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I want to do great things and make a positive impact on other people's lives. I want to be one of those people that other people look at and ask how on earth does he get all that done... and still write his wife love songs? This post is going to be a post I look back to each week to make sure that I'm making progress in the direction I want to go. Take Care of Yourself First! Like the safety warning you receive when flying (to put the air mask on yourself first and your children second), you have to take care of yourself first. This means physically and mentally. This is not easy if you have children, a job, or any other responsibility! But it's critical that you do. If you're married, getting your wife or husband on board with this makes it a lot easier. Encourage each other to workout and eat healthy. Unless you can help yourself no one will expect, or trust, you to help them. You can't really imagine the disheveled drunk from the street corner walking into the Whitehouse and telling the President and Congress how to solve the debt problem (although he could do a better job than the current fiasco administration I'm sure)... You can't help anyone else until you can help yourself. 11 Reasons We Fail God has given us everything we need to succeed... I'm not kidding, it's really true. If we're struggling then we're have one, or more, of the following issues... at times I think I suffer from all 11!

1. We don't believe that we can - I call this the Eeyore syndrome.
2. We are filled with fear (related to #1). The thing about fear is that it usually does not appear as fear. It's usually masked behind well thought-out and polished sets of reasons and excuses. This also shows up as "we don't believe we deserve it".
3. We have underlying problems that are eating away at us. Financial, relationship, health, you name it. If we're not facing or dealing with it, then it's festering and fermenting and souring our subconscious. This undermines anything and everything we're trying to do. We may not be able to solve the problems, but the minute we start facing them we start making progress.
4. We don't see the resources and raw materials that we have available to us. This can be physical as well as thoughts and ideas (creativity).
5. We see the resources and raw materials we have, but don't see the path to use them.
6. We ignore God's plan in favor of our own: we want to be a ballerina and we weigh 350lbs and have bad knees (see paragraph about taking care of yourself!). If we're constantly feeling like a salmon swimming upstream then we're probably not doing what we're supposed to be doing with our life.
7. We are slaves to bad, detrimental, or time-wasting habits.
8. We are selfish.
9. We ignore or don't ask for help and guidance.
10. We listen to the wrong people. Satan succeeds by confusion and division... and he's very, very good at it. What? You don't think Satan is involved. Wrong. Evil is real: it does not want you to succeed and create anything good for yourself or the world - lest of all help other people succeed and create something good for the world.
11. We care about what people think or who gets the credit.

Until next time, Fred

Business

I recently read a short eBook that I found to be very, very engaging and powerful. I put it on my iPad and plan to read it a few more times and refer back to it often. That's how good it is! The title is "30 Days to Change Your Life" and it's written by Mark Harrison. Mark has put together some incredible insights on how to effect change in our lives. It's an easy book to read. Mark has laid it out with 30 short chapters with the idea of reading a chapter a day... right... I just kept on reading and finished it in about 3 days! Mark builds his ideas by drawing from various cultures and religions and adding in personal experiences and stories. The result is a very positive and uplifting guide to help the reader find and identify areas and actions in their everyday life that can, and will, effect change. I can't recommend this book strongly enough! Click here to learn more and to purchase Mark's book: 30 Days to Change Your Life. (note: this is an affiliate link - however I would, and do, recommend the book regardless) Personally, I don't think Mark's charging enough for this book; his message is easily worth several times the price! Until Next Time, Fred P.S. Please take a moment if you haven't already and "like" my Blue Solar Water Facebook Fan Page: Blue-Solar-Water - I really appreciate it!

