But the problem is I needed something that would pay the bills and fast, and I was still licking my wounds from my spectacular business failure.

Now this wasn’t the beginning of my failures… no sir. This was one among many.

Maybe you can relate to this story. So here it goes..

I was about 14 years old and I see Carlton Sheets for the first time on TV. He starts the whole pitch about how you can make millions of dollars with creative real estate. After watching this infomercial probably a hundred times throughout high school, I finally bought the course, reviewed it another hundred times, and convince myself that I was going to be a…

Creative Real Estate Mogul

Fast forward 9 years later. I am just getting out of the U.S. Navy, and I decide to start my first company (Illinois Home Solutions, Inc.). My path to real estate fortunes was “lease options”, which basically is a strategy that allows you to buy property with no money down, and then resell it for a quick profit and have a monthly residual income. Looks real good on paper, but didn’t workout to well in 2003 when the real estate market was booming (but works like a champ right now).

To make a long story short after four months of cold calling all the for sale properties in the weekly paper, and meeting with over 100 potential sellers. I threw in the towel.

Around this time I read a great book called… “Multiple Streams of Income by Robert Allen“. In this book Robert talks about a great business opportunity, known as…

Multi-Level Marketing

…and references a company called USANA.

I immediately went out and sign up under Robert Allen’s USANA downline. Not only did I max out my credit cards to join the uber-platinum, super-duper USANA Associate package, but I proceeded to waste every evening for the next six months cold calling people to join USANA.

Plus strain the relationships of any family member, friend, or neighbor who joins under me.

Again… I threw in the towel. Multi-level marketing was not for me.

But I wasn’t through just yet. Maybe I just needed to start something local. Something that is easy to understand.

I know… “I’ll start an Indoor Flea Market!”… wait not just one but a whole chain of indoor flea market’s known as Flea Mart.

You don’t have to tell me how brilliant of an idea it was. I was there

So that brings us back to my…

Most Spectacular Business Failure

…to date.

While I was riding my flea market to the ground. I was reading everything I could on marketing to try and save my business.

Time after time I kept coming back to the internet.

In 2004, things weren’t nearly as developed as they are now. But the opportunity was apparent.

By the time I really understood the full power of the internet, it was already too late to save my business.

But today, I want to give you the shortcut I never had.

Even after deciding my next business would be online… it took a very long time for me to finally wrap my tiny little brain around what it really takes to make money online.

There are so many “gurus”, so many “tactics” floating around the web that it can make you go mad at times.

That’s Until I Discovered The Formula

The one formula that no matter what business you are in, if you focus on this one formula you will make money. Period.

In fact, it’s so simple I don’t want you to be fooled by it’s simplicity. Because if you forget everything else, and just do this, you are going to see dramatic things happen to your bank account.

I know it’s easy to get distracted by all the glitz and glam that come with the latest marketing tactics, or traffic trick, but trust me.

All that stuff changes overtime. What I am about to teach you…

WILL NEVER CHANGE

Here it is. (Write this down.)

TRAFFIC + LEADS + OFFERS = MONEY

And if you want to make it even simpler… Here is the formula ANY business in the world uses to make money.

LEADS + OFFERS = MONEY

Now I know I will get tons of push back saying there is more to it. But I promise you. THIS IS IT!

Here’s a better way to think about this.

I want you to imagine that you are looking in the hood of a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro. This is my favorite car in the world, but let’s not get distracted. Take a look at the engine.

You see all that chrome, special covers, fancy hoses, etc…

None of this makes the car run faster.

It’s the big a** engine block with large pistons that have the impact on if the car drives fast or not. Not the shinny stuff.

Now think of LEADS as your fuel and OFFERS as your pistons.

Now you can have really big pistons (lots of offers), but if you have no leads, you go nowhere.

Also, you can have a full tank of gas (lots of leads), but without offers, you go nowhere.

But the moment you combine the right LEADS with the right OFFERS, you hear the engine fire up and roar as the profits come rolling in.

Want to go faster?  Just pour in more leads.

Let’s take this a step further.

The engine block itself is your business model. Which means not every part in the world is going to bolt onto your engine.

Now the next time you hear about the latest shinny marketing tactics, ask yourself this. “Does this fit on my profit engine?”

The truth is, not every business needs to be on twitter, not every business needs even a sales letter.

It depends on the business model. But what every business needs is LEADS and OFFERS. Tattoo this to your forehead backwards.

Here’s How To Make Money Online

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCPit7LDW8g

1. Traffic - We need to get as many eyeballs as we can to our various web properties. Online this is called traffic. The goal is to create as many paths as possible to get people to land on our pages. Traffic is mistaken as the life blood of an internet business, but they are wrong. It’s…

2. Leads - The name of the game is getting more leads into the funnel. How much traffic you are getting is irrelevant if you aren’t capturing the leads you aren’t building a business. How do we “capture” leads?

