Andrea Wilson’s Blog

With the tools we’ve been given — free, I might add — by our Thirty Day Challenge mentors and members, niche research has just become push-button easy. Even with the odd bug still being worked out, these tools are dynamite! I have located half a dozen profitable niches using them and I’ve picked a couple to delve into for the Thirty Day Challenge.

I’ve written six mini-articles for one niche and now I have to do some research and write six more for my second niche. With Bloglines as my research tool and Google Notebook as a way to keep all my notes together, this has actually been an enjoyable and manageable experience.

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By Kellie Fowler

If you’re struggling to keep up with busy schedules, growing time constraints, escalating financial issues, and a family that you yearn to spend more time with, you’re not alone.

Like you, more and more people are fed up with the 9-5 grind and with putting in overtime hours and efforts that go above and beyond only to receive disappointing paychecks.

Understandably, they feel they are missing out on life and looking for legitimate ways to generate additional revenue without resorting to just another low-paying part-time job.

And, as many of these people have found, the answer they are looking for can be found in affiliate marketing.

With little start-up costs and the only resources needed including just a computer and Internet access, this online publishing business is freeing people up to live their lives to the fullest, all the while finally achieving financial freedom, while simultaneously spending more quality time with family and friends.

It may sound too good to be true, but it’s not.

Better yet, you can learn the techniques and strategies used every day by James Martell, a successful affiliate marketer, in his online course, to be conducted one evening per week for eight weeks.

It’s called the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp - Online “Night School” Edition and “seats” do fill up fast!

Why? Because Martell has been successfully teaching students how to create profitable affiliate marketing businesses for years.

See for yourself what one Martell student says about the BootCamp training: “In the past, I’ve attended several seminars with multiple speakers. None came close to James’ powerful, articulate, hands-on, gritty presentation. He’s by far the best Instructor I’ve been privy to hearing… and grasping.”

Martell BootCamp student Darryl Ruff agrees: “I’m a slow learner, but James makes things simple to understand. Would I attend another BootCamp as a refresher? In a heartbeat!”

Martell’s BootCamp students consistently give the training an enthusiastic thumbs-up, with BootCamp student Sheldon Smollan calling the BootCamp “a genesis opportunity.”

But never before has this “opportunity” been offered online, allowing Martell’s students to save time, money and the associated travel, which means everyone now has the chance to achieve true online success - and from the comfort of their own homes, with Martell looking over their shoulder every step of the way and available to answer questions, address concerns, and more.

So, even if you already have Martell’s top-selling Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook, or listen to his engaging weekly audio newsletter, the Affiliate Buzz, this online course curriculum may be just what you need to propel your online efforts to sure-fire success.

And if you are not familiar with “Martell’s book, buzz and bootcamp” (as they are referred to throughout the industry), you can get everything you need now in this exciting and informative first ever online BootCamp course.

“I believe my experience at (Martell’s off-line) BootCamp was the best investment I’ve ever made in myself, in my family, and in our dreams, explains BootCamp attendee Denis Vaillancourt. This opportunity has energized and motivated me to get to the next level of my affiliate marketing career. I’m confident in my future success now because of my BootCamp experience.”

Understanding from students like Vaillancourt the overwhelmingly positive impact the BootCamp has made on their personal, professional, and financial lives, Martell has searched for some time for a way to personally deliver his training “live” to his worldwide audience, but it wasn’t until recently that he found the robust technology he felt truly mirrored the personal training he painstakingly delivers through his off-line BootCamps.

So, just a few weeks back when Martell was exposed to an online conference room that would allow him to present the entire BootCamp using his PowerPoint presentation, live videos and live audio feeds, he knew he found the answer - and the first ever online affiliate marketer’s course curriculum was born.

Structured much like a night-school course, the curriculum will be delivered by Martell “live” in eight classes.

Martell will dedicate each class to covering one of the eight steps outlined in his recently refreshed Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook - “2006″ (THIRD EDITION).

Students can watch via the Internet as Martell personally delivers the powerful tutorials that allow students to watch him as goes step-by-step through all the stages of building a website, finding products to promote, determining which companies to partner with as affiliates, adding keyword-rich content to his site and submitting his site to the search engines.

What’s more, Martell’s online students will participate in live, interactive question and answer sessions, and be on track to complete weekly assignments all of which, when added together, make the online BootCamp experience as effective as the off-line BootCamp experience.

