Entrecard Russian Roulette

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No doubt I’m shooting myself in the foot here, but during my absence from posting to Reward Rebel blog, I sporadically logged into Entrecard, and there was always a queue of advertisers waiting for approval to display their little promo box on my site.

Curiously, quite often the advertiser wouldn’t have dropped their card on my site on the day they submitted the request… or at all recently.

Firstly, I’d like to thank those advertisers for their loyalty.

Secondly, however, I have to express my concern about how many of the Entrecard community don’t appear to visit a website prior to submitting an advertising request.

In a sense, it is flattering to my blog that a repeat advertiser trusts the content-to-date to be enough, but if there hasn’t been any new content for weeks, why does anyone wish to advertise on a site that’s dormant?

Hey, I’m not biting the hand that feeds me…. er, I suppose I am, but that’s not the point. I’m inclined to infer from the lack of a card being dropped that the advertiser just couldn’t be assed!

Perhaps I’m going about this the wrong way…. “Hey, amigo, WAKE UP!”.

Why aren’t you checking out the websites where you advertise?

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve advertised on a website, I check it out before submitting a further request. You shouldn’t take anything for granted.

This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed blogs that haven’t posted for months still continue to advertise on Entrecard… as though this is somehow the same thing as maintaining an online business.

Recently, I had to reject an ad request from a website that hadn’t posted fresh content since March! The disquieting aspect was that it was a website dealing with financial markets and their changeability. How can I justify displaying an ad encouraging my readership to visit a site that doesn’t offer anything new for three months… a quarter of a year!

Don’t be complacent, don’t be loyal for the sake of it. If you aren’t involved in internet marketing per se, and participate in Entrecard for the social aspects, you are fortunate that none of what I’ve said here really applies to you, because you have a different agenda.

But if you’re involved in internet marketing and/or blogging to be making money with an online business, it’s all the more important.

You need to constantly monitor where and with whom you advertise, because the internet changes so fast, you may get left behind!

I wish you enjoyable blogging and successful internet marketing!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 26% [?]

Will I Miss The 4 Minute Warning?

If the 4 minute warning is ever given, my partner hopes that we’ll be listening to the radio, and not watching TV, as he reckons we’ll miss what’s being said, as I’ll be too busy slagging off the appearance of the newsreader!

It’s true. I’ve frequently realised that I’ve not heard a word said, cos I’m pulling apart the unflattering hairstyle, poorly fitting jacket, badly applied makeup, seizure-inducing tie….. you get the picture.

There was a time when TV newsreaders followed guidelines restricting their attire to outfits that wouldn’t distract viewers from the news itself. Obviously, guidelines or not, people like me are hopeless cases.

Hey, I love fashion and clothes, but I’m a child of the TV age, and I’ve a short attention span. If an item doesn’t grab my interest fast, it’ll go for a stroll!

Of course, I have wondered what I’d do in my final four minutes — if I managed to actually hear the warning message. After all, there’s not a lot you can fit into just four minutes, is there?

Harris Fellman and Brian “Koz” Kosobucki have some tantalising suggestions for what can be accomplished in such a brief snippet of time, and have collated the best ideas into the aptly entitled creation, 4 Minute Money.

4 Minute Money incorporates videos, reports, marketing and SEO tools for each of the money making techniques, which are all clearly explained, including explicit instruction on how to put them into practice. First you get the information, then the tools to implement it, as well as video tutorials to ensure you get it right!

4 Minute Money - 7 Day Trial offers you the opportunity to try before you buy, and you’ll gain immediate access to:

4 Minute Money Guides
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4MM Guide #3 - “The Automaton System: Robots Making You Money”
4MM Guide #4 - “The Insider’s Guide to Instantly Getting Your Own Free Labor, Products, and Money”
4MM Guide #5 - “4 Minute Traffic Tactics”
4MM Reading Instructions

4 Minute Money Tools
XConversions Keyword Tracker
Yahoo Answers Alert
Classifieds Watcher
Link Cloaker
Versus Keyword Generator
Coupon Keyword Generator
Email Form Creator With Stuffer
Coupon Finder
Coupon Link Pop-Up
Cookie Cloaker / Stuffer
Blogger SEO Tool
Gmail Auto Reply Checker

4 Minute Money Videos / Tutorials
Blogger SEO
Cookie Cloaker
Email Form
Keyword Coupon Generator
Link Cloaker
Keyword Versus Generator
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I’m experimenting with some of the techniques myself, so let me know how you get on with it.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 29% [?]

