.

Surviving this Economic Collapse

I am now dedicating ALL of my time to my new website Surviving Economic Collapse.  I’m doing this because I don’t think that my blog is focused enough on the REALLY IMPORTANT issues that are unfolding before us.

If you’d like to sign-up for the free newsletter that I will be writing each month, please go to: NEWSLETTER

I believe this is some of the most important work I’ll ever do.  Making money online is great, BUT if the money you make won’t buy you anything, it’s completely pointless having it.  HYPER-INFLATION will happen this decade. I want you to prepare yourselves for it.

Luke

.

Of course I don’t know if this is factual, but I DO know (from experience) that when people are in desperate situations and they feel threatened in some way, they WILL do all kinds of crazy things to save themselves.

.

.

.

.

There are several very excellent programs also available, from IBP to SEO Elite, but making money online shouldn’t always mean you have to BUY software every time you want to try some new method of finding potential readers of your blog.

There are two excellent free programs (no ads…………really free), that work extremely well, and they are both very small, so don’t take up valuable resources on your computer.

The first is called KeywordPad.  It is a software for managing large keyword lists used in your Internet marketing campaigns (organic search engine optimization, Pay-Per-Click ad campaigns, etc). Currently it works on Windows systems only, but this may change of course.

The second program is GoodKeywords.  This piece of software is great for finding the common words people usually search for.

For example if you type ‘fishing’ the Overture/GoTo search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘fishing’ was searched 452349 (examples only) times at Overture.Com. Similarly ‘deep sea fishing’ was searched 304407 times. Given one word only, it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word (again this is based on ACTUAL searches made by people).

If the word you typed in not a common search term you will not get any results. It simply means that very few people actually searched for that word during the last month.

Give them a try.  I use them and they’ve both worked well for me.

Luke

.

Like him or not, he was right about that.  What he didn’t say is that it’s also the dirtiest profession in the world.

Luke

.

You can read more about the deal here: The Complete Guide to Traffic.

This is easy the most professional and AFFORDABLE way to become a website traffic master.  30 modules to choose from, each one being between 40 minutes and nearly 3 HOURS long.

I’ve personally done the ENTIRE video course and it is SUPERB.  EVERYTHING this company produces is first class and the people who run it AND who work there are WONDERFUL.  I really can’t recommend this highly enough.

Luke

.

Here’s how a traditional business is started:

1. Get a product or service (could be a car, a wristwatch a gas-station………anything)

2. Advertise your business and your product to find potential customers

3. Convert those potential customers into actual customers

This system has actually worked for many years in just about every industry. Business owners decided that they like a certain business service or product, so they went about making creating that service or product, advertised it…………and hoped that they could then get enough people interested and then convert them into buying customers.

While this was okay in its day, and still works in some third-world countries where there are only a few suppliers of certain products and services, and almost no competition, it isn’t possible to work like this any longer in the Western world, such as Europe, Australia and the U.S.A.

This is NOT the way to start your internet business (or any business for that matter!).

The only thing about the above ‘business formula’ that is correct is number three, converting potential customers. There is also something lacking in the formula. Know what it is?  Yep, researching your market.

Here’s THE winning business formula:

1. Research your market to see if there IS a market and how much competition you will have

2. Get visitors (traffic) to your website.

3. Convert those potential customers into actual customers

4. Get the product or service

What? Get the product LAST? Well, if you think about it, unless you know you have a market, and you know that you can get visitors to your website and you know how to convert them into customers, having a product is pretty much a waste of time.

You see, once you have traffic, you can ASK THEM what they would like, and you can then supply it to them. And they WILL tell you! Why wouldn’t they? If I asked you what you wanted now, and you thought that I could supply one or more of your needs or wants (wants mainly), they surely you would be more than happy to tell me, right?

So, remember this formula. Making money online can be FUN and EASY if you do it right.

YES, you have to work. Yes, it will take some time. But not anything like as long as a traditional business and if you’re working at something you really enjoy, it’ll hardly seem like work anyway.

Luke

The really great thing about using articles is that you can generate and submit as many of them as you want to on as many different article directories as you can find that offer free submission. Sites like ArticleCity, EzineArticles and ArticleDashboard are all excellent, but there are dozens of others of course.

A well-written article earns you major credibility and enhances your expertise in the eyes of potential customers and they give you a chance to really show off the fact that you know your subject.

Articles are also superb traffic building tools. Each article that you write and distribute, while granting others the right to re-print it, has a viral effect on your traffic. Your reach is expanded into areas of the web you may never have discovered on your own.

You see, once an article is written and submitted to an article directory, it’s out there FOREVER! Even if you decide to remove it from the article-sites, other people would have found it and used it on their own site (with YOUR links in it) and you cannot remove the article from other people’s websites.

Articles have a cumulative effect on your link popularity, and on the number of keywords that pull up your site in the search engine listings.

If you don’t feel that you can write, or if you’re simply too busy to write, you can hire a ghostwriter to produce your content on the cheap. There are plenty of freelancers to be found at places like Elance.com. However, I really do recommend you TRY writing. You may be very pleasantly surprised at how much you know AND you might actually enjoy writing, especially if it’s about a subject you’re interested in.

The theory is very simple: the more articles you submit to different article directory databases, the more chances you have of getting higher rates of traffic into your web site.

One last thing to really be sure your articles get placed inside the directories you submit them to is to write up your own original articles. Not only that, you could also post them directly onto your own web site, and offer your site visitors the opportunity to reprint them for free on their own web sites.

There is one thing you must include with every article you release, and that is a link (at least one) BACK to your own website.  This is your payoff for writing and submitting the article in the first place.  Take a quick peek at any of the articles at ezinearticles.com and you’ll see each author’s byline at the bottom of the page.

You’ll sometimes hear people refer to the byline as a “resource box”. They’re both the same thing, but I think the phrase “resource box” describes the content more accurately.

Your resource box contains a very brief summary of your business history and areas of expertise, along with RELATED resources like a free giveaway you’re offering (ebook, email course etc.) and this resource box is your ADVERTISING area. You grant other web publishers the right to reprint and distribute your article at will on the condition that your resource box remains intact and unchanged.

You should write your “Resource Box” up as if you were writing it about someone else and not yourself.

The only limitation to using articles as promotional tools is how many topics you can dream up. If you’re reasonably prolific, you can write an articles about almost any subject in your area of interest or expertise. You can use articles to sell your own product, for building your credibility, or even for promoting an affiliate product.

Writing articles is, in my humble opinion, one of the very best ways to market your website.

Luke

.

Note: To all you gun enthusiasts out there, notice the YEAR this duel took place.  This man created something very special in the same year:

Would somebody please explain to me how the news articles are chosen to be presented to us?  Here’s what I thought happened:

1. Something that affects large numbers of people in the world happens

2. Brave journalists report on this event and send it to their editor

3. The editor makes small adjustments to the article, so that it will fit into the newspaper’s allotted space

4. People read the newspaper and are informed, so that they can make up their own minds how to react

An Example

For about three years now, each morning my wife turns on the TV to watch the news (I don’t watch TV for the news any more) we see the Headline News.  Invariably it’s the SAME STORY.  Huh?  Yep, it’s a very tragic report of a young child who went missing, and was eventually found dead; you know the one.

Now, it’s reaching it’s zenith, and the trial has finally begun.  Lots and lots of really interesting stuff that will affect many people in the world; stuff they REALLY MUST KNOW in order to make informed decisions about their lives.

YES I’m being sarcastic, of course I am.  That’s my point, there’s exactly NOTHING of world interest in “the Headlines” other than something either about a young British woman who married into a very wealthy family (from another wealthy family) or a child being found dead.

The Reality

Is there REALLY nothing happening in the world that WILL IMPACT MILLIONS and BILLIONS of people?  Things that they actually DO need to know about?  OF COURSE THERE IS!!! But that’s NOT what is reported to us.

The REAL News

Here is just a TINY sampling of what’s happening in the world and the TV news won’t tell you about:

1. The world is in a huge financial crisis which has led to the current financial DEPRESSION

2. Forty-four million (out of 310 million) Americans are below the poverty and on FOOD STAMPS, up 10% from when this article was written ONLY THREE MONTHS AGO

3. FOUR Banks (JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America and the Granddaddy of them all, Goldman Sachs), could collapse any day if they don’t get INVENTED (printed) dollars pumped into them to keep them solvent

4. America is now involved in FOUR wars as of June 2011 (Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen)

5. Oil reserves GLOBALLY are now in SHARP DECLINE.  This includes Saudi Arabia and Mexico; two of the biggest suppliers to the U.S. Oil CANNOT last forever!

6. The U.S.A. is becoming a second-world (communist/fascist) country with corporations buying their way into Washington D.C. (Apparently, D. C. now stands for District of Corruption) or are now PART of the Washington hit squad (Paulson, Geitner to name just two)

7. Unemployment in the U.S. is at an all time high of over 20%, but scarily, the OFFICIAL figure is only half of that. Shadowstats.com offers figures calculated the way they were done in the 1980’s, which is far more accurate

8. The Fukushima nuclear reactors are melting down (or have melted down by the time you read this). Why isn’t THAT in the news headlines.  Wouldn’t polluted fish in the Pacific Ocean warrant being headline news?

The Media Circus

The media is as best entertainment, and at worst, an arm of a deceitful government which wants your time, money and effort, to keep it’s schemes going in the games played by those in charge around the world.  It doesn’t matter WHERE in the world you live either; this statement still holds true.

Don’t trust the news on TV or in newspapers.  Look to the internet for real news, otherwise you’ll never know what’s really going on in the world, and you’ll never be able to prepare yourself to protect you family and loved ones.

Luke

This is easily the biggest hurdle you’ll have to overcome if you ever want to make serious money.  Even if you only want a little money coming in regularly without too much work, you’ll still need to overcome the desire to put things off.  What do we humans typically put off? The DIFFICULT stuff, that’s what.  The VERY things that will make a positive change in your life are the things that we put of doing. Sabotaging yourself like this is NATURAL (sadly).

Let me put it like this; getting a car to go from zero to 30mph takes more energy than it takes to get it to go from 30 to 60mph.  In both cases you’re adding 30mph, but in the first instance you haveto overcome INERTIA. Inertia is the physical (and mental) state of staying where you are.  Now, if you want to stay where you are, great.  But YOU don’t (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this).  So, even though it takes MORE energy to do what appears to be the same things (adding 30mph) it is ESSENTIAL that you put forth the effort, because you CANNOT go from 30mph to 60mph unless you have ALREADY gone from zero to 30!

Okay, enough of the car analogies.

Now, here’s the good part.  Once you’ve reached a certain level (you’ve done the tough bit by DOING SOMETHING) you start to achieve MOMENTUM.  And momentum is what will keep you going when there are hiccups along the way as there inevitably will be.  Momentum is the opposite of inertia.  Momentum is the the physical (and mental) state of something that is MOVING.  The great part is, once you get going, it’s actually quite difficult to STOP!

So you don’t know where to start?  Well ,you can simply look online.  Type an area of interest into Google or Yahoo.  Look for home-based business opportunities.  Don’t trust them?  Understandable.  I was like you once.  I didn’t know where to begin, so I just BEGAN.  I DID SOMETHING.  Were there dead-ends?  Of course there were, and there will be for you probably.  Try checking out the my sidebar to see some of the companies that I KNOW really deliver on their promises ——–>

Or you can take a look at my tutorials page for ideas.

The ONLY way you will ever REALLY fail is if you don’t KEEP TRYING.  Making money on the internet IS achievable.  Making money online is actually one of the easiest ways to make money in all of history. You don’t need much money to start, you can (and should) work from home to begin with and the upside potential is HUGE.

Stop procrastinating like I stopped years ago, then go and DO something.  I urge you to do this for your OWN sake.

Luke.

.

.

.

In early 2009, I warned you of the coming financial storm.  Well, the storm is now at our doorstep and NOTHING can stop it from affecting us.  It’s taken years of incompetence, greed and hunger for power by our glorious leaders to bring us to this point, but they’ve done it.

The Warning Sign

The signs were there, but most people chose to ignore them.  Like an electric storm, we are given warning of an impending disaster.  In an electric storm when it is far away, we first hear the rumblings of thunder.  Then, as it draws closer, we start seeing the lightning strikes.

What’s actually happening is that the lightning comes first, and only THEN do we here the thunder, but that’s obvious to us once the storm is close. Important note: once the lightning has struck, there is absolutely NOTHING that can be done to prevent the thunder which follows; the thunders is INEVITABLE!

The most obvious sign that something was VERY wrong with the economy was that our political leaders we over-spending.  In the past few months, they’ve been taking about 2 TRILLION dollars a year in taxes…………and spending about 3.5 TRILLION.  You don’t need a calculator to see that they are spending 1.5 trillions dollars more than they are taking from us. YOU try doing that in your household for just a short time, and you’d need a printing press making counterfeit notes to pay your bills.

Unfortunately for all of us, that’s EXACTLY what our leaders have been doing for several decades now.  What’s worse is that they are doing it FAR MORE now than ever before.

