A Dog’s Life

The Universe is expanding… and I’m not talking about the physical universe. We live in a physical universe but we function in a universe of knowledge and information. Everything you do… from getting out of bed to making a living to listening to music.. everything… requires some sort of knowledge, some sort of information that you have internalized.

And the world of information is expanding at a furious pace and your ability to access that information is expanding.

Your choice is to expand with it or not. In a way, if you’re not expanding along with the universe, then you’re contracting. You’re becoming smaller relative to the world around you.

There have been times in my life when I chose not to expand. I chose the comfort of familiarity. I chose to contract.

Lately I’ve been choosing the excitement of expanding over the comfort of contracting. Expanding often isn’t easy. Usually it takes effort. I hate to use a time worn analogy, but it serves its purpose… it takes effort to climb the mountain, but the only way to experience the excitement of the view from the top is to make the effort of the climb.

I feel more plugged in than I have in years and it isn’t because I’m watching the news. It’s because I’m participating in my life instead of watching it unfold.

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Richard Random Thoughts

There is a Sanskrit word, darshan. The literal translation is “vision” but it has deeper meanings. It also means a vision of the divine. And deeper still is the meaning of the blessing that you receive when you see the divine.

So pilgrims go to shrines and “receive darshan” from the deity that the shrine is dedicated to. They receive a blessing by gazing on the representation of the deity.

Gurus “give darshan” to their followers by making themselves available for viewing and usually the touching of their feet and so their followers are blessed by being in the presence of a holy person.

I choose to see this in an even bigger way and whenever I talk to someone who reminds me that life is good and that I am blessed simply to be alive, I thank them for their darshan. I thank them for the blessing I have received from them reminding me that life itself is the greatest blessing of all.

Thank you my friends for your darshan.

Richard Random Thoughts

They say that faith moves mountains. I think that sells faith short by a mile. Faith isn’t just the most powerful force that humans can muster. I could easily argue that faith is the only power that humans can muster.

If you don’t believe in your ability to accomplish something, then you will never accomplish anything. If you want to make something happen in your life, if you want to change your life in any way, large or small,  you have to start with faith. You have to start with the faith that you can do it.

Faith is always the first step in any journey.

If you lose your faith, if you stop believing in yourself, then everything is lost.

Never lose faith. Never lose hope. Never give up and anything you want to accomplish will be yours.

It all starts with faith and faith is what keeps it going. Faith is the engine, faith is the fuel, faith is the rubber hitting the road. Faith is the whole game.

Understand that in your guts and the world is yours.

Have faith my friends for nothing else matters if you don’t have faith.

Richard Random Thoughts

My new “pre-sell” site is up and running! I’ll be adding new pages soon and working to drive free traffic to the site using the techniques I’ve learned from Stomper and The Thirty Day Challenge.

Cure Yeast Naturally – Information about yeast infections and a home remedy that cures them without drugs.

Richard Internet Marketing

The book has truly changed my life. There’s nothing in it that I haven’t heard before; I was just at a place where I was ready to hear it and take it in.

I used to think that making money on the Internet was about “knowing how” and I still think that is important. After all, I’m spending a lot of time and effort in learning the “how.”

But I’ve realized that it isn’t the most important factor. The “how” is well known and is available for free and I could have learned it all years ago. The most important factors are straight out of the book.

You have to have TOTAL FAITH in your ability to succeed. If you don’t believe that you can accomplish what you want, then you can’t.

You must be filled with the BURNING DESIRE to make it happen. It isn’t going to be easy and you’re going to have failures along the way. You’re going to get discouraged. Without the total commitment of burning desire, you’re going to quit before you get to your goal. Giving up cannot be an option.

I now know that I have TOTAL FAITH combined with a BURNING DESIRE and so I know that I am going to accomplish everything I want to accomplish.

Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised

Richard Random Thoughts

As time goes on, I’m really starting to get what affiliate marketing is all about. All the stuff I’m finding is making sense and I really feel like I’m putting it all together and there is no longer any doubt in my mind that I am going to be successful at it. The problem, as usual, is focus. There’s so much to learn and so much to do and so much to absorb that it’s starting to make me feel like my head is going to explode.

So… the Thirty Day Challenge is moving to the back burner while I concentrate on a Stomper affiliate site. I’ve found a good product (unlike my first try) and I understand all of the Stomper lessons a lot better now and so I am going back to square one and starting over with a new product.

For now, I’m going to archive all the Thirty Day Challenge videos and lessons and come back to them once I get my Stomper shit together. There is no question that everything Ed teaches is ripping good stuff and stuff that I need to know, it’s just that there are only so many hours in the day and so many brain cells that can be active and I just can’t do it all at once. Stomper stuff is full time and TDC stuff is full time and I have a full time day job.

I started my journey into Internet Marketing with Stomper and I know the program is solid and I know that following it is going to teach me even more (and I’ve learned so much already) and so I just feel that I need to see it through. I should able to get my new site to the “turn the crank” phase in two or three weeks and then I’ll be able to dial back on the work for it and concentrate on the TDC program.

So here’s the agenda:

1) Build a classic Stomper Simple site and promote it and SEO it in the Stomper Simple method. Once that gets going, I’ll be ready for…

2) Dive into the TDC program and learn as much as I can. At the same time…

3) Write my own e-book and convert my site to selling my book instead of someone else’s book.

