Sent from my iPad

Technorati Tags: pinterest, social media

My CFT’s for today

I’m currently working on an installation guide for an up and coming free minisite template I’m giving away over at QuickSiteStudio.com. My aim is to provide everything you need to get a website up and running for FREE.
Today I completed the bulk of the guide which currently stands at 38 pages with over 7000 words written. The next task at hand will be to create all the illustrations and maybe some videos too.

Do you use any techniques to boost your productivity?

Technorati Tags: cft, content creation, going pro, productivity

It’s been a while since I posted to the blog and as its the start of a new year I thought it was probably time to get my act into gear.
Yes I say it every year (to myself anyway), but this year IS going to be different.

I’m going to go all out on growing my online businesses to make them what I think they should be, giving me more money (excellent) and more time to spend with my wife and children (double excellent)

So what better way to kick start the year than a blog post outlining my intentions for my businesses and for my blog.

Goals for my business

My minisite design business is my main source of income and I’ve got lots of amazing things planned for 2012… More products and more services.

The plan is also to grow some other sites I have.

I’ve got loads of small affiliate sites that I’ve neglected over the last 12 months which I want to work on to achieve a passive income.

The goal is £500 profit a month.

It’s not a huge amount but it’s a goal that I think is achievable and not too high that is unrealistic for me. As Ed says start small.

The plan is to chart the progress here on this blog.

Which brings me to…

Goals for the blog

The way i see RichardPargeter.com is as a Central hub for me and my thoughts.

Somewhere where I can share tutorials, freebies and workflows of my own (and those I’ve found).

A place where i can Brain dump and just get things out of my head. Hopefully these thoughts will be helpful to anybody reading probably they’ll not make much sense.

Good to look back on

But I reckon over time they’re going to be great to look back on and see the changes that have been made or the progress I’ve made. Most will probably be laughed at!

Either way with my trusty iPad I’m hoping to blog more often.

And there it is… my first post for 2012!

Bring on the blogging.

Technorati Tags: 2012, aims, goals

If you haven’t read how I use my iPhone to draft ideas read that first.

So after I have a few ideas saved as drafts in my WordPress dashboard, I’ll go through them to see which one I want to tackle first.

After I pick one, I reach for my trusty iPhone again and open an app called iThoughts.

iThoughts is a mind mapping app that basically allows you to easily get your thoughts down… kind of like brainstorming.

I’ve used mind mapping software on my PC before but there is definitley something about actually creating some stuff while touching the screen of the iPhone compared to using the mouse with the PC.

Here’s the mind map for the original blog post. (in the end I split it up into 2 posts). Click the image to see the mind map full screen (opens a new window)

To start off I have the central idea for the post in the centre.

Then ideas for the sections in the post are added as branches off this central area.

I just let the ideas flow and it’s so easy to flip from one section to the next if you come up with an additional idea.

Then once the bulk of the mind map is complete (I say complete, but 99% of the time I’ll go in at a later and add something else) You should see the mind map as something organic that grows over time.

Anyways, once I have the bulk done I’ll go in and move sections around… treating each idea as as paragraph in my finished post.

I’ll play around with it until I’m happy with how it flows.

Once I am then I’m ready to start writing the first draft of the post.

The beauty of iThoughts is you’re able to sync with dropbox… so within seconds I can have the PDF version of the mind map on my PC and have it there to refer to while I write the draft.

And that’s my process for content creation on my blogs. It may not be revolutionary but I’m finding it so much more easier and time friendly than sitting in front of my PC scratching my head wondering what to do, plus I’m enjoying it a whole lot more.

I’ll update you on my progress.

Technorati Tags: content creation, going pro, iphone

I constantly put off writing because I saw it as a job that needed a lot of time to do. I made excuses that the “atsmosphere” wasn’t right and I hadn’t worked myself up enough to write. Crap excuses I know but basically I would do anything other than knuckle down and write the damn article.

I really didn’t like writing much at all, coupled with actually coming up with ideas to write about, I found it a problem… but you can probably tell that when you look at the last post I made… 4 months ago!

Anyway, after following Ed Dale for some time now, I’m finally Going Pro… and doing it the right way.

Now this just means going at content creation in the same way the “professionals” do it… processes and systems to make the job easier and faster.

So, I’m a big iPhone fan… the nifty little device is hardly out of my hand all day, checking email, surfing the net, catching up with what’s going on in Reeder and posting to Twitter, you name… I can do it.

