Well folks it's been a while since I last sent you through a post, been very very busy! I thought it was about time I gave you an update of where I am at with my weight loss.

Drum roll please….. I now weigh 97Kg's (around 213 pounds). I've lost around 8Kg's since the 4th June to today, so I am pretty happy with that.

What am I doing you may be asking? Visiting the Gym every day (yes I mean every day). Today is my 56th straight day going to the Gym, and I have no doubt it's this dedication and hard work which is helping me dramatically.

I am eating very sensibly, with the occasions bit of "fun food". With that said it's amazing how used you get to eating regular healthy food, and more importantly how bad you feel after you eat a lot more than you are used to, I very much dislike that bloated, "full" feeling, and never want to go back to the way I was.

All up I've lost a total of 35 Kgs (77 pounds) and I can tell you this, I am not ever going back to that place again.

You know what's fantastic? Going into a shop and buying a size L T-Shirt and knowing it will fit. Now I can (and do) wear the latest fashions and not just the reject "fat man" clothes I used to have to wear. Another 17Kgs (37 pounds) will see me around my goal weight, and I full expect to be there by Christmas time.

If your overweight and want to lose weight, drop me a line, I would love to help you out and give you some ideas on how to do it. Better still leave your questions here, and I'll answer them.

Cheers for now…

Tim

I found this great little free report by Rich Schefren. He talks about attention spans and focusing on goals, and doing what you need to do to succeed. Most importantly he tells you that he believes that things are going to change dramatically in Internet Marketing, and a lot of the old Marketers are going to fade away. Personally I am all for those Marketers peddling junk products with false promises to leave the market!

You do have to leave your email address to get the report, but it's worth reading.

Check it out…

http://www.strategicprofits.com/doctrine/

No, this is not an affiliate link, and there is no hard sell there (or one time offer, etc). Just a decent read. There is even the chance to win $25K by promoting his site, but this is not an attempt to enter the competition by me. Rather, this is just me sending out a link to you and urging you to read what he says. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Have a read, and let me know what you think of the report.

Cheers
Tim Buchalka

As you may know, if your a regular reader of my blog, I am a software developer. And in the spirit of giving, I want to use my skills to generate software tools for Internet Marketers (especially beginners, but no just limited to newbies).

The plan is to get as many people as possible to drop me a line with exactly what software tool they would find handy, and I'll write it, and release it, free for everyone to download and use, with no strings attached.

Interested? Visit my blog and leave a comment with details of the particular problem you are having, and how you would see the software fixing it.

Perhaps it's something that would replace a manual process you are doing now that takes you hours to do.

Perhaps it's software that would do something that you just can't do at the moment. Any and all ideas will be considered, so please get those ideas into me now. I plan to start in the next few days, so don't delay! Don't forget, it will not just be you that benefits, but lots of people, and I'll be sure to credit you in the program (and your website).

Now we have to be realistic here, I'm not going to be able to develop an operating system to rival Windows XP overnight (2 days minimum will be required!), so it would be good to consider little programs that do useful things first and get them released as soon as possible, and then we can move onto bigger programs.

My goal will be to develop as many programs as possible that automate all those annoying manual processes that collectively can take hours out of your day, if your doing them manually.

So drop me a line today (you can contact me on my blog if you want to remain anonymous) or just leave a comment.

Let's work together and make a difference today. With your help we can achieve a lot!

Remember the software will be released and be free to use, with no strings attached!

Be sure to subscribe to this blog to stay informed of developments!

Hope to be talking to you soon.

Cheers

Tim Buchalka

So, your working hard at achieving your goals, creating some momentum, and learning your trade. You're probably holding down a full time job and trying to balance that while you get up to speed, right?

Don't quit, it's the worse thing you could do right now.

I got a great email from Stephen Pierce with a small, but really concise 9 page report on why you must not quit. It really struck a chord with me, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Now before you ask, no it's not an affiliate link,and no, it's not an opt-in, it's nothing like that. Just a direct link to the PDF file so you can read it.

For anyone who's thinking that things are getting a little hard, or are questioning where they are going, read this report, it could make all the difference (yes it's that good).

Stephen Pierce Do Not Quit Report.

Until next time….

Tim Buchalka

Have you checked out Squidoo?

This is a relatively new website (recently coming out of beta) that is getting rave reviews from Internet Marketers (who are aware of the site, and many are not) . This site it getting a great reputation as a quick and painless way to drive web traffic, and after spending some time using it over the past week, I would tend to agree that it really is a force to be reckoned with.

