John Cow dot Com

Syndicate Your Content For Search Engine Domination

John Cow — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:31:21 +0000

As you know a couple months ago we opened a new free service that helps bloggers to get content for their blogs and every week, we get a bunch of inquires about this.

Many Syndicate Kahuna members ask us…

“How can I submit my content/videos to well over 4,000 blogs in Syndicate Kahuna?”

Well, now you can with Syndicate Kahuna Premium and the cool thing is this network is growing by loads of new blogs each day!

Getting automated blog content from Syndicate Kahuna is an effortless way to create money-making blogs.

But, on the flipside…

Syndicating *your* content through the Syndicate Kahuna network is very powerful (and profitable).

If you want more traffic, backlinks and to influence your search engine rankings, then…

Hit the link below right now for all the details.

Important –> If you already are a TrafficKahuna or PortalFeeder member, then you already have access to this, so do not sign up again

You need to CLICK HERE now!

PS - All you Johncow affiliates… you already have a free affiliate account with SK and if you signed up people with JC then when I emailed them, your affiliate link was used

If you want to grab some banners or email copy, then login to you account at SK and get busy making yourself some 50% recurring commissions!

Review of Advent 2.0

John Cow — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:51:48 +0000

Motive Interactive has really stepped up its game with the release of Advent 2.0. Advent 2.0, which runs on Motive Interactive’s performance-based advertising network known as “The Motive Network,” is one of the most user-friendly and fully-functional ad programs a web publisher can use.

Forget for a minute the high payout rate. Forget their high performing offers and reliable payment schedule. Advent 2.0 has it where it counts: in the interface.

Now, If you’ve used any amount of performance-based ad networks, you know how clunky and difficult they can be. Even the big boys like Commission Junction need some serious help when it comes to the usability of the interface. It’s strikingly easy to get lost in interface hell, trying to figure out where to find link code or download a simple banner.

Advent 2.0 has the best publisher interface in performance-based network advertising, bar none.

There are two things I really like about the Advent 2.0 interface. First off, it’s simple. All of the functionality is there, but it’s arranged in such a way that everything has its own place. There’s no trying to remember which link takes you to new ad campaigns, no series of clicks to view a landing page. It’s all right there.

The best example of this is the “my offers” tab. Here’s where you’ll find the various advertiser offers. The tab uses Ajax to give you everything you need right there. Click on a thumbnail and the full-size banner pops right out. The code is right there, too. There’s no annoying pop-up window to generate your code; its already done.

Advent 2.0 doesn’t stop there, however. If you want text ads, it gives you text ads with a single click. If you want an email ad package, it’s right there too. Nothing you want is more than one click and a copy and paste away. Customizing your ads is quick and easy.

The “My Campaigns” tab is extremely versatile, too. If you want filtering features, it’s got it. You can filter by up to 4 categories, search by ID, or search by campaign. If you have just a small number of offers that you’re working with, you can disable the filtering.

If you’re a web publisher who’s tired of wasting precious time just to participate in an ad network, CLICK HERE give Advent 2.0 a look. You won’t be disappointed.

Need a Web Designer, Programmer or Writer? | Paid Review of Project4Hire

John Cow — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:00:56 +0000

In the world of the freelance marketplace, it can be hard to find one site that offers you access to skilled professionals spanning a variety of tasks. One site might be great for finding writers, but stink at finding web developers. Another might have plenty of programmers, but not be geared toward graphic design. Add to the mix the fact that each site typically charges a listing fee for every project, and even the simplest task might wind up being more trouble than it’s worth.

Enter Project4Hire.com. Project4Hire.com is a one-stop, full service site where you can post jobs for everything from engineering and hardware support to writing and translation. Best of all, there’s no charge for posting jobs on Project4Hire.com. You can register and post in whatever categories you want without paying a dime.

Project4Hire.com is ideal for freelancers, too. There’s no cost to freelancers unless they accept and approve a project. Freelancers can bid as often as they like in whatever categories they like without having to pay a monthly fee.

Like many other freelance websites, Project4Hire.com offers a safe transfer option. This service functions much like an escrow service. The client deposits money into the safe transfer account at Project4Hire.com with a specific freelancer’s name on it. The client and Freelancer can view the payment, and once the project is completed the client can complete the payment. The freelancer can cancel the payment, putting control of the transfer equally into the hands of both parties.

Project4Hire.com features a feedback rating system, as well. Once a project is completed, the client can leave feedback for the freelancer on a rating system of one to ten stars. In addition, the client can leave specific comments about the freelancer’s work in the feedback system.

Each project features a Project Message Board to facilitate communication between clients and Freelancers. You can post public or private message to the PMB, and the client will receive notification of the contact.

Project4Hire.com combines the best features of the other freelance websites into one quick and easy site. With easy site navigation, highly-functional search capabilities and a broad array of freelance categories, Project4Hire.com is a great place to find freelance work or hire freelancers.

Check out Project4Hire.com now!

Step 1 of 4 Week Plan to Answering What Is This All For!

John Cow — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:55:13 +0000

Yesterday I was traveling back from Colorado Springs (I am going for another week next week if any of you live there, drop me an email and we can maybe have a lunch thing) and I realized that there is no way I can put this plan all in one post… so I am going to have to divide it up.

In the previous post “4 Weeks to Answering What This is All For” I mentioned the four part…

Time: I needed to give myself as much time as I could to focus on the right things, needed to eliminate activities that were time suckers or may even seem important but distracted me from achieving this goal.
Health: I needed to eat better, sleep better and exercise more so I could feel better and be more focused… but I needed time to do that.
Clutter: I needed to organize myself better and delegate better (ties into “Time” but for me I made this a separate category).
Family & Friends: I needed to make room for the people that I love first and foremost.

Today I am going to walk you through the “Time” steps I took. My notes initially were a lot smaller but that is because I knew in my mind what it was they meant and I realized writing this post that I need to go into a little more detail.

NOTE –> This is NOT going to be a four week post series… but it is going to take 2 or 3 more posts (a couple more then I originally anticipated).

