Goals vs. Dreams: You Need Both, But You Need to Know The Difference

Many, many people mistake dreams for goals. You might set a ‘goal’ of selling a thousand copies a month of your new product, or getting new people onto your mailing list… While these are both good things, they aren’t actually goals. They’re dreams, and while it’s good to have dreams, you also need goals. Let me explain you why…

Goals vs. Dreams

A goal is something that you, yourself, have the power to make happen. Losing weight is a goal, albeit a vague one, because you are entirely in charge of all of the variables necessary to make that happen. Selling a thousand copies of your product, on the other hand, is not something you can directly control. People will buy it, or they won’t, and while you can absolutely influence, you can’t control it.

You need both dreams and goals, but you need to be able to tell the difference between the two. The problem with mistaking a dream for a goal is that if you don’t succeed with your dreams, which may be out of your hands, you’re going to be disappointed, and that’s going to drain your motivation.

What your goals should do is support your dreams. What I mean is that you should break your dreams, which you can’t control, down into things that you can. For instance, if your dream is to sell a thousand copies a month, then your goal could be to produce new content everyday, or to learn how to get Cheap PPC Traffic. These are goals, and they will allow you to reach your dreams.

Reaching a goal will however require more than just envisioning a positive result… I, for example, set myself a goal to produce new content on my blog at least twice a week, either with new blog posts like this one, or new videos like those you can find on CKTV. This is a goal I set myself and that will help me reach my dreams but it requires action and commitment.

So what are your goals, and what are your dreams? Do they sync up? Please leave a comment below! Remember you can also get in touch with me via my Facebook page!

Author:
Julien
New Year’s Resolutions Suck…

New Year's Resolutions…but habits are awesome! A lot of people make some kind of New Year’s resolutions, even if they don’t necessarily think of them as resolutions. You probably do have some things you’d like to do or not do this year, but how long will this last?

The chances are pretty good that you’ve already gotten way off traffic even though 2011 is just barely out of the gate. This is not a bad thing, believe it or not, because what you need aren’t resolutions, as such, what you need are habits. Resolutions, in general, are too nebulous to actually be particularly helpful.

Let’s say you have a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. This is too big to really be useful. On the other hand, if your resolution is to weigh and measure everything you eat, that’s something that you can say you’re definitely doing or not doing every day. You can lie to yourself about whether you’re working towards your goal, but it’s hard to do so with something concrete. That’s why habits are better than resolutions.

Even more so than that, it’s something that you can do habitually. Habits are something you can create, and they’re what you need to do to accomplish big goals. Losing weight is something that requires an application of will. Weighing your food, on the other hand, will rapidly become a habit, and habits don’t require willpower.

So what does that have to do with internet marketing? Well, you probably made some resolutions for this year, and what I’m suggesting is you chuck those and pick stuff that you can make New Year’s habits out of. Here are a few examples:

Answer All Your Emails Everyday – Well, the ones that need answered anyway. You can probably ignore that Nigerian prince who needs your help, but a lot of people have a bad habit of procrastinating, and this is one to prevent that.

Write Everyday – It’s a fairly rare internet marketer who doesn’t need to do some writing everyday, and it’s an even rarer marketer who does as much as he should. So make it a habit to do some everyday, no matter what! Write every single day of the week!

Backlink Building – If you want your pages to rank well in the search engines, you should build backlinks. However, building backlinks isn’t a one-off thing, it should be a daily habit! Build backlinks to your pages every day for long-term, consistent results!

There are of course plenty of other habits that you could have. Do you have any in mind already? What habits will help you get ahead this year? Feel free to leave a comment! Remember you can also chat with you on my Facebook page!

Author:
Julien
Internet Marketing Secrets: Do your Homework!

You need a little extra income. You want to start an online business to work from home in the evenings after your day job. If all goes well, maybe you will be able to make it a full time venture. Toward that goal, you need to know Internet marketing secrets. You have read about people who profess to make 5-10 thousand a month from the comfort of home. How do they do it?! What are their Internet marketing secrets?

Actually, the only real secret is to do your homework. Like any other business venture in the traditional marketplace or online, you need to know what you are getting into, before investing the time and money necessary to get started.

Doing your homework is the biggest internet marketing secret, like for example, golf… If you want to be a good golf player, you need to do your homework on what is required to swing correctly. Once you know this, the next most important part comes in… practice, practice and more practice. You can’t be an expert overnight and understand everything overnight, you need to read up on it and figure it out as you go along. (That is also what this blog is here for, to share methods with you to make your marketing learning curve much smaller, and cheaper!)

First, you need to determine if there is a market for the product or service you want to sell. For example, if your town has 10 Mexican restaurants, chances are you will not want to start yet another. Instead, maybe your town could use some Japanese cuisine. Unless you can setup the best Mexican restaurant, then you can take the ‘traffic’ from your competition.