As Ed teaches in the Challenge – Market Leadership has never been so easy.

But now with my iPhone, I have found and dveloped my own process to be more productive across all of my niche wesbites as well as here at RichardPargeter.com.

And I do it like this -

First off, I was reading a blog post the other day by Lynn Terry on the secret to writing really great content. She was saying how she uses the “DRAFT” feature in WordPress to document her ideas for posts… so that when she logs in she has a list right in front of her of things she can be getting along with instead of staring at the computer screen for hours thinking…”What shall I do” (not the Going Pro way!)

Anyway this got me thinking, because of my love for the iPhone this was something I was doing in a notes app… making lists of ideas… the problem being I wasn’t actually using these lists.

So I figured I’d do a search on the app store for a WordPress app and bingo there was one. Basically you can post and add to all your blogs from the one app… excellent.

So now when I get an idea I open up my app, wherever I am, whatever I’m doing… I could be watching TV and something springs to mind I make a quick note of it in the WordPress app and there I have it. Once I save it as a draft I know the next time I log in to my site from my PC I’ll have a list of things to do posts to make, there in front of me.

Here’s how to set up the App:

1. Open the app and you’ll see this screen…

Tap the “+” icon to add a blog

2. Select “Add self-hosted WordPress blog”

3. Fill in the details and tap “Save”

4. You’ll now see your blog in the “Blogs” screen, tap on it

5. Tap “Posts” at the bottom… if you already have posts you’ll see a list here

6. To add an new draft idea… tap the icon in the top right hand corner of the screen

7. Add your post idea in the title and any additional notes in the “Tap here to begin writing”

8. DON’T tap “Publish” as your post will go live.. Instead tap the “gear” icon at the bottom

9. Tap “Status” – at the moment it will say Published and you’ll see the following…

Scroll down to “Draft” and tap “Done”

11. Tap “Save” and your draft idea will be uploaded to your site, ready for the next time you log in.

Pretty nifty eh? I was going to run through the whole process I go through from start to finish in creating content but I’ll leave the next part for another post.. [Grabs iPhone]

What do you think? please leave a comment below

Technorati Tags: content creation, going pro, iphone, wordpress app

Just a quick test

Why would you want to do this?

For a couple of reasons:-

1. It looks better.

A normal affiliate link can look something like this:-

http://34035cphs8mcd498ykrm4v3x7t.hop.clickbank.net/

…urggh! pretty ugly don’t you think

A cloaked affiliate link looks like this:-

http://www.richardpargeter.com/recommends/product … much easier on the eye!

2. Unscrupulous people can’t steal your commissions (as easily)

Believe it or not there are people hiding in the shadows of the great world wide web that are prepared to steal your commissions.

How?

Well if you have a naked affiliate link without cloaking it’s fairly easy for those in the know to realise it is an affiliate link. They can then go and sign up with the merchant themselves get their own affiliate link and purchase the product through their own link, in effect giving themselves a discount and robbing you of your commission for directing them to the merchant in the first place.

Don’t get too hung up on this but just be aware that it does happen.

3. A naked affiliate link looks dodgy!

Some people will see the source of the link and think that the code looks untrustworthy and may even be put off from clicking on the link. If you’ve got a nice looking link like the example above your visitors are more likely to click the link not knowing that it is in fact an affiliate link.

Affiliate Link Cloaking

The process of hiding your affiliate link really is very simple and involves just three steps.

Step 1. Copy your affiliate code. If you haven’t got your affiliate code I tell you how to do this in my previous post on how to add your affiliate codes to your website

Step 2. Create the Redirect Script

Open up a text editor like Notepad and type the following code:-

<?php header(Location:'YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-GOES-HERE');?>

Replace the YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-GOES-HERE with the actual code you got from the merchant or affiliate network.

Save this file something like specialoffer.php and save it in a new folder called ‘recommends’

Remember to save as .PHP otherwise it won’t work.

Step 3. Upload to your server

The final step is to upload the ‘recommends’ folder with the specialoffer.php file (or whatever you’ve decide to call it) inside, to the root directory of your domain server using an FTP program like Filezilla (See my resources page)

The file structure should look like http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/recommends/specialoffer.php

From now on when you are promoting your affiliate product you should use this new CLOAKED affiliate url.

And what happens is when someone clicks on http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/recommends/specialoffer.php they will be redirected to your affiliate offer without your affiliate code being visible.

