Day 1 with MS AdCenter and Yahoo Marketing!
My MS AdCenter ads seem to be doing fairly well. Through out most of the day my CTR was higher than what I had experienced on Google Adwords, but I noticed the amount of impressions was much lower on very short keywords. It is too early to tell what my conversion rate is, and it is very early to tell how my split testing is working. I noticed that I am still paying more per click than I really would like.
Yahoo, I can’t honestly tell yet. My Ads sat in Editorial Review for close to 48 hours, now that they are approved, and everything seems active, I have no impressions. I am going to give it another 24 hours, and then contact Yahoo’s technical support team (who has been GREAT in the past) and see if I can’t get this sorted out.
Google has new competition … Cuil (Pronounced “Cool”)
Today was the launch date for Cuil a new search engine that is developed with 33 million dollars in venture capital backing. Its aim is google, and rivals google in the privacy sector however, has a new unique layout for it’s searches. Unfortunately it was down most of the day due, likely due to traffic from the hype surrounding the new search engine.
Bullied by Google…
I opened up my email from google after asking for some assistance as to why my adwords weren’t running. I was shocked, appalled, I could not believe that ANY business could treat a customer like that and remain in business. However, I guess with investors involved, and the grand majority following the rules, and with being the search engine that takes over 60% of America’s searches, pissing off a few customers here and there means nothing.
I was banned from Google Adwords today. In the email I received from them, I was told I violated part of their TOS, which part, I have no clue, however, the representative went on to tell me that opening another account, or trying to contact them for further support would be a poor investment of my time. (Obviously, big bad google knows how best to invest my time as well? Maybe that is part of their magical formula?)
The problem - Google felt absolutely no need to assist their customer in what part of the TOS had been broken, or even offer them the ability to fix this, there was no warning, nothing. From what I read today, I am banned from Google Adwords for life.
The Solution - I don’t need Google Adwords, even the Roman Empire fell, and so too shall Google one day. In the meantime, I have decided to focus my attention on bigger and better challenges such as Yahoo Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter. My Experience with Yahoo Marketing has been that when a problem exists with an Ad Yahoo supports their customer. Furthermore, I plan on focusing on natural SEO, and VEO. After reading Constant Conversation (FREE) by Colin McDougall with Colin Arthur and The VEO Report by Colin McDougall I have realized that it is not impossible to realize natural traffic to your website, and this traffic I believe is longer lasting and more valuable than any pay-per-click advertising you will ever recieve!
While I may sound spiteful by these events, I assure I am not, I focus on the solution. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, add some rum and ice, and shake it, and suck it down.
Whats does it mean to join the new rich?
What does it mean to join the new rich?
This was a question I pondered today as I was sitting at Fado’s Irish Pub with my wife and children this evening having a nice summer drink.
First, let’s differentiate between being rich and being new rich. The rich tend to either inherit money, or live a deferred lifestyle in order to en mass money, they tend to work long hard hours until they reach an age somewhere in their sixties where they finally retire, get bored, and die.
The new rich build multiple sources of income, which could also mean being employed. Not all new rich are entrepreneurs, nor do they need to be, at the 4 Hour Lifestyle we focus on working with employees who want to automate their current source of income, employee’s who want to be entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs who just want to break free of being a slave to their business.
The new rich tend to live life in the here and now, and plan mini retirements instead of work everyday until they can no longer work. Being in my late twenties and spending time with my children today in the most influential years of their lives is more important to me, than spending time with them someday (hopefully I didn’t die of a heart from the years of stress). Being able to take my children to Europe to teach them about the crusade’s, or British literature is a much better educational experience for them than some teacher telling them about British literature.
Does this mean that the new rich live poor? Just the contrary. The new rich set up business’s, systematize them, and outsource the pieces of them, empowering others to make decisions on their behalf. I am currently in the process of teaching my assistant to “think like me” so that I can outsource more of my daily activities to him.
A new rich realizes that lifestyle design is about designing your life so that you not only have the income, but the time to accomplish the goals and dreams that they want. This means separating income from time. This also means, putting themselves in the positions that any work they do, they can do from anywhere in the world at any given time. Freedom of time, and mobility to accomplish the things they need to accomplish from anywhere in the world.
Take this survey at the Four Hour Work Week blog : Bribing You to Quit and Bosses as Muppets
Dealing with the fears of lifestyle design
As a lifestyle designer, you constantly take risks. What you don’t realize, is even if you haven’t fully implemented your 4 hour lifestyle, you are taking risks everyday. I can understand the risks of negotiating a remote work agreement with your employer, or outsourcing pieces of your business in order to give yourself more freedom of time. Remember the goal is to put your income on autopilot as much as possible, that can be a scary though in of itself.
As a lifestyle designer, the key is to calculate your risks. There are some simple steps to do this.
First, when considering that dreamline, consider what the WORST possible thing that could happen would be if you were to focus your time and energy accomplishing that dreamline. Please keep in mind, the things we fear the most will likely never happen. Once you have listed the WORST things that can happen to you, write down what you would do in order to overcome that horrible thing.
Take negotiating a remote work agreement for example. The steps you need to take in order to negotiate the remote work agreement is to approach your employer regarding this, what is the worst thing that can happen here, your fired. First I have to ask, do you really see that happening? In all likeliness the worst that will happen is a no. If you take no for an answer, you haven’t negotiated, nor have you prepared for your journey with lifestyle design. Go back to the drawing board.
