The message of ivoweb.com is that you would probably jump at the opportunity to get on board with Yahoo! in the mid-90s or Amazon.com about ten years ago. Your next big opportunity is i-Vo!

I-Vo stands for Internet Video Overlay which is a near DVD quality video that is designed to engage visitors to a web page more effectively than ever before.

You can spend all your time learning about search engine rankings, search engine optimization, and the next greatest traffic funnels (although traffic is still important). I-Vo is content and we all know CONTENT IS KING on the web. I-Vo is the content that effectively turns a visitor to your website into a customer for your business (conversion).

Find out more at www.ivoweb.com.

Two of the top Professional Bloggers have finally written a book

If there are two names who are synonymous with making money on the Internet and making money blogging, those two names are: Darren Rowse (Problogger.net) and Chris Garrett (chrisg.com).

These two guys are the top of the game and are the premier leaders on the Web. They have collaborated and produced a book that should be on everybody’s reading list who wants to learn:

• How to make money on the Internet
• How you can make money from a blog
• How to earn a substantial income to replace your 9 – 5 job

The product description notes the following topics are covered in this book:

• How Bloggers Make Money
• Direct Income Earning vs. Indirect Income Earning methods
• Why Niches are Important
• Using 20 critical blogging tools
• 20 Ingredients for a successful blog post
• Optimizing advertising
• Which advertising platforms work best
• Expert analysis of Technocrat’s Top Blogs - why they work

2) 45n5 wrote an interesting article about meme tracking which I thought could clearly be a “customize-and- implement” marketing strategy.

3) Shai Coggins wrote an interesting article for 5 Ideas on How and What to Sell Online.

4) CourtneyTuttle has a good article about the importance of checking keywords that bring traffic to your site.

I want to add suggestions to those from Li Ming Wong:

• Educate yourself

If you don’t know how to avoid falling prey to scams on the Internet, the first time, you have a legitimate complaint. However, the second time, you have no one to blame, but yourself.

1) Read SANS Top-20 Internet Security Attack Targets
2) Review US-CERT Cyber Security Tips
3) Read University of Penn’s Desktop Security 101

• For financial scams, you can always check the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
• For websites, always check with McAfee’s SiteAdvisor

Be safe in your Internet adventures!

If you do encounter a problem, report it. It helps others who may visit the site after you and it will help you in court if, in unfortunate circumstances, it gets that far.

• How to complain in the UK
• How to complain in the US

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Merely a couple of years ago, Mike Filsaime rushed onto the Internet Marketing scene with his highly successful Butterfly Marketing System. He was successfully using elements of the system for many years prior to his release of the Butterfly Marketing System and the accompanying Butterfly Marketing Manuscript.

To get all the materials to include the manuscript, tutorials, and software, you can find the Butterfly Marketing System here.
-or-
To get the information from the system without the software and videos, you can find the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript here.

As with most sales letter pages, Butterfly Marketing’s is filled with comments and recommendations for the system, but, by far, the most convincing piece of evidence to credit the system for making a lot of money online is a video of Mike as he logs into his Palpal and Stormpay accounts and shows you how much money he was (for the past year) and is (at the time he made the video) making with the Butterfly Marketing System. You can view the video from the Butterfly Marketing Sales letter here. After I viewed the video, I was surprise that he made it and I was amazed at how much money he was making with the system.

The Butterfly Effect

Remember the 2004 film, The Butterfly Effect, where a guy continually experienced the tremendous impact of little changes over time? The concept of little changes that produces large effects over time is called the Butterfly Effect. Ian Stewart, in his book Does God Play Dice?, defined it this way, “The flapping of a single butterfly’s wind today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month’s time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn’t happen…” In Butterfly Marketing, Mike Filsaime using the Butterfly Effect to lead into the application of Viral Marketing on the Internet.

Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing is the term applied to strategies designed to stretch the word-of-mouth advertising to compound over time. When you reach five people and each of those tell five more people, thirty people were told. If each continues to tell five people, after the third round an additional 125 were told, and after the fourth round an additional 625 were told. All you had to do was reach five people, who each told five more people and you produce word-of-mouth advertising that spreads like a virus – viral marketing. Butterfly Market covers the techniques to apply on the Internet to produce this sort of effect and capitalize on the traffic to a website.