Simple. You give people a reason to give you their contact information. This can come in a number of flavors, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The final part of the formula is…

3. Offers - This is the final component, and dare I say the most critical to you making lot’s of moohla. Now an offer is not a product or service. An offer is the deal. It’s how you structure the way you sell a product or service. Once you have leads coming in, your job as a business owner is to create more offers to give your prospect more opportunities to buy. I will break this down in a moment but first let’s look at the…

The 5 Ways To Make Money Online

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcSW9B-UmgI

1. Contextual Advertising - This is probably the simplest way to make money online. How it works is you basically get paid for displaying ads beside content you have on your website. Typically you are paid per click, which is very attractive since it’s a lot easier to get a click than a sale. But this is also the lowest ROI you will get on your traffic. I call this the bottom of the barrel. Typically you are a traffic broker and not using the magic formula to build a business. If you are interested in this method check out Google AdSense.

2. Subscriptions - Subscription based services are the holy grail of making money online, and for good reason. They provide the closest thing you will find to residual income. A subscription based product or service can be either a piece of software, a membership site, or a service provided on a monthly basis. Typically much harder to sell than anything else, but also the most lucrative when everything is dialed in.

3. Affiliate Marketing - A brilliant way to make money online because you don’t need a product, you don’t have to deal with customer service, product fulfillment, or have any experience setting up the sales process. This is what draws a big majority of people online. It appears easy and lucrative. I personally only use affiliate marketing as a supplement to my main businesses, and not the business itself.

4. Advertising - Selling advertising space is probably how most people envision making money online. It’s easy to understand and very similar to the old school advertising mediums like TV and Radio. You have an audience of web visitors and you simple sell ad space based on the number of eyeballs viewing the ads. Typically done on a CPM or Cost Per Thousand basis.

5. Products & Services - The final way to make money online is, in my opinion, the best way, but it’s not for everyone. Creating and selling your own products and services at the end of the day is going to be the most lucrative and long term way to make a living via the internet. It simply eliminates so much of the uncertainty from the other methods and allows you to maximize the formula I shared. Although I know it’s intimidating when you first get started, the sooner you dip your toe in the water, the sooner you will get used to the idea.

But let’s talk about the two components to any business. First we have…

LEADS

A lead is nothing more than the contact information of someone that has raised their hand saying “Hey, I’m interested in this stuff.”. That’s a lead.

But how do we get them?

There are several ways, and some ways work better than others. But for the most part we are giving them something of value that they want in return for their contact info. This could be a free report, access to a membership section on a website, free video, etc.

But once we have their contact information, and this could be their physical mailing address, phone number, or email address. We need to create a dialogue about the stuff they are interested in (now this is an art all on it’s own that we will have to visit later). But once we have this dialogue, it’s time to make…

OFFERS

“Strong copy will not overcome a weak offer… but… in many cases, a strong offer will succeed in spite of weak copy written by marketing morons! Also, what you have to say is enormously more important that how you say it.” ~ Sir Gary Halbert

This quote is one of favorites from Gary, and let me tell you it’s completely true. Your focus needs to shift from a copywriting focus to an offer focus. If the offer sucks, it is going to take an amazing amount of salesmanship to overcome it.

But if the offer is irresistible, then it almost sells itself.

So what the heck is an offer exactly?

The simplest way to put it. It’s the structure of the deal.

Don’t mistake an offer for a product. One product can have many offers.

Have you ever driven by a furniture store that was going bankrupt? Then next week they are still there in business.

What they are doing is using a bankruptcy as a hook for a new offer.

Offers come in many shapes and sizes. Here are a few:

• Retail - Now this is probably the most basic offer. This is just the price you sell your product or services for typically. Nothing fancy, just the asking price.
• Sales - Of course you know what a sale is, but maybe until now you didn’t know that this is just another offer. The reason businesses all over the world hold sales, is because they work plain and simple.
• Coupons - Similar to a sale, but it has a physical aspect that must be redeemed. A very, very effective offer strategy is coupons. Probably the most underrated offer strategy, but my personal favorite.
• Payment Plans - Payment plans are a great way to get your product and services to another segment of the marketplace. If you are offering something over $200, payment plans can really open the doors to new business. Split the retail into two or three payments, and you just made yourself another offer… see how easy this is
• Bonuses - Because everyone loves free stuff. If you don’t want to sacrifice on the retail price, then you can add more and more value with bonuses to get the offer to the irresistable point.
• Limited Time Offers - One of the most powerful mechanisms to a successful offer is scarcity. We all want what others can’t have. It’s wired into us to value something that is scarce. By limiting your products and service by either quantity or time available you will ultimately double or even quadruple the results.
• One Time Offers - Just as they say. This is an offer presented “One-Time”. Meaning they have to sh** or get off the pot. With these offers you can give a really amazing deal, but they have to take it or leave it. That’s what makes it “One-Time”.

Of course you can combine any of the above into a new offer. Get creative, there are lots of possibilities.

Now I am sure I missed something, but what I want you to focus on is that it’s the deal. Not the product.

When I say you need more offers, you need to make more deals. Give your leads a reason to give you money. Got it? Good

So now you have what it takes to make money online, but before I close I want to show you how to make more money online.

Here is the formula.

More Content + More Offers = More Money

Once you have mastered the basics. Here is how you can grow your business.

I believe it’s all about focus, and if you want to make more money. Here is the two things you need to focus on.