Let’s say that your employer lets you go for asking for this, how would you handle this situation? You would find a new job right? Maybe work somewhere you don’t really want to work while you get back on your feet right? What is the alternative? Never accomplishing that dreamline because you failed to take control and design your perfect lifestyle, right?
If your afraid of the rejection, I want you to pick of the phone right now and attempt to contact 5 people who have a lot of money, ask them each to loan you a quarter of your salary. This will get you used to rejection. In the world of business, we need to get used to rejection anyway, it happens.
Sit down tonight, face your biggest fear about lifestyle design, and deal with it. Make a list of the worst things that can happen, and what would you would do if that particular scenario came true, then consider the likeliness of that happening.
~Lifestyle Design
Giving up on email…
One of the things I have noticed that takes up an insane amount of my time is email. Especially with my current employer, they send emails to the entire group about having a headache, its almost maddening. I just came across this article on Tim Ferris’s blog in his archive titled The Holy Grail: How to outsource the Inbox and never check email again
Basically, Tim has trained his assitant to think like him, summarize his emails, and spend 4-10 minutes synchronizing with him. This really allows him to be anywhere, spend very little time in his inbox, and still achieve what he needs to achieve.
This is something I am going to attempt over the next few months. I wonder if Tim has any tips on training my assistant to think like me?
Are things moving slower than expected?
Once you set a path to move your world to the 4 hour workweek, your mind will start to move a mile a minute. You begin to think of the things you can accomplish by having the freedom of time and your income on autopilot. You start gearing yourself and overcoming the small challenges you face one at a time to achieve the 4HWW.
It is really overwelmhing at first, and as you define and refine your path, it becomes exciting. Then you hit that day, where you realize where you want to go, and how you want to get there, that is one of the most exciting days of your journey toward the 4HWW.
Then a couple of weeks of hard work go by, your are doing the things you need to do to reorganize, and monetize your first mini-retirement, and you become frustrated by the timeframes. This is where you need to really FORGE on, move forward and continue to refine your dreamline, and refine what you are doing to accomplish your goal of mini-retirement.
Being new rich doesn’t mean being rich… Dreamline like a lifestyle designer.
One of the most important tools to a Lifestyle Designer is a dreamline. Dreamlines are similar to goals, however, there are no long term, mid term, and short term goals. As a lifestyle designer, I focus on one particular goal, normally 3-6 (Maybe as long as 9) months out.
I believe in visual goals. This can be something as simple as a posterboard, with pictures of your next great big adventure, or something a little more advanced. Since I like to travel as light as possible (I have to because travelling with my kids requires me to travel heavy for them, Dad can’t bring much!) I like to keep as much online as possible. I suggest attempting creating your first dreamline on Vision Board
An example is the current dreamline I am putting together. My goal is to in 6-9 months (sometime in the winter) rent a condo in Snowmass for a month, I want to spend very little time working during that month, because I want to be able to skii most of the time I am there. I want to teach my two year old, and possibly my 3 (he will be 4 then) year olds to skii. Furthermore, to get there, I would like to fly a rented (or maybe purchased) turbo prop plane.
In order to accomplish this goal, I need to calculate how much it is going to cost me, once I have calculated that, I break it down into how much money I need to make per day between now and then in order to accomplish this goal. Obviously I am not looking to fund my whole trip by saving between now and then, thats ridiculous, and is considered deferred living. Therefore, I have to establish a level of income to be able to fund this goal, however, that income needs to be sustained, which is how a New Rich lives. The goal is to between now and then create a sustainable source of income that can be systemized, broken into pieces, and then outsourced, removing myself as a cog in the wheel.
My dreamline now contains pictures of images that at the end show people skiing in snowmass, and pictures of potential turbo prop airplanes which I can purchase or rent for that month. It includes a picture of the airport in which I plan on flying into (KASE), it also includes pictures that iconify the current business I am putting together in order to achieve this goal. I have mindmaps which outline what needs to be done and when for the business.
Dreamlining is a fun, and very effective way to find yourself realizing your dreams. Visual imagery brings a level of realism to the goal.
Happy 4th of July… Hope your living it the 4 hour lifestyle way.
Well, not much to write about today, I really just wanted to wish everyone a happy fourth of July.
I hope you are all practicing the concepts of the 4 hour work week this weekend!
Next week I will start giving some insight about the 4hourlifetyle.com, and our upcoming big launch, BIG THINGS coming that could be invaluable to future lifestyle designers!
Are you addicted to your mobile devices?
A quick post today. I just read an article on Forbes magazine about being addicted to your cell phone.
I have to admit, I am, only because I enjoy staying in touch with people. However, I hate phone calls, I let almost EVERY phone call go to voicemail, unless it is my wife, or a phone call I have expected from somebody that *I* deem important.
One of the most important lessons in Lifestyle Design is to realize that YOU OWN your time. I tend to take voicemails, and respond in emails. I find emails much less intrusive into my time, and it is much easier for me to control the conversation. The only time I truly return a phone call immediately is if I deem necessary due to it being an emergency of some sort. Remember, most emergencies aren’t really emergencies at all, when I say emergency, I mean, somebody is about to die in the hospital emergency.
Check out the article on Forbes.com Cellphone Addiction
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