Michaela Cernescu’s Blog

This is the time of year when we look back at 2008 and we make New Year’s Resolutions. This is also my last 2008 post.

For me 2008 have been a year with ups and downs. I am proud of my accomplishments but I have a list of things that are unfinished.
Why?

• I worked at too many projects at a time, I promised to discipline myself, but never happened.  I think this was my weakest point
• Spend too much time with Social Bookmarking and Social Networking. It is Ok because I learn a lot, but I have to take some decisions in 2009 about separating the weeds
• My planning must be more realistic

I am determined to learn from my 2008 mistakes and accomplish more in 2009.
I put in writing my business vision, my goals, and my actions.

I think this must me the start doesn’t matter what you do:

• Take the time to think about what you want to accomplish
• Putting in writing
• Follow up because things that are tracked and measured tend to improve
• For Internet marketers – constantly test and track to improve conversion rates
• Setting up attainable dead lines for your actions, this will make you feel a sense of accomplishment that might be enough to encourage you to stick with the plan until you achieve your goals

This is the general wisdom but let’s get back to my resolutions:

• In 2009 I’ll work on one project at a time, it’s a promise I have to stick with it
• Try to isolate myself from any distractions
• I learn a lot about Social Marketing and Networking, I can separate now what is working vs. what is not, and I’ll concentrate only in what is working
• Must finish an eBook I started in 2008, and plan for the next Digital Product
• I will work minimum one hour per day for a Squidoo Challenge I committed in Dec 2008 see  http://www.squidoo.com/SquidIncomeGoal
• I will set up a membership site
• I’ll work more with affiliate programs
• Cut off on coffee drinking…

I wish you all a Happy 09, let’s strive to make the best of it!
Michaela

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I like Christmas Carols, but one Christmas Carol always intrigues me.
Finally I found out why was writter and I want to share with you.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly.
Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church.
Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit: Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

The ten lords a-leaping were the Ten Commandments.

The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles’ Creed.

So this is a piece of history, the original Carol. This knowledge was shared with me and I found it interesting and enlightening and now I know how that strange song became a Christmas Carol… so pass it on if you wish.

Happy Holidays
Michaela

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It is about the right time for Dec. Newsletter that I pledge to get it out around 15th of each month. This is special because is the last newsletter of the year and we are close to special Holidays and the challenges of a new year.

My mini talking points are:
1. Website design – Find out if your Website is meeting its usability requirements!
2. The faster growing Web 2.0 Application – Twitter
3. Holidays and 2009 expectations

——————————————————————

1. Website design – Find out if your Website is meeting its usability requirements!

Website Design is a subject dear to my heart. I have started creating Websites from the scratch long time ago, and I have been a stanch believer on the concept of combining a good looking Site with a useful content. I don’t believe in ugly Websites, even when the content is good. Make sense as I am a fun of Seth Godine’s school of the 3 Rs:

useful  –  unique  -  up-to-date

We always create our Sites with a purpose in mind. We never create a Site for just one time visit, using websites we want to create lists of potential customers, a community of friendly people that coming back again and again to visit out site, and this is the most powerful way to transform potential customers in customers. 

The first impression: unique, pleasant, a warm feeling is what makes me look closer and discover the content. The first 5 seconds of exposure are very important to determine a visitor to stay longer or go away. If the visitor starts browsing your site, the other characteristics are important: easy navigation, clarity, quality content.

The truth of the matter is, after so many years of Website design, we have now good guidelines for website usability, accessibility, and we have a lot of tools to measure those characteristics. The bad news is not everybody follow the guidelines.