1. Create More Epic Content - Now, I am not saying any old content. The days of crappy garbage content getting results is over. You now need to be worthy of the traffic, leads, and sales. Meaning you have to put a little heart into your business. You can’t just throw mud up against the wall and hope it sticks.

Create EPIC content, more often. Period.

If you do this, then you will get more traffic, more leads, and build better relationships.

2. Create More Irresistable Offers - Dust off your old products that have been selling at retail for months or years, and create some new offers. There are so many ways you can sell your goods without ticking off previous customers while opening the doors to new customers. A big chunk of your time should be spent on crafting new offers. This is what makes you money, remember that.

I know this was a long one, but I hope this really clears up what it takes to make money online. Focus on this formula, and you will see results. We’ve built our engine, now we can supercharge it with other pieces that bolt on. Maybe it’s a better converting optin pages, or a better sales presentation.

But the basic formula remains. Leads + Offers = Money. Now go get some!

By the way, I am working on a book right now that I think you’re going to love. It’s been in the making for sometime, but it will show you a business model that doesn’t take a ton of leads, but can make a lot of profits. Be on the look out.

I still remember what it was like before we had every answer a few clicks away. You need to find a plumber? Well, you just grabbed your big Yellow Book and began to look at the big ads or the alphabetic listings starting with AAA Plumbing, Inc.. There were no reviews, no pictures of the business and typically the directions sucked.

But back then books like the Yellow Pages were actually useful, and used on a pretty regular basis. Now, I can’t seem to remember the last time I opened a Yellow Pages.

Wait… I did swat a fly with one last summer. But here in a minute I will show you how these old books could make you some money in 2012.

Did I get your attention yet? Good.

But before we dive in you may be wondering…

What In The Heck Is Local Search?

Well local search can be defined as anything that is searched online with a intent to find or buy something locally… or a better way to put it.

What + Where = Local Search

Which basically means it’s anything with the goal to find something in a local place. So visitors are seeking information online, but buying offline. This typically is in the form of a search with a geo qualifier, that’s fancy talk for city, state, county, or zip code. But here’s where the plot thickens…

According to comScore, 66% of Americans use online search engines to locate offline businesses and 90% of all online commercial searches result in offline brick & mortar purchase. Hmmm interesting.

Plus, way back in 2007 Google stated that 73% of activity online is in one way or another “related to local content”. (That was 5 years ago!)

Since then Google has introduced it’s places, maps, and more and more local offerings to businesses. Obviously they know the numbers, and the numbers don’t lie. Those little streams of local traffic add up to big numbers.

And not only that, local small businesses are catching on fast. Take a look at this. Small businesses are slowly shifting their ad spend to online media.

But there is good reason for it, and a good reason you are reading this blog. Online marketing works, plain and simple.

But here’s the warning. The time to act is now, because the window of opportunity is quickly closing. Take a look at the numbers of businesses already online.

And just recently Yelp! announced it’s 100 million dollar IPO. So what does all this mean? Simple. There is money in local search and businesses are wanting to have a bigger presence online. Anyway you can help them achieve that goal you create a true WIN – WIN.

How you do this is simple. You help them dominate “local” search terms that bring in leads and sales. But here’s where it gets a little tricky. Local keywords are deceiving.

At first glance at the handy dandy Google Keyword Tool, you would think. “Crap! There is hardly any traffic.” Well this is where everyone’s thinking has been flawed.

It doesn’t take 10,000 monthly searches for a local business to make a lot of money.

In fact, a trickle of good targeted leads can make a company extremely profitable all year long. (I’m talking only 1-3 leads per month, sometimes less)

This means having 30 local searches is NOT a small number. If 10% call, this is a big winner for the local business.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I want to hook you up with some research and tips that’s going to jump start your chances of dominating local search in 2012. First I’m going to share with you…

The Top 33 Local Search Terms

1. Hotels
2. Restaurants
3. Nightlife
4. Shopping
5. Bars
6. Taxis
7. Newspaper
8. Limousine
9. Dentist
10. Injury Attorney
11. Real Estate
12. Cosmetic Dentist
13. Plumbing
14. Criminal Lawyer
15. Plumber
16. Accident Lawyer
17. Electrical Contractor
18. Lawyers
19. Nightclubs
20. Remodeling Contractors
21. Implant Dentist
22. Electrician
23. Attorney
24. HVAC
25. Teeth Whitening
26. Roofer
27. Flooring
28. Car rental
29. Painter
30. Heating
31. Locks
32. Furniture
33. Web Design

Now I find this list a little funny. First of all I see a lot of keywords related to bars or night life, and then a lot for attorney and lawyers. Wonder if those are related. Lol

So here’s how we compiled this list. Using a keyword tool I will not disclose publicly my team went and researched the top 5 cities in the United States for common keywords using the city modifier. So for example “Attorney in Chicago”. This is the list we came up with. Use this list as a jumping off point for local niches. But this is not exhaustive, this is just the most searched. Typically there are two types of local keywords.

High Traffic / Low Customer Value or Low Traffic / High Customer Value. I prefer the lower traffic, low competition keywords.

