Issue #2292
- WEALTHY: 3 ways to make money overseas (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: A simple way to tone your caboose (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Larry Chase on the Internet
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- "Being a real person" and 8 other techniques to raise your search engine rankings (Alexis Siemon)
- Solutions for a thorny language problem (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… about glow-in-the-dark scorpions
- Add "copacetic" to your vocabulary
Revealed: Probably the Biggest Red Herring in History!
While the world’s been stock watching (and losing!), the elite quietly play a different game with different rules…
Feeling cheated and disillusioned by the stock market? Sure, you may have made a good trade here… but then lost on another. The people dutifully pour their hard-earned cash into investment banks to put into the stock market for them… and those investment banks gladly oblige, for a fat fee… which they invest somewhere else! I’m no conspiracy theorist, but in my opinion the stock market is really a diversion for the masses… a distraction from where the BIG and consistent money is made… in the world’s money mountain. And when I say “ Money Mountain,” I speak quite literally… the BIGGEST mountain of money on the planet. Click here to read more…
Dear ETR: "How can I generate an income in Rome?"
"I have decided to live in Rome. I am 60 years old, and have about $75,000 in savings. At the present conversion to the euro, that won’t go very far. I am a self-employed building contractor with good communication skills. I have a degree in construction and one in business administration.
"Any suggestion as to ways of generating an income over here without going to work as an employee?"
- Chris Hodges
Rome, Italy
Dear Chris,
Rome is a great city. One of my favorites.
You can live an amazingly rich life in Rome without spending a ton of money. The great luxuries in life – conversation, food, wine, art, and architecture – are abundant there… and very inexpensive.
But you are right about your $75,000 in savings. It won’t go far. You will need to earn a living almost immediately. With a European Community passport, getting a job is nearly impossible, even if you wanted to. So what can you do?
There are basically three choices:
1. You can earn money illegally by selling merchandise on the streets, working without papers, etc. The most obvious choice for you would be to do something in the building trade. But given the weak economy for construction in Rome now and your lack of familiarity with Italian methods (and Italian), I don’t think this is a good option.
2. You can earn an income as a freelance professional – a marketer, a copywriter, a graphic artist, a photographer, etc. There are all sorts of freelance jobs you can do for U.S. corporations while living overseas. But you need the skills.
If you are interested in this option, check out the programs that AWAI provides. It will take you a year or two to develop your new skills and get some clients, so you’ll need to support yourself till then with your savings. The good news is that you can complete the AWAI programs – and even search for clients – on the Internet. And you can do it no matter where you live.
3. You can start your own Internet business – either an information-publishing business or something else that doesn’t require a large capital investment. ETR has several very good programs to choose from. It may take you a few years to get up to full speed. But, again, you can complete and implement these programs from anywhere in the world.
What you should do now is begin to contact Americans who live in Rome. Start with the U.S. embassy in Rome, and then call or write American universities that have programs there. Ask everyone you meet to recommend you to someone else. Be friendly. Be grateful. Ask questions and stay in touch. You’ll have dozens of people a phone call away who can help you find work and enjoy yourself.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
Reader Feedback: "Yours was the most intelligent answer I have ever received to my question."
"Thank you, Michael, for your response to my question about online sign-up rates. It is the most intelligent answer I have received to the question.
"We are in what you call ‘Stage One’ of our business in your book Ready, Fire, Aim. We hope to break through the $1 million mark by the end of this year."
- Andrew Collings
Melbourne, Australia
[Ed. Note: Want to get your name and opinions published in ETR? Let us know how reading ETR has helped you - maybe even changed your life. Send your comments to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown... and we may print your e-mail in a future issue.]
"Like China, the Internet is a huge new market. It’s up to you to figure out what to do with it. Use it as a prospecting tool, make connections with people, add value for your existing customers."
Larry Chase
The Social Media Connection: How to Get Search Engines to Love Your Site
In the world of search engine marketing, links are extremely important. Search engines view inbound links to your website as votes – endorsements of your site and its content. The more of these votes your site receives, the more the search engines regard it as a trusted source and the more likely you are to rank high in their search results for your keywords.
There are many different kinds of websites you can get links from. There are links from big trusted sites and directories like Yahoo and DMOZ, links from relevant vertical search engines, links from respected industry organizations, links from forums and blogs, and so on. And there are almost as many techniques for getting the links from these sites that the search engines love.
