Notes on keywords, niches, and real life.

Just some notes and updates on keywords, niches, and how it really all fits together.

Been going through several trainings lately. They all have their points.

But they each have some confusion on where keywords work and why. I've earlier pointed out about some keywords are "natural". Means keywords that people use are simply ordinary to them. That turns out to be the basis of all search - find out what people are talking about and the words they use to describe them. When a lot of people use the same terms consistently, these have been named "keywords".

The trick is that these also tell a lot about where peoples' attention is at - and where they continue to look for things in certain areas, these are known as niches. Some have more activity than others - and this is known as "competition".

Now, the way search engines have looked for keywords and evaluated sites has changed dramatically over the years. This is because there has been some artificial importance to the top few sites which search engines turn up. Because Google shows up only a certain few web locations for each particular set of words. And some have gone for the short-term profit of trying to grab and hold onto these "top sites".

Meanwhile, a whole 'nother section of the web developed, called social media. These are what was formerly known as "communities" and they still are - it's just that social aspects have been high-lighted with new technology and people have de-centralized and more loosely-connected themselves.

While search engines have always simply tried to group and serve up what is really important to the Internet - they are now looking to the social media to point their way. This is seemingly a very good rating system which is almost impossible to spam - so you get routinely great content. So these are now what the search engines serve up as tops.

This comes back to keywords, because - again - real keyword use is natural and organic to the traffic that uses them.

Now, where this goes off the rails is people thinking that keywords and niches are the same things. True, niches have words and a keyword phrase might also be a niche.

But there are differences - niches really can't be "dominated". They are constantly moving targets. (I really dislike that word - almost as bad a "manifesto" - they both have some negative emotive content...)

Ok, so you can hit that moving target here and there, but you can't ride it like a bull, even for 8 seconds. It just moves too fast.

Buuut - you can keep pages in top search engine positions for "long-tail" keywords. Those are like Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" of marketing - where very precise mini-niches have almost vertical markets and change very little.

Jack Humphrey has built most of his work on this exact point - becoming an authority in these niches and then monetizing from that vantage.

You essentially create a volume of work which is all great content and develop trust with all these niche denizens. And they start looking to you as a dependable resource and trust your data. As you do, they will also click through on what you offer. And that's where you get your funding - because you either then provide them good content or get paid a commission for having a link on your site where people who trust you will click through and by their products.

OK?

Now, here is the simple point that people get waaay wrong: Niches aren't keywords. No, duh?

Niches have lots of competing pages for the same basic terms. Because a lot of people are talking about the same stuff and search engines have difficulty discerning which one is more important than others. Search engines are basically linear.

In social media, you don't have that problem, because all your content is referred by your "friends" (people you trust as authorities) and you don't really have to search for much. And meanwhile, most of these social media sites acquire some sort of search capacity as they grow. Primitive search, but it's useful.

But search engines are necessary part of life right now. They allow you to bridge between niches. You can keep track of related niches this way - or find out about something which is of interest to you, but isn't perhaps all that popular in the niches you are interested in.

So - in marketing (working at getting paid for offering solutions to people you don't particularly know) we want some tools to enable us to get our pages up on search engines and keep your pages up in the prime categories and so people can find your stuff - and then pay you for your work.

All long-tail keywords aren't the same.

Niches are high volume traffic. Plenty of demand, plenty of supply.

Long-tail niches have much less demand, much more focused supply.

What you are after is to optimize your pages for the search engines - so that they will see your pages and say they are important.

Right now (and things are constantly changing) all you need are

1. you keyword phrase in your page title
2. your keyword phrase in your headings
3. that keyword phrase in your incoming links
4. and the data on your page defines what you are talking about - your topic theme. (If you want more data on this last, look up LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing)
   

Other than that, you want fresh original content - which the social media discover and talk about. (I could go on at length about inspiration and how to improve on this - but see my other sites and blogs for this, as least for now...)

Here's the main point I wanted to talk to you about today:

How do you figure out what keywords to use to put in those headers and so forth?

You can't go by any "magic number" per se. There isn't a certain number which is big enough to go after, or competition which is small enough.

You can look in Google for certain keywords and find how many pages have that keyword phrase (put the entire phrase in "quotes") compared to how many pages have all those words - or most of them - on that page somewhere. This gives you a rough idea of your actual competition, different as the wheat from the chaff that surrounds it while it grows. You are harvesting here.

And if you have those four points in above, this will usually do the trick.

But what about those main niches - you'd think there would be more marketing possible when there are a lot more traffic?!

True enough. The trick is in what we've already covered: lots of disoriented traffic. Search engines have a hard time with their millions of pages in serving up the right ones.

Here's two tools you can use:

1. Go small first, and then build your foundation so that you can reach the sky. And it's about that much work as well. Grab a sub-niche by providing good content and optimizing it for search engines (called SEO, btw). Then grab the niche next to that. [Ex: border collie training videos, miniature collie training videos, miniature collie training DVDs, border collie training DVDs, etc.]

That's going to take some regular work, but practically, it is one of the best ways to start.

2. Find areas where there is high demand, low supply. One author (Sumantra Roy - http://www.1stSearchRanking.com) figured out a formula for comparing the numbers of requests for data against the number of actual pages across different search engines (they all use different algorithms and get different numbers of pages for the same terms). He called this "KEI" or Keyword Efficiency Index (or something like that - I'm writing faster than I can research right now...)

Some paid services such as Wordtracker are built specifically on this one feature - although they've expanded their offerings as they've been successful.

And this was what through me off this area for a long time, since I didn't know that a person could "roll your own" KEI. You can do this if you get a tool which will tell you the amount searches and the amount of pages on various search engines. One tool I found to do this is called "Niche Keyword Buzz". (And this company makes a lot of other free and useful little tools as well...)

This tool actually uses the free Wordtracker keyword service and gets the words you are interested in, then goes to Google, Yahoo, and MSN to tell you what the competition is.

You probably already know about Google's Adword KeywordExternalTool - which can give you a set of words which are related to the words you are searching for. And you can save that list of words as a text list.

Take that keyword list and plug it into Niche Keyword Buzz (or similar tool) and then run the results. Now, export this to a CSV and open it in OpenOffice (or Excel) and then add a column which does the calculations I laid out above.

Once you get the results (you may need to multiply that result by 1000 to get it out of decimal-land), then you can see that certain of these long-tail keywords have high demand, but relatively few pages. (Obviously, this needs some work - and your mileage may vary...)

