Michaela Cernescu’s Blog

I like to start the New Year with my reflection on 2009, enjoying the good moments, learning from mistakes, enforce the plan for 2010 and organize to the bone, and whatever takes to make it better, and a humble thank you for the blessing friends and working JV partners of 2009.

It is fair to say that 2009 wasn’t one of my favorite year even though was better then 2008. It was a mix of too many events, projects which as a whole made me tired and not always happy.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the accomplishments:

Learning:

•  It was a turning point on the way I looked at Web 2.0. A learned a lot and spend a value time analyzing some new trends. As a consequence I am going more towards: tagging, grouping, and blogging using only WordPress and the new born WP MU, abandoning some classic concept of putting my nose all over the net. I can see clearly now that this was a mistake of the past. Thanks you: Yaro, Eric, VanDyke, Joel for a friendly hand when I need it the most
• I definitely want to spend more time in small niches, but keeping in mind the main purpose of my business vision and its goals
• I eliminate a foggy area and I make now a clear difference between my main purpose and the  satellite “tools”
• It was an important step forward on my understanding of Google strategies, myths, and future trends. Thanks  Jonathan for “Search Engine Myths Exposed”, you are a marvelous researcher, deep analyst, and honest Internet Marketer. I learn a lot from you and I am using your scripts with a different prospective now
• I learned a lot about membership sites, scripts, and macros. Thanks: Eric, Jan Del Carmen, Stu  
• Learned WordPress MU, wrote the first eBook in JV with Alex: “WordPress Multi User”, read aboutit on this lens
• I know from sometime that the key of  long term success is to create automated systems, not to chase a couple of sales, but for the first time I made the creation of automated systems my priority, it is going to stay like this for 2010 as well 
• I’ll use an entire arsenal available for Automated systems: scripts, macro, autoresponders, recurring tools (membership sites, e-courses)

My 2009 Blessings and 2010 Hopes:

• In 2009 I was blessed with a couple of good new friends. Some were coming from working relations, others just happen to be the right person at the right place and time for me. I am really grateful for having all of them on my side, yes, the friends make our world. A special thanks for Jeanie, Alex, my dear musketeers, and a handful of very dear Squidoo friends
• In 2010 I’ll work at just a project at a time, no exceptions, the decision is coming as a hard to swallow learning experience from 2009
• I’ll eliminate all un productive activities, all volunteer work for hopeless experiences
• I’ll extend working relationships with people who happen to share what I  believe in, and I’ll continue to learn and grow within this friendly environment. I am glad  these type of people exist around me, I value their expertise, collaboration, and above all friendship
• I am convinced that if I want to work hard on my goals, my goals will work on me; I’ll continue to dream big, and plan to the last detail. I don’t want to face the future with apprehension; I want to do it with anticipation and joy. Yes, I always consider the joy of honest hard work a prerequisite of success 
• At personal level I have to put more time aside for family. My mother is 95 old now, she needs me, I’ll be available day and night for her, she is the best mother in the world for me
• My audience will find out about the progress from my blogs, published products, lenses, tweets, and so on
• To serve better my loyal subscribers, I’ll transform this blog in a monthly Newsletter-Blog, starting Jan 15th, and as usual I invite you to participate, I really love to hear from you

Quote Mark Twain

My Predictions:

• I am convinced that Blogging, Affiliate Marketing, and Internet Marketing in general will play a bigger role in 2010
• But a lot of changes will happen, new tactics, and trends will emerge, as of new FTC rules ( read lens ). To all the pessimists out there who are telling you that Internet Marketing is saturated, I say that they don’t understand essence. The Internet is big enough for you and me, and gazillion of other honest people, there are no fences, and the difference between the impossible and possible lies only in a person’s determination, not on outside influences 
• Among my good friends I clearly see 2-3 new stars in 2010, I wish them well, keep on open eye, and help as much as I can

To your success, Happy New Year Michaela

Popularity: 40% [?]

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Part III

Alexa

Alexa is a Yahoo free tool that allows you to find out the traffic of any site online, it is coming with some controversy, I will say that even when is unreliable, it is doing an excellent job:

• It does give you a good indication as to how many hits a site is getting
• Let you compare sites traffic
• Let you monitor your own site, just creating an alexa-account for the site and implementing a small HTML code in your site meta-tags

In the next picture I compare traffic for:

• Zazzle.com
• CaffeePress.com
• eBay.com
• Amazon.com

Looking to the chart: Amazon has the most hits, followed by eBay, Zazzle and Caffee Press are almost zero traffic vs. Amazon and eBay. But between Zazzle and CaffePress, Zazzle is doing better.

If you request a chart just for one website you scroll down can click on self-service tool (red arrow):

At this point you open an Alexa account for your website, follow the instructions, and when the account is approved, we will receive an email from Alexa with a piece of HTML code, and instructions where to put the HTML snippet on your site. 

Making money online is all about traffic AND conversions, if you know more about how your site is doing, it will be easy to know the areas you must improves.
If you understand its limitations of this tool, and you will do using it, then Alexa can be a fantastic free marketing tool.

Zamzar

Did you ever want to convert files from one format to another without to download bulky software?  You need www.Zanzar.com

Zamzar supports a big variety of different formats, I frequently use it when I need to convert a gif  picture in a jpeg picture,  I also use it when I need to convert something to a PDF really fast.

Gigasize

Did you ever need to send a big, really big file that e-mail cannot handle it?
You need www.Gigasize.com which will let you transmit max. file size 300 MB and 10 file max for a free account.

