Strategies, tips and tactics, automated software and dodgy link-building, hidden treasures and push button results. Get rich in 24 hours from now without even reading this post till the end. I promise you before you reach the next paragraph wonderful things will happen to you. But do not forget for the magic to happen you have to send this to thirteen people tonight or…

If you have reached so far into this post and if you are wearing a smile on your face then let me welcome you stranger! And let me ask you the most important question! Now prepare because this question is very special and the answer will determine whether or not you are truly successful in what you do…

Ok here we go:

Are you having fun doing what you do, blogging, creating informational products, creating those killer videos, preparing for the next webinar or just consulting the next client. If you are let me congratulate you for being successful already.

If you ask me about the single most important factor that determines whether or not will be successful online (it applies offline too) my answer will be:

If you are doing what you love, doing it passionately and givingly, loving every minute of it, managing to spot every silver lining while finding always new ways to help others along the way… well Yes! You will be tremendously successful online and offline. (but why bother with the offline world when it is slowly transitioning)

It is all about having fun. Are you having fun doing what you do? If you are not you better think again as you do not know what you are missing.

We knew that when we were kids but somewhere along the way we were educated to be miserable while chasing the next dollar. Not anymore…

I here and now give this promise to myself – I will always do what I Love and to Love what I Do!

You do the same and I will see you at the top!

Photo by Sean Duan

It is here and it is not something we weren’t expecting. Google started the whole +1 thing back in March. I have to admit it back then I wasn’t sure where this is going. Buzz and Wave were kind of  lost cause. I do know Google is struggling to find the right social approach I just wasn’t sure if the +1 will be their thing.

So far it was only working for search results and ads now since 1st of June the big G made it available for pages and websites. What does this mean? For a lot of website owners and bloggers it means one more button cluttered on that new post or a page. However it also means one more social proof factor to consider.

Say hello to the the new +1 for websites. If you want to try it give it a go… look to the left of this post and hit the +1.

In order to use the plus one button you have to be logged with your Google account. If you are using Google apps with your domain and not a standard Google account, well we Google apps users will have to wait.

Here is how Google’s video explaining the new feature:

I do expect to see an incoming torrent of spambots setting up Google accounts, firing off searches and +1ing their “preferred” sites and pages. However I am sure Google will find a way to handle this problem, with around 20 000 staff working for you filtering the bad guys shouldn’t be that much of an issue. I bet Google’s idea is a bit different than facilitating the tons of SE (Search Engines) spammers.. it is not their thing.

I have to say I do like the idea of Google getting more social and will keep and close eye on the development and the progress of the plus one. An interesting thing for me is to see what the feedback will be. I do believe +1 one will become one of the factors affecting the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) positioning and the way people do SEO.

Here is a short list of some of the big names across the early adopters:

Here are some resources from Google on the same topic:

Adwords and +1
Google’s Blog Post

Here is the official +1 page

..and here is the almighty +1 generator

I will keep track on the things for you, as always and will let you know if this time Google will manage to make search results even more helpful and relevant…
or not…

Now go there and start plus-ing! Start with this page

Will see you at the top!

The only way to do marketing in this fast changing virtual economy and innovative business environment is to do it ALL THE TIME. Just a few people understand what this means. It’s not about doing “something” the right way.. there are no more magic pills (red or blue), no more “I want” or “I don’t wants”… You have to have a complex, diverse marketing strategy that is really representing you and the heart and soul of your business, products, services… You need to execute it EVERY SINGLE DAY!
..that is if you are serious enough about achieving substantial results.

There is no secret recipe to online success today. However there are certain things that no one will deny will help you WIN online and get there faster.

Planning & Strategy

• You need long term goals. A clear view of the big picture and what you want to achieve. To become a doctor or a lawyer you have to spend time and focus to graduate. It is the same with your online ventures – you will need time to take them to the stage where they will be a primary source of income for you. You have to know where you are headed to.
• You need short term action plan that will keep moving you forward. To get from NY to LA in a car you only need to see the next 100 feet. Still you need to be there all the time – steering and changing gears, making sure you have enough petrol… (Knowing where you want to go will definitely help you put together the action plan.)
• You need to analyze your results and compare them to your plan and strategy. You will get a lot of clarity by analyzing the results that you are getting. Fine tune your strategy. You may be sitting on golden eggs and not know it. You have to look around you more often and this means – analyze your data – use Analytics. It will be your most trusted consultant along the way!
• You need to constantly adapt and refine your action plan to keep moving and building momentum. You need to be open to change… Things in this Universe are constantly moving and changing. You need to be really open to change! The early adopters of new technology are very often riding the fast train to success.