The general wisdom is that a Website must have:

• Easy Navigation, and map side for large WS
• Functionality, Clarity, and Consistency
• User Control, everything a user wants to do, must be available: search, cancel, sign-in, read more, contact us, about us. Don’t leave the impression that you have something to hide, put your picture, address, email, your Twitter count, Alexa count. This is the way you will build trust
• Content of high relevance presented in simple language, avoid jargon, well structure info: clear links, paragraphs, bullets. This is very important that a lot of people first scan and second read or go away
• Content is the king, but don’t hype, be as honest as you can, at this point in history people are sick and tired of hype and sophisticated enough to discover what is hype and what is not
• On-line help and instructions available for sign-in, for download
• An efficient System of User Feedback
• An efficient System of Error Prevention with visible error messages and concise instructions for correction

We have a lot of sources, but for more details, I redirect you to the best source available that also contain learning sites, checklist and guidelines:
http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html

I give you same tools to measure your site usability and accessibility:
http://fivesecondtest.com/   this is a site which will run a quick usability poll for you

http://www.feng-gui.com/  this site shows you the heat map of any image you put in your site, it effectively analyze attention and attraction in visuals (this is important for “5 seconds first impression” I talk about)

To lean more about Usability and Accessibility you can go in forums:
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums

Hang on in forums is always a time well spend, you can learn from others, find best advice, and best people interested in your niche, new ideas, and is fun as well.

If you enjoy this post, let me know, drop a line or two. I’ll come back to this subject, because I believe in the power of “well done” Websites.

2. The faster growing Web 2.0 Application – Twitter

Not all Web 2.0 Applications are equal, and Twitter is really the fastest growing Application.
It is build around a simple question: What are you doing now? And you can respond only in 140 characters or less. Initially I was skeptical but after I tried I discovered why people get into it:

• It  is very simple and easy to communicate, a lot of people is using it as a mini blog
• A perfect way of picking up useful information
• Easy way to find new customers, business partners, pears, friends 
• Excellent opportunity to advertise yourself, your work, services, blogs
• A powerful networking tool, put questions, give answers
• It is addicted and fun 
• You can build a following crowd in a short period of time, anyway quicker then an opt-in list in a website

All I said is valuable but the best profit of Tweeting is build a team of followers, create a community that like you, communicate with you, pay attention to you, get closer to you daily. In time you can brand your business, doing this you make people know you, remember you and finally trust you. 

I don’t advise you to put in front of your follower offers all day long, this will be considered same sort of spam and the people will go away, but if you build correctly the relationship, and brand correctly your business, when you will advertise something this community will pay attention to you, because the felling of knowing you was created, and you will have customers.

In summary: The numbers of so many applications that have been created and are related with Twitter are definitely the proof and the recognition of the value of Twitter. I list just a couple of them:
http://twitter.grader.com
http://tweetdeck.com
http://twittAd.com
http://tweetMyBlog.com
http://TwitWall.com
http://search.twitter.com
http://TwitPWR.com
http://TwitPic.com
The latest I found is: http://itweet.net  it built-in auto-refresh, search and hashtags, full follow, block, notifications features, view user bio, location, URL inline with tweets, and watch conversations with “in reply to” links, awesome!

Play with all of them and you will find something you like it for sure.

3. Holidays and 2009 expectations 

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27 hours later… The Arbitrage Conspiracy Is Live!

After reading previous post, you know the good, the bad and the ugly, and I hope you also read the PDF report, and listened the VIDEOS.  Now you can make an educated decision about the most intrigue launch of 2008:

Arbitrage Conspiracy

The doors are open and you are invited:
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/AC

I’ll give you some interesting fragments from Gauher Chaudry’s comment, a very well-known marketer in CPA and traffic brokering methods:

“I have not seen the course, so I can’t comment on the calibre of the material.
…
What you will read is not hype, but rather the truth. Sometimes the truth can get distorted during these rather large product launches.
…
I was well aware of this course almost 3 months ago because the guys behind it, Aymen and Emmanuel are both Pay Per Click Formula and Pay Per View Formula owners.
…
Aymen has been gifted with great intelligence. He is only around 25 years old, but talks like he has 50 years experience under his belt. No joke.
…
Emmanuel has shared with me insider tips and even sent me some of their PPC tools that were created in-house.
…
So while I can vouch for their credibility, I still can’t say anything about the course itself…”

Well this credibility vouch, coming from Gauher Chaudry, means a lot to me.