Hint: See #33 is Web Design. Businesses need your help!

Here’s How To Build A Local Keyword List

1)  Use “Non-Local” Keywords – Start out in the keyword tool with general broad terms that people would search first. This is going to reveal how people would really be looking for a business online.

2) Search The Big Cities – Use the nearest big city to get more ideas. Then modify those terms with your local area. Remember a trickle of traffic is still valuable with local search.

3) Use that old Yellow Book for ideas – Yup it’s still useful. Wipe the cobwebs off it, and take a look at what categories they use, and what language businesses use in their ads.

4) Use GEO Modifiers – Once you have your list of keywords, modify them with city, state, county, and zip code. Get surrounding areas as well. Here is a free tool to help you out.

But here is something I found really interesting. It is estimated that 35-50% of people looking to buy offline are searching by business name. Of course there is still a big opportunity for the keywords and categories searches, but an often forget opportunity is the business names themselves.

That is why I recently developed a new piece of software to help me take advantage of those 35-50% of people. After doing some test, I was shocked how easy it was to rank for these terms. So if you are looking to Dominate Local in 2012, you can join me here.

Funny story. So my kids and I went to BestBuy to look around at the latest gadgets and whatnot. When we first got to hold the iPad, they had a GT Racing app on display and it was like nothing we had ever played. You just hold the iPad up in front of you and turn it like a steering wheel to drive. It had crystal clear graphics and an ultra responsive display. My kids and I were in love.

For me it was less about the games, but the business possibilities. I’m a lefty and I have always been sort of screwed when it comes to using a mouse to get my ideas on digital paper. But the iPad finally leveled the playing field for all left handed people around the world

Here’s the funny part. That day I put in an order for my iPad 1 I was told that it wouldn’t be delivered for several weeks. But then it happened, it came. As soon as I got it I had to open it up and begin to download every business app I could get my hands on.

But I couldn’t let the kids see it just yet, otherwise I would never hear the end of it. (If you’re a parent you know what I’m getting at)

So I had to hide the fact that the iPad arrived just for a day or two. So Dad could have some play time…

I forgot one small detail… I left the cover to the box downstairs in the kitchen.

As soon as my kids came home, all I hear is “IPAAAAD!”

After locking myself in my office, trying to keep the little hooligans out. I caved.

Eventually the newness wore off the illustrious iPad, and in the process I downloaded every business app in the app store until I found THE ONES. The apps I can’t live without. So here it is, after years of intense research. My top 11 Business Apps.

FastPDF+

This is by far my favorite PDF reader on the iPad. I have always had a problem with ebooks spread all over my hard drive, but not anymore. I now have every PDF in one place, a treasure trove of business wisdom always within easy access.

Brushes

I love, love, love Brushes. It’s a drawing app that makes it incredibly easy to jot down ideas or to take a screenshot on the iPad to make notes for employees or outsourced workers.

Dropbox

If you haven’t got a Dropbox account yet, go get it now. C’mon man get with it. It’s the best thing since sliced bread.

But seriously, a great app to access important information on the go.

Air Video

Now if you’re like me you have tons of business information in .mov, .wmv, .avi, .flv, etc sitting on your computer and there are times you want to review this material, but not be chained to your computer. This is the app that will free you to hang out in the backyard and watch anything that is on your computers harddrive, without ever having to store it on your iPad.

Penultimate

Looking to turn your iPad into a virtual notebook? I have reviewed tons of note taking apps and I always come back to Penultimate at the end of the day. I use this at all masterminds, all seminars, and all workshops. It keeps everything neatly organized in virtual mole skin notebooks and allows you to email your notes in PDF format to colleagues, etc.

I even use this to create bonuses to products, webinars, etc. It’s fast, looks cool, and it delivers that personal touch.

iDisplay

Would you like to extend the size of your monitor on your laptop while traveling, or on your desktop so you have some scratch space? This is the app for you.

Tip: I use this when recording sales videos. I put keynote in presentation mode and have the presenters window display on the iPad using iDisplay. Then I can see what slides are coming next, and how much time I have been recording. It really allows me to work efficiently and do my recordings in less takes.

iAnnotate PDF

This is a must have for anyone in business. One of my life long pet peeves has been signing contracts on paper and then scanning them into fax or email. Well my friend, with iAnnotate you will never have to do this tedious task again.

With this app simply open a PDF that has been sent via email, sign it on the iPad, and email it back signed. Easy peesy.

MindMeister

I used to use Mindjet’s Mind Mapping product, but ever since I started using MindMeister I have never looked back. This iPad app brings the same experience you get from MindMeister on the web into the palm of your hands. Great for mapping out all your brilliant business plans

Pandora

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy… you don’t want to be a stuffy business type now do ya. Ok, so we all love music, even when we are working. Pandora I simply cannot live without. I have been introduced to more new music using this application than any other source of media, friends, etc. It’s like a robot that figures out what you like to hear.

