Notorious Punk’d Actor Ashton Kutcher has become aware that he has over 850,000 followers on twitter.

He is also aware that CNN(the #1 twitterer), has over 900,000 followers. He has issued a challenge to Ted Turner ceo of CNN, as well as the rest of the Twitter Community. If he gets to 1 Million Twitter followers before CNN he will punk Ted Turner – hopefully on video for the whole world to see.

I originally got scoop of this over at TechCrunch, and you can read his Twitter Update as well. It’s pretty clear that Ashton Kutcher is seeking to be the first Twitter user to breach the 1 million followers mark.

Ashton may need a little more help, which is why I suggest that we all propel him towards that goal – I for one would love to see CNN’s ceo Punk’d. There are currently 10 million Twitter users, if we all work together we should surely be able to get Ashton to 1 million twitter followers by the end of the week!

Here is what I’m suggesting:

1. First follow Ashton Kutcher @aplusk.

2. Send the following tweet:

“RT @patrickcurl Help Ashton Punk CNN’s CEO. Read more here: Pls RT!” Click here to Retweet without Cutting and Pasting.

3. Lastly you can also follow me on Twitter and I will return the favor. @patrickcurl

Kutcher has also clarified that he is planning on doing the time-trusted classic: The ding dong ditch. Ashton has stated that a proper ‘ding dong ditch‘ will include a million ______(Fill in the blank) on the door step.

P.S. Also feel free to share this post via digg, stumbleupon, buzz, blogging, etc….

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When you need a quick, simple screencast, but don’t want to bother with installing and configuring software, a new service called ScreenCastle may just be the app you’re looking for.

ScreenCastle is an extremely simple screencasting tool. ScreenCastle is so simple to use. Just visit their website, click the big red button, load the java application, decide how much of the screen you want recorded, and whether or not to include audio from your microphone.

Those are the only settings, after your settings are chosen a small black bar appears at the bottom of your screen. This is your recording control mechanism. Just push record when you’re ready to record, and move the mouse to the very top of the screen when you’re done.

If you’re not recording in full-screen mode, then you’ll have a small window which you can click on to end the recording.

Currently there is no size or length limits of screen-casts – but be aware the videos are uploaded from your computer after the recording is finished, and lengthy videos will take time to upload.

Screencasts are given unique urls to share. You can link directly to the screen-cast, download the screencast, or direct link to the file for downloading purposes.

The downside of ScreenCastle is that there’s currently no way to edit screencasts, so if you’re not happy with the results you will have to start over. Alternately you could download the file and edit it locally using video editing software. Currently ScreenCastle is completely free, and only requires a web browser with Java Script support.

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Is my World Plus the Biggest Scam of 2008? Check out the Video! (Yes, that’s me in the video!)

My World Plus – The Biggest Scam of 2008?

Join My World Plus now!

This month was great to me traffic wise. I’m working on increasing my monetization as well. I don’t think $248 is too shabby though for one month’s work.

Here are some of the best posts for the month:

1. Extreme Pumpkin Carving – over 25 resources for the Pumpkin Carving Enthusiast
2. Set Goals or DIE! Part 1: Posting Frequency Goals…
3. Mahalo joins the Layoff Express. Bastard, Laying people off is Unamerican!
4. 17 Kicka** Green Businesses to Start Now!
5. The Many Versions of Michael Jackson’s Thriller – 12 to be exact!
6. 26 Exciting Home-Based business ideas!
7. Have a Happy Debt Free Christmas – 4 Ways to Save Money this Holiday Season

Finally – My favorite book – Sword of Truth comes to TV! TONIGHT!!!

Book cover via Amazon

I must say, I am totally excited about tonight. Yes, I’m a geek. The legend of the Seeker launches on abc networks. I was afraid at first because I couldn’t find it listed anywhere – luckily my tivo lets me search shows, and I found it playing on WGN. Most places are showing it on the WB.

Legend of the Seeker is the highly anticipated tv series based on Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series (which I’ve read all 11 books like 2 times at least.)

It should be pretty good, as it is being put together by the director of Spiderman. Of course, I can say that a part of me is sad that it’s not gonna be in theatres, and Peter Jackson isn’t directing it. After seeing what he did with Lord of the Rings, I’d have loved to see him take on the Sword of Truth – which I actually liked reading more than I did Tolkien.

The Legend of the Seeker follows young Richard Cypher, a woods guide. Richard is encompassed in a mighty quest mere weeks after his father’s brutal murder by an evil king from a land across two impassible boundaries, in a world that Richard never even thought he’d be a part of one day.

Richard saves Kahlan a woman who has a special ability. She’s called a confessor, not just any confessor though, she is the Mother Confessor. Her ability is to touch people, and make them fiercely devoted to her. The premise is that their job is to be the last ditch effort in heinous crimes where men who claim to still be innocent can choose to confess to a confessor, or be hanged. Many choose hanging, even if innocent, because the touch of a confessor is permanent.

Kahlan carries a harsh burden put on her from birth. She can never love, and never let herself get close to someone. In the intimate moments when passion over-takes thought she would be unable to control her power and would unleash the power in her lover.

Richard having no idea what she is, is the first person to accept her for who she is, but she can’t bring herself to tell him what and who she is, risking the world on a lie, to keep the only friend she’s ever had.

There’s some major twists, lots of wizards and magic, a dragon or two. Fierce creatures, and an awesome story of love, devotion, passion, faith, honor, and more. Legend of the seeker is an epic journey that can’t be missed.

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Image by pixelposition via Flickr

The first major goal of blogging: Finding and Setting your Post Frequency.

You want to make a living doing this right? You’re in this for the long haul, am I right? You don’t want to be a one-night stand blogger, do you?

Then you must set short-term goals. My first goal was to make $100 per month off my blogs. The goal I’m working on now is to get 50,000 hits per month (currently i’m at 35,000).

Here are a few different types of goals you should be working on, if you really want to become a professional blogger. Traffic Goals, Monetary Goals, Posting Goals. These are just a few, I’m sure there are many more, but these are the generals that I will focus on during this discussion.

First we will take a look at posting goals. Frequency of blog posts play a very important role in how successful your blog becomes. The most successful blogs are the ones that have 5 posts or more per day.

Is that to say you can’t compete by writing less? No, sometimes quantity isn’t an absolute, sometimes it’s quality that really matters. I believe that we need to find a good medium between quality and quantity.

One thing that it took me awhile to recognize is that not every blog post needs to be perfect, sometimes just getting a post out there is good enough. With that said though, sometimes it is pertinent to go above and beyond on a few posts.

A few good examples of going above and beyond are these posts:

• 17 Kicka** Green Businesses to Start Now!
• Gas Prices Love and Hate them – 10 Reasons to Love them, and 9 Ways to Save on Gas.
• Obama: The First President of America 2.0?
• Is your Blog a Dead Beast? 16 Ways Bring it to life!
• 7 Ways to be Best Buds with an A-List Blogger!
• Blogs need to eat too! Feed your blog with 39 ways to build your RSS Subscriber base. So easy a slackjawed yokel could do it!
• Warning: Avoid these 7 Time Traps or your blog Will Fail – Guaranteed!
• 16 Places to get the dish on Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

These are my personal cream of the crop posts. But that’s out of 180+ posts since I re-launched this blog in March.

I’ve posted 25 posts just this past week (13% of my total blog posts in a single week.) My goal is to be posting as many as 50 posts per week by the end of the year. I would love to surpass the magical 1000th post by my 1 year anniversary of re-launching this blog. (Middle of march).

As you can see, I have a vision of where I want to go with this blog. Without a vision, you will never get any place. You may experience short-lived success, but you must have a vision.

FACT: The more blog posts you have, the more traffic you will get from long-tail search results. These are great traffic sources because they are new to your blog, they will bookmark it if they like it, and many may subscribe.

Let’s discuss: Please tell me about your posting frequency – do you have a certain goal? Have you even thought about setting a goal before?

Read the whole series:

1. Set Goals or Die! Part 1: Posting Frequency Goals…
2. Set Goals or Die! Part 2: Traffic Building Goals..
3. Set Goals or Die! Part 3: Monetization Goals…(forthcoming).

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Just when you thought people were more tolerant… “Hit a Jew Day!”

Sounds like a republican holiday..JK..