Worth Less Dollars (Worthless Dollars?)

How can they do that?  Well, not only does the price of everything UP and they get MORE TAX because of the increased prices, but they are basically defaulting on their debt obligations (to the countries “trading partners” such as China, Canada and Mexico).  It’s not that they aren’t paying, it’s that they are paying with ever more worthless dollars!

Other Economic Warning Signs

Another sign is chronic unemployment.  While we are being told that unemployment is only around 9% (which is WAY too high anyway), but REAL unemployment (see: John Williams www.shadowstats.com) is actually around 22%.  During the Great Depression, the rate was 25% and was calculated using the same factors that John Williams uses.

There are of course lots of other signs; expanding wars around the globe that are not affordable (and most likely completely unnecessary; e.g. Weapons of mass destruction NOT EVER found in Iraq; Public enemy No 1 found in Pakistan and NOT in Afghanistan……….).  Other signs; bankers making billions of dollars, just in BONUSES, while 44 MILLION people are on food-stamps.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

The Cure

There IS NO CURE, at least not in the short term.  Because of the idiot leaders that we have chosen, and because the game is rigged for US TO LOSE, we are now going to have to endure at least a decade of really, REALLY hard times.  Just like the lighting and the INEVITABLE thunder which will follow, the die has been cast; everything has already been done to ENSURE that this economic depression deepens.  In fact, because of the ongoing money printing by the Federal Reserve (and their European, Japanese and Chinese counterparts), the depression we are in can ONLY get worse.

In all honesty, I think we’ve had it too easy for too long. Money was easy to borrow, food was cheap, jobs were plentiful (if you really wanted one).  Now we’re going to have to actually start WORKING for out livings.

What YOU Can Do

Think of all the ways you can REALLY be useful to others, and you may come up with an idea that will be even better than government (that is, OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY) handouts. What can you offer them that they happily exchange their time and effort for?  That is the KEY to real wealth.

Can it be any worse than I describe?  Yes.  Historically, whenever world leaders have messed-up so badly like they have yet again, they typically start wars.  This is so that they have something to distract us, and something to blame it all on.  I think we could already actually BE in WWIII, but we won’t know that for sure until WE start getting attacked.

Luke

The other good thing is that once you have put some of your information out there (on Squidoo), you can then get interested people to come and have a look at YOUR website.  It’s then up to you and your site to convert them into customers, or at least, into regular readers. The more “website properties” you own (or at least that you control) the more links you can put on them pointing to YOUR money website.

Lenses

In Squidoo, you can create what they call ‘lenses’.  These are nothing more than insights that YOU write about a subject…………ANY subject.  It’s called a lens because it’s your FOCUS on a subject.  So, as an internet marketer, you can create your lens about marketing and making money online.  If you are familiar with email-marketing, you can have a lens about email marketing.

Short Posts But Keyword Rich

You don’t have to write much, somewhere between 500 and 1000 words.  Then, if someone finds your ‘lens’ by using Squidoo’s search-box, they can click to open and read your stuff and then, if they liked it and learned something of value, they might go and take a look at your website.

Squidoo is FREE but they still manage to contribute to CHARITIES.  Which charities?  YOU can choose where the money goes!  Huh? Yep,  what they do is this: when you sign-up for an account, YOU choose which charity gets 50% of any money that the ads on your lens-page generates.  So if you have a popular lens, they’re going to get more click on their Google (and other) ads.  They keep half and donate the other half to the charity of  your choice.

Squidoo Is Highly Ranked

They currently ranke #218in Alexa and have a Google page rank of 7, which is very good by any standards.  They make their money from ads and affiliate links, so they don’t need your money. They are simply using your CONTENT, so that they don’t have to create any content.  And, as you know, CONTENT is king! It’s what brings people TO a website.

I strongly urge you to get an account for yourself and put some content onto a lens about YOUR website’s content.

Give it a whirl and see if you like using it.  If nothing else, it will drive some people to your money websites or your blogs.

Luke.

.

.

.

In my OPINION, the world monetary system is controlling what’s happening in the U.S. either directly or indirectly.  Check this video series out and let me know your thoughts:

.

This WOULD explain why suddenly just about EVERY country is suddenly going through an economic crisis.

Luke

.

1. You don’t have to buy a product to sell

2. You don’t have to create a product to sell

3. You don’t have to deal with customer support

You will need your own website of course, using a blog service like Blogger.com really isn’t an option I’m afraid. You need your own website so you can brand yourself.

Get Visitors To Your Site

You also have to learn how to drive visitors to your site using various traffic tactics.  When starting out, I certainly would NOT recommend trying Google Adwords, as many inexperienced people LOSE money doing this.  FREE ORGANIC TRAFFIC is the best traffic you can have, very much like word-of-mouth advertising.

“FREE” is not strictly true, because you have to SPEND your time and effort on getting website traffic, but at least you don’t have to spend money on it.

The best course I’ve ever seen on getting people to visit your website is The Complete Guide to Traffic.  It’s over 50 HOURS of first class, no nonsense information.

AutoResponder Service

You’ll also need to learn how to use an autoresponder server like GetResponse, or AWeber.  Without a service like this, there’s no way that you can possibly keep up with all of your potential customers.  Also, with an autoresponder, you can effortlessly email hundreds (or thousands) of people once a week with your message or perhaps your weekly newsletter (with your hoplinks and affiliate links in it!).

Affiliate Marketers

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the role of affiliate marketers.  They are basically well-paid commission-only sales people for some of the best products available.  You can develop your own loyal following and present products to them now and again.  Don’t do it too often or they’ll think that the relationship is one-sided.  You need to offer a LOT in return for their continued support.

Clickbank etc.

Clickbank and PayDot.com are two companies that simply wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the enormous and ever-growing army of affiliate salespeople.  Companies like these make it easy for affiliate-marketers to locate products that they would otherwise have great difficulty in finding.

Clickbank, Commission Junction and others have made it even easier to make money online but this is a double-edged sword (excuse the cliche), because it means that there are MORE people learning how to make money on the internet than ever before.

Learning Is Ongoing

And learning IS THE KEY to your success and you should NEVER STOP LEARNING, especially in the internet marketing world, where things change VERY rapidly.  You can be in #1 position in Google for a keyword one day, and on page 100 the next!  That’s how quickly things can change.

You also need to learn about the niche that you’ve chosen, and the best place to do this is to visit three or four of the highest ranked forums for that topic.  They’re easy to find, just use a search-engine and type the words that best describe your niche-area and then look for the word ‘forum’.

Luke

.

The economy is NOT improving, it’s getting worse…………….FAR worse.

Stock Market

As the Dow Jones (and other markets around the world) are UP. Take a look at the chart below:

.

As you can see, this graph represents the past three months of trading on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  Clearly, it’s on the increase.  However (a nice way of saying “but”) the stock market is NOT an indicator of how healthy the economy is.  In this case, it’s a good indicator of how POOR the economy is.  Let me explain.

Stock Market vs. The Economy

In my post about the stock market vs. the economy, I explained how the stock market is really like a big Casino, with a good number of people who cheat; these people are called insider traders, because they have market knowledge that most other people in the market do not have.  This is illegal of course……….UNLESS YOU’RE A CONGRESSMAN OR WOMAN IN WHICH CASE IT’S LEGAL!!!!

The reason the stock market is on the rise now is for three reasons:

1. The Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates SO LOW that the only way that most typical investors can make ANY return on their money to keep up with inflation is to gamble in stock trading.

2. The insider traders (cheaters) within the stock market believe (or know) that the Federal Reserve has every intention of continually printing money out of thin air, backed by nothing.

3. The value of the dollar is declining (in this case, the “value” being how much of something it can buy).

This means that the stock market increase is NOT due to a good or improving economy.

How To Know The Economy Is Bad

There are two really good indicators of how healthy the economy really is:

1. Unemployment

2. Inflation

Unemployment figures keep increasing.  Also, there are MORE people who are approaching work age and coming out of college, available for work, but there is no work for them (unless flipping hamburgers counts).

Inflation is WAY higher than the 1% that we are being told it is.  How do I know?  Same as you.  I SHOP!!!  Gasoline and food, two of the most important things that we buy for our everyday living and BOTH are going up much, MUCH higher than 1%.  My guess is gas could be $4 a gallon again within 6 months (it’s already WAY over $3.30 where I live) and I’ve personally seen about a 10- 20% increase in my grocery bill.

The Fall of Rome

History tells us that Rome went through very similar crises are we are seeing today (NO, not gasoline prices!), and during that time, their was a huge growth of gladiatorial contests all around what is now known as Italy (not just the city of Rome). How is this similar to today?  I give you…………………………the UFC. (and all the other Cage Fighting organizations out there).

Luke.

.

.

One of MANY currencies now it trouble, and being devalued at a pace faster than people can earn it, the greenback was, up until recently, considered the “gold standard” of currencies.  It’s still used as the default currency for world trade, but this is about to change and it WILL affect you.

Money vs Currency

While most people still see currency as being the same thing as money, this is clearly not the case.  Here are the specifications for money; all these things are REQUIRED:

Money has to be:

1. Portable

2. Durable

3. Divisible

4. Fungible

5. A store of Value

Let’s look at each of these in turn:

1. Portable: this speaks for itself; you have to be able to take it with you

2. Durable: it must be physically strong to handle some abuse

3. Divisible: it must be able to be split into smaller parts

4. Fungible: it must interchangeable, so one is directly equal to another

5. Store of value: it MUST retain is purchasing power throughout its existence

Money

Money, such as gold, silver, platinum, palladium etc. meets all of these criteria, including number 5.  For example, 3000 years ago, 1oz of gold would buy you about 350 loaves of bread.  Today, it will buy you about the same (depending on your choice of bread and shop that is).

Currency

Currencies (including the Greenback) meet the requirements of 1, 2, 3 and 4.  but does NOT meet the fifth.  In fact ALL currencies eventually resort to their INTRINSIC value, and that is ZERO.  The cost of the cotton to make the paper is actually DESTROYED when they put ink onto it.

I would suggest that the fools gold these days is CURRENCY!

Luke

This is simply because you can hear your OWN voice in your head when you read, and you do, of course, trust yourself, when you may not trust the voice of somebody else.

The Sales Copy MUST Be Good

This is not a lesson on how to write great sales copy.  I couldn’t possibly do that just in one post, and possibly not even in one book.  However, there are some basic rules that you should apply.  Here are the most important things to keep in mind:

1. Make it benefit oriented.  Load it up with EVERYTHING that your product will do for the reader.

2. Benefits. Make the benefits about how the reader will FEEL (emotionally) when they buy your product.

3. Use A.I.D.A. Remember, this has worked for years, and still works.

A = Attention

I = Interest

D = Desire

A = Action

Don’t leave ANYTHING out.  If you think something you’re thinking about isn’t really important, ADD IT anyway.

Luke.

.

To which I would add, “or people with badges and guns.” - Luke

.

.

Peter Schiff describes perfectly what must happen to get out of debt.  Now, let’s see what Steve Martin thinks of that plan:

.

.

Nope, looks like Steve’s character is about as stupid as our leaders.

Households have to budget, companies have to budget and so do governments….but politicians HATE being restricted like that.  I mean, that would limit their POWER, and they wouldn’t want that!!!

Luke

Though the search-engines can’t ’see’ videos (yet) tagging them properly and giving them keyword-rich titles WILL get them noticed, particularly if you add them to video sites like YouTube (there are LOTS of other now, just Google “YouTube alternative” to find them).

Good reasons to do video marketing to get visitors to you site?

An online business with a high search-engine ranking is considered to have more credibility; these are often called “authority sites”.  These are sites that have LOTS of links to them.  YOU want YOUR website to become an authority site!  Video marketing is great way to do this.

Video CAN go viral, which means OTHER people will take the “embed code” from the likes of YouTube (don’t forget all the other sites will you!?) and put them onto THEIR site, giving you more exposure.

How easy is it to get started marketing your site with videos?  DEAD easy!  Below is a link to some free software called CamStudio.  It records what’s on your screen AND your voice (if you choose to do so), so you don’t have to buy a video camera and worry about how dorky you might look with a friend filming you. You can do demonstrations on your computer and simply send the resulting video to YouTube etc.

Video Cameras

Of course, you may really enjoy being in front of a camera, and if this is the case, then by all means have somebody film you.  Video cameras are VERY inexpensive now and far superior to the ones made just a few years ago. However, if you can’t afford one, you can use a webcam that cost about $15, but nowadays most laptops have them built-in anyway.  A colleague of mine actually films himself walking around town, and then turn his laptop around to face things he wants people to see in his demonstrations.

Of course, don’t forget to add a text link to your website so that people know how to find you.  AND make sure the title and tags you use for each video include keywords that the video is about.  Make it educational and or fun and people WILL come to your site to check it out.

Benefits of Video Marketing

The benefits of video marketing far outweigh any negatives, not that that are many anyway.  Here’s the great FREE piece of software (you know just how much I LOVE FREE STUFF!) from Cam Studio.

