Michaela Cernescu’s Blog

It is probably the right moment to chat about the power of  challenges.

A lot of people like challenges for different reasons.

Some consider them like sports events, some just want to see where they are vs.  the competition, some like to learn something new, and so on.

In general the personality of a person will motivate the reasons of entering in a challenge.

Internet Marketing challenges can be trigger by the same reasons as  life challenges but also can inherit some specifics from On-line work.  We all know and witness how Internet changes our way of shopping, learning, communicating, and YES, thinking.

I participated in a couple of challenges, I am in middle of one right now, and I try to be honest and give you the reason why I love them.

For me a challenge:

• Discipline myself to have consistency at work, follow rules, be within a system
• In general take out the best of me
• Motivate me and capitalize on the competition spirit of my nature
• Like to have dead lines, a structure to follow, yes, I am opinionated but not a rebel by any stretch of imagination, I like organized work
• Love to learn new things and keep abreast with technology and trends
• Like to get out of my comfort zone and fight for ideas I believe in
• It is a measurement of my abilities
• It is for sure a method to brand myself and my work
• An on-line challenge is a powerful way to advertise, build trust, create relationship with a list
• Powerful way to gain extra money

With a challenge, do you need to be a winner all the time? It is great to be a winner but based on the nature of the challenge, the rules, the competition,  is hard to emerge always as a winner.

But I argue that sometimes just the participation on a challenge has a lot of merits and benefits. It will put your work on prospective, you will learn from mistakes, and you will be better prepared for future challenges.

Coming back to the challenge I am working on right now. It is not a new “sliced bread” invention, it is in the middle of a a very high competitive niche, but I have my unique approach. I want to create a model to monetize blogs for beginners. All the gurus pretend that they want to teach beginners, but as soon as they gain a ton of money they really forget what being a beginner means.

If you get in front of a beginner and flood the room with hype, you don’t help, you confuse the beginner.

If you just say I made a million last year, and you show the checks, but you never tell people how much expenses you have: out sourcing, employees, office and business expenses, software and memberships you participate, how much you pay for traffic, and so on – you misled pure and simple.  How many gurus you know who attache expenses in a sale letter? All of them are talking only about how much they make.

I was a couple of years ago in a seminar, in the class had 2/3  beginners  and a well know Internet marketer said that he had the perfect method if we invested $20,000  in PPC campaigns, we got a return of $40,000.

First of all it is not guaranty that the return will be $40,000, what if it is only $5,000?  The return is based of the niche, campaign skills you have and more.

Second, the double the investment is glamorous but how somebody can imagine that a beginner has an extra income of $20,000 to invest in any method.  That one was the last seminar I participated.

So in this very competitive niche in which exists a lot of demand but also a lot of offers, I consider that it is a need of a real model for beginners.

My challenge will take 3 months, I am in the week 3 now and I just posted a plan of my model which I will start to implement and test from now one.

http://squidooeventlog.com/building-blocks-of-monetizing-blog/

So I am not losing time being obsess with winning or falling, I just stick with my plan and if you are curious, read each week my weekly report.

Until next time be well

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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

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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

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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

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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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