the course. As she scales up the course sales, she can continuing working as a stylist if she enjoys it, or she can retire from working as a stylist altogether and focus on her course and other scalable offers.

In this case she’s not making more haircuts happen, but she’s taking a small subset of her work, one she might have easily overlooked, and she’s recognizing that it can be a serious source of value for other stylists (as well as for their clients). Furthermore, she might even have the potential to expand her work into other fields that also involve carrying on a conversation while serving customers.

I know many dozens of people who’ve done these types of pivots in a wide variety of fields. They can work very well in practice.

Notice that the type of work changes though. First you create a source of value that can scale, such as a course. Then you must also do the work of scaling it. Nobody will know about our stylist’s course unless she gets the word out, so her real work just shifted to marketing and sales, most likely online. This will allow her to leverage marketing tools to find clients and scale up the number of people taking her course, even while she’s sleeping.

When people get stuck in this process, they often miss this last step. Scaling does take some work, and it is an activity. Most income streams don’t auto-scale. You need to do the work of scaling them up. Otherwise it’s like launching a website that no one visits.

But notice the key difference between doing one-time work that doesn’t scale versus doing the actual work of scaling up. In the latter case, your rewards are compounded. For instance, you could set up a decent system to attract potential students, and once you have that up and running, you can keep building it up further.

As I shared, a common difference between scarcity-minded people and abundance-minded people is that scarcity-minded people typically spend most of their time doing maintenance work. This means that they work to maintain their income, such as by trading hours for dollars. By contrast, abundance-minded people usually spend a good bit of time on advancement work. They invest their time and energy to advance and increase their income streams, not merely to maintain those streams.

How many hours in a typical working month do you spend doing advancement work? This means creating scalable income sources and then scaling them up? Do you have any scalable income sources yet?

Of course you won’t always succeed when you try to create a scalable income source and then scale it up. But each time you try an approach that doesn’t work, you’ll learn something, and you’ll eventually discover approaches that do work.

Can everyone scale up this way? What happens when everyone tries to do this? Well… let me know when everyone really is trying in earnest to do this since it would be a pretty huge shock to me. People really seem to struggle with the basic mindset here, acting as if scalable income is some alien concept. It seems clear that we’re moving into a phase of life on earth where more and better scaling is becoming possible and accessible thanks to the Internet and ever-evolving tech, including further developments in AI.

I have many friends who’ve scaled up to 7 and 8 figure income streams, and they don’t work any harder than those with non-scalable income. They just approach the problem of providing value differently, thinking about scalability up front before committing to a particular direction.

Making Scalable Offers

If you do any work at all, then you’re already making offers. So how scalable are your offers?

If you make offers with low scalability, such as trading your time for money via salary or hourly rate, then you’re placing a fairly low ceiling on your income. You may also be setting yourself up for a sensation of time scarcity if the only realistic way to scale your income is to work more hours (if you even have that option).

On the other hand, if you make offers with high scalability, then as soon as you pass the threshold of covering your expenses, everything beyond that is a bonus. Interestingly, you may need different forms of motivation to move beyond this point, such as developing a stronger sense of mission or purpose.

Think about some small subset of your work where you actually feel you do a good job but you also feel like your skills in this area aren’t being leveraged too well. Could you teach someone to get a little bit better in some area of life? What would that mean to someone over the course of a year or more?

There’s nothing weird or odd about scalable offers. You may be less experienced with them if you’re more familiar with offers that don’t scale, but don’t dismiss the potential for learning to leverage scalability. Even if you aren’t scaling your offers, there’s a good chance you’re playing a role in someone else’s scalable system. So if you aren’t scaling your value, someone else is probably using you to scale theirs.

Personally I find that my best framing for making scalable offers is caring. If you genuinely care about providing value to people and creating some positive ripples in the world, then why be so selfish with your value and limit it to just a few people? Why not do something to help a lot more people if you can?

I learned this powerful lesson as a game developer. I could use my talents to create a game, which was limiting, or I could share what I learned from my own experience to help other game developers, which was more expansive and scalable. This helped more developers complete their projects, so more games got released, and more players got to enjoy them. The ripples I could create from helping other developers were greater than the ripples I’d been creating from working on my own games. It was this mindset that helped me carry forward into creating scalable sources of value when I began doing personal development work years ago.

You may have some internal objections to going this route, such as wondering if you can provide any value worth scaling. Join the club. Everyone has objections. The people who go this route just don’t let their objections stop them. They see the irrationality of those objections and use better reasoning. They understand that if they seek ways to provide scalable value, it may take time, but they’ll eventually figure it out.

This is where caring helps again. If you care then you’ll also listen and observe. You’ll find out if people are indeed receiving value from your scalable offers, and you’ll learn what effect your efforts are having. You won’t be able to measure all of the ripples, but you’ll be able to see some of them, and that’s very motivating when you start seeing positive ones.