Let’s become a co-conspirator, and join me and Aymen team as we all pull in massive profits in 2009!

http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/AC

Until next time all the best
Michaela

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WOW! Today my inbox is full again with a big product launching… full of buzzz,  enthusiasm and hope.  It’s really hard to stay focused on what you’re doing when there’s so much noise and distractions hitting your inbox.

This introduction doesn’t mean I don’t like product launching but I have my own way of reacting to them!

If the launching is perfectly orchestrated, I am not commenting because in this case, hundreds of affiliates are doing their part, JV are awake day and night counting their money, it is not much to add to it.

If a launching raises questions, lack of enough details, obvious hype, and so forth, I comment because I feel that I can contribute to it in a modest way.

Arbitrage Conspiracy Project is one I decided to comment, you will see why.

First I’ll give you the general background.  It was a conference in Las Vegas, per invitation only where “Aymen and Associates”, nobody knows Aymen second name or the associates names; and they talk about their project called Arbitrage Conspiracy.
I wasn’t in Las Vegas, I don’t know details directly from the source, but people I trust and know very well positively commented on it and I started to be interested in this project.

In a nut shell, the project consists of a 12 week course in which Aymen will teach how to master PPC AdWords and other top notch techniques which will bring you between: 10k-100k net profits a day. This really sounds hype but one is innocent until  proven guilty, right? I continue to be curious and interested in Aymen’s project.
I am not a stranger to this subject, 2-3 weeks ago I read Eric Louviere’s 72 pages PDF, called “Six-figure Apprentice Program”, it has the same subject of to make money with CPA, obviously using PPC (Pay Per Click).

I did my part of learning curve:

• I signed in and got a free report called: Arbitrage Conspiracy, and I read 25 pages word by word
• Last night I listened to a conference in which Brad Fallon well known IM and a lot of other gurus asked questions to Aymen
• At the end of the conference we had Aymen’s promise that we will stay today glued to PC at 11:45 AM when the official launch will occur.

What I noticed:

• Aymen started with $50, knowing enough about PPC, I don’t think that is enough to start with this amount – this looks hype to me
• No need for website, product, list etc, it is a stretch because you have to create landing pages, these means domains, also need to buy some tools, memberships – this “no need” concept is at least 50% hype
• You can be up and running in 24 hours, well it is enough to apply to CPAs and you need days and weeks to be approved. I applied to 6 good CPAs and after one week I found out that 3 of them approved me and 3 of them rejected me. I cannot see how in 24 hours you are ready to go – this is other unnecessary hype
• In last night’s conference the gurus ask very good questions, and Aymen gave vague answers, it is true that an hour is a limited amount of time but he can chose just one subject in which he gave enough detail to convince people that he is the real deal, didn’t he?  Actually this worries me the most, his lack of details
• Today at 11:45 AM he was suppose to have the big launch, it is 9:30 PM now and we still don’t have the launch
• It is to much secrecy; we don’t even know his second name, or associates names, why? We in the States are very open about everything, looks like he is part of a different culture, which is not a problem, but the secrecy is strange.

Well this is my conclusion:

• I am not saying buy or do not buy the 12 weeks course, you have to do your own learning experience, read the blog: http://www.arbitrageconspiracy.com/blog/ 
• A lot of people are convinced that there is great value in Aymen methods and I respect this even though when you have a lot of value, you don’t need hype at all
• But prior to take a decision, you have to determine if this 12 weeks course is for you, if you are technically good enough to load scripts, design landing pages, instal new software
• You have to figure out if you can afford, we don’t know the price yet and judgeing by the guru-interest, it will be an expensive one 
• The promise of a potential $100k per day is unusual promise, in a case like this you don’t jump without knowing exactly what you suppose to get, this is why I want more details about it, and we hope that a part of them will come at launch time.

Please don’t jump to conclusion that I am critical, I am not, I just want to see more details and also to find out why they chose to use hype when the quality of their project doesn’t really need it. And I want you to make informed decisions.

