The main reason I was attracted to Online Marketing was the ability to make sales in an automated fashion. After 8 years of being on the phone several hours per day, I found the idea of Sales Automation very attractive.

Needless to say, it didn't take long to realize that it takes lots of time and money to go down an untraveled path. It would take over 4 years before I began to make money online. By that time, I had wasted $100,000 on consultants and failed projects so I was down to my last few dollars. That's when I had the break-through that changed my entire life.

This break-through lead to my first automated selling machine "FreeCreditMatch.com".

Give Thanks to Get Happy

"Gratitude seems to be incompatible with some negative emotions. It's hard to feel envious or greedy or bitter when you're grateful," says Sonia Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. She conducted an experiment in which students were instructed to write down five things for which they were grateful. One group wrote once a week, another three times a week, and a control group did not write at all. Those who counted their blessings once a week showed a measurable rise in happiness.

Interestingly, students who wrote more frequently apparently got bored with the routine and showed no change in well-being. Researchers suggest that if you practice gratitude, choose a timetable that keeps it meaningful, and change the domain in which you contemplate your good fortune every week -- from, say, health to career to relationships to simple pleasures. That may help sustain the rise in happiness created by the exercise.

Read The Complete Story

Surviving Google's Aging Delay
By Lawrence Deon

Google has always been the search industry's innovator and that's just what Google's aging delay symbolizes, the evolution of search innovation… yet another significant step forward for Google.
Google's success as a search engine can undeniably be attributed to its ability to consistently return the most relevant search engine results. That's what kept the search giant on top of the pack and leading the multi-billion dollar search industry & that's what's going to keep them there!

Now that said, is it any wonder why Google incorporated the infamous aging delay into their ranking criterion? The simple truth is, Google's aging delay is a full frontal assault on artificial link inflation.

With the induction of multiple clever off-page reciprocal-linking strategies engineered to artificially inflate link popularity and PageRank, Googles aging delay wasn't only necessary and long overdue; it was the next logical step in the evolution of search.

The confusion and misunderstanding of the aging delay among site owners is nothing short of amazing. Many of my clients are confounded because their new sites are well positioned in Yahoo, MSN & the other large search engines while they're site is no where to be found in Google's search engine result's pages (SERPs)… except for perhaps on the most obscure search terms.

Current and unconfirmed speculation has been misplacing the blame on Google's ‘sandbox' effect. While this is a possibility I believe it's also highly improbable.

The sandbox holding period is typically anywhere between 90 to 120 days, the aging delay appears to be much longer. I've seen new sites delayed for up to 6-8 months.

The premise of the sandbox delay theory suggests that new sites are being penalized for gaining too many links too fast. To date I haven't seen a scrap of evidence to support that claim.

The sandbox theory is further disproved by the fact that newer sites engaged in procuring relevant links experience the same delay in climbing Google's SERPs as other new sites utilizing scores of purchased text links. This lends credibility to my thought that new sites are not being penalized on the premise of acquisition or quantity of inbound links and; supports my theory that it's the reciprocated links that are being delayed by an aging filter.

It just doesn't seem ‘reasonable' for Google to penalize sites for acquiring legitimate directory listings & building an optimized reciprocal link based network. In my opinion, mainstream SEOs are confusing the existing sandbox effect, with Google's new ‘aging filter' that arrived on the search scene earlier this year.

It seems more likely that Google's aging filter is weighing the ‘maturity' of inbound links and not the new site itself. Meaning that in addition to the traditional ranking criterion, the age of a sites inbound links are also now considered.

My own theory is that newly acquired inbound links are placed on a ‘probationary' status until they've ‘matured' before they're considered. For example, a new and relevant inbound PR 6 link would not be given the same weight or consideration as a ‘grandfathered' PR 6 link until the aging delay expired.

By placing newly acquired links on a probationary period and delaying the ranking of newer sites Google has effectively offset the instant free ride to the top of their SERPs. Purchasing volumes of brokered links to that end is now a moot point. After all, your site will still be delayed regardless of the amount of links you purchase and you won't see any return on investment (ROI) for at least 6 - 8 months.