Teleprompt+

If you are looking to record videos, and want to work off a script. Then you need a teleprompter, typically those cost in the ballpark of $800. Now you can get it for about 20 bucks. Well worth the investment. I have reviewed all the telepromter apps in the app store, this is by far my favorite. It syncs up with Dropbox to pull the scripts into the app, and it can even record the audio within the app if you choose.

iA Writer

I never thought I would be able to effectively write on the iPad, until I found iA Writer. If you write content for your business, you need this app. It’s no frills, but that’s what makes it brilliant. It forces you to focus.

I use it to write sales copy, emails, blog posts, etc. Get it!

Now of course there are tons of other business apps in the Apple App Store, but these 11 are the ones I simply cannot live without. Most of the others I could find alternatives to, or would prefer the desktop version.

Of course there is more to the iPad than just apps. Here are the accessories I can’t live without either.

Dodo Case

I am a little old school in my tastes. I like to swing dance, listen to old music from time to time, and I like my books to be hard bound. What I don’t like about the iPad is that out of the box it can get away from you; hard to carry around unless you have some geeky rubberized case. So here is the solution. It’s called Dodo Case, and it takes all the latest tech, and wraps it in an old school binding. I love this product, and I am sure you will too.

One thing to mention. This is made of wood, and a book binding. It won’t last forever. Expect to replace it yearly, at a minimum.

Targus iPad Stylus

This little pen is what finally unlocked the doors for me to start cartooning in digital form. I never invested in one of the desktop pads to use in Photoshop etc. Honeslty, I never really wanted to learn the fancy stuff with digital drawing. I just like to draw.

But with this Stylus, I have almost replaced paper. I used to have stacks of legal pads lying around with notes and brainstorms. But now I have it all stored digitally in the iPad.

If you are going to pick one of these up, I recommend getting the longer version. It feels a little more like a pen.

So there you have it. The 11 iPad Business Apps I simply cannot live without. Of course there are several games and fun apps I play with here and there, but grab these apps and you can’t go wrong.

Leave a comment below if the iPad has totally changed the way you do business, or if you have a gem of a business app I may have missed. Now time to get back to work… all I need is some coffee and the iPad.

It was eight years ago, and I was just starting my first big business venture.

I had done many things before. Creative real estate, MLM, sold some knives door-to-door. But frankly never had any great success at any of them.

But this was different. This was that “Big Idea!”

It took me about six months to write the business plan, line up all the details, and go around begging for some start up capital. At the ripe old age of 23 I suckered a bank into giving me a small business loan.

A little shocked, and flushed with my new found *borrowed* wealth. I went to work creating what was planned to become a chain of indoor flea markets called “Flea Mart“.

In that year I learned more about business, life, and myself than all my previous years. I never realized all that was involved in running a business, especially one housed in a 50,000 sq.ft building.

With offline businesses you have city governments to deal with, building codes, fire departments, tax collection, etc.

Plus, all the other normal problems that come with having thousands of customers every weekend.

But the thing that killed that business more than anything else was…

OVERHEAD

It is simply a business killer. It was then, and still is today.

At the time I was paying 20k per month just for the rent and another 6k just for electricity. I’m sure you can see, I quickly went broke.

Within six months, the business had to close. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life. There were flea market vendors who loved their mini retail space and wanted it to stay open. But, in the end I had no choice.

It was at this time I turned 100% to the internet for one reason…

LOW OVERHEAD

It was because of the ridiculous low cost of entry that I was able to bootstrap my way back up from bankruptcy to making more than I ever did in my life.

But even on the internet you are not immune. You still need to watch your overhead and ensure that you are running lean.

So here’s the lesson. Scale when you are ready to, and only when you know those resources will bring in more revenue. If you don’t follow this rule you will soon find yourself in the same situation I was in eight years ago. Bankrupt!

But on the flip side, there are times you can be the bottleneck in your business. Thinking you can handle it all, when a tiny bit of overhead would free up your time to be able to do the core money getting tasks.

So take the time today to take an honest look at your business.

Is there anything you’re doing that someone else could do better and cheaper? Things like customer service, backlinks, etc.

Now take a real hard look at everything else. What is essential and what is not. This can bring about some very tough decisions.

Eight years ago, I burned all my cash rapidly. In the end I had to lay everyone off, and close the business.

But if you operate as a lean machine now, you will never have to worry.

This is why I really focus on maximizing every aspect of the business by leveraging systems.

Here’s an example. I recently received an email from a Backlink University customer that was paying through the nose for some pretty basic SEO tasks.

Here’s what he said…

“You just saved me and my company, Code & Arrow, $1500/month!… Thank you so much!” ~ Kevin C. McCarthy

He had hired an SEO firm to do some pretty basic backlink work for $1,500 per month, and using the Backlink University systems he instantly saved over 90%.

When I was promoting Flea Mart, I was all over. TV Commercials, billboards, radio, and newspaper. I had hired a marketing firm to handle all my advertising. Boy was that ever a big mistake. They bled me dry with frivolous spending. Just take a look at one of the silly commercials.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAANH-qeiiw

 Have you experienced this in your business? Leave a comment below.

I will never forget when I first read this book, it was one of those books that change the way you think forever.

At the time I was still in the Navy, and my contract was just about to expire.

I read this book with amazement, as it talked about how to break free from the shackles of a job, and how to create a business that works for you. Instead of one that enslaves you.