Success is only a matter of time.

Richard Internet Marketing

You Tube stuff. Subscriptions, playlists, etc.

Noticing Not Judging – Search for {keyword} “affiliate” to see what’s out there in my markets. Every market has sites selling related products and they all have affiliate programs of one sort or another.

Google Trends – Just noticing how my markets look in Google trends. Some show more variability than others.

Richard Internet Marketing

The Getting of Stats – Using Wordtracker to look at keywords for my seven topics and then investigating them in Google to see what sorts of PPC ads are coming up.

I’m actually looking at thirteen markets for now just to see how they play out. All of my markets came off the top of my head. Later on I will use the recommended sites to find perhaps better markets, but for now I was easily able to brainstorm 13 markets and I’d like to see how it goes with them.

Cooking – 17,931 Searches and very slow drop-off so I’m seeing a lot of potential here I think. Competition is all over the map and not well targeted. Not sure what to make of that.

Home Brewing – 898 Searches and pretty fast drop-off. Competition is all selling supplies.

Video Production – 2,393 Searches with medium drop-off. I need to work on these keywords to find the right phrase, but this will do for now. Competition is video production companies and video production schools.

Gardening – 12,970 Searches and a lot of variation here to mine. Competition is landscapers and nurseries.

Learn Poker – 824 Searches and quick drop-off. Surprisingly few searches. Competition – no shortage of people wanting to teach you poker.

Collecting – 5,082 Searches – Coin Collecting dominates the field. Competition on “collecting” none. “Coin Collecting: brings up coin dealers. Nothing about collecting for fun and profit. I think there may be an untapped market here for an information product.

Tropical Fish – 6,015 Searches and medium drop-off. Lots of related ways to go with this too as in “fish keeping” and “aquariums.” Competition is stores selling fish and one information product.

Cake Decorating – 5,145 Searches – Can you tell I like to watch cooking shows? Competition is a mixed bag.

Woodworking – 9,037 Searches and slow drop-off. Looks promising. Competition is tools and supplies and a couple of magazines.

Cleaning – 19,738 Searches and slow drop-off. Lots of potential here, I think. Competition is janitorial services.

Home remedies – 5,673 Searches and medium drop-off. Interesting. Competition is five information products.

Birding – 1,482 Searches and fast drop-off. Not sure if there is anything here or not. Competition is books, supplies and software for tracking your sightings.

Coffee – 32,145 Searches all over the map. Slow drop-off because of the variety of stuff.

Richard Internet Marketing

Generating Ideas – Looking for markets to test. Markets are everywhere and I’ve already developed this mindset to a small degree but Ed, as usual, has a methodology to exploit.

1) eBay – What are people buying. Always good to know. Categories suggest markets.

2) Technorati and blogs – What are people talking about.

3) Google Groups – What are people passionate about.

4) Number four I don’t know because the video won’t load. TDC is so big that it’s overwhelming the servers. I’ll get back to you on this – time for me to wash the car while I wait to see if the video will load.

Ok, car washed, video loaded – 4 – Google Hot Trends – It’s Google’s world and we just live in it. I’m ok with that. Google is making me money as I sit here! I love Google! Also Yahoo Answers. It’s all out there just waiting for you (and me) to capitalize on it (literally).

Thirty Day Challenge

Richard Internet Marketing

Ok, we’re off an running and I’ve decided that one way to keep focus during the Thirty Day Challenge (hereafter “TDC”) is to commit to blogging about each day’s lesson or activity.

Typically, I’ll be playing catch up on the blogging just as I’ll be playing catch up on the training itself, but I’m ok with that. It’s the results that matter.

This ties into an idea I learned from Ian King (a strength training coach and  bodybuilding coach) who says that you need to be clear about why you’re training. If you’re training to feel good about yourself, then how you train doesn’t really matter. However, if you’re training for results, then you do whatever it takes to get those results and the only thing that matters about a training regimen is if it produces results. You may have a training routine that you’ve researched like crazy and spent hours developing but if it doesn’t produce results, it’s crap, no matter how good it looks on paper.

Focus – OK, Day 1 of TDC is about making sure all your tools are in place and understanding the process. “A Symphony in Four Parts” and those parts are:

1) Market Research – Ed says this is the most important part of the puzzle and my recent experience with the Stomper $1 Trial confirms that wholeheartedly. Spend the time here, so you don’t waste time later on. In Stomper, I ended up promoting a product that nobody wanted because I didn’t do the market research. I didn’t know how to do the market research, but the total failure of my business was a great incentive for me to realize I had to figure it out or give up and giving up is not an option.

2)  Traffic – If you can’t generate traffic, then you’re cooked. So, we will be learning how to generate traffic. For free. Cool. I can see the application for that right now.
3)  Conversion – Once you generate the traffic, you need to sell them something. Here’s where we learn how to sell something online, and since it’s Ed… that means Web 2.0 style. I’m very excited about this. I can’t wait.

4) The Product – Most people think the product is the most important thing, and it is important, but not until you handle the first three. And here’s the thing about product. If it isn’t great, don’t bother. I know that whatever I make or sell is going to be great.

This is going to be very cool and I’m totally psyched. Some of the people from Ed’s previous 30 day challenges have gone on to fabulous success. Millionaire success. Yeah baby.

Thirty Day Challenge 

Richard Internet Marketing