After the big improvements I am seeing with One Week Marketing Plan I decided it was about time to start excelerating the growth of my online business and finally fell for FirePow. If you have read my last post on the CB Notify plugin and other tools you can use to make your job with ClickBank easier, you could see a screenshot of the earnings I made in a day with CB.

I am grateful for these earnings that I accomplished because of the One Week Marketing Plan but also realise that I am still far from where I want to go, there still are days that sales are slower and others that I see a big jump of 3, 4 or more sales a day. So I am working hard on making the process of money coming in more consistent and reliable.

If you have been a reader of this blog, you must have seen some “messages from the Universe” and this morning I received another one that made me write this post:

Very simply, Mirjam,

the more that you accept responsibility for,

the more power you have.

Doesn’t that rock?

Love,
The Universe

Thought that was a really good message, and it certains holds truth for me. See, I have been fluttering around for way too long, trying all sorts of things like many other people do when they first start out making money online. Many of these people never get any further than making a few bucks online and give up, thinking it isn´t possible for them.

But really, the only person responsible for your earnings online, is you.

The so called “money making products” aren´t responsable for your earnings (or lack of earnings in most cases) nor the advice you take from others. The only person responsable is you. YOU.

In a world that has come accostumed to blaming all the bad on others, the MMO scene really isn´t any different. So many people blame the bad products, the scams and whatever they can think of to not take responsability for slow results. They claim it can´t be done, that they work hours and hours a day, they have thrown away money on crappy products, they can´t afford to sign up for excellent services or training and the list of excuses goes on and end.

And of course, the latest newest excuse is a widely accepted one, the worldwide financial crisis.

Well, I have had enough of it! I have had enough of the excuses, I have had enough of all those negative thoughts and people, saying that “IT” can´t be done, holding on to their negative believes that in the end only bring them down even more!

See, in my area of Spain, unemployment has gone up in a shocking speed, latest news I´ve heard was that the percentage of people unemployed in my area is approaching 20% and unemployment in the whole of Spain belongs to the highest of Europe, yet one of the biggest Spanish football clubs was able to pay a total of over 150 million euros to buy only 2 new players (Kaka and Ronaldo) …

People around me all talk about the crisis, about so and so losing their job, about no money being available anywhere and I am seeing many foreigners trying to sell their homes so they can return to their countries and at times it seems the country has gone mad. The newspapers all feature horrible stories about people in need, disasters and accidents and yet another scam some political hotshot pulled off.

Yet, when digging deeper and skipping over to the job vacancies, I see plenty of jobs available, even more than say 6 months ago. I talked to a friend of mine who wanted to renovate part of his hotel and he kept complaining that it was impossible to find people to do the job. I think the crisis is in the head of many people, and of course I know many people have been laid off and many banks and big companies have fallen down from their pedestal, but really …

YOU are the one responsable for your own earnings when working online.

I know that sounds hard, and I am probably kicking many people in the behind or offending them by saying it so bluntly, but before starting to shout at me, take a real honest look at your own situation, and instead of spending a lot of time complaining  and bitching, moaning and blaming others, put that time to work in a productive way and change your mindset!

If I am able to increase my earnings the way I have been doing lately, you can too!

Now, back to the title of this post, I really do believe this is the best time to start excelerating your business growth despite the financial crisis, I´d rather say that the financial crisis going on everywhere around us, should be the biggest impulse to grow your business and stay far ahead of others that aren´t willing to put in the elbow grease.

So, I have been building blogs, I have been building lenses and OWM projects, I have even started writing my own products to start selling online (and no, they don´t have anything to do with the MMO scene, rather the subject is my true passion, horses and all sorts of therapies) and been trying to streamline the process to get more done in less time.

A big step I have taken the other day was signing up for FirePow, a tool to put blogging on high speed. I had heard of it many times already and looked at what it would do for my business (or what it claims it could do for that matter) but to be honest I was constantly put off by one thing and only one thing, the monthly cost of $127 and I am sure many of you would be put off by that as well.

And yes, it did hurt a bit to pull out the ol´ credit card and put my words into action, but the way I see it is that I can completely combine the OWM with FirePow and but my whole blogging business on speed, saving a lot of time while taking advantage of the built in tools to increase promotion (and thus more sales coming in!)