Of course, you shouldn’t JUST market with videos.  This should still be considered a supplement to your article-writing and posts on forums and other people’s RELATED blogs.  Keep using the best traffic-building techniques found in Traffic Tactics and other great products, and you’ll have a well-rounded advertising and marketing campaign system working for you, even while you sleep.

Luke.

.

.

.

.

The video is about 17 minutes long and is in two parts.  Please watch them both and consider what YOU would do if this happens.  What preparations have you made?  If you think it can’t happen, you simply will NOT be ready for it and you will suffer the consequences.

Some suggestions:

1. Stock up on canned food

2. Buy a water filter (Katadyne make excellent filters)

3. Buy some books for reference (edible wild plants in your area)

4. Stock up on some multi-vitamins

5. Buy a bicycle

6. Buy a good supply of ammunition for your weapon ( you DO have a weapon, right?)

7. Buy some pre 1965 silver coins (they are 90% silver so have INTRINSIC value)

There is a LOT more you can do, but these things are among the most important.

Personally, I don’t think it will happen this way.  In my opinion, it’s much more likely to continue the way it is going; a gradual, barely noticeable decline in the standard of living, along with increasing crime, loss of jobs and homes, and inner-cities being run-down because there’s not enough money for their upkeep.  However, it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE go happen just like the video shows that it can.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, after all, our glorious leaders can get us out of this can’t they!?  I mean, they got us INTO it, so they know what they’re doing………….right????

Luke

.

.

.

.

From The Horses Mouth

So, in Alan Greenspan’s (Ben Bernanke’s predecessor) OWN words, to pay the government’s bills, all they have to do is print money!  And this is in DIRECT CONTRAST to what Ben Bernanke said in December 2010:

.

Dollars WERE equivalent to Silver and Gold

Have a look at the image below:

.

Note, at the bottom of this PRE 1930’s dollar bill, it states “In silver payable to the bearer on demand”.  This means that the bank would HAVE to give the bearer silver in exchange for the note.  Now look at this dollar bill below:

.

Now you’ll note that the dollar bill states that this bill is the ONLY LEGAL way to pay for goods, services and taxes.  In other words, it is now a FIAT CURRENCY.  Read this if you’d like to know more about what a fiat currency really is:

Why Does Money Have Value?

What Does This Mean To You?

Fiat currencies ALWAYS return to their INTRINSIC value.  What is the value of a piece of cotton-based paper?  Well, it’s not really big enough to use as toilet paper…………..

Luke

.

Expired Domains

Can you imagine how many thousands of links there are out there pointing to domain names that no longer exist?  Well, YOU can easily benefit from all the work that other people have done to get traffic to those sites by buying the domain name.

Things To Consider

When buying an expired domain, there are several things to consider.  Here are a few of them:

1. How long has the site been off-line?  The older it is, the likelihood of the links to it still being active diminishes.

2. What’s the page rank of the domain? Obviously, you want a domain with as a high a page-rank as possible.

3. How many backlinks does it have? Again obvious, the more the better.  Use Yahoo’s link search feature which is more accurate than Google’s.

4. What’s the ‘WHOIS’ data.  Well worth knowing the history of ownership.  If they have a bad reputation, don’t touch it!

5. What has the site looked like over the years?  Use the Wayback Machine to see the sites variations over the years.  To find the wayback machine, just bing, yahoo or google the term.

Finally, what’s the cost?  If it’s too expensive, look for another domain; there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands out there!

Luke.

.

.

.

.

World Population

Humans have been around on the planet for about a quarter of a million years, depending upon your source of information.  I’m referring to Homo Sapiens, not Lucy, the bi-pedal ape-like creature that roamed the earth some 3.6 million years ago.

Even if Young Earth believers are correct and the earth is only about 6,000 years old and humans were put on it then, it’s still OLD compared to our life spans of about 70 years.

In 1950, the earth’s population was 2.5 billion (2,500,000,000) people.  Today there are about 7 billion.  So, let’s be generous and say that the new earth believers are correct (and I’m not one of them by the way). That means that it took 5, 939 years to reach two and a half billion people (but realistically it took a LOT longer than that).

So, in 61 years, the population has almost TRIPLED!!!

Population Explosion

In my article World Population Is Out Of Control I discussed how this can only lead to shortages of food and clean drinking water.  You see, our technology, as advanced as it is, cannot keep pace with the explosion of the number of people on the planet.  Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, but ONE of those advances is in medicine, which helps people live LONGER, and makes it possible for even MORE people to have MORE babies.

Currency Explosion

If there is too much demand of something and not enough supply, the value of that thing skyrockets.  If you put that equation onto food and clean drinking water, you’ll realize that not only will the price of food an drinking water increase, but it there simply won’t be enough of it to go around, and the result will be famine and resulting poverty and starvation.

The flip-side of that is when you have too much of something and not enough demand, the value will PLUMMET.  Take a look at the graph below:

.

As you can see, it’s a chart showing how much currency (NOT MONEY, JUST CURRENCY) was put into the monetary system by Alan Greenspan (then the head of the Federal Reserve) during the Y2K  ”crisis” in 1999, which turned out to be a NON crisis, and then again just after the world trade center was attacked the the Saudi Arabian idiot zealots.

These were mere BLIPS on the radar! What the new Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is doing makes what Mr. Greenspan did look like a toddler with a cap-gun compared to the supreme commander of a military with his finger on a 1,000 mega-ton nuclear weapon.

That’s actually a better analogy than I first thought, because it IS going to have DEVASTATING effects on YOU and YOUR LIFE.

How This Will Affect You

You cannot escape the effects of this SUPER or HYPER Inflation.  If you do nothing it will affect you negatively: prices of food, clean drinking water and gasoline, all the things we need to survive from day to day, will skyrocket and you’ll have trouble buying enough to feed yourself and your family.

If you do something, such as invest in something that is going to be in great demand, then it will affect you positively and you will survive and even prosper.

Listen to people who KNOW what’s going to happen and who have a great track record of being CORRECT.  Some examples of these people are Gerald Celente, Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Max Keiser, Robert Kyosaki etc.

If you keep listening to the lies from the politicians and all their media sycophants, you’re bound to be led like a sheep to slaughter.

Read more, get in shape physically and learn new skills.  This is going to be one of the rockiest decades of your life.

Luke

I think you’ve read all of these headlines and probably hundreds more just like them.  However, the reality is MOST people offering internet business opportunities want nothing more than to make themselves rich.  Why is this?  (you know the answer already)…………because people are SELFISH!  NO, not YOU, heaven forbid.  All the OTHERS out there of course.

Okay, a little sarcasm was required there I think.  We are ALL interested in ourselves FAR more than we are in others.  The one time that MAY not be true is when we’re head-over-heels in love with somebody, and that is normally a very fleeting feeling (and is also rationally explained by self-interest…………..it FEELS GOOD!).

More Scams in This Economic Depression

So, back to my point.  There are LOTS (thousands) of scams out there on the world wide web (especially now that we’re in an economic depression), and you need to protect yourself from the predators; those who want something from you by offering you something in return.  Here’s how to protect yourself:

The old adage “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is” applies online as well as off.  If you come upon a website that offers to set up a business for you, find customers for you, sell to them and do all the normal business things like credit-checking, credit-card processing and tax reporting etc. and all you have to do is pay them some money, you KNOW that this is nothing more than a scam.

PayPal

These scams are often monthly subscriptions (not all are scams, some are EXCELLENT) and all they want is to bill your credit card each month for several months before they go out of business and shut their website down.  These sites come and go all the time because they are run by the same groups of people, over and over again.

If a site has really poor spelling or grammer………..oops, I meant grammAR, then it’s another little clue that you should avoid giving your credit card details. Use PayPal whenever you can.  It’s by far the safest way, as the people you’re buying from never see your credit card details.

Credit Card Scams

Regarding credit cards, if the site refuses to accept PayPal or PayDot.com (or similar) and only wants your credit-card details……..it’s VERY LIKELY that it’s a scam.  This is a bad sign indeed, because most legitimate online companies will gladly accept paypal and the like these days.

Social Security Number

Sites that ask for ANY personal details like your social security number must be avoided like Yersinia pestis (look it up!).

Sites that ask for Donations AFTER they have let you download the product are legitimate for the most part, but again, don’t give out your credit-card or any other details!  Sometimes these outfits offer some poor quality or out-of-date product so that you will feel obliged to give them your credit-card info, but don’t. NEVER give out ALL of your social security number……….EVER!  It’s bad enough what your government does with it, without you adding to the list of parasites.

With your social security number (which they’ll say they need for “security purposes”) they can wipe you out! They can access all kinds of accounts with this information alone.

Urgency or Rarity Ploy

If the site makes you think that they are about to “run out” of a down-loadable product, this is either a call for immediate action (a legitimate but sleazy way of marketing) or a scam.  How can you run-out of a file that can be replicated a BILLION times or more? This IS a technique used LEGITIMATELY by some internet marketers who ACTUALLY DO limit the number of a certain product they will sell, but this is rare.

Scambusters

A great site to investigate is ScamBusters.  Check it out! There’s also another great site call Hoax Slayer.  Definitely worth checking on before you buy something online.

As if we don’t have enough parasites in D.C., the District of Corruption, we have to now endure ONLINE scams too.  Keep a watchful eye and use some common sense, or perhaps that should be UNcommon sense.  Check forums by using your favorite search engine for the product/service you’re thinking of buying, then put the ‘+ scam’ next to it.  You’ll soon see what others have to say about it, usually from people who have already been burned.

Be safe out there!!!

Luke.

.

.

While writing your posts you need to keep in mind a few basics.

A catchy post title or headline is about 50% as important as the content of the rest of your post. It can glue a reader to your post immediately.

Write in a friendly manner but avoid using too many jargon words.  Explain things using familiar words that most other people use.

Make sure that you hold your reader’s attention by making your posts catchy. Don’t write in a tone that is tiring or boring. Write short sentences and keep then crisp and precise. Always hit the point immediately in the course of your post.

Keep it simple. This is the rule of thumb you must follow at all point. Long tedious posts are just boring (I know because I’ve written some myself!). No one has the time to throw away, no matter how well you write.

Using the keywords of your posts frequently increases the search-ability of that particular article which in turn leads more people to visit your blog. DON’T OVER-DO THIS, or Google (and Yahoo now) will give you a slap on the wrist!

Keep linking the blogs you read to yours in order to build a network of links. Remember, linking increases rankings (one way links are by far the best of course).

Make sure you put your thought clearly before the readers so that it does not become dull.

At all costs keep your content – articles, poems, photographs, videos – reader friendly.  Your reader must be at the center of your post in a way that he (or she of course) must feel that he is gaining something out of reading your post. This is the basic rule in blog writing.

Never let the reader feel that he has been tricked into reading your post or clicking on your blog link. You are ruining all your long term chances of that reader coming back to your blog if you use trickery.

Making grammatical and spelling errors can be a major put off for many readers. They may not visit your blog again because your grammar stinks. Always proof read your blog. A small typo here and there can be understood, but make sure you don’t make LOTS of errors.

So, be consistent with your blog content and watch visitors start to increase week after week.

Luke

Democrat                              Republican

.

Left Wing or Right Wing?

In the U.S. and other countries that have what’s termed a “two party system”, there is a common belief that people of voting age have the power to choose what kind of government will run their country.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

As you can see from the image above, the reality is (in my opinion) that you are ALWAYS voting for the same creature but you are simply choosing which head will do the talking!

If you are naive enough to still think that your vote carries some kind of power over how your country is run, then don’t bother reading further; you have been brainwashed to the point that nothing I say will make any impact. However, if you have just a slight inkling that maybe, just maybe, you have been fed a bunch of BS all your life and you think that there’s a possibility that your vote makes exactly NO DIFFERENCE to how well the country is run, then read on.

Military Industrial Complex

Dwight Eisenhower was the 34th President of the U.S.A.  In January 1961 he made his farewell speech; you can see it below:

.

What he so eloquently describes is EXACTLY what has happened.  The U.S. and many other countries are now in a kind of chain reaction, where both the gov. and the military, along with their banking and corporate friends, are snowballing out of control.  It’s part of the “too big to fail” mentality.

Too Big To Fail

What exactly does this mean anyway?  If a company is so bad at what it does that it can’t sustain itself, why SHOULD politicians take tax payers money (either directly with taxation or indirectly by inflating the money supply) and give it to a company that is, by definition a failure? Why? Because their friends asked them to; no other reason.

Capitalism

Capitalism is about making money by creating products and services that people want and need and are willing to exchange goods and money for.

Communism

Communism is about sharing total wealth of a group (commune) of people, regardless of their input.

Fascism

Fascism is the merger of state (government) and corporations (banks and other businesses).  Mussolini (probably the most famous fascist in history) called it “corporatism”.

Which one do YOU think is currently in place in YOUR country?

Whatever you “political leaning” is (and everybody has one even if they think they don’t) try to keep in mind the REALITY of what’s happening, whichever country you live in. If you seriously think that ‘Party A’ knows all the answers and ‘Party B’ gets it all wrong, then you are really saying that one group has ALL the answers.   When you think about it a bit, you’ll realize that’s simply not possible  NOBODY (not EVEN the religious leader of your choice) has all the answers.