What’s Included

With the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript, you get the “how to” information and all of the technique’s the Mike Filsaime has had tremendous success with. The manuscript provides you with the techniques, but, unfortunately, leaves out the important software to actually operate Butterfly Marketing on the web.

With the Butterfly Marketing System, you get the “how to” information, all the techniques of Butterfly Marketing, and all of the software to use the techniques in a plug-and-play with your specific website.

You can find the Butterfly Marketing System here.
-or-
You can find the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript here.

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Widgetbucks

Recently, I discovered Widgetbucks and am initially impressed with this new site. Widgetbucks offers two ways to make money online:

1) through an ad unit like this:

WidgetBucks - Trend Watch - WidgetBucks.com

2) and through a referral program through links like this one:

Make Money with WidgetBucks

There are several good points about the ad units and only a couple of drawbacks.

What is good

• You can display the ad unit along with AdSense (allowing multiple ad units on a page).
• They do not restrict the number of ad units you can display on a page, but reason dictates that the site should still be usable. You should only display what fits in with the content of your site.
• The ad units work great for sites about products, because most of the ad units are lists of products.
• The Ad units are animation items, so it presents a slightly better look to the website (you can also customize the color to match your site).
• I’ve heard that the units get good click through rates (CTR), but it is too new on any of my sites. (The site advertises $2-$6 per CPM (thousand impressions).
• It is quick and simple to setup.
• The site pays through Paypal.
• You earn 10% of any referrals earnings for up to the referrals first 12 months.
• Right now, you can get a $25 bonus when you signup.
• The site pays out monthly with a minimum of only $50.

If anyone is using Widgetbucks, I would be interested in learn how you are doing. Submit a comment below.

You can sign up for Wigetbucks here:

Make Money with WidgetBucks

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Is it wrong to pursue money? Is it wrong to seek wealth? I am surprised sometimes by the different types of people who have money and wealth. Some of the wealthiest individuals in the world – Bill Gates, Warren Buffet – earned their wealth. While there is a long list of people who did not earn wealth, some got it in a legitimate manner like those who inherited wealth. Still there are those got wealth from illegal and wrong manners – thieves, drug deals, dictators, war lords…

I guess it all goes to show that money and wealth are independent of right or wrong. Money is not an ethical issue, but there are often a lot of ethical issues associated with wealth.

Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, who is also credited with her own philosophy – Objectivism, defined money as a merely a tool.

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” ~Ayn Rand

Too many are willing to commit a large number of wrongs and even atrocities in the pursuit of money. Too many people have lost their lives and legitimate and hard-earned property at the hand of someone who was willing to cast aside right and ethics.

Deserving It

For me, I’d rather deserve wealth. I am not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination although I am better off than a large number of people. When I do make money, I prefer to earn it by my hard and smart work. I appreciate it more.

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By far, the easiest way to make money online is with Google’s affiliate program – Adsense. There have been wide spread speculation that some publishers earn as much as five figures every month! There is room for growth, but there is also the potential as some have reported earning merely a few dollars every month.

To maximize your Adsense earning, check out these two books:

1) The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense

2) Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords, and the Google APIs

Both of these books are popular and I have read both. The AdSense Code covers the broad strategies of making money online with Google AdSense. Google Advertising tools covers the technical details of using AdSense and includes the added benefits of covering AdWords and Search Engine Optimization.

• If you are web publisher and you would like to quickly and easily start making money online:

• If you want to improve your earnings with AdSense or you want to start using AdSense at the programs potential, pick up both of these books:
  

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Stuart E. Lucas is really good point of contact for everything to do with wealth. He is a fourth generation heir to the Carnation fortune from the company that his great-grand-father, E. A. Stuart founded. Additionally, Lucas has been a professional wealth manager for the past 25-years. So drawing from the perspective of having and managing his own wealth and from the perspective of helping others manage their wealth, Lucas wrote the book, Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, And Share It.

In this 356-page book, you will learn about t eight principles of strategic wealth management and viewing wealth as an industry with pitfalls that can be avoided.