So far it has been 3 days since I have signed up and in those 3 days I have managed to set up 2 new blogs and almost completed the work I want to do in order to have them being updated for the next 2 months on autopilot, with unique, interesting and informative quality content, videos and pictures. The actual set up took a few minutes which included installing wordpress, theme and plugins for both blogs so that was a big time saver. Actually amazing to see that being done from the same control panel inside FirePow without having to go all different places, cpanels and ftp servers.

Now, to be fair and honest, 3 days is far from enough time to have all the knowledge and experience to be able to give a full complete review, so I am only sharing my experiences and thoughts so far, at the end of my month you can expect to see a full review and results of what I have managed to do with FirePow so sign up for my RSS if you are interested in speeding up and growing your online business.

Some of the excellent features I have been using so far:

• Universal panel to control all your blogs at the same place
• Instant set up of new blogs complete with wp software, themes and plugins
• Free videos that explain all the features of FirePow in a visual manner
• Automatically pulling content for your keywords to build your blog
• Automatically find free stockpictures from within your post, keyword based and added to your posts
• Automatically adding RSS to different RSS directories
• Automatic bookmarking set up to 20 bookmarking sites

Like I said, I am still far from using all the tools that come in the FirePow control panel, but so far I can only say that I am well impressed and have good hopes for it paying for itself in the next month or so and more. I still have to explore all the tools to create many backlinks to my blogs, part of that is the private blog network they have in FirePow containing hundreds of blogs where you can post your short articles with links, and I haven´t fully explored the RSS and social bookmarking yet, although touching the surface on that is already proving to work.

So you might think, Mirjam, you always keep saying that you aren´t gonna spend another dime on mmo products and yet you forked out $127 for blogging software and yes, that is a very legit thought.

Maybe you remember that a few months ago I wrote about having problems with Squidoo and not being able to log in to any of my squidoo accounts. That problem has since been solved and it basically had to do with my internet connection, but still, it lingered in the back of my mind that all my work at squidoo could dissappear for just about any reason.

And yes, I still believe OWM is an excellent way to learn how to make money, how to do keyword research, find profitable niches and products to promote and set up promotional products. It has actually taken over most of my other online work and is starting to form a major part of my income, not just through Clickbank but other affiliate networks as well.

However I have come to the point that I don´t want to have free resources to become the major part of my income, especially since I don´t have any control over those resources so I want to use the OWM lenses created as a means of back up support to my own sites. After all, I do have control over my own sites, can sell them if I want to and build my website portfolio, and the squidoo lenses are a great way to give extra weight to them.

The FirePow blogging software now actually enables me to build new blogs in a very short period of time, promote them, automate them and take them along in my OWM projects and the way I see it now, it is looking to be the perfect combination.

I will be posting on this combination more over the course of the next few weeks as well as share my personal experiences with this blogging software, but I´d be happy to see your thoughts, questions and comments, maybe you have been working with FirePow already and want to share some insider tips with me!

One last note, if you do decide to have a look at the FirePow software, you will see that you can actually import your excisting blogs into the FirePow control panel and use the promotional tools on those blogs, but unfortunately this feature is under maintance at present so if that would be your only reason to sign up, wait. I have already contacted the online support (pretty cool to have online chat support as to not waste time waiting for your questions to be answered!) and they have told me it would be a few more days. I will of course let you know once this feature is up and running again.

If you are still reading (sorry this became a pretty long post nearing 2000 words LOL) I hope you have a great weekend and think about all the things I have said in this post…

You are the only one responsable for your online success!

Check out the FP blogging software

This morning I woke up and found an email from a dear friend of mine. We have been talking quite a bit these past few months (boy, seems like we have known each other for years LOL) and I have been trying to help her set up a few blogs and explain a few things.

In her email at one point she mentioned she had bought some software to make videos that would bring more traffic in than any other program (heck, that is something all of us want right, more traffic!). I received that sales email yesterday as well and decided to have a look, but after a few minutes I closed the screen and went on.

She on the other hand, decided to go ahead and buy the software.

As I was responding to her email, I noticed that all the things I said to her, actually applied to myself and that is what caused me to write this post.

See… in my mind there is one big ugly beast that kills business for internet marketers and the only way to actually become a success online is to kill that beast.

That beast is the Internet marketer him/herself.