Make Some Time

The first part of this entire process for me was making time for things. If my thought was “I have no time because I am too busy” then I was never going to be able to achieve my goal. This also made me look at what the word “too” means and one of the definitions is…

excessively: to a degree exceeding normal or proper limits; “too big”

That means that I have an excess of things that are keeping me busy and therefore I needed to trim the excess. If this was really important to me, then I can NOT use the excuse “too busy”. So the very first thing I needed to do in order to make this work was clean my time table and commit to holding to it. Since this is a 4 week plan, the clean slate time frame was focused on that period of time… meaning i did not have to quit and cancel everything… but i had to at least postpone as much as possible to clear the 4 week period.

Clean Slate Check List

1. Planner: Set up a 4 week daily calendar for this specific goal and put in big letters on the goal date so you can see it. I recommend you use a day planner type calendar that will allow you to pencil in time for each day (you should be using a planning system of some sort anyway but that is just my opinion).

2. List Commitments: On a separate piece of paper, list all time commitments that you would normally be committed to for the next 4 weeks. This includes appointments, activities, meetings and so on.

3. Prioritize Commitments: Now create two columns… one with the header “Critical” and the other “Not Critical” and enter in the appropriate column each commitment. This is harder to do then you may realize at first (was for me anyway) because it is human nature to often think everything is much more important then it is. The thing to remember here is that you are not categorizing for life, this is simply for the next 4 weeks, so if there is an appointment or volunteer activity that can go on without you or be rescheduled then put it in not critical. For those that have a full time job working for someone else, make sure to put the hours of work and travel time (if there is a bit of a commute) in the critical.

4. Reschedule Commitments: For all the “not critical” tasks you now need to reschedule, postpone or cancel. I actually quit one volunteer activity I was involved in because there was enough help and it was too big a time commitment for me. A word of warning… they will try to convince you otherwise but just say no. Do not waffle on this! Tell them that after 4 weeks you will reconsider but for the next 4 weeks the answer is no. Now in your calendar / planner enter in all the critical commitments and mark the times.

Note –> This is going to change a bit in the next 4 weeks as new things come up but I found it a lot easier to say no to new things because I was too busy for them… and the cool thing was the things I said no to were not important and it felt good to say i was too busy for them.

5. Schedule Rest: Our bodies should get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. I realize each person is different but one thing I find is when I talk to people about sleep, it is the people that stay up late that feel they need more then that. It is believed that every hour of sleep you get before midnight is worth 2 hours of sleep if you go to bed after midnight and personally I can vouche for this because I find if I go to bed after midnight, I feel that I wake up with almost a hangover type feeling… which never happens when I go to bed earlier and sleep the same amount of hours… unless i have one too many beer

What I did here was make a commitment to be in bed by 9:30pm and this way I could hopefully be a sleep by 10pm. I also made sure to set my alarm for 6am to ensure I got my 7 to 8 hours but did not waste any time sleeping in. Yes, this includes weekends… and remember this is just for the next 4 weeks, but i hoped i could get my body in a better pattern.

This was very important for me because I know personally that giving my body the rest it needs is critical to having the right mindset and having a healthy body.

6. Daily Time Suckers: Next I looked at all the time wasters I participated in that were small daily things but wasted a huge amount of time. An example of this is flopping in front of the TV and wasting 60 minutes watching TV. So I made sure that I committed to clearing up ALL not critical time. I erased everything… no matter what it was because I wanted a fresh slate.

Now for those of you saying you need to have time in there for family and exercise… I 100% agree, but those are not time suckers… I am talking about doing things like going to forums online or just aimlessly browsing the internet, chatting on the phone, playing video games and stuff like that.

Now I struggled here at first with just saying I am committed to this because I know for myself I need constant reminders. So I updated my start page and put a reminder on the wall beside my desk about focusing time on my goal. I recommend you do that as well to keep that reminder front and center.

Result: The end result here is a clean as possible plate that I can start working with, which you will see why i did it in the next couple posts. My mindset behind this is, when I start listing important tasks and activities in the next step, I want to be able give them as much time as possible and I wanted to be able to schedule the rest of my life around them. I am not posting the next step tomorrow (Sunday, I have a few paid reviews I have to get caught up on, so this will be on Monday).

Any questions?

Posts in this series…

4 Weeks to Answering What This is All For!

John Cow — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:51 +0000

(This post is a continuation of yesterdays post Do You Already Assume How the Conversation Went?)

Can you really answer the question of “What This is All For” in your current situation/state of mind?

If you are not able to be honest with others (including yourself), if you have no time, if you are unhealthy, stressed out or any number of other things…. can you really answer that question?

For the past 6 months I have had what appears to be an enemy attacking me. I do not care if you are a Christian (I am and darn proud of it), believer in some other higher power or an atheist… there are times when you feel like everything seems to be going wrong and it appears like someone is out to get you. It seemed that everything that I had my hands in was being ripped apart and attacked.

I remember sitting in my office with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands just feeling overwhelmed. Every aspect of my life was under attack… and I was looking for someone to blame. It was not until 3 weeks after when I was talking about it with two very close friends that I suddenly realized what happened.

I WAS THE BLAME!

You see I have always been a big believer in the fact that in order to be successful you had to be accountable for your actions… but I was not practicing what I was preaching. I have always set goals, I have always planned accordingly but when the rubber finally hit the road I realized that I was a complete hypocrite. Now do not get me wrong, 80% of what i was doing was good… I was setting goals, I was achieving targets and I was progressing… but then comes that ole 80/20 rule again.

The 20% that I was not doing right… that was the most important part that I needed to be focusing on first!

So what did I do?

I sat down and tried to write out exactly what I was doing this all for… but I could NOT answer it. My first attempt was so fake it made me sick and that was when I realized that I was at fault. The problem was because of all of my current emotions, paradigms, internal and external stresses I was not able to actually even write that out. I was driven by emotion… I was frustrated with employees, with family members and with people I volunteered with… and all of this frustration was causing me a lot of anger and contempt.