Have you found this post useful? Please leave a comment below…

Technorati Tags: affiliate link cloaking, cloak affiliate link, free affiliate link cloaker, hide affiliate link

Step 1: Grab your affiliate code.
Once you’ve found a product on ClickBank by searching the Marketplace, you need to click on the Create Hoplink link

Step 2: Enter Your ClickBank ID
You’ll be presented with a pop up window where you’ll need to enter your ClickBank account username. You can enter a tracking code if you wish (I’ll talk about this in a later post)

Step 3: Copy your Affiliate Link
Click the Create button and your affiliate link will be created (ClickBank likes to call them hoplinks but they’re the same thing)

In the image above the highlighted code is the raw link code that you should copy and paste into a text file or spreadsheet so you can use it later.

If you like you can copy the second line of code and you will have a ready made link that says Click Here! like so. (This is an actual working affiliate link so you can see the results…the product is good too)

Step 4: Adjust the text link

The actual html code that creates the link looks like this:-

<a href="http://a73911fnmbjf64copdlbqa00og.hop.clickbank.net/" target="_top">Click Here!</a>

So if you wanted to change the link so that it reads as something else you just need to delete the “Click Here!” and type in whatever text you want.

Step 5: Copy & Paste

Once you’ve got your code all that is left to do is copy it and paste it into your website, making sure the source code view is active in your HTML editor.

That’s it. That’s all there is to including your affiliate link on your web page, in fact this is the code you’d use on any website that you wanted to promote the product on.

Important note: If you go back to Step 3 above and hover your mouse pointer over the Click Here! link you’ll notice that your full affiliate link is displayed in the status bar of your browser. To be more professional you need to consider cloaking your link so that instead it reads something like www.yoursitename.com/recommends/the product This looks so much better and hides any important information that could identify you as the affiliate. Watch out for my next post where I’ll show you exactly how you can cloak your links professionally.

I hope you’ve found this post useful, if you have let me know by leaving a comment below.

Technorati Tags: affiliate code, affiliate links, Affiliate Marketing

In it’s simplest definition affiliate marketing is promoting someone else’s products in return for a commission.

How Affiliate Marketing works:-

First off you need to sign up at an affiliate network which is basically a big marketplace where you can find products to promote.

Clickbank and Commission Junction (CJ) are affiliate networks, there are many more but when you’re just starting out these will be the 2 big players you’ll hear people talking about the most.

Clickbank specialises in digital products and CJ deal with both digital and physical items.

Then you find a product to promote, I’ll be talking about this in later posts but just a word of warning if you get this wrong from the start you won’t have much chance of making any money before you even start.

Once you’ve picked your product you’ll be given an affiliate code. This is a unique link that you can place on your website to promote the product.

An affiliate code looks something like this – http://62739ftlq8r87t7fxzo-j5s8u5.hop.clickbank.net/

So lets say you have a blog and you include this code in one of your posts. When a visitor to your blog clicks the link they are redirected to the merchants site. At the same time a tiny file is placed on their computer called a cookie and this tells the merchant that you sent that visitor to them. If the visitor then purchases the product you’re promoting you earn a commission which is paid to you through the affiliate network.

Therefore the more people you send to the merchants site the more chance there is of you earning commissions.

In my opinion affiliate marketing is the easiest entry in making money online because you don’t need a product of your own and you need very little cash to start.
Stay tuned to my blog over the next couple of weeks because I’ll be going in to detail on how you can start to profit from affiliate marketing.

Did you find this post interesting? Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, make money online

If you enter an unprofitable niche your chance of success is already decreased.

In this series of articles I’m going to share with you my affiliate strategies of how to find niche markets. In this first one I will use Amazon. I’m going to take the step by step approach because I think this will be easier to follow for the internet marketing newbie.

Amazon.com is probably one of the biggest if not the biggest retailer online, but it is also a fantastic resource for our niche research online.

Go to http://www.Amazon.com/bestsellers
On the resulting page you’ll get the best selling items on Amazon sorted by department. You’ll see that this list is updated hourly, so you know that you’re getting the latest information in almost realtime.

As you can see from the image above the Apple ipod touch has spent more than 80 days in the top 100 for electronics so we can assume that this would be a good niche to explore.

Scrolling down further we can see the Flip UltraHD Camcorder has spent 197 days in the top 100 so this would also be a good market to look into.

By moving over to the left of screen we can see all the categories. This list alone can be excellent for brainstorming niches. If we click on the Books category we are then taken to the top 100 best sellers and we can then see which products are the most popular and also which products are moving up or down the chart.