And because you’re learning from someone who uses these same eight steps day-in and day-out to maintain his own enviable success, you bypass the steep learning curve associated with affiliate marketing and can be up and running and making money in a matter of weeks, after implementing Martell’s proven eight steps - which have more than withstood the test of time, much like Martell himself.

What this means for you is that you can get your online business up and running faster and you can be assured that, once you implement the eight steps just as Martell details them, you’ll be on your way to making money - be it part-time or full-time - from the comfort of your own home.

Now, you really can take control of your future and your family’s future and steer it in the direction of financial freedom, allowing you to determine how much you work and even how much you make.

So, the big question is: What’s stopping you?

You and your family are worth it and this online training is, as Martell’s students have pointed out, the chance of a lifetime.

All you have to do is grab it.

For more information, and for class schedules, visit:

http://www.affiliate-marketers-bootcamp.com

About The Author

Kellie Fowler is a successful freelance writer and a seasoned professional providing valuable insight and advice to those wanting to create work at home business for themselves. Her numerous articles offer real-life tips and techniques to those looking for a way out of the rat race.

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Got back last evening after spending three days on Whidbey Island, Washington with my women’s group, the Otter Daughters. The group is semi-fluid, with some core members and others who drift in and out. There were seven of us this time. We ate, laughed, cried and shared our stories.

We helped one member with her English: she now knows the difference between “public” and “pubic.” LOL And she shared a Chinese joke with us about “old eagle feather,” but it’s a bit risque to explain here! She now also knows that “volunteer” is not from the same root as “valentine.” We had a lot of laughs as we tried to explain some English words to her. Somehow they all seemed a bit risque in the end! Okay, maybe not “retriever” and “driftwood,” I guess. Although given time, we might have come up with something!

All in all we had a lot of fun and I didn’t think about the Thirty Day Challenge at all. But today I had to catch up. I thought about how much my little “community of women getaway” meant to me and how the Thirty Day Challenge is a community, too. And a very generous one, at that. It brought my two worlds together and made me thankful even for online groups in a world where communities in our everyday lives have dwindled to almost nothing. Women in particular need community. And we are the ones flocking to forums and chat rooms in search of what we have lost.

The times are gone forever when women spent their days together looking after the children, gathering food, cooking and making clothes. The days of sharing, learning, laughing and crying together are few and far between. In the Western world women are far too isolated from one other.

If you don’t have a little community of women you truly love and respect, you should try it. The freedom to be yourself is amazing. Any old group won’t work though; you need to find a warm and loving community like the Otter Daughters, bless their souls.

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Well, I’m all packed for my mini-vacation: three days on Whidbey Island, Washington with a little gaggle of women called the Otter Daughters. My friend Marianne is our den mother and I am soooo looking forward to spending some time with her and with the other OD’s (Otter Daughters!). We plan to eat, laugh, do a little soul searching, roast marshmallows,  and attend the Coupeville Fair… enough arts and crafts to keep my little niche-finding mind quite happy, I’m sure!

Yes, I’m worried about catching up with the Thirty Day Challenge when I get back, but there’s nothing like a break to refresh the mind. I spend far too much time in front of the computer as it is without missing this opportunity. So, catch up I will. I’ve picked a couple of niche markets so that part is done. But I am really looking forward to whatever the next step is!

Thank goodness for the thoroughness of the niche market research part of the Thirty Day Challenge. I certainly would have picked the wrong markets without it!

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Wow, Day 8 of the Thirty Day Challenge blew me far, far away! I now can determine if a niche market will most likely prove profitable. While there’s no crystal ball, now I know how to use Wordtracker, Google search and Google Trends in a way I never could have come up with without one very important thing: a baseline to measure Google Trends results against. And today Ed Dale gave us that baseline for free in the Thirty Day Challenge. This is the best Internet marketing training I’ve ever taken… and it’s free. Today I threw away all the niche markets I had been contemplating over the last few days, but I finally came up with three or four decent niches in the last couple of hours.

My Web site XSiteProDesigns.com would not have passed the “niche market” test, however when I started it, I already knew there was a very small, but very hungry market I could serve. My problem has always been with researching niches I’m not familiar with… in order to put up a lucrative affiliate site, for instance. Not any more! Now I can feel comfortable venturing into that arena again.