SLAP!!!

I realized that I suddenly was slapped in the face and had to give my head a shake and stop everything. If I continued down that path I was traveling, I was going to fail!

Once again I picked up my pen and this time instead of writing out what it was I was doing this for, I started writing down all the things that were causing me frustration and stress. I wrote everything down… I did not care how immature it sounded, if it caused me any stress I wrote it down.

I then went through the list and categorized them into controllable and uncontrollable. What that means is the things that I have the power to control and the things that I do not have the power to control. To my complete surprise I had almost every single item in my list under the controllable category.

SLAP!!!

Talk about another slap in the face. I had been telling myself lies for so long and these lies were all about how I could not control certain things and I would just deal with them by suppressing them. I would constantly have conversations in my head and assume how the outcome would be and therefore act according to my assumptions… this HAD TO STOP!

My 4 Week Plan…

That was when I decided on a new goal… a goal that was set for 4 weeks and I created a plan on how to achieve that goal. I like working in weeks because it allows me to organize my schedule to get into a pattern (habit) in order to achieve goals. To do this I also knew I had to eliminate as much of my list of stress and frustration as possible… I needed to have a clear head…

I COULD NOT ACT ON IMPULSE OR EMOTION

So I started a mind map… just with a pad and paper to get one started right away and I tried to organize and prioritize how I could do this… and what I came up for myself was….

Time: I needed to give myself as much time as I could to focus on the right things, needed to eliminate activities that were time suckers or may even seem important but distracted me from achieving this goal.
Health: I needed to eat better, sleep better and exercise more so I could feel better and be more focused… but I needed time to do that.
Clutter: I needed to organize myself better and delegate better (ties into “Time” but for me I made this a separate category).
Family & Friends: I needed to make room for the people that I love first and foremost.

Tomorrow I am going to share with you the actual plan that I created and the details of it. This plan is my plan… but I HIGHLY recommend you heed my advice here and figure this out and make a plan for yourself before life starts slapping you in the face.

So.. any comments?

Posts in this series…

Do You Already Assume How the Conversation Went?

John Cow — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:59:48 +0000

Over the last couple days I have been asking you a few questions and I am very impressed with the comments… well today I want to ask you one more question.

Have you ever avoided doing something, like talking to someone about an issue or perhaps avoided trying something new because you assumed you knew what was going to happen?

The best way I can explain it is that it is like you have already had the conversation in your head or have already performed the task out in your head and because of how your mind works (paradigms, experiances and so forth) you act out in real life as if the experiance that happened in your head was real.

Now think about that for a second and then think about the questions I have asked over the past 2 days.

What is this all for?
Is major failure (a slap in the face) necessary for acheiving success?

Do you see any connection between those two questions and my question about assuming outcomes?

OK, enough with the questions now… it is time for me to explain to you where I am going with this and how these all tie together for me. My hope is that by sharing this I can help some of you avoid a lot of the issues I have had to struggle with and can help you set your self up for better success.

The first thing is who are you telling lies to?

Do not take that lightly… this is something extremly important to focus on and think about. This tied directly into answering all the questions I have posted over the past few days. I look back at the past 11 years and and I truthfully say that I have told many lies… and most of them were to myself but many were also to others who were close to me.

These lies mainly focused around the question of “Who is this all for?”

I remember arguing about the fact that all the sacrifices I was making were for my family… they were for making “OUR” lives better. I tried convincing myself of this fact and would defend it adamantly to my wife and family. I did it because of the fact that I had conversations in my head of what would happen if I told the truth and what the outcome would be and I wanted to avoid that.

So what did this do… it caused me to have conflicting interests and that in return caused me to not be able to focus on the right priorities. By not focusing on the right priorities I gave mixed signals to everyone I was involved with for both my business and my personal life.

The end result of that, you guessed it…

a HUGE slap in the face!

But was this all necessary for me to succeed… where all these things needed?

Tomorrow I am going to go into more details about this and how I think a “slap in the face” in NOT necessary to success and how I “could” have avoided it and how you “can” avoid it.

Until then… whats your thoughts on this post?

Posts in this series…

Why Do We Sometimes Need a Slap in the Face?

John Cow — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:12:32 +0000

Often times in movies you will see someone going crazy, repeating the same phrase or just talking nonsense and suddenly someone slaps them in the face. This immediately shakes the person up and seems to calm them down and you will often hear the character then say “thanks I needed that”.

Why is this?

I do not mean getting a slap in the face literally of course but I mean in general. Why is it that we often need something major to wake us up and get us back on focus?

If you listen to any of the successful people out there, it seems that there are often moments in thier lives where something major happened. It often is some financial disaster but not always. It is these “slaps in the face” arise that suddenly the person stops, sits back and takes a look at the big picture of everything they are doing.

Here is another question for you to think about…

Is major failure (a slap in the face) necessary for achieving success?

Yesterday I talked about asking the questions “what is this all for?” and I mentioned I would explain my thinking behind it but I am going to actually hold off on that for a bit and the reason is I want to discuss the above questions first.

So whats you opinion on the question…

Is major failure (a slap in the face) necessary for achieving success?

Please do not just give a yes or no but give a reason too

Tomorrow (for real this time) I am going to talk about this and also about answering the quesiton “what is this all for?”

Posts in this series…

What is This All For?

John Cow — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:14:16 +0000

Have you ever asked yourself that question?

I am serious about this and I think it is a vital question to ask.

I often talk about planning and setting goals but really none of that makes any sense unless you can truly answer the question of “what is this all for?”

Looking back at when I first started my business online back in 1997, I remember that the initial reason was because I hated my current job and I felt like I was trapped. I saw an infomercial on TV about starting a business and actually bought it.

The course was a joke and the person that sold it has since gone belly up and actually has had some legal issues as well. The course was not in anyway expensive and in all honesty I did not feel that I got ripped off or anything. In fact I have to give a lot of credit to that initial course because that is what gave me the kick in the pants to get started.