From Publishers Weekly

Wealth: those who have it want to keep it, but what’s the best way to ensure it doesn’t run dry? Lucas is ideally suited to answer the question. A Harvard Business School graduate who’s worked at wealth management firms, and a fourth-generation heir of E.A. Stuart, the founder of the Carnation Company, Lucas counsels readers who have, or are planning to have, at least a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank. His book teaches them to manage their wealth so it grows, or is at least maintained, for as long as they want, whether that’s one lifetime or several generations. Lucas focuses principally on investing decisions, spending decisions (like whether to engage in philanthropy) and emotional issues. He provides a good balance of in-depth financial guidance and tips on negotiating financial decisions in the family. Though the subject is dry, Lucas keeps the book interesting by using examples taken from his own family’s experience with fortune, a tactic that lends both credibility and intimacy to his advice. With its frequent plunges into the minutiae of investment options, this book is definitely not light reading. It is, however, a helpful guidebook for those faced with the task of growing, protecting, spending and sharing a large amount of cash. (Mar.)

From Newsweek

Newsweek, March 20, 2006 issue - Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, and Share It by Stuart E. Lucas Congratulations! You’ve just come into some cash. But what to do next? With $1 trillion per year expected to pass from one generation of Americans to another over the next decade, it’s a question more people than ever are facing. Writing from the perspective of one who has managed wealth for clients, as well as received it (he’s an heir of Carnation Foods’ founder), Lucas shows step by step how to set investment goals that match your needs and values, pick the right advisers, manage taxes and avoid the pitfalls that shrink fortunes and fracture relationships.
~John David Sparks

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1. The city center of Rome has a not so pleasant smell to it; at least it did when I was there at the end of April last year.
2. There are a lot of homeless and beggars.

I am not going to write about Rome, but I will say this: it’s a great city to visit and everyone should see it at least once.

Rome

I don’t know why the city center of Rome smells. It may be due to large populations of people living there for thousands of years, to include times when sewage systems were not very advanced. It may also be attributed to a large number of homeless people. That one took me a bit by surprised at first. A couple hours after I arrived, I was walking and went from the city center across the Tiber River; that’s when it hit me. Where else is it a “better” place to be homeless then in a year-round warm climate and the home of the world’s largest and wealthiest church.

Vatican City

The Vatican City, with its stone walls, marble steps, gold chandeliers, its own diplomatic corps, and focus on tithing and charity, is a force of problems, not solutions. Give your money to the church and then the church will give your money to the poor (after they build large monuments of marble and gold or course).

Giving

Bill Clinton has even written a new book about giving. The 256-page book outlines his new focus on philanthropy and “how each of us can change the world.” I don’t think so.

There are some things that can have a definite impact on poverty, hunger, and “third world” status, but I don’t thing philanthropy, in itself, will change that.

“Anything that is given has less value than the same thing when it is earned.” ~Jonathan Frye

This is my three step process:

1. Get rid of governments that are not “of the people.”

There is a lot of debate as to whether democracy can work in the Middle East and I must admit that if it can then it will take time. One of the major obstacles to entrepreneurship, success business, and individual wealth creation is governments – corrupt governments, totalitarian governments, and overly bureaucratic governments.

Anyone is welcome to try and disagree with me, but America is the best example of a government that works. We are not perfect by a long shot, but we are better because we are a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” (Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address). There is no ruling class or royal family, but ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

2. Teach people to work.

Allowing people to get something for nothing stifles them learning to get that thing for themselves. People need to learn to work. People need to learn to earn what they need and, then, what they want. Even if you start at a lowly fast-food job, if you start then you can finish better. There are too many people not willing to work. I suggest you follow the 7 Steps of How to Make More Money.

There are also people not able to work for physical ailments or other limitations. Each obstacle can be overcome. If you can walk, you may still be able to think. Acknowledge what you cannot do and then find out what you can do to earn your own paycheck.

3. Teach people how to work better.

This is the process of education. Education is the single greatest differentiator between success and misery. Education is the single greatest differentiator between wealth and poverty. Education is the single greatest differentiator between a successful economy and a third world economy. If there is one area, where giving money can make the largest impact, it is in education.

The worst case scenario

I had a friend tell me about his time in a poor Middle Eastern country. He was with the US Air Force and was given a brief by the military to ignore people begging in the streets. He was told to do that even if it was a child who was maimed and deathly skinny. The reason: parents would purposely maim and starve their children at young ages in order to make them look more pitiful, so they would get more from begging.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It makes me want to scream! I don’t understand how a parent could do that to a child, but I will not do anything that would encourage that ever. I will not do anything that would make a parent think that their child could get more from begging than from learning how to work. I don’t want philanthropy to cause more harm than it does good. So I want to follow the timeless advice:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Education and work ethics, not philanthropy, can change the world.

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