Business

The NY Times published an article on February 13th (the 12th online) titled The Dirty Little Secrets of Search by David Segal, that lambasted J.C. Penny for a massive paid link campaign. This included playing elementary school tattle-tale and reporting their "findings" to Google - which in turn got J.C. Penny's search engine rankings flushed down the toilet. To me, and probably a lot of other SEO experts, the article is a joke. The condescending tone alone was enough to make me almost not read it. There are flaws in their "investigation" but come on; they didn't investigate Obama this much... had they, maybe our country wouldn't be swirling around, and around, heading down the toilet. I don't think all the "expert" SEO opinions in the article are accurate... more on that at the end of this post. Evidently Segal was irate that J.C. Penny was ranking so high for so many items they sold, and brought in an expert to do some research on why. This expert found that J.C. Penny had been buying links to boost their SEO rankings. Something Google says is against their rules. The article refers to link buying as "Black Hat". That's a joke. If anything, it's little off white or gray: nowhere, I repeat nowhere near black. People that actually know and use black hat techniques would laugh at the whole article. Woops... Segal should have done a little more homework on some of the sites he quotes in the first few paragraphs of his article. As he's naming various things like dresses, bedding, sweater dresses, etc. and questioning if J.C. Penny is really the best web site in the world for that product, he links to sites HE thinks should rank better... the problem is, he links to at least one site that buys links! Yep! You got it. And he gave them a no-follow link from the N.Y. Times to boot... I'll take one of those please! I spent maybe 5 minutes and found the rug site he links to has what appears to be paid links in link directories. J.C. Penny denied they were buying links, but subsequently fired their SEO firm. The SEO firm should have used other methods to build links and kept the paid links at a minimum. I'm sure J.C. Penny was paying big dollars to this SEO firm and the firm was being lazy and obviously didn't take the best care of their client. Buying links is common... my guess is Segal or someone at NY Times had a beef with J.C. Penny, or, owns a company that J.C. Penny was out ranking. Is Organic SERP Boosted by Massive PPC? The Times article also questions if there's a link between J.C. Penny's massive paid advertising spend on Google and their seemingly unnatural high search rankings. I think there is a correlation, however, I also think it's a subtle side effect not an intentional benefit rewarded by Google. Google is not God. Google is not infallible. Getting massive traffic from paid ads probably triggers an increase in organic rankings, but it's probably not much of an increase at all. I don't believe that Google rewards big advertisers by giving them a big jolt of organic ranking caffeine. But if they do, it's their business. They say they don't, so I believe them. If they do, then they shouldn't say they don't and that's the extent of it. My Take... My take on this "investigation" is: Get a Life! Go investigate something important and let Google police their own company and rankings. It reminds me of Barney Fife blowing something way out of proportion and making a big deal over nothing - and locking up the whole town. After all, J.C. Penny actually sells the products they ranked for - there was no trickery, you could actually get what you were looking for... and that's the point of searching for something. I don't agree with all the SEO "expertise" that's bantered around in this article - something I address in SEO Secrets - there are a lot of experts who state this or that, but when I've tested these things, they don't actually matter, or, even worse, will hurt your rankings... in this article I didn't read anything that would hurt rankings, but I did read a few things that they claim to matter that do not. Until next time, Fred

Business

What, you didn't know they changed something? A lot of internet business marketing types get all upset anytime Google changes (or noticeably changes) their ranking algorithms. The truth is Google tweaks their rankings on a regular basis, sometimes they make public some of the changes, other times they do not. Below is an official link detailing some of the changes in this latest update that has a lot of Internet Marketers in a Tizzy: Google Search and Search Engine Spam As for me, I'm happy! Why? Because as I'll show you, a lot of my sites have improved in ranking. The ranking for this blog has suffered in recent months, not because of anything Google has done, but because I've not been posting on a frequent basis like I used to, and that matters in a competitive environment. So why are some people complaining and reeling while I'm happy? Because I practice what I preach, and I preach what I practice. Google and other search engines are in the business of dishing up what people are looking for. Give Google garbage to dish up and you'll get slapped. Maybe you will get your garbage ranked well for a while, but eventually you'll get ranked where you should be and that's way back in the pack. This latest update dealt with garbage and getting it out of the search results. Recent months have brought the spotlight on Google for some questionable search results in some areas. One person who sold eyeglasses had found if he treated his customers with distain and anger, practically stalking them in some cases, he would get enough bad posts and comments that it kept his rankings high... and kept business pouring in... not exactly what Google set out to create. Other items that were getting bad press were sites that were automated sites that "scrape" or copy content from other sites. These sites are generally not very human usable and low quality. There's nothing wrong with copying content - a huge part of the benefit of the Business of the Internet is the ability to do just that. In fact, at the end of each of my blog post is a statement specifically giving you permission to copy and use this content - provided you keep the source, author, and link back intact. A lot of high quality, very helpful sites copy content from other sites, either in whole or in part. It's all about quality and value to the user. And that's the secret to maintaining good, consistent rankings: it's all about quality and value to the user. There are a lot of other factors too, but without a quality base you're open to being slapped around a lot. Sometimes people follow bad advice (either free or paid for) and end up turning what would have been good work into something that gets flagged as spammy by the search engines. For example, if you're worry about keyword density while writing your web or blog content, then you need some better advice: www.pqSEO.com. Here's one example of a site that is a small site, has unique, quality content... look at the jump in ranking position for Google on 1/27:

Date	Google	Yahoo	Bing
2/3/2011	11	38	185
2/2/2011	11	37	187
2/1/2011	11	37	308
1/31/2011	12	38	313
1/30/2011	13	38	315
1/29/2011	13	30	301
1/28/2011	13	30	169
1/27/2011	13	30	196
1/25/2011	156	31	280
1/23/2011	165	31	181
1/22/2011	163	31	166
1/21/2011	163	31	140
1/20/2011	163	31	157
1/19/2011	165	32	126
1/18/2011	163	32	148
1/17/2011	163	32	142
1/16/2011	176	32	135
1/15/2011	169	32	130
1/14/2011	190	31	123
1/13/2011	185	31	123
1/12/2011	191	31	87
1/11/2011	191	32	88
1/10/2011	195	32	83
1/8/2011	188	31	82
1/7/2011	190	32	82
1/6/2011	189	31	82
1/5/2011	187	32	77
1/4/2011	179	32	81
1/3/2011	187	32	86
1/1/2011	177	32	89