But that's the point. You spend your time on niches that have a lot of traffic, but are under-served. You don't spend hours on content that gets buried by the search engines - or nobody is looking for. That is your main key to success in this area. Figure out your own KEI or hire WordTracker to do it for you. And there are other services out there.

And there you have it - my two cents. I'll keep working on this as I can and let you know, but I haven't posted here for awhile and thought you deserved it. ;)

- - - -
update (some hours later)

Above tool isn't heavy duty. It times out and has connection errors if you push it too hard. Nice start, though.

And found this definition for KEI:
The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) is the square of the popularity of a keyword multiplied by 1000 and divided by the number of sites which appear in search engines for that keyword. It is invented to measure which keywords are worth optimizing your site for and used by Search Engine Optimizers (SEO). The higher the KEI, better the keyword.
In this case we took the Overture popularity count of a keyword and the number of sites which appear in Google for that keyword. Other counts and other search engines will give another outcome.

Note that Overture isn't even able to be accessed these days (and was nearly a couple years out of date), so the above tool on that site returns nothing every time. WordTracker and others have developed workarounds.

Wish I could have one site with all this data, rather than having to scrape it...

- - - -

Further, a discussion about using WordTracker from http://www.buildwebsite4u.com/building/keywords.shtml
"Write down the most profitable keywords (KEI > 10) along with their attributes, click the link at the bottom of the page to try again, clear the basket and type in your next keyword. You may repeat it as many times as you need to analyze all related keywords.

Note:

• WordTracker assigns high KEI to words with low Count and very low (or zero) Competing. Don't target these keywords. What good would it do for you to rank high for these words if no one ever searches for them? Select words with high Count (not less than 100)."

- - - -
And a discussion of KEI and its pitfalls is here.

- - - -
Found a free (47Mb download) tool called Rank Checker, which seems like it's set to do the job I need (and then some). Still evaluating - get it at http://www.link-assistant.com

Now a point I may not have made clear in the above:

You are looking for popular phrases. Simply. But you don't start and end with good KEI keywords. It's probably more the start of what you do, then more research, and then the end of that research.

You want to get a smart niche where there is high demand, low supply. But then you check into that niche fully to make sure you can generate content for it and that you can actually monetize it and get something from it. Lots of traffic, but no buyers - well, that's a poorly-run non-profit site that can't even keep itself afloat.

Once you know your niche is something that you're interested in, something you can generate tons of content for, and an area which has buyers and does exchange money - at that point you can then start finding the keywords you need to use to generate that content.

Now, here's the interesting point: as you set up these keywords, and optimize each page, you'll find yourself ranking for other keywords that you didn't even particularly target. Remember that "in quotes" tool above? That tells you what your actual competition is. But as search engines aren't all that specific, they are also awarding you top spots for keywords you didn't really target. So, as long as you keep optimizing your pages you will actually take on the competition in areas you weren't even targeting.

Like "dog training". Too much competition. But - you can make lots of contents for "training chiuhuahua dogs", "training boxer dogs", "training collie dogs", etc. As you keep building up all these sets of pages, videos, and podcasts for longer-tail keyword phrases, you site actually moves you up the rankings on "dog training" and also "dog" and "training".

Nice to know.

- - - -
Update: 1/10
This from adyacker.com:

Try to choose words with a KEI score above 3 whenever possible, and also make sure that term has a decent amount of daily searches. Even if the term only has 400 daily searches, you’ll be able to drive much more traffic with a KEI score of 3, than a phrase with 1000 searches and a KEI score of .18.

Now I took another version of the "Buzz" tool above (called Matt's Free Keyword Tool) and used it to query wordtracker and get the data. It got down to about 88 keywords out of 100 before it "lost connection" (meaning that tool was done for the day as Google and the other SE's had called it quits for that logon - so I can run this once every 24 hours?).

I cut out all the data which was missing slots (like nothing from Google, for ex.) and save the data to CSV format.

Opening this up in Open Office, I then entered the KEI formula above into an empty column and got some fascinating results. You just don't see this stuff by looking casually at the numbers of competition and searches. And you can't get this data unless you have a program which will query the searches and match them up with the competition - and then you can calculate their actual worth.

My problem was being stuck in a keyword "Self Help" which I knew to have lots of traffic. But variations of this didn't get me anywhere, since most programs only give you another word tacked on. The KEI of these variations got me nowhere. Now, when I started using various synonyms for the benefits people got out of self help, I started getting amazing results.

Look up health, success, wealth, happiness, achievement - just for starters. Lots of traffic, tons of long-tail niches, many with decent daily searches, but few competing pages.

I took success for one such search through the "Buzz/Matt's" tool and got 33 usable high-traffic (30 or better daily hits) and a KEI over 3. Some were fairly tight niches, where off-hand I could only write maybe one article without some research - but when I see that "key success factors for hotel web sites" has 119 searches daily and a KEI of over 54,000 - you know I could set some time aside for that!

Now, I'd then take these hot KEI-proven keywords and then run them in some sort of competition checker, or just look them up on Google and use my SEO Firefox plug-in to see the data right off. (all in title, all in link, etc.) And I could then study up these guys to see what they are talking about and how they are presenting themselves to see how I would set up my pages and presentation to out-create them.

Social media just with those keywords would take over top spots, but I'd also then set the back up pages so that there is something for them to post to.

Previously, I said to make mini-webs and have your social media posts point to them. Here's the new "social media full court press":

1. Write articles - six versions of the same thing - with the same keywords. Post the best one to your blog and the others to the top 5 article directories.
   
2. Podcast the best version and post it to archive.org
3. Create a powerpoint and post to Slideshare.com
4. Link the podcast to the powerpoint and create a slidecast on Slideshare.com
5. Create a video from this same data and submit it via TubeMogul.com
6. Create a Squidoo lens when these articles go live and link everything through that lens.
7. Social post everything through OnlyWire as you create it (don't try to post all of these the same day - you could get your account pulled for spamming.)
8. Everything points to your original blog post - but now create a mini-blog summary and put it on Blogger and/or other free blog.
9. Update your original blog post with links to this other data.

And sure, this is a lot of work. But you are getting most of the above-the-fold positions in Google. So you should also be able to monetize this traffic meanwhile.