Working From Home Getting A Tan!

This week, Londoners have enjoyed basking in brilliant sunshine and, as if overnight, my garden has become a jungle, requiring a skilfully wielded machèté to traverse it to the far end!

In the time it takes to blink, the lawn (using the term in its broadest sense) is knee-high, and new foliage is sprouting all around. Blossoms are readying themselves to burst, and I’m especially thrilled that my Magnolia is smothered in buds, as it didn’t flower last Summer.

A smattering of bluebells sprung up this year, but they’re now shrugging off their bright petals to reveal seed pods, which will soon drop, ensuring a more abundant display next Spring.

New life is profoundly inspiring, and a comforting reminder that every living entity renews itself, and that everything has its time.

Yesterday afternoon, I enjoyed a thorough physical workout, attempting to tame the backyard jungle, and today my arms, shoulders, back and legs all attest to how much I am in need of ‘away from the computer’ activities!

I’d just started to cut the grass, when it occurred to me to take a photo - my apologies for the quality.

[Click image to view enlargement.]

Below is a shot of the garden last Summer, after I’d started to knock it into shape.

[Click image to view enlargement.]

There was a spell yesterday when I took a break from hacking down the grass and pulling up weeds, and I sat in the dappled sunlight, listening to the melodic birdsong, and contemplating whatever came into my mind.

Then I realised how privileged I was to be seated in the sun, smelling the fresh cut grass and glimpsing the tiny frogs leaping about their newly-disturbed world.

I’m privileged to be working from home building my own online business. Internet marketing offers many options for making money online, however, my recent experience with blogging has taught me that many people start a blog thinking that they’ll be making money (a full-time living) by blogging alone — this is rare. Making money online with one blog alone is very rare.

Diversify. Your blog can be used as an internet marketing tool to help grow a mailing list, by offering a subscription to a newsletter, updates, or special offers. But don’t immediately start promoting products to your list, first you must gain people’s trust and respect — you have to convince your readers that they can rely on your opinion and recommendation.

They say that an internet marketer, actively promoting to his or her list, earns a minimum of $1 per month for each name on it. That’s why the internet marketing gurus with multiple lists of 50,000 plus are millionaires!

When you have established a reputation, you can email the occasional promotion — your own product, or as an affiliate marketer you could promote other people’s. But be careful. This is an area that’s been highly abused, and I don’t hold with daily mailings, promoting each and every ‘latest and greatest’.

Internet marketers practising this type of email vomit-a-thon in my Inbox don’t retain my name on their list for long. A surprising number do send too many mailings, which makes me wonder if they are making good sales, because people succumb to the pressure. I’d prefer not be making an income by annoying the contacts on my list, and I’d rather retain some dignity, too.

Recommend products that you have purchased, and genuinely consider to be quality and worth the bucks. Once again, I soon unsubscribe when I’m frequently sent recommendations for products from the marketer’s ‘good friend’ who has just launched some new something that he thinks I shouldn’t be without. Phoney, baloney.

Diversify. Develop your own product to promote or, as an affiliate marketer, you can save yourself a whole heap of effort, and earn generous commission, promoting other people’s products.

So many internet marketing strategies can be managed via auto-responders and, once set up, they require the minimum of maintenance. You could be making more money online by doing the same amount of work!

Step back from your blog, view the bigger picture, and apply leverage.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 44% [?]

Google Page Rank 2 Attained

I am in celebratory mood. Why? Reward Rebel is basking in the glory of having attained a Google Page Rank of 2, and from little acorns….

The timing is amusing, as it has popped up like an exclamation mark at the end of my previous post!