The same can be said for Internet businesses. If the Web is already saturated with a particular business, and the people offering a similar product or service are struggling, you might want to come up with a better idea.

But, how do you find out if consumers will be interested in your product or service? Based on my own personal experience, do a lot of reading and ask around. Google your business of interest and do some reading. Check out other sites. Also, join some business blogs and ask for advice from people who are already working online. Neither action will cost any money. In the long run, it might save you a few bucks and a little heartache in the process.

Second, see what you need to set up your site. Do you have a Web host? Find the best deal based upon price, support services, and ease of use. Many hosting sites will offer packages with discounts for signing up for longer. In addition, the good sites will provide tutorials and other services to help you build an optimal site for your new business venture. Also, if you can afford the expenditure, many hosts have website designers on staff to help you create the best site to attract consumers.

(I co-founded and run ViralHosts – it is a website provider with a simple point and click SimplePanel, so you can get a great site up in a few clicks!)

Third, you must research what you need to place on your site to make it more user-friendly, while highlighting your product or service. Then, learn what it takes to market your site and bring consumers to your virtual doorstep.

In truth, there are really no Internet marketing secrets, nor are there any real get-rich-quick schemes. Like any other traditional business, it takes a lot of dedication and hard work to get a new business off the ground. However, the rewards should be well worth the effort, if you do your homework.

I Currently earn six figures a year online, and am learning something new everyday, I hope you are learning something new all the time too!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Nelson Mandela Turns 92! Comment to donate $13.70

Tomorrow is Nelson Mandela’s 92nd birthday, but it is MUCH more than that too…

Nelson Mandela Day

It is also the 2nd Annual: ‘Nelson Mandela International Day’ – The guy has done so much for my country (South Africa) and so much to unite the world, that the United Nations General Assembly declared July 18 Nelson Mandela International Day in recognition of the former South African president’s contribution to the culture of peace and freedom world wide.

What can you do? Well 2 simple things, the first is, spend just 67 minutes doing something good for your local community tomorrow on Mandela Day. This is to signify the 67 YEARS Mandela spent fighting for Social Justice. It doesn’t matter where in the world you live, try and spend just 1 minute per year that Mandela spent, helping out tomorrow!

For more information, please visit his website: http://nelsonmandela.org.za/

Post a comment and I will Donate an Additional 100Rands

Then 2nd thing is to spread the word about Mandela Day, and you can do so in part by sharing this post. Please post a comment of your support below and I will donate an additional 100Rand to Nelson Mandela’s foundation ($13.70). Once you have posted your comment, please share this post. For every person that posts a comment on this thread by Monday I will donate an additional 100Rand. This means that even if you personally can’t afford to donate, I will do it for you, as a direct result of your action (Taking a minute to post a comment of support for the great man).

So please place your comment below and then share this link on Twitter, Facebook, with your lists and friends, tell them to come here, read the message and post a comment! (link: https://www.colinklinkert.com/nelson-mandela-day/)

This is one of those rare times where I will feel GREAT about getting hurt in the pocket, so please spread the word. Thank You!

Update: I just donated 1,800 Rands (approximately $250 USD). Check this out:

Thanks a lot of your participation and support!

Nelson Mandela Day

Author:
Colin Klinkert
ColinKlinkert.com Redesigned!

Today I’d like to tell you about the changes I recently made to my blog. It’s the first blog redesign I attempt (for this particular blog) and I must say I’m pretty happy with the end result. Most of you who visit my blog regularly must have noticed the changes already. I made changes to the navigation menu, about box, layout and footer. I also changed the RSS feed button and added an opt in box (make sure you download my new ebook by the way, simply enter your email address in the opt in form on the left). With these changes, it should be much easier for you to navigate throughout the blog. For those who have never visited the blog before, here is how it once looked:

The navigation menu was on the left side and the about box on the top. I really liked this navigation menu but wanted to add more links (to new pages of the blog, some are still under construction at the time this blog post is published). I also wanted the content to appear higher on the page and the opt in box to show up high in the sidebar. I didn’t make all those changes myself but got a designer / programmer to do it for me… and I’m very happy with his work! I had everything in mind before though.

If you scroll down, you will also notice that the layout has changed. In the past the home page was showing the ten latest blog posts (in their full version). Only one full blog post shows up at the top now, followed by two abstracts and a few archived posts. You don’t need to scroll down during hours anymore to find out what the previous blog posts are about. It is now much easier to find the blog posts that most interest you. I also added a testimonial… and there are more coming.

