After Energy Independence, Then What?

Issue #2415

• WEALTHY: The difference between high earners and low earners (Brian Tracy)
• HEALTHY: What’s in your bottled water? (Kelley Herring)
• WISE: Abraham Lincoln on looking ahead

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• A peek into the future (Robert Ringer)
• How to get out of a common Internet marketing trap (David Cross)
• It’s Good to Know… about smart pigs
• Add “filial” to your vocabulary

== Highly Recommended ==

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Best part: It is easy to follow this method and it flat out WORKS fast. To get the full scoop and all the exciting details, click here…

Earning 10 Times As Much

By Brian Tracy

Here’s an exercise for you. Imagine that it’s possible for you to earn 10 times your current annual wage.

The first reaction of most people to that exercise is to smile briefly and then begin thinking about why it isn’t possible. But, as Mark Twain once wrote, there are a thousand excuses for every failure but never a good reason.

The main preoccupation of the average American seems to be money, or the lack thereof. The tragedy in this is that the average person has the inherent potential to earn far more than he is earning currently.

Is the manager earning $250,000 per year 10 times smarter than the manager earning $25,000? 10 times more experienced? Does he work 10 times harder? Of course not.

Here are two things you can do to start increasing your income:

1. Identify the highest earning people in your field. Find out what it is that they are doing differently from others who aren’t doing as well. Copy them every day.

2. Set a goal to double your income over the next two or three years, and then figure out what you have to do to achieve it.

Get started!

[Ed. Note: Doubling your income is a reachable goal. So is the goal of becoming a millionaire. Especially if you follow men and women who have reached seven-figure net worths in seven years or less. Learn how they did it - and how you can do the same - right here.

If you want to find your focal point and learn to maximize your income and minimize your effort, check out Brian Tracy's 6-CD Power of Clarity program.]

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“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.”

Abraham Lincoln

After Energy Independence, Then What?

By Robert Ringer

Glenn Beck recently did a fascinating interview with Ray Kurzweil, the remarkable inventor/futurist. Among other things, Kurzweil, a member of the prestigious National Inventors Hall of Fame, developed the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind.

Right on Beck’s show, he demonstrated how it works. It was amazing.

While listening to Kurzweil talk, the thought crossed my mind how geniuses like him appear to be able to transcend the junk that you and I allow to flood our brains day in and day out . Dumbed-down infomercials. Round-the-clock sports on TV. Nonstop pain-at-the-pump and global-warming tales. The latest shenanigans of cartoon characters like Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The childish ramblings of our own presidential candidates. Even the scary news flashes about Hollywood celebs who are threatening to emigrate if their candidate doesn’t win the upcoming election.

Listening to Kurzweil reminded me that most of the things people think about, fret about, and argue about don’t really matter much in the long run. Over the past century, we’ve survived a rash of bad presidents and shameless politicians, unthinkable natural disasters, the Great Depression, and “world” wars (along with a few little skirmishes like Vietnam). And humankind stubbornly keeps pushing forward.

I believe one of the biggest reasons for this success is that the people on the leading edge of civilization seem to be unfazed by all the nonsensical stuff.

Now when I say we’ve survived, I admit I’m talking on a macro basis. Between the advances, there is almost always a great deal of pain and suffering for the many people who happen to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Soviet Union is the best recent example of this. It was only a matter of time until the lie of communism collapsed under its own weight. But for 70 years, hundreds of millions of people suffered and tens of million died. The same was true of Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Saddam’s Iraq, and Mao’s China. But what’s interesting is how, notwithstanding government’s best efforts to slow human progress, the best and the brightest keep moving mankind forward.

As a result of the exponential progression of information technology, Kurzweil says that the rate of progress itself is now doubling every decade. In fact, he believes we will experience 32 times as much technical progress in the next 50 years as we’ve seen in the last century! It’s hard for a guy like me, whose neurons shut down at the thought of learning how to load my iPod, to comprehend such things.

Kurzweil says that when he first came to MIT, the school had only one computer. It took up an entire floor and cost more than $10 million. Now, the computer in a $50 cellphone is thousands of times more powerful than that MIT dinosaur. Which is why he believes we will see a billionfold improvement in information technology over the next 25 years. And then, in the years that follow, we’ll see it again, and again, and again.

