Friday December 7th, 2007: Issue #868
A big warm thank you to everyone who has helped me to help critically and terminally sick children this Christmas.
You may remember that on Wednesday I mentioned that I’m still selling my ebook, ‘How to Build Your Own Mastermind Group to Catapult Your Success’ in benefit of the Starlight Foundation - an international charity that grants wishes for seriously ill children. I’m delighted to say that quite a few generous Kickstarters have now bought the book and so I’ll be able to make a nice donation to the charity this Christmas. I’ve already been on the phone to the Financial Director of the Starlight Foundation.
People who are not inside this world of Internet marketing can often get the impression that it is all about hype and flim-flam, scams and questionable ethics. I guess that like any business, that kind of stuff is out there, but there is a wonderful side to it all too.
Internet marketing has helped many many people to meet bills that they would otherwise have struggled with.
It has helped a huge number of people who could never have afforded to set up an offline business to start something online that has brought them a good part-time, or even full-time income.
It has even created a whole lot of new millionaires - although to be honest with you, those ones are the exceptions.
What I find particularly gratifying is that the power of Internet marketing has also allowed me, and a lot of other people who think the same way as I do, to raise a lot of money for some really deserving causes.
Since I began raising money for the Starlight Foundation by selling an ebook for the tiny sum of $7.50, over $5000 has been sent to them. That’s five grand that wouldn’t have been put to work helping children who really need it without the power of Internet marketing. http://ebooklets.kickstartdaily.com/mastermind.htm
My other charity appeal, the Rotary Club of Sidcup Lifestraws Challenge has also raised thousands of dollars and continues to receive donations through the web page I created for it at http://www.kickstartdaily.com/lifestraw/
It makes me proud to be a part of the Kickstart family.
#~#~#
One thing I’ve never been very good at is creating Google-friendly sitemaps for my websites.
XSitePro does the job for you, but a lot of my sites are not created with XSitePro because I actually enjoy the process of hand coding! (Yes, I’m a geek. No apologies!)
Google’s XML-structured sitemap protocol has now been accepted by both Yahoo and MSN, as well as a few of the minor search engines. It is a simple way to tell the SEs what pages are on your site, when they are updated and where the SE spider should look for them.
If you want to have all of the pages on your site indexed, and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you, an XML sitemap is pretty much vital these days.
I sat down the other day to try to write a php program that would spider my sites for me, make a list of all the pages that should be SE indexed, and turn the whole thing into a well-coded XML sitemap.
After about an hour I had a script that spidered my sites. It worked, so I went to Google to get the latest XML protocol that they are using.
I found what I was looking for, but I also found a site that stopped me in my tracks.
Someone had already created exactly what I wanted and much much more.
There is a free option that you can run from their site, or a more advanced paid option that only costs $19.99.
I may love the challenge of coding PHP, but I’m not completely stupid (careful how you respond to that). For less than $20 I wasn’t going to spend another minute reinventing the wheel!
I bought the script.
There is an affiliate program, but as I haven’t had time to test the script out yet, I haven’t joined.
I can’t yet say that this is a recommendation, but if, like me, you’ve ignored sitemaps for far too long,
here is the straight link to the site, offered in the hope that it might prove useful to you: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
#~#~#
I’m very excited today.
In an hour or so I’m heading up to London to host today’s London Lunch.
Thirty Internet marketers of all levels will be descending on a restaurant in Covent Garden to spend hours and hours talking about our favorite subject.
With such a big turnout, this should be one of the best lunches yet.
If you are in the UK, or can easily travel here (one of our lunchers today is flying in from the Netherlands) and would like to be informed about when the next London Lunch will be held, please sign up for the announcement list at http://www.london-lunch.com
_____________________________________________________
An Inspirational Thought
_____________________________________________________
Affirmations are the magic words of power.
Whatever else you affirm to yourself today, try adding
these:
“Today I smile at everyone I meet.”
“Today I look for the positive in everything.”
“Today I am excited at what I can achieve.”
And today you will have a great day.
###############################################
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
_______________________________________________________
Aristotle said,
“The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.”
_______________________________________________________
Today’s Power Thought
_______________________________________________________
Today’s power thought is a creativity exercise with a big difference. Other creativity exercises have been designed to free up your imagination and release the channels on your mind through which your creative inspiration can flow.
Today’s exercise - and I urge you to please spend a moment doing it - is designed to unblock a very different channel in your mind - your success channel.
Let’s start by asking a simple question:
What would it take to make you a success?
If you stop to think about that question, it isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds.
We all, in different ways, strive to be successful. That is a driving force in our lives. But, how many of us actually ever take the time to define what we really mean by success.
We can all recognize it in others, but what does it mean to ourselves.
I’d like you to take a short break from reading this newsletter and spend one minute - yes, just one minute - in writing down what you mean by being successful. Not success as it applies to someone else, but success as you would apply it to yourself.
And before you start, don’t cheat yourself by writing something simplistic like ‘being happy’ or ‘being rich’ because my next question would then be ‘why?’
:
:
:
Did you do it? Was it difficult?
It should have been.
You see, when success is a vague concept, we all know in which direction it lies - it is somewhere ahead of us. But the road is shrouded in fog, and the pathway is twisty and treacherous and filled with hurdles and obstacles.
We keep the hope alive that somewhere at the end of the journey things will get better for us - but for most, they don’t. The fog never lifts and the road never ends.
But if you took that minute I asked of you and honestly wrote down your own personal definition of what it would take for you to feel that you are a success, you will have drawn a destination on a map. You have allowed the sun to burn off the fog.
When you know where you want to get to, planning the route becomes easy and fun.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” Laurence J. Peter.
_______________________________________________________
Fascinating Facts
_______________________________________________________
Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons couldn’t resist ’signing’ his star character: he built his initials into Homer.
Homer’s hair is an ‘M’ and his ear is a ‘G’.