Now, back to Campbell, who got me started on this (and I only put it aside until I solved a non-Wordtracker solution, as outlined above) - he said to then find an affiliate product which you can sell which matches those keywords. So you then create the sales page first and all this promo would run straight to that sales page - if you are only doing "bum marketing".

But... his later stuff says to have this sales page simply linked to your blog page - in a key position so people can find it easily. (Top left...) And meanwhile, create an autoresponder series which supports this keyword and also a giveaway (ethical bribe) so people will opt in for your data.

That's the long and short way of monetizing right off the bat. And since we are in this to survive, you have to have some sort of way to monetize as you go. Every link on a page needs to monetize in some fashion - either as a (cloaked) affiliate link or to a direct product you sell. (Or simply have a donate page.)

Putting these links on a blog page builds your trust with them until they are willing to clickthrough on one of your links (or simply give you money in appreciation).

- - - -

Now, let's review our keyword data:

1. Paid route is through WordTracker to find popular keywords which have low competition.
2. You want niches which have decent traffic and but are poorly served, or the pages which do serve them are poorly optimized (most are). KEY POINT and PURPOSE.
   
3. Unpaid route is getting a tool like Rank Tracker to find your keywords and do the KEI on them. Alternates are the "Buzz/Matt's" tools above, and then doing your own KEI through a spreadsheet (if you have lots of time spread over short periods daily). (But I would recommend you download one of these and try out what I just outlined above to get your hands really dirty in what makes KEI so important.)
4. Get your niches and then do your full research on these to see what the supply has been offering and how you can create better stuff.
5. Find some products you can sell to that niche.
6. Pick the most likely niche and start marketing to it via social media submissions (this assumes you have a WordPress or similar blog on your own site - so they can arrive there).
7. Set up your backend to be able to deliver to this traffic as it starts converting.
8. Meanwhile, keep promoting to that niche until you have several blog posts and lots of videos, etc. about that particular keyword phrase - essentially when you've taken the bulk of the top search engine spots.
9. Then take your next niche keyword phrase - which is another variation of the shorter niche keyword phrase you want to really want to take over.
10. As you start controlling more and more of these longer phrases, you will start showing up for the shorter phrase.

That 10 point step (although the research phase is many steps all in itself) really summarizes and boils down the data I've been studying from this over-paid and free training I've been taking lately.

One more lesson tomorrow and then I'm done with all this and straight onto real work.

Once I do get thoroughly on the way to my Online Millions, then I'll let you take my course.

- - - -
Update: 10/2/08

Cute trick with that KEI tool - Rank Tracker. Unless you buy their pro version ($98) you can't save your work. And you can't copy/paste the results. So you're going to have to hand copy your data. And start over every time. Cute. Wish I had a thumbs down right now... But the program is great otherwise (and it's Java-inherent slowness).

My education in eBay continues - through the world of hard online millionaire knocks

If you thought an online millionaire course in training people on eBay was going to be easy, guess again.

Ah, the hard slogging work of getting eBay feedback up through buying things...

I was up late doing the convoluted dance of buying the remaining cheap digital downloads through eBay - did you know it takes about 6 different screens to buy each item? And even then, you have to wait until that buyer contact you some how with the download link.

Increased my feedback by 6 overnight, just in the buying process. I'll now finish off buying from the rest of the non-duplicative sellers (and non-duplicative products - hopefully), then pile in on leaving them all positive feedback. You know, karma and Golden Rule and all that.

Now, a tip: when/if you do this, keep track of three things on a sheet of paper (or notepad if you like to type) - seller ID, product name, eBay item number. Reason being is that people's email doesn't align to their eBay seller name - but they'll often refer to the product you bought or the item number (eBay always has the item number in every email they send you). This way you can avoid losing track of what you've bought and who you bought from.

Because they can only give you feedback once. You need to buy one extremely low-cost item each from many, many different sellers.

Just bought a chicken wings recipe book with complete resell rights - and the sales page said it was in the public domain... Gotta love eBay.

Was listening to an interview with Socrates Socratous - who has made his living selling digital books and information products. He advises not selling these to other resellers, but selling them to people who really want and need the data. Makes sense - do some research on eBay information products as to average price and you'll see that this market is really polluted with nonsense.

Another approach is to sell the actual item (CD/book/combo) as these actually tend to sell better than the downloads. Also, you can give away the download as a bonus (after you've listed it on Lulu.com and can tell people what it's value is) when they buy your product - just send the link to them.

But your ebook sales depends on what keywords you use in the title. Nobody searches for "WOW!!!", for instance. Buyers search and buy, shoppers look and look. Keywords that attract shoppers' attention will turn off buyers. The great thing about eBay is that it makes it much easier for buyers to buy.

Well, I've now bought the prescribed number of things to get my feedback up above 50. Now, I have to send all this feedback and get it all in (plus drop all these downloads with resell-rights into my hard-drive). And I managed to stay below $5 for each purchase. Let's see - started off with about 19 and needed 31 - so I've spent maybe $50 or so getting these. Maybe you can't buy happiness, but you can buy feedback -- cheap!

If any of these don't come through, I'll look for a few more I can buy cheap and wrap it up.

Notes from Tim Knox webinar: eBay Multiple Streams of Internet Income (Mar. 26, 2008)

(my comments in italics)

(this webinar problematic unless you have very dependable broadband - I'm trying to watch this over satellite in a rainstorm. It's about an hour long - unless you have to restart it often...)

(Tim) started with a $7 ebook and built into multi-million income in about 3 years.

After 11 years, laid off with no severance package - wife, new baby, new house, new car. Went to flat broke, sleeping on his mother's couch.

These days - no such thing as job security. Single stream of income is like keeping all your eggs in basket - wind up with a basket full of broken eggs.

Diversification, automation. Multiple streams of income on a semi-automated basis.

Best time to start a business is now - due to Internet.

Work once - get paid many times.

Roadmap:

1st income stream - ebay
- easy to start, up in an hour
- open eBay store quickly as a web presence
- promote yourself with About Me page: funnel traffic from eBay to other websites
- Internet is in runaway expansion mode; lots of buyers online, Billons of goods sold yearly.
- eBay ready-made pool of potential clients

Sell what sells
- don't follow the herd
- don't sell "hot items" people who made money on iPods sold accessories
- don't invest big money until you know you have a product that will sell (test market first and drop ship)

(When you are selling for a drop-shipper, you are actually being an affiliate - you name the margin you want to sell it for. Consignments are the same arrangements. You are a independent/freelance salesperson. When you buy lots of wholesale goods and ship them yourself, this is still the same framework. When you rent your own warehouse, then you are doing the same functions, just with a different title. Manufacturing the stuff yourself is only slightly different - but you still have to sell that product, or attract affiliates/freelance salespeople to do so.)