What if I told you that my page on squidoo rose to the top position in Google for particular keyword phrase in two days flat (this from a brand new page that had never been indexed before). Impressed? I certainly was.

Let's talk a little about what Squidoo is. It's a way to get a web page up and running very quickly (no html/programming experience needed). Squidoo refer to a web page as a lens. Unlike other sites of this nature, they encourage Internet Marketers. The only pre-requisite is that the content on the lens should be unique, and not just be a re-hash of an existing web site.

This is a particularly important point for affiliate marketers, who might be tempted to include only a few words, then have a redirect, via an affiliate link to the product site hoping to make a few quick dollars. Doing this will likely get your lens deleted.

Squidoo has a large number of modules which you can add to your lens automatically, including links for Amazon, eBay, a GuestBook (to get links from other websites or lens), and many more. In additional Squidoo automatically adds Adsense to your website, and allows you to share in any profits made when people click a link on your lens. You also get to share in the revenue from the other modules. Alternatively (and this is what I have done) you can donate all your profits of this nature to a charity, all done automatically for you.

You can also "roll your own" content, and include your own html (although there are a few limitations). But it is possible to add functionality not available on squidoo using this method.

For an example, check out one of my sample lens I setup on ways to increase web traffic on squidoo. If you scroll down towards the bottom of the page, you will see an opt-in box where people can subscribe to my mailing list. The html for this page actually resides on my server, and is loaded automatically by squidoo any time you visit that lens.

Publishing the page on squidoo is very easy, most of the setup is point and click, and the interface is very clean and useable.

Because the web site is fairly new, a lot of marketers are not familiar with it, so this is a golden opportunity for you to sign up and setup a web page.

Check it out and let me know how you find it. If you would like me to post a follow-up article on some great ways to get you into the search engines quickly drop me a line.

Until next time….

Tim Buchalka

LifeTips.com contacted me a week back and asked me to appear on their weekly radio show. I did this a few days ago, and you can now download and listen to the interview at http://www.webmasterradio.fm

Unfortunately they got the name wrong on the web site, it's Tim guys, not Tom. Luckily for me they got it right in the interview.

Anyway have a listen and let me know what you think? I start talking about halfway through the audio, and I give away some useful tips for people trying to break into Internet Marketing.

The Interviewers raise some interesting points they raise about determining traffic once I have finished talking (after the break).

These comments prompted me to write the QuastCast and Alexa post right here on this blog.

As always your welcome to leave a comment, or follow up with any questions.

Until next time…

Tim Buchalka

I've had lot's of communication recently from people stressing because their website is not ranking at all or "high enough" in traffic ranking sites such as Alexa.

Alexa's own faq, mentions that they currently index around 11.2 million web sites. PC Authority, released an article in November 2006, stating that over 100 million websites were on the Internet (although only half were active). They also state that new websites are coming along at a rate of 3.5 million websites per month.

So Alexa's popularity index is effectively representing around 10 to 20 percent of all websites on the Internet. In other words, Alexa is showing you the popularity of 10 to 20 percent of all websites on the Internet. Hardly a true representation of the majority of web sites, is it?

And the reason why they can't be more representative of the majority of websites? Their data is only captured if the visitor to a website has a toolbar installed in their browser (this information is then sent back to the "mothership" to be included in traffic rankings).

It get's worse though. The toolbar can only be installed on Microsoft Windows, and on Internet Explorer only. Sure, there are plugin's that you get download that will display the Alexa Rank for a particular page, but the data capture only works on one platform, and one browser!

If you believe the numbers, Internet Explorer at best has 80% of the browser market (probably a lot less) so another 20% of the Internet community is excluded from the rankings. When you factor in "non-windows" users, i.e. Macintosh, Linux, devices such as PDA's, mobile phones, etc you really starting to walk on shaky ground.

And what of particular groups, for example Software Developers. I don't know of any software developers who use Internet Explorer daily (other than to test a particular page for support). So if were the case worldwide, Software Developers (using them purely as an example) would not be represented in the traffic rankings at all!

So what are we left with: -

• 10 to 20 percent of all websites on the internet (at best) are even included in Alexa's rankings
• Only the surfing habits of users on Microsoft Windows using Internet Explorer are considered important enough to be included.
• Surfing habits of users on non Windows Environments are not considered.
• It's likely that entire professions (e.g. software development) would have very little representation.

Hardly conclusive is it? One of Alexa's major competitors Compete, does little better, they do support Firefox (yay!) but only Windows users, and only around 2 million users. So their entire ranking is determined by this select group of people.