No this is not being made up. Several sixth graders at Parkway West Middle School began an unofficial spirit week, this week.

It started out innocent enough with “Hug a friend day”. But that’s where the niceties stopped.

Then there was “hit a tall person day”, and finally ending with Nazi sentiments by launching “Hit a Jew Day”…

My question is how Teachers could let this happen, surely they should’ve known something was up, especially by the end of the “hit a tall person” day.

You’d think some teacher would get wind that it was “Hit a Jew Day”, after all kids say the darndest things, don’t they? Please tell me, kids still say the darndest things!

I’d also like you to tell me Santa and the tooth fairy are real.

The students who hit the Jewish student could face suspensions and counseling. Other students that participated in taunting the Jewish kids, will receive lesser penalties.

I think this would be a good time to show some really disturbing and graphic movies on the holocaust. Open their eyes to the dangers of racism.

Just my two cents…

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

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Image via Wikipedia

Poll: Which matters most to a profitable blog – Quantity or Quality?

My Answer:

I believe that both are important. Don’t just publish a crap post to get traffic, but not all posts have to be perfect either. Also the more you post the more traffic you will get. Look at all the big dogs like techcrunch you can expect 10+ posts per day from them.

I’ve written quite a few google trends targeted blog posts, I usually do these more as an exploration exercise than anything else. In otherwords, I am experimenting with ways to use google trends to increase search engine traffic.

My results are pretty astounding. My number 1 source of traffic was Twitter, and now it’s Google. My traffic shot up from less than 100 hits per day to an average of 1,000+ (on days that I blog).

My formula is this: My goal and guideline is to write 40% good high quality articles(not necessarily a pillar article, but informative nonetheless), 20% affiliate articles to pay the bills, 25% Targeted at Google trends, and 15% for top notch pillar articles which I try to get dugg / stumbled.

This strategy is working pretty well for me – but I am very interested in your opinions. What are your posting tactics?

Lets have a discussion!

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Image by Sarah Grice via Flickr

Mark my words: Green technology is going to fuel our economy more than anything for the next 10-20 years. If America takes the bulls by the horn and becomes the global leader of green technology we would be able to take our technology to every country in the world.

The businesses that take advantage of this will become extremely wealthy.

1. Green Shuttle Service. Utah has a shuttle that goes from Vegas to St. George, and I think even to Salt Lake. They charge about $45 per trip. I live in Ohio, now but I always thought that would be a good business to turn green.Many states don’t have travel solutions to get between major metropolitan areas. The idea here is to get a fleet of vans and drivers to drive people around the state, and perhaps even to the nearest big cities on the bordering states.  You would use modified vehicles that burn biodiesel or hydrogen or electricity, and help the environment.
2. Green Taxi Service.  Start a taxi service using cars that have a low carbon imprint.
3. Green upscale restaurant delivery service. There are many companies that will pick up food from different local restaurants and deliver that food for a fee. This saves gas and time for the person ordering, and is a way to make a lot of cash.Most companies charge a flat fee of $5-10 per delivery, and a percentage of the order amount.
4. Green Business Consulting.  There are many ways that a business can go green, helping businesses maximize their green awareness, or minimize their carbon footprint is a great green business waiting to be started.
5. Home Energy Consultant. Along the same lines as the previous entry, only this would be helping homeowners live greener lives, and energy proof their homes.
6. Renewable Energy Installer. Install wind turbines and solar panels for homes and businesses.
7. Green Teacher. Teach a community class on what people can do at home to save on energy costs, and help the environment.
8. Green Tech Blog. Blog about green technology, provide the best resources on the industry, and make a difference in the industry.
9. Green Cleaning Service. Most cleaning supplies involve using dangerous chemicals that are bad for the environment, not to mention our health. Start a cleaning business cleaning homes and businesses using 100% eco-friendly cleaning supplies.
10. Water-safe landscaping. I lived in Arizona for awhile. In the western states the trend is to forgo grass for a rock garden type landscape. This can be very beautiful if done right. This is a great business to conserve water, which is a needed resource that is dwindling world-wide.
11. Eco-friendly Dry Cleaner. There aren’t many of these yet, so it’d be a great way to get a foot in the world of green businesses.
12. Green Car Rentals. Self-explanatory, but very profitable.
13. Organic / Green Catering Service. Organic foods are generally bought locally meaning lower carbon imprint via trucking. They also help the environment because they involve less chemicals.
14. Organic Fast Food Restaurant. Make a fast food restaurant that is not only convenient, but healthy, tasty, and green!
15. Green Publishing Company. Make flyers, brochures, etc using recycled paper, cardstock, vegetable based inks, etc…
16. Electronic Recycling Company.  This industry has become a multi-billion dollar industry recently as newer and better electronics are constantly replacing their counterparts of only a few years. Here is a very good e-cycling business plan starter document in pdf.
17. CNG Gas Station Owner. CNG(Compressed Natural Gas) is a big part of Pickens Plan – which you may have seen ads for recently. Of course many say that it’s because he has large stake in a CNG company, but CNG does have a better carbon imprint than petroleum, and would help us get off foreign oil. The problem right now with CNG is the lack of CNG fueling stations, so this may be a hot business to start in the coming years.

On top of all of these ideas is the fact that ANY business can be greener. All it takes is some ingenuity. If every corporation would just switch to recycled paper, that would make a huge change in the global carbon imprint.

If every company would recycle their electronics, or use hybrids for their fleet vehicles, or energy proof their businesses, use renewable energy, etc… There’s many things that can be done in the business sector to further the green industry – be creative.

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I’d think of all people to piss off when running for an election, media icons should be last on your list. I’m more of a Leno fan myself, but I used to watch Letterman when I was younger. There’s no doubt in my mind that Letterman is a cultural and media icon.

Letterman has been around a long time, and has a huge following. Mccain outright ditched Letterman yesterday, stating that he was needed in Washington.

As you may be aware Mccain made the decision to put his campaign on hold on Wednesday. This was when he cancelled his appearance on Letterman. Letterman was not happy, to say the least.

David Letterman had many choice words for John Mccain, he started out saying how he has admiration for him, and respect for serving in Vietnam, and for his sacrifice as a prisoner of war.

Letterman went on to say “When you call up at the last minute and cancel, that’s not the John Mccain I know.”

Regarding senator Mccain’s decision to put his campaign on hold, Letterman said “Something smell’s right now” (perhaps his depends are full?)…

Letterman also suggested “somebody must’ve put something in his metamucil”.

David Letterman said that John Mccain had said that the economy was about to ‘crater’, which necessitated him getting to Washington immediately. Letterman then suggested he not suspend his campaign at all, but send in his “second string quarterback”, surely Gov. Sarah Palin has no reason not to be able to attend the debate, or visit Letterman on John’s behalf. Letterman said, “You don’t quit”.

After remarking that Sarah Palin should ‘be ready’ to step up, and take over for the old man, Letterman reconsidered and said “don’t get me started”.

In the absence of Mccain, Letterman brought out MSNBC host and stark republican critic Keith Olbermann, together they both assailed on Mccain for his decision to cancel his appearance, as well as put his campaign on hold.

Their critique reached a highpoint when Letterman learned that at this very moment that Mccain was ‘needing to get back to Washington’, and should’ve been on the couch next to Letterman, he was in fact at the CBS news center three blocks away in Manhattan being prepped for an interview with CBS News Anchor Katie Couric.

Letterman ordered his director to put on a live feed from that location, which showed John Mccain getting ‘made up’ to go on with Ms Couric. Letterman observed “he doesn’t seem to be racing to the airport”.

After listening to some questions from Ms Couric, Letterman said: “Hey John, I’ve got a question: You need a lift to the airport?”

He then asked Keith Olbermann if he thought this was all Mccain’s fault or somebody in his campaign’s. Keith simply said “He ditched you”.

Here are some Excerpts from Letterman’s rant on Mccain which quickly made their way around the Internet:

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave Letterman got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Letterman even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, “Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?”

Earlier in the show, Dave Letterman kept saying, “You don’t suspend your campaign. This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves.” And he joked: “I think someone’s putting something in his metamucil.”

“He can’t run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?”

