Royal visit to Marazion
Today, HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall have visited Marazion and St. Michael’s Mount. They arrived by helicopter this morning before meeting local dignitaries.
They then walked through the town stopping to talk to business people and bystanders. I had the great privilege to speak with both of them.
- Prince Charles and Camilla heading for the beach
Prince Charles and Camilla then met Lord St Levan and the St Aubyn family on the beach before crossing the Causeway and enjoying a private visit to St Michael’s Mount.
Way back in February 2009, I posted about a couple of articles that I wrote and had published at Associated Content and Constant Content.
As a money making method, my experience has been that both are hopeless. The returns from the articles, even publishing almost the same articles on both sites, were not worth the effort involved.
To make matters worse, Associated Content changed their terms and conditions on 1 May 2010 such that international (i.e., non-US) writers such as myself can no longer receive payments for articles submitted unless they qualify as a “Featured Contributor” and even then monthly payments will be made only if they exceed $100 (previously $1.50) and US withholding tax will be deducted. The requirements to be a “Featured Contributor” are too onerous for me given the results that I have achieved to date.
To get some benefit from the effort put into the articles, I have updated them and have submitted them to my Ezine Articles account – I know that I get great results from there – more about Ezine Articles another day.
Ever since I set up this blog I have regarded it as simply an information resource and have not done much to monetize it. However, you may have noticed that I have now decided to put up Google AdSense ads. These ads will appear in the first three posts on each page. For simplicity they are placed at the bottom of the posts using a WordPress plugin. This does not provide a particularly well optimized solution but it will do for now.
I know that some readers do not like such ads, but the income from them will help to pay the running costs of the blog.
I have been asked to come up with a step by step guide to make sensible money from internet marketing. So here it is.
The aim of this plan is to earn $3,000 per month after about six months. The plan is very demanding but if you want money you have to work for it. The plan is not really a detailed step by step plan because I do not have the room in a single post to do that but I will expand on some of the steps of the plan in future posts.
The steps are:
1. Select your business model. (This is assumed to be the Niche Affiliate model for the remainder of this plan.)
2. Choose your niche.
3. Research keywords and long tail keywords.
4. Find one or more affiliate products on ClickBank.
5. Create website, including a blog based around your affiliate product(s) and keywords.
6. Create a landing page for each product chosen in 4 above.
7. Get yourself an autoresponder account, set it up on the landing pages created in 6 above and start building your list.
8. For the first month, write five articles per day based on the long tail keywords and submit them to 20 article directories.
9. Write a blog entry every day.
10. Search for blogs in the niche and leave comments with a link to a landing page.
11. Create a Squidoo lens (or / and other high profile “Web 2.0″ sites) with a link to a landing page.
12. Submit your articles to all major social bookmarking sites.
13. Write and issue a press release on the affiliate product(s).
14. Build high quality backlinks to the website, including the landing pages.
15. Create a video about the product(s) and submit it / them to video directories.
16. Participate in relevant forums - include a link in your forum signature.
17. Participate on Twitter – from time to time leave links to your landing page(s).
18. After the first month, write three articles per day and submit them to article directories.
19. Analyze results and work on any areas that need improvement.
20. Start work on your own product.
All you have to do now is start!
WordPress 3.0 has just been released. Major new features in this release include a much better new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. The Twenty Ten theme shows off many of the new features.
Internet Marketers will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run many blogs from the same installation.
There is a new lighter interface with contextual help on every screen. Apparently there have been 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements!
For more information see the WordPress blog entry WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”. You can even watch a video that tells you all about it.
Updating this blog was a one click operation from the dashboard – make really sure that you back up everything first though and check that your plugins will work with WordPress 3.0 before updating.
Is it better than the previous version? – I hope so but we will have to wait and see.
You cannot possibly have missed the marketing hype that surrounded the launch of the Apple iPad recently. But have you thought any more about it?
The Apple iPad launch represents a significant achievement in marketing. If you can learn any lessons for your own business from the marketing surrounding the launch they could be quite valuable.
Why is all this significant? Well it’s not that the iPad tablet itself is a first. It’s not because of what it looks like – it’s not the first and will not be the last great looking piece of kit. It’s not because of what it does or how it does it – quite a few people want one even though they have no idea of what it is for! And it’s not because it is made by Apple!