The book is called E-Myth, and it transformed my thinking about business & life.

In the book it talks about one very important concept over and over…

Systems!

See most people end up being a technician that works inside their business. They are just the cog in the machine.

But this book teaches how to build a machine. A machine that works without you. 24/7.

So how is this done?

Clearly layed out processes and systems that leave nothing to guess work. Your whole business documented down to how answer the phone.

The book impressed me so much that when I was working on creating a chain of flea markets, I hired an E-Myth consultant to help me systematize the whole business. It wasn’t cheap ($1k month), but well worth the wisdom gained.

The goal was simple.

To allow anyone to take my systems, setup and run one of my Flea Marts in their area. In typical McDonald’s fashion.

Do this, then this. Step-by-step.

So here’s the lesson. What ever you are doing that you absolutely hate. Stop.

Create a clearly defined process for someone else to follow. It does take time to create the process, but once it’s in place you really never have to think or worry about it again.

The other book that you must read is called Work The System.

The author of this book, takes E-Myth a step further and shows you how to apply this thinking to your life as well as your business.

One of the big reasons I am able to get top rankings time and time again is because of the systems I have in place. These systems will literally turn any minimum wage worker into an SEO expert, without them even realizing it.

So I can focus on the big picture, while backlinks are being built to all my sites. Without me every thinking about it.

Now go pick up those two books. E-Myth & Work The System. Start thinking about, “What do I hate to do?” and start documenting the process. (I plan to write a little guide on how to create the processes later)

Document it once, and never do it again.

Talk soon ~ Jared

Here is a bullet proof method to Select All of your friends or fans inside Facebook. This is especially useful for inviting friends and fans to events within Facebook. This code does not rely on some sort of javascript, it uses a Macro which clicks on the check boxes just like a human would. Meaning this works in the current Facebook in 2011. All the other scripts no longer work.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Install iMacro in Firefox.
2. Open Facebook in firefox, and go to either your event, or your like page and click invite all guests/friends.
3. Scroll to the bottom of your friends list so that all your friends have loaded in the little window.
4. Go to the iMacro icon on the top of the tool bar near refresh.
5. Click on the record tab in iMacro. Click Record, then Stop. If you don’t do this it won’t work.
6. Then Click load, and load the Select All macro that you’ve unzipped.
7. Go to the Play tab and Click Play.
8. The macro will then check mark your entire friend list up to 5000. You can stop it once your entire friends list is done.

Facebook Select All Robot

You can download the Select All Robot here. (Fully tested and still working in 2012)

If you would like to learn how to get over 3,637 Raving Facebook Fans in less than a week for as low as a penny a fan check out the T-Shirt System here right now you can take it for a test drive for $1. Also if you want a Ninja way to setup you Fan Pages, check out my free Fan Page Ninja software here.

Oh WordPress how I love thee. Let me count the ways… you’re free, you’re code is beautiful, and when all dressed up you are a traffic magnet.

But seriously.

Of the top million websites according to Alexa, 55% are running WordPress! But that’s not all.

1. It’s FREE
2. Easy to use. So easy in fact a caveman could do it
3. Secure… sort of.
4. Highly customizable
5. Great community!

Plus, the numbers simply do not lie.

But here’s the problem with WordPress. Out of the box its SEO sucks!

Here’s how we are going to Supercharge WordPress.

1. Fix the default WordPress settings.
2. Optimize WordPress’s operation.
3. Correct the on-page SEO.
4. Optimize our internal link juice.
5. Upgrade the promotion engines.
6. Add Social Media (optional).

Step 1: Fixing the default WordPress Settings

Ok so the first thing we are going to do is fix the default WordPress Settings, some pet peeves, and talk a little about security.

1. Create a new admin account.
2. Log out.
3. Log-in under the new admin account.
4. DELETE the original account with the username “admin”

If you don’t do this you are asking for your website to be hacked!

SEO Friendly URLs

Search Engines hate long url strings, and reward websites that use the keywords in the url. So we want to set up WordPress to create clean URLs.

Go to Settings >> Permalinks

*Select Custom Structure and put

/%postname%/

Note: I recommend you never have two pages with the same title. If you have do have a massive site you can also use the category in the url, but I feel this is redundant and has no SEO value.

To do this you would put

/%category%/%postname%/

Add a robots.txt file

An often overlooked, but stupidly simple thing to have is a robots.txt file. This simply tells the search engines what parts of your website they are allowed to spider and index. WordPress doesn’t come with a robots.txt file by default, so we need to add one. It’s a simple thing, but it does help our rankings.

Create a text file named robots.txt and put this inside it:

User-agent:*
Disallow:

Put it in the root folder of your website.

Like this => http://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt

Learn more at http://www.robotstxt.org

Step 2: Optimize WordPress’s Operation

I started using WordPress in 2004 when they just released version 1.2.2. It has come a long way, but there are still some tweaks I like to make to improve its basic operations. This will set the stage for proper SEO.

W3 Total Cache

The first plugin is W3 Total Cache which will improve a sites overall performance 10 times. By caching the pages it reduces page load time, increase the visitors time on your website,  and causing visitors to view more pages.

