Was just thinking about what else I could write about today. I was doing an assignment last night til 3:30 am in the morning, so I didn’t do my daily 400-500 words. I had a realisation that just felt right during university. If you’ve been reading my posts/articles for the last few days, you would have noticed that they lack some direction and focus. I was more writing for the sake of writing and grabbing some nice readers and SEO in the process. I got my first EzineArticles comment today from a REAL person.

At any rate, I decided to talk about a video that I watched on TED.com a while back. TED showcases some amazing speakers and performances from around the world, enlightening and delighting people of all ages, generations and backgrounds. I was watching a video about an Indian artist called Raghava KK. His video, which I’m still trying to embed at this point in time talks about his “5 lives” that he lived through.

Have a watch of the video. It is quite interesting and his cartoons are provocative, in-your-face and entertaining. There will be a part in the video that you might or might not pick up on. It’s the bit where he talks about his decline from fame after his cartoons started turning ugly. In any other “normal” person, this would have been a big deal. He swept it off as if it was nothing and continued on talking about his next “life”.

Stop and have a think about it. Someone reaches the dizzying heights of fame, mixing with the celebrities and stars and suddenly it’s all gone. I don’t know about you, but I would feel pretty bummed; people who you thought were you friends turned out to just be using you since you were the “it” man at the time. Old friends who might know you might have dumped you if they got too jealous or if you simply lost touch with them.

It was interesting to see that his wife actually stayed with him. It says a lot about our society that is so focused on fame, recognition and glory, simply for the purposes of satisfying one’s ego. The fact that experiencing fame and losing it breaks a lot of healthy relationships you have with people is sad. The fact that it’s considered the norm is even sadder. But I guess that’s how our society is structured.

In an ideal world, it would be awesome if people were constants. You were their friend or lover because you like or love them for their Essence and not who they are as a bundle of expectations tied together. Because really, it isn’t that big a deal if you’re not popular. The real damage comes from yourself when you’re telling yourself that because you have no friends, there must be something wrong with you.

The ego is a dangerous thing and it’s pretty easy to get sucked into what people expect of you. The hardest part is breaking free from those expectations and leading a different life. It’s not as simple as giving it all up one day. You can’t help but feel as if you would be disappointing too many people.

1. Get Your Ex Back

2. Weight Loss

3. Building Muscle

4. Seduction

5. ???

These are the ones I thought of just off the top of my head. Any more you might care to add?

Yep... pretty pathetic, I know...

There’s an article called, “Internet Marketing – The Best Way to Build a List” and the logic I find in this article makes sense to me. I mean, we’ve all heard of forum marketing, right? You know, chucking a link in your signature, blah blah blah. The reason why this article caught my eye is because of the sense the marketing made. Basically, you sign up to 3-4 forums, look back at the last 3-4 posts, find the recurring problems. Compile these into a short 15-20 report. Then, you link to this report on your blog. Then you put a link in the report to your site. If it’s a winner, then do the article, PPC and all that jazz. Makes sense to me.

There was another article, “How to Enter Any Niche & Determine If It’s Profitable Overnight“. Again, very awesome simple marketing logic. Reading through just again, this point jumped out at me: “What I like to do is look at what my competitors are offering to that niche. I try to find an information product that sells for $47 to that niche.” That never occurred to me. If it is a profitable niche, then people are already capitalizing on this.

This rides upon the previous article. So after you decide that it could potentially be profitable, then you make your report, write articles going to your site, put the report in your signature. This is further niche testing. Of course, you’ve gotta have a good offer, a good report and pretty good articles to make sure the niche testing is of decent quality itself.

There was another line that jumped out at me, for another reason: “It becomes a numbers game. Every 6 or 7 niches I invade, I find one that works pretty darn well, making it well worth my time.” WTF? ” 6 or 7 niches? How much marketing does this guy do?

I’m sort of distracted because I’m watching TV at the moment so I’ll write more on Jason Fladlien’s articles a different day.

Sometimes, I join lists just for the fun of it to keep an open mind to new marketing techniques/tactics. After the Mind Movies launch, I’ve received not a lot besides pitches for other products related in the self-improvement niche. I’ve ignored these pitches up until last night when I was bored and just decided, “what the hey”.

This time, they were promoting Sasha Xarrian from OutrageousMastery.com. Check out the website if you want, but personally, it screams out SCAM to me, even if the main product is on $17. It’s just the feel of the website and testimonials. They just feel and read very scammily.

Anyway, that’s far from the point. The free PDF they were giving away from the website was worth a read. What I tend to do when I read free reports is skim through them, then if something catches my eye or I have a mini-epiphany, then I’ll go back to the start and re-read the whole thing slowly.

