Wednesday July 25th, 2007: Issue #825
In the last issue of Kickstart I wrote about how I am reducing the number of membership sites that I belong to - either because they have failed to live up to expectations, or because my own needs have changed.
What has been interesting to me has been the ones that I wouldn’t dream of cancelling - they are way too valuable to me. There is one in particular that I joined about 6 months ago and have never mentioned here in Kickstart before.
My silence has stemmed from the fact that I really wanted to give it a good test run to see if it would give me long term results.
It has. Brilliantly.
And so I’m at last breaking my silence.
The site in question is called ‘Unique Article Wizard’ and it exists to do one thing for you - submit articles to article directories.
There are other article submission tools around, so why is ‘Unique Article Wizard’, well, unique?
For one thing it has a system in place that removes or greatly reduces the threat from duplicate content filters. The articles you submit to each directory will be ‘unique’. I can’t tell you much more about that particular benefit because I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement, but I can tell you that it works. There is a short learning curve and a small amount of work required when submitting each article, but both are well worth while.
Another great benefit is that every article submitted by members of ‘Unique Article Wizard’ is reviewed by a human before it goes out to the hundreds of article directories in the system. That ensures that UAW doesn’t get a reputation for sending out junk articles or articles on dubious or undesirable subjects. That kind of attention to detail is good for all members.
Since I joined Unique Article Wizard the program that drives it and the entire membership site system has seen continual improvement. Dr Noel Swanson, the owner and developer listens to what members want and wastes no time in implementing changes and new feature that can benefit everyone. In the last week alone there have been half a dozen significant upgrades, including the addition of 200 new article directories to the submission list (I don’t think that change has even made it to the sales page yet!).
But of course, with anything that submits articles for you, the only real question is does it work?
That’s what I’ve spent six months testing.
Any article submission service can send out articles to loads of directories for you and get you a heap of links. I can think of at least three other services. The proof though is how long those links stay active for; how long your articles continue to work for you for; how ‘robust’ the service is in real life.
Well, I think a 6-month trial is proof enough for me! Here is a selection of results from the very first article I submitted using Unique Article Wizard (I gave the article a unique title that returned no results in the search engines, so the figures shown should be ‘clean’)
Week 1: 0
Week 3: 77
Week 5: 278
.
.
Week 27: 587
The numbers are the number of results (and therefore links back to the website I mention in its resource box) for my article in Yahoo. As you can see, there has been a steady growth with, 6 months on, no decline. I can still attribute consistent traffic (and income) to that one article that I wrote and submitted with Unique Article Wizard 27 weeks ago.
And in case you are wondering, yes, it still has a good showing in Google and MSN too.
Of course, you don’t generally get rich with one article. You need to write them (or have them written for you) constantly and consistently if you want to enjoy a steady flow of traffic and the sales and income that flow from that traffic.
Unique Article Wizard allows you to make as many article submissions as you like, for as many domains as you like, using as many pseudonyms as you like, so membership, which is already very inexpensive, is incredible value.
This membership site has been one of my ’secret weapons’ for the last 6 months and now I’ve proved to myself that it works brilliantly, long term, I’m confident to tell you about it, I hope it will become one of yours too.
#~#~#
On Friday night at midnight, Lauren and I joined the line to buy the latest and last Harry Potter book.
I’ve never lined up to buy a book at midnight before, but we figured that the chances of there ever being such a book launch again is remote, so why not join in the fun!
Over the course of the weekend it has been quite something to realize that more people across the world have all been reading the exact same work of fiction at the exact same time than ever before in history.
Hannah, Lauren and I have all finished the book (Delia and Charlotte are still eagerly turning the pages) and thoroughly enjoyed every single word.
I’m not going to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t read or finished it - I would have hated it if someone had spoiled it for me - but I will say that it was an eagerly anticipated book that didn’t disappoint in any way.
JK Rowling has said that she doesn’t want to write any more Harry Potter books, but even though she is now a dollar billionaire I do hope that she continues to exercise her prodigious writing talent on other projects. To do otherwise would be such a waste.
#~#~#
Kickstart was absent on Monday because Delia and I had to go up to London for some business meetings.
While we were there I took the opportunity to take Delia to my favorite restaurant in London (probably in the world!). The restaurant is in St. John’s Wood, just north of Regent’s Park and unless you’ve been there before you’d never know it was there.
There is a block of apartments called Oslo Court that overlooks the park. Apart from their location, there is nothing interesting or noticeable about them. Certainly no sign of a restaurant.
What you can’t see from the outside is that one of the ground floor apartments is actually the restaurant. It was established about 40 years ago to serve the local community of apartment dwellers and the current family who own and run it have been there for nearly 30 years.