It is because everyone is talking about it. It has even got good coverage on the front pages of national newspapers! If you can achieve all that you will become very rich indeed.
Last week I posted about an article in a national newspaper describing “the 50 best websites”, but, quite deliberately, I did not tell you what the 50 best websites were. This tactic is commonly used quite effectively to provoke a response. And it did. I had quite a few emails asking for the list.
Here it is:
Entertainment:
bbc.co.uk/iplayer
youtube.com
mousebreaker.com
popbitch.com
luckyvoice.com
Social Networking and Communicating:
facebook.com
skype.com
twitter.com
meebo.com
linkedin.com
Shopping:
ebay.co.uk
coolmonpicks.com
gumtree.com
notonthehighstreet.com
net-a-porter.com
Home:
fixmystreet.com
planningportal.gov.uk
askanowner.com
tpsonline.org.uk/tps/what
the50plus.co.uk
News:
huffingtonpost.com
prospectmagazine.co.uk
newsnow.co.uk
wordpress.org
Help:
helpwithpcs.com
adviceguide.org.uk
garlik.com
weather2travel.com
seniorsdiscounts.co.uk
Sport:
bbc.co.uk/football
skysports.com/football
eis2win.co.uk
uk-golfguide.com
castletriathlonseries.co.uk
Family:
badmothersclub.co.uk
schoolsnet.com
drfosterhealth.co.uk/hospital-guide
genesreunited.co.uk
moshimonsters.com
Out and about:
walkingbritain.co.uk
whatsonwhen.com
eventful.com
squaremeal.co.uk
lotc.org.uk
Culture:
gutenberg.com
culture24.org.uk/home
theartnewspaper.com
thestage.co.uk
last.fm
However, please note that it is very subjective and UK based. And there are a huge number of these types of lists around. Use with care!
This last week the THV Galatea has been visiting Mount’s Bay. THV Galatea is an 84m lighthouse tender operated by Trinity House, the body responsible for the operation of lighthouses and marine navigation aids around the coasts of England, Wales and the Channel Islands.
THV Galatea in Mount's Bay
THV Galatea provides aids to navigation for the safe passage of mariners, including maintenance work, buoy deployment, wreck location marking and towing. She is also able to carry out additional tasks such as hydrographic surveying and wreck finding and contract commercial work. She is equipped for:
- hydrographic surveys including bathymetry, side scan, sonar and wreck investigations
- aids to navigation deployment, maintenance, repair and examination
- research platforms for deployment and recovery of scientific equipment
- sampling projects
- marine hazard search and marking
- lifting, towing and accurate positioning of marine equipment
- recovery and re-establishment of off-station aids to navigation
- sea trials of electronic and specialty equipment
- helicopter support
- safety boat assignments
- guard duties for cable and pipe laying projects
She is a reasonably frequent visitor to Mount’s Bay.
June 7th, 2010 in
Cornwall | tags:
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A week or so ago I was reading one of the Sunday newspapers and came across a list of the 50 best websites. Now this is pretty subjective and I have to say that I do not agree with the inclusion of many of the sites in the list but it is useful sometimes to have an outsider’s view on what the best websites are.
Why is this important? Well websites that are high profile enough to attract the attention of a journalist can be useful to the internet marketer. The sites will probably have a reasonable amount of traffic which is likely to increase, perhaps dramatically, following exposure in a national newspaper. Your aim should be to visit the best websites and see if there is any way you can get links from those websites to your own website. The sites may have a links section (not so likely these days), but will probably have a forum which may allow links, if not in posts themselves then in footers or profiles. A good number of such links will boost your website’s Google profile and could bring you some good traffic.
This morning (Friday 28 May 2010) HMS Severn is in Mount’s Bay.
HMS Severn in Mount's Bay
The current HMS Severn (the ninth Royal Navy ship to have that name) is an 80m River class offshore patrol vessel of the British Royal Navy. She was built by Vosper Thornycroft in Southampton to serve as a fishery protection vessel within the United Kingdom’s waters. She was commissioned in 2003 and is currently based in Portsmouth. HMS Severn is commanded by Lieutenant Commander Catherine Jordan RN.
