Authority Site Experiment

Author: BigFish

This is an open article on exactly what is involved when you get carpet cleaning service in your home.

You can have an idea exactly what to expect from a carpet cleaning experience whether it is from our company or another here in the Fargo-Moorhead area. You can use this as a point of reference to compare services.

Most carpet cleaning companies use hot water extraction cleaning, otherwise known as “steam cleaning” which does a very good job of releasing dirt from the carpet and flushing it out, leaving your carpet healthy and clean again. There are other methods of cleaning, but for the most part, hot water extraction is going to do the best job on your carpet.

A basic carpet cleaning service usually involves the following services:

1. Pre-treat and pre-spray spots, stains and traffic lanes.
2. Hot-water extraction and rinse, flushing out dirt and soiling in the carpet.
3. Final grooming and fluff. Carpet dries faster.

Cost: More than likely, basic charges may go from $20-$45 per room depending on the size.

A middle of the road carpet cleaning service may involve extra services for the client:

1. Pre-vacuum carpet and move furniture
2. Pre-treat and pre-spray spots, stains and traffic lanes.
3. Hot-water extraction and rinse, flushing out dirt and soiling in the carpet.
4. Final grooming and fluff. Carpet dries faster. Replace furniture.

Cost: Charges may be higher into the $25-$55 per room range depending on size and complexity of the job.

A deluxe carpet cleaning service may involve the following:

1. Pre-vacuum carpet and move furniture.
2. Pre-treat and pre-spray spots, stains and traffic lanes.
3. Hot-water extraction and rinse, flushing out dirt and soiling in the carpet.
4. Apply carpet protection. This step involves using a spray-on protector such as Teflon or Scotch Guard. Both products coat the fiber of the carpet and help reduce the chances of spots becoming permanent stains.
5. Final grooming and fluff carpet. Carpet dries faster. Replace furniture.

Cost: This service may cost more into the $30-$65 per room range, again, depending on size.

Hopefully, this information will give you an idea of what you would like done before you contact a carpet cleaner in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

About the Author: John McTighe is an entrepreneur in the Fargo-Moorhead area. He is the owner of Big Fish Service Company, a carpet and upholstery cleaning company specializing in residential service. You can contact him directly at 701-306-7026 for more information on carpet cleaning or visit his web site at Big Fish Service Company

Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1352034_27.html

Author: Derek Rogers

Pay per Click is now the leading choice for UK advertisers. Delivering volumes of targeted traffic from the outset and requiring no initial investment, it’s not hard to see why.

Whilst the benefits of PPC are widely known, they do come with a note of warning. Paid search requires an in-depth understanding of the requirements and techniques used in this unique environment. It isn’t like creating a newspaper advert and buying a space in the publication, your PPC campaigns need continuous management.

As the name suggests, you are required to pay for each click that one of your adverts receives. You can’t therefore simply let it off the leash and allow a campaign to progress unguided and unchanged, otherwise you could end up hopelessly out of pocket with no revenue to speak of. PPC is a real-time advertising platform, it allows you to adjust and readjust your advertisements as and when required; affording you the opportunity reassign budgets, rewrite ad text and include additional keywords.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of PPC

Managing a PPC campaign requires a fair degree of knowledge of the paid search model. Whilst anybody can get traffic by targeting a few keywords, bumping up your bids, putting ads on broad match and creating a huge budget, is this really the most effective way of advertising your services?

Pay per click management is all about a laser like focus. It is about understanding how to optimise successful campaigns and adjusting those that aren’t doing so well. Above all though it is about getting targeted traffic in the highest quantities for the least amount of money. This, of course, is no mean feat.

Let’s start with the dangers of PPC. If you’re new, where do you start? Do you get a book and try to learn it? Do you visit Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter and follow their tutorials? Do you ask someone in the know? Essentially, whatever you do before getting going with your paid search campaign, you need to have a fair level of understanding. Trial and error is all well and good, but it could end with a lot of wasted money and frustration.

