Every year (for the last 7!) Ed Dale has run his Challenge… it started off as the 30 Day Challenge, and has now morphed into just “The Challenge“.

The Challenge is a fantastic program that is geared toward helping people make their first $1 online. Whether you’ve been at this a while or you just turned on your computer it is a fantastic step by step program that will walk you through everything you can do to make your first dollar (and more) online.

I’ve been doing this online marketing thing for a LONG time (in fact, I remember the first challenge! yikes), and every year I sign up and take The Challenge.

Have I made my first dollar online? Of course I have! But Ed always has something new up his sleeve that can help me out in my business.

The best part of The Challenge? The whole thing is free! Yep, because as Ed says… “There’s no charge for Awesomeness”.

So… if you’ve been trying to make this work, and still haven’t made money ~ get to The Challenge right now.

If you’ve been making a little bit of money… go ahead and take The Challenge as well. I’m almost positive you will learn something that will drive your business forward.

If you’re making scads of cash ~ eh, take The Challenge anyway… Ed’s always up on the newest techniques and you’ll learn something new you can implement in your business.

Here’s what you can expect from The Challenge this year (straight from Ed):

1. Our new front door! I’m going to personally take you on a tour of the Challenge and show you exactly how to get started in our brand new welcome webinar.
2. Our Webinar will set the standard with what people think an online seminar should look like – Remember where you saw this first
3. The entire Challenge is available RIGHT NOW - you go as fast or as slow as you like!
4. The Challenge Manifesto – The Challenge as a book for your iPad and iPhone – This is STUNNING.
5. The first course designed to not only be iPad ready but iPad AWESOME - With the flick of a finger through your Challenge lessons up to your big screen TV using an Apple TV
6. Completely redesigned modules to take advantage of the very lastest discoveries from our famous Melbourne and Manchester Labs.
7. All your favourite features are back – including the amazing forum

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I have no problem doing that… but here’s the deal.

I can’t send you all the pictures you lost. All the home videos. All the things you just can’t get back.

While my computer hasn’t crashed recently, it has crashed and I lost a lot of stuff. Luckily it was before Hanna was born so I didn’t lose any pictures of her. After the initial crash I got the Backup Fever. I regularly put all my photos onto cds and put all the products I’d purchased onto cds or DVDs. I started running everything through gmail so I could always find my passwords and urls for things if something happened.

This kept on for a while, and then I became complacent, and forgot that sinking feeling of having lost it all, and just stopped backing things up. A couple years ago I got a new computer so I ended up backing up everything so I could make the move, but now I have at least 2 years worth of pictures of Hanna ~ pictures of the new puppy Bella and all the special holidays in between ~ all stored right on my handy dandy trusty computer.

yeah, well…

That’s just a nightmare waiting to happen.

I wanted something easy I could use to backup, and I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it. Here’s what I found. (Guess what… it’s free!).

SugarSync.

This is pretty cool. It is a web based service where you can basically copy the contents of your computer to their servers, which keeps it safe if your computer crashes. All you have to do is log in to your account at SugarSync and all your awesome stuff will be there.

There’s a couple other cool things about it.

You can access your stuff from any computer. Just like you can go to facebook or delicious from any computer you can also go to SugarSync from any computer. So if you need a file off your computer, but you’re not home, you can access the file if you saved it to SugarSync.

This is going to be fantastic when I’m in Tulsa visiting family.They are always wanting to see pictures, but I never have access to them. Now I do.

How does it work?

Very simple. You sign up with SugarSync. Download the little tool for your desktop. Once it’s installed you open it and choose which files on you computer you want to save to Sugarsync.

I chose my pictures file (where I hold all the original pictures I take) and the folders for my products, and the products I’ve purchased.

Then SugarSync will copy them over to their site and they will store them there for you (aka back up your files).

Now… whenever you add something new to the folder on your computer, SugarSync will automagically save it to their site for you. (aka sync with your computer ~ I have no technical verbiage in my vocabulary!)

I’m involved in this 365 day image challenge over on twitter (#jpg365 if you’re interested). So I’m taking pictures every day now… every time I download my camera SugarSync comes along and grabs the new images and puts them in the folder on their server. Always safe, and I don’t ever have to think about it. (I LOVE that part!).