Existing Site owners interested in immediate (ROI) are now strongly motivated to build new pages or expand existing sites in order to avoid Googles lengthy aging delay. With the ‘all-the-rage' mini-network strategy shifting to more of a long-term commitment it seems likely that's exactly what will happen!

Whether by clever design or not, the only alternative to riding out the aging delay that produces immediate results in Googles SERPs is to advertise through Google's AdWords Program. So it seems that Google's solution vis-à-vis the aging delay has turned out to be an excellent vehicle to promote Googles own AdWords Program as well. Hmm…

How do you survive Google's aging delay? By taking pro-active action!

I haven't seen any new sites with new domains appear at the top of Google's (SERPs) since early to mid 2004. I've consulted with and tracked many of my clients' new sites and despite the fact they have hundreds of #1 positions in Yahoo, Alta Vista, AllTheWeb & MSN for their keywords I've yet to see any remarkable results in Google until the 6 - 8 month period.

The trend I've noticed suggests that new sites are initially indexed; ranked accordingly in Google's SERPs for a week or so and then literally vanish from the SERPs for several months. In most cases they can't even be found with the most obscure search terms… including their own name and address.

If you're launching a new site don't panic. Once you've registered your domain name and configured the hosting, you should set up a few temporary pages. Obtain links to them from other sites in Google's index to start the aging delay count down. I recommend launching a site immediately with enough content to set up and facilitate the requirements for directory listings to start. The sooner Google is aware of your domain the better. Just don't hold your breath waiting to see results… It could be as long as 6 - 8 months!

Gauge your optimization efforts by where your site ranks in the other search engines. Provided you're not engaged in unethical practices and followed Google's Webmaster's guidelines this should give you a ballpark indication of where Google will rank your site after the aging delay, just be patient.

To that end, don't keep tweaking and changing your pages source code and trying to manipulate your rankings until your site has been in Google's index for at least 6 - 8 months. In other words, there's no need to reinvent the wheel here because it doesn't seem to matter what you do, your site will still be delayed regardless.

Don't keep submitting your pages to Google either! It won't make any difference.

Check your server logs to confirm Googlebots' crawl and then forget about it. Googlebot will find your site again if you're actively reciprocating links so your time would be better served building an optimized reciprocal link network to get your site out there and linked to as early as possible.

If traffic from Google is crucial to your marketing and promotion plan, and I don't know anyone who would argue otherwise… budget to run an AdWords campaign for a few months until the site is indexed and positioned. You might even consider running an Overture campaign as well!

If you purchase non-directory links, reallocate that budget to Adwords advertising.

It's pointless to purchase links when you can invest in an AdWords or Overture campaign. Purchasing links is an investment you won't see a red cent ROI for at least 6 - 8 months while an Adwords campaign will drive targeted traffic to your site that can convert immediately. Keep in mind that Lycos, HotBot, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Iwon, Netscape & Teoma also receive paid results from Google! MSN, AllTheWeb, AltaVista & Yahoo receives paid results from Overture.

Do other search engines have an aging delay?

Google provides primary search results to other search engines. It only seems reasonable to expect that your site may be delayed in Google's partner sites as well.

One-way you may be able to work around this, and I can't emphasize this enough; is to make sure you submit your site to DMOZ, the open source directory. Google, in addition to the other major engines, receives directory results directly from DMOZ.

Yahoo and its partner sites don't seem to be utilizing an aging delay, nor does MSN, so focusing your early efforts on these search engines might give you a competitive edge in the Yahoo network.

At the end of the day when it's all said and done surviving Google's aging delay is just a matter of time. The days of purchasing instant link popularity and PageRank are over and in due course you will see Google give your site the recognition it deserves.

About the Author
Lawrence Deon is an SEO/SEM Consultant and author of the popular search engine optimization and marketing model Ranking Your Way To The Bank. http://www.rankingyourwaytothebank.com.