.

.

Luke

.

Windows

Have a look at the image above.  Anything look strange?  You got it, several of the windows have been bricked-up. Why? you ask (at least I hope you did).  It’s because in England under King William III, the politicians introduced (that is ENFORCED) the WINDOW TAX, in effect TAXING THE LIGHT!!!

If ever you go to England (I’ve been there and seen for myself) and pay attention to their architecture, you’ll see that many hundreds of thousands of building have their windows bricked-up so that less light gets into the building.

Daylight Robbery

Some people believe that the term “Daylight Robbery” came from this tax.  Most British people at the time were totally against having an ‘Income Tax’ levied against them, as they believed it would be too invasive, knowing that it would mean that everybody would have access the personal information about them; after all, what’s more personal than your own finances, other than perhaps your bedroom preferences.

The Next Window Tax?

What worries me is that if such an absurd tax can be levied on people by politicians (so that they can spend YOUR money on THEIR goals……….lifestyles) then what can we expect in the future?  Here are some ideas for all you budding theives………..I mean, politicians out there:

1. Tax the air we breath

2. Tax the food we eat (oops, too late, they already do that)

3. Tax our thoughts (they already tax mine!!!)

4. Tax our freedom (darn it, I missed the boat again)

5. Tax rainwater (they’re ALREADY considering it: http://americansforprosperity.org/040610-obamas-new-tax-onrainwater)

6. Tax our taxes (they do that too; pay income tax, then when you spend it, you’re taxed again through sales taxes)

I wonder where this mentality of taking other people’s money and resources comes from?  Perhaps it’s the fact that most politicians (yes, probably even the ones you like) demonstrate all the same characteristics of sociopaths?

Luke

.

Choosing a domain name can be a very stressful thing to do.  On the face of it, it really shouldn’t be, but I’ve personally spent DAYS doing keyword research, just to find out that the ideal domain name isn’t available.  Well, a FREE software program called Domain Samurai can change all of that for you.

Domain Samurai

Noble Samurai has already brought us Market Samurai, and now they are offering a FREE program that will help you find domain names that are available, or will soon be available, that are similar to the one you are looking for.

.

There IS a paid upgrade (of course) which will help you find even more information, but the free version is excellent as it is.

Free Version

What will the free version do for you?  Just go to this site and check it out. www.domainsamurai.com

Paid Version

The paid version isn’t really paid, it’s just that to use the Aged Domains module within Domain Samurai, you must have a DomainFace account, which is where they make their money and charge you a fee.

Luke

.

.

Luke

.

.

Inside Job

I saw an excellent documentary recently called ‘Inside Job’.  I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know how the financial crisis that started in the U.S. in 2008 all happened.

Unlike the more recent movie style movie ‘Too Big To Fail’ starring William Hurt, this one doesn’t pull any punches.

‘Inside Job’ details how bank(st)ers and politicians colluded to keep their jobs safe and their bonuses high, while making the lives of millions of “common” people (e.g. me) much worse.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

The movie demonstrates how their system worked; the bankers used almost free money from the federal reserve (I think their interest rate was something like .001%) to make BETS on the derivatives market, the “exotic instruments” based around the casino called the Stock Market.

If their bets paid off, they take the profits and put the money in their bank accounts.  If their bets were failures, they KNEW they’d be bailed out…………with TAXPAYERS money.  The game was rigged such that they simply couldn’t lose.

Politicians, and also many religious leaders, use these sneaky tactics to part you from your money.  Even if the politicians can’t take enough money from the taxpayers to pay for their exorbitant lifestyle, their outrageous “war on drugs”, “war on terror” and actual wars in other peoples’ countries, they will print more money and in so doing make the money you’ve saved over the years worth less.  Prices always rise when inflation (money printing) is done by politicians to pay for THEIR costs.

My Movie Review

I’d recommend the movie and I only have two comments to make about it:

1. Two people who are interviewed an appear to be two of the “good guys” have since been involved in sex scandals (Eliot Spitzer and Dominique Strauss-Khan).

2. At the end of the movie, the narrator says that we are now coming out of “the recession” caused by the bankers and their politician friends.

I have no comment on the first point, but as to the second, we are NOT coming out of anything.  We are just at the beginning.  Things can only get progressively worse (for most people at least) before they get better.  There has to be a massive “reset” of the system, because, like the housing bubble, it’s gone completely out of equilibrium, and when that happens, something HAS to change.

Change can be good, but it can also be VERY painful.

Luke.

Writing doesn’t come easily to many people which is why there are so many article-directories out there.  The few who can write well are willing to provide content for your website so long as you give credit to the author and put a link on your site.  This is a very equitable arrangement as YOU don’t have to write, and THEY get links to their website.  Definitely a win-win situation.

That’s ONE thing you can do with articles written by other people.  Another great way to use other people’s content is to put several articles together into a compendium-book.  You still have to give each author FULL credit for his or her work and you still need to include links in the book to the authors’ websites, but given that caveat, you can produce and ebook in one day very easily.

What Is It About

Firstly you need a subject matter.  Once you’ve decided what you want the book to be about, go to article sites like Go Articles, Article City, Idea Marketers and Ezine-Articles and use their search-boxes to find articles related to your subject.

READ THEM!  Yep, make sure that each article is well-written and that it does make sense.  Collect enough articles for about 50 pages, which will be about 25 articles or so.  Leave them EXACTLY as they are!  Don’t change a word, even a spelling error.

Starting

Now, write a few lines introducing your book and making it clear that it is a compendium of ideas from several different authors.  Put the articles in some order, and then write an index page with the title for each article along with the author’s name and ad the correct page number.

Free Word Processing Software

If you don’t have a decent word-processing package, one of the best is OpenOffice, which is totally FREE and very impressive in what it can do.  OpenOffice also has several other office utilities, but the one you want right now is OpenOffice ‘writer’, (though you may as well download all of the other utilities as you may want them and as I said, it’s FREE!).

PDF Files

The other great thing about this software (how much better can it get?) is that it has a built-in pdf printer, which is also one of the best pdf printers out there.  It’s one of the best because you can write ANY text you want and then hyperlink the text to ANY website.  Many pdf printers don’t let you do this.  Use this feature to put links to YOUR websites in your introductory page.

Appearance Of Your Book

Make the fonts of your ebook look interesting.  Don’t just use the default Times New Roman.  Change some font colors too.

So, now that you’ve compiled your book using this software, click ‘File’ then click ‘Export As PDF’.  Save it somewhere you can find it, like your desktop, then click ‘Save’.

Let the software do it’s magic, and then once it’s finished processing, you have a nice new ebook.  You can the book away as a bonus or you can give it to people who sign-up to your mailing list.  By the way, if you aren’t creating a mailing-list, you MUST do this.

Luke.

.

Politicians, preachers, benefit junkies, many “public servants” and children up to at least 16 years of age “ride the wagon”.  That leaves the rest of us to “pull the wagon”.

Luke.

.

.

What Is Inflation?

Inflation is nothing more than increasing money supply, that, in turn, makes prices go up in response.

What Is The Current Inflation Rate?

The current STATED rate of inflation is 2%.  That’s what our leaders want us to believe. They want us to think that the cost of living is only going up by 2 dollars in every hundred per year.

What Is The REAL rate of Inflation?

If you are the person who spends the money in the household and/or you buy gasoline, you already know that the cost of living is going up WAY more than 2%.  If you look at the chart below, you’ll see what John Williams (NOT the musical composer!) has calculated it to be:

John uses the original method of calculating statistics that was used in the 1980’s, when it was done accurately.  He runs a great website called Shadowstats.com, which is well worth looking at.

As you can see, REAL inflation (as of May 2011) was about 12%………..MUCH higher than stated by our wonderful, all knowing, all seeing leaders.

Why The Difference?

Our financial leaders (who’d want to be led by them???) use a different “model” now and they do this so that they can appear to be achieving their stated goals.  It’s just like cheating at a game of monopoly or scrabble and then convincing yourself that you won.

They use TWO different methods that, as you’ll probably agree, make no sense whatsoever.  They use:

1. Geometric weighting

2. Hedonics

Geometric Weighting

Geometric weighting is where they put more mathematical emphasis (weight) on goods that are dropping in price, and less emphasis on things that are going up in price.  This has the effect of making inflation look less.  An example of this would be if prime-rib is going up in price (it is) but ground-chuck is going down in price; they’ll put the mathematical weighting on the crappier-meat and tell us “hey, hamburger is going down in price, so stop eating prime-rib and start eating hamburger!”.

Hedonics

Hedonics is where they “weight” (put more emphasis on) products that give more pleasure (Hedonics derives the the word hedonistic, which in turn came from the Greek word ‘Hedon’ meaning ‘pleasure’).

So, and example of this would be when New York Federal Reserve chairman William Dudley stated:

“Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful.  You have to look at the prices of all things.”

From the crowd he was addressing in Queens, NY, somebody shouted out “I can’t eat an iPad!”.

Don’t Believe The Media

The TV news along with newspapers will only report what is released by our glorious leaders and their minions.  If you believe everything they say, you won’t have the right mindset to prepare yourself what is about to come our way. The cost of living IS going up, and it’s going up dramatically.

We use gasoline to get us to work and to drive to grocery stores to buy our food.  We MUST eat to live and we must get to work to have the money to buy food.  Just because technology is improving, doesn’t mean our standard of living will improve along with it.

I urge you to start thinking seriously about how you will survive when the SHTF; it will happen, and it’s likely to happen sometime in 2013.  But, it may happen sooner, especially if the dollar is no longer accepted as the world’s reserve currency, which is what the Chinese, Brazilians, Russians and several other countries are considering.

Luke.

.

Before You Begin

Before you start your home-based business there are plenty of misconceptions that you need to be aware of. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that working from home isn’t work.  Sometimes it will become MORE work than your previous job of selling your time to somebody else.

When I first fired my boss and started working for myself, I found that I spent more hours, not less, and worse, I started to worry about my business.  THIS IS A GOOD THING!  It means that you CARE about your business.

Also, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can get up at 8am, laze about until 9am before booting up your computer and then having 2 hour lunch.  Anything worth having REALLY IS worth working for.  A few people on this planet get lucky, but  most of us are about average in the luck-department.  Create your own luck by starting as soon as possible, having short lunch-breaks and don’t finish until what you set-out to do that day is DONE.  If you can’t possibly finish your task that day, start even earlier the next day and make sure you’ve completed the previous days work.

Luck

Luck is one thing and one thing only; it’s when opportunity coincides with preparation.  Be prepared for what you want by learning everything you can about a subject.

Knowledge

To start, you obviously need knowledge, but you also need determination.  Without this, nothing will work for you (unless you happened to be born into wealth, which is a LOT rarer than you might imagine).  You also need a stong belief in yourself and more importantly, a belief in your ability to LEARN new things.  In school we are NEVER taught HOW TO LEARN, which are just shown things that we are told that we should learn.

Never Quit

Perseverance is also paramount.  Without the “never quit” mentality, you may well stumble at the first hurdle (don’t you just HATE cliches????!).  But the single most important thing you can have to ensure your eventual success is MOTIVATION.  Your WHY!  WHY do you want a business you can run from home?  Once you can honestly answer this question (and believe me when I say that it took me YEARS to work out what MY “why” was) then you are well on your way to making ANYTHING you want work-out.

Why Do It?

Knowing what your real motivation is (your “WHY AM I DOING THIS?”) will give you ALL the FUEL you’ll ever need to keep-on-keeping-on when you have those irritating and sometimes seemingly insurmountable problems arise.

What is YOUR why?  Well, it could be your daughter’s education, or a good retirement for you and your wife.  Find out what your “why” is over the next few weeks.  Think about it and then every time you have a problem with you business, you can simply think about your “why” and I promise you, this will give you all the fuel you’ll ever need to keep going.

Luke

.

.

.

Money As A Store Of Value

Money as we know it, Dollars, Yen, Rem nimbi, Rubles etc, is a pitifully inadequate store of value.  Why?  Because it can be created at will by people who don’t know how to create wealth.  Wealth creation is NOT done by politicians; they are really only good at four things:

1. Lying

2. Taking other people’s money

3. Using other people’s money to buy votes (and therefore power)

4. Printing money

I have no doubt that some politicians go into politics for noble reasons (the likes of Ron Paul), but most career politicians simply want unearned power and free money.  But I digress………..

Currencies Intrinsic Value

Whatever currency your country uses to trade in, its INTRINSIC value is ZERO.  What is intrinsic value?  It’s the value that a thing has by its very nature.  For example, anything that can be used to make things (wood, metal etc.) has an intrinsic value.  Some metals have more intrinsic value because they are more rare than others (which is the same for wood by the way), such as Platinum, Palladium, Gold and Silver.   They can be used in industrial applications to make things, such as catalytic converters for cars exhausts, mirrors, electronics etc.

