Absolutely! They help you to focus on your goals and desires and keep you on track. For anyone that doesn’t know what a visionboard is…it’s simple a piece of card board or maybe a picture frame, where you paste up pictures and images of the things you desire. Now days you can get a program to create a super personalized visionboard, right on your computer.
I’ve been using a visonboard for over ten years. Two years ago I went to the computer version and love it! Check it out here.
Can you make your own? Certainly! Get yourself a large piece of cardboard…the kind that teachers and students use to paste up pictures.
Then simply cut out pictures of images and people, places, words, poems, anything that jumps out at you. Look for things that truly inspire you and make you want to take action…things you feel passionate about…otherwise you won’t be motivated.
Spend five to ten minutes everyday looking at it. Put it up on a wall, somewhere so that you won’t forget…always keep your visionboard within close reach…like on your computer. Then sit back and watch the results. You can change it or add to it anytime you like. But consistency is best. And you gotta have faith.
If you’re new to ‘article marketing’…and even if you’re experienced, it’s never too late to learn what it takes to create a great author resource box. This is where you get to put your links and flog your stuff! So it’s critical that it be done right!
Here are five tips for a great ‘author resource box’:
One - Don’t go into detail about who you are and what you’ve accomplished! People don’t care! They want to know what you can do for them! Keep it short and simple when it comes to providing info about yourself. (example: Susanann – weight loss expert)
Two - Limit yourself to one link only! There are two schools of thought on this but I agree with those that feel one link is best. If you give people too many choices they get confused. They may or may not click both links, but in any case will likely come away without having made a decision. Give them one link that goes directly to a sales page for a product or to an opt-in page, if building a list is your priority.
Three - Don’t sell in the bio box! Let the sales page do that when the reader clicks on your link, or do it through your autoresponder emails…but not in the bio box.
Four - Tell them what to do! For example, if you have a free report to give away - ”to find out how you can get my free report click this link” – or something along that line, as not everyone knows how the Internet works.
Five - Give them a reason to click the link! Obvious maybe, but you need to give them some important fact or tips to take away - or suggest that in your free report there are more helpful tips, facts and so on. It’s okay to tell them a little of what they will find in the report, in the bio box…just keep it short.
If you’re using Matt Callen’s ‘linkpipeline’ to get one way backlinks…here’s a cautionary note: check the links showing up on your site. They may be totally unrelated to the site’s content. Guess how I know?
A few days ago I was checking out my personal growth blog and found a bunch of links – after every post yet – that had to do with selling mustangs!!Mustangs!! I don’t know if they were of the four legged, orfour wheeled variety but I certainly wasn’t interested in selling them on my personal growth site. These same links also appeared on this site. I can also assure you there was no mention of the word ‘mustang’ in any post on these blogs.
I thought my site had been hacked. Spent hours trying to figure it out. Finally I Hostgator security and found out the next day, from them, that the links were coming from linkpipeline.
I won’t bore you with the bad experience I had with the software provider…actually it was the tech guy that responded to my complaint and concerns. He was obviously someone with no customer service knowledge. Even though I flagged it as critical it was two days before I got a reply…sent to emails. The reply stated simply, it was still in testing mode. End of story. No apology, no interest in my problem nor all the info I provided to them.
It was not a nice experience…lets leave it at that. I came away feeling pretty disappointed. So check your links if you’re using linkpipeline.
Well, my favourite ‘to learn from’ blogger is and has been for some time – Pat Marcello at the seonewsblog.com She is full of information and helpful tips. I believe wordpress is her blog specialty, as well as SEO.
I first encountered Pat as a member of Tellman Knudson’s List Building Club over a year ago. In fact she looked at my first blog to critique it. I recall being so excited but scared that my blog was one of the ones chosen to be profiled on the teleconference. That’s another story. I was tickled though that she called it ‘jazzy’.
Anyway it was some time ago. That blog is still up. It’s not my favourite blog, but it’s my baby, so I keep it up and post on it occasionally.
The point of this post is to recommend Pat’s blog. You’ll get some amazingly good, unique and helpful information. She currently has a post with a link to a great graphics program that is free. It’s apparently better than ‘photoshop’. Here’s the link:
If you use the ‘einze author’ widget on your blog or website, and for any reason you change your author name, or it’s spelling…don’t forget to go back and get the (new) HTML code for the widget. Otherwise you are lost, your articles are lost, and the widget will say “no articles found for this author”.
I discovered this when I removed the period after my last name initial (I don’t bother using my full name…but you are required to have a minimum last name initial for all ezine articles). I was advised I had to remove the period to use the ’ezine to twitter’ widget.
This may be a dah! for some techie’s out there but it was not for me. I just knew my widget didn’t work anymore. And, my author resource box disappeared as well. All this for a piddly little…period.