Plus, you will see a bandwidth savings of up to 80%. This improves web server performance, and makes it easier to sustain high traffic periods, but most of all easier for the search engines to spider and index your content.

To install this plugin just select the “auto-install” feature. That’s all you need to do, and you’ll be off to the races.

SEO Slugs

Once you have enabled permalinks you have taken a giant leap forward in creating SEO friendly URLs, but there is one flaw in WordPress that this plugin solves.

Typically when you write a blog post, it take the whole title, and then just adds dashes between the words to create the permalinks. This plugin strips common words like “what”, “you” or “can” out of your post slug to make it more search engine friendly.

Automatically turn this:

/what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings

to this:

/immediately-higher-rankings

404 to Start

This plugin will automatically correct any screw-ups you do with your backlinks, moving, or deleting pages on your site.

Here’s what it does. It redirects all 404 page not found errors permanently (or temporarily) to the homepage, automatically. This ensures all visitors at least land on your homepage, but most of all that all backlinks even if they have typos still will pass some link juice to your websites.

Here’s how to set it up:

Set to 301 and redirect to the blog homepage url.

Robots Meta

We already added a robots.txt file now we want to be able to control what the search engines can access on pages they do find. To do this we will use Robots Meta to add appropriate meta robots tags to your pages, disabling unused archives, and adding nofollow to unnecessary links.

We are going to first select the settings to prevent the search engines from using DMOZ or Yahoo Directory data for our sites description. This way we force them to use the description we provide, or they will create one from the content on the page.

How to Hacker Proof your blog.

1. Have your webhost enable suExec globally for WHM/cPanel this will prevent other websites on your server from being hacked if one is compromised.
2. All folders should be CHMOD’d to 750
3. All files should be CHMOD’d to 640
4. IMPORTANT! Rename or replace the admin username, and use a good password. Brute force attacks are the most common hack.
5. Install Login Lock and set to at least moderate.
6. Inside Robots Meta change this setting:

Login Lock

This is one plugin I feel should become part of the WordPress default installation. It provides protection from the most widely used hacker attack, the “brute force” attack. Which basically tries to crack your password by running through every variation possible on the keyboard.

This plug in enforces strong password policies, provides emergency lockdown if compormised, monitors login attempts, and blocks hacker’s IP addresses.

The recommend minimum setting is moderate.

Step 3: Correct WordPress’s on-page SEO.

All-In-One SEO Pack

There are several plugins available that can help us correct WordPress’s on-page SEO, but only one that has most of the features all-in-one. Plus, this is the most widely download, and supported WordPress plugin.

Here are the first settings we want to change:

This is probably one of the most important tweaks we can make. Not only will it make our website look better, it’s going to make our pages rank so much easier. By default WordPress uses the blog name, over and over.  We are going to get rid of this functionality with these settings.

For the home page of your blog, you want to take extra care in choosing the title tag, description, and keywords.

Here is a basic formula… to test.

([keyword phrase] – [keyword phrase with a word in between] – [modified phrase with last part of keyword])

Put your main target keyword first, then a modification on that keyword phrase, and finally a phrase that contains a part of the first keyword. This will allow you to pickup some additional rankings for the homepage, and have good keyword prominence.

Tip! Try to word it so it sounds like a headline, use a little copy writing to increase the odds of getting the click.

Some other recommended settings:

Alternatives to All-In-One SEO

• WordPress SEO by Yoast
• Ultimate SEO
• Platinum SEO Pack
• HeadSpace

SEO Friendly Images

One of the most overlooked, but powerful on-page SEO tweaks you can make, is to begin to religiously use the ALT and TITLE tag for your images. Here is a plugin that will automatically update all the images on your blog to be SEO friendly.

Here’s how it works. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Plus, it even makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

Step 4: Optimize our internal link juice.

This is the step where we can really have some significant impact on the rankings of our website. By funneling link juice within our website more effectively, we can give our interior pages the ranking juice needed to get on page one of the search engines.

Internal Link Building

The first plugin I recommend you download is called Internal Link Building, and all I can say is that it’s brilliant! It allows you to really maximize the internal contextual anchor text links, which are incredibly powerful. Also there are some great features to give great anchor text variety.

Download here: http://seoroi.com/downloads/internal-link-building

Here is how to use it:

1. Go to Settings > Keywords
2. Add keywords you want linked within your blog, and the url to link to.
3. Assign keywords to specific pages within your site.
4. Select a word or two before and after the keyword to provide natural looking anchor text variety.
5. Set a limit of the amount of times the links should appear on a page to 2.

SEO Smart Links

Now for when we are feeling lazy I recommend we install SEO Smart Links. This will automatically links keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.

Everything happens completely transparent, and you can edit the options from the settings page.

Yet Another Related Post Plugin

Another great plugin to add is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) which uses an algorithm you configure to determine relevant blog posts from your site to display at the end of a post. This leads to visitors reading more of your content, and more internal links. There is also a new service called Blog Glue that integrates with YARPP, that allows you to show related posts from other blogs, and have your posts shown on their blog.