I’m pretty sure these changes will significantly improve the usability and I hope the new layout will help me grow the community I want to create on this blog. I’m sure these changes will make a difference! Anyhow, I hope you like the new design! Feel free to leave your feedback. A few weeks ago I also changed the design of my help desk, check out the following blog post for more info: Reply2Colin: New Design for Better Usability!

Author:
Julien
Social Networks: Google Social Search Goes Live!

Last week Google announced the launch of a new feature that may revolutionize the way we use search engines: it’s called Google Social Search. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced deals with social giants Facebook and Twitter but Google fired back almost immediately. The social search war is on! Google Social Search is developed by Google Labs and is still an experiment at this blog post is published but is quite likely to be part of the search engine landscape in the near future.

Google basically wants to deliver search results using your social circle as a source: with social sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed but also other types of platform like Gmail. They want your social networks to have an influence on your search results. If you join the experiment, when doing a search on Google, relevant search results from your social circle will be displayed at the bottom of the results page.

Google will know who your friends are once you have filled out your Google Profile with links to your social network profile pages. If you’re a Gmail user, Google will also look into your contacts. For now the social search results show up at the bottom of the results page but we can imagine that they will climb up as often your social circle if more relevant to you than the first search results. Would you rather read what Wikipedia says about tourism in the Fiji Islands or read a blogpost a friend of yours recently published about the holidays he spent in the region? What means more to you?

Relevancy seems to be one of the keys to Google’s success, and once again they’re on the way to provide their users with more relevant search results than ever before. For more information on Google Social Search, watch Matt Cutt’s video. Matt Cutt works for the Search Quality team at Google.

Any thoughts on this experiment? Do you think that this feature has the potential to change the way we use search engines?

Author:
Julien
ViralHosts switches to cPanel!

Did you give ViralHosts a try? For those who have, we hope you are making the most of this new all-in-one web hosting, list builder and mailer system.

You may have experienced a few issues with the hosting section the last few days. Rather than just fixing the glitches, our Server Technician Tycho Luyben changed the hosting panel to a cPanel based system. Genius!

This is great news because cPanel is much more advanced and has many more features than the previous hosting panel, which means better usability, functionality and support. Before we continue with the great news, we have some important housekeeping details for you that come with this improvement…

1. You will still get access to the old system hosting panel for a few more weeks, so you can access emails you still might have received there.

2. Your files, databases, sub-domains and domains have already been transferred, so nothing to worry about in this regard.

3. Your old FTP & email accounts will not be automatically transferred, please simply setup new ones in the new cPanel.

cPanel has so many features, we don’t even know where to start. First, cPanel allows us to provide you with better support, because of the Getting Started Wizard and the instructional videos integrated in almost each section. You will be able to find lots of help pages too.

Other new features include: mailing lists, auto-installers for WordPress and many other scripts, wizards and so much more! Just take a a look at this HUGE dashboard:

cPanel

cPanel is the most used hosting panel in the world. We’re still wondering how they’ve been able to include so many features in a single system… and that’s all yours with ViralHosts! There are some features that are still switched off, and we’re ready to customize some on demand so it’s even going to get bigger and bigger!

The hosting is now more stable too. The hardware used for this new cPanel server is much more powerful, you will surely appreciate the speed and flexibility. No doubt about that!

Make sure you log in as soon as you can to check it out! ViralHosts has now nothing to envy to its competitors, not even the big ones! We’re so excited about this and we’re sure you can’t wait to tell your friends! It is time to promote ViralHosts big time again!

Did you know upgraded members (any level starting at Silver) can install WordPress in any directory with the simple click of the mouse? No joke! If you want this and many other advanced hosting features please login to your account, and click the last menu link: “Upgrade Section”.

In that section you can see the different upgrades and great features they offer. Click here to login your account! Upgraded members also get access to 340 simple point and click templates to get your site(s) rocking and rolling in no time, so if this sounds good to you, check out the upgrade section.

Please send us your feedback. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via our help desk! Make sure you choose the right category when submitting your ticket so we can answer it in the quickest time possible.

‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe… it can achieve.’
Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

To your success,

Colin Klinkert, Frank Bauer & Tycho Luyben
Co-Founders of ViralHosts DOT com

P.S. – Are you a member of our other list builder service that the industry is raving about? If not, please click here to check it out!

Author:
Julien
Finding Good Joint Venture (JV) Partners

Finding good JV Partners for your online product is not as easy as you may think. You want to make sure that you find the right persons who will promote your product the best possible way. Whatever your product is: an ebook, a software, a membership site… you should put a decent effort into searching for good JV Partners as they could have a decisive influence on the overall success of your product. Some internet marketers are just so good at promoting online products and services. You don’t want to miss out on these big shots because they can boost your online revenues in no time.