Not the person, but their actions or lack thereof…

Now the sales mail explained how to easily make “killer videos” to create a huge amount of traffic, sales pitches like “this video was created in 2 minutes”, “how many can you make a day”, referring to the amount of traffic each video surely was gonna get etc. So yeah, I could imagine anybody watching the sales pitch to start having visions of receiving thousands and thousands of uniques to all their affiliate sites per day, raking in the money as we speak. Besides, it was only a small investment, 40 or 50 dollar I believe, so hey, you would be crazy not to buy it, right?

I am sure that many people watching that sales video and listening to the voice telling he himself was technically challenged and all but with this software he was able to create a traffic monster video in a few minutes, would think they could do the same.

Please understand that I am not ditching the idea of creating videos in order to create traffic, nor am I saying that nobody should buy into the sales pitch, nothing like that.

What I am trying to get at is that before buying yet another piece of software, or yet another “big traffic generator” one stops and thinks about the reason they are not getting enough traffic as we speak.

I mean…there are just so many free resources online that will create targeted streams of traffic, as long as you are willing to put in the elbow grease and work them.

There is no magic pill, no magic formula, creating traffic no matter what anybody says, takes work, it takes time to do the research and find a proper niche, do the research and find proper keywords to rank, and it takes time to create links so that more and more people will find your affiliate site.

So as I was responding to my friend, saying that I wasn’t gonna buy that software because chances are, I am not going to use it, I started thinking about all the resources I already have at my disposal and am not using to the fullest potential myself.

See, after all this time online and seeing so many new launches, so many new products that would pave my way to everlasting riches, there is one thing that any product lacks. One big flaw that no product seems to be able to fix. And probably no product creator wants to fix that flaw because it would mean that any new launch would become redundant and useless.

The big flaw in any moneymaking product is the USER of that product.

And I am not referring to the lack of ability to actually use the product, rather am I referring to the lack of interest to really use whatever tools available already and keep working productively at creating more content and more links to websites to generate traffic.

Back to that video creating software, in the sales pitch it was said that it only takes 2 minutes to create that traffic pulling video, but really come on guys, anybody believes that?

Just a quick reality check here:

• You have to find the idea for the video
• You have to find the product to promote
• You have to find the text
• You have to find some images
• You have to find some background music
• You have to put the video together (which will take a bit longer then 2 minutes, especially in the beginning)
• You have to save the video (and then be able to find it on your computer )
• You have to upload it to youtube or any other video site

So yeah… it looks like a great piece of software, and probably if you are really motivated and able to figure out things really fast, work on caffeine and all you will be able to create one video in 15-30 minutes, maybe bring that down a bit the more you work with it and familiarize yourself with the how-to´s and short cuts.

My thought, chances are that after 2 or 3 videos, maybe some will even make it to 7 or 8, most people will throw in the towel or better said, get sidetracked by yet another new product that makes traffic generating even easier! My estimation is that only a very low percentage of those that buy the software will actually put it to the fullest potential and actually get to the stage where they see their hard work pay off, traffic streaming in, sales going up and get even more motivated to create more videos.

I actually made 40-50 dollars just by passing on and not buying the software cause I know that I belong to the group of people that would give up after a few videos, getting bored out of my head or just feeling it takes too long to keep going.

Acknowledging my flaw is one step on the right track, second step is getting back to work and be productive today, so I am off for now. I would really like to hear your thoughts on all this though!

Are you guilty of buying too many products and then not using them?

Are you guilty of having resources available and have them gather dust

Are you guilty of always looking out for the next best thing?

Are YOU killing your own business?

I just wanted to give you a last update on my article marketing and One Week Marketing Plan challenge before I am off enjoying life offline for a bit.

As you could already have seen in the other updates, I didn´t get to work my regular schedule of setting up my promotional plan because of problems I have been experiencing with Squidoo. As it turns out, the problem is related to my internet access which is a really poor connection, seeing that I live out in the country side and have no landlines here to get a high speed connection.

Anyways I really do hope to get that sorted in the next few months or so, seeing that without a good connection, I am losing a lot of time as you might imagine.

At the start of the challenge I had set up 6 squidoo lenses and added content on them and then went on doing the steps in the One Week Marketing Plan. Now for any of you who is struggling to make money online, I really think it is worth to have a look at this program, it is not just great for beginners to get the idea of how to set up an online promotion, for those who have been working online and felt they were not getting good enough results, this program goes into a lot of detail and lays out a plan and working schedule. I know I got a lot out of it so far!