What was wrong however was that back then I started to put hours upon hours of work into something that I had an unclear understanding of. I knew I wanted a better life and that I wanted to make more money but that was it. I really had no clue as to really what I was doing it for.

The challenge this put upon me was that I had mixed up priorities and things that should have been focused on were not and things that should not have been focused on were. I was guided by emotion rather then by logic… I was destined to fail.

Over the past 5 years, as my business has exploded I have found that it was my understanding of why I was doing this that helped me to put things in focus. The problem with this however was that I was not honest about this with others and this caused conflicts. You see I was truly doing this for a selfish reason but when others asked I would say that it was to build a better life for my family and I.

BULLCRAP

I was doing this because I wanted to and it was not about doing anything other then having more money then I did before.

The positive thing was that I had a focus and was able to set my goals on it but the negative was I was never able to be completely open and honest about this with others.

Over the past 3 months I have been going through a major turn around in my focus. I have changed staff, changed focus and I am now finally being open and honest with myself as to why I am doing this. I have loads of things planned and loads of things coming down the pipe (I already talked to my biz partners about this).

In my next post I am going to talk about how I came upon this realization and how it helped me to be able to understand exactly why I am doing this and…

What this is all for?

Trust me when I say this is not something to take lightly.

Posts in this series…

Off-Line Marketing Techniques for your Online Business

John Cow — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:39:48 +0000

When it comes to promoting your blog, things like social media, comment marketing or article marketing naturally come to mind. While these are tried and true ways to promote an online business, you may not have considered the fact that off-line marketing can often be as effective, if not more effective, than on-line marketing.

Why off-line marketing is important

Why is that? Why does off-line marketing often have a bigger impact on your online business? There are several reasons:

Off-line marketing is portable. If you run a small ad in a weekly flyer, a reader can rip the ad out and take it with him. A banner ad on a website is there only while the reader is on the site the ad is located.

Off-line marketing is personal. Personal marketing techniques – from passing out business cards to putting up a flyer at the library – tend to connect with people on a different level than online marketing techniques. In the offline world, people know there’s a real individual behind that business card. Online, there’s just a computer.

Off-line marketing is proven. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of the marketing potential on the Internet. In the long term, it’s likely that most marketing efforts will include, if not exclusively, Internet efforts. Still, off-line techniques have been studied, in some cases, for decades. We know what works off-line, and we know what doesn’t.

Getting started

There are colleges and business schools that offer four year degrees in marketing. I can’t give you all of the advice those programs could offer here on my little blog. I can, however, suggest some basic ways you can get started in your off-line marketing efforts:
Business cards. This is the easiest way to recruit visitors to your website off-line. Hand out business cards everywhere – on the bus, at the diner, even in your kids’ school on parents’ night.

Community news. Most newspapers and public television stations offer free “community news” announcements. Create a special offer or even host an event to tell people about your business.

Networking. I’m not talking Facebook or Twitter here, I’m talking about old-school networking. Connect with your friends, co-workers and former employers. Give them the scoop on what you’re up to with your business, and recruit them as word-of-mouth marketers.

No, you won’t get as much traffic from off-line marketing, but the traffic you do get is more likely to be ready to convert.

Create Writing Rituals to Power Your Writing

John Cow — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:46:21 +0000

No, you’re not a professional writer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same tricks and techniques professional writers use. One of the dirty little secrets effective writers don’t tell you is that they aren’t good writers because of innate talent; they’re good writers because they practice writing rituals.

Writing rituals are nothing more than personal habits. They might have to do with how long you write, where you write or when you write. In some cases, there are behavior-based writing rituals that use a repeated action – such as sipping a drink or sharpening a pencil – that you do before, during or after writing.

Many rituals don’t have any practical impact on your writing, per se. Instead, they have a practical impact on you, which then impacts your writing on more levels than you can imagine.

Here is what writing rituals do for you:

They decrease your stress: The stress of writing quality content day in and day out can lead to procrastination. By using writing rituals, you put yourself in a familiar situation that reduces procrastination and peels away some of your stress.
They boost your confidence: It’s easy to feel like a slave to your blog, having to publish updates on a daily basis. Using writing rituals gives you the ability to regain a sense of your own self control.
They make the writing process easier: Nothing will cut through a little writer’s block like using your writing rituals. They make it easier to start writing and power you through the writing process.

Now, just because most writing rituals don’t have a practical impact on your writing doesn’t mean that they can’t. For example, here are some rituals that writers use in order to get their juices flowing every time they sit down to write:

Outline before you write: If you jot down just three or four main points that you want to get across in your blog post, you’ll be surprised how fast the writing goes from there.
Close your other applications: When you’re 500 words into a blog post and an email comes in, you’ll be tempted to read it. If and when you get back to the blog post, you are essentially starting over. Close everything out during the writing process.
Set parameters: Know how long you’re going to write for or, better yet, know how many words or blog posts you want to write. Don’t stop or even get up until you’re done.

So, what about you? Do you have any blog post writing rituals you’d like to share?

Is Your Business a Well-Kept Secret?

John Cow — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:35:05 +0000

Everyone has one. It might be a favorite restaurant, or a bar that only you know about. It’s a great little place to hang out, it’s never crowded and the people are friendly. The food is good and the drinks are cheap. The service is personal and the place is always clean.

In five years, that place is going to change. It’s going to become crowded, expand, hire new staff and raise their prices. Either that, or it’s going to shut it’s doors for good.

You see, in business, it’s never good to be a well-kept secret. You need loyal customers, to be sure; but you need a certain amount of them to become, and remain successful.

You might have a couple dozen die-hard fans at your website who think you’re the dog’s bollocks, but if that fan base doesn’t grow your site is going to tank.

After all, that’s why we spend so much time trying to drive traffic to our sites, isn’t it? That’s why we do article marketing, comment on other blogs, use and abuse social media and pay for advertising.