A PPC budget can be swallowed in minutes if you allow adverts to run in broad match or don’t fully understand the bid pricing principles. For starters broad match is quite a dangerous tactic, particularly for those with limited resources. Rather than focussing on your keywords and only appearing for these terms, broad match will have your ads appearing on SERPs with little more than a passing relevance to your site and services. Fine for those who just want traffic at any cost (Amazon and eBay are two good examples), not for those on a shoestring budget.

Effective Paid Search Management

Your budget can be set with a daily limit, ensuring that you don’t exceed your means. Proper PPC management can ensure that this budget goes further. By integrating additional relevant keywords and banishing negative keywords (those searches that are irrelevant to what you offer), you help hone in your ad campaigns. Similarly, you can set adverts to appear at certain times of the day whenever you want throughout the week. So if your business is busiest in the evenings on weekdays, you can set them to appear accordingly.

Wastage is the bane of any Pay per Click campaign. You can’t simply allow it to run away from you, it needs monitoring and constant development to really succeed. PPC is an entirely unique way of advertising your business and it has to be accorded a certain respect. Just as you wouldn’t go out and create a television advert on the hop and then casually distribute it across numerous stations without any regard for audience, PPC requires planning and effective management to succeed.

Stephen Logan works as a Copywriter for leading Southampton SEO Company Impact Media. They offer a full range of search marketing solutions including expert Pay per Click Management.

Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1347081_7.html

Author: Tom H. Brown

There are many types of children’s beds to choose from these days. Actually, there are literally hundreds of choices, involving such variables as the type of material used, the style of the bed, and the shape of the bed itself. Kids’ loft beds, kids’ trundle beds and twin beds for kids are some of the many examples available. These beds also frequently come equipped with different accessories to keep your child amused even while in bed.

Some kinds of children’s beds are creatively shaped to resemble forts, castles or even automobiles. These beds can actually work to solve the all-too-common problem of getting your child to bed at the proper hour, and helping him or her enjoy bed time. Bunk beds are a classic example of style, comfort and enjoyment. Many children just love the bunk bed system, because it lets them define their own space and still have a bit of fun, depending on who’s sleeping on the bottom bed and who’s in the top bed.

Sometimes the body of the bed is attached to other accessories in the room like a closet or a study desk, as is the case with some loft beds. And trundle beds provide yet another example of a type of bed which provides more space for both sleep and play. But if your children’s room is spacious enough to allow placement of the beds in addition to other important furniture pieces, with each having its own place, then your best choice might be twin beds.

No matter which beds you finally decide to buy, whether loft beds, trundle beds or twin beds, it’s important to make sure the beds are both comfortable for your children and still convenient enough to provide ample space for sleep, play and study.

Children’s beds can be produced from a wide a range of materials, such as metal, wood, or polymer plastic, to mention some of the more common. And today you can select from not only the style and material of the bed, but you can even have beds custom made to match the exact style and quality you want.

Of course, all the types of children’s beds can be made in many different styles, so the cost will also reflect the variance in style. All things being equal, a simple style may cost you a lot less than a more sophisticated one. Loft beds and trundle beds can be generally somewhat higher in price than twin beds.

Some places where you can find the many types of children’s beds are children’s furniture stores, large department stores, discount warehouses and in online stores. By using a bit of shopping research you’ll be able to find most of the commonly-used beds like those mentioned in this article. Then it remains for you to select the bed most suitable for your space and your children’s taste!

——

Tom H. Brown is the editor and chief writer for Small Decor, the online magazine with Big Ideas for Decorating Small Spaces, at http://smalldecor.com. If you found this article helpful, you might also enjoy “Use Twin Beds for Kids to Customize Your Children’s Room” ::Click here to read => http://smalldecor.com/twin-beds-for-kids/.

Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1352126_27.html

Author: januszjanulis

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click is one of the most cost-effective advertising programs available today. Offered by many search engines, pay per click programs allow you to bid on keywords relevant to your site. When those keywords are searched on, the search engine would display your ad (i.e., a link to your site) on the results page along with natural (non-paid) search results. If you do a keyword search on Google, you’d get the natural results on the left column along with paid ads on the right. Advertisers are charged only when their ads are clicked on. Some search engines display paid advertisements above non-paid search results; others, like Google, devote more distinguishable sections of the page to paid and non-paid results. Generally, the higher you bid on a keyword, the higher your ad will be placed in search results for that keyword.