Fiat Currencies

Fiat currencies have NOMINAL value; that is, they are valued in name only.  A $1 bill costs the same as a $1000 bill to make and they both have the same intrinsic value (NOTHING!).

The word fiat means comes from the Latin ‘fieri’ which means “let it be done”.  In other words, fiat currency is ONLY pieces of paper that SOMEBODY (a government usually) SAYS has value, and is ACCEPTED by people to be a medium for trade.

When people lose FAITH (belief without proof) in a currency, it’s value ALWAYS drops to its INTRINSIC value…..which is ZERO.

Where You Live

Wherever you live in the world, you are currently in a very dangerous situation if you have all of your wealth in a bank, as digital money on their computers, or as cash under your mattress.  The cash is being devalued as more money is being printed than EVER before in world history.  Supply and demand works for cash just as it does for any other and ALL other products.  If there’s an over-supply of something, it’s perceived value drops, along with it purchasing power in the case of currency.

Other Forms Of Currency

What you can offer people in exchange for food and shelter is one form of currency, but it’s not a STORE of value.  Other good stores of value would be property, but it’s often bulky (land, houses etc.) and has costs associated with it.  There’s a term used in gangster movies that I think applies well here; it goes something like this:

Gangster: “So, what will you take to do this for us, silver or lead?”

I think the time is going to be upon us soon when this will apply to many more of us.  I urge you to think about this, take your head out of the sand of soap-operas and “reality” TV, and prepare for some VERY harsh times.

Luke.

Luke

.

.

.

Housing Market Is NOT Recovering

If you’re new to this site, you won’t know that I’ve been writing about the CURRENT financial depression that we’re living in………..you know, the one that nobody wants to admit to, for some years now (see: I Feel Like Sarah Connor) .

In fact, the first conversation I ever had about it was in late 2007, when a friend of mine came to visit me, and he was telling me how “we’re not officially even in a recession”, to which I replied “Are you kidding me?”).

Foreclosed Homes

As Chris Greene says in the video, there are millions of homes sitting on the banks “foreclosed” books, waiting to hit the market.  What Chris didn’t say was how MANY millions.  Two million?  Five million?  Nope, try TWENTY MILLION!  Yes, that’s right.  As of May 2011, there were 20,000,000 vacant homes on the market awaiting the banks to start putting them up for sale.

With that in mind, and knowing that supply and demand eventually ALWAYS dictates price, do you think that house prices are going to rise any time soon?

Wages

People HAVE to earn enough money to buy stuff (including houses) and as wages have NOT increased in real terms (allowing for inflation) for over 10 years, they can’t possible afford houses.  As a friend of mine once said “If you have to borrow the money to buy something, you can’t afford it!”.

Food Stamps

Most people in the U.S. are SO poor in fact, that 44,000,000 (forty-four MILLION) people are on food stamps.  That’s no problem for our leaders though is it, because all THEY have to do is take more money from those who DO have jobs. Oh, and they can print more of course.

Ask yourself this question: “If creating wealth is simply a matter of printing money, why does’t the government simply print enough money and give a few million dollars to everybody in the country?”.  I mean, that way, we can all retire early, buy a nice house each, along with a new car, and we can simply play golf all day long.  Easy, right!?

Of course, this is RIDICULOUS…………………but it’s what our leaders are doing (other than giving it to the people who are earning it that is; from them, they just TAKE!).

Back To Housing Foreclosures

I heard from a friend yesterday, that his neighbor rented out his house.  The guy who rented it tore the place up, filled it with trash and then left. Why did he do this?  Because, like other sociopaths (e.g. most politicians) he didn’t care one jot about anybody else.  But there was another reason; he knew that the owner (my friend) was thinking about putting the house up for auction, which he was, and DID.  Fortunately the scum-bag renter didn’t bid high enough, however, the damage done to the house was severe, and it cost my friend a lot of money to get it cleared up and repainted.

Scams

Beware of scams like this.  There will be many, MANY more like this as the economy worsens.  Not only will “white collar” crimes like this increase, but PHYSICAL crimes, mostly for money, will increase.  Muggings and burglaries will become very common-place.

If our police forces could see beyond the whole “ware on drugs” thing, perhaps they’d have the resources to patrol our streets more and catch the people who are ACTUALLY doing us harm.  Oh, and yes, hell IS starting to freeze over.

Luke.

What Is Viral Marketing

Simply put, viral marketing is a way of getting a piece of advertising to be self-replicating.  That is, when it is put into the environment (most usually the internet), it will act like a virus and be sent from one person to two (or more) who will each in turn send it on to several others.

How To Make Viral Marketing Happen

There are several things that you can do to make your advertising piece go viral, whether it’s an ebook, some software or a video.  Here are some things you can do:

1. Make it free.  Everybody likes free stuff right?!!

2. Ensure it is unrestricted.  That is, if people can do whatever they want with it, they’re more likely to send it on to their friends.

3. Make it easy.  People are lazy (like me) so make sure it’s as easy as possible to send on.

4. Emotive.  Make it have an emotional effect on people, preferably happy and pumped-up.

5. Make it shareable on existing networks such as Twitter, Facebook and all the rest.

6. Shock!  Making it different and new.  If it’s something never before seen or used, others will WANT to share it.

7. Sexy.  Okay, not THAT kind of sexy!  I mean make it look good; cheap appearances are never impressive.

Viral marketing has never been easier now that we have the internet.  Try making a video with some free software like CamStudio, or use your smart-phone camera and see what results you can get.

Luke.

.

Who says Russians don’t have a sense of humor???!

Luke.

.

.

U.S. Economy Is WAY Worse Than People Realize

Have you ever been on a diet?  Okay, I’ll assume you have.  You know how it goes, you over-eat for a few months, then one day, you either get a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you can’t button your pants so easily or a good friend greets you with “Hey you fat bastard, how you doin’?”  Well, you get the point; you suddenly realize you’ve put a few pounds of ugly fat on.

The economy of several countries is like that and the U.S. is one of them.

The U.S. Needs To Diet

In the radio interview (above) with Dmitry Orlov (check him out for his credentials……….he experienced what happened in the former U.S.S.R.), you hear him describe what to expect in the U.S. THIS decade.

I believe that the U.S. should have gone on a strict “NON SPENDING” diet about 40 years ago, or at least 20 years ago.  At worst, it should have stopped spending money it didn’t have in 2008 when the economy first showed the first signs of impending failure.  It didn’t happen.  People (including our glorious leaders) kept spending and borrowing like tomorrow didn’t matter.

The Result Of Not Dieting Sooner

If, when you noticed you were carrying an extra few pounds of unwanted fat around your waist and thighs, you chose to eat only 1,500 calories a day, instead of the 3,500 you normally would, within a few weeks, you’d be back to your normal great looking self; you’d also be able to fit into more of the clothes you own. You might even get more dates (with your spouse if you’r married that is).

If, however, you chose to ignore the problem, hope for a miracle, and keep eating as much as you did before, you’d not only look chubbier, but you’d make it MORE difficult to lose the fat IF you started dieting in a year’s time.  You’d have to either start eating your 1,500 calories for MUCH longer, or you’d have to eat EVEN LESS for a slightly shorter time.

U.S. Over-spending

The U.S. has been spending more than is makes for several decades now. Individuals have done this also, by buying houses they can’t really afford, cars they can’t afford and having children they can’t afford.  The U.S. is not alone in this.

People in other countries (e.g. European countries) do it too.  However, the REALLY BIG problem comes when countries GOVERNMENTS (that is THEIR POLITICIANS) spend OTHER people’s money (YOURS!) on things they can’t afford.  Things like, “FREE” healthcare, wars on “terror” (whatever the heck THAT is) and wars in other people’s countries “on humanitarian grounds” (of course) and “wars on drugs” (again, what the heck does THAT mean?).

The result of all this overspending is going to be CATASTROPHIC! As money is taken from the few people who DO make money (mostly the middle classes) and is given to the “too big to fail” companies, and people who don’t want to work for a living, but choose to have babies they can’t afford instead, the country will see a change (as we are already seeing) like NOTHING it has ever experienced before.

Politicians

By DELAYING the inevitable (inventing money our of thin air), the politicians are simply “kicking the can down the road”.  It will simply be a MUCH worse “can” by the time we catch up to it.  They can’t continue to kick the can down the road, as they are doing with “T.A.R.P. bailouts and Quantitative Easing 1 QE2 and the inevitable QE3 (or whatever they’re going to market it as this time around). It’s simply not possible.

When our politicians are out of tricks (which is probably this year in 2011), they do what they always do when their backs are against a wall.  They get US involved in currency wars (going on as I write this) then TRADE WARS and eventually PHYSICAL wars (also going on now).

What To Do

1. Get out of debt.  My wife and I sold our large house.  We made a loss.  But we’re out of debt.  A friend of mine chose bankruptcy because she felt it was right for her.

2. READ about what’s really going on in the world.  DON’T trust the regular media.  They are bought and paid for. Look to the internet for independent thinking and reporting.

3. Consider an alternative lifestyle. You may as well, because you’re going to have one soon     anyway.

4. Get fit.  Stop eating crappy food (that may well taste good) and exercise, even if it only means walking.

5. Consider an alternative means of transport.  A smaller car perhaps, bicycle or motor-scooter?

6. Learn how to secure and defend yourself and your home. Crime IS rising and will continue to do so!

Change is inevitable, but how you VIEW it may well be the deciding factor between surviving happily, surviving miserably, or not surviving at all.

Luke.

Internet marketers get refund requests all the time.  You will be expected to refund about 10% of your sales; a large part of this is due to fraud; people just want something for nothing, even if your product delivers EXACTLY (or better) what was promised.

Turn A Refund Request Around

You can, however, often turn the request for a refund around and this is how I do it.  Email the customers something along the lines of this:

‘Dear “first name”,

Thanks for trying our ‘Product ABC’.  We’re sorry to hear that it didn’t meet your expectations, and we’ll be happy to give you a refund.

However, before processing your refund, we’d like to offer you a possible alternative.  We have another product  called ‘Product XYZ’, and it is the (better, faster, professional, big brother, advanced) version (or you can say it complements ‘Product ABC’).   It retails for (e.g.) $197 which is $100 more than ‘Product ABC’.  If you would us to send you this, in lieu of a refund, please just drop us a line and we’ll get it to you right away.

You can then keep your ‘Product ABC’ and have ‘Product XYZ’ as a bonus.

Whatever you decide, just let us know and we’ll process your request and send you a download link immediately.

We look forward to hearing from you.

‘Your’ name etc. on behalf of ‘Your’ company etc.

This way, you are only giving them a copy of another digital product that has almost no cost to you, but you get to keep the money from the initial sale.

Hope this helps.

Luke.

.

.

Though Spain may be a long way away from where you live, it doesn’t take much to understand why the young people in Spain are protesting.  Their government has FAILED to run the country with fiscal responsibility, and the result of this failure is a “dis-enfranchised” generation of people between the ages of 18 and 25.

Unemployed

Most people don’t really want that much.  They want a job that they can tolerate and that pays the bills with a little left over for some enjoyment outside of work.  They want a little respect, by being heard.  Finally, and I believe most importantly, they want to know that they have a future.  While none of us REALLY know if we have a future (good or bad) it is essential that we BELIEVE we do.  Once that is taken away from people, and feel that their backs are against the wall, they will fight.

Protests

They won’t just go out and start fights; that’s not the way revolutions happen.  First, they do what the young Spanish are doing; they protest.  They tell the people who have done such a bad job at running the country of their birth that they want changes.  When their government doesn’t listen (or simply ignores them) they will start rioting; this is rarely (if ever) premeditated, but most likely in response to physical force that is used, BY their own government, on them.

If you think that this can’t happen in YOUR country, then you should think again.  Why?  Because at some point in history it probably ALREADY HAS HAPPENED in your country, and will most likely happen again.

Look out for the signs; they’re all around us.  Watch the news (I don’t mean on the television! You won’t get ANY useful news from you TV, unless it’s connected to the internet).  Watch OTHER COUNTRIES news broadcasts and you’ll see what’s REALLY happening out there.

Things ARE going to get nasty. Your government CANNOT keep messing-up without there being severe consequences.  Look after yourself and your family, and try to think of ways to be USEFUL to others.  It may be the only way you’ll survive what’s coming at us.

Luke.

When I started out, I really had no particular plan, mainly because I didn’t have a clue where to start.  All I knew was that I wanted to make money on the internet, without having to travel to a job, where I would be told that I wasn’t doing enough for them and wasn’t spending enough of my (precious) life in servitude to them for a measly pittance they call a salary.  End of short rant.

Now, here’s what I’ve learned that the steps actually are:

1. Understand that websites are nothing more than a collection of html code, images, pdf and video files, linked with hyperlinks.

2. Understand that web-browsers (like the one you’re currently using) are simply programs that cobble-together (”render” is the technical term) all of these files.

3. Learn how to write html code, or even better, learn to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) website creation program (the best one I’ve used is XSitePro - click on the image below for more details).

4. Decide what business you want to be in (because the Internet is just a communication tool, allowing easier and faster communication than previous technology).