Start off with selling everything you don't need or use around the house. This gives you experience in writing titles, copy, photos, etc.
- you can also go to storage unit auctions/sales
- flea markets, thrift stores, consignment sales (even RV's), closeouts, bargain basement...

2nd income stream - start your own Ebay store (doesn't cover this much - diverges into info products, which he later elevates to its own income stream)

Informational products (see yesterday's post)
- can be about mostly anything.
- charge more for the hardcopy (these also sell better).
- add audio/video with it, and you can get over $200 for it. (Link to your About Me page and they go right to your download site. Meanwhile, sell dropship CD's/DVD's on ebay.)
- can be easily automated, just send the emails over to the fulfillment company. (And meanwhile, get them to subscribe to your mail-list for additional bonuses...)
- high profit margins (don't get stuck in selling resell rights to resellers for .99 each - go upscale with CDs/books/packages, and then bring them back to your website to buy downloads for much higher - $47, $67, etc. Your overhead is the same, essentially zip.)

You can hire writers to write for you.
- elance.com, etc. (caveat - get writers who know what they're doing, some have good credentials and good feedback, but no clue whether what they write is correct.)
- when you become an author, your credibility goes up, more people are likely to buy from you
- use ebooks to supplement your regular product line (example: "teaching dogs tricks" book for a pet-toy store)

3rd income stream - Joint Ventures
- partnership between two parties to promote a product and share in profit.
- fastest way to build your list
- turning point to his business was JV
sequence:

1. find successful sellers
2. approach them with your idea, and send them a free copy
3. should be complementary to what they are selling already
   
4. seal the deal (do your homework in this area)
   

4th income stream - Affiliate Marketing
- sign up to sell others products, or sign others up to sell your product
- register as an affiliate, sell the product, collect a commission (see above)
- you don't need your own product or your own website to sell as an affiliate
- you can sign up others to see for you, paying commissions as high as 75% (sales you wouldn't have otherwise - money in both your pockets, but you keep the new clients on your list)

5th income stream - Build your own website
- funnel buyers/shoppers from eBay to your site
- can build simply with templates, etc.
- add on ecommerce, etc.
- (caveat - don't use a free site. Best I've found is getting a cpanel-powered web-provider)

6th income stream - Turnkey website
- get these already set up with products, etc.
- don't get a middleman from the dropshipper

Variations on this - he mentions briefly a membership website. This would be another income stream all on its own, but you'd have to have a web-provider, etc.

Income streams:
- eBay: direct sales
- eBay store
- Info products (auctioned or through store or both)
- Joint Ventures
- Affiliate Marketing (for someone else or others for you)
- Own website
-Turnkey website

- - - -

Let's reconstruct this:
First - start on eBay and get your grounding in online sales, delivery, customer relations. Study everything you can, including peoples' websites. Take some courses in this if you can - where they actually give assignments, not just send you emails.
Second - Set up an eBay store and run your business from there. eBay will actually send customers your way, again this is a gradient approach
- you can use joint ventures here
Third - Write or commission some info products and put them on your eBay store and auction them. Goes on your eBay store.
Fourth - Expand your sales expertise by becoming an affiliate. Study up on online promotion, SEO, and social media promotion.
Fifth - Get your own website
- Can be turnkey from someone else
- Or build your own with ecommerce engine, etc.
- Add in affiliate sales (others selling for you)
- Joint Ventures
- Subscription site - sell memberships

My review of Tim Knox:

All of this stuff works. He speaks sooth. Only really misses one point, that he actually refers to through out but never specifically takes up - which I include below.

This webinar is good data, and he gives tons of his products you can buy at the end. (Which is what webinars are for - they are online infomercials, afterall.)

The overall theme is that you have several different income sources so that if one tanks, you aren't left holding an empty bag (as most jobs are).

The approach to start off with eBay is a good one, since your success here will lay the foundation for your later success. If you don't do well, then you aren't out a great deal.

If you already know a bit about website-building, then just get your own site up and running, then start funneling traffic from eBay over there. Get a good hosting provider which can handle the high demands or can scale.

Once you have your website with a good e-commerce engine, set it up for affiliate sales. Add in joint ventures. (Note: you can actually set up affiliate sales with nothing more than a few sales pages and thank-you pages where affiliates can send you buyers.)

Tim's missing point: at some juncture, you are going to have to get an autoresponder service. This is how you upsell, cross-sell, and continue to sell earlier buyers/clients you have had. You really want every person you sell to to opt-in to your mail list. Every auction you get has emails coming to you. Give them the option of becoming part of your mail list (give them a bonus ebook or other ethical bribe). Then you can sell them over and over. Build a big list and then you have the capability to announce new products to that list. And is how you can have an "instant" bestseller on Amazon - tell everyone you know and JV that product with other people to their mail-lists. (That bestseller then generates more traffic for your other products.)

Summary advice - what I've learned over the past few years

To someone just starting out: find people who have actually made their own success at what they are writing or talking about. I recently heard of a person who had actually gone bankrupt as a PowerSeller on eBay and was now pitching an expensive course on how to become a PowerSeller (!). Look up their track record, not just the "glowing testimonials" and the sales spiel.

Get a coaching program that makes you actually work at this. Maybe you could do two or three - if they each increase your income, and more than pay for themselves, you can take as many as you have time for. Pick out programs which provide the structure you need. If you need to attend someone's intensive boot-camp, then so be it.

Study up on everything you need, ask questions, look for real-world examples.

Learn to look beyond the hype. Once you understand how sales pages are constructed, you can get easily through the silliness that goes for most sales pages. Learn the scams that are going around and how to avoid them. All the free bonuses in the world doesn't mean you need to buy that product. (Even if they all have resell rights - not so good if you can't resell them for more than $.99).

Change your world-view to become an entrepreneur - not an employee. Those are the people earning the big bucks these days - self starters. Surround yourself with effective examples and inspirational books, MP3's, videos, etc. Read biographies of people who have started out with less than you have now - keep their examples in mind as you go through life. Quit watching TV and listening to radio, reading newspapers. Get your news through the Internet, and keep it brief. Use an RSS reader to give you synopses. You can't waste time, since it doesn't come back to you.