“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”

Letterman also dedicated his top ten to Mccain:

TOP TEN QUESTIONS PEOPLE ARE ASKING THE JOHN McCAIN CAMPAIGN
10. “I just contributed to your campaign — How do I get a refund?”
9. “Hi, it’s Sarah Palin — Does this mean I’m Parsident?”
8. “Can’t you solve this by selling some of your homes?”
7. “Hi, this is Clay Aiken. Is McCain single?”
6. “Do you still think the fundamentals of our economy are strong, Genius?”
5. “Are you doing all of this just to get out of going on Letterman?”
4. “What would Matlock do?”
3. “Hillary here — My schedule is free Friday night”
2. “Is this just an excuse to catch up on napping?”
1. “This is President Bush — What’s all this trouble with the economy?”

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• Don’t Lie To Dave Letterman, McCain
• David Letterman Pissed At John McCain Video
• McCain cancels Letterman. Dave hits back
• McCain Ditches Letterman, Gets Caught Next Door With Couric
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Google Trends made me crap myself…

I checked twice, and nope it ain’t chocolate pudding…

I’ve been blogging recently about google trends and the ability to make money by capitalizing on popular topics. As far as I’m aware blogging about popular topics is not yet against google’s terms…

So last week I blogged about Hurricane Hannah, and Hurricane Gustav, and a few other topics. Friday I posted my last blog post for the holiday weekend. I moved this weekend, so I’ve been pretty busy, and haven’t been online once.

Today I got online, and I noticed that on Sunday alone my website had roughly 3000 unique hits. That’s more than I’ve ever had in a single day. I posted some really good blog posts on Friday about the new vice presidential candidates(Sarah Palin and Joe Biden), and so I thought perhaps that’s where the traffic was coming from…

I was dead wrong, I checked my counterize statistics, and apparently Tropical Storm Hannah, has become Hurricane Hannah, and has become an overnight hot topic. Having been one of the first to blog about it when it first hit the trends site I have been able to get a lot of traffic to my Hurricane Hannah blog post.

How many hits?
Tropical Storm Hannah – 18035 hits since the post was written (This was a whopping 22% of my traffic since the blog began!).

Folks, since my website has had about 90,000 hits total since March, that’s huge. My Hurricane Gustav track blog post brought in around 3818 hits(or 5% of my overall totall traffic).

My link bait post on the Presidential Candidates (16 Places to get the Dish on Joe Biden and Sarah Palin) brought in 2897 (this is 4% of my overall traffic – ever)…

So my question to you is:

Do you still doubt the power of Google Trends?

My advice is get in on this action before google does something to block it, they always seem to fight it when people find good ways to bring their site traffic.

Mashable has put together two really nice lists of places where you can find out more info on the current vice presidential candidates(Joe Biden and Sarah Palin), I thought I would combine them into one easy list for you to view.

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Image via Wikipedia

Debt is a problem plaguing Americans all over. With people losing their homes, and their jobs, debt is becoming an even bigger nightmare than ever before, but there is help…

DON’T consolidate your debt—CLEAR IT!!!
Legally ELIMINATE your credit card and other unsecured debt

•    WITHOUT ever making another payment
•    WITHOUT it affecting your credit long-term
•    WITHOUT confrontation

Legally Cancel Your Credit Card Debt

This IS NOT:

•    Bankruptcy
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Visit here to learn how.

Erase Your Credit Card Debt

•    Must have a minimum of $10K in combined household unsecured debt to apply.
•    Must be a US resident.

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PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Governor Sarah Palin : Image via Wikipedia

SARAH Palin – is she Ready to Lead?

- this post is brought to you by whitehouse2008.info

Sarah Palin is the current Governor of Alaska, and the presumptive 2008 candidate for Vice President of the United States.

If elected Sarah Palin will be the first female vice president. Sarah Palin is the first female vice presidential candidate ever representing the Republican Party, and only the second Female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major political party in America.

Sarah Palin is also the first politician from Alaska to be nominated for Vice-President.

Sarah Palin was born in Idaho, but raised in Alaska. Sarah Palin is an ex-beauty pageant runner up for Miss Alaska(1984). Palin used her beauty to land a scholarship at the University of Idaho, where she majored in journalism.

Sarah Palin worked as a sports reporter for an Anchorage tv station, then served two terms in the Wasilla, Alaska, City Council from 1992-1996. Sarah Palin was then elected mayor of Wasilla(population 8,470) in 1996.

Sarah Palin then ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2002 unsuccessfully and was finally elected Governor of Alaska in 2006.

Sarah Palin gained national attention for publicizing ethical violations of state Republican Party leaders.

My question is: Sarah Palin is supposedly for good ‘ethical policies’ then what the hell is she running for Mccain’s vice president? Mccain is as immoral and unethical as they come. How anyone could back a president known for perjury is beyond me..(everything he says is practically a lie, or what people want to hear).

Sure with Sarah Palin, he may get some of the female vote, but I think he might’ve gotten more if he’d picked the guy from Minnesota. All I can say is that it’s going to be easy pickin’s for Obama.

Of course Sarah Palin doesn’t bring much experience to the table, only leading a small region with 8,000 people for a number of years, and then being governor for a mere 19 months.

This is definitely one of the thinnest resumes of any vice president since Nixon chose Agnew. Not to mention the fact that Sarah Palin has some corruption policies herself.

Sarah Palin allegedly attempted to have fired a state trooper who was embroiled in a custody battle with her sister. (Does this sound like the kind of person we need as vice president of the United States?)

Of course Sarah Palin has previously said that her administration didn’t exert pressure to get rid of trooper Mike Wooten, and also disclosed that members of her staff had made over two dozen contacts with public safety officials about the trooper.

I think it’s funny that Mccain chose someone who doesn’t have experience as Sarah Palin shows, and who also is in the middle of a political corruption crisis herself, it apparently shows his lack of good judgement.

It’s going to be nice to see his poll ratings plummet from this move.

Another funny thing about this is how he hoots and hollers about Obama not being experienced enough to lead this country, but then picks the most inexperienced governor in the whole united states to run as his runningmate. This just proves that Mccain is incompetent and that Obama is way more ready to lead, especially since he actually chose a vp candidate in Joe Biden that will greatly aid his campaign and not hinder it.

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• Sarah Palin Videos
• Sarah Palin is Spiro Agnew
• McCain names Sarah Palin as surprise VP choice
• The Palin File, In Brief
• McCain’s V.P. Pick?????

Read Write Web posted a article detailing three futuristic search engines, and I discovered SearchMe.com and thought it was a pretty interesting find. I even made a video on the features and uses of Searchme.com Check it out below. What are your opinions?

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Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

Running a successful blog takes a lot of effort. There are many things that go into blogging that most people don’t take into account, when they attempt to start a blog.

One of the surest ways to fail at blogging for a living is to waste your time online. Your time is valuable, it is your livelihood. Each second wasted can’t be returned to you, treat your time like gold and you will become a

golden blogger, just like Darren Rowse, John Chow, or Shoemoney.

Here are the 7 time traps that will make your blog fail…

Time Trap #1: Trying to hard to monetize your blog. It is true, that you do need to have a revenue source for your blog, but you shouldn’t obsess over this.

Many bloggers get it in their head that if they aren’t making any money it’s because their advertiser isn’t working out, so they try another, and another..and so on..

My tip is to put up some bidvertiser ads, maybe a few performancing ads, and leave it at that.

Notice I don’t mention adsense, it’s because they’re not a good program to go with until you’re bringing in a lot of traffic daily, if you have even a little click fraud they’re more likely to shut you down if you’re a small site. I am still banned because some idiot clicked on my links 97 times in a single day.

I bet if someone did that over at JohnChow’s site, or shoemoney’s they wouldn’t even slap his hand. Heck they probably wouldn’t even notice.

Time Trap #2: Obsessing over your design. Web Designers sometimes tend to be perfectionists, I know I fall into this category quite often. It doesn’t matter how pretty your blog is, if people aren’t reading it.

I’ll say that again for emphasis:

“IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW PRETTY YOUR BLOG IS, IF PEOPLE AREN’T READING IT.”

Content is king, not design. I’ve seen some ugly ass blogs that earn more than most people see in 3 months. When you have 500-1000 posts and are making the big bucks, then you might decide to tinkle with your design, or theme.

Heck by that time you might as well go ahead and hire someone to create you a professional and unique blog theme.