5. Once you know what business you want to be in (VERY difficult to choose, UNLESS you’re super-passionate about something), you have to either find other people’s products to sell (either physical or digital) or produce something of your own.

6. Create a website (using XSitePro) and offer your product (or service) for sale.

7. Learn how to get people to VISIT your website (the best course BY FAR is The Complete Guide to Traffic (click the image for more details).

Easy

Sounds easy doesn’t it? Well, the sad fact is, most businesses fail within 5 years.  Should that deter you? NO, absolutely not.  All it should tell you is that you must EXPECT your first (and maybe your second and third) business to fail and you should USE the failure as a learning experience to make your second (or third) business even better.

The EASIEST way to make money BY FAR is to take it by force.  I DO NOT recommend that.  Leave that to thieves and politicians.

The NEXT EASIEST way is to have other people give it to you; this is where politicians can work for you; they’ll give you other people’s money for your vote.

The NEXT EASIEST is to find products that already exist, and then match those products to people that you find (this is called marketing, or AFFILIATE MARKETING).

The MOST DIFFICULT way is to create something of value that hasn’t been created before, and that improves people’s lives somehow, then offer it for sale on your website.

In my opinion, the last two are the ONLY way you should consider making money online.

Luke.

.

.

.

GM has, apparently, recently decided to spend $2,000,000,000 (that’s two BILLION dollars) upgrading 17 of “their” plants to create 4,000 jobs.  Sounds great doesn’t it?  I saw the report on the news on May 11 of this year.

The News

The news that my wife has us watch in the (very) early a.m. made this sound like good news, at least, good for the 4,000 people who will get jobs.  But is it REALLY good news?  As you can see from the video above, GM didn’t really pay back the bailout money, they just used OTHER bailout money to pay off the first loan, a bit like using one credit card to pay off another card.

Now, let’s do the math: 2,000,000,000 (two billion) divided by 4,000 (jobs) equals 500,000.  Yes, it’s costing half a million dollars PER JOB created, and that’s WITHOUT paying them their wages and benefits.  But of course, what’s worse is that it isn’t GM’s money…………it’s YOUR money (if you’re a taxpayer) that they “borrowed” and didn’t ever pay back.

Inflation

Okay, let’s say that I’m wrong and they DID pay it back.  Let’s say the government DID get the money back.  The question to ask is now, where DID the government get the money from in the first place?  Well, it’s not from collecting taxes, because at the moment, they aren’t taking enough in taxes to even break even. They are spending WAY more than the taxes they getting, mostly on wars that they can’t afford, medicare/medicaid and pensions.

The money is actually coming from the printing presses (or digital version of printing presses such as just “saying” there’s money in an account and pushing some buttons on a computer like this…………$20, 000, 000, 000, 000).

How It Affects You

Because money is being artificially created (not through wealth creation, but by the “magic” of the fiat money system), YOU and I eventually pay YET AGAIN through inflation.  As they INVENT money out of nowhere, it dilutes any existing money’s ability to buy stuff, because it forces prices up.  Check this out for more on inflation.

The News

My MAIN point in writing this post is really to show how THE MEDIA can spin pretty much anything to sound good OR bad, depending upon how THEIR owners (and the people who put pressure on them such as politician’s, lobbyists, wall street “businessmen” etc.) choose to spin a story.  Heck, I think they could make the assassination of a former Mujahideen ally sound like the world’s problems are now fixed.  Oh, wait a minute, they’ve already done that.

Luke.

.

Tabbloid

As you know, a tabloid newspaper is formatted so that it is very easy to read.  Even if it wasn’t, people are now so used to reading them that they have BECOME so familiar, that they are the accepted format worldwide.

Tabbloid.com makes it really easy to receive all of your RSS Feeds in an email in the format shown above.  The feed that it shows is one of my favorite writers, Yaro Starak, a great online marketer/blogger and a very nice guy too.

Interface

.

As you can see from the image above, the interface to input your favorite RSS feeds is really simple.  All you have to do is enter your feed (in the case above, Yaro Starak uses feedburner, so that’s where you would get his feed from) then click the ‘Add’ button directly below.

You can set your delivery options of course and save them or amend them later. Once you’ve entered your email address where you want your newspaper delivered to, you can expect delivery each time that a new entry is added by your favorite authors.

This is easily the best way to get your daily (or weekly, or monthly) doses of your favorite writers, AND it looks, feels and reads just like a newspaper.

Luke.

.

.

In case you’re thinking that war is actually caused by disputes about things, think again.  Smedley Butler was (and I think still IS) the most decorated soldier in history, and is famous for quoting “War is a racket.”  His speech, by the actor in the video above, explains succinctly how a war VETERAN felt about it.

The Ivory Coast

As I write this, in late May of 2011, hundreds of people in the Ivory Coast have been killed and MILLIONS are fleeing to other countries in fear of losing their lives.

The question I would ask you is this; if sending troops into Libya is about “helping the rebels create a democracy” or “saving lives of innocent people”, then WHY AREN’T THESE SAME TROOPS HELPING THE PEOPLE OF THE IVORY COAST?

In my opinion, the ONLY reason is because THE IVORY COAST DOESN’T HAVE RESOURCES THAT WE WANT. What resources?  Why, OIL of course.  If Libya’s main export was turnips, do you think that there would be military action there?  Of COURSE not!  This is about making MONEY from oil, nothing else. But hey, that’s just my OPINION.

Here’s what Max Keiser thinks about it, along with Paul Craig Robers (former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan).

.

.

In my opinion War is little more than a business…………..BIG business.  It makes a small handful of people very, VERY rich, keeps thousands in employment (indirectly as suppliers to the various military organizations, or directly as military personnel) and and destroys MILLIONS of people’s lives.

That’s my two cents worth.

Luke.

As you can see from their simple interface, you can type in any name that you desire, and then the online software will work its magic, checking all of the popular, and most of the less popular, social bookmarking sites to see if the name you’ve chosen is available.

Why Use The Same Name?

By using the SAME name across all of your chosen social sites, you’ll be able to BRAND yourself.  Branding is VERY important in business and is one of the least understood aspects of business.  Here is an article I wrote some years ago that may help you understand it better: Branding.

Using the SAME username (or vanity name) is essential if you want to become well known in your niche.  Using the same colors, same avatar and same name is one of the most important things you can do within the social networks.

As you can see above, using my name Luke only found a handful of sites that had my name available.  Now look at the image below:

As soon as I try something less likely to have been taken, using hyphens and numbers for example, MANY more sites are showing this as being available.  This way, you only have to be on ONE site for a few minutes, and you’ll have your new brand up and running in no time.

Luke

.

.

.

.

Baby strollers for $20.  I’ll tell you my FIRST thought in just a moment, but I considered several other things after my initial reaction.  Things like:

1. In this economy, isn’t it amazing how, even with inflation being what it is, with food and gasoline pricing soaring, you can still get a baby stroller for twenty dollars.

2. Isn’t it amazing how some stores can make a profit selling like this for only twenty bucks.

3. How can these be made profitably for less than $20, because, after all, the manufacturer has to make a profit too.

4. How can the store afford to have them SHIPPED and STILL make a profit.

5. How can these even be SHIPPED from China (which is where they were made) for as little as twenty dollars?

6. I wonder how safe these are?  Are they inspected for safety?  How much did THAT cost?

My mind went in all kinds of directions, but I kept coming back to the economy and how we are in SERIOUS trouble, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.  People are STARVING in other countries, and are beginning to feel the pinch in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and several others.  YES, the reason they are protesting, rioting and starting civil wars is because they CAN’T AFFORD TO EAT!!!  NOT because they want democracy.

So what was my first thought?  It was this:

“If people can only afford to spend $20 on a baby-stroller, HOW CAN THEY AFFORD TO HAVE A BABY?”

I also considered the very LIKELY probability that these same people will have more than one baby.  Who’s going to PAY for these babies to survive and be educated to a level at which they are useful and productive members of society? Well, in all likelihood, it won’t be the parents.

Luke.

1. Use common sense; just because you’re separated by many miles, doesn’t mean you should become a discourteous idiot.

2. Think carefully about “friending” somebody.  Don’t just go for a high “follower” count.  If they’re not in your niche, or you simply don’t think you’d like being in touch with them, don’t “friend” them!

3. Keep your ration of “followers/friends” about the same as those following you.  If you choose to “follow” somebody and they don’t return the favor, you may want to consider “un-following” them, unless you REALLY like their stuff.

4. Don’t EVER spam. This makes you prone to being “un-followed” very quickly.  Remember, QUALITY is king here.

5. Don’t be pushy. These are SOCIAL sites, not business sites.

6. Act like the adult you are………unless you’re 12, in which case…………thanks for reading my blog and I think you’re really a clever youngster!!! In other words, don’t act childishly.

7. Keep private messages private.  Don’t reply to a private message openly for all your other followers/friends to see.

8. Always be polite and courteous. It’s pay dividends long term.

9. Regardless of privacy settings, assume that EVERYONE can always read what you’re saying; this will help keep you in check.

10. THINK before you post anything.  Go through a mental checklist: is it relevant to your niche?  Is is QUALITY?  Will it HELP your followers?  Will it ENTERTAIN your followers? Will it UPSET your followers?

Doing these things will keep the social gears oiled, and will improve both your follower count, and your statues in your community.

Luke.

.

.

That’s the fun part.  Now, check out the video below:

.

.

You heard him, he just wants to feed his children.  Now, I’m NOT condoning this whatsoever, and whether he’s right or wrong to do what’s he’s doing is NOT my point.  Here’s my point:

We now have the situation across the world (and yes, in the U.S.A. too) whereby a whole new breed of criminals is being created.  Many of them never had any intention of stealing, but feel they are being forced to do so, because their governments are letting them down.

The Nanny State

Let’s be straight about this; it is ABSURD to expect any other person to look after you, once you’re over the age of 18 (and a lot lower age in many countries around the world). To expect a group of people, namely a government (made up of POLITICIANS), to look after you is simply courting disaster.

The man robbing the gas-station (or mini-mart) most likely had paid his local, sales, state and federal taxes dutifully, all of his life, up until he no longer could.  Now that he needs some of his money returned, probably because he lost his job and couldn’t find another, the people (the system) who took his money were not there to help him, at least, not for the duration of his unemployment.

What Caused This Situation?

MONEY PRINTING, otherwise known as INFLATION is ONE of the main reasons.  And the underlying reason for INFLATION is ineptitude, greed, and lack of foresight on behalf of the politicians in power, and the Wall St. money-junkies who can NEVER get enough of it.

Here’s how these money and power-junkies did it:

Because commodity prices (pork bellies, corn, oil, wheat and everything else.) are CURRENTLY traded in DOLLARS, as more dollars are printed (based on nothing and backed by nothing) EVERYTHING that you buy to survive (food and gasoline mainly) will GO UP IN PRICE.  That’s bad enough by itself.  But when you add to that the fact that many manufacturing and service jobs are now being sent overseas, so that corporations can show higher profits, it exacerbates the problem even more.

Unemployment

Unemployment figures are being fudged; pretty much anybody with an IQ above 70 can figure that out.  What they may not yet know, is how bad it really is.  Here are some figures:

1. There are just under 2 million fewer jobs than there were a decade ago (in 2001).
2. There are just over 11 million MORE PEOPLE looking for jobs in 2011.  That means that there are 11 million more people seeking fewer jobs than there were ten years ago.
3. To stay STATIC with new people entering the workforce, 150,000 jobs have to be created EVERY MONTH; that’s JUST TO BREAK EVEN!

When people can’t afford to feed their children, they resort to taking it from others by force, or threat of force, like the man in the video.

As Gerald Celente (TrendsResearch.com) would say:

“When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it!”

There is going to be an increase in crime unlike anything you or I have ever known, and that’s REGARDLESS of what country you live in.  Prepare yourself now.  Get mentally prepared first, then start looking at ways to defend your wealth (precious metals perhaps), your health (eat better!) and your family (secure your home and be prepared for intruders).

Luke.

.

Cui Bono?

I learned that yesterday, so thought I’d show off!!!  It’s Latin for “who benefits?”  If you look at the image above, you’ll see that BOTH parties win.

The owner of the blog that you’re writing for gets:

Regular, high quality (I hope) free content

Additional expertise that she/he may not have

Enhanced reputation in that niche

A different point of view (though it DOES have to be complementary of course)

YOU get:

Back links

Your biography posted (if the owner agrees to do this)

Additional authority (”it MUST be good if it’s on THIS blog!”)

A chance at Joint Ventures with the blog owner (eventually)

Less expensive advertising (maybe)

Exposure to more people

What To Look For In A Blog

When looking for blogs to guest post on, you must look for sites that are:

1. Highly Trafficked

2. Relevant to my niche

3. Have high page rank

4. Be an authority site

A good way to do this is to use your favorite search engine with the search term ”Guest post” + “your keyword”.  Doing this will narrow the results somewhat.  You can be creative here of course, and try other things like: “Guest post blog” and the like.  Once you’ve found a few that look promising, simply email them and request to post for them.

