Money Conciousness

At times, I really wish that I carried a camera with me.

This morning, I saw a brilliant piece of advertising, while stuck in rush hour traffic.

While I was waiting for the car in front of me to move, I saw a scooter drivbe by me with a board saying “You don’t have to be a superhero”. It was closelly followed by another one, whose board said “To Fly through traffic…” The third and final one complted the message, with the Vespa Symbol on the back.

I normally do not notice advertising, but this was brilliantly targeted, since only people actually stuck in traffic would notice it, and the the ease with which the Scooters moved through the traffic nicelly highlighted the message.

I am really tempted to get a Vespa now.

Technorati Tags: advertising, vespa, interesting, scooter, targeted advertising

Well, I just joined BlogRush (still in Beta at the time of this post)… The more observant among you may have noticed their widget on the right side of my theme. The idea is that by my RSS titles getting displayed on the other blogs that are in the BlogRush network, I will get a traffic increase… I will have to wait and see how this goes

Technorati Tags: BlogRush, traffic, widget

I just had to sign up for this one, David Airey is running a competition with a grand total of $4000 worth in prizes, in order to celebrate the first year of his blog. Of course, he is not providing all the prizes himself, but has managed to get an impressive bunch of sponsors together. The prizes include:

Gold Prize

1. Logo Design from the competition master himself. His designs look good, and I would love to have one for my own blog
2. Custom WordPress theme, Designed by
3. Personal marketing / advertising plan from Dosh Dosh. I love Dosh Doshes blog, and I think that he could teach me a lot about blog promotion, of course, whether I would stick to the plan is another matter entirely.
4. One year’s hosting and blog setup from John Boardley of I Love Typography. Probably the prize I am the least excited about, seeing as I already have hosting that I am very happy with, but it goes well as part of the first prize package.
5. Signed copy of Blogging Tips by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress. Being the bibliophile that I a, I can always use another book, although it will be strange to read about blogging in a dead-tree edition.

Silver Prize

1. A second logo design from Tara Roskell of Graphic Design Blog. Like I said earlier, I need a logo for this blog, so this one is good for me.
2. Website critique from Randa Clay of Randa Clay Design. Things like this always scare me, but I guess feedback is good.
3. One hour SEO consultation with Lyndon Antcliff of Cornwall SEO. This would be conducted via Skype. For some reason I don’t like Skype much, but the info will be good.
4. $60 of books from Amazon courtesy of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. Like I said before, more books = good.

Bronze Prize

1. Logo / blog header design from Jonathan-C. Phillips of Smart Wealthy Rich. Another logo design.
2. One hour blog optimization consultation with Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips. It could be interesting.
3. Revolution Premium WordPress theme package (personal package) from Brian Gardner, WordPress designer. HAving seen the theme, its a nice design, not sure how well it will fit this blog, though.
4. Blog review and email interview published on Make It Great! with Phil Gerbyshak. Like I said earlier, reviews make me nervouse, but the link would be nice. I can use all the links I can get (this is a subtle hint for any webmasters readng this.

In addition to the big three, there are also a ton of other, separate prizes to win:

• Behringer Podcastudio USB Podcasting Kit, kindly donated by Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog. This would be nice for two reasons: I love gadgets, and I have wanted to dip my toe into podcasting.
• $25 via PayPal courtesy of Gayla McCord of Mom Gadget. Since I cannot receive from PayPal in South Africa, I will hold a contest for this if I win it.
• 2GB USB storage key x 3, courtesy of Jamie Clague at Terinea Weblog. Like I said I like gadgets, and the only USB drive I ahve at the moment is a measly 1gb.

A number of people have decided to offer blog reviews, Including:

• Chris Lodge
• Aaron Russell of miLienzo
• Lakshmi Mareddy of Chilligavva
• Hock Ng of Marketing Tools Review.
• Charles Jordan of The Queer Chef

There is a whole lot of other stuff to win, including consultations, books and advertisitng, even membership to Andy Beard’s soon to be released site. So, if you are reading this, don’t enter the competition, I want all the loot for myself.

Technorati Tags: competition, logos, web design, wordpress, andy beard

In the interests of growing my Internet Marketing Empire, I am always on the look out for new tools. Digerati Marketing announce last month that they will be launching a set of Elite Seo Tools, which I think will come in usefull, although their hat colour seems a bit murky (for those of you that don’t catch the reference, read up a bit about SEO).

Technorati Tags: seo, black hat, Digerati Marketing

Like with most things, in order to make money, we first need to get our minds working correctly.

One model that I find very useful when trying to understand human behaviour (including my own) is Attribution Theory. The theoretical framework for this theory was developed by Weiner in the early 80s. To grossly oversimplify the theory and framework (those of you that would like to go more indepth on this can find a wealth of articles with a simple Google search), the Attribution Theory states that our actions and results are determined by the explanations that we attach to the events in our lives.

Any result that we get, whether good or bad, we can attribute either to internal or external factors.

Internal Factors , as their name implies are factors that are inherent to who we are, they include such things as our abilities, moods, personality and the amount of effort expanded. A lot of those can be under our control.