I could go on and on about Ray Kurzweil’s amazing inventions, knowledge, and insights into the future. But the biggest of all his predictions is that due to advances in nanotechnology, we will soon be able to produce highly efficient, lightweight, inexpensive solar panels. As a result, he is all but certain that solar power will provide 100 percent of the world’s energy needs within 20 years - easily and inexpensively. He points out that the sun provides us with 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to accomplish this.

If Kurzweil is right, it not only will put a damper on draconian save-the-planet ideologies aimed at increasing control over people’s lives, it will change the balance of political power worldwide. It would also mean that millions of hours have been (and will be) wasted over debating whether or not to drill through the hides of caribou or dig up our trillions of tons of coal and convert it to oil.

All this reminds me of something that another great futurist, Alvin Toffler, said in his landmark book Future Shock. Toffler believed that at any given time in history, about 90 percent of the population thinks in terms of the past, 7-8 percent have their heads in the present, and 2-3 percent are focused on the future.

When you look back on just the past 10,000 years, the evidence is clear: Human progress accelerates, notwithstanding little inconveniences such as famines, disease, volcanic eruptions, and asteroids paying their respects from time to time.

Don’t get me wrong. In the coming decades, I believe the U.S. is likely to be a totally different place than it is today. We may even have to go through a dictator or two. Perhaps even a couple of revolutions. But the scientific brains and futuristic thinkers don’t seem to pay much attention to politics and social upheaval. They just keep marching forward as though nothing were going on around them.

Nevertheless, the big question that remains is the same one that’s been implied throughout human history: What good does human progress do in such fields as technology, medicine, and energy if there continues to be no human progress in the area of goodwill?

So, what can you and I do about this? Plenty. The thought of ever-greater technology joining forces with ever-greater malice should incentivize each of us to demonstrate - through our actions -a spirit of goodwill.

You and I can’t force anyone else to change to our liking, but we totally control who and what we, as individuals, can become. Rather than joining crusades to save the world, we can accomplish much more by focusing on making ourselves the best human beings we can possibly be.

[Ed. Note: Improving yourself takes work - but with a few easy-to-follow guidelines, you can accomplish any kind of personal change you want. Learn how to get expert guidance and dozens of goal-setting tools right here.

Becoming a better person can garner admiration and respect from colleagues and potential partners alike. Follow Robert Ringer's suggestions today, and you could increase your income many times over. For a treasure chest of proven ideas, strategies, and techniques, check out Robert's best-selling dealmaking audio series. And sign up for Robert's Voice of Sanity e-letter here.]

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== Highly Recommended ==

The Three Magic Words to Building Wealth Online

What are the three most important words for rapidly building enormous wealth online?

Quick, cheap, & easy! Our new Internet program has them all.

You see, the problem with most Internet advice out there is it’s designed for people with big (multi-million dollar) advertising budgets, lots of administrative, legal, and accounting support and an existing marketing base.

But if your company is smaller than $1 million and/or if you don’t have an Internet business yet, then you need something different… something that lets you start off small.

One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How’s that for starting small!

Let me show you how you could get a similar Internet income stream running for almost nothing.

- Charlie Byrne
ETR Associate Publisher

Dear ETR: “Should I press on, or re-start?”

“I have a website that doesn’t get many visitors, doesn’t get much in Google AdSense payments. I created the website in February 2005 from scratch. For marketing, I’ve only been exchanging on target links, plus optimizing pages. Nothing paid for - do not want to go down that route.

“My goal for the site: to get a part-time income from it, to provide a useful service.

“My question: Should I press on, or re-start?”

Kim Campbell
London, England

Dear Kim,

Your site has incoming links but its big problem - from what I can see - is that it has little original, fresh content. For example, at least five sites have published the same article on Web hosting with the exact same text that I found on your site.

This is a common mistake with sites trying to drive traffic to gain ad revenue. And it’s one reason Google started its “supplemental index” a couple of years ago, which excludes duplicate content results from search results.

Generally speaking, you need to be first on the Net with any article to gain the maximum benefit from that content.

If you wish to continue with your existing website, you need to find ways of generating original, fresh, regular content that puts a different slant on the subject matter you cover. If you wish to continue by posting “generic” content, you should, at the very least, add a few paragraphs of your own reviews, opinions, thoughts, and/or testimonials. You should also do whatever you can to make your content stand out from the rest. And I suggest you publish an RSS feed for your content, and make sure it is registered with Feedburner.com.