In the image above you can see that the book The Help has spent 280 days in the top 100 and is also rising up the charts. Whereas, the Diary of a Wimpy kid has moved down the chart. This could be for 2 reasons that it has become less popular or the books above it have knocked it down. This would be something you would need to consider when choosing your niche.

You should also notice that there is now a list of categories within the book category on the left hand side of the screen and you can even drill down further within those categories. You can treat each category as a niche and the categories within them as sub niches.

On Amazon.com you can also check out the Movers & Shakers. These are the products that have risen up the charts sharply over the last 24 hours and can indicate a new trend. Go to www.amazon.com/movers-and-shakers

Once again you can select your category and drill down further.

One word of warning following the movers and shakers could just be a short term trend and you may find that going in to this niche will only provide short term profits. I would always advise to sacrifice short term profits for long term wealth.

For example I have many niche sites for Amazon that earn me a modest income throughout the year, nothing that I can retire from but generally a steady income. Now with Amazon sites in particular there is always a spike in sales come November and December for the Christmas period, because people are more willing to spend their money and they have a deadline to spend it by… unless they want to upset little Johnny come Christmas day.

Anyway, if I wanted I could surf this wave trying to maximise the cash on the short term because I know come January the sales will drop again. And there lies the problem, I could spend 2 months squeezing the most money out of my Amazon sites for the short term or I could concentrate on building a business that will bring in rewards all year round. So I would advise when you’re looking to find a niche market to enter go for one that is evergreen and has consistent sales all year round you’re business and bank manager will thank you for it.

I hope you can see how powerful Amazon is for finding niche markets. In the next article we’ll be looking at another fantastic way to find niche markets.

If you’re struggling with affiliate marketing and need a proven blueprint to follow you should really check this out

Did you find this helpful? Please leave a comment below

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, how to find niche markets

After dabbling for a couple of weeks I received my first cheque this morning.

Now I’m not going to be able to retire just yet the payment’s only for $246.73, but what it proves is this stuff works. I’ve had my days where I’ve thought making money online is not as easy as the big gurus make out and to some extent it’s not.

You have to put a lot of time and effort in, whether that’s building websites, squeeze pages or generating traffic and it’s definitely not a get rich quick scheme.

For me my first clickbank cheque signifies a starting point and proof that with hard work and dedication to the cause, you can get to see results and rewards pretty quickly.

So if you think making money online is not possible, think again you’re probably going wrong somewhere…I know I have in the past.

Now, how do I pay a US dollar cheque into a UK bank account?….

I’d love to hear your experiences please leave a comment below

Technorati Tags: clickbank

I’ve had more success with PPC so that’s something I’m going to explore over the next few weeks and months… I really want to become a success at it because IMHO it’s the best way to get a huge amount of traffic fast!

I’m not going to rush it because I want to avoid losing my shirt and my underwear for that matter at the hands of Google I’ll keep that story for another post.

I’ve dabbled with PPC before with very limited success not really knowing what I was doing, so I bought a few Adwords books to answer my questions but the problem with printed material or digital come to that is it’s very difficult to keep up with the Google changes.

I needed some questions answered fast, really an assessment of whether I was going down the right track. So where did I go?

The Warrior Forum!

If you don’t know already the Warrior Forum is one of the greatest sources of Internet Marketing information online and it’s all for FREE!

I’d been a member for a while but hadn’t really used it, I’d dip my toe in now and again but I never really went for a swim.

With my PPC questions ready I posted them in a new thread and within minutes I had many replies giving me advice about where I was going right and wrong. I picked up some little gems that I’m sure some of the big gurus out there would charge many dollars for… but I got them for free because it seems at the Warrior Forum everybody likes to help.

Now obviously like anything you have to use your own judgement on who to listen to because there are some people over there from ‘the grumpy club’… you know the ones who tell everybody that internet marketing doesn’t work and the make money online stuff is all a big scam. My advice is read their comments and then forget about them, only listen to the people who give you good sound advice. Now, granted you may see the advice as positive or negative but if they have proof to back up their claims it’s still good advice and down to you which one you go with… just don’t join the grumpy club blaming other people if things don’t turn out as expected the buck lies with you…END OF RANT!

Since becoming an active member of the Warrior Forum I’ve learned loads of useful information that I could have probably paid for… but why put my hand in my pocket when I can get most of my questions answered for free.