SELL yourself; sell your credentials, your experience and your ATTITUDE.  If they’re interested, they probably ask for a sample of your writing, after which, they’ll either ask you to post or not.  If not, move on to the next one and DON’T take it personally.

Luke

Without doubt, this is the SCARIEST movie I’ve ever seen -  Luke

.

I’ve been trying to explain to a good friend of mine why the stock market is still doing very well (at the time of writing this the Dow Jones was at 12,061) while the standard of living was rapidly declining for most Americans.

Then, I had an epiphany (like I do once every decade or so) and managed to explain it to him like this:

The companies that are listed in the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) make profits, that’s why they are IN business, to make a profit.  When they become MORE profitable, their share price will increase, making them more expensive to buy.  If enough of these companies in the Dow increase in value, OR if just a few make a HUGE increase value, then the AVERAGE (hence the Dow Jones Industrial AVERAGE) will go up.  That’s what we are seeing now.

Why Are Companies Profits Increasing?

Something most economists like to ignore, or simply not tell you about, is WHY a lot of companies profits are going up. Several things are at play, including the fact that more people investing in the stock market because they cannot make any money by investing in banks because the interest rates are so low (and being kept artificially low for that matter).

Another, and possibly bigger, reason is that companies profits are increasing because they are becoming more efficient, getting the same amount of output (be it products or services) for less money put in.  How can they do this?  Simple, they OUTSOURCE a lot of production and services TO OTHER COUNTRIES, typically production to Mexico, China etc. and services to India and the Philippines etc.

This makes THEIR profits go up (and their share prices along with it) but it does NOTHING to improve the economy of the U.S. or livelihoods of the people who live in the U.S.

China

China has now surpassed the U.S. as the world’s leading manufacturer.  This trend is set to continue and will do so, so long as companies are more interested in profits than they are in their country.  I’m not saying what they are doing is right or wrong; that’s simply a matter of perspective, but one thing is certain; while they continue on this path and while a small handful of people are becoming very, very rich, the rest of us will be left in the dust.

What do I mean by that?  Simply that there will be NO middle class.  It’ll be a few people living a great lifestyle, and EVERYBODY ELSE will be poor.  If you don’t believe this, just look at other countries where either Fascism, or Communism is the political structure, because that’s what we have here right now.

The gap between the rich and the poor is the largest in the U.S. than any other Western country, and the stage is set for it to get even wider.  Prepare for this, because, in the short term at least, there’s no stopping it.

You can read more here:

Stock Market vs. The Economy

Luke.

Panaramio

Panaramio from Google, allows you to upload your images to their servers and then “geo-tag” them with Google-Earth.  This simply means that you can put a pin on a map of the world (or city, or town) where the photograph relates to.

You don’t have to necessarily make the geo-tag WHERE the photograph was taken, though this IS what a lot of people do, but you can tag it to anywhere you think is relevant.  For example, if you went to San Diego Zoo and photographed an elephant, you could upload it to Panaramio and geo-tag it to the country that the elephant originated from, say India or one of the many African countries where they are indigenous.

How To Get Traffic

To get traffic, you need to get do-follow links back to your website, and it’s good if you can also get direct clicks.  Whenever you upload images to Panaramio, you can put your URL into the image, along with some other information as shown in the image below:

As you can see, the image contains both the name of the photographer and also the URL to his website.  This is great for getting direct clicks.  Also, if you’ll notice, these are highlighted in BLUE.  This is because I was using no-do-follow, the great little add-on to the Firefox browser that allows you to see whether or not links are follow or no-follow.

Red means no-follow and blue means follow, so these links are definitely do-follow links, and with them you’ll be able to increase your page rank, and you’ll get  some organic click-throughs too.

This is a great little tactic, and very under utilized by most internet marketers.

Luke.

.

If you are AT ALL interested in the world’s economy (and you SHOULD be because you’re part of it and it DOES affect your life), then the above video is probably ALL you ever really need to know about economics.

Written by Irwin Schiff (father of Peter Schiff), it explains EXACTLY how real economics works, and how it is manipulated to ultimately fail.

Luke.

One of the biggest problems for an internet marketer is to find out what people are currently interested in.  It’s even better if they can figure out what people are spending their money on.  That’s where What the Trend can help you.

What The Trend

As you can see below, What the Trend offers information about what is popular (read “pop culture”) in each country around the world, and if the trend is getting stronger or weaker.  Glee was “the trend” in the U.S. about a year ago, and is still going quite strong, but people have moved on other “better” things of course.

I’m not sure where they get their information from, and even if I did know I wouldn’t be certain that these popular trends are real, however, there are such sources as magazine questionnaires (”go to www.blahblahblah.com/opinion to tell us YOUR views!”) and similar things, along with whatever happens to be in television.

How You Can Use What The Trend

While it’s unlikely that whatever is currently popular in a certain part of the world is EXACTLY what you niche is about, you CAN still use this in your marketing, be it blogging, tweeting or other social medium.  It’s a matter of tailoring your article/post/review etc. to make it incorporate some elements of the current social trend.

For example, I write about internet marketing, geo-politics and economics.  I could write about Radiohead (see above image) and write about the countries they are visiting, how safe they might be, what the locals can afford to pay to see and hear them play and so on.  I could also ad something about how they went about advertising their concerts, whether they used social marketing or traditional TV ads, magazine ads and so on.

If NOTHING else, using What The Trend and others like it (Google Trends) you’ll have a better feel for what’s going on in the world, because one this is for sure, you won’t get that by listening to the news, which is little more these days than entertainment, dressed up as comedy and presented as something important to you life.

Luke

.

.

You don’t have to watch (listen to actually) the whole video, but about a minute towards the end, the guy on the phone says that because he simply cannot make ends meet, and because he’s afraid that “child protective services” might take his three children from him, he may have to turn to crime to get enough money to feed them.

THIS is the current state of the U.S. and I’m afraid that I can’t see any easy fix to any of it.  The middle-class, that is YOU and me, have been the ones who made the country the wealthiest on the planet.  We are now being sucked dry.  The elite are taking the last drops of our output and are giving it (like they have for many years now) to their friends on Wall St. and in the higher echelons of the major corporations and banks.  They are also giving it, albeit in tiny amounts, to the rest of the non-producing voters, so that they can keep their positions of power.

Because there is no easy fix, I simply recommend that you protect yourselves as best you can, learn new skills (medical field is huge, as is alternative power and fighting cyber-crime) and become friendly with your neighbors.

YOU’LL NEED THEM, and they’ll need you!

Luke.

ccMixter’s slogan is “You already have permission……….” which is GREAT for anybody looking to add FREE MUSIC or other audio clips to their websites, videos or just plain audios.

While LOTS of websites offer “Royalty Free” music and sound clips, the fact is, you STILL have to pay for them.  Not only that, but you often have to get special permission (translation: pay more) if you want to use the clip for commercial use, such as, as a lead-in to one of your videos which promotes something for sale.

“Royalty Free” sounds great, but really only means that you don’t have to pay an ongoing fee; there’s usually still a one time, up front payment required, but this is not so with areas of ccMixter.

Interface

As you can see below, the interface (at least the current one as I write this) is very simple.

.

.

Once you’ve selected the ‘Free for commercial use’ option at the top, you simply type in a keyword to get the kind of music and sounds clips that are considered (by them) to be in that category, then clip the “dig” button.  A keyword will be perhaps “horror” or “relaxing” etc.

Once done, ccMixter will offer you what they consider to be relevant to your search.  You can then simply click the “sampling” button to the right of each file to hear a short clip of the file.

Once you’ve found one that you like, all you have to do click the download button to the far left (the one with the downward pointing arrow) and you’ll see a screen like this one appear:

.

.

All you then need do is click the file that you want, and your computer browser will download the file to a location of your choice.

This is a superb free option, with THOUSANDS of music and sound files, well worth trying.

Luke.

.

The Secret of Oz

.

Not much is written about this HUGE topic, but I thought I’d just mention it briefly so that you are aware of the fact that you CAN produce a significant amount of traffic with audio.

As you can see (but the search engines can’t, so I’ll list them again) there are many ways to use audio files to get visitors to your website.  They are:

Teleseminars

Streaming Audio

Online Radio

Embedded Audio

MP3 Sharing

Audio Books

Podcasts

Here are some tips when you are producing your recordings:

1. Warn your family so that they don’t interrupt you

2. Check to make sure your don’t have a stuffed-up nose and so sound “nasally”

3. Make a test recording first to ensure all your equipment is working properly

4. Ensure there are no external noises from open windows, TV’s etc.

5. Make sure you choose the time of day that you are most upbeat

6. Don’t be distracted with emails or anything else

7. Think and plan for any interruptions (make sure your phones are OFF, or ringers turned off)

8. Don’t worry about accents; we ALL have them……….even those who think they don’t!

Podcasts

There’s also a GREAT piece of free software called ‘Podcast Generator’.  It installs into your website rather like Wordpress, so you can simply create a folder in your site called something like, oh, I don’t know “PODCASTS” and then install this small but powerful application.  Once it’s set-up, you can simply make your weekly or monthly podcast and upload it to the application, which will take care of the RSS feeds etc.  It even publishes to iTunes, so you can reach people on their handheld devices too.

Hope this helps you the next time you choose to make a podcast or other kind of audio offering.

Luke.

.

.

Check this video out:

.

I’ve heard some people argue that communism is coming to, or is already in, the U.S.  Others still say that this is not so, but that fascism is already here, what with the merger of state (Politician run Washington D.C.) and Wall Street (run by the gambling bankers who pay themselves huge bonuses when their bets pay off, but get their friends in Washington to bail them out with OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY (i.e. YOU) when their bets lose.

Communism

Fascism

You decide what’s happening, because if you don’t have some kind of feeling for what’s happening, then you simply cannot have a plan to deal with it, that is, you won’t be able to survive, let alone prosper.

Luke.

It would be easy as a new internet marketer to think that there is only one type of traffic coming to your website properties, but that simply wouldn’t be true (or factual!).

Traffic Types

If you look at the image above, you’ll see that there are really SIX types of traffic that might come to look at your website.  They are:

Unqualified

Qualified

Academics/Browsers

Shoppers

Buyers

Members/Subscribers

Unqualified Visitors

These are simply people who have stumbled upon your site by accident and have no interest whatsoever in your content, and certainly not in your offering, be it free or paid.

Qualified Visitors

Qualified visitors are the people who WOULD be interested in the content on your website, but who need convincing.  They need to be offered something, preferably free, so that they will join your mailing list and become subscribers.

Academics And Browsers

As you’ve guessed, this type of site visitor will be on your site for studying.  They want information and are not prepared to pay for it.  They CAN become subscribers, however, if the incentive you offer them is good enough; perhaps a free email course?

Shoppers

Shoppers sound great, but they are often just comparing prices of things.  I’ll do this myself whenever I’m looking at buying some new technology; once I know the specification of the product I want, I’ll go “internet shopping” to find a store that I can get the product I want and the best possible deal.

Buyers

Buyers are THE BEST!  They have already proven that they want your offering and you have established a relationship with them by meeting their expectations (or surpassing them).  Once these are on your email list, you can develop that relationship further, by offering them lots more free information (and products) and sending them occasional referrals to other products and services (while still offering them your own products and services).

Members/Subscribers

These visitors may or may not have bought from you.  They could be simply on your email list, they could be on your list of buyers, or they could be a paying member of your membership site.  Whatever they are, there is money to be made by helping them solve their problems.

Luke.

.

http://www.nber.org/cycles/sept2010.html.  By the time you read this, they may have taken it off of their site out of sheer embarrassment.

So, now that “the recession ended in June 2009″, I want to have a little rant.

Firstly, let me tell you about something that happened to me just before Christmas. My wife and I were in a restaurant (actually it was an Applebees, a mid-priced chain restaurant).  Two unkempt people came in and sat near us, a man and  a woman. They ordered two meals, including appetizers and desserts.  Having eaten it all, they then paid with an E.B.T. card…….that’s FOOD STAMPS if you didn’t know.

They then told the waitress who served them to “add $10 for yourself”, to which she replied “you’ll have to add that to the form”.

What’s Wrong With This?

If you read my stuff regularly, you already KNOW what’s wrong with this.  If not, here’s MY issue with it.  Do some people need charity?  Absolutely!  Is giving food stamps to people charitable?  NO, IT ISN’T!  It is FORCED money out of working people, by politicians.

Yes, we should help people who CAN’T help themselves, but we shouldn’t have out money TAKEN and given to others without our consent.

Next problem.  For the amount that they paid (not including their VERY GENEROUS TIP of about 20%, they COULD have bought about three days worth of food for BOTH of them.  It would have been HEALTHIER food too!  But they chose to simply spend the money on ONE MEAL rather than the NINE meals that they could have bought.

Why did they do this?  Because it was OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY that they were spending, that’s why!

Benefits

While politicians know they can get votes by giving away other people’s money, they WILL perpetuate this kind of nonsense.  It has already destroyed other countries (like the former U.S.S.R.) and this mentality will continue to wreak havoc on societies around the world.