Today, I’ll talk about one of those techniques: how to use social media for building links.
The term "social media" typically refers to social news sites like Digg, social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon, and social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook. Social news and social bookmarking sites are the most common social media sites used in a link-building effort.
These sites were designed specifically for people with shared interests to post and vote for content all over the Internet. Social media is a great way to get your articles and website content in front of a large group of people in a relatively short amount of time. And this can generate lots of traffic to your site.
Now you may be thinking: "Um, didn’t Patrick Coffey just tell me that social media will bring my site useless traffic?" Yes he did. And he’s right… mostly.
Through my own recent experiments with link building through social media (as Patrick mentioned), I attracted over 28,000 visitors to our health-newsletter site, Total Health Breakthroughs. And a measly 0.2 percent of those visitors signed up for the newsletter. If this were the only marketing technique we were using to build the e-mail list for the newsletter, we’d be in some seriously sorry shape.
We’ve made some improvements to ensure that our conversion rate will be higher next time. Still, despite getting a disappointing number of subscribers from all that traffic, my little experiment with social media did have a positive side. It also resulted in about 600 inbound links.
This is how social media can give you a big boost, especially if you are just starting out building links for a new site. If a page of your site makes the first page on Digg or gets a lot of reviews on StumbleUpon, you get that much more exposure to Web users who have their own sites and blogs. If these bloggers and website owners like your content, they’ll link to you. This has the potential to build your links exponentially! And remember, the search engines love it when your site has lots of relevant inbound links.
"All right, you’ve convinced me! So now what do I do?"
1. First, you have to have interesting content.
For some ideas on how to create top-notch content that will help your website’s pages do well on social media sites, take a look at David Cross’s "Bad Writer’s Guide to Creating Website Content" and Patrick Coffey’s "Creating Content for Your Website."
2. Then you have to present that good content in ways that will get the attention of social media junkies.
Here are four types of content that social media users love:
- Lists – Some would say lists are cliched or overused by now, but they still work. Top-10 lists seem to do really well, particularly on Digg. As I write this, there is a story on the first page of Digg with the headline " The Top 10 Places to Take a Techie on a Date." So if you can rework a page of your content or one of your articles into a Top-10 list, give it a shot.
- How-To Articles – Like lists, how-to guides do well. If you’re in the business of teaching people how things are done, you’re one step ahead of the game.
- Controversial Topics – People love controversy, but use this tactic wisely. You don’t want to misrepresent yourself or your site. You just want to create a buzz.
- Catchy Headlines - As with every other form of marketing, your headline is key in social media. Craft it carefully to attract the most attention.
3. In addition to having the right content on your website, you have to comply with social media’s unwritten code of conduct.
There is a reason social media is also known as social networking . When you create an account on a social media/networking website, you are literally signing up to be part of a community. Kind of like a condo association, the early adopters and hardcore users of social media sites take their communities very seriously. And they like it best when you play along.
If there’s anything this society hates, it’s overt marketing. If they suspect you are participating in their network purely to promote your site, they will report your submissions as spam and can even have the site disable your account. So here are some tips to help you appear more like a real person and less like a loathsome marketer.
- Upload an Avatar – An avatar is a little picture that’s associated with your account. It’s a pixilated ambassador that represents you and all the actions you perform on your account. An account profile without an avatar is a pretty good indicator of a marketer.
- Don’t Submit Content Solely From Your Website - This would seem like a no-brainer, but it is often forgotten. If the only pages you submit to a social media site are from your website, chances are you’re a marketer.
- Add Friends - Friends will usually vote for the content you submit. The more friends you have, the more votes for your content. The more votes you have, the better your chances of getting content on the first page of the social media site. But remember to reciprocate. Nobody likes a taker.
- Be a Real Person – A surefire way to look like a real person and not a marketer is to actually be a real person. Social media sites are fun! That’s why they’re so successful.
Let yourself go, and truly participate in the community. Make friends. Comment on posts. Discover new websites. When you do submit something from your own site, it will simply be another genuine contribution of great content. After all, marketers are people too, right?
Using social media to build links to your website can help boost your search engine rankings. It’s a lot of work, but it can also be rewarding… and entertaining. Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to driving useful traffic to your website.
[Ed. Note: Alexis Siemon is ETR's resident Search Engine Marketing Specialist. Get step-by-step instructions for starting your own Internet business with ETR's Magic Button program.]