The problem is this: that well-kept secret restaurant of yours might be located on a main thoroughfare. There might be plenty of people who drive by it every day, see the signs, and never stop in.

Why is that? Because the restaurant is an unknown quantity. They don’t know whether the service sucks or whether the food tastes horrible. They need something else to convince them.

That’s where your couple dozen die-hard fans come in. The oldest and best proven marketing technique in the history of business is simple word of mouth. You need to recruit those fans, get them to talk about your site, your product or your business. Get them to rave about it on message boards, convince them to tell their friends and coworkers.

Word of mouth alone doesn’t lead to more sales. However, when you combine it with increased traffic, you’re bound to see an upswing.

These two elements – customer loyalty and customer recruitment – are the twin imperatives of any successful business marketing campaign.

JohnCow is NOT for Sale Again!

John Cow — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:37:27 +0000

First of all allow me to apologize for the absence of involvement around here but life has a funny way of getting in the way sometimes and due to personal family reasons I had to separate myself from work for a few weeks.

I used the title “not for sale” because there have been a couple posts and emails sent to me asking if this is the case… and I can asure you that the answer is a 100% no. I have no desire to sell this blog and there are loads of big plans coming very soon… including a HUGE contest that will focus on making you money (no it is not a market leverage challenge).

I do have some planned posts for this week but things will not be back 100% for a couple more weeks and in the mean time if any of you are interested in submitting a guest post, then please send it my way and I will review it.

On a positive note however, we now have CommentMILK approved in the WordPress Plugin Directory

The benefit of this is now it will automatically notify you when there are updates to it.

Last of all (hey I cant make a post with out some sort of lesson behind it)… do not let your work or your hobbies run your life. We all have the desire of financial success and often times when we even get to where we wanted, we are still not happy. Now I am not going to get all sappy on you all here but the bottom line is if you want to achieve true success in your life then you need to focus on more then finacials… believe me I know!

Blogrush is Dead - And A Good Lesson Too

John Cow — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:33:45 +0000

Just a quick note to let you know that the often controversial “BlogRush” is having its life support pulled and as always, the legend John Reese has a few words of wisdom to add about it.

Check out John’s blog post about it at…

http://www.income.com/blog/2008/10/29/the-death-of-blogrush/

I am very impressed when someone is open about something like this and critics beware…. unless you are successful like John then keep your negative comments to yourself. I too have had many failures and each one is a huge lesson learned and made me that much better for the next project.

Moving From Busyness To Business - Taking The Right Actions

John Cow — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:54:42 +0000

Hey what’s up Cowboys, Cowgirls, Cowdogs, and Cow lovers of all kind! This is Normal Joe from IMwithJoe.com and I’m doing a little guest post action for the CowMan….I think he’s out cow tipping…err….looking for Cow so he asked me to tend to the herd.

Now before we get into all the udder squeezin goodness and stuff let’s cover a topic I think we all can relate to and implement into our business models. Of course, I could be totally wrong and this may only apply to me, but….I’m pretty sure there is someone else out there suffers from this as well.

Busyness Doesn’t Help Your Business

I know that word looks funny, but I assure you “busyness” is actually a real word. Hey, it was on the internet, it has to be real right? The internet does not lie does it? Oh well, I found it and it had a definition so I ran with it.

Want to see the definition? Of course you do, here ya go.

adj. bus?i?er, bus?i?est

1. Engaged in activity, as work; occupied.

2. Sustaining much activity: a busy morning; a busy street.

3. Meddlesome; prying.

4. Being in use, as a telephone line.

5. Cluttered with detail to the point of being distracting

Wait dude, that’s not even the same word!!! I hear you, relax, the word is actually the noun form of the same adjective we just defined.

busy?ness n. <—- see I’m not crazy

Now, for our little discussion I want to focus on 1 and 2 as it relates to online business.

Many people working online, or starting an online business get so excited they immediately get busy. Now, this is not a bad thing in and of itself, the problem is, most will not be taking the proper actions to move forward and will merely be doing busywork. Hey, I’m speaking from experience here!

We always here things like “take action” or “get something going” and we immediately jump into action with no real direction, focus, or plan. This leads to us simply doing various tasks that may be related to our business only by the mere fact that it’s being done online.

Some Examples Of Busyness In Your Business

There are many was one can merely be suffering from busyness and have the appearance of working on their business. Some of us love to tell folks how much time we spend “working on our business”. The problem is, the act itself becomes the prize, just telling folks you have an “internet business” may be fulfilling when they show interest.

This translates to the stuff we do online. We may be online merely “networking” when really we are doing nothing more than socializing all day. Without a clear plan of attack, you really won’t have any checkpoints to mark your progress and you’ll get pulled in all kinds of various directions.

Constantly spending the whole day completing optin forms so you can get free ebooks and software and calling it “research” is not research. I can tell myself that all I want, but really it’s just me spending time gathering up various amounts of crap to pile on top of the other 7 piles of crap I already have on my hard drive and haven’t read past the first page!

Oh yes, then, I have to go and “organize” all my “research”. This is nothing more than me creating infinite amounts of folders and sub folders and playing my own personal game of “hide then find the ebook”. How much time have I just wasted, 1, 2, 3 hours or more!

I could go on with various amounts of examples, but I really just want to get you thinking on the proper things, and identifying those areas of busyness that your business suffers from, as it will be different for each of us.

Working Efficiently Or Working Effectively

Now you may feel that I’ve lost my mind again, that’s find..I tend to do that from time to time, but just roll with me for a few minutes. I can be doing many things online, and actually staying busy, completing multiple tasks….but not the RIGHT tasks, so in actuality I am not really being effective in my business, even though I am being efficient.

Just because I am good at something doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for me to be doing in my business. If what I’m doing doesn’t move my business forward then it’s not effective, no matter how efficient I am in getting it done. I know…this isn’t as black and white as some may like, but really it’s more of a brain stimulant than anything.

I want to get you thinking about how effective you are with the things you do in your own business, and how you can tweak your tasks to become more effective and still be efficient as well. Being efficient in the wrong things will only leave you in the same position your are now, it’s like moving sideways as opposed to moving forward.