Time Trap #3: Twitter. Nuff said? Twitter has become this huge distraction. Twitter is great and wonderful, in fact I absolutely LOVE Twitter, but there is a time and a place. Set aside a certain amount of time per day or week to focus on twitter, and leave it at that.

With that said, I would definitely use the pingpress.fm wordpress widget in conjunction with ping.fm to simultaneously post to all your microblogging sites every time you update your blog. This will drastically improve your blog rankings and traffic.

Oh and speaking of twitter, why don’t you go and follow me already?

Time Trap #4: Not planning = Planning to fail. To be successful, you need to have a plan of action. The internet is the biggest time waster on the planet, and it’s addicting. It’s very easy to start reading an article, and follow link after link to related article, till 5 hours have passed and you haven’t written one blog post.

Trust me – this is a trap that I fall into all the time myself. It is one that can get the very best of us. Having a plan of what you’re need to get done, and when you can just surf without a plan will in the end help you stay focused.

The truth is, if you can’t post at least 5 blog updates to your blog per week, then you might as well stop trying to do it for a living. It will never happen for you. I’m sorry to say, but why waste  3 years trying and come out broke and pennyless. Sometimes even 5 blog posts per week isn’t going to ensure your total success, but it is a start. If you can do 1-2 per day then you’re awesome, and should be worshipped by all the wannabe’s.

Time Trap #5: Too many household distractions. Unless your blog is about tv, or tv related topics, or you’re live blogging about some show you’re watching, it’s probably not a very good idea to watch tv while working online. It’s also a good time, if you’re a professional to find a place that you can go and work, a place that isn’t full of distractions. Of course for mom’s, I know that’s hard but this is about doing your best. If you can’t get rid of all distractions work on getting rid of the biggest ones, and you should do quite well.

Time Trap #6: Obsessed and ignoring those who matter most. I have to admit, I’m obsessed with blogging and social media, it’s hard not to become addicted. Sometimes being obsessed makes us forget those that mean the most to us.

As bloggers we need to take time out each day for those we love, or they will resent your blogging. I know this from personal experience. This is a time waster because when people are angry at you for blogging it affects your performance. It also affects your spirit and attitude, which I believe affects your ability to manifest success.

Keep your house in order, when blogging. Bring your family into the conversation. Set time tables where you’re not to be disturbed, and other times where you’re not to touch the computer, reaching a balance in your online and offline lives is pertinent to true success.

Time Trap #7: Not Using the best tools available. As a blogger there are many tools available to us. It seems like each day there are more and more. My advice is to find the one’s that work best for your daily activities, and use them. I swear by feed readers. I don’t have to patience to scan blog posts for ideas unless I’m reading it in a feed reader.

My favorite new tool is a twitter tool called monitter, and I also enjoy ping.fm.

Monitter is a great tool that lets you track live updates on keywords that matter to you. It’s a great way to get new ideas on blog posts. There are many blog tools and research tools for bloggers, that it’s impossible to name them all, and I’d be wasting my time trying.

Mashable.com is a good blog tool starting point, and perhaps I will write another post listing the best blog tools, let me know if you’re interested in that topic, and I’ll definitely post about it.

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Ping.fm is my new best friend, and it should be yours too!

What is ping.fm?

“Ping.fm” is a service that allows you to post to all your microblogs and social networks at once. “Ping.fm” is a much more efficient way to post.

We all have many friends and contacts across the many multiple social networks. Some friends are only on one or two of the different networks, and being able to post to all at once just makes sense. “Ping.fm” makes it so everyone is in the know about your lifestreams.

“Ping.fm” currently supports many networks including the following:Bebo, brightkite, facebook, twitter, wordpress.com, blogger, friendfeed, identi.ca, jaiku, hi5, kwippy, linkedin, livejournal, mashable, myspace, plaxo pulse, plurk, pownce, tumblr, xanga, and I’m sure “Ping.fm”" will add many more before it’s all said and over.

“Ping.fm” has many options for posting, you can apply a filter for each network, or choose to post as a blog post, microblog, or status update. You can use triggers to send “ping.fm” updates to only certain networks that you choose. You can also choose to only send “ping.fm” updates to the networks setup as microblogs as well.

You can also post to “ping.fm” by many third party services including: Aol Instant Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, IGoogle Gadget, Facebook App, Iphone app, mobile app, or email, or just via their site.

Along with that there’s also a new wordpress plugin for “ping.fm” that I found yesterday called “pingpress.fm“. It replaces such services like wordplurk, or twitter tools by sending an update to all your networks each time you post a new blog post, it’s pretty genius. Definitely a great tool to have around for your lifestreaming needs.

The Pingpress.fm plugin can be downloaded here.

“Pingpress.fm” is a great way to increase the traffic to your blog. Since using “pingpress.fm” I’ve gotten about 15 new subscribers in one day, and noticed a huge increase in my traffic.I highly recommend using “ping.fm” and “pingpress.fm” if you want to take your traffic to higher levels.

Be sure to try out “ping.fm” and “pingpress.fm” and let me know what you think.

Special note – updating all these services also means replies will only come to those networks, which is why I recommend combining “ping.fm” with friendfeed for the best results.

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Image via CrunchBase

I’m just going to make this quick – Chris Brogan reported(When Google Owns You) that google had shut down the who account of a Nick Saber, just an average guy, for no apparent reason. Here’s what Chris posted:

Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]

That’s it.

Nick sent a message or three to Google for support. He got back this:

Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information about this account.

And that’s it.

That’s just an excerpt. The question posted was are we giving google too much power by relying in the arm of google too much? Does google control our lives? What would happen tomorrow if you couldn’t login to Gmail, or similar?

These are all troubling issues, remember once upon a time when Google’s slogan was ‘Do no Evil?’ What the hell ever happened to that? It’s been a scenario in the bible, and philosophical circles for ages: With power and / or money comes corruption (not always but quite often…).

It seems Google has free reign to run unchecked and do just about whatever they want to.

WHY I’M PISSED: Today I found out that my adsense account had been shut down. Apparently someone thought it would be funny to click on a bunch of my links, and raise my daily revenue. Do they get punished? Nope, just me. I’m sure I’m not the only person having issues like this…

I was about to cash out my adsense for the very first time too.. I had like $90 before the 97 fraudulent clicks… Yes, I did submit an appeal, but from the way google seems to be acting lately, I doubt I’ll even get a response. Nick eventually did get his account back, you can read about the reply he got from google here.

On another note, apparently google can make their own rules when it comes to ads served on google UK. They apparently are serving a large interactive ad in their sponsored section see the pic below.

I found this via Google Blogoscoped. Google’s stance has always been that google won’t use any ads that adwords users can’t access in their user panel. Apparently Google’s new stance is “go F*** yourself, we can do whatever we want <hwa hwa hwa>…” Blogoscoped also pointed out that this isn’t the first time they’ve proved themselves wrong. You can view the search your self: Secured Loans.

In closing, I’d like to say that I’m moving to another email provider, and closing down ALL my google accounts once and for all.  Shutting down my adsense account was uncalled for, especially since I went to their help forum to report the suspicious activity 3 days before it was shut down. Perhaps people should be notified and given a chance to rebuttal. Perhaps googlers should be innocent until proven guilty…eh?

What’s your take? Google Evil or Nay? Would you join a Boycott if there were one?

Here are some related posts:

• Guy gets locked out of all Google apps
• Google Can & Will Shut Off Your Account Without Warning
• The Downside of Relying on Google for Everything [Google]
• When Google Owns You

Social Media Jobs and Where to Find them…

Social media is the latest greatest buzz word. It covers all things web 2.0: Blogs, podcasts, vlogs, lifestreaming, social networking, microblogging, etc….

Mashable just put up a post about Social Media Jobs, whether they’re here to stay or not… I’ve decided to run with that and list some good places to find social media jobs (if you’re a job-seeker), as well as some places to post social media jobs if you’re a manager at a company, or some sort of recruiter.

So Without further adieu:

• Social Media Jobs
• Social Media Jobs from Metarand.com
• Social Media Jobs by Jobamatic
• Social Media Jobs on Myspace
• Social Media Jobs on Indeed
• Social Media Jobs on Net-Savvy

I’m sure there are many more, and I’m sure many jobs are duplicated through-out the aforementioned sites, you could also probably find some good ones on craigslist. Hopefully this will be a good jumping point for ya.