The two major players in pay per click are Google Adwords and Overture, a Yahoo! company. Unlike the usual URL submission process, which could take several weeks or months for your site to be listed, pay-per-click will allow your site to appear in search results almost immediately (ah…the miracle of money!). We routinely use pay-per-click to bring instant traffic to a new site while waiting for the search engines to index it. This site, for example, is getting around 200 visitors a day just from our Google Adwords campaign alone.

For this site, we might target such keywords as “website promotion”, “search engine optimization”, and “URL submission”. The only problem is, our competitors are willing to pay up to $5.00 a click on these keywords. Since this site contains mostly free content and is likely to generate minimal revenues, there is no way we can compete with them. We could bid $0.05 a click on these keywords on Google, but chances are, our ad won’t be shown very often as Google can make a lot more money by showing our competitors’ ads.

Alternatively, we might target less popular keywords like “free website promotion tips” or “free URL submission”. True, there will be fewer searches on these keywords, but there’ll also be fewer advertisers competing for them.

Overture has a nice Keyword Selector Tool for estimating how often a particular keyword will be searched on. Another excellent tool from Overture is their View Bids Tool, which allows you to see how much people are willing to pay for a keyword. We use the Keyword Selector Tool in conjunction with View Bids Tool to find less popular keywords that have low or no bids from other advertisers.

Google Adwords requires a minimum bid of $0.05 a click on a keyword, and Overture sets the minimum at $0.10. For a non-commercial site that generates little or no revenue, it is hard to justify paying $0.10 or even $0.05 for every visitor you get. Fortunately, there are smaller companies offering lower minimum bids. WebLaunch.us, our very own PPC program, offers keyword bidding starting at just $0.01 a click. A potential disadvantage of using smaller pay-per-click search engines is that they do not have the reach of the 900-pound gorillas. For best results, we recommend that you use a combination of both large and smaller PPC programs to get the most out of your investment.

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Thanks for reading and I wish you all the success!
JanuszJanulis
© 2003-2010 World Marketing Media, Inc.

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Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1350032_7.html

Author: Gen Wright

If you have a friend or family member that recently purchased their first home then you are probably trying to come up with a great present. Instead of the standard plant or item that they will never use, why not give them a piece of wicker furniture as a house warming gift? They will be pleasantly surprised and they’ll actually use it.

Wicker is inexpensive. The price range is from under twenty-five to a few hundred dollars. It lasts for a long length of time before it needs to be replaced. You won’t have to spend a lot of money on the item. You can find a small piece for any room in the house. Wicker is able to be placed anywhere.

You don’t have to get a large or bulky item. You can purchase anything from and inexpensive lamp shade to a clothes hamper, to storage items. There are so many items that are now made from wicker furniture that you would be amazed. If the person has registered their wish list at a major department store then you might be able to find something on the list that they will like.

If you order the item online from a reputable source then they can ship directly to the person. You won’t have to worry about wrapping the item. Who wants to wrap the gift anyway? As it is an odd shaped item you might have a serious problem doing anything other than sticking a bow on it.

There are many items to choose from. As there are so many choices, you might get overwhelmed at all the possibilities. Instead you should concentrate on the specific rooms in the house. You also want to make sure that you pick a color that is going to enhance the d?cor and not detract from it. If you’ve never been in the house, don’t worry simply pick a neutral color that with blend in with the other furniture pieces and the home d?cor.

Your gift will be unique. They will realize that you took effort and thought in picking out your gift for them. Even though people say it is the thought that counts. That is not true. If you provide a crappy gift they will talk about you forever. You don’t want to be that person.

If you and or the new home owner are conscious about the environment, then you definitely want to get a piece of wicker furniture. It doesn’t deplete from trees that take a long time to grow and it grows very quickly.

Most people never have to worry about purchasing a house warming gift. For everyone else that needs to find something but don’t know what to do wicker furniture is a great house warming gift idea. It is inexpensive; lasts forever, can be purchased online, and can be shipped directly to the person’s house. There is no need to carry and transport the item around in the back of your car.