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A woman just emailed me about an article I wrote in 2003 that she recently found online. The article was about how to choose an Internet marketing coach. She asked me if I would still recommend the same coach and I told her that today I would recommend Ed Dale of the Thirty Day Challenge and sent her the link. She emailed me back a few moments later saying she had signed up! For her, she has unleashed the power of 1) doing an Internet search, 2) making personal contact and 3) taking action! For me, the power of writing articles comes to mind. Four years later, my article is still in cyberspace doing its work. Will this woman become a client or buy something from me? It doesn’t matter; I’ve helped her… that’s always my first commitment!

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Today I discovered yet another workaround in XSite Pro that I doubt 99% of XSite Pro users have found. On the Web, blue, underlined text means a hyperlink. But in XSite Pro, the default colour for the links on parent pages (pages that list the sub-pages under them, e.g. a list of articles) are black. Yes, they are underlined, but especially when there’s a description under them (which is one of the choices with the sub-pages token), they don’t stand out as links at all. Well, today I solved that problem and proved to myself once again that persistence pays off!

You might think it sounds easy, just change the font colour or use a CSS class. No, it’s not that easy when there’s a token involved! In XSite Pro, some of the code is not accessible to a user or even to an experienced Web designer like myself, so I am often looking for ways to make XSite Pro do something that it was never meant to do. I have bent and twisted that software until it doesn’t know which end is up when I’m around!

You can read all about it here.

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Finally my email disaster is more like a bump in the road and I no longer feel like killing myself for being so stupid as to let my MS Outlook 2000 PST file exceed 2GB.

Lessons learned:

1. Use the archive feature in Outlook to keep your PST file as small as possible.

2. Delete old, unnecessary emails.

3. Back up your PST file(s) regularly!

4. Sign up with an online backup service like MozyPro which is what I am doing right now.

5. Never give up searching the Web for answers to your problem. By utilizing the Web, I was able to overcome horrible problems getting MS Outlook 2007 working properly, as well as to recover more data than I thought possible from my corrupt PST file. You might have to search with various keyword combinations and variations, as well as any error messages you get, but if you’re having the problem, others have had it, too, and likely posted about it in some techie forum somewhere. Techie forums can be a goldmine of information.

6. Do NOT install a trial or “try it” version of MS Outlook 2003 or 2007. They install just the way they would if you were buying them, which means rolling back to MS Outlook 2000 will be a nightmare if you encounter problems or don’t like the newer version.

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I work directly with some small to medium bricks-and-mortar businesses and run across the Web sites of many more in my daily online activities. Most of these businesses have no idea how to optimize their site for the search engines.

To me, it seems like an impossible task to reach all these businesses and help them. While many of the obvious tasks can be taught, almost all of these stem from having done the right keyword research in the first place. And, in my opinion, keyword research is the hardest part of SEO.

For many businesses, their keywords may seem obvious, but likely there are long-tail keyword phrases, misspellings, abbreviations and less obvious keywords that could push them to the top of Google, but that they will never discover.

For other businesses, the right keywords are very elusive. They just never seem to be able to settle on exactly the right ones, so no keywords get enough attention on their site to register well with any search engine.

And then there are many businesses who still believe that if you put up a Web site, their customers will find them! Keywords? Search engine optimization? Huh? Oh boy, talk about a tough sell! Good luck getting them to buy a search engine optimization package. You’ll need to explain it all very carefully in layman’s language. Your best bet is to team up with a Web designer who doesn’t do SEO, but who understands it and will make sure their clients appreciate the need for it. If the client trusts their Web designer, you will have an easier time getting the client’s business.

Do-It-Yourself Web Design and SEO

If you’re an XSite Pro user, however, the whole SEO thing just got easier. First of all, SEO is built into XSite Pro so you will have a fighting chance to score well will the search engines right off the bat. Second, James Schramko has put out an excellent ebook called XSP Cheat Sheet that takes search engine optimization for XSite Pro to a whole new level.

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Almost time for the 30 Day Challenge to start. I’ll be heading off to bed soon so I can be fresh in the morning. I have some clients’ XSite Pro templates to work on before I can tackle the 30 Day Challenge coursework. One thing that we all need to remember is to maintain our work ethic when it comes to our day jobs or our online businesses. While the 30DC is exciting, there’s still bread and butter to earn… and our customers still deserve our best efforts.

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