Redirection

In order to tidy up any loose ends we may have with our internal links, or pages in general we need to install Redirection. This is an essential plugin to have available to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and to funnel the link juice even if we remove a page or post.

Quick Redirects

One of my favorite plugins is Quick Redirects, this allows you to quickly create redirects on your site to other urls. Great for affiliate links!

Step 5: Upgrade the promotion engines.

One of the great benefits to using WordPress over other open-source CSM systems, or static sites, is the built in promotional engines. Did you know that every time that you write a blog post WordPress sends a notification to several websites around the web? We are going to optimize these features.

Ping Optimizer

Another critical plugin to install is Ping Optimizer. Did you know that every time you edit a post WordPress pings? Think how many times you click on “Save and Continue Editing” or “Save” button. This effectively labels you as a ping spammer, just from editing your typos.

The MOST effective ping list!

Settings > Writing Settings > Update Services

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/pingSubmit?bloglink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.YOURSITEHERE.com

Sitemap Generator

A sitemap is a no-brainer way to get more of your pages indexed, and get more link juice flowing deep within your website. My favorite sitemap plugin is Sitemap Generator. You can see an example of this plugin here. This plugin creates a sitemap meant for actual humans to be able to navigate within your site easier. It’s highly customizable, and looks sharp.

Google XML Sitemaps

Now that we have taken care of our human visitors, we want a search engine formatted site map. This plugin generates the fancy XML sitemaps Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask love. This will make it easier for them to crawl your website, and see the complete structure of the site. Plus, this plugin will help notify the engines when there is new content.

Tip: Once you create the XML sitemap, add the link to it in the Sitemap Generator plugins settings.

How to ping sitemaps.

To ensure our sitemaps get crawled by Bing, Ask, and Yahoo we can also manually ping them. Add your XML sitemap urls to these different urls and then visit them in your browser to ping them. You will need a Yahoo API ID for the last one. I recommend doing this monthly.

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[http://domain.tld/sitemap.xml]

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=[http://domain.tld/sitemap.xml]

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=[YOUR YAHOO API ID]&url=[http://domain.tld/sitemap.xml]

Getting a Yahoo API ID

1. Register or sign in to Yahoo here.
2. Select “Generic” as the “authentication method”
3. Fill out the fields:
   Developer/Company Name
   Product Name
   Contact Email
   Description of Application
4. Click “Continue”
5. Make a note of your long API ID

Step 6: Add Social Media (optional).

I put this step as optional, but really it’s silly not to have a way for people to spread the word about your content. Here are two great plugins to add social media buttons to WordPress.

Share This

This is used on over 1 million websites. It allows you to share to 50 plus social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and Google Buzz.

Add This

My personal favorite, and plugin I use on Cliconomics. It allows you to promote your content to 295 of the most popular social networks. It also has a button that is small, unobtrusive, quick to load, and recognized all over the web.

But what I really love is the AddThis.com account that gives great insight into how your content is being shared. Plus, they have this great dynamic button that basically detects what sites your visitor uses the most and displays it to them.

Four FREE Killer SEO Themes

CopyBlogger Theme

Elements of SEO

Swift Theme

Thrilling Theme

WordPress SEO Package

I have went over a ton of information in this guide, but I like to streamline things when ever possible. So I created something called the WordPress SEO Package. It will basically does everything we discussed in this blog post, automatically! So if you are creating a new WordPress powered website, use my “soon to be” famous WordPress SEO installer to have it fully configured with plugins, themes, and settings in less than 5 minutes.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkVctbxR_BA

Leave a comment and spread the word. Cheers!

Once upon a time, a long time ago (around 400 B.C.) there was this dude by the name of Sun Tzu. His legend has shaped men and wars for centuries. Known for his unique ability to consistently win wars.

The book, The Art of War, has become the de facto guide on crushing your opponent in war, business, and Yes even the search engines. That is what we will begin to discuss today.

Now unlike previous posts, this will be a little shorter, and go into the philosophy of The Art of SEO War. This will be a living work that will grow, and expand as you contribute through comments, and insights. Also I will take more time to condense Sun Tzu’s works into specific SEO strategies.

So let’s begin…

The Art of SEO War

Move swift like the wind, quiet as the forest, attack as fierce as fire, and be as immovable as a mountain.

(風)  Move Swiftly – Take action quickly. Discover what is working, and what is not. Leave behind everything that’s not. Money loves speed, and your goal is to be nimble.

(林)  Stay Silent – Staying under the radar, don’t trip any filters. Don’t let your competitors see you coming.

(火) Attack Fiercely – Reverse Engineer your competitors, decode their processes, and follow their every move. Make bold moves, and bring the heat.

(山) Never Give Up! – No matter what be the immovable object.

Know yourself, your opposition, and the battleground well.

It’s all about these three things:

1. Strategy
2. Skill
3. Study

We use systematic processes for achieving our goals.

There are two critical questions.

1. What is my position?
2. How do I advance my position?

The secret…  is to listen, and then attack where they are not prepared.

What are your thoughts? There is so much wisdom in the book, The Art of War, it’s tough to condense it all here.

Click here to join me on a live webinar June 16th at 10pm EST.