Learn more about patio furniture and wicker patio furniture.

Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1352306_27.html

I was surfing the web recently, visiting some of my favorite sites, when I saw something interesting on Lissie’s Passive Income blog – how to make money online through freelance writing. I really should have been doing more work, but work is boring …

Anyway, I followed some of the links on her old articles and ended up here, Maximize Your Adsense Earnings, where a prolific hubpage author, Hal Licino, gave his take on making money online using Adsense. He made two interesting observations based on statistics derived from his more than 700 published hubs:

1. Visitors from niche forums rarely click on Adsense ads
2. Adsense ads tend to be generic and target visitors who only have basic to intermediate knowledge of the topics you are writing about

Mistake #1

His first point, about the visitors from niche forums, most experienced internet marketers already know about. Forums are social web sites. Using today’s buzzwords, they are Web 2.0 properties even though they originated as BBS’es way before the term Web 2.0 existed. While they exist to help people, at least in theory, most forum members actually get together online to socialize. As anyone who has participated in sites like Digg and Facebook know, members of social websites do not like to click on ads. In practical reality, they suffer from ad blindness and automatically filter out any ads they see mentally. Of course, some of them even install add-ons like Ad-Block on their Firefox browsers.

Does this mean you can never make money online from forums? Not so. Leo of Internet Marketing For The Rest Of Us wrote this post on how to make money online using social marketing. He does not actually mention forums until two pages down in his extremely long article, but when he does, he discusses it extensively. If you have the patience to make it through the end, you should also look at the resulting discussions in his comments section. You may find it quite illuminating.

Mistake #2

Hal has an interesting explanation on why forum visitors do not click on ads – because many of them are self-proclaimed experts with egos the size of a barn while most Adsense ads are targeted at newbies or people with intermediate knowledge. Honestly speaking, I have never heard of this idea before, but it makes a lot of sense.

But this idea brings up some very interesting points – what if those ads are targeted at experts? Is it possible that ads can be successfully created to target the self-proclaimed experts who are forum participants? As an advertiser or a product creator, this is potentially a valuable insight. One of the dictums of making money is to cater to an existing need. What need do these experts have? Most products target beginners in a particular niche, with only a very few targeting experts. Experts in most niches are under-served, and hence a great target of opportunity.

While all that is well and good for advertisers and product creators, how about publishers and webmasters trying to monetize their site? Is there a way for them to make money out of these so-called experts with their iron-clad opinions? Possibly. Adsense is probably not a good method of monetization. But a targeted affiliate ad, for example to an advanced book on Amazon, or some other product targeted to the advanced market that has an affiliate program, could yield surprising dividends.

But what if you are not able to find an affiliate program for a good product? One alternative option is to find drop shippers who supply that product. An affiliate program and a dropship program bear many functional similarities. But if you had been following the teachings of any particular internet marketing guru, dropshipping is almost never mentioned. On the other hand, if you had been following the teachings of eBay gurus, affiliate marketing is almost never mentioned.

Mistake #3

Many Adsense publishers do not get targeted visitors. Most social web gurus promote the idea that you should publicize your website on Web 2.0 sites. This may have been true in the old days when webmasters sold banner ads to large companies who wanted branding, and more visitors equaled more money. Not only that, but the old Web 2.0 sites also gave you backlinks, which made it possible to improve the search rankings of your site, enabling you to get more search visitors (FYI, these are the visitors who will click on your Adsense ads that target newbies).

So where can you get targeted visitors? Intermediate and advanced internet marketers know that the people who are most likely to buy products or click on ads are visitors who use search engines like Google and Bing to find information and reach their websites this way. To get search visitors you need to rank well in the search engine result pages (SERPS). To rank well, you need to build anchor text backlinks to your website.

The problem is that this is a lot of work and very slow going especially for new internet marketers. If you have just started out to make money online, a faster way to get targeted visitors is to do article marketing. So what you need to do is to write plenty of articles and submit them to a good article directory like EzineArticles.com (EZA). EZA gets a lot of traffic, and their visitors will read your articles. If they like your article, and if you put in a good call to action at the end of your article to visit your site, they will do so. When they come to your website, they are more likely to click on your ads and/or buy your products.

