Just what would you tell a 16 year-old YOU if you could?

The question was prompted by a snippet of a TV programme I saw recently.

Now, as you may know, we don’t watch much TV here, due, mainly, to it being rubbish but it did raise an interesting question.

Personally, I would tell my 16 year-old self that cookery isn’t women’s work at all and to take advantage of the training offered to me whilst serving in the British Forces! Crickey, I could have been a Jamie Oliver or a Gordon Ramsey…!

Seriously, I would tell him to work for himself and not working for someone else.

Robert Kiyosaki has much to say about being an employee, suggesting that it’s just more risky than being a business owner or an investor.

I can’t think of a skill, trade, or profession that cannot be undertaken without being an employee. The benefits of one over the other are there for all to see.

Amongst some there is the feeling that employment with the security of a ‘regular’ wage coming in is preferable to the riskier world of self-employment. But is that so, especially in the economic climate we are now experiencing?

The idea that a boss, working miles away, in another city, country or continent, can dispense with your services, after what might be half a lifetime of serving seems not so secure, after all.

OK, so discipline will be needed, as you will not have anyone to tell you when you have to attend, how much you will receive in wages, how much time-off you will be entitled too, etc.

You will, also, be told how much will be taken from you in taxes and for social security. Promises will be made with regards to the benefits you will receive but will in all probability not be honoured despite you being forced to keep to you your part of the bargain.

That’s not to say, that as a self-employed business person you will have much more input but, maybe a little more and that must be a good thing, surely. Not only that, if one does have to live on ones own resources, and talent, as a person of business does, one never knows where it might lead.

In closing, I would say to anyone considering the Internet as a way of earning money to give it a go, give it a year! What have you got to loose?

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Keyword Research Explained

At the outset, can I say for the sake of those who don’t know, a Keyword is a set of words used as a title of something, be it an article, a Blog, a forum-post, someone is doing a search for.

There are two types of keyword – short-tail, which are less that four words, and long-tail which are five words or more.

Now that we know what a keyword is, can I say that a Squeeze-Page is highly unlikely to get to the top of a Google search, sorry to disappoint those who are new to this.

However, there is something that could appear on page one of Google or any other search engine – and that something is an article, a blog, linking to a squeeze page, maybe to YOUR squeeze page.

Of course, your page will only appear if someone, doing a search, types in a KEYWORD that you have used.

To increase the chances of your article being the one to be seen, which keywords should be used?

This is where Keyword Research comes in, and it is defined as discovering the words that are going to be most profitable to use and these are the most popular and excepted words on a given subject.

There is a two-step method to discover the most profitable keywords for you to use, once you have decided what your keyword is.

Step one involves using a Keyword Tool – this comes from Google (just type in KEYWORD TOOL in the search browser and you will be taken to the GOOGLE Adwords tool page – It’s free so don’t worry).

This will inform us how many people have searched for the particular Keyword you have chosen.

Once we have discovered how many searches there are for a particular Keyword we will then discover how much COMPETITION there is for that Keyword.

It is here that I would like to reveal to you a secret…We want a keyword that has a HIGH amount of SEARCHES but LOW amount of COMPETITION…

Remember me mentioning short and long tail Keyword, earlier? Well, short-tail keywords get lots of COMPETITION, so remembering the secret above, we want long-tailed Keywords to keep COMPETITION low.

When accessing the Adwords tool, the screen displayed will be segmented with TOOLS to the left and the search area, called FIND KEYWORDS the remainder.

Take your time and study this well…there should be no rush to do this…

On the left of the screen, under the forth heading of Match Type you want BROAD to be clicked…

Then fill in the FIND KEYWORD area with the keyword you have in mind, fill in the security capture, should one appear(they don’t always) and press SEARCH.

You will, of course, know your own niche or market area, your domain name, and your Keyword will be related to that area after brain-storming some search ideas.

For the Keyword “cheap hotels in new york” (travel niche) I got HIGH competition and 165,000 Global Monthly Searches. There was also, a further page of alternatives.

The figure of 165,000 is good. We are looking for anything over 2000 in the Global Monthly Search and 2000 makes this, potentially a profitable word for us.

Now we have satisfied ourselves that there are enough searches, we now need to check the COMPETITION for that word.

How do we check the COMPETITION, I hear you ask?

Well, we go back to GOOGLE and we do a search. However, we put our KEYWORD into speech marks (“”). This tells the search engine that you only want to see results that match the KEYWORD EXACTLY.

Now my COMPETITION search got 3,530,000 results, which isn’t good…We want in the region of 60-70 thousand to qualify. Can I say here this step is more art than a science, so do not be concerned.

So, we go back to the KEYWORD SEARCH and my second most popular is “cheap hotels in new york city”, which as 60,500 Global Monthly Searches, so its’ above the 2000 minimum. Perfect.

Now type that into the Google search, in quote marks and this is also too high at 985,000 but a step in the right direction.

We, then, go to the next one…then the next one until we find one that fits both our criteria.

Can you see that what we have done?

We have used Google to sort the possibilities for us, with us filtering the Keyword results until we find one that matches both sets of criteria.

Granted it will take time and effort but it will be worth it in the end, especially when you start getting traffic to your website via an article you post to a forum…

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All I wanted was a bit of control...

The Canaries, where I am fortunate enough to live are, nominally, part of Spain.

I say that things are nominally the same here as on the Mainland. Many of the things that apply there don’t apply here. The tax systems are different, and so is welfare and social security.

Also, I am lucky enough to work on the internet despite access being somewhat erratic http://www.keithdonnelly-online.com/

One of the things that is the same here as on the Mainland, is the number of fiesta’s they have every year – Or, so one would think.

I, only mention this because the Government in Madrid has decreed that the number of days off must be reduced, and along with the ending of the Siesta – which even the loosing, Socialist government, was trying to get rid of, must be a thing of the past, in the name of efficiency.

Apparently, a modern economy cannot have its’ workers taking so many days off during the week, irrespective of

the climate, these workers toil in.

In a recent spat between Spanish and German officials, a representative from the German government suggested that if the Spanish worked as hard as the Germans, they would be equally successful.

It was, then, pointed out that in fact Spanish workers have less time off when annual leave is taken into account.

It was in this atmosphere of turmoil, in the UK that I decided to seek out opportunities for earning an income on the Internet

As I have mentioned, previously, it was a slow process. Not that I didn’t have the chance – My email inbox was packed with offers – people sending me offers, claiming I could earn thousands a month, a week, a day, all while sitting on the beach with the waves lapping at my feet.

I have to say, that once or twice I was seduced and actually parted with money, only to be disappointed.

Working here brought to mind a quote from Bob Proctor, from The Secret, who in an interview I saw, said he hadn’t worked a day since he quit as a Montreal fireman, in the mid 1960’s.

I was hearing this over 40 years after he quit fire fighting, so I thought he must have come into some money, or won the lottery. Then, just recently, I heard the explanation in a conversation he was having with a man called Lanny Morton. Bob tells Lanny that he enjoys what he does so much it can’t be considered as work.

And that summed up my feelings towards my work, on my website and writing this Blog. OK so, time can fly by and I not notice – But there’s no one standing over me telling me to hurry, or that I have to do something else.

Regards, Keith

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