  External Factors include such things as the difficulty of the task, luck and so on. They tend to be not under our control.

Research has shown that people who tend to attribute failure or success to things that are under their control (e.g. the amount of effort expanded) tend to become more successful in their tasks, while those that attribute events to things outside their control (e.g. luck, inherent ability, etc) tend not to do so well, possibly because they do not see a way to improve.

In terms of making money (which is the point of this site), this can also be seen. When a project fails to preform to your expectations, you can blame it on factors outside your control (the market, bad luck, the fact that you are “just no good at this”) , which, while it will make you feel a bit better about yourself, will also mean that you will remain stuck.

You can also chose to learn from the experience and accept the things you have done worng (I should have done more research, I should have invested more time…). By this, I do not mean wallowing in self pity, or deciding that you are worthless, just acknowledging what happened and doing things differently.

Interestingly enough, attributing success to internal factors beyond your control (ability, intelligence, etc…) can also have a positive impact on future performance (if you decide that the reason you succeeded at something is your own brilliance, you would tend to work harder next time, in order to preserve your self-opinion)…

Some people are afraid that they will get arrogant if they chose to believe that their successes stem from their inherent greatness. for some people this could be a problem, but the vast majority of us need every boost to our self-esteem that we can get.

Technorati Tags: Attribution Theory, psychology, motivation

As the more perceptive of my readers may have noticed, I have changed themes again. This is the first step in my effort to get this site off the ground gain, I realise that I have been seriously neglecting it these last couple of months. From now on, I will stick to a blogging schedule of a minimum of three posts a week, including at least one ‘flagship’ post.

If you do see me slacking, feel free to add a comment about that, I would really appreciate it

Technorati Tags: theme, change, blogging

Another post, another contest…. I promise I will reduce the frequency of contest posts once I get the major update I am planning under way, until then I have decided to take advantage of all those people that are kindly offering free swag.

Today, I am talking about a blogger that has designed and published their own baordgame, Quartile . The game looks like it would be fun, and seems designed using a more ‘Europea’ model of boardgame design (those of you that do not care about the finer points of boardgame design, that just means that it does not use dice, and utilises a simple set of rules, with few exceptions.)

Technorati Tags: boardgame, quartile, blogging

Finally! Alexa has released their official toolbar for Firefox, so that now those of us that have good taste in browsers can take advantage of their stats. Some people have expressed doubt about the accuracy of Alexa stats, and whether they provide meaningfull information, but I still like to see my rating go up.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Alexa, Add-ons

Yes, I know that you actually want some real content, rather than competition entires, but I cannot resists this one.

so, first a bit of copy & paste, even if they tell me not to

“Over at JohnCow.com they must have the coolest web hosting provider in the pasture. These guys are having a cowpetition and are giving away a $500 prize! Here’s your chance to win a Playstation3,or an Xbox360, a Nintendo Wii, an iPhone .. you name it, they’ll pay it! Don’t miss out and check out their mad cow blog!”

Ok, that handles the links that they wanted… I would have written something myself, but I have very little time, and this just seems easier. so, please check out their blog, and tell them that I am not that bad, even if I am lazy!

Technorati Tags: competition, John Cow, Nintendo Wii, iPhone, PS3, Xbox 360

I ahve recently joined a program called eVo. I normally avoid joining programs in pre-launch phase, but I think that this one has the potential to take off. The site does have a bit too much hype for my taste, bu tmanages to provide some solid information. They have set a launch date for the 15th of July, so we can see the full plan in a week.

eVo will provide a social site, which will allow the users to play online games gainst each other. As the site and the inseders report point out, the casual games market grows at an amazingly fast rate at the moment (they give a figure of it growing at four times the rate of the net as a whole. I have not taken the time to confirm or deny this figure).

I have several reasons for joining eVo :

1. I agree with them that online gaming holds a lot of promise for profits and a possible good return on investment.
2. In addition to above, I enjoy gaming in all its forms, and I would love to make money from it ( as a matter of fact I have a couple of projects, in various stages of development in that field)
3. I think that social sites will continue growing for a while, and that niche sites, about a particular interest can get a lot of users. In addition, I just love social media in general.
4. They seem to have put alot of effort into appealing to an internation audience, and have their information available in several languages.
5. The people involved in the launch have several other successfull businesses already, and can bring a lot of expertise to this venture as well.
6. I have always wanted to join something like this before it gets overstaurated, and I think that this gives me a very good opportunity.
7. They promise an MLM-like structure to the business, which neans that it will have a good potential for developing a passive income.
8. Unlike alot of other multi-level opportunities, they will have an actual product, that will provide some value on its own.
9. While the launch data involves a bit too much hype for my taste, it still falls far short of other opportunities, and I have not seen it promoted on every single blog yet.
10. They have a fairly attractive looking site.

Bonus:

11.  You pay nothing to join.

Anyway, now you have some of my reasons for joining eVo. If you think that any of these sound good, than go and sign up.

Technorati Tags: Evo, evolution, MLM, opportunity, gaming, web2.0, social web