EZA is not the only article directory on the internet. There are many others. In my opinion, EZA’s ability to send a website traffic has been slipping. In addition to that, I have had various problems with them in the past. But in the end, I always go back to them. Why? Frankly speaking, every other article directory I have tried have had worse problems (for example, many of them do not send any traffic at all, or send only small percentage of the traffic I get from EZA).

Conclusion

If you want to make money online with Adsense, there are three mistakes you want to avoid:

• Spend time and effort getting forum visitors
• Do not target the content of your website to the visitors you receive
• Do not get targeted traffic to your website

I recently received a request from an SEO agency asking to buy links from one of the sites I operate. They told me that they had found my site (not this one) through the search engines. That site was one of my newer sites, only 3 months old, set up according to “The Keyword Academy” guidelines to make money online.

Of course, I felt flattered. After all, this meant that I had done a good enough job that someone could find that website. On the other hand, I also felt a certain amount of trepidation. I had not created that particular website to sell links (my intended monetization model was completely different), and I was not completely certain how to proceed.

However, the contact person from the SEO agency was polite and professional, so I decided to ask for more information. Apparently, what they wanted were in-content anchor text backlinks.

What is an in-content anchor text backlink?

A backlink is actually a reference from one website to another website. It would look like this, www.bing.com, or like this, Yahoo Mail. An anchor text backlink is similar, except that it contains keywords that people would use when they search for information on Google, etc. An anchor text backlink looks like Make Money Online, or Passive Income, etc.

Most webmasters and bloggers are probably already familiar with the concept of a link exchange or blogroll exchange. These forms of link exchanges basically make use of plain old backlinks or anchor text backlinks. They appear in the blogroll (of blogs) or in link exchange pages, footers or sidebars of normal html websites.

In-content anchor text backlinks are a little bit different. They appear inside a blog post or an article in a html website. Sort of like how “internet marketing“, “make money online with SEO” or “SEO” appear in this post.

They passed me both their desired anchor text and their target website. I could easily fit the anchor text they wanted into one of the articles on my site, so that was not a problem. Their target website also looked fine. It was an e-commerce website and it looked perfectly legitimate. While I still had some uncertainty about link selling, I thought I understood the risks of link selling well enough and continued the negotiations.

The risks of link selling

Search engines like Google and Bing frown on webmasters selling links. This is because the number of links that a website receives is used as an indicator of its importance when people search Google/Bing for a particular keyword. They have been known to punish small webmasters whom they believe to sell links, regardless of whether or not the accusation is true.

The problems of link selling

1. You need to keep track of when the link expires so that you can remove it (or re-contact the SEO agency to ask if they want to pay for a renewal).
2. You need to take the risk that the search engines know that the website is a link-buyer, and may punish everyone who links to that website. This punishment could range from having the value of all their outbound links discounted to having the link-seller’s website de-indexed. That means your precious website could stop producing income for you.

In the end, the sum they offered me was a far cry from what I had hoped to get. Perhaps my expectations were unrealistic, perhaps not. Sorely disappointed, I was tempted to reject it outright. However, I decide to sleep on it instead. When I had calmed down somewhat, I decided to post my experience on a webmaster forum on which I was a member to ask for the thoughts and advice of my peers. Unfortunately, there were not many replies (only one), and he basically said that I’ll need to use my own judgment, but link selling when the SEO directly contacted me is relatively low risk and he had safely done it before.

I am still far from certain whether or not to accept the offer of the SEO agency. Had they offered me $300 for their link to remain for 6 months on my website, I would probably have accepted it without question. But it was far less than that. Anyway, rather than waste all my effort, I have decided to share the spreadsheet template I created to keep track of link sales. After all, who knows if you may get a call (or e-mail) from out of nowhere asking to buy links from your website. It is just one more way to make money online.

Spreadsheet templates to keep track of your link sales. In Firefox, just right click on the link and click “Save Link As”. In Internet Explorer, just right click on the link and click “Save Target As”.