One of the key benefits of scaling that people often overlook is how much thanks and appreciation they’ll receive (sometimes for the rest of their lives) for providing value to people in ways that scale. Consider how much appreciation J. K. Rowling must receive because she took the time to share her imaginative stories in the form of a scalable medium. When you tell a story, are you putting it into a scalable form that can provide value to others indefinitely, or will your stories die with you?

Join Markethive to learn how to scale up effectively and how to develop your strategy, where we deliver printed, video and live educational offers to get you acclimated and up to speed.

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

"Republished from StevePavlina.com"

Part 3 – 5 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging 5 part series

Want to earn some money?

There are many ways people earn from blogging and you could too. Whilst it may take time to build a following and start earning a regular income from blogging, it is possible. Here are a few ways you can start.

1) Affiliate Programs

There are countless affiliates programs online and many of them provide you with marketing collateral like banners, images and unique referral links. If you write a post that is related to that affiliate program, you can easily add your affiliate links within the article itself. 

Alternatively, you can also add a banner at the beginning or end of your blog (similar to what I done here for Markethive).

You can also check out the Blog Posts section on my "Hacking Travel" Group to see how I've incorporated Amazon product links there and how you can do something similar.

2) Banner Advertising

Once your blog has a regular flow of visitors and you have the stats to show this, you can sell advertising space and invite companies with complementing products or services to buy a spot.

For instance, if your blog is about parenting you could invite companies that sell educational games or other children related items to buy an ad spot. 

If your blog is about places to visit in Colorado, for example, you can make a deal with your favourite local bakery and invite them to buy an ad spot or tell them you will advertise their bakery for free if they can give your readers a free croissant or coffee every Tuesday, or something like that. 

3) CPC / PPC / CPM Ads

Cost per click (also called pay per click) ads are usually banners that can be placed within your blog content or in the sidebar. Each time a reader clicks on the ad, you are paid for that click. Your reader does not actually have to buy anything from the advertiser. They only need to click the ad.

CPM Ads (“cost per 1,000 impressions,”) on the other hand are ads that pay you a fixed amount of money based on how many people view your ad. This is great if you have a high traffic blog.

One of the most popular networks that provide this type of advertising is Google AdSense. Many bloggers employ this method because they do not need to contact any advertisers as Google takes care of all that. 

You only need to place the banner on your site and Google will determine what ads are relevant to your content. When your viewers click on the ads, you will get paid by Google. That's it.

Of course, Google is not the only company to offer this type of advertising. There are other companies such as Infolinks.com and Media.net, that you can check out.

It is worth mentioning that you will not earn a large amount right of the bat, but as you continue blogging, creating a brand for yourself and establishing yourself as an expert, you will start to see the money come in.

4) Paid to Blog

Finally, there is a platform that actually pays you to blog. It's called Markethive. I personally prefer this method because my earnings are not solely dependant on anyone clicking my affiliate links or banners or ads. In addition, it allows me to earn with my very first blog post. Very few platforms in this world give you that opportunity. Plus they pay you in cryptocurrency!

Of course, my hope is that my readers find the content I provide helpful and useful and so they follow through to purchase whatever they need to through my links but knowing that I'm earning just for blogging, is nothing short of awesome! Want to start earning for every blog post? Click here.

Stay tuned for Part 4!

 

Melody Christie

Where life takes me..

Click here to start your free Markethive account in 1 minute flat!

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

Part 2 – 5 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging 5 part series

Photo by Dakota Corbin on Unsplash

 

2. Do you want to help others?

Think about it, how many times have you desperately Googled for something and then found the answer you were looking for in a blog post?

In the same way, if you choose to blog on a topic you have some experience with, you could very well provide the answers to questions many people are searching for.

For instance, if you're an Entrepreneur, you could offer advice to others who are considering becoming one, talk about the things to look out for when choosing a business, potential pitfalls, the need to commit and spend at least a little time each day working on their project and such.

Or if you are a foodie (yes, it's a thing now), you could tell people where all the best restaurants, cafes and eateries are, the best time to visit to avoid standing around waiting for a table, etc.

Think of it as helping people. Put yourself in their shoes and consider;
– what they are searching for
– what they need help with
– what you already know
– what you are good at
– how you can help them

It's heartwarming going through the reader's comments knowing your post has helped someone.. even if it's a seemingly small thing like how to re-open a browser tab they've closed prematurely 🙂 (<– this was not a blog post but it was one of my early shares and the response was just great)

If you would like to test your blogging skills, Markethive is a free platform that provides you with everything you need to do just that. Plus it comes with a community of supportive Entrepreneurs who are happy to guide you along the way… and the icing on the cake? You get paid for every post you make! What else could you ask for?

Click here to start your free Markethive account in 1 minute flat!

Melody Christie

Where life takes me..

ecosystem for entrepreneurs