Essentially if you have a good ranking in Alexa, Compete or other types of companies like this, you need to be aware that it's a ranking by a very small subset of the entire Internet community that has determined it.

Now I am not saying you should ignore the rankings from these web sites. They are definitely good as a start point, and it's likely (but not guaranteed) that you are probably going to be having lots of web traffic from visitors outside the selected group who these sites rely on for their calculations if you have a decent rank with these types of sites.

What I am saying is that there is no need to break out into a cold sweat if you not doing well according to their rankings.

A company that is on the right track is Quantcast they do not require a toolbar to be installed on the visitors computers, rather they use data from advertisers, publishers, ISPS, etc as a basic for their traffic calculations. In addition a web site owner can add some simple html to their site which will then firm up the numbers (sending data back to Quantcast to help in traffic calculations). Of course this opens up the door to data manipulation by web site owners.

What this means is, if a web site owner did not know about Quantcast, or did not use services that partner with Quantcast, they may not appear in their calculations at all! And they might be getting millions of visitors per month!

Quantcast's own faq mentions that the data they collect is but a drop in the ocean compared to the entire Internet.

There service is a step in the right direction, but it confirms that there is no sure fire way for external entities to accurately collect traffic information on the majority of the web sites on the Internet.

More to the point, if your stressing because your website is not getting good rankings in these sites, or worse still, if your spending thousands of dollars trying to get in there, you may well be wasting your money and time doing so.

Focusing instead on great, relevant content that a visitor to your web site will find of value, and give them a reason to bookmark your site and to visit again (or purchase your products, etc). This is far more likely to give you success than a ranking from a traffic site.

At the end of the day, the only important ranking should be the amount of traffic coming to your website, and the percentage of conversions you are making from that (conversions being sales, or opt-in's, or whatever else you are trying to achieve).

Until next time.

Cheers

Tim Buchalka

My friend send me a link to a great story from his friend who put up his story about his battle with weight loss.

Very inspiring stuff, it keeps me wanting to work hard to achieve my goals.

It just goes to show you what can happen if you work, and believe in yourself.

Cheers

Tim

If your new to Internet Marketing, it won't take long to start hearing about Affiliate Programs.

First question, what are Affiliate Programs? Simply put, they are a method to allow you to sell someone else's products or services on the Internet and to receive a commission for any sales you make. Usually these are downloadable products (electronic books, audio books, videos, etc) but there are also Affiliate Programs for physical items such as books, electronic equipment, etc.

Affiliate programs can be a great way to make some quick money, but there a number of things you need to consider. As you can imagine with the size of the Internet and the number of people connecting to it, there are a huge number of affiliate programs to choose.

How do you go about choosing a program? My advice is to choose a program where you have some expertise, or that you have an interest in. For example if you have an interest in Golf, find an affiliate program that promotes something relating to Golf. If you do this, you will find you have more enthusiasm to promote the product, and this will show through to your potential customers when you promote the product. And let's face it, you will find it easy to do, because of your interest, and it will feel less like work, and more like fun.

A great place to start looking for affiliate programs to promote is clickbank.com

This is the number one web site for affiliate programs (where the vast majority of product owners list their products for sale). ClickBank make the ability to sign up and promote products very easy for people looking to promote products. There are many thousands of products there, so go take a look.

The next thing you probably going to want to know is how to go about promoting an affiliate program, just where do you start. This is one of the things I get asked a lot, and you will find that most Internet Marketers who are selling a "how to" book assume you are not a complete beginner.

One of the most important things you should do is to setup your own website, and to capture your visitors name and email address. Then you are able to promote products and services to them in the future. Most guides on the Internet will not tell you to do this, because the fact is the affiliate product owner doesn't want you to promote to your own customers. They would much rather pay you a once off commission for a sale, and then be free to promote to their customer directly (with you out of the picture) in the future.

Any marketing consultant will tell you that it's a lot easier to promote to an existing customer than it is to get a new customer. So if you have worked hard and managed to get a customer, you don't want to lose them, you want to keep them, and promote to them in the future.

As I've mentioned you want to grab your visitors information before forwarding them on to the affiliate owners website. To do this, you really need to give the visitor and incentive to give you their information. Everyone is worried about spam, so you need to convince your visitor that your won't spam them.

How do you do this? By being honest and upfront and telling the visitor this. You would be surprised how many websites just ask for someone to leave a name and email address, and give them no incentive to do so, and then don't let the visitor know that they won't be spammed.

Visitors will naturally be wary about most things on the Internet, and if you can't give them confidence in yourself, guess what, they won't leave their details.