Do tons of research, constantly. Know before you go. Look before you leap. The only constant that stays the same is change. Check your results as next week, they might not be the same.

When you sell - sell only to niches. Find the demand not being serviced. Expand your niches and take on more niches and/or broaden the ones you're already in.

Convert every first buyer into a lifetime buyer.

Automate every part of your business you can. Hire people to save you time as you need them.

Shoppers look for bargains - buyers are willing to pay any "reasonable" price (reasonable to their own idea of its value to them.)

- - - -

More applications in marketing into/through social media

I've covered earlier (and these posts started this current eBay research) about how you can promote through social media, but can't market there.

The point, as many have discussed, is to start or take over a conversation. You really can make a big mistake here with ClueTrain when you say that marketing is a conversation, so just start conversations and then you've marketed. No. Marketing conversations include the exchange of goods. Social conversations establish you as an authority, and then people want to hear more about your view of things and so will look you up. So all your social promotions need to have active links which come back to you and your products.

But the site itself carries the heavy lifting. It has to convert visitors to shoppers to buyers. And social media fails as marketing as the majority of the traffic is visitors - they aren't even up to shopping. They mostly are even below taking the bait of free downloads/bonuses. They are there for the experience.

And here's where eBay as a social community comes in. It's full of buyers more than shoppers. It's built to do the heavy lifting, since every single item has a built in urgency to buy now.

Most web sites (and I'd include most item descriptions on eBay) couldn't lift a feather with a strong wind under it. Those people never learned the basics of copywriting, headlines, keywords, titles, images - nearly anything connected to a web page. When you get into marketing, your result has to be intended from the outset - you are going to wind up exchanging your valuable good for something of theirs, usually money in some denomination.

Social media has conversations which are intensely enjoyable - but that is the end product for most of these: an enjoyable experience. So these conversations are not marketing, at best they are promotion, but mostly they are either educational or entertainment. Education always has some sort of agenda - and so is a form of promotion. The best entertainment has a story behind it, and people use these to evaluate and improve their lives - so entertainment is promotion.

Social media promotions don't equal marketing. Marketing can promote through social media to get traffic, but the result is traffic, not sales or subscriptions (potential leads).

eBay is a premier social network for marketing, since every sale is a classic reverse-funnel - you only get their email after they buy something from you. And so, this is reasonably the best introduction to online marketing, online sales, and the springboard to financial independence.

And all social media isn't equal. eBay could "almost" be considered social media, except for the common ideas (and reputation) surrounding it. It rather falls into the more formal "community" aspect instead of the wide-open cowboy-scene we have in MySpace and some of the others. Just talking about structure as the chief difference between earlier social communities and today's social media.

Creating your "aura" of authentic credibility through social media and comment marketing

Social media promotion is almost too easy. It follows fads even more closely than Google could ever (which explains why Google follows social media so much).

1. Go to popurls and find out what is going up on the world. Digg is another relatively painless way to find out what is considered "hot". Google trends and Yahoo's version of this - not so much. (They're simply too dinosaurian - can't move that fast.)
2. Pick a subject area you are interested in (preferably something you know about or are interested in enough to research).
   
3. Find blogs talking about this and start leaving comments which forward that conversation. Make darned sure that your web address (or several) is hotlinked (and not your email address). Preferably use Search Status plug-in to find blogs which don't use no-follow links. (Get your link love where you can - but this isn't essential.)
4. Make sure whatever is at your web address is representative of what you represent and every single link is monetized, either through affiliate sales or direct sales through your own ecommerce efforts.

If you do this well, people think you know what you are talking about and will want more from you. They come to your web address and you convert them to buyers.

Yes, this is simply comment marketing. Something that's been done on forums for years and before that the BBSes (yes, I'm that old).

Social media just adds a great deal wider variety of formats - such as pictures, slideshows, video, podcasts, etc. So you want to link to and use a great deal of these-type media in your posts.

This is marketing, because you are using social media intentionally to bring traffic to your web address which then converts them to buyers. Your intention is to get sales of your products from the get-go. You are creating a market.

Simply participating in the discussion isn't necessarily marketing - or even promotion. Only when that discussion leads to a sale or a future sale (ie - name on a mail list) is it marketing. Marketing has definite metrics - sitting around talking in a coffee shop only results in sales of coffee, muffins, and bathroom supplies. But you aren't selling coffee or any of that - so you're getting no return on the time you just invested.

That's the difference in marketing conversations and social media conversations.

- - - -

And tomorrow I start my 20 hours of day job. Usually too tired to do much after that (slogging heavy boxes and rugs around in someone else's warehouse isn't all that much fun).

Rest of tonight will probably be in listing my old books on Half.com - again, so that I could essentially raise my feedback without having the hassle of setting up auctions.

Most of the research on eBay itself is now done. The Tim Knox interview above really tied everything into a package. My own notes on HammerTap over the past few days show the advanced (and only profitable) way to go with this.

Next Tuesday is my first coaching session. Should be interesting.

Using eBay to create an Online Millionaire - a course on the fly

Creating an eBay Online Millionaire - and writing a new online course meanwhile

Of course, all this eBay research is going to mean what I extensively revise my approach to making online millions. Because as I try all these things, I find out new things. While I've researched and written all the different ways to get something going, that hasn't happened for me - mainly due to my own lack of back end. And so the structure which I'm getting through this coaching is where it all comes to play.

The other reason for my slow start was the lack of a Napoleon Hill "BURNING DESIRE" (his emphasis). I've another post to write about this subject, over at my Modern View blog, but suffice to say that until you really get a fire under your own butt, you won't quit sitting on the smoldering logs. People, even me, don't want to move out of their comfort zone.

Means that my mental notes for An Online Millionaire Plan Course (when I get around to it) are changing pretty radically. When you get down to the bottom of this post, you'll see why. But it doesn't change the basics - just puts new light on them, as well as a different emphasis. eBay is just another route to your millions.

Keywords and building your website

Thought I'd pretty much figured all this out, but then I got this nice summary in a recent email I got from Bright Builders (which I've reformatted):

• Keep your title tag short (8 words or less) and ensure it is compelling.
• Use the keyword that you are targeting only once in the title.
• Use a compelling meta description tag. Keep it 10-20 words in length (this text will appear below the title in a search result).
• Use the keyword phrase just once in the meta description.
• Use the keyword meta tag, but keep the keywords generic.
• List five or fewer keyword phrases in the keyword meta tag.
• Avoid unnecessary meta tags.
• Build up your viewable content to at least 450 words per page.
• Use the keywords in the content naturally, so the text flows.
• Do not keyword-stuff your content, or you may turn off your visitor.
• Launch a campaign to get links to your site and be consistent with it.

Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google: "If you create a web page that is well designed, and the content is informative and is exactly what the searcher is looking for, we will do our best to make sure that your page comes up in the top ten. However, don't think that you can just throw up any page or copy content - the text must be original."

It's always the Buyers' Market - Attracting buyers versus shoppers

Peculiar to HammerTap and eBay is that you can see what keywords actually brought buyers to your site - versus shoppers who are "just looking." Buyers are what you want. And buyers already know exactly (or pretty exactly) what they want.

Which brings us to how viewers have evolved along with search engines. Keywords are hot, but keyword phrases tuned to your product are the hottest way you can have to get people right to your auction in eBay. Viewers (especially buyers) are now search engine savvy. They don't just type in "motorcycles", but will enter "Honda 350 All-Terrain". So your long-tail keyword (as if you could still find such a motorcycle) would actually get your buyers. Being tops in "motorcycles" will get you shoppers. Doesn't mean you don't use "Honda 350 All-Terrain motorcycles" if you routinely wind up top in rankings - but realize that bringing more shoppers to your site will increase your traffic, but drop your conversion rate. So shoppers actually just suck your bandwidth and don't pay for it. You want buyers.

HammerTap helps you find buyers because it shows how the keywords are related to sales (and/or lack of them). You can actually research down and find which keywords were associated for top completed auctions for that particular item. And then build your title from those keywords - only.

A point here. Each and every successful auction in eBay (barring a handful of exceptions) only sells long-tail niche items. Buyers buy, shoppers just keep shopping. Buyers are pre-sold. Shoppers are impulse-based. Buyers pay for bandwidth (and hosting fees). Shoppers suck - bandwidth. True, shoppers can be converted to buyers - but let's take the easy route: invest in buyers and shoppers might also show up. (If you invest in shoppers, the inverse isn't necessarily true.)

So your title is simply long-tail niche keywords.

Now this rolls right into everything we've already been covering in An Online Millionaire Plan. The money is in the niches, not in the mega-marts. You can take over search engine real estate for niches, but ignore trying to take over the big (shopper) keywords.

There are apparent exceptions. I was pointed to the term "gavel". And a website owner has that keyword for his site - and was trained though Bright Builders. But look at that keyword. It's a one-word niche. It won't be found under "hammers" or "judges". The guy has a site completely devoted to selling gavels - straight up and deluxe presentation kits.

But when you make a long-tail niche keyword phrase and optimize your landing page around it, then you have buyers only coming to find that item there (or accessories for it).

The strategy with eBay (and how you become an Online Millionaire through this) is to then sell on eBay as a lead generator - and then get reverse funnel buyers to subscribe to your site. You make clients of them (plus the other bidders to your auction).

Build your big site - but do it one product at a time. You don't make money selling only sizzle - people ultimately pay for steaks.

This gives us a sequence. Set your site up with a handy shopping cart - but have single, individual landing pages for each site - which are keyword optimized (including theming) for that long-tail keyword. Every single link on that page is optimized, including all affiliate links to similar products. But unless they are going off your mini-web to an affiliate, don't give them an option to go somewhere else.

(One strategy is to give them a link off site - but have this with a giveaway that they can subscribe to a mailing list to get... before you let them leave - and then send them to a search engine page with your links on it. Idea behind this (not mine, but still clever) is to give them a back button right on your site - but then expose them to more offers, so you are servicing your customer, but it's on your own terms. I suppose you could send them to your list of auctions, which would put them back on eBay...)

Mastering Trends - versus "following the buzz"

"What's hot" is a misnomer. The flame isn't the hot part of a fire - the heat is actually given off by the coals. Following the "hottest trends" is a sure route to ruin. Because this is where everyone is heading with their own marketing.

Recall the datum of Product Life Cycle. At the beginning there isn't a lot of supply, but the demand is increasing. Getting into the market right now will cost you a bit, but there is a lot of money to be made because demand is outstripping supply. At the peak (when it's finally noticed as "hot"), the supply is wide open with lots of distribution points - and profits are thin, mostly in the Big Box stores who already have customers (creatures of habit, remember) who shop there - and buy other stuff while they are "shopping". The third section is where it goes into a niche product. Most people probably already have that product, but will be looking for accessories or spare/replacement parts. (Late adopters are another subject entirely - but another reason to sell after it's "cooled off" a bit. Take advantage of others creating the market for you - it's their advertising dollars, not yours.)

You always, always, always want to find high demand, low supply. These only exist on the two sides of that peak. You don't follow fads and make any money at it.

But trends are not just "what's hot".

Trends have human social reasons for existing. They do not burn out like fads and "hot" items. Trends can be tracked. Fads are a blip on the screen - straight up and straight down.

Christmas sales patterns are repeating trends - as are most holiday-shopping "seasons." These are recurring waves of sales with peaks and valleys. On the Internet, these waves have been getting bigger every year since the Internet started - which can be said for brick-and-mortar sales during the same periods.

[Pure controversial statement: Global temperatures are natural trends, they shift every thirty years or so from hot to colder and back - within the realm of a few degrees. Al Gore and his "prestigious" awards are a fad - and he got those awards after the hottest year on record (1998, per NASA) in the last few decades. ]

Trends drive product sales. You look for trends first and then the products which are part of that trend. Only then can you source for profitable individual items to sell.

Now, environmental awareness is a human trend. And "green" products are becoming more and more common. Stuff made with recycled materials, or use less energy. Or converting to biofuel (like diesels which can run on vegetable oil - not expensive ethanol).

Boomers are a trend. And Europe has a worse boomer problem than the U.S. - their immigration problem is also much worse than ours. Boomers want to retain their health as long as possible with a high disposable income to buy it with. Gen "Y", Gen "X", etc. have differing wants and needs - but they aren't as big a demographic and won't be.

There are eight drives (mostly) for trends:

• consumer/customer/client wants
• consumer/customer/client needs
• lifestyle changes
• (shifting) demographics
• new technologies
• innovations
• long tail niches
• economics

Notes on these: Wants are different from actual needs. The old saw is that "we buy what we want and then justify it to be what we needed." Food is a need - "fast food" is a want. New technologies are bringing tons of new products to view - and new versions of old products combined with newer technologies. Any niche you have is splitting as it grows into long-tail niches.