Building & Branding

• You need to be building your pages (squeeze / landing / sales pages, etc.),  websites, presentations, videos, brochures, business cards with your brand in mind. (it doesn’t matter if you have a brand or you want to brand yourself (your name)
• You need up-to-date design. You may as well be successful without top notch design and visuals, but truth is it will be sooo much easier if you invest (time or money) in taking your design to the next level.
• You need design that converts. Design is not only about fancy looks. Research shows that changing the color of a button or moving an element to a different spot can change your conversion rate substantially. Just few people understand the real value of having designs that convert.
• You need consistency, consistency in everything you do. People should be recognize you, your products and services from a mile away! This means – always the same colors, always the same fonts, always your logo – and always in the same way. Always the same style. Keep it consistent and you will see the difference.
• You need high quality content. They used to say “Content is King!”, even though we believe that having links to your website is at least as equally important fact is that your content is going to build your subscriber count. You need more than just visitors – you want to have loyal readers and followers! So make sure everything you post is well researched and is really valuable for your audience. After all what is the point of posting it if there is no value in it! Give and you shall receive!

Growing & Marketing

• You need to be growing to stay in business. This doesn’t mean necessarily grow your personnel or your office size. You need to grow your sales and your traffic / visitors / customers… You need to network with more people and have more partners
• You need to implement pay-per-click, pay-per-view, guest posting, social media marketing, direct email marketing, article marketing, guerilla marketing, old school traditional marketing, video marketing, search engine marketing,  … and pretty much any “new fancy term” marketing that comes to the scene to change the way people market themselves and their products and services.
• You need to combine the power of the different marketing channels and the benefits and rewards they bring with them. This way you will have stable and sustainable growth and you will not depend on one source only. What would you prefer – sitting on 3 legged chair or 4 legged one?
• You need to be able to scale it up quickly. This takes certain knowledge that you will gain along the way. We will also teach that here at MarketingClock.com as we believe as soon as you find something working for you and your industry and niche you need to immediately scale it up. This way you will have a healthy steady cash flow that will allow you to experiment more and test more…
• You need to outsource! In order to do all of the above and grow your business YOU NEED to outsource! Stressing this out is really important. You cannot achieve everything on your own, and you don’t want to have many employees. Outsource, Outsource, Outsource!

Tracking & Testing

• You need to read your data! Read it like people were reading the newspaper before (some are still doing this actually). Read it with your coffee in the morning, read it in the afternoon while you rest, read it before you go to bed. Get to know your data, you will love the clarity that it will give you about what is going on with your website.
  ( If you need help learning how to read your data contact us, we will be able to help you become a good data reader! )
• You need to split test. If you are wondering whether you should put something here or there, if you are wondering about the tag line or the sales message or about colors or about anything at all… Split Test! Use Google Website Optimizer to test and see what works for you. This will keep the ? factor out of your success equation.
  ( If you need help setting up Google Website Optimizer for your business contact us, we will be able to help you with that too! )

Rinse & Repeat

• You need to constantly monitor… Monitor your results and statistics, your conversion rates, your visitors and traffic. Use the data to refine your strategy. Test and track and be always ready to make changes. Change is good if it is based on solid research.
• You need to rinse and repeat. This way you will have sustainable growth. Make sure that you don’t rely on one source only. Diversify the traffic sources – use article marketing

Keep yourself in the loop,
STAY UNSTOPPABLE!

See you at the top!

Looking for fiver alternatives? There are many out there just some of them are worth using, most of them are waste of time.
I am using only a few but my favourite fiverr alternative.. well I guess that’s fiverr. (BTW if you are looking for ways to make money with fiverr click here.

If you are serious enough about achieving big results online you need to outsource. Period.

If you are on your own (which most of us are when we start) you should plan to start outsourcing immediately after you find something that works for you and brings results. You need to leverage your time and your efforts. The moment you find something that works and you can structure it as a system, determine what can be outsourced and find someone to do it for you. This way you can focus your attention and your time on the things that really matter.

This is applicable to social media marketing – Twitter and Facebook, article marketing – article writing and submission to article directories, guest posting to other niche related blogs, forum posting, getting more links, hiring people to comment for you on other blogs, getting more comments, views and better rating for your Youtube videos, video creation and marketing – get someone to create videos for you and submit them to more than just youtube. (I will add a list of the websites that accept videos in another post.. soon). Same goes for design services and web development.