So, I had the lenses, went on to doing off site promotion and also set up a website of my own that would be supported by article marketing and the squidoo lenses, or at least that was the basic idea until I ran into my squidoo problems and wasn´t able to access my lenses to adapt them and link more.

That I gotta say, got me thinking big time about the use of free sites to promote a product. Now the basic idea behind the one week marketing is to use just sites that are free, so apart from investing some money into learning the ropes (investing in your own skills!) there is no other investment required because all the tools you use are free. However, and I think Jennifer, the author of this plan, is right when saying that as soon as you can, you should spend some money on buying your own website and use the free resources explained to promote that website, giving it more authority in Google because of the already set up pages on high PR sites.

Seeing that I could not fully use Squidoo for this project, I immediately set up a website on my own domain to make sure I could continue with my challenge and would use the squidoo lenses to back up that domain. Hope that makes sense to you all!

What I have seen so far

Keeping in mind that my project has only been “live” for a week now and a few article directories are still in the process of approving my articles that I submitted, and the initial problems I had with my squidoo lenses, I can only say that the project has been a success so far for a number of reasons:

• I was able to stick to my working schedule even though a lot of unforeseen things happened
• I am already seeing traffic coming in on my squidoo lenses and on my own site
• I am already getting hits on the product I am promoting
• And the best of all, I already got one sale!

Plus posting this challenge online has already done a few other things I wasn´t really thinking of when starting. I have gotten a few ideas for future posts that might be of interest for you, so if you haven´t signed up for my RSS you better do so now to make sure you don´t miss out on my future posts.

I have been doing quite a bit of article marketing over the past week and been playing around with different ways of distributing articles, how to write them to get more hits and what to do to increase views. So I think a post will be coming up soon, going more into depth on how to write articles for article submission, what to do and what not to do and things you need to understand when getting into article marketing.

Instead of just submitting to EzineArticles, I have been trying out different article directories, and another future post will be a more detailled post on different article directories, how to use them and what to look for. They are all different and offer different options when it comes to building links, so you better not miss those posts if you want to go into article marketing.

Another thing that has happened these last weeks is being invited as a guest writer on different blogs. Now I know I said a month or so ago that I wouldn´t be doing any promotion for this blog anymore, meaning I wasn´t going to be using any of the “social link building techniques” so widely promoted by everybody and their dog. It is still too early to tell what the impact will be for that decision, but for now I can share that my rss subscribers have gone up with 25 this last week, and google analytics is showing me an increase of 20% in visitors to my site.

I can only say that I am really happy with that and want to take this moment to give a thanks to all of you visitors, leaving interesting comments both here and in my mailbox, I highly appreciate any feedback and the support is wonderful.

Back to the invitation to do guest posts, I am still thinking of that and will probably send you an article if I find them good enough to post on another blogs, just know I am not forgetting about it

The last thing I saw actually made me chuckle, I was being called the “Buzz Killer” by Caleb because of my post on using massive traffic techniques and whether you should follow the hype or not. I would like to repeat here that if what you are doing right now is getting you the results you are after, by all means keep doing that.

If however you are not getting the wanted results by spending hours and hours of work and effort maybe it is time to think for yourself and analise those efforts in order to find a more productive way to work. I will be posting more of my own thoughts on that in the near future as well.

I will be keeping you guys updated of course on my little challenge project but for now I am going to prepare myself for a nice little break and enjoy life offline for a week or so. It will be my birthday this Sunday… time flies when you are having fun … and I am having my mom and a friend over for a week to celebrate and have a little holiday here on the sunny coast of Spain, so if you wonder why there aren´t any new posts for a while, it is because we are having a blast!

See you back next week!

After reading my last posts you might think to yourself, “so Mirjam, would you kindly explain why you aren’t cashing in all those thousand $$$ checks yourself?” and all I can say is that you are completely right asking me that question.

You see, at the time when I first read the SAH my first stage was being completely overwhelmed with all this new information. I skipped through the manual quickly and then went back to really read it.
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So it has been a while that I have last posted, but rest assured I still did not abandon ship!

I have been venturing out doing work off line as well, starting a small catering business since cooking and catering is something that I have been doing for I don’t know how many years, and with some encouragement of my friends I decided to take a step forward and plunge in.

The idea of doing something offline again, away from the home and meeting and dealing with people and clients face to face is a bit strange. So I started wondering if I have been hiding out behind my computer screen. I guess hiding isn’t the real word here but it comes pretty close.
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