So there was something that caught my eye as I was reading and it was the chapter on Guilt. I’ve been feeling guilty lately about some relationship stuff that’s been going on, so naturally, I read on. It just had some instructions on how to get rid of guilt from your life, since it saps your spirit and strength.

I don’t know. It just got me into a contemplative mood, thinking about what self-confidence was and how guilt fitted into the scheme of things. I’ll blame myself before I blame others. If you’re pissed off at someone, it’s usually a reflection of an insecurity you have. Keeping that in mind, whenever anger does ebb at my conscience, I remember that and go on. However, the fact that it did ebb initially means that there was some internal gravitational force that caused that emotion to be stirred up. So basically, I’m in denial.

I’ve copied Page  3 for you, since it’s quite simple to understand. It’s what Self-Confidence isn’t, so it’ll help you understand what Self-Confidence is.

2. WHAT SELF-CONFIDENCE IS NOT
Self-confidence is not acting like you are better than others.
Self-confidence is not feeling like you are better than others.
Self-confidence never feels false. It is not something that
you should feel guilty for wanting.
Self-confidence is not the ability to step on others or
promote yourself by tearing someone else down.
Many people are afraid to desire great gifts for themselves.
They feel if they desire great things for themselves it will mean
that they are filled with pride and may mean they are not worthy,
loving people. But, nothing could be further from the truth.
It takes a level of self-confidence to desire great things for
yourself and you never achieve great things without first having
the desire for them.
Having self-confidence does not mean you are unworthy. It
does not mean you should feel guilty for wanting to possess it.
Self-confidence is not boastful or mean or taking advantage
of others.

Just a quick post for you all. I found this last night when I was looking for Travis Sago’s Bum  Marketing Method on Google. It was a Lens ranked number 1 and was quite long winded, but some bits and pieces caught my eye here and there. It’s actually a service that Travis Sago uses himself so if he uses it, it can’t be half that bad can it?

The guy that owns the site, Ken Leatherman, keeps things simple: one article a day in several of the most common niches online:

• Internet Marketing
• Fitness
• Relationships

You can basically submit it as a PLR or use the article directly yourself by submitting it to EzineArticles.com, putting it up on your own site, or using it as filler content for your email marketing, etc.

So yeah. It’s 30 or 31 articles a day for $19.95, which translates to about $0.67 per article. I haven’t tried it yet, but am really contemplating it, so check it out and tell me what it’s like if you want. If you’re wanting to buy cheap articles, you really can’t get much cheaper than this.

Click To Automate Unique Content Creation –> 1ArticleADay.com

Of recent, I’ve developed more of a “just do it” attitude. I day dream and usually succumb to short-term, quick fix sort of pleasures, but for the greatest rewards in life, I’m going to have to hold off for a bit and exhibit some self-control and discipline.

I’ve appreciated the time off I’ve had from affiliate marketing. Oh and another thing, one of the blogs that I’d set up earlier last year officially hit one year old! I checked my bank account and lo and behold, no cash increase… though I was short about $115 from the automatic GoDaddy hosting renewal.

I considered maybe stopping the hosting or even trying to sell it at SitePoint.com, but then I realise how valuable it actually is… I wrote a hell of a lot of articles and put them onto EzineArticles.com, pointing towards that blog and, like half a year later, it’s still getting a decent 250 hits a month. I mean, nothing special by anyone’s standards, but that’s free traffic that I paid for simply by putting in effort to writing article after article (I was trying to promote Vince DelMonte’s No-Nonsense Muscle Building. Look it up on Clickbank).

I’ve got to think of an extremely hands off way to monetize this traffic, since I’m a busy full-time university student. I can’t help but feel it’s all going to waste as I leave it there.

Anyway, just some more random thoughts about desperate niches.

The problem with most forms of Internet Marketing is that they lack the Marketing. Gurus and whatnot use flashy graphics and stuff to promise them the world to leave them nothing but a lighter wallet. The reason why it’s so hard for noobs to start making real money is because they don’t know enough about the market or marketing in general to start with an easier market that will give them a consistent but perhaps smaller income flow.

The first step is finding the desperate niche. You’ve got to understand why that niche is considered desperate.

The second step is identifying keywords that that desperate niche might type in with the intention of purchasing something. Besides the obvious words like “review” and so forth, most people, including myself, can’t tell a profitable keyword from one that may only be used for informational purposes.

The third step and last step is monetising that keyword by writing an article or advertisement that utilises the keyword so that it shows up in search engines. Of course, if the keyword is geared towards an extremely desperate and starving niche that is not being served, how well the article/ad sounds is negigable, supposedly. I’ve yet to prove this myself though I remain hopeful. =]

If you haven’t checked it out already, check out Travis Sago’s InstaCashKeywords.com. Corny name, but something worth checking out if you’re a fan of his Bum Marketing Method. Basically, what he does is send you a list of pre-researched profitable keywords that desperate consumers will type into search engines with an intention to spend money.