Although I haven’t been considering quitting, I had been thinking about a subtle, discreet amendment to the site’s direction, as well as building on new keywords.

But no such thoughts are hovering now. A Page Rank is just what the site needed, to reassure myself and my readers that I’m a competent driver, and am steering in the right direction!

Whoop-diddly-doo!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 31% [?]

Don’t Throw In The Towel!

As I often emphasise, blogging isn’t my ‘thing’, it’s part of my internet marketing ‘thing’ – a requirement of the modern online business.

During the past few weeks, I’ve been heavily involved in developing new projects, and haven’t been as active with Entrecard as I had previously been. However, during the past few days I have tried to allocate some time again to networking with the Entrecard community, as it’s been a good friend to this site.

To shake things up a little, I decided to open my Inbox and drop my card on blogs which had visited me way, way back when, but I was in for a surprise.

Within just a couple of days I have found myself time and again landing on a blog that hasn’t posted for anytime between several weeks and a few months.

When I first started building an online business, including blogs, I read about the high proportion of drop-outs after the initial 3-6 months. This is the first ‘wave’ of quitters I’ve personally witnessed, and it’s disappointing.

Did they just run out of things to say? Were they expecting to earn bucketsful of cash overnight? Have you tried making money online in the past and given up?

I’ve felt fed-up with it all sometimes, particularly the endless series of new technologies to get to grips with. I don’t have the residual funds to outsource, so when something needs doing, it’s me doing it, or it doesn’t get done!

I had to teach myself everything, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far, both in new skills and abilities, and the progress of my online business.

If you find yourself feeling like giving up, try to remember how you felt about making money online – whether via blogging or broader internet marketing techniques — back when you first became interested.

Remember your initial enthusiasm, and the plans you had for your life, which you felt an online business could bring to fruition.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again. Keeping on, keeping on is the only way you’re going to succeed!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 33% [?]

The Art Of Internet Marketing Promotion

Finally, I’ve received the first couple of Derek Gehl videos of the 4 Day Build-a-Biz Challenge.

I’ve been a fan of Derek Gehl from when I first began researching internet marketing and making money online. He is the millionaire CEO of the Internet Marketing Center, and qualifies as an ‘internet marketing guru’, and I’m not generally a fan of the IM guru.

However, I have some excellent IM training manuals from the Internet Marketing Center, and they cost me very little (although I got collared for $120 customs duty, it was STILL a good deal!), so I don’t like to knock the man or his company.

Internet marketing gurus don’t spend their time and money on projects in which there isn’t an investment in the bigger picture. After all, this is how they have become millionaires — boy, can I be naïve sometimes!

Of course, the 4 Day Build-a-Biz Challenge is a vehicle for promoting a new product. Derek is using new software called Bebiz that enables the entrepreneur to create an online business from scratch.

So far, I’ve only watched the first video, and am disappointed. I’d hoped to witness Derek conducting his niche-identifying market research via the routes we are familiar with, like Google Labs, Amazon database scrutiny, Yahoo Answers, forum foraging, and then see him develop his keyword list.

But every step of the creation of his new online business is accomplished via the new software, in which I don’t have the slightest interest.

I’m not particularly keen to watch the remaining videos, but I’ll try to fit them in, just to be fair, as I started this ball rolling, and should see where it winds up.

Sorry there are no wonderful internet marketing revelations!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 25% [?]

4 Day Build-A-Biz Challenge ~ Don’t Miss A Valuable Opportunity

I want to remind you not to miss Derek Gehl’s 4 Day Build-a-Biz Challenge - the first video is released on Monday, 21st April, to qualify for free access, sign-up in advance at 4 Day Build-a-Biz Challenge.

Click the image to link to opt-in form

Derek Gehl, CEO of the highly successful Internet Marketing Center is going to build a fully functioning internet business ~ from scratch ~ in only 4 days, and he’s filming it ‘live’!

I don’t earn anything from you signing-up — I simply believe that if you’re involved in internet marketing, this is a valuable opportunity.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 25% [?]