Also if you’re looking for Blogging jobs you might want to check out the following sites for blogging jobs:

• Freelance Writing Jobs
• Performancing Jobs
• Problogger Job Board
• BloggerJobs.biz

Happy social media job hunting, and good luck!

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It’s a fact – people love lists, especially top ten lists, and so here we have it – my Top 76 Top Ten List List. These are pretty much random, and in no specific order, I must’ve spent 4 hours on this, so I hope you like it, if not you can kiss my <profanity>.

Why did I only pick 76? Because I got damned tired of looking for more lists – DUH!?

1. Top Ten Questions Not To Ask In A Job Interview
2. Top 10 mobile apps[java] for your phone
3. Top 10 Quirkiest Early Flying Machines
4. My Top 10 Internet Phenomena
5. Top 10 Norton / Symantec Secrets You Shouldn’t Know
6. My Top 10 favorite Google Products
7. Tools of the Trade: Top 10 Tools for Social Media
8. Top 10 Most Expensive Celebrity Divorces of All Time
9. Top 10 Mistakes Made in Business Plans
10. Top 10 Unwed Celebrity Parents
11. The Top 10 Coolest Olympic Mascots
12. Top 10 Printable Paper Productivity Tools
13. Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr, All Fresh and New for 2008
14. Top 10 Brain Training Future Trends
15. Top 10 Concepts That Every Software Engineer Should Know
16. Top 10 Movie Roles Taken In Order to Make-Out With a Hot Chick
17. Top 10 Fantasy Worlds In Literature
18. DUI MA – Top 10 Mistakes in Drunk Driving Cases
19. Top ten: The world’s most dangerous places
20. Top Ten Places To Visit In Egypt
21. Top 10 Things to Bring to China
22. Top 10 hottest Olympians
23. Top 10: Widely Believed Myths
24. PTV’S TOP 10: The Greatest Political Web Videos of All Time
25. Top 10 Strangest Hotels in the World
26. Top 10 Phones of 2008
27. Top 10 Most Overpriced Zip Codes in America
28. Top 10 Sites for Illustrator Tutorials
29. The Top 10 Free iPhone Apps for Young Professionals
30. Top 10 Consumer Headaches
31. Top 10 Songs You Must Turn Off (Personal note, I don’t quite agree w/ the Evanescence remarks)
32. top 10: songs to primp to
33. Top 10 Countries to Make the Most of Your Dollar
34. Top 10 Mistakes Guys Make When Trying To Get A Girl
35. Top 10 Ways Gay Marriage Harms Straight People
36. Top 10 portable gadgets I take with me when I travel
37. Top 10 Reasons to Start a Business Blog
38. Top 10 Alternative Abstinence Slogans
39. Top Ten Conspiracy Theories, and sometimes a lizard is just a lizard
40. TOP 10 start up killers
41. Top 10 Free Things to Do in Paris
42. Top 10 Animal-Friendly Superheroes
43. Top 10 Template Generators for Blogs and Websites
44. Top 10 Firefox 3 Features
45. Top 10 Keyword Research Tips To Boost Your SEO
46. Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done
47. The Top 10 Star Wars Sounds
48. Top 10 Mac Freeware Applications.
49. Top 10 TV Shows Killed By College
50. The Top 10 Animated Films Ever Made
51. Top 10 Reasons Why I Haven’t Bought an iPhone 3G
52. Top 10 Idiocies of the General Election … So Far
53. Top Ten Dark Knight Scenes
54. Top 10 Punk Guitarists
55. Baseball’s Top 10 Trade Deadline Deals of All-Time
56. TOP 10 Worst Snack Foods
57. Top 10 Scientifically Inaccurate Movies
58. Top 10 Obsolete Car Features
59. Top 10 Bad Ass Movie Cars
60. Top 10 Movies for Kids who Love Dinosaurs
61. Storage Top 10 Best Practices
62. Top 10 CSS buttons tutorial list
63. Top ten things we like in tight economic times
64. Top 10 Fatal URL Design Mistakes
65. Top 10 Apple iPhone 3G tips and tricks
66. Top 10 Romantic Places in the World
67. Top 10 Command Line Tools
68. Top Ten Places To Have Sex
69. Top tips for marketing your web site
70. Top 10 Ways for College Students to Save Money
71. TOP 10 Unintentionally Funny Websites
72. Top 10 Busted Tees Nipples
73. Top 10 Websites You Probably Never Heard Of But Should
74. TOP 10 Worst Karaoke Songs
75. TOP 10 Things I’d Like To See In Theaters for 2009
76. TOP 10 Worst Movie Quotes To Say In Bed

Image by BigBlue via Flickr

So much to do…So little time. How do we overcome the time trap?

I don’t know about you, but this trap has plagued me from the get-go. Time management is a very important part of being successful online. Without proper time management skills you’re setting yourself up for failure.

With any home-business the hardest part of staying on track, and making money is keeping focused. With blogging this is intensified by a factor of 32,548 give or take, because you have the biggest distraction known to man right at your fingertips – the world wide web. Learning time management skills is a must, if we are to succeed at becoming a professional blogger.

Before we discuss ways to combat time management pressures, lets discuss the cause of the problem.

First off we have life distractions such as: Baby, Dogs, Hunger, Potty, Phone, Tv, Radio, etc…

Second we have online distractions such as: Twitter(BIG ONE!), facebook, myspace, google, blog feeds, email, 25,352,520 different things to do online, and then some….

With all of these distractions it’s becoming easier and easier to lose track of time. It’s now more important than ever to take control of your day, and learn time management skills.

I don’t know about you, but I have 200 TV channels. I find it very hard to pick one that I want to watch there’s just too many choices. Same goes for the internet, first you browse, then you find something else to browse, and it keeps going until you’ve spent an entire 8 hour day browsing sites, and not working.

I’ve done this many times myself. Sometimes we like to see what someone else is doing to be successful, and that leads us to other successful blogs, and all the while those successful bloggers are writing new posts, which draw you back, and you spend all your time reading, and no time writing.

Well today we’re going to take a stand against distractions. I want you to say aloud: No More Distractions! I’m going to Blog like a pro!

Go on – Say it aloud. Make it your mantra!

No More Distractions! I’m going to Blog like a pro!

Now for the meat and potatoes…mmm potatoes (stupid low carb diet, lol)…thus we see how easily I am distracted. LOL!

Step 1 – Focus on the tasks that are the most important.

In order to better manage your time – you need to make a schedule and commit yourself to sticking to it. The easiest way to do this is to write down all the important tasks you have as a blogger.

For me my important daily tasks are:

• Check Email – No more than 3 times per day.
• Check and star items in feed reader for the day. I come back to these items when I am having bloggers block, to gather ideas for new blog posts.
• Check for updates / comments / messages on twitter, facebook, friendfeed, and my blog.
• Stumble 15 blog posts – I usually choose the best posts from my feedreader.
• Write a daily pillar article. This is a hard one, because somedays I just don’t have a pillar article in me – but I try hard, and if I don’t make a pillar article I at least make a really decent post that will draw in a little traffic from my network.
• 30 Minute Lunch & 30 Minute Walk.
• Add my daily limit of friends on facebook.
• Add friends on Twitter. Adding friends is a good way to get new followers, it’s the same method used by Robert Scoble,
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  and Jason Calacanis

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  It does work – just don’t spam your followers.

• Add friends on friendfeed. Friendfeed is a great way to share the conversations that you have online.
• Write 2 mini-posts. These are decent blog posts but easier to write than a full out pillar article. The more blog posts that you have, the more google juice your blog will carry – just don’t publish crap. Make sure your blog posts have a point. I was actually surprised by ProBlogger Darren Rowse last week when he posted this crap post most likely with the intent of getting iphone traffic from google. It’s not what I’ve come to expect from ProBlogger.net; In fact it would’ve fit much better on twitter or plurk.
• Comment on 15 Blog Posts. I use comment hut to make this a lot easier – it searches for blog posts that are relevant to the keyword you’re looking to target.
• 15 Minute Snack Break.
• Post 5 posts on 5 of the top forums related to my blog. That’s 5 posts per forum, or 25 total posts.
• Record a podcast / video.
• Other tasks as they come up…

Now that I have my tasks labeled, I need to prioritize which ones are most important, and which ones are secondary tasks.