Now you don't have to be trendy or a trendsetter to study and research trends. It doesn't take more than HammerTap and the media you already use to study trends and know what is going on (although once you get the gist of how this is done, you'll start seeing trends in every thing that comes across your lines). And this should be part of your regular research habits.

Here's three trend-spotting websites:
http://www.trendwatching.com
http://www.influxinsights.com
http://www.trendhunter.com
Some of these are "interesting" to say the least - themselves verging toward fads, but these should get your head out of any rut about what you think acceptable trends are.

What you are doing is to set aside your own personal biases and just observer buyers buying. You have to get around whether you think that trend makes sense or not, or whether you'd personally buy it. Forget "what's hot" and look for "what's selling". Just look down your magazine racks and you'll see what is being pushed by advertisers, based on their market research. Also, look for trade publications - find the trade publication for your product by typing in your product (in quotes) and then "+ trade publications".

Once you find how trends are moving, get some sample products (especially as you check through HammerTap) test-market them, and then sell them if they are profitable. Thinking creatively will give you so many more ideas about what could be sold. Checking your percent completed will give you an idea of these. However, note that you might be ahead of the curve and you will have few auctions - so the studies may not support it.

But this is where last year's auctions come in. Look for similar products that have sold in the past and this will give you some idea of how it will perform.

By studying and taking action on the trends you notice, you will actually put yourself a bit ahead of the curve - a very profitable area if you predict it right. What you will notice that these 8 points above will cross-connect to give very long-lasting trends. (New technologies for boomers...) Getting into a product line first will give you great products until that line gets saturated. You can continue selling it as a regular item on your website, but by then your auctions will have new items you are testing and buying by bulk when they do prove out.

Idea here is a simple set of basics:

• Start trend-watching as a back-of-the-mind habit.
• Look for products within that trend.
  
• Test-market and sell new products for a rising trend. (Or look for accessories or updates to supplement a declining trend.)
  
• Trends morph and change - so your trend research and product testing need to be constant in order to maintain maximal profits.
• Keep an eye out for repeating social trends such as buying seasons. Keep up with the advertising schedules of the Big Box stores. Remember, individuals move faster than the big stores. Be aware, be prepared, and be insanely profitable.
  

Holiday selling doesn't mean redecorating the trees in the front yard.

Christmas and other holidays repeat their trends (above) and are insanely profitable if you plan for them. By researching last year's shopping statistics, you can expect to improve your preparations for this year's sales. Per report, more and more people are venturing online to shop. One report has it that over 40% of buyers intend to buy something online this year.

Biggest sales days: (in order)

• Dec 13th, Dec 4th, Dec 11th

Biggest traffic days:

• Dec 13th, Dec 12th, Dec 11th

Biggest conversion days:

• Dec 12th, Dec 11th, Dec 13th

Biggest week:

• Dec 4th - 10th

This doesn't mean you only sell and prepare for Christmas - but you can and should research for sales days (Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, etc.) which are global or American peak sales points - and then figure out what you can sell.

Once you have a holiday shopping period nailed, you can then look through top categories for 90 days worth of sales through that period. Look for maximal success rates and prices.

You're looking through your analysis to find a few key things:

• what auction type to use
• what ending day (and hour) will be best for you
• how long a listing duration should you use
• is there a starting price that creates a bidding frenzy
• keywords which produce the best hooks
• listing features which work (and ones to avoid)
• what's the most effective category to put your auction under

All these are answered in the HammerTap program - and I really recommend you study their tutorials from their forum. That's the homework I've been doing for these eBay posts - in addition to everything BrightBuilders has and my own collection of ebooks.

What you do in searching past sales is to take snapshots of three-month and then weekly periods to see how these change over time. Look at the dates above. Now people start shopping for Christmas in October - and don't forget about Black Friday, as well as the shopping after Christmas when there are probably less competitors (who buy the idea that no body sells after Christmas). In short, don't neglect to turn over every rock in your search for the best time to sell.

Your mileage will vary depends on your own research. (And every single item performs differently.) But ny getting these snapshots (and HammerTap saves each report so you can jump between each one), you can see trends. As you keep up such research, you can then find other peak selling periods for your particular item. Again, look for completed sales versus average price. Where there is a high competition, these will change. But through your own analysis, you can find where the peaks and valleys are.

This post shorthands the subject quite a bit. And if you've not seen these forum presentations, then I've got you completely mystified. Once you see the power of this program, you'll be hooked like me. (But I, on the other hand, have already invested in this and have to recoup that investment - so you can see my own necessary excitement in this.)

Another approach is to search through categories to find best-selling categories - then pile through these to find what items in those sold the best last year. Chances are, if they have new items this year, they'll have similar sales potential. (But don't go out and buy a container of these things without doing very thorough research first.


And what does this say for your SEO efforts and your social media promotions?

Frankly, a lot. Ok, so I don't know at this time that when you optimize a sales page using your keywords for eBay that this translates right across to top search engine real estate. But figure this - maybe you don't particularly have to depend on search engines to have people find your site. Get the top for that keyword in StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit - and then have these social networks send you traffic. Maybe you only get shoppers - but on the other hand, if you are consistently setting yourself up as an expert in this area (particularly if you are posting articles and making Squidoo lenses, as well as comment marketing), people will be following you in Twitter and these others in order to see what you are talking about these days.

But you go ahead and social promote every single product sales page you create. Again, your sales page will probably be written as a product review page - and then have a link to your "buy this product now" page. (And wouldn't it be great if you did a comparison page and sold either all of these products or were an affiliate for each one/some of them...)

Why I tell you constantly about social media promotion is that either social media are replacing search engines, or search engines are going to expand their use of social media to find better content to display. Either way, if you aren't on the social media bandwagon, you won't be able to keep up in the profit parade.

But if these eBay keywords are the same - and remember, they are long-tail niche keywords - you are going to get buyers coming to your specific pages to find what they are looking for. And while they are there - they can bookmark your page and sign up for your mail list and become your client.

That's the underlying basic to everything we are covering here. You want to attract buyers who come and spend money on your services (or a company you are an affiliate for).