Please Note: I am in no way affiliated to the Warrior Forum, I don’t earn any cash from recommending it, I just do because I wish someone had told me about it earlier on in my internet marketing endeavours

I’d love to hear what you have to say, please leave a comment below:-

Technorati Tags: warrior forum

Two info packed days at the O2 Arena hosted by Andrew Reynolds.

If you haven’t been to the O2 before… it’s a massive a great venue although the catering on the first day was a lot to be desired. I went with my Dad and we stood in line at lunch for about 45 minutes and still didn’t get anywhere near the front before we had to get back in the arena to see the next speaker… so I went the day on a Snickers bar and a packet of mini chedders!

Not that I’m complaining at all, the information I gained was fantastic. There were many speakers and I particularly enjoyed Andrew Reynolds, Simon Coulson and Joel Comm

I made pages of notes and have been reviewing them over the last few days and I can say that 2 days was a turning point in my business and for me personally.

You’ll probably know only too well that it’s easy in life to become side tracked. I’m no different.

I’ve gone from one thing to another chasing the money but now more than ever I’m more focused and ready for the challenge of taking my life and my business to the next level.

I’ve learnt that to achieve my goals I have to believe my goals and start living like I’ve achieved them before I have.

Sounds weird, but I heard the same thing time and time again from experts in their field who are worth multi-millions of dollars, who’ve been there and done it on a massive scale. They all said that to change your life you have to change your mindset and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

At the moment I’m making plans to take my business up a notch, I’m setting myself goals that at this moment in time seem impossible and I don’t really know how I’m going to achieve them. What I do know is that I’ll get there and I’ll get there thinking positively!

What are your dreams and aspirations? I’d love to hear them so please leave a comment below.

Technorati Tags: andrew reynolds, entrepreneur bootcamp

Technorati Tags: make money online, pocket money profit

Whatever you do don’t spend hours and loads of cash on developing a product if you don’t know who you’re going to sell it to.

This is the biggest mistake that many ‘future’ internet businesses make. And I don’t want you to be one of those.

You need to find a group of people who have a problem or what some call an itch.

And this itch is so great that this group of people will pay good money to have that itch scratched.

You need to find a group that are hungry for information and have a strong desire for a solution to their problem… and when you do you’ll find it a whole lot easier to make money than if you’d already got a product that you were trying to fit to a market.

Internet Marketing doesn’t work like that.

So how do you go about finding a hungry crowd?

My advice would be to start off with something you’re already interested in. If you have some knowledge of a subject at the start then you’ll find it a lot easier to give advice and solutions. Plus you might be talking or blogging about this subject for a long time so you don’t want to pick something that’s going to bore you stupid in a month or two.

Been there done that

So always, always always… (do you get how important this is?) find a hungry group of people BEFORE you spend any time or money on creating or buying a product.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you’d like to share them with me then please leave a comment below.

Technorati Tags: beginners, start a business

You might be wondering who Richard Pargeter is… well since 2000 I was working as a professional artist selling my paintings worldwide making a decent living.

Then at the start of 2008 things started to slow down for me and I was beginning to feel TOTALLY burnt out by the whole painting pictures for a living thing.

After all I was the only person who could do the work.. if I was ill or on holiday I wouldn’t get paid… and to be honest I started to feel like a production line churning out the work.

On July 5th 2008 I decided I was going to make a break and I QUIT… pretty scary for me but I knew it was the right thing to do.

Since then I’ve been working full time on developing my Internet Business where I’ve just started to see the rewards of 12 months of searching for answers… I’ve read a vast amount of books, training programs, dvd’s, paid for monthly subscriptions. Built website after website trying different techniques.

And 1 year on… the fog from the information overload is starting to clear… I’ve FINALLY found a system that works!

Now you won’t get any hype from the INFORMATION I’m going to share with you… I’m going to tell you like it is, without the smoke and mirrors that you’ll get from some of the so-called gurus. In fact I’ll even tell you the negative sides too and hopefully you’ll be able to learn from where I went wrong and not make the same mistakes as I did.

I don’t want you to be put off by what I’m saying, after all I’m supposed to be giving you a warm welcome to my blog… but I’ll be honest, it’s not going to be easy and you’ll have to work pretty hard, but let me tell you we’ll have some great fun getting there.

Make sure you fill in your name and email in the form at the top of the page and you’ll be the first to receive updates.

I look forward to sharing my experiences with you, which hopefully will help you build your Internet Business and start making money online too.

Make sure you check back regularly, I’ve got some great stuff lined up for you and wouldn’t want you to miss anything, okay?

Speak soon,