My most important tasks are (IN order of importance):

1. Write 1 Pillar Article per day.
2. Write at least 2 small but informative posts.
3. Record podcast / video and submit it to the appropriate directories.
4. Comment on 15 Blog Posts.
5. Add friends on facebook / twitter / friendfeed.
6. Stumble 15 Blog Posts from my feed reader.
7. Check for updates / comments / messages on blog, email, and social networks.
8. Submit 25 posts to forums online.
9. Research new ways to brand my blog / business online.
10. Devote time to web design if needed.

Next you will need to decide how much of each work-day you will be spending on each task. Example: I spend 1.5 hours on my pillar article, if I go past the alotted time I continue writing the post tomorrow.

Which brings me to another bullet point: Know when to quit. In other words know when you’re done with a task for the day, it’s okay if you don’t finish the task at hand. It’s better that you stick to your schedule, and finish the post tomorrow than it is to go over schedule and get behind schedule.

Keeping your tasks and time in order is also a very good stress reliever. When you know what you’re doing and have a plan, it essentially makes it a lot easier to accomplish your goals.

Step 2 – Write down the tasks and time devoted to them.

It is very important when developing a time management plan to write down your tasks, when you’re going to do them, and how much time you’re going to give yourself for doing each task.

Outlook has a good task manager / calendar that you can use, and there are also many great software programs available out there, my favorite is Essential PIM.

Writing down tasks also increases productivity by decreasing thought-load in relation to task management. For example, say you finish one task, now it’s time to figure out what else to do, in this ‘limbo’ between one task and the next you have a few options.

First you can just choose an activity at random, which does require a little brainstorming and may waist maybe 5 minutes a day, do this 10 times a day and you’re looking at at a waist of 50 minutes. Just from the process of deciding what to do next.

Let’s go one step further with this – 50 minutes waisted per day equals 4.1 hours in a 5 day work week, or 216 hours a year. That’s 5 work weeks. Imagine having an extra 5 week vacation every year. If you were working for someone else you’d be losing them about $2,160 per year if you only earned $10 an hour.

But the fact is as a blogger you’re working for yourself, each minute waisted is a minute you cannot get back. Each minute we spend waisting time is time that has been thrown away. Life is precious, and waisting time is losing out on precious moments you could spend with those that matter most in your life. Each minute for a blogger is priceless – which is why it is imperative that we take actions to increase our time management skills today. Don’t wait till some future day, take action now.

Back to choosing an activity at random – if you would’ve written down your tasks by priority, and scheduled them out you would’ve not only saved the frustration of thinking ‘what’s next’, but you would save 216 hours of lost time. Over a life time you will have reclaimed a whopping 8,640 working hours. Over 4 years worth. I know many on their deathbed who’d give the world for 4 more years, yet we frivolously just throw out time away.

Also when we automagically know “what’s next?”, we can smoothly start our next task easier and more efficiently and are more likely to finish that task, because we didn’t have to waist time thinking about it.

Step 3 – Stay Committed to your Schedule.

In order to stay on track you will need to stick to your schedule, it’s not always going to be easy, and if you find after a week that there are certain high priority tasks not getting done, don’t be afraid to rearrange your schedule. You can add more time or take away time from one task and apply it to another, just as long as you’re only doing what’s written down.

A great way to stay committed is to make it a game. Try to see how many tasks on your list you can get 100% completed in a given week. As you accomplish more and more you will feel much better about your online business, and you’ll also start seeing a lot of results that will keep you motivated for the long haul.

Part of staying committed is to facilitate a conversation with your family and friends about what you’re doing, you can even blog about it – many of these tips are things that I’ve come across and found myself as I’ve been trying to get my time in order.

By bringing your loved ones on board, they will be able to support you better, either emotionally or by just not distracting you during your scheduled work hours. Also by staying committed to your schedule you will be taking the first step towards running a successful business. Success is about equal consistent effort on a regular basis.

When your spouse / loved ones know your schedule they may even help keep you motivated by keeping you accountable, I know my wife does. With her help, I’ve become much better at time management.

Step 4 – Keep a small journal of your successes and failures in Time Management.

I can go on and on about ways to do this or that, but sometimes it does come down to the fact that each of us is different.

Everyone has their own way of doing certain things. Keeping a journal of your successes and failures with time management will help you improve your own time management plan. Some things may work for you, some may not.

A journal may also give you new ideas on how to improve your time management. Just don’t spend all your time planning your time management plan and no time on following it.

Step 5 – If there’s an easier way – do it!

Each day we do many tasks over and over. My favorite part of successful time management is coming up with quicker ways to do everyday tasks.

For example, each day when I turn on my computer I usually load about 5-10 different tabs in firefox. To make this easier, I created a bookmark group for when I ’startup firefox’. I automatically load Gmail, Twitter, Plurk, My Blog, My Blog Admin, My Feed Reader, Google Adsense, Facebook, etc…

I found this list on ZenHabits it’s a huge list of articles just on increasing productivity it’s definitely a great place to start when trying to manage your time.  Here’s the meat and potatoes from the post:

• Lifehacker: Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters
• Lifehack.org: Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve Your Productivity.
• 43 Folders: Merlin’s top 5 super-obvious, “no-duh” ways to immediately improve your life.
• Dumb Little Man: Productivity Ninja: 101 Ways to Rock the Keyboard.
• LifeDev.net: 10 Ways History’s Finest Kept Their Focus at Work.
• FreelanceSwitch: 46 Must-Read Productivity Tips for Freelancers.
• Life Clever: 5 simple steps to greater productivity.
• Wise Bread: 5 Efficient Ways To Boost Productivity.
• Scott H. Young: Twenty Unique Ways to Use the 80/20 Rule Today.
• Cranking Widgets: 6 Ways to Limit Interruptions at Work (That You Can Use Right Now).
• Pick the Brain: 7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit.
• Zen Habits: Top 10 Productivity Hacks.
• Life Optimizer: Top 10 Ways NOT to Become a Productivity Ninja.
• HD BizBlog: 3 Essential Tools for Productivity.
• Matthew Cornell: 10 GTD “holes” (and how to plug them).
• Ian’s Messy Desk: 10 Resources to Help Overcome Procrastination.
• Instigator Blog: Over 100 Great Productivity Tips.
• Stephen Aitchison: 8 Ways to get out of the rut.
• Organize IT: The Top 10 GTD & Productivity Sites/Blogs.
• Dumb Little Man: The 20 Biggest Online Time Wasters, and 6 Strategies for Beating Them.

GTD is a term you might see used a lot in terms of time management – it means ‘Get Things Done’ and is an action management method devised by David Allen.

The key is: Find the easiest fastest way to accomplish the most tasks. A couple tips to accomplish this includes:

• Learn to use firefox addons, if you haven’t already – and use them – there are many that make life a lot simpler.
• Learn to use a feed reader, again this is also crucial to succeeding online. My favorite is google reader, but there are many other good feed readers, find the one that works best for you.
• Subscribe to the blogs that you visit most often – don’t waste the time visiting their site – view their newest posts in your reader, this saves a lot of time. I also like to star the headlines of articles that look interesting, and ignore the rest, then I come back and read the starred articles when I’m having writers block. You can subscribe to this blog here.
• etc….

To recap the five biggest productivity and time management steps that I can offer are:

1. Focus on the tasks that are most important.
2. Write down the tasks and the time allotted for the tasks.
3. Stay Committed to your Schedule.
4. Keep a journal of your time management experiences.
5. If there’s an easier way – do it! Find ways to increase your productivity.

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Everyone is feeling the crunch with the rise in gas prices. Higher gas prices not only affect our pockets but that of companies. Higher gas prices leads to higher costs for all goods that you purchase. It leads to higher costs for air travel as well. It is just one factor in our great economic struggle that is building.

On top of the high gas prices is the mass exodus of American jobs. As many businesses close their doors and even Starbucks is closing 600 stores, we will see a yearly job loss perhaps as high 1 million jobs by the end of 2008.

That’s 1 million new people living on welfare, or food stamps, or collecting unemployment. That’s 1 million people potentially homeless if things don’t change…

But there is a shining sun behind every storm cloud, and here’s an opportunity that I’m taking to make some lemonade from the lemons, so to speak.