There are now hundreds of thousands of THIRD GENERATION welfare families, and THEY ALL VOTE.  Until this “system” changes, the U.S.A. can go in only one direction, and that is DOWN.

End of rant.

Happy New Year!

Luke.

The Complete Guide To Traffic

The wonderful people at Intellimon Ltd. have created the single BEST authoritative video course on HOW to get people to come and look at your sites.  It’s called The Complete Guide to Traffic and now that I’ve been through the 50 HOUR course, I can say without hesitation that it is everything and LOTS MORE that they promise.

With a combination of powerpoint type presentations and over the shoulder (viewing their computer screen) tutorials, their presenter, the excellent Richard Butterworth, shows EVERY technique currently being used by the most successful marketers (including Intellimon) to bring thousands of new and repeat visitors to their websites.

How To Get It

To get a copy of this outstanding course, brought to you by the same people who created XSitePro and The Complete Guide to Website Building, just click on the image below.  I simply can’t recommend this course more highly. At the very least, you should read their own sales material to see exactly what you will be getting.

Luke.

If you think it’s a good idea, then you obviously don’t (yet) realize how dangerous this kind of thing can be.  Give me two minutes of your time and I’ll explain WHY it’s so dangerous.

Agatha Christie, the famous British crime novelist, one wrote a book which is NOW titled ‘Ten Little Indians’ (which is a great read by the way). It was also called ‘And Then There Were None’.  Here’s an image of the ORIGINAL book when it was first published in 1939:

Nineteen Eight-Four

In 1949, Eric Blair (a.k.a. George Orwell) published his book Nineteen Eighty-Four.  In it, he tells a fictional story about how life will be 35 years in the future in 1984.  This story is EASILY the scariest thing I have ever read, for several reasons.  ONE of those reasons is that what he wrote about IS HAPPENING NOW!

What is happening?  Because of what is termed Political Correctness (or PC) people are actually AFRAID of using certain words (notice I’M not using the word that all this Huck Finn nonsense is about).  This is being INDOCTRINATED into us as though it’s the RIGHT thing to do, when CLEARLY it is a VERY DANGEROUS thing to do.

Dangerous Mentality

The MENTALITY behind this is what’s REALLY dangerous.  What is it?  It’s the idea that you can CHANGE HISTORY simply by rewriting, altering, adulterating OR DESTROYING the parts of history you don’t like!

If you think this couldn’t happen again, you’d be wrong.  It DOES happen, even in places where you might think it couldn’t possibly happen; places like Europe and the U.S.A.

How badly can this thinking make people behave?  Take a look at what happened a mere 70 years ago:

Here’s what one very intelligent person thinks of it:

.

.

What’s REALLY IRONIC is that Mark Twain’s book was largely a social comment ABOUT HOW BAD RACISM IS, and how bad it was in Mississippi during the mid 19th century (about 1840).

If there REALLY IS free speech in a country, it means FREE SPEECH.  It does NOT mean free-ish.   If something is only PARTIALLY free, then it is not free at all.  It’s a bit like being SLIGHTLY PREGNANT……….it’s simply NOT POSSIBLE.  You either HAVE free speech or you DON’T.

Luke.

Okay, registering with the search-engines is a good start, but that really should count as ‘Class 101′ because that is the first thing you should do to start the progress of your sites march up the rankings.  You need to be a little sneakier though.

Getting Sneaky

Here are a few nice techniques you can use to find out what the other players in your field are doing.

The “top secret” algorithms that Google and Yahoo use to rank your site include weight given to links from OTHER websites back to your site.  Their logic?  Well, if OTHER websites think you’re site is relevent, then so do they!  AND the more links that each of THOSE sites have, then the more “weight” they carry.

Linking

So, let’s look into linking.  One of the best snooping tools in the world is…………………GOOGLE.  After all, Google is ALL about information indexing right!  Here’s how you can use Google (or Yahoo if you prefer) to get the “skinny” on your competition.

Firstly, to find out if YOUR site is listed in a particular search-engine, which it should be because you registered it with them, simply type your full domain name/URL into the search box (including the www). If you ARE registered with them, then a result will appear (or hopefully several results).

Okay, now try typing into the search box site:YOUR WEB ADDRESS (that’s YOUR address) this will give you a list of all of the pages that the search-engine has been able to find indexed for your site.

Now if you can get this information for YOUR site, then you can get it for your competitors sites also!  Good information to have, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The next trick you might want to use is to type link:YOUR WEB SITE into the search box (don’t forget the colon).  Now you’ll see how many sites are linking TO your site.  Again, if this works for YOUR website, it’ll work for your competitors sites also.

Yahoo is actually more detailed than Google who, for some reason best known to them, are kind of vague about them.

Contact Them

Once you see who is linking to them, you can CONTACT these other sites and suggest a link-trade with them! They link to you and you link to them. Great for building links back to your site, even though Google doesn’t give as much ‘weight’ to these ‘reciprocal’ links as they would a one-way link directly to your site

Now, Google and Yahoo are both quite fussy in what they term a “link”, so to get a true number of links, go to ‘alltheweb.com’ and do the same thing.  You’ll now see a much more extensive list of who is linking to your site, but more importantly, who is linking to your competitors sites.

Finally, you can try using Alexa (http://www.alexa.com) to find out how your competitors are doing in the rankings.

So, if you want to make more money online (and who doesn’t), practice a few of these techniques regularly and watch your rankings improve dramatically.

Luke.

.

.

Who should you believe; the people who consistently have been shown to be WRONG, or the people who consistently have been shown to get it right?  I know who I believe!

Luke.

.

This is a very informative, but chilling, video by the National Inflation Association.  It shows in much more detail something I wrote about many months ago entitled SS Eastland and Los Angeles.

Unintended Consequences

While I believe that most people just want to be left alone rather than being dragged into other people’s problems, the horrible fact is, MOST of the time that politicians make decisions on our behalf, we end up in WORSE shape than we did before they made that decision.  The video about describes this well.

Politicians and Their Motives

I have little doubt that a VERY FEW politicians actually want to create a better society for their country’s people, by far THE MAJORITY of them only think about themselves and how they can improve THEIR lives and THEIR careers.

Proof of this is seen when you consider that most of the world’s so-called “leaders” are actually career politicians, that is, they go into politics SOLELY for power, prestige and money (in other words, they rely on politics to give them what most other people in their country rely on productive jobs to give them).

The Future

The next decade will be a really tough one; probably the toughest in your lifetime and DEFINITELY the toughest i my lifetime. Nobody knows for certain what is in store for us, but without a doubt, the near future (2011 to 2020) will be one of massive global and geo-political change.

With this change will come massive social unrest, which could easily turn to war………..by which I mean bigger wars than are already being perpetuated.

Change can often be, at best, uncomfortable, and disastrous at worst.  Most of what happens in the world we have NO CONTROL OVER.  What we CAN control is what we say, read, eat and (to some degree) think.

Your Best Defensive Weapon

Your BRAIN is your ultimate source of protection and feeding it with the right television and literature is the best way to keep your protection in the best condition.

My recommendation to you is to eat healthily (which is often less expensive than eating un-healthily), exercise and  read (and watch) only quality EDUCATIONAL books, articles, blogs and TV shows.  Yes, watch some fluff too, but in small doses, otherwise it’ll rot your brain and you’ll find yourself at parties telling others how bad “global warming” is!

Luke.

.

The Moonwalking Bear that is!?  No? Well watch it again right now.  There you go! Why did you miss him the first time around? Because the makers of the movie used a very old trick that has been employed for centuries by those in the know.  Who?  Well, politicians and magicians are two groups of people who come to mind, but there are others.

Diversion

The technique is called ‘diversion’ and it is simply a way of making a person (or most often a large group of people) look at something else while you are doing something that you don’t want them to know about. It’s the very ESSENCE of controlling people.  So, if you don’t want to be controlled by others, like advertisers, politicians, your boss etc. then you need to start paying closer attention to what they are NOT discussing or showing you.

STAY FOCUSED ON YOUR TARGET and DON’T LET OTHERS DISTRACT YOU for THEIR benefit.

When you can do this, you will have made a HUGE leap towards gaining personal power and personal wealth.

You Must Stay In Control

Making money, be it online or anywhere else requires, that YOU be in control of your destiny.  If you let others tell you what’s happening and believe everything you see, read and hear, you cannot possibly be in control of your finances or your life.

Remember, people in authority over you can ONLY have authority IF YOU GIVE IT TO THEM.

Stay on your guard at all times and start making and KEEPING money for yourself.

Luke

.

As usual, Gerald Celente is being straightforward and HONEST.  We make not LIKE what he’s saying, but he’s telling it HOW IT IS!  Here are some FACTS:

Facts

13% of U.S. citizens are on FOOD STAMPS (that’s over 40,000,000 people…………forty MILLION!!)

17% of U.S. citizens are on MEDICAID (that’s healthcare paid for by OTHER PEOPLE)

If these statistics don’t scare you, THEY SHOULD!

Unemployment

REAL unemployment is more like 22%.  Why? Because the way that the numbers are calculated is done differently to the way it was during the great depression of the 1930’s.  For example, now, if a person works for ONE HOUR A WEEK, they are counted as being EMPLOYED.  Huh?  Yep, that’s right.

Unemployment figures DO NOT currently include people who have been unemployed for over a year. Nor do they include people who have stopped trying to get a job.  Prisoners (nearly 7 million in total) are NOT counted.  It goes on.  Here’s a video that explains it better.

Now we’re well into 2011 and THINGS ARE WORSE.

You need to start ignoring the TV news and the newspapers.  You will NOT get the facts.  Keep up to date online with Youtube and the like.  You’ll get a much better idea about the REAL WORLD.

Luke.

Backlinks

Getting links is also important for another very good reason. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo (and all of their related sub-engines like Alta-Vista etc.) are primarily interested in RELEVANCE. In other words, how ‘related to the search-term used’ is the website (the Keywords the people are using being the search-term).

Therefore, when the search-engine spiders (the crawler software that continually scans the web) see that there are lots of links to YOUR website, they will rank you higher and you will find yourself being listed in the earlier results-pages.

Quality Of Backlinks

How much better will your ranking be? Well, that depends upon how many links you have, and the quality of the links (links from websites that THEMSELVES have links to them).

But how do you KNOW how many links you have? And WHO is linking to you?

There is an excellent free tool from MarketLeap called Link Popularity Check. You can find it here:

Link Popularity Check.

WHY do you need to know how many sites are linking to you? Because you will then know which type of marketing is working for you, whether it’s your articles, your press-releases, your blogs etc.

The tool also shows you who is linking to you.  If you click on the actual number (showing you the quantity of links) this will take you to a page with the actual sites that are linking to your site, so you can go to their website and see how they linked.

This is a VERY cool tool. It isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s FREE, so I would urge you to take advantage of it.

Luke

.

Not bad for a micro-blogging company that only started trying to make money a little over a year ago is it?!  What’s the problem with that?  Simple; It CANNOT be worth that amount of money because in 2010, it made less than $100 million in profits.

Amazing Success

Now THAT IS AMAZING.  Any company that can do that is quite extraordinary, but that’s NOT my point.  My point is that companies are normally valued at around 3-5 years earnings.  So, let’s be generous and say that they are valued at 5 times. That would mean that it’s valued at 5 x 100 million = 500 million, or half a billion.

That’s a FAR CRY from the 3.7 billion, in fact it’s over SEVEN TIMES what it should be.  They are valuing the company for what they THINK it will make over the next 37 YEARS.  This is crazy by any standard.

Casino

As I’ve mentioned before, the stock markets around the world are nothing more than places of fantasy. They are the world’s BIGGEST CASINO’S and nothing more.  If you need any more proof of this other than the Twitter story, then there must be something very wrong with how you think.

Read more here.

Though I don’t know the specifics of what has happened since I wrote this nearly 3 months ago, but I’ll bet that by the time this posts (I’ve scheduled it for March 9th 2011) the world’s media will have FINALLY ADMITTED that we are in the Greatest Depression the world has ever seen.

Luke.

How Does It Work?

Evernote is a two part system.  Firstly, you download the desktop software.  There’s a picture of the simple interface below:

.

Interface

As you can see, whatever notes you have copied into the left (middle?) panel, are shown in larger size in the right panel.  The more notes you have in the left panel, the smaller each icon becomes, so that you can quickly see which one you want to see larger on the right.

Second Part Of Evernote

The second part is the storage space online.  The Evernote servers allow for a small amount of data (enough for me) to be stored whenever you click the ‘Sync’ button.  This means that there’s a copy of all your notes backed up, and it also means that you can access your account from any other computer, should you be away from your own machine.

Upgrade

There IS an upgraded version, which allows for MUCH more storage, but the cost is a mere $45 a year (at the time of me writing this).  The free version is great, the paid version is better; who’d have thought?

Here’s the ‘One Minute Elevator Pitch’ by Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote:

.

This is easily one of the best free systems currently available.  I hope you like it (and use it) as much as I do.

Luke.

.

.