The other thing you need to do is to give the visitor an incentive to leaving their details. The simplest way to do this, is to offer a useful report, or perhaps an ebook that the visitor will be able to download for free if they leave their details with you.

There are a few options for you. My preference would be for you to create you own report (this could be a simple document, even just a few pages). The main thing is that it should be relevant to the product you are promoting, and generally be of interest to the visitor.

Just ask yourself, if you were the visitor arriving at your website, would you be willing to leave your details? Put yourself in the shoes of the visitor, and give them a real reason to leave their details.

The next thing you need to think about is how you actually store the information the visitor leaves you. You need some way for the visitor to enter their details, and then you need to be able to act on this, and forward the information to the visitor automatically.

I believe automation is one of the keys to success on the Internet, as much as possible and practical, you want to automate as many processes that you can.

People expect immediate results, and if your asleep when someone leaves their details, and you don't act on it for hours, the visitor has likely surfed to another site where they could retrieve the information automatically.

In this case, what you are after is an Auto-Responder service. Many web-hosts have this functionality built into their offerings, but my recommendation would be to use a dedicated auto-responder company who's focus is on providing this functionality. Two of the major players are www.aweber.com and www.getresponse.com (although there are many other companies). My websites use Aweber, but both are reputable.

Auto-Responders allow you to automatically accept and record details from your visitor (name, email address, etc) and to then automatically send information to the visitor via email. You can even get personalise the emails sent to the visitor with their name, etc. This all happens automatically, even if you are asleep! The visitor is happy because they get the information in a few minutes, and your happy because your web site is working for you, while you sleep.

In the email you send to the visitor, you would include the download link to your free report or ebook (remember that's the reason they decided to give you their details) and you could perhaps give them some more information about the products you can promote to them (perhaps with a product review, and other useful information).

I will go into more details about Auto-Responders in a future article (this will focus on how you go about setting them up, etc).

In my next post (Part 2 of Affiliate Products), we will move past this introduction and look at choosing an affiliate product, and how to setup your links, and discuss ways to promote them).

Feel free to drop me a line (click the Contact Me link at the top of this page) if you have any questions, or feel free to comment by leaving a comment after this post.

And please, if you know someone who you think this website would help, please pass on the web address to them, the more people we can collectively help, the better.

Until next time,

Tim Buchalka

Hello again,

I've been hard at work exercising and watching what I eat, I am glad to say another two kilo's (about 4 1/2 pounds) have walked out the door, and they are never going to return! It's very heartening for me to see the weight coming off, because I have been working very hard and (for me anyway) not seeing a regular result makes it harder to want to continue.

I am now working very hard on cardio exercise seven days a week at the gym. My schedule consists of 25 minutes on the cross trainer (around 900 Cal's in "cross trainer" calorie usage), and then a further 10-15 minutes on the treadmill, averaging around 7 Km's/Hour (approx 4 1/2 miles). This leaves me very tired after i have finished, but I am trying to ramp up the intensity on a regular basis, because I find it easy to get comfortable if I don't continually push myself.

The next step is to get stuck into some serious weights, but I am concentrating on cardio exercise initially to drop some weight. If you read up on this, you will find lots of different methods the "experts" recommend for someone in my situation.

Some will say to only train 3-4 times a week. Otherwise will say maybe 5 times a week, and still others recommend the full seven day a week training.

I actually found that if I don't do the exercise seven days a week, I just don't lose the weight. About a year and a half ago, when I first started exercising, my local gym set me up a program than also included weights, and you know what? I went for weeks at a time not losing any weight. Yes I understand that muscle weighs more than fat, and that I was probably gaining muscle, but I found it extremely disheartening because I wanted to lose the weight.

Since I changed over to my method of cardio only, and continue to work very hard on it, I've found I seem to be losing a consistent 1-2 kilograms (2-4 pounds) per week. So I will stick with this program while it is working.

Once of the things I have found from reading up on this is, if you do find something that works for you, keep doing that, even if it goes against what all the experts are saying.

For me, the combination of the exercise I am doing, and keeping my daily intake to around 2000 calories is working well, so I will keep it up. Just out of interest, when I first started seriously looking to lose weight, I restricted myself to around 1400 calories a day and found that after the initial week where I lost some "water weight" I was losing very little weight (not to mention being extremely hungry).

Turns out that it is likely my body was in "survival mode", when I increased eating I lost weight, how it that for an interesting fact. Again I am talking personal experience here, it just goes to show that you need to test these things out.

Would love to hear from you if you have any comments, drop me a line.

Cheers

Tim