If you go the free route you  get a 5 GB account with SugarSync. 5 GB is pretty big. I had a LOT of pictures on my computer and I didn’t go over my limit ~ close, but not quite there yet. Your free account does everything a paid account does, you just have a little less space.

BUT WAIT… here’s where it gets really fun. If you need some extra space you can refer other people and for each person who signs up for the free account you get an extra 500 MB of space on your account. They don’t have to buy anything, just sign up for the free 5 GB account and you get some extra space. (so yes, if you get a free account I’m going to get some extra space ~ just one more reason to grab the free account. )

This service has worked flawlessly in the time I’ve been using it. I’m really happy with it, and I absolutely LOVE the peace of mind I get not having to worry about always having my pictures backed up.

Because you never know when your computer’s going to crash. It’s not like your computer sends you an advance “I’m gonna crash” email. Well, maybe Macs do that, but I’m pretty sure mine doesn’t. Get your stuff backed up so if your computer ever crashes you can get back to work without a bunch of down time in the process.

Grab a SugarSync account. It takes 5 minutes and can save you from a world of heartbreak.

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When I started talking about creating your own product I heard a lot of “I don’t have time”. “I’m working on this right now”. “That’s just not possible”. “I don’t know how”.

It’s easy to get stuck in that place ~ believe me… I know. I’ve got a million things going on, and my “goal” for this year was to stay focused on one thing. I get it.

However… if you think about it ~ when are you ever going to have “free” time, or even “more” time to work on creating your own product? If I look back over the last few years I seem to have less time now, than I ever did. More projects, more family stuff, more school stuff, more, more, more, added to my plate every day.

If I want to get a product done I’m going to have to MAKE the time, find the time, schedule the time. This is where my “all or nothing” thinking comes in. I get to thinking, well that’s never going to happen. I have to do it ALL right NOW. I’m never going to be able to set aside a week or a month to put this product together.

I did recently challenge myself to put together a product in a weekend ~ which was a big success ~ but I know most people won’t. So why not choose to set aside a small amount of daily time over a longer period of time. Even 30 minutes a day will get you moving in the right direction.

I know it’s Review Friday ~ I’m in the process of reviewing a step by step product on how to create your own product. I think I’m going to recommend it, but there’s a few pieces that I’m not sure how I feel about and I want to test them out myself before I do my review and recommend/not recommend the product.

So for today ~ here’s a quick report I thought you might find helpful ~ if nothing else to maybe get your mindset in a place where you can create your first product.

(right click the link below ~ save as to save it to your computer)

30 Minute Success System

It’s a short, interesting report that got me thinking about how I can let go of the “all or nothing” a little more and get more done in less time.

Enjoy.

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It’s coming up on the end of the month and for a lot of people the end of the month means there’s a little more month than money. The end of the month is when people get a little panicky and either get depressed and give up or get inspired and get busy!!

Over the last week I’ve had a few resources  come to my attention that have really pushed me to take this challenge myself, and to hopefully inspire you to take it as well.

Dave Navarro put out a new free report this week. How to Start Making Real Money with Your Own Products in Only 3 Days. Like Dave’s other freebies and What’s Holding You Back?  it is fantastic!

I’m sure when you saw the mention of product creation a ton of  “yeah buts” came to mind, in fact, maybe you even thought about not even finishing this post. DON’T.  Go right now and download Dave’s new report. Read it. He is a master of walking people through all those yeah buts (myself included) and making them look like silly little thoughts that we were ridiculous to even entertain. Seriously.

He has a multitude of worksheets in this free report to help you work through your “yeah, buts”, no matter what they are ~ no list? no time? no product? no ideas? no body? Yeah, Dave will help you with that.

But that’s not all this report is, it is also a step by step (7 steps to be exact) manual to get your own product started, finished and out there in the world making money in the next 3 days.

No joke. The process is very simple, and you CAN do it.

Don’t get yourself all worked up by the word “product” and start thinking you have to write a million page ebook to have value ~ the knowledge you have is valuable. You just need to share it.

Before Dave’s report came out this week I’d just finished reading Jonathan Leger’s report called “Write That Report“. It is a fantastic little report that will walk you through writing, selling and profiting from a short report. His process is 10 steps, and it doesn’t get much more simple than the way he’s lined it out.

I highly recommend you download Dave’s free report ~ and if for some reason you talk yourself into the fact you can’t do an audio product ~ grab Jonathan’s Write that Report and do a written product. Either way… you owe it to yourself to accept this challenge.