If you are a company the above said is valid for you too. Spending money on hiring people is fine if you have the budget but most of the time the expense does not justify the results. Especially if you are just starting.

You can use all those websites like Freelancer and Scriptlance and Elance.. You can also go to the forums like DigitalPoint to post your project. I will give you more info on how to use those websites to find the golden service providers, it’s not that hard but still you’ll have to spend some money to learn it the hard way if you don’t find someone who can help you cut the learning curve. Learning from other peoples’ mistakes was a big lesson for me.

The reason of this post is to give you an idea about a new and innovative approach to finding providers that can help you take your online marketing to a new level. And it will only cost you the equivalent of a decent lunch!

Fiverr Gigs
If you haven’t heard though, a gig, is like a job. There are sites dedicated to allowing you to post an ad saying that you will do something for a predefined sum of cash. The most popular one is Fiverr and all gigs are listed at $5. This gives all of us a good resource of people that have an online asset – twitter accounts, facebook accounts or have some coding knowledge or a software that they learned to use in a way that can help you get more exposure for your website and your business. Tapping into this field of $5 resources is giving us a good leverage.

Page Rank: 5  Alexa Rating: 890

Browse through the gigs and I am sure you will come up with a better understanding on how you can use this resource of providers. Fiverr is not the only website using this model. Those other websites don’t get as much traffic but they are still worth the time so you can get more exposure.

Here Are The Top 10 Fiverr alternatives / clones:

1. GigBucks

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 32,370

2. Zeerk

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 40,646

3. TenBux

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 40,885

4. Uphype

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 108,913

5. Dealerr

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 130,519

6. JustaFive

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 140,584

7. GigMe5

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 146,244

8. Tenyt

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 177,777

9. GigsWood

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 203,128

10. GigHour

Page Rank: 0  Alexa Rating: 433,233

Before you pay someone make sure to check his feedback. It is a good indicator. However this does not mean to not try people without previous feedback as a lot of new providers are joining every day. Just be cautious and don’t go an a spending spree. Test slowly, use Analytics to track your results and conversions and then scale it from there after spotting what works for you and what doesn’t.

Leverage your time and efforts and focus on the things that matter most!

See you at the top!

Have you worked hard on getting your website up but then never saw anything big happen, I mean not as big as you would imagine it, no real results? Have you felt like you had enough and you want to quit?

Well I had that feeling many times. And I mean MANY times… when life feels overwhelming, when the big profits that all the experts promised were nowhere to be seen… when all my late nights and countless hours seemed to have no actual result at the end – it was so annoying and it made me want to say ENOUGH and just quit! That was when I realized that “Build it and they will come” is not a viable marketing method!

There was one saying that helped me a lot in such moments…

“Winners Never Quit and Quitters Never Win”
-Vincent Thomas “Vince” Lombardi

I kept on repeating this to myself every time I felt the urge to throw everything away and give up. This has been going on for years… yes I said YEARS. Everything that I achieved was not an overnight success. It was not an easy road, more like one of the bumpiest journeys I have undertaken… But it was one hell of a fun ride and it still is… To be honest I think it will always be… and it should be and it will be if you are doing what you truly LOVE doing. It is totally worth it!

Another favorite quote of mine:

If you truly love what you do you will not work a single day…

I can’t remember who said it and what were the exact words but I am sure you will agree that it is not the most important thing…

You see I realized achieving true wealth and success is more of a mind game than anything else. Yes it takes some technical knowledge but you can outsource that, yes it takes experience but you will get that while walking the walk. But it is a mind game and it takes a certain mindset and focus and persistence. I would take that any day of the week compared to technical skills or deeper understanding of the web marketing and the online environment.

There are those golden nuggets that stood the test of time and they are here to open our eyes. Those will help you along the way if you manage to get them to stay at the back of your head while focusing on what you want to achieve. I have this practice – I dedicate 15 to 30 minutes a day reading quotes from my favorite inspirational writers and leaders. This helps me stay inspired and has been one of the things that helped me most on my online journey that led to the life that I was striving for.

That’s why I decided to add the category “Success Mindset” to this blog. My goal with this blog is to share everything that has been helping me and i still there for me. Share all those priceless pieces of information that are moving mo towards my goals.

Here you will be able to find the inspirational sources that keep me on track and helped me live the life of my dreams. I am sure you will enjoy the rewards that you will reap once you start applying the techniques that you find on the pages of MarketingClock.com.

So…

Start Your Engines,
See You At The Top!

image courtesy of csitscenter