A football team can be efficient in making lateral passes, but if they only make lateral passes and never advance up the field then they are not being effective. Maybe they are not used to completing any passes at all, so seeing the lateral passes completed get them excited and that becomes the focus. Well, 4 of those passes and they lose possession of the ball! They were efficient in completing the pass, but they were not effectively doing the RIGHT things needed to move the team forward.

Are you being efficient and not effective? Or are you moving toward being effectively efficient? Any thoughts? Let the cow patties fly!

As is my custom, I want to leave you with a little visual stimulation for those that like to listen and watch more than read. And for me…videos have not only been efficient, they are effective!

How to Crack into Google’s Servers and Find Search Keyword Gold

John Cow — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:53:36 +0000

Researching keywords for your next blog post, article or site?

I’m going to show you a way to get a peek behind the scenes of the Google search engine and see actual “search keyword” trends. Using these techniques you can discover keywords that you will want to use now!

Sure Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) can help you find the top 100 hot topics but unless you are into top news stories or celebrities it doesn’t always help.

Google has finally let us pull back the curtain and see into the mounds of data that they have been collecting for years using their Google Insights for Search Tool. (http://www.google.com/insights/search/)

This is a keyword researchers dream. Four years of actual search data that you can comb through.

Using the Google Insights tool:

The first thing you should do is to sign in to your Google account at the top of the Insights. This will provide you with a little more detail in the results.

Before I start with an actual example of how to pull some nuggets (keywords) you need to know something about the numbers you are seeing. Google is keeping one thing hidden from us; the actual search volume. The numbers they show are all relative. I explain that more in my example below.

When you first get to the Insights tools you will see a screen like this:

The red arrows point to samples that Google has provided so you can see what the tool can do. I suggest you look at several of those to understand how to you can use the tool.

Lets say you have a tech gadget blog or you are a seller of electronics and you blog about the items you sell. I’m going to enter a search that should be a popular holiday shopping item in this category. That is digital camera. And I’m going to pick only the United States and 2008 so I can get current data.

Click To Enlarge

Google gives digital camera a relative volume of 82. By itself that means nothing but they do provide a graph of the relative volume for 2008. And when you compare that term with another one, let’s say, ummm dairy farm, which is where I think Cow was taken to, you will see how the volumes relate.

Digital camera has a relative search volume of 82 to the 3 of dairy farm. (Wow! That many people are searching about a dairy farm. It must be in the search for Cow.) While diary farm by itself has scores a 78.

Currently with a volume of 82, digitals camera are sitting at its lowest volume period of the year. If you went back and looked at prior years, you would see that there is a huge volume spike in November.

Over the past four years the volume is decreasing. That right there would tell me that this is not a good keyword. It’s a top level category keyword and it’s too generic to be able to use and draw any traffic from.

We need to go deeper into the mine to find the nuggets. Scroll down to the last on the results page. These are the top searches related to your search term and the rising searches. This is where the gold is.

I am going to look the rising searches to try to find a new growing trend.

Looking at that list, two of them quickly caught my eye. Waterproof digital camera and underwater digital camera are two related terms at the top of the rising searches. It seems like we have discovered a sub-niche here.

You can then investigate further by click on the terms. Upon clicking waterproof digital camera I find this:

The first listing is a model of a waterproof camera and Google say this is a breakout term. That is a term that is new for the time period you selected and has a surge in volume.

Now I have a possible idea for my next article.

Olympus Stylus 1030 SW Waterproof Digital Camera Review

Or if you are building a new site, you have a possible niche to work with of waterproof digital cameras.

And the best part of a long tail keyword that is a product, it’s very easy to tie into your store or to an affiliate site like Amazon, eBay, or another affiliate store selling that product.

You can use this same process for any niche you might be working in. It will work the same way. Sometimes you find dead ends, or low volume terms, and many times you find the keyword gold you need.

Blogging with Clarity - I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

John Cow — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:42:17 +0000

Whether you use your blog to sell something, interact with others in your niche or just get out a message, writing with clarity is essential. Clear writing is convincing, more likely to connect with your reader and get a response. Most of all, clear writing is more likely to produce the results you want, such as a sale.

If your reader doesn’t understand what you’re saying, he isn’t going to spend the time to figure it out. Like most web surfers, blog readers have short attention spans. When they hit a roadblock like unclear writing, the look for the nearest link and they escape as quickly as possible.

So, how do you improve the clarity of your writing in your blog? I can think of a few steps you can take:

Organize your writing: Outline your post before you write it, and make sure your post has a logical flow to it.
Edit your writing: Don’t put up your post immediately. Sit on it for a day, and look at it again. When you do, ask the question “Does this convey the message I’m trying to convey?”
Learn to write with precision: Get rid of unnecessary words and phrases. Watch out for redundancy. Never use eight words to say something when it could be said in three words.
Open your writing up to constructive criticism: Ask someone to proofread your posts before they go live. Once they’ve read it, ask them: “What is the message this post conveys?” If it doesn’t match up with what you intended, go back to the drawing board.
Keep your writing simple: While you don’t have to stick to small words, the more simply you write your blog posts, the more readers that will be able to understand.
Finally, you need to review your posts after they’ve been up: Look at the comments. Are there questions in there about your meanings? If so, figure out where your weakness was and fix it for next time.

With a little dedication and attention, you can turn your muddied blog posts into laser-sharp attention-getting posts.

Using oDesk for Outsourcing Continued

John Cow — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:47:12 +0000

This post is a continuation of Outsourcing Using oDesk

So far my experiance with oDesk has been met with some frustration but it is not the oDesk system that I blame but the people I am hiring. You see, the oDesk system it self has been great (I do have some recommendations to make it better but overall it is great) but the problem is that the people that I have interviewed and even hired have been less than exceptional… not all of them… but the majority.