It is supper fast, you’ll have your files sent before you know it! You basically send large email files on Internet by uploading to Gigasize.

This way you can upload: Movies, Music, Games, and Photos, and store them on-line for instant access and sharing.

Copyscape

Did you ever worry about people stealing your content online (if you don’t, you should be!)? Y0u need www.Copyscape.com.

The debate is still on about whether penalties for duplicate content exists or not, but I advise everybody to have a quick look to discover if anyone has stolen your content every now and then.

This is a handy free tool, you type your website address into the box, and then click submit. This is it, the tool will rush off and check if anyone is copying your post/aticle when they shouldn’t be.

It is amazing! Isn’t it?  

Until the next time

All the best Michey

Popularity: 51% [?]

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Part II  -  Graphics

Picresize  and Picasa.

You can use for Graphics: Photoshop or Corel Photo-Paint, both are expensive and there is a learning curve to use them properly.

But in majority of cases if you creat a Squidoo lens, or a Blog Post, re-sizing is all you need.  For just this operation I use Picresize which is incredible simple, follow this example.

The flowers you see in next pictute I need to resize at 50%

• Equalize
• Gaussian Blur
• Grayscale
• Raise
• Raise Frame
• Rotate or
• Go forward with the default

 

 For this demonstration I Chose Raise Frame, pres a button and this is what I get:

This is it, I have my picture reduced 50%.

As an alternative you can use Picasa  a great software from Google, the difference is that you have to download the software, and the process is similar.

GIMP.

If your needs are more then just resize, Gimp is a fantastic free alternative, is easy to use, intuitive and above all is free.

It is true you don’t need of spend hundreds of dollars, it is a great editor to use.

For Blogs.

Blogging is closer to my soul, I highly recommend:

Blog Pulse 

Blog pulse is a great free research tool that allows you to discover what’s hot and what’s not in the blogsphere.  All you have to do is typing:  a topic, keyword, or URL.

In the above chart is a comparison between:

• Google Chrome
• Google Wave
• Google SideWiki

Do yourself a favor, and start using Blog Pulse, it really is an excellent tool.

Until the next time all the best

Michey

Popularity: 48% [?]

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I kept last post to be about the fold longer then usual, I did it on purpose.  Now is the right time to go forward.

Everybody under the sun is complaining about information overload and the luck of enough time. We cannot make the day longer then 24 hours even if we try, this is a fact, but we can help ourselves with some Marketing Tools which can be Free or Paid.

I’ll tell you today about FREE Marketing tools I use and like to make my life easier, to minimize the time, and make me happy as an Internet Marketer.

I need more then one post but this is the plan:

• Google Free Tools
• Graphics
• Blogging
• SEO
• Others

Google Free Tools

They are so many; I enumerate 6 of them in alphabetical order:

1. Google Alerts  it is a tool which can help you to get more traffic, and more knowledge about a subject

Google Alert

I am interested on Affiliate Marketing, I create a Google Alert for it and all the time when it is a new blog post, forum discussion, website and so on I receive an email about it, this cover the knowledge part.

All other people who have a Google Alert about the topic of this post receive an email about this post.  It is a very easy way to keep abreast with new publications, and make your activity visible in the same time

2. Google Analytics is a free tool which you must download.

It gives you rich insights into website traffic and marketing affectiveness. It is a great traking and stat tool which is not used yet at the real potention.

3. Google Docs It’s basically a place to store your documents online, with the added benefit that you and others can edit files at the same time.

You can watch this video.

The beauty is, you don’t end up with lots of different versions of the same file flying around, and you don’t have to download your file each time you want to open it. It really is a brilliant free software to use.

4. Google Keywords It ia a tool you can download.

It is a tool that helps you with your keyword research, very fast, and it has loads of features. I advise to use it in combination with other tools as well. My favorite is SpyFu , this tool is teling me what the competition is doing, and I love their motto:

“It’s tough out there. Succeed beyond survival”

5. Google Reader 

You must use RSS to keep up to date with the best content on the web. Almost all blogs publish an RSS feed, and that means that if you use an RSS feed reader, you can have the content of that site delivered to you as soon as it happens.

When you start subscribing to your preferred RSS feeds, you’ll discover that you save a  loads  of time which you can now use for other purposes to grow your business.

There are lots of different RSS readers out there, but my personal favourite by far is Google Reader, click to get a tour first. It’s completely free, very easy to use, and it will save you ton of time.

6. Google Trends  It  is an excellent tool that allows you to see graphs of search volume over a period of time.  The following graph is for Squidoo:

For the next graph I narrow the scope, and I choose just USA, you will be surprised to find out which States and  Cities are using the most Squidoo:

This is a great niche research tool, and you can use to get a feel for whether some search terms on a particular topic are likely to go up or down.

Others:

Roboform If you want a  big time saver download now the Roboform.

I am sure you have over 100 of usernames and passwords for loads of different sites. Just to remember so many passwords it is mission impossible

Roboform does the work for you, as it saves all of your different login details inside a toolbar that sits at the top of your browser. To visit any site you just select it from the drop down menu and then Roboform takes you to the relevant page and logs you in.

I successfully use this simple site, for over 2 years, but last week I give up as the new Norton Internet Security 2010 has a nice feature called: Log-ins and Cards which makes the Roboform features even easier to use.  Norton is a paid product but I have it anyway for security reasons, and I decided to you his new 2010 function to replace Roboform.

I’ll continue in differnt posts.

Until the next time all the best

Michaela

Popularity: 18% [?]

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