Again, eBay or not, you'd build your main page first (an ecommerce engine of some sort) and ensure it has a mail list subscription opt-in (and all the necessary analytics connected to it) and then start building individual product pages, which all link in and give link-love to your main page. You are building a mini-net, one product at a time. Now your eBay sales drive business over to your product info page - which sends it to your ecommerce page. As you continue to add products, they build up your page rank and bring you more attention from the search engines. Videos and slidecasts and blog posts and Squidoo lenses will also bring traffic to your product pages. Hopefully, you are attracting buyers in all this traffic.

eBay, then, is a simple reverse-funnel lead generator for mail-list subscribers - which you can then up-sell and cross-sell over and over and over. When you plug this into your existing online marketing structure, you build a devoted and profitable client-base. And that is how you become an Online Millionaire. And any millionaire will tell you that you diversify your income sources - so eBay is only one way to get buyers and subscribers. (Boy, that paragraph would make a nice ebook, wouldn't it...)

Getting your feedback rating up quickly - an investment.

I've run across a simple feedback method - essentially, find low-cost items that are ending soon with no bidders. Search eBay and find:

• Items with no bids on them.
• Items that you want!
• Or, items that NOBODY would likely want (better chance of being the winning bidder!)
• Dutch Auctions (will usually guarantee you a winning bid)
• Auctions that are ending soon.
• Auctions that allow payment via credit card (quick transaction)
• Sellers with a high rating!

Then, when you buy the item pay immediately - and ask for feedback with your email.

But watch out for high shipping. Don't even bother bidding if they have something far over the normal shipping costs. (Oh - and if you are smart, you can re-auction that item, or give it away as a bonus...)

You do want to get your feedback rating over 50 as fast as you can, which can come from sales or buying - so invest in your feedback and it will do you well.

Note: a little product research can net you some tidy profits by buying cheap on eBay and then turning around to sell it high - based on what you already know in this area. Lots of people buy right on eBay and turn around to sell it. So your investment in feedback can double up when you sell it for a profit.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Question Pages

Here's another tip. If you're selling a lot of something, have a FAQ page which answers all the routine questions. Now you can always tack this onto the bottom of your Review page as well, with in on-page link to that section (and another one there back to the top). If you do a standalone FAQ page, it should be worth your social media promotion - and grab its own search engine real estate, sending its link-love to your main page with a no-follow link back to your sales page for that item.

The efficiency of a FAQ page is to save you time in answering questions. You answer the first question and tell them that there is far more information on the FAQ page. However, by including the FAQ at the bottom of the sales page, you can save yourself the emails.

On the other hand, being able to communicate with your bidders will actually give you a personal contact, the chance you need to build the relationship. And your email signature will give them a chance to see your other sites - as well, sending them to your FAQ page (or back to your "more information page" about that product on your own site, you have a chance to make a direct sale or get them to subscribe to your mail-list (give them a bonus, etc.).

Your credibility and your articles can increase sales

Increasing credibility of your website can be done by hosting your own (or others') articles on your own site. If you can link to articles about this product or related products right on your own site (which then link right back to related sales pages, plus specials) will then tell your customer that they can come to this site for more than just buying a product, but actually how to use that product in their own life. As you do research on this area, you can collect up data and then write 500-700 word articles handling a specific point about that product - with hot links to any product you mention by name.

Oh - and did I tell you that these articles then are social promoted to get you more link-love?

(I wouldn't, however, go so far as to host your own forum, since you have to moderate these to keep out the spammers and riff-raff.)

Other uses for eBay - why become a salesperson.

This gives you an overall experience in selling stuff, becoming a merchandiser. That is all Sam Walton did when he founded Wal-Mart. (His first store was a failure, by the way.) But Wal-Mart is constantly finding the sweet-spot, how many people will buy what at what price. Same as eBay particularly when you use a key research tool like HammerTap.

Our culture currently develops a very low appreciation for salesman in everyone. (Right down there just above lawyers and rocks.) So people simply don't appreciate this very highly-paid tradition and occupation. (See Earl Nightingale's "Strangest Secret".) But as you get over this trained-in aversion, you can then build up your back-end to support this vital, highly-remunerative activity.

That is the essential that I've had to overcome as part of this Online Millionaire Plan. And probably one of the reasons I stuck into my product creation activities instead of building my back end when I started out.

But however you do it, forcing yourself to get in there and sell stuff is good for you. On eBay, it's a bit easier than going door-to-door, since you don't have to meet people face-to-face and can simply do it from a number-crunching aspect through HammerTap.

Now with the proper tools, eBay doesn't have to have a burn-out aspect. Drop shipping and HammerTap take a great deal of the stress out of this area. You want to be efficient with your time and earn the most money from your listings.

• Not selling (50% of most auctions currently complete with no bids right now) isn't an option you want to have.
• Having to package and ship stuff personally can get tedious.
• Spending a great deal of time finding salable items at yard sales and auctions - hoping you can get a good return from them - is a bit stressful and can load up your garage with some very interesting non-moving items.

If you organize and get the proper tools, none of these common aspects of eBay auction work should bring you down.

My key point in this is to get a coaching program to get you over the hump of selling on eBay and helping you build your backend to make it all happen. The program I dropped into, Bright Builders, has a top track record in this area and a website with so many different resources it can fill several CD's with that data.

But it's pricey - which makes you commit to making yourself a success with it. Sure, they guarantee you'll make it all back. Know at the outset, though, that YOU are the one who is going to getting that work done.

Once you've swallowed that pill of getting yourself to sell to make back the money you just loaded up your credit card with - then you can make some forward progress.

And that's why I recommend it.

Is all eBay sales this number-crunching effort?

No. And you don't have to be an accountant to succeed in what you're doing. But my enthusiasm for HammerTap is that anyone can now find exactly what sales, what time to sell it, what keywords to use, what hour to sell it, how long to sell it for, what special mark-ups work and which don't, etc. etc. etc. You just can't get this data to this degree and quality by looking up completed sales on Ebay and then guessing.

So get a bit twisty in this and get some real analysis going. Sure HammerTap costs by the month. But then - if you're making monthly income, it tends to pay far beyond your monthly investment, doesn't it?

It's the road to power selling - and their own studies show that existing power sellers have improved their own sales by 40%, while cutting their listings by 50% - making more money with less time. Neat.

- - - -

What's next?

I've basically exhausted all the stuff in my library and the forums at this point. Now I need to practice and put all this stuff to use. I'll also be getting into my own website and posting some stuff shortly (today) in order to have a rudimentary site ready to send my clients to.

That's what you can look forward to in my next post...