So far I have tested a few different people and I have just now found someone that I am hopeful with. The biggest problems have been…

1. Not able to dedicate time needed: Even though I put in the job request that I need someone 30+ hours a week, every single one of them (expect for the latest) seems to think that means something entirely different… like maybe 10 hours a week.
2. Do Not Understand How to Communicate: I had to actually chase down two people to see if they were actually going to do the “test” assignment. One of them decided no and the other finally got back to me with something that could have taken 20 minutes (it was a joke).
3. Are Not As Experianced as They Say: This one was a big lesson for me and it made me revamp my test assignments I have been given them. People will lie about what they can do in their resumes and as a result I assumed certain things and did not bother to test on them… BIG MISTAKE!

OK, so this kind of sounds like a slamming of oDesk, but it really is not. In fact I love oDesk and it has been the features available on oDesk that have really helped… especially the time tracker with screen capture. This has allowed me to see if people are even started on the task and the real amount of time it took them. With elance and rent a coder, I was always left to just hope… but oDesk shows me.

What I am not crazy about is…

1. There should be “contact info” front and center on the work team page for each worker. This is not in an obvious spot and is a pain to find.
2. Should have a communication area (a message board) for communicating with outsourcers in the team room. Using email and having to track the communcations is a pain in my opinion. I would rather everything be there like how elance does it.
3. Even though you put criteria for the job, people can still apply that do not meet it. For example, I would want the ability for applicants to have to confirm that they can be available he 30+ hours a week before being able to even apply for a position. If the say they can but can’t then they get a negative point on their profile.
4. When you “interview” some one, it needs to show you clearly on the application board (where all those applying for the job, have their profiles show up) who you have requested an interview for.
5. If you have more then one job open and click on a person to interview, you then have to select a drop down box for which one of the jobs you are interviewing them for. That may sound easy but it is first of all in a terrible spot and easily missed. Plus if I am on the page for a certain job that people are applying for, why in the world when I click “Interview” would it not just automatically know that is what I want to interview them for!

Overall, I like oDesk… but with the above changes I would LOVE it!

I am going to work with this system for another week and then put a checklist together for all of you as to how I am going to use oDesk. This will include…

1. How to post a job
2. How to interview
3. How to create test assignments
4. What to watch for in test assignments
5. How to manage outsourcers after hiring them

So what are your thoughts and what else would you like me to include that I may have overlooked?

Top 4 Small Business Marketing Blunders

John Cow — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:03:09 +0000

Marketing is, for many small Internet-based businesses, a necessary evil. Unfortunately, it’s also their life bread. Without effective marketing, your Internet business doesn’t stand a chance against the competition.

Here are four of the worst marketing mistakes you can make (In my opinion that is):

Denigrating your customers: If you come out and say, “only a moron would buy from my competitor,” you’re effectively closing off every potential client who’s ever bought from that competitor. It makes your potential customer feel embarrassed and out of touch. You want your potential customers to feel good, because happy customers are much more likely to buy.

Denigrating your competition: Talking smack about your competitors doesn’t boost your own business. All it does is make you look like a bully. Instead of insulting the other guy, talk about your product and why it’s a better product. This demonstrates an overall sense of integrity, as well as a genuine belief in the product you’re selling. And if you don’t believe in your product, potential customers won’t either.

Being desperate for a sale: Desperation implies that your product hasn’t been selling, which tells your customer that maybe it isn’t a quality product. You want people to have a favorable perception of your product, which is why so many good marketing techniques rely on urgency and scarcity. Demonstrate that you want the customer’s business, but also demonstrate that you’ll be fine without it.

Focusing on yourself: If you want to sell something to someone, you have to focus on the benefits that product or service brings to them. Don’t talk about what a great marketing coach you are; your potential customers don’t really care what you think about yourself. Instead, focus on what your coaching can do for them. Talk about how your coaching can take their business to the next level, and make it more profitable.

All New CommentMILK Version 1.0 BETA is Ready!

John Cow — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:55:41 +0000

Introducing the official public release of the all new “CommentMilk” BETA WordPress Plugin.

Click Here to Download Version 1.01

Installation Instructions

Step 1: Download plugin and extract “CommentMilk” folder.

Step 2: Upload Folder and all the contents to “wp-content/plugins”

Step 3: Log into your blogs admin panel and navigate to “plugins” and activate the plugin “CommentMilk”

Step 4: Navigate to “Settings” –> “CommentMilk”

Congratulations, you have successfully installed CommentMILK!

Use Instructions

Example Image 1: General Settings

A) Latest CommentMilk News: This is a direct feed from JohnCow and will keep you updated on the latest updates to CommentMILK

B) Making CommentMILK Default: You can set it so that CommentMilk is active on all your blogs posts. It is recommended that you set this to “Yes” and then set your default campaign settings how you want them.

C) Current Running Campaigns: Each campaign that you create wil be accesed here. Click the “edit” ink to modify the campaign settings and “delete” to remove the campaign. You can not delete the default campaign.

D) Campaign Name: When creating a new campaign, you wil want to enter the name of the campaign here.

Example Image 2: General Settings Continued

A) Nofollow: You can select whether or not to allow the comment links to be “nofollow” or not.

B) Text to Display in Comment: The default text is…

[Name]s latest.. [link]

…This will then display the commentor’s name and then a link to the latest RSS feed link. The plugin automatically goes to the link entered by the commentor and looks for an RSS feed in the source code. It does this by looking for…

link rel=”alternative” type=”application/rss+xml”

…in the source code on the URL given.

C) Enter Keyword Phrase: By select “Yes” here, you will allow the people who comment on your blog, to check a box and then enter the keyword phrase they want to use to link to the URL they entered. This will then overwrite the auto linking to your site RSS feed and will instead just enter the hyperlinked Keyword Phrase under the comment.

D) Keyword Phrase Text: This is the instruction text that will be displayed if you select “Yes” to the “Enter Keyword Phrase” feature. For example, in the post you are reading, I have entered the text for the comments on this page as…

“Enter Keyword Phrase to Hyperlink to Above Entered URI”

E) Ignore this… it is getting removed

F) CSS Styling: You can decide how the text in the comments will appear. An example might be to enter…

border:1px dashed grey; display:block; padding:4px;

… this would but a grey box around the link under the comment to help it stand out and reward your commentors more.