Finding JV Partners

By good JV Partners we mean partners who will actually promote your product, on the long-term (and not just as a one-off). Just don’t pick people randomly, but make sure they would be interested in promoting your product and actually be able to do it well. It’s even better if they have promoted a similar product in the past, or if they have a product or service that is complementary with yours.

Here are some of the techniques we use to find good JV Partners:

– Your existing contacts

If you’re a well-established internet marketer, you certainly already have a list of contacts. Who do you think would be able to promote your product the way you want it? Write a nice email and send it to them. Don’t forget to mention how much money they would earn on each referral. If you’re totally new to the industry, try the next technique.

– Warrior Forum

Warrior Forum is simply the best internet marketing forum you can find on the web (no offense to other forums). Check out their ‘Warrior Joint Ventures’ section or simply search for products that you think would fit with yours and contact their creators.

– Google

Simply search for products that you think would be complementary with your own product, and contact the site admins. You need to send them a nice, customized email. Don’t just blast them with a generic email that will not stand out from the other JV inquiries. Ensure that the sites have a decent Alexa ranking, so you are sure that they actually have traffic.

– Referral contests

Several sites organize referral contests (like we do on ViralUrl and ViralHosts). If you can check the contest rankings, you can see who are the best at promoting the product and thus quite likely to promote your own product the best possible way. The best promoters like to do it their way, but make sure you offer your JV Partners promotional tools so they can blast their list or put banners on their site with only little effort.

– Directories and networks

There are several directories and networks where you will be able to make a JV offer for your product. Mike Filsaime’s JV Network is one of them, but there are several other ones. Browse around and see if you can find what you’re looking for.

– Social networks

Just tweet about it! Or whatever your favorite social network are, just let people know that you are searching for JV Partners. That’s a really cool way to interact with potential JV Partners but you then have to decide whether or not they qualify.

There are of course several other ways to find good JV partners for your product. Feel free to share your own techniques with us! We would love to hear from you.

Author:
Julien
How To Get Quality Inbound Links To Your Site

With HubPages, Squidoo, Tumblr, Posterous… and ViralHosts!

Inbounds links are useful for two main reasons: they can generate additional traffic to your website and, most importantly, influence search engines in the ranking of your pages. There are plenty of ways to get inbound links to your website. One of them is becoming increasingly popular: through user generated content websites and micro blogging platforms.

HubPages

HubPages is certainly the most popular user generated content website. It has been designed around sharing advertising revenue for high quality, user generated content. Some of the pages – all built by web users – are very popular and generate a significant amount of traffic. Just so you know, some people are making heaps of money with these kinds of websites. I’m not explaining you how to make money with them though, but how to get more quality inbound to your website. Anyway, HubPages is the first website you want to look at.

Squidoo

Squidoo was founded about a year before HubPages and is also very popular. It doesn’t generate as much traffic as HubPages but is still a big player. Squidoo was designed to help web users easily find useful overview pages – called lenses – written by real people. With Squidoo, you have the option to give your earnings to charity, which is a good thing if you’re not really interested in monetizing your page.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a micro blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos and other types of content to their micro blog. Tumblr is popular for its customizability and ease of use. This is not the ultimate blogging platform, but if you’re not too familiar with blogging, or just want a simple but effective blog, then you should consider Tumblr. Signing up on Tumblr only takes a few seconds, and everything has been done to make you publish your content in the most simple way possible.

Posterous

Posterous is another micro blogging platform but is slightly different from Tumblr. With Posterous, you can publish blog posts by simply emailing your content to a dedicated email address. If you’re confused about blogging, well this might be the best option. I just cannot think of a more simple way to publish content. You email your content and… that’s it. Your blog has been created. You don’t even need to log into the system to publish your content. You can do so though, if you really want to, to edit your existing blog posts for example… It is not as big as Tumblr but I really like the concept. Give it a try, it is definitely worth it.

ViralHosts

ViralHosts is also a great way to get more quality inbound links to your site. This all-in-one cPanel hosting, list builder and mailer system allows you to host and build a site in no time. With ViralHosts, you can link to your main site, squeeze pages or any other pages you want. You know how much value search engines give to inbound links… ViralHosts is your chance to get quality ones! To be honest with you, I just can’t stop finding new benefits to using ViralHosts, so make sure you join free today and see how this system can help you build a strong online presence!

Otherwise, you may want to look at alternatives like Google’s Knol, SpongeFish or LaunchTags. Browse around and choose the ones you like. If you’re really after inbound links, then create a page on each of these websites. Keep in mind that not all will allow you to post links without a rel=nofollow attribute (which basically remove the value of the link for search engines), or only allow you to do so once your page is considered as a high quality page. Focus on quality and don’t insert too many links, one or two (to different landing pages) are usually enough. There is no use linking twice to the same address on the same page.

Author:
Julien
Author:
Julien