First off I’m going to give ways to save on gas, as I’m sure we all could benefit from these:

1. Take walks to save gas. Not only will you be burning less gas, but you will start burning more calories, and who can’t afford a little less gut these days?
2. Buy / Ride a bicycle instead. Heck even a horse and buggy would be better and more cost effective if you can afford one, and it’s of course legal in your area to ride one. Of course an added benefit of riding a bike is it helps the environment and helps your waistline.
3. Carpool if you can. This is an obvious way. If two people are going to the same place it just makes sense that they share the trip.
4. Plan each trip that you take. Knowing exactly where you’re going and having a plan, will help you to not get lost, or distracted. If you have a goal of where you’re going, you won’t spend extra gas / time driving around looking for what you need or want to do.
5. Learn fuel-efficient driving. Experts relate that it’s possible to save as much as 25-30% off your fuel if you make a few simple changes to your driving. These include:
   • Turning off the engine for stops over 10 seconds long – Idling is never good for your car or gas mileage – and idling to warm up your car is bad read more.
   • Keep a moderate speed. Don’t drive above 60mph, and be use your cruise control to maintain a consistent speed.
   • Make sure tires are properly inflated.
   • If driving a car with a manual transmission, be sure to drive in the correct gear for your situation.
   • Know when to use the A/C and when to turn it off and roll down the windows. A good rule of thumb is when it’s hot use your windows for city miles, and roll them up and turn on the A/C for highway miles. When driving higher speeds having the window down creates drag, but when driving slower having the A/C on can lower your gas mileage.
   • Drive smoothly, avoid rapid acceleration and hard braking. Try to maintain a steady speed. If you can coast down hills and try to keep your foot off the break as much as possible.
6. Buy tires with lower rolling resistence. Less friction means less wasted energy means more money saved.
7. Don’t buy premium gas unless you absolutely have to. If you’re car is designed to run on regular, premium won’t help it, and will just eat up your money.
8. Buy a fuel efficient car. Of course most of us can’t afford a new car right now with the economy the way it is – but buying a fuel efficient car or hybrid will save you gas in the long run. If you’re debating a vehicle purchase anyways, you might as well buy one that will save you hundred a year in gas. When gas hits $7 per gallon in 2010 (just 2 years), you will be glad you bought that hybrid.
9. Get cash-back on your gas purchases. Last but not least, try getting a credit card that pays cash-back on gas purchases, a good one to get is the Discover more card. You’ll receive around 5% back for gas purchases. Apply for the Discover® More Card
   

Alrighty I’ve talked long and hard now about how to save money on gas, now let me tell you why I believe that the hike in gas prices may be a blessing in disguise. Here are ___ reasons:

1. It gets gas guzzlers off the road. Due to the high gas prices many people are trading their SUVs and Hummers for smaller more efficient cars.
2. Of course with less traffic, means better environment. There’s less emissions, and so at least the environment may stand a chance of healing itself.
3. New green technologies are on the rise. With people struggling to pay for gas, green technology companies are growing in leaps and bounds. The technological advances that the higher gas prices have brought is extraordinary to say the least.
4. High gas will help stamp out Obesity. How? People who can’t afford to drive will walk more, take bikes, or take public transportation – but even with public transportation you still end up walking more than if you were driving yourself around.
5. People are now taking closer look at finances. People are in debt over their heads, they’re losing their cars and houses at record rates. With the rise in gas prices people are watching every little penny. Gas prices bring up the prices for just about everything that people buy, when everything costs more we’re each going to have to take a hard look and decide if we need a plasma tv or if we can make do with our 32 inch old style tube tv.
6. Higher gas prices will lead to better public transportation. Now that people can’t afford to drive themselves around, we need to relook at our methods of public transportation. In Europe you can travel to almost any big city by train, I think we need to look at our current rail systems and possibly expand them.
7. The rising fuel costs are leading to more gas friendly perks for their employees. Some employees are beginning to allow telecommuting, some are switching to a 4 day work week instead of the traditional 5 hour. Utah is implementing a plan to make all government jobs work four 10 hour work days instead of five. This not only saves the workers’ gas, but it also cuts back on the costs of energy to run their computers, and the lights in their offices. Of course important jobs like emergency personell will still work normal shifts, but this will be a huge experiment to see how much it will affect the environment.
8. Less travelling means better communities. As people are travelling less to see friends, and relatives they will need to reach out to each other for their socializing needs. People will stay closer to home, and the community will grow as a result.
9. Finally, the government may actually consider increasing fuel economy standards. In Europe – non-hybrid cars routinely get 50+ miles per gallon. In America we’re stuck with cars(non-hybrid) that get 30 mpg or less. Maybe we’ll get some of the European models.
10. High gas prices may help the internet. If you blog, or run an online business, high gas prices may actually help you out, if people can’t leave their homes they’ll stay home and surf the net, which could mean more advertising dollars for your blog or website.

Also – I’m going to take this moment to let you know about a contest running. You can win a free $25 gas card, and who couldn’t use this? Check out the contest here, or Read some tips from their site on  “Saving Money at the Gas Pump”

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Image by premasagar via Flickr

As I mentioned in my post earlier today about “16 Ways To bring your Blog Back To Life“, one of my tips was to comment as often as possible.

Commenting on other blogs needs to be a huge part of your daily blogging career. Here are some power tips to make the most of your commenting, in the least amount of time.

1. Download and install Comment Kahuna, this software is amazing. It lets you search for blog posts with certain keywords, you can choose which platform, and you can also search blogs that have ‘nofollow’ removed, which means that each comment you submit will carry some good SEO juice.

2. Make sure you have at least 5 pillar posts. Many people make the big mistake of linking to their main page when submitting comments, this does bring traffic and seo power, but there’s an even better way.

3. Create a profile for each pillar article in Comment Kahuna. For your blog link – link directly to that post. For your name – instead of using your name, use some keywords relating to the blog post.

4. Do a search for the major keywords relating to your blog, I usually like to find blogs with at least a pr2 or above, comment kahuna has the option to let you refine your search as such.

5. Read or scan each post that you submit comments on, find 1-2 things that you can: expand on, ask questions about, answer questions on etc.. In other words provide a unique comment that contributes to the bloggers community. Make sure it’s relevant, and pertinent to the topic at hand.

6. Schedule time daily to do your commenting, if you do it everyday for just least 20 minutes a day you will see a huge improvement in just a few months.  You will see more search engine traffic, and higher search engine rankings.Â

Now, you might ask the question, is this spamming?

My answer is: No.

First off you’re providing a response / comment that relates to the blog post. Secondly, each comment is unique and not submitted automatically by a bot.

This is just smart marketing and to be successful online you need to work smarter, not harder!

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I launched this blog a year ago this month, and when I first launched it my primary focus was to make money. I’ve learned a lot in that year, and made many mistakes. I actually gave up on this blog for about 7 months.

I came back to it on March 15th of this year. In fact I had lost all the previous posts, I’d done and had to start anew. (Roughly 130+ posts gone). My original theme was using the law of attraction to bring $1 Million into my life by the age of 30, which I believe was perhaps a bit over zealous.

My new goal – apply what I’ve learned in my year of blogging, and help other’s become successful. I’d also like to launch a few social related businesses eventually, that are currently in the ‘idea’ stages.

My 50 States Roadtrip / American Blogger Directory is just part of gaining an keeping an audience.

You’ll notice the most successful blogs out there aren’t just individual people talking while everyone listens. The most successful blogs are communities, where people interact with what the blogger is writing.

You’ll notice almost every post they write gets tons of comments, trackbacks, pingbacks, etc… It’s no coincidence – without this community atmosphere on your blog it is nearly impossible to keep your blogging growing.

Without interaction from your readers your blog will die. Just as a flower needs sunlight to live, a blog needs comments / reactions from the community at large.

Here are some tips to build your Community.

1. Tweet ALL posts to Twitter. There are some good wordpress plugins for this like Twitter Tools or Twitter Tools for Tweetburner. I highly recommend tweetburner because of it’s statistics and shorter urls.

2. Build your Social Presence. Many might call it spamming, but if you look at Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis this is how they got huge. They built up the max number of friends on facebook, and they have 15000+ followers, a lot of those were gained by initiating the follow, ie following first.

3. Comment Frequently on other blogs. There is a secret power method for this which I will mention in another upcoming post, I will show you how to build hundred of incoming links extremely fast and easy.