Note: we just get I word from Aymen, they decided to delay going live until tomorrow  Dec 11th  at 12:00 PM PST or 3:00 PM EST and he promised an extra surprise bonus for everyone. 
Until then you can read the Arbitrage Conspiracy Blog: http://www.arbitrageconspiracy.com/blog/ listen to the videos, sign in and read the free report.

Until the next time, all the best
Michaela

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Just want to let you know why somebody may be interested in giveaways:

• To increase the opt-in list – the money is in the list, we already know this, it is not a cliché, it is the soul of Internet Marketing, you want to be successful you need a list
• To download more Digital products they can use to market and/or to learn more. The truth of the matter is that “being a Guru” is a misconception, some people knows more then others, but nobody knows everything, and the learning process never stops because the internet is growing so rapidly, if you stop learning you are out of the loop in 6-10 month
• To make money. This is the purpose of this post, I’ll show you how.

Well, not all giveaways are born equal, but it is enough to look at the conditions of participation and you will find out which are good giveaways.

This is the right path of participating to Giveaways:

• You have to have a Digital Product to offer for Free, this can be an eBook, a Report, a Video, an interview, webinar, and my favorites are an e-course or a Report
• You participate to a giveaway in which you offer your free Digital Product, you download all the goodies from the giveaway and store them in a folder. Using my experience, 60% of the gifts have a real value, help me to learn more but also I can use them as free gifts in other giveaway which will come along, 30% have a medium value, 10% I am not interested in (just to be polite)!  From that 60% I select carefully around 10 very good products with Master Resell Rights, and I keep them, I can use them as free gifts or as OTO or I can sell them
• When you create your giveaway gift, you will add an OTO (One Time Offer).  You chose a product with real value, related with your gift, but more informative then yout gift. Only this way a person that was interested in your initial offer will be interested in your OTO. The OTO will have a decent price on it and, sure, some people will take it, some will pass it but if you have a big list you will make a profit
• If you don’t add an OTO to your gift, you are leaving money on the table, but you increase your list and in future you can send other offers.

In previous post I gave you an example of a good giveaway, if you didn’t decided to be a contributor, at list try to be a member and download all the goodies:
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/5JVMem

If you are a beginner, the part which is missing is probably the OTO, how to create one, how to use it properly, how to increase the chance your OTO to be picked up.

I’ll help you with OTO learning curve, offering a free lifetime membership from where you can pick up a lot of knowledge about how to create an OTO:
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/OTOfree

And I’ll let you know when other good giveaway will surface.

Until the next time, all the best
Michaela

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Just a short post. I am sure you noticed the giveaways flooding the Internet in Nov – Dec. I participated in 2 of them and I added hundreds new potential customers to my list, but I was reluctant to participate in all of them because I want to preserve the integrity of my business.

Something new and different appeares, I participate again as a contributor, and I want to share with you.

This is a very short JV, just 5 days  between 8th Dec and 13th Dec. what can put some money in your packet daily bases for 5 days.

What is different:

1. How Many Gifts Can you Add?   UNLIMITED!
2. How Soon Will Your Gifts Be Approved?   INSTANTLY! That’s right, there is NO WAITING FOR GIFT APPROVAL.
3. How Soon Will You Get Commissions Paid?   DAILY through PayPal! You have to recognize that it is a big difference vs. other giveaway events.
4. How Long Will This Event Last?   ONLY FIVE (5) DAYS but they are prior to Christmas and with daily pay you still can use money for Christmas shopping.

Any questions; let me know
Look it over!  If you want to be a contributor, click now, you still have time to add gift(s):

http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/5JVCon

If you want to be just a member and only grab all the goodies, come back on 8th dec, after 8.00 PM. and click on:

http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/5JVMem 

This is a perfect chance to increase your list and acquire free products you can use for the big Christmas giveaway which will start soon.

There is also an upgrade for $27 on the OTO, take it or pass it and do it inside for the same amount! You’ll get 100 credits towards your ranking and you can put in as many of your own offers as you want!

I am a contributor with my updated eBook: “How to do affiliate marketing the right way” and I expect a big return, the other 2 events produced a big return for me. 

Regards Michaela

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