$4.95 for a one-week trial and $97 recurring per month. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve been meaning to. It’s just with uni and stuff I haven’t been able to. There’s not much to lose and you can do a lot in 1 week with material from Travis Sago. Perhaps someone can try it and report back to this blog to tell me how it is?

Well, that’s my ramble for the evening. It’s currently 8:42 pm, the eve of September 11 down under.

Apparently Google is trying to make the hugest digital library ever and make them all free, if not at a predetermined super-cheap price discussed with the author.

Should us Affiliate Marketers be nervous? Could this mean the end, if not a substantial reduction in commissions from digital products?

I currently don’t have an answer on how to get more clickthroughs, but it’s going to be a question at the forefront of my mind. Any help or feedback I’d welcome; I realise it’s a pretty hard question to answer and there’s no set formula to getting more clickthroughs, but anything that stimulates some thought and discussion would be beautiful.

I actually googled the term, “how to get more click throughs” and the first thing that came up was a Copyblogger post. Love ‘em. They say that writing “click here” is a waste of anchor text but as I continued scrolling down, I came across a “click here” of their own and being aware of myself at the time, I smiled to myself when my first reaction was actually to click. I guess it does work. In fact, I might try it out now on my blog.

In terms of what I’m doing now, since uni’s started, my life’s become a juggling act once again. I want to continue doing my IM, but I’m limiting myself to 2 hours a day and only on weekends. I know it’s not much time, but at least it’ll allow me to focus when I’m doing it instead of ending up on Facebook or something like that. Of course, university is priority however and I’ve got to make sure that I get what I’m aiming for: a H2B average (75%). I need to start being more decisive and disciplined.

I am an overthinker at heart but I know it’s something I can conquer, since I’m aware of it. I’ve got wonderful, caring friends who help me and I’m thankful for that, but it’s still up to me to set up my Internet Marketing businesses once and for all.

I never did actually do anything that I set out to achieve over these holidays. In terms of my goals, my holidays have been a completely failure. I was more reactive than proactive and I unfortunately, sleep was again the thing I valued most.

I want to have an automated income from Affiliate Marketing by this time, but yet again, here I am typing with no change in status quo.

If I sound a bit disappointed, I guess I am, but I’m not letting it get to me, because it’ll feed of itself and make me feel worse. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on certain things, especially marketing in general and for that, I’m happy. I also know that as long as I don’t give up, there is always a chance, a glimmer of hope. All I have to do is reassess my priorities and really find out why I am an Internet Marketer and why I want that automated income.

Because until I do, it won’t come and other things like sleep and being lazy will get in the way.

I’m always someone that puts a lot on my own plate and it’s something that I won’t think I’ll ever change. What I can change about it is my attitude. I guess I fancy myself as a multi-tasker. The only problem is, I can’t multi-task. This is what’s going to happen at uni.

I’m going to start later today and be all relaxed and still on holiday mode. I’m going to be more reactive than proactive again and only get whipped into a frenzy of hard work by a due date. I’m still going to try and get my IM campaigns up and going, but because there’s so little time, I’m not going to get anything done again. I’m going to end up with poor results and not a sliver of profit to my name, all because I was disorganised.

The first step I guess is addressing my habit of going from zero to hero. I have to take things in baby steps. I can’t set up crazy goals for myself and expect myself to achieve them. The things I do everyday have to be measurable and achievable and achieve an ultimate aim in the end. I have to plan out my days and make room for unexpected surprises and stuff. And most importantly, I have to take everything in good spirit. I know my capabilities as a pessimist. Already, I’ve put on my stinky face about this semester at uni. My reaction to that? I am different from everyone else. I’ve found my direction while being at uni and I’m pretty sure that everything I do, I do for my parents. They’re my #1 priority. I only want to help them live comfortably. I want to help them retire. My life revolves around them and honestly, if I had to, I would quit uni just to provide for them right now if I had to.

Anyway, enough rambling. These are my long term goals for this year:

1. achieve avg of H2A (75%) for all my subjects. This will require: planning, asking questions, being proactive rather than reactive and being POSITIVE. I can by just relishing the simple things: spending time with my new lady friend (you know who you are ), listening to music that makes me smile and dancing.

I want do to this to develop my mindset as something that is focused (and to make my parents proud)

2. have an automated income by the end of the year. This will require: planning, FOCUS and knowing my goals. Finding something that supersedes sleeping in. I’ve got to forget about the glamour and luxury of the Internet Marketing lifestyle and first have the mindset I need to succeed. I have it, I just need to take action. I have to remember, I’m doing it for my parents.

I’m far from being the man I want to be, but as long as I’m aware that I’m in control, everything will work out.