G) Open in New Window: This will automatically add…

target=”_blank”

…to the links in the comments, so when clicked on you will not lose the reader, instead the link will open in a new window.

Example Image 3: Contest Settings

This area is what you would fill out if you are holding a contest.

A) Subscribe Option: If you want the criteria of “subscribe to newsletter” to be part of the contest, then select “Yes”

B) Subscribe Points: Enter the amount of points they will be rewarded for being subscribed to your blog. I usually enter “1″

C) Subscribe Text: This is the text that will be displayed if you select “Yes” for the subscribe option.

D) Comment Points: If you want to reward 1 point for the person commenting, you can select “Yes”

IMPORTANT –> E) Post ID: This is where you enter the numerical value of the post ID if you only want this campaign to be for a specific post. More then likely a contest will only be applicable to a specific post and so enter the post ID # here. You can find that by saving the post as a draft and then looking at the post=# in the URL of the browser.

Example Image 4: Contest Settings Continued

A) Extra Form Field: CommentMILK allows you to enter up to five extra criteria to include and the form filed is where the title of the critieria will go. So for example, if you contest requires a bog post about the contest, then you could enter “Blog Post URL” here and they would need to enter the URL of the blog post that talks about your contest.

B) Textbox or Checkbox: Depending on the criteria, you can have the option so that the commentor needs to enter info (such as a URL) or you can have a checkbox. The chechbox would be used to acknowledge something. This is to allow for more flexibility on the blog owners part with setting up the criteria.

C) Point Value: This is where you select the amount of points received for completing a task

Example Image 5: General Settings Continued

A) Reward Your Top Commentor: You can now add to any post or page a simple little code that will allwo you to display the top commentors on your blog. An example is…

…this will display the top 5 commentors for the past 30 days. I am using this at the bottom of this post for you to see a live example.

B) Get Paid for Using CommentMILK: Not only can you get all the benefits of this free plugin but if you are a johncow affiliate, you can enter your ID here. If someone clicks the banner under the comments, your link will be tagged with yoru affilaite link and if they visit johncow and sign up to our list, then they will be yours. Then if they upsell to trafficKahuna or the all new SyndicateKahunaPRO then you get the lifetime commission. It is better then just linking to us, isnt it?

C) Add New: Click the Add New if you are creating a new custom campaign.

D) Update Options: Click “Update Options” if you are only making changes and are not creating a new campaign.

JR @ Internet Marketing Strategies

OK, so what are your thoughts about this plugin and what features would you love to see added?

Update as of October 17 9:13am eastern

List of work to be done:

Fix conflict with the nofollow-free plugin (submitted by Hussein) - Programmer is installing this plugin to look at why they are incompatible. Feels it should be an easy fix, that will be included in next update.
Add an exclude list for top commentors. Easy fix to be included in next update.
unlink the numbers in the top commentors (submitted by Hussein). Easy fix to be included in next update.
Add border=”0″ to top commentors avatars. Easy fix to be included in next update.
point value for leaving a comment. Easy fix to be included in next update.
Admin comments not contain link from RSS feed. Easy fix to include in next update.
Fix error caused by certain URI’s when fetching rss (submitted by Simon). Found reason for error, will be fixed in next update.
Fix error: Table ‘myusername_wrdp3.wp_campaigns’ doesn’t exist(submitted by Omar) - Fixed in this update.
Investigate ability to have only one comment per IP and email that will be nofollow per post OR only allowing the acceptance of one comment per post. (We need to look at this one) (submitted by Chelle) - Will need to look into this further. Going to see about possibility of having three options. Nofollow, Dofollow or 1 comment Dofollow and the rest from same email is nofollow.

Update as of October 17 1:01pm eastern

Programmer has reviewed features and bugs and has a fix for everything. This current release version 1.01, has the fix for error: Table ‘myusername_wrdp3.wp_campaigns’ doesn’t exist. The remainder of the above listed fixes and improvements will be in the next release
Oce these are fixed, we are not going to add new features for a couple weeks. We will want to make sure we get all bugs squashed first. We will however add features after the initial 2 weeks and so any feature requests you would like to see, please add them. I expect the next update to be available by Monday at the latest.

Review of The Social Profiles Wordpress Plugin

John Cow — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:09:37 +0000

As we are putting the finishing touched on CommentMILK, I thought I would share a new plugin I came across last week that I liked.

As you most likely know, one of the best ways to encourage blog commenting is to offer your community members increased exposure. Plugins like Commentluv, which brings a link in from the commenter’s most recent blog post, are an added incentive to comment on your blog and become a part of your community. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a way to integrate this sort of benefit with social media.

Enter the Social Profiles Wordpress Plugin. Designed by Sugarrae and written by Wordpress plugin legend Joost de Valk, Social Profiles lets you add links to your commenters’ social profiles. The links can be text links or graphical ones, and you can even put a nofollow tag on the links if you want to.

Social Profiles comes with ten of the most common social networking tools pre-installed. These include:

Delicious
Digg
Flickr
Furl
MySpace
Newsvine
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Technorati
Twitter

By default, Digg, Delicious and Flicker are enabled. You can add and remove tools via a control panel.

The one downside to Social Profiles is that only registered users of your site can have their profiles listed in their comments. While this is ideal for sites that use a membership model, sites that don’t register users may have more difficulty implementing Social Profiles.

You can register her at JohnCow and use this… PLUS when you register it makes commenting easier

Installation of Social Profiles is relatively easy, and consists of uploading the files to your Wordpress plugins directory and adding a single line of code to your template. There are plenty of customization options, too. The control panel lets you ad prefixes and suffixes to the social network links, as well as the ability to customize their appearance.

Check it out for yourself at http://www.sugarrae.com/wordpress/social-profiles/