I used to visit at least once a week, but haven’t been back for almost ten years. Until Monday.
When we walked through the door it was like stepping back in time. Everything was exactly the same - even most of the staff. And incredibly, none of them looked any different at all.
The place is a time warp!
Actually, it really is a time warp because the menu was written in the 1970s and is still the same too! Only the prices have been updated!
I love everything about the place. The service is exceptional, the food is excellent (if somewhat rich for today’s tastes) and the ambiance is utterly unique. I don’t know of another restaurant anywhere that comes close.
It is a such a shame that getting to North London is a trek for me, but having made the pilgrimage back in time I certainly won’t leave it as long in future.
#~#~#
Delia and I were idly chatting about how the next iteration of the Internet (Web 3.0?) and future versions of Windows will probably plug straight into your brain. Microsoft in Your Mind. Scary thought.
And then it dawned on me that as I have now reached the age where a complete system shutdown is unavoidable most afternoons, it seems likely that they have already installed it.
No dear, I’m not taking another nap, it’s that new Windoze… It has crashed again.
#~#~#
When did the concept of personal inhibitions die out?
Surely it wasn’t all that long ago that people kept their personal information to themselves, so when did it become socially acceptable to share your every intimate detail with anyone in earshot?
I’m referring to cell phones.
I can remember a time when people using telephones lowered their voices - both to avoid disturbing others and to stop everyone hearing. People muttered into phones.
But as phones have become smaller, their user’s voices have become louder and inhibitions have gone.
On trains, young women share their most intimate secrets with their friends - blissfully unaware (or is that totally uncaring) that their bellowing voices can be heard throughout three carriages.
Pin-stripe besuited men discuss serious business deals and erroneously believe that the simple act of turning their head towards the window affords them privacy. Not when they are booming into their Nokia it doesn’t! On some of the city line trains these days, anyone with a notebook could make a killing on the stock market.
The worst of the lot are people with hands-free phones. Unlike the crazy people of our youth who wandered the streets muttering to themselves, hands-free cell-phone users wander around shouting.
They look just as crazy though!
______________________________________________________
An Inspirational Thought
_______________________________________________________
It was only a sunny smile,
And little it cost in the giving.
But like morning light,
It scattered the night,
And made the day worth living.
Every reference to that lovely little poem I can find marks it as ‘anonymous’. Do you know who wrote it?
###############################################
Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
###############################################
_______________________________________________________
The Quote of the Day
_______________________________________________________
James Hickey said,
“I feel very happy to see the sun come up every day. I feel happy to be around … I like to take this day - any day - and go to town with it.”
_______________________________________________________
Today’s Power Thought
_______________________________________________________
Here is a word for you: inertia.
It means the state that something is in without outside influence.
We think of inert as meaning without movement, but a brick, for example, can be just as inert sitting on your window sill as it would be traveling through space at 10,000 miles per second.
Inert simply means that unless something changes around it, it will continue to stay in the same state.
What has that got to do with action points and personal development?
For many of us, inertia becomes our natural state. We get ourselves locked in a groove like a needle on an old record (that dates me!) and although our minds keep telling us to change course, there is no outside influence acting upon us.
So we continue to do nothing, or carry on doing the wrong things, getting more and more frustrated at our own inertia, but being quite unable to do anything about it on our own.
Many people find that being laid off work, while traumatic in the extreme when it happens, provides them with the outside influence that they needed. Their lives make a massive turn around and many say that in retrospect it was the best thing that ever happened to them.
I am NOT advocating quitting of being laid of your job as an ideal solution to your inertia. Far from it. That is like our brick hurtling through space changing course by suddenly being hit be a meteor.
Instead, what I AM about to suggest is that you start to think about creating your own minor discomforts that will slowly nudge your trajectory. Small pressures soon mount up to exert quite a considerable force.
Rather than wait for the world to radically change around you, start to think ‘what ifs’. What if you ARE laid off in year? What should you be doing NOW to make that transition easier. What plans can you put into action NOW?
What if you could build a private income that was more than you make at work? What would you have to do NOW to start that process?
Your ‘what ifs’ are the nudges that you need to break your inertia.
As someone once said, ‘Keep doing what you’ve always done and you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.’
Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to keep getting what you’ve always got. There is a whole lot more out there that you can get.
Nudge.
_______________________________________________________
Fascinating Facts
_______________________________________________________
A Queen bee lays up to 1500 eggs every day, and live for up to 2 years.
That is up to 1,095,000 children per Queen.
But they don’t write, they don’t bring chocolates, they never phone and as for Christmas and Thanksgiving…