Copyright 2005 Lawrence Deon

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"What is your 'how?' Are you faster, better, cooler, more innovative? More connected with your customers? Or, asked another way, how do you inspire emotion in your customers? Do they feel liberated? Hip? Special? In control? Connected?

Own a 'how' in your industry, and you'll have a path for future growth as the market and competitive set changes."

Pick A Niche and Own It

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More great blogs are coming soon!

RapidFeeds Launch Info

"As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and old, migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and as more people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to keep themselves informed, the ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is gradually shifted from a complete attention to major search engines and content optimization techniques to an increasing awareness of RSS feed directories and search tools."

Sorry, I forgot the Link:

Robin Good's Top 55 RSS Resources

"I launched PVRblog publicly on July 16th with half a dozen posts, then announced it on my personal blog. In a matter of hours, dozens of other sites linked to it, the site ascended Daypop and Blogdex's lists, and all told the debut was a big success.

Late that night I remembered the ads and logged into my Adsense account to see how the day went. I clicked over to reports to see the activity. From approximately 3,000 visits (not too shabby at all), enough people clicked through that I made $40 in the first 24 hours. The first thought that came to mind was this:

Great googly-moogly, holy crap. What just happened? What did I do? What does this mean for weblogs? Would the world be covered in textads when I tell people about this?

To say the least, I was a bit freaked out. I was measuring everything in increments of $20, hoping to make my monthly hosting and in one day I had enough to pay for two months of hosting. The next day brought another month of paid hosting, and this continued until a few days later I was a Yahoo pick for new site of the day and it resulted in twice the traffic I'd seen so far and over $100 in click-thrus came in during a 24 hour period.

Once again, I freaked out."

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Corazoncitos

Lower Your Cholesterol

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Money Management Tips

More coming next week!

Mike

Today I'm announcing the next step of the evolution in the AnswerBlogs portal site. This is the edition of AnswerBlogs Travel. Over the next few weeks I'm hoping that many of you will begin building "Niche Based" blogs on your favorite place to vacation or where ever you currently live.

I want you to think about it as if you were going to visit the area for the first time. What would you like to know about? I imagine you would want to know about the Restaurants, Hotels, Interesting Sites, Area Attractions and any Special Events. What time of year would it be best for me to visit? Things like that.

After you find your niche in the travel world, please come back here and click on the "comment" link below to announce to everyone what you have chosen. This way, we won't have too many people doing the same exact location. Please just start with one travel blog per person.

Have fun with this, I'm sure you will find the travel industry to be very lucrative and quite fun!

For more information on creating a Travel Blog see the corresponding lesson in your SuccessBlog.biz back office.

Anytime you start something from scratch, it takes awhile before you begin to see any progress. But I must say, the SuccessBlog bloggers are doing a great job of organizing their content and getting their blogs put together. We are in the process of adding all new blogs to the http://answerblogs.com site and it's starting to look like a real network!

Focusing on a Niche.....

The bloggers who make real money ( $5,000+ per month ) will be the ones who choose a niche and totally exploit it with great content. A niche, by definition, is a small detailed topic. For example, if you have an interest in Crafts and would like to do a blog in that area you would not choose to name your blog "CraftsBlog" and do it on crafts in general. Why not? Because there would be intense competition and you would never stand a chance of obtaining a decent ranking in the search engines ( which is the key ). Crafts is an industry ( an entire category ), not a niche.

Instead, you would find a niche such as "wedding crafts" which had 5907 searches last month. By focusing all your content on wedding crafts you would have a much better chance of exploiting that category and making good money! Granted, it probably wouldn't be an out-of-the-park home run, but it's much better to go for singles and doubles because the rate of success if much higher. I'm reminded of a commentator who once said "many of the batters ( in professional baseball) who go for the home runs also have the highest strike out percentages".

Now before you went ahead and did your blog on "wedding crafts" you would want to make sure that there is actually advertising demand for that category. I show you how to do that in Lesson #5.

Summary: Find your niche and exploit it! Focus on creating as much content as possible that is targeted directly around that niche.