Link Selling Spreadsheet Template (Excel)

Link Selling Spreadsheet Template (Open Office)

Buying good quality standalone furniture is expensive. But cheap plastic furniture is shoddy and does not last long. So what do we do? Why, we go back to basics. We do what our forefathers did – we build our own furniture. But life is easier for us. They did not have power tools and various convenient accessories to help them. They had to rely solely on strength and skill to shape the wood they worked on. We, on the other hand, not only have the hammers and chisels and saws they had, but we have many modern power tools which greatly simplify our work.

Some of the easiest pieces of furniture we can build for our home are shelves and bookcases. Their basic design consists of just 5 or more wooden boards joined together. You can buy these boards (whether you buy real wood like pine or beech, or whether you buy fiberboard is up to you) at your local lumber yard, carpenter’s workshop or hardware shop. You will have to look up the Yellow Pages and call them up to find someone willing to supply you with these wooden planks for a reasonable price. You will also want them to cut them to size for you (although this is optional).

There are several ways we can use to joint these boards together to make a shelf, but one of the strongest and easiest methods is to use the Kreg Jig to help us make what is called a pocket hole joint. The earliest examples of this type of joint come from ancient Egypt, where ancient craftsmen drill one hole into the first piece of wood at an angle and then used a screw to join it to the second piece of wood.

So what you need to do is use the drill attachment of the Dremel Rotary Tool and drill the holes for the pocket joint using the Kreg Jig. Then you glue the two pieces of wood together and wait for the glue to set. Once the glue is dry you can put in the screws. After that you just need to fill up the screw holes with wood putty. Just repeat these steps with all the joints you need to make and you are done.

Traditionally, one would use a dovetail joint in this location. The problem is, it needs very precise measurement and cutting of both the pins and dovetails to fit nicely (and strongly). On the other hand, pocket hole joinery does not need the same level of precision. Of course, it may not as strong as a perfectly executed dovetail joint, although this is disputed by the Kreg company. They say that their tests show that pocket hole joints created with the help of their Kreg Jig are stronger than the mortise and tenon joint, which is traditionally considered the strongest method of joining two pieces of wood together.

Some experienced carpenters actually tested this assertion. They created simple furniture using both joints, then smashed them apart. What were their findings? The furniture broke apart before either joint did, i.e. both the mortise and tenon joint as well as the pocket hole joint outlived the furniture they were used to join together.

Mind you, using the wood-cutting blade on the Dremel Rotary Tool to cut the dovetails and pins is not too difficult. It’s just that there is more work to do, at least in my opinion.

You can also use the pocket hole joint to join board #3 to both board #1 and board #5 if you are lazy. It will not be able to take a very heavy weight, like your collection of dumbbells, barbells and kettlebells, but should be perfectly acceptable for your CD and comics collection. However, if you do need to keep something heavy, then you can do something like this:

You will need to do a bit more work to cut out the grooves for board #3. Once again, this is not too difficult with the Dremel Rotary Tool’s cutting blades.

Anyway, now that you have your shelf, you will want to apply the finishing touches. All you need to do is use the sandpaper attachment of the Dremel Rotary Tool and you will quickly finish the task. Then paint your shelf and it is Mission Accomplished.

The plan for the book shelf I provided is a very simplified design ideal for a first DIY woodworking project. Those who already have a few DIY projects under their belt will probably want to build other things as well. You can find many woodworking project plans on the internet. The quality varies, some are free, others are not, e.g. Woodworking Plans and Designs.

NB: The Dremel Rotary Tool is a basic power tool for beginner DIY-ers manufactured by Dremel. Those who want top-of-the-line equipment may prefer to look at the Fein Multimaster instead.

It’s the end of the year and time for many small businessmen and women to pause, take stock of their activities for the past year, and determine their course of action for the next year. Many of those in the home based business crowd take this opportunity to publicly account for their successes and failures. They make this into an opportunity to make further connections with their audience as well as a chance to motivate themselves to do even better in the future. They do their goal setting for the coming year – sometimes including their personal as well as business goals.