Until next time, Fred

Business

If you're tired of paying high click rates on Google for PPC ads, then you should give Facebook a try. Let's talk about some of the differences between the two and how you should approach each. Don't Spend a Dime Until You Do This... First, and this is important... no, it's UTTERLY, CRITICALLY, IMPORTANT... you should not invest one single penny in advertising unless you can actually measure its effectiveness. You may say "well duh", but people do it everyday. Everyday people pay Google, or Facebook, or some other site, to display ads... and they may look at various analytics about traffic, but unless you have your analytics setup to actually track when a sale (or other targeted event) occurs from a specific ad source (and even the individual ad), then you have no way to know what actually caused the sale. Zero, zip, nada. You may as well flush your money down the toilet. It's not all that difficult to track these things. You can do it for free with Google Analytics. But there is one catch: you have to have a page that you can put the JavaScript code on that signifies a goal has been met. A thank you page after the sale for example. So your order process goes something like this: Sales page, order form, Paypal or other payment processor, thank you page. The thank you page has the code on it to let Google Analytics know a sale was made. If the goal was not a sale, but rather a sign up form or something else, it works the same way. Not everyone will click through to the thank you page from the payment page, but most will. Once this is done, you can then look at your data in Google and view the goals met and the keywords that led people there from search engines (or other source). This will allow you to know if the money you're spending on PPC on a particular ad from a particular source is responsible for any sales and for how many sales (or completions of whatever the goal is). Why is This SO Important? This is important because here in the real world more than one thing usually happens at the same time. And unless you track everything you can, you won't know that the PPC ads had nothing to do with the little bump in sales you saw, that instead it was someone mentioning your product on a popular blog or web site. Or, you would know that for every $1 spent on Facebook you're getting $2 in sales. Now to my Facebook Tests... I really like the way Facebook handles ads.

• They have a fast turn around on approval - I'm talking 10 minutes to an hour in my experience.
• They have a easy to understand, real-time, display that shows each ad your running along with stats like impressions, clicks, and click through rate... and how much you've spent.
• You can set low per-day limits - I set a $10 a day limit.
• They make it easy to clone an existing ad and make a few tweaks.

The one thing I didn't seem to be able to do - and it may be possible, I just didn't see it, was to specify that my ads run at certain times of the day. But you can manually pause and restart your ads or campaign at will. But What about Keywords - How to Target? Facebook does not have keywords because its users are not searching, and therein is the big difference between advertising on Google and Facebook. On Facebook you select various profile settings to target where and to whom your ad is shown. You can select age ranges, male vs. female, looking for (male, female), location, and interests groups, etc. You can really zoom in on the perfect demographic for your product. One nice feature: as you tweak the demographic settings for an ad you see a real-time estimate of the number of possible people or profiles that could see your ad. What About Facebook's Suggested Bid Range? I didn't use their suggested bid range. I cut it a little more than in half. Once I had tweaked the demographics of my first ad sufficiently, the suggested bid range was between $1.02 and $1.80ish... I bid a maximum of $0.50, with a cap of $10 a day. I got as many impressions as I needed to reach my $10 limit - they do a good job of throttling the ads so that they don't all get displayed in 10 minutes - they were spaced out around the clock. And, a lot of the clicks cost a little under my 0.50 bid... Don't be Pushy... A Picture IS Worth a Thousand Words! Facebook users don't really respond to pushy sales ads. You have to hook them with an interesting photo and then some copy that peaks their interest. I read a really good post on Troy White's blog that his Facebook advertising tests showed that the most important factor in successful ads on Facebook is the image - and he is correct. I tested the exact same headline and body copy with several different images. Out of the 8 or so images tested only one had any click through at all. I got a few clicks (meaning literally 2 or 3 clicks) on one of the other images, but most received NO clicks at all. The same ad with the winning image received clicks - lots of clicks. What about My Results, My Sales? Please read the section above about tracking your ads. My weeklong test with 25 or 30 variations of my ad resulted in.... drum roll... Zero Sales. Yep... nothing. However, I thought after the first few days that it was. I had not looked at Google Analytics yet, just the Analytics on Facebook showing CTR, etc and was happy that I was seeing clicks and was making sales. My brain naturally saw the cause and effect. WRONG. Once I sat down and spent some time in Google (I had setup my goals as noted above before running the first ad). I could not find any sale that was directly related to Facebook ads. I did see a few where the person came from Facebook, but not from the ads. I did see where people came to the site from the URL from Facebook Apps (the ads) but that did not link to any sales. It's possible that one or two sales were the result of someone clicking the ad and then coming back to the site later. There are always those things that skew the totals a little. I will test Facebook again. It didn't cost much to run this test. But, had I not setup analytics correctly, I would have mistakenly thought the ad was working and kept spending money on it... money that would have been wasted. For this product, I didn't come up with a winning ad. It's a low cost product, so I didn't have much margin to work with: I had to have low click cost and some sales... I only got one of those, not both. Maybe if I'd raised my bid I would have received better placement or an increase in some other factor on Facebook I'm not aware of, but with this product, even if the ads had resulted in sales, at the higher click price I probably would not have broken even, I would have lost money. My goal was to at least break-even on the ad. Until next time, Fred P.S. Are you interested in a low cost tutorial on how to setup both Facebook ads and Google Analytics to do this? Leave a comment if you are.

Business