A related problem with your site is that it’s too similar to existing - and more popular - sites. For instance, I suspect that in your niche in the UK, many people would turn to Which? magazine for the types of recommendations you offer. So not only is your content not original, it is also competing for traffic with a much bigger, better-known publication. Generally, we advise against doing online businesses that are too similar to other businesses. Especially if you have no USP (unique selling proposition) or means of differentiating yourself from your competition.

My ultimate answer is that you need to make drastic changes if you want to keep your site - especially if you want any chance of making money with it.

But all is not lost. See what you can do with the advice I gave above. Even better, ask yourself if there is a passion, a hobby, or an expertise you have that you could turn into an online business. One that could stand up on its own right. Then get to work on filling up your site with fresh, original content that’s related to that niche.

- David Cross

[Ed. Note: Maybe, like Kim, you have a site that isn't performing the way you want it to. Or maybe you have no clue how to get an online business started. Either way, ETR's team of Internet marketing experts can help you build a fully functioning online business from the ground up. Learn how to get their shortcuts to business success right here.

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.]

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Danger in a Bottle

By Kelley Herring

You may think you’re doing yourself a favor by drinking spring water. But new research shows there could be danger lurking in the bottle.

A recent study published in Toxicology Letters found that polycarbonate water bottles, exposed to regular conditions, contain harmful levels of bisphenol A (BPA). BPA is an endocrine disruptor that acts like estrogen in the body, triggering hormonal changes and encouraging the growth of breast and prostate cancers.

Dr. James LaValle has recommended, in ETR, that you avoid drinking or eating from heated plastic. And that’s one step you can take to protect yourself against BPA. However, while you can keep your water bottles cool after you’ve purchased them, there’s no knowing their past history of heat exposure or storage time - which also affects the amount of BPA that leaches into the water.

To limit your exposure, avoid bottles with the recycling number 7, as most contain BPA. Instead, opt for recycling numbers 2 and 4 or cloudy-colored plastics, which are usually free of BPA. You can also use a high quality reverse-osmosis purification system (which removes other harmful things, too), and store your water in glass bottles in the refrigerator.

[Ed. Note: Now that you're aware of this potential threat, you can do more to protect yourself and your family for years to come. You can get more advice from nutrition expert Kelley Herring and ETR's team of health professionals, every week, for free. Discover what's bad for you and what you can do to get leaner and healthier right here.

And for delicious recipes that taste nothing like "health food," check out Kelley's website, HealingGourmet.com.]

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It’s Good to Know: Smart Pigs

The word “pig” doesn’t always refer to barnyard animals or chauvinistic people. It’s also the term for devices that help keep gas and oil pipelines in tip-top shape. These pigs (pipeline inspection gauges) check out the condition of pipeline walls, clean the insides of pipelines, and record data about the pipelines (including size and position) for engineers to analyze.

According to the Pigging Products & Services Association, the devices range from utility pigs (which clean and seal pipelines) to geometry pigs (which record wrinkles, bends, and dents). And so-called “smart pigs” provide even more information about the pipe and its contents, and detect corrosion, leaks, and cracks.

Click to comment on this article.

== Highly Recommended ==

How to Make Fast Profits From Your Own Internet Import Company for Just 48 Cents a Day – Starting in Less Than 24 Hours

Right now, corporate America is getting filthy rich off of you.  And they do it every time you shell out money for almost any item – large or small.   These profits come from the massive mark-ups on imports from places like China, where a widget may cost a buck or two, but sells for $19.95.

But now the tables have turned on the corporations - thanks to the Internet and our global economy. And you can be the one reaping windfall profits from the import business.  Best part:  You can easily run the entire business online, with no employees, no previous experience or knowledge, and with as little as $50 in start-up costs.

All you need to do is simply follow a proven, step-by-step plan that is handed to you with this turnkey system. Just a few hours of “work” (if you want to call it that) is all it takes to set your business up.  Then, the whole thing runs on autopilot, freeing you to live life however you wish.

OK, so let’s get going - learn how you can get started right now!

Word to the Wise: Filial

“Filial” (FIL-ee-ul) - from the Latin for “son” - means pertaining to or befitting a son or daughter.

Example (as used by Deborah Solomon in Utopia Parkway): “He would live with his mother for nearly his entire life, bound to her by an inordinate sense of filial piety.”

[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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