4. Respond to your Audience. If someone sends you an email, drops a comment, replies to a twitter comment you made, etc.. Take the time to respond. Now when you have 10,000 hits daily it can get hard, and you might miss a few here and there – in blogging you don’t need to be perfect, just do your best.

People like to know they’re being listened to, this will go along way towards building a large following.

5. Ask a lot of questions. People like to be heard, and asking your readers questions via blog posts is a great way to give them this opportunity to voice their opinions. This makes it more fun to visit your blog, and increases the interactivity of your blog.

A lot of times I will ask a specific question at the end of my blog posts, and it will usually garner a lot of comments.

6. Be kind to those who are kind to you.  When someone takes the time to follow you or add you on a social networking site – reciprocate. Also when someone takes the time to link to your site – go to the post and leave a thankyou comment.

7. Stumble incoming links. If you stumble all of your own links, you’ll eventually end up getting banned. One secret is stumbling any and all incoming links. If someone is kind enough to link to you in a post, go ahead and stumble or digg it, and you will get a lot of traffic, plus you’ll help them get traffic. It’s a win-win scenario.

8. Link to other blogs often. I’ve talked about this a lot – but linking to other blogs will get you on their radar as it shows in the dashboard on wordpress, and secondly you’ll get a pingback / trackback from their site.

9. Start a meme. My Twitter Meme: Feed the Twitter Monster, has taken off hugely and gained a ton of incoming links and traffic, be creative though, and make it your own idea. Do something unique.

10. Start a resource for bloggers or website owners. I’ve just launched my American Blogger Directory, but it has already received a ton of hits and results. This of course is also part of my 50 state roadtrip, which is looking to be getting a lot of acclaim online as well.

11. Network with other bloggers. Friends will always give you more attention, and having more blogger friends never hurt anyone.

You can use some tips from my article on becoming friends with A-listers, many of the tips relate to networking in general.

12. Build your subscriber feeds. Market it anyway possible. The simple fact is you need subscribers, if you haven’t read it – here’s 39 great ways to get more RSS Subscribers.

13. Make your posts simple to follow and you’ll have mass appeal. Make sure the text doesn’t run together, as most people have low-attention spans and can’t be bothered with reading whole paragraphs anymore. Lists are huge in fact I try to write 1 list every week, as they tend to bring me a lot of traffic just because they’re lists. – I know it’s crazy!

14. Get active in Forums. If you have the time, you might want to try being active in popular forums, or just answering questions on the different answer sites like yahoo answers, this will help build credibility, and lead to more traffic.

15. Share and share alike, then share some more! When you launch a new resource, pillar article, etc you definitely need to tweet / send it to your social networks. However, you should also retweet it, if it is bringing in traffic, and subscribers.

I generally send my rss feed link to twitter once every 3-4 days asking for more subscribers. Especially when I get close to the next big number like 200 – asking people to help you ‘break’ a number is a great way to get them to actually subscribe, it might be tricky but it works.

I also send my best links, resources, and posts to my followers on twitter and ask them to digg or stumble the posts. This usually brings in a huge amount of traffic. When doing this make it extremely simple, though. Send them the actual link to digg or stumbleupon, so they don’t have to work. People are lazy and want instant gratification.

Another good tip is to help out other bloggers by forwarding their promotions to your followers, they may do the same for you some day. This can lead to some very interesting viral marketing.

16. Write your damn content, already! Last and foremost the #1 method to building a community blog is frequent posts. The more the better, I’ve said it a hundred times the more content you have,  the more traffic, comments, and interactive your site will become.

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So here I was… reading article after article after article on how to apply this new found knowledge from ‘the secret’ into my own life, and then I found some articles on the opposing view, which there’s opposition in everything, and I got to thinking how a little skepticism can be healthy – again only a little, a lot would be overdosing on that as well. There’s a saying in my church – Moderation in All Things.

Now I don’t discount the power of ‘the secret’ or the ‘law of attraction’, but I started thinking maybe I was being a little foolish going full headed into this, when I don’t really know what it all entails. So I took some time to meditate and ponder over ‘The Secret’ and the ‘Law of Attraction’ after some thought I believe it can be altered a little better to fit into my own belief pattern.

I’m an avid believer in my church, I’m LDS/ aka Mormon – and I know I might be considered odd by many, but some of the teachings of the Law of Attraction seem to contradict my religious heart, and seem odd to me.

As I said earlier my church has a popular saying ‘Moderation in all things’. I think it’s very well possible to over-do things a bit with living the law of attraction, but I’m saying this is only my idea of the way I personally need to live it.

I’m a very liberal person, I have never supported the Iraq war, and I have never supported our False President, however as a Mormon I can be quite conservative on some issues for instance Abortion. I’ve read a number of books on becoming a millionaire, one of my favorites is the Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. I’ve also read article after article on wealth creation. Then of course there’s this old adage by Benjamin Franklin that says “a penny saved is a penny earned”. Now I say this after I wasted money, that could be applied to my future, at Mc Donald’s, but I’ll admit I’m a work in progress.

The Meat of this post: A Somewhat Conservative Liberal Mormon’s viewpoint slash version of the Law of Attraction.

First off I want to say go and read about the law of attraction, watch ‘The Secret’ then come back and re-read what I have to say.

Now having been a dreamer and believer most my life and tried just about everything a man can try – From MLM Riches to HYIP Dreams to Autosurfs Folly, you name it I’ve been there, and on some I made some money for a little while but then lost everything.

I still hold dear to my heart the fact that I believe I can be everything I’ve dreamed about, I also believe altering my attitude and emotions can help me get there, and believing that I deserve the desires of my heart and that they are a worthy goal and desire.

I believe God gives us what we think we deserve rather than what we really deserve, and being an omniscient God he knows all of our deepest thoughts and knows our feelings of Guilt and Doubt. Do not doubt that you deserve something, or if you do doubt then work on overcoming that guilt and doubt, there is a way, wherever there is a will.
Patrick’s Personalized Law of Attraction:

1. Ask God for those things that you desire, ask with a sincere heart and be comforted knowing he will give you everything your heart desires, that he intends for you to have, if you have the faith, and if you don’t have the faith he may test your faith or wait till you do gain the faith required, the faith to move your mountains.
2. Pay Tithe’s to God, or if you don’t share the same beliefs as me it can be any charity, give 10% of what you earn back into society.
3. To gain time(aka freedom) and money you must give time and money, spend time each week giving of your time to others, by helping others you will not only giving of your time, but you will be showing God or the Universe(Whichever you believe) that you are worthy of your desires.
4. Pay yourself first, According to David Bach this is the single biggest way to gain wealth and retire early. To be above or at the rest of society he suggests saving 10%. To be greatly above the rest of society and acquire wealth faster he says you need to be saving 20-25% and this should be going into safe but profitable mutual funds and other long term investments.
5. Pay another 5% monthly into an emergency fund. You should have at least 1 year’s worth of funds in a savings account, before you increase the amount you pay yourself, a good rule of thumb is to pay 5% to yourself and 10% to your savings until you have your savings at one year, then you can increase your payments to yourself, you never know when a Hurricane Katrina might show up at your door, so it is essential to have this safety net.
6. Do whatever it takes to become a home owner. It’s a fact owning a home is a big step in becoming an Automatic Millionaire, your first home doesn’t need to be fancy, it doesn’t need to be huge, it could be an ex-chicken coup(trust me I’ve lived in one – remodeled of course) – just get ownership of a home, work as hard as you can to pay it off early then when you sell it you’ll have a huge down payment on a bigger home, then work hard to pay that off and you’ll have a nice down payment on another big home, or perhaps a nice size home and some investment properties, see where this going?
7. This is another of my own personal steps – it involves two different thoughts, first better yourself where possible so that you can get a better career, go back to school if needed, start a business if you can, etc. Secondly if possible do something on the side that will help you make more money, an extra $200-300 per month can relieve a lot of burdens, and lower your stress levels, I mean would you turn down an extra $3,600, a year? Someways to do this is yardsales, ebay, adsense, blogging if you can get a following, or do like my wife and sell baby bedding sets that cost her $15 to make for $70-$100 on local classified sites.
8. Fake it till you make it, believe in yourself and your dreams. Here’s where you’ll live the law of attraction – don’t doubt that you’ll receive what you want, keep at it until you do succeed, and most importantly never give up.