Save Thousands in Taxes and Reduce Your Risk of an IRS Audit
If you’re operating your real estate investment business as a sole proprietor, you may be taking some dangerous risks when tax time rolls around. But there’s still time to shore up your position before April 15.
Savvy investors use a special business structure that allows them to pay thousands of dollars LESS in taxes each year. Not only can their secret help you enjoy the same savings, it can also make you 5 to 10 times LESS likely to be audited by the IRS. What’s more, you’ll also protect valuable assets like your home, your car, and other personal property from predatory lawyers and business creditors.
Click here to discover how you can minimize your taxes, avoid lawsuit risk, and take advantage of powerful tax-free retirement benefits!
Firm Up Your Butt Without Hurting Your Knees
I get a lot of e-mails from readers who have sore knees, but still want to work their butts into shape. Here’s an exercise that will firm up your butt without giving your knees a pounding:
The One-Leg Lying Hip Extension
- Start by lying on your back with your knees bent. Keep your feet flat on the floor. Brace your abs (by contracting them as if someone were going to punch you in the stomach).
- Contract your right glute (butt muscle) while you lift your left leg off the floor and hold it straight up in the air.
- Using the right glute, bridge your hips up off the ground. Keep your abs braced. (Do not use your lower back to do this exercise.)
- Slowly lower your hips until they are an inch above the ground, and then repeat the exercise.
- Switch sides and do the same thing using your left glute and your right leg.
[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne is the creator of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system. For a free online source of information, motivation, and social support to help you improve your health, lose weight, and get fit, sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter.]
The Language Perfectionist: Gender Generics
By Don Hauptman
Once upon a time, it was understood that the pronouns he and his could be used to refer to both sexes. Today, however, you can’t get away with that. To avoid accusations of sexism, it’s become common for writers and speakers to employ the generic plural pronoun, as in these examples:
- When you’re looking out for the person you love, you don’t want them to make a mistake.
- If you give someone a camera-phone, it’s an inviolable rule of nature that they will take a picture with it.
- My policy was to never make a counteroffer once the employee had accepted a new position. If they came back, I knew I really did not want them working for me.
This approach, however well intentioned, always strikes me as clunky, grating, and illiterate. I wouldn’t be surprised to read: "If someone has difficulty getting pregnant, they should…"
But fear not. You have alternatives. A sentence can almost always be recast so it is both grammatical and inoffensive. Among the options:
- The most obvious solution, if it doesn’t sound cumbersome or repetitious, is to include both sexes. The first example above would then read:"… it’s an inviolable rule of nature that he or she will take a picture with it."
- Reframe the sentence in the plural. The third example above would then read: "My policy was to never make a counteroffer once employees had accepted new positions. If they came back, I knew I really did not want them working for me."
- The pronoun can often be changed to we, you, or one.
- Sometimes a pronoun isn’t even necessary. Take this sentence: "If a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo Autos and has selected San Francisco as their default location…" In this example, the word their can simply be changed to the.
As with just about every error that achieves widespread use, this one has its passionate defenders. But I agree with grammar guru Patricia T. O’Conner: "I can’t believe the singular ‘they’ will become accepted in educated writing in our lifetime."
[Ed Note: Don Hauptman was a direct-response copywriter for more than 30 years. For his direct-mail subscription packages, he won The Newsletter on Newsletters promotion award for 10 years. He also writes about the English language and is now working on a humorous new book in that genre.]
It’s Fun to Know: Glow-in-the-Dark Scorpions
To find scorpions at night, scientists use ultraviolet light, also known as black light. Scorpion exoskeletons have a thin layer of film that glows when exposed to this kind of light. Ancient scorpion fossils still glow.
(Source: That’s a Fact, Jack! )
What’s Wrong With this Picture?
By now, you could be forgiven for thinking making money online is akin to some kind of black magic! You’ve probably heard the talk about SEO, XML, PPC and ended up more confused than when you started.
But you know, it’s really very simple. Make no mistake, what I’m about to share with you (for FREE) is THE secret. It only fills a couple of lines but this is the truth you’ve been denied by so many of the so-called “gurus”.
Ready? Here it is (drum roll please)…
Word to the Wise: Copacetic
Something that’s "copacetic" (koh-puh-SET-ik) is fine, very satisfactory. The origin of the word is unknown.
Example (as used by Heidi Benson in the San Francisco Chronicle): " Everything seemed copacetic until a favorite store – the anchor of the street – closed suddenly."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
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