For example, Leo of Internet Marketing Techniques and Theories publicly wrote about his personal and business resolutions for 2010. He intends to move away from creating thin affiliate review sites to creating more value for visitors to his websites.

Another good example is Lis who wrote about her passive income goals for 2010 and also about her past and future experiments in time management for internet marketing. Those of you who have difficulty in keeping focus will find great value in reading her posts – she goes into the techniques she has tried and explains what worked for her and what did not.

In reading these posts on goal setting and time management, I was reminded of Dennis Becker’s 5 bucks a day system (affiliate link). The core of his technique is to start and complete a small internet marketing project every week which will make you $5 a day. It combines a way of thinking about your business, setting your goals and time management all in one. Although it is more of a philosophy and meta strategy than a concrete money-making strategy, I found the case study he presented (based on his personal experiences) to be particularly valuable.

If you are already making money online and successfully setting and completing your goals, the 5 bucks a day system (affiliate link) is not necessary. On the other hand, if you are finding yourself falling short of your income goals, or if you find yourself frequently distracted, then I definitely recommend reading Lis’ posts on goal setting and time management. If you feel the need for more detailed steps, then Dennis Becker’s 5 bucks a day system (affiliate link) will definitely be useful to you.

Has his goal setting and time management ebook been useful for me? To be honest, I have had mixed results. His techniques seem too simple … so simple that I frequently embellish it with unnecessary stuff. When I follow it closely, I find myself getting better results. But then I slowly find myself deviating away from it, and my results also slowly wander off course. Then when something prompts me to re-read his 5 bucks a day report (affiliate link) and I return to his system of goal setting and time management, my results return on track.

Recently, a member of a forum I occassionally visit asked this question: “Is Jason Fladlien’s 7 Minute Articles worth buying?” It seems that this member had some difficulty producing content for his website. After all, as we know, creating more content leads to making more money online (there is more to the formula, of course, but content is definitely one of the keys).

Don’t get me wrong – 7 Minute Articles is a good product. But it is not a silver bullet. I find that you need to have a lot of experience in writing before you can extract the full power of the techniques he explains. Even then, I feel that not all the techniques are applicable to all niches.

So what is inside 7 Minute Articles? Basically, it shows you how to write the same article in 8 different ways. Jason gives fairly comprehensive examples in his report. Personally, I found that for my main niches and my level of writing experience, I could only use 3 or 4 of the article templates he described.

That said, some of you are probably not interested in his article template but only want to know whether you can really write articles in 7 minutes. Theoretically, I would say “Yes” … if you are able to master the full range of techniques. Of course, it also depends how quickly you can do your research and brainstorming for your article (re)writing. The advertised “7 minutes” assumes that you have a reasonable amount of experience about the subject you are writing about and do not need to do very much additional research. It averages the time you need to write 8 articles based on Jason’s given templates from the same set of brainstorming notes.

Did it help me? Yes, it did. But I never actually did enough writing to cut my writing time down to 7 minutes per article (that’s roughly one hour for the whole set of articles, excluding research and brainstorming). The problem (which I mentioned earlier) is that I could not apply more than 3 or 4 of his given templates to most of my writing. Again, let me repeat that this is probably due to my lack of writing experience rather than any fault on his part. Nowadays, I use the techniques he teaches more for rewriting my existing article portfolio rather than writing fresh articles.

Was it worth what I paid for it? First, let me make this disclaimer – I bought this product at an introductory price of $7. It was certainly great value to me at this price. I do not know the price he is charging for 7 Minute Articles today. It would probably be too expensive at $100 and somewhat on the high side at $50. If you already have a moderate amount of writing experience and need to increase your productivity, I feel that it is of reasonable value even at $25.

But what if you are still new to article writing? I think it is still worthwhile at $7 if you can find it at that price. If not, you are better off doing some research on the internet on how to increase your writing productivity. This Hubpage on
make money writing gives quite a few good tips. A free resource that I like to use sometimes are the article templates from EzineArticles. As some of you already know, EZA is one of the top article directories on the internet today. If you are trying to make money online, you absolutely need to join up and syndicate a percentage of your articles there.