So what’s the challenge?

I challenge YOU (and myself) to put together a simple but valuable product and have it on the market for sale in the next 72 hours.

So… what do you think? Get over your “yeah buts” and do it. It will be the best thing you have done for your business and yourself as a business person yet! Creating a product, having a product that is yours changes everything. It changes the way you look at your business. It changes the way you look at yourself. It adds another income stream to your business. It really is a turning point. Don’t get stuck in the BS… send the kids to a movie with Grandma this weekend, and get busy.

When you get your product done and online ~ come back here and leave a note in the comments section. I’ll definitely want to tweet your awesomeness!

Ready? Set? GO! GO! GO!

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Today’s my birthday, I have a great idea for a post, but I need to pull some things together for it first. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming on Monday.

Anyway ~ Last week sometime I received an email with this free report in it. It is seriously one of the BEST reports I’ve read on how to get started with internet marketing, and it was FREE!! Imagine.

It walks you through everything you need to know to create an income online.

** Warning ** If you are already in the process of doing something that is working ~ do not veer  your path. Stay on track and keep taking action. **

If you’re still struggling to get started or not sure what direction you should take this is an excellent place to get started.

There are a few affiliate links in the ebook (which aren’t mine btw), but they aren’t mandatory.

Take some time over the weekend to read through it and get ready to take action!!

How to Make 1000 a Month Online

I hope you enjoy the book ~ I’m off to have a lovely day for my birthday.

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I’ve created a new Free Resources page where you can find free reports on different topics that might help you move forward.

This all started because I knew I had some cool resources on getting more traffic … somewhere…  I finally found the one I was thinking of and wanted to give it to you on almost the last day of the Web Traffic Tips series.  (I’ve got one more post scheduled in the series for tomorrow so look out for that as well).

Anyway ~ here’s the ebook I wanted to give you on getting more traffic. It’s a pdf, so just clik the link and the pdf will open. Make sure you save it to your computer so you have it for later reference.

77 Ways to Get More Traffic

While I was looking for it I also found a nice little report by Nicole Dean I thought I’d share with you as well. Make sure you save this one to your computer as well.

7 Free Ways to Get Traffic

While I was putting the resources page together this morning I got an email from Jimmy D. Brown. He’s offering one of his short reports that got lost in the shuffle for free.

This was to be a real short report, it just got lost in the shuffle and never got put on the short report website. He’s giving it to you for free as a nice goodbye gift. Don’t forget that all the short reports will be taken down tomorrow at 10pm, so if there’s any that you want to get you should get them now. Make sure you check out Homepreneur Habits ~ it’s one of my favorites. It’s like an operations manual for your home business. Good Stuff.

Anyway… the gift report is called The Ultimate Free Traffic Model (that fits in nicely right?). You can grab it here for completely free.

So there you go… a few free gifts even though it’s not even Friday. Hopefully these reports will give you some more ideas on how to get more traffic that you can take action on.

Any questions please feel free to ask! I’m here.

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• I’ve recently started regularly reading IttyBiz.com. It’s a great blog, very straight forward and honest. I like those kind of things that give me a good kick in the ass when I need it! Today’s post was absolute genius (and it’s a guest post lol).

No BS Branding and the Sustainable Empire of YOU.

• Thanks to @FrankDickinson for giving me the heads up for the next blog. Remarkablogger. I started digging around over there last night and there’s some good stuff. If you’re wondering how to use Twitter in your business this is the perfect place to start.

The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Business on Twitter

• Are you wondering how on Earth you’re going to keep up the workload for the long haul? You know most people at some point learn to delegate and outsource some if not most of this stuff right? (yeah, I’m still working on the letting go and delegating part lol). This site is an excellent resource to understand how to outsource your work. It’s a series of 10 short videos. (sorry for my non video folks). BEST resource I’ve seen yet on outsourcing and it’s FREE! woohoo

Mass Outsource

• If you’re looking for some honest information about building your list this site will be helfpul. Just remember to be clear about your goals and how you’re working your business and don’t let yourself get sidetracked from that plan.

Build That List

• Looking for some great tips on blogging from someone who has had meteoric success in internet marketing. While sometimes it’s discouraging to see someone who has been so successful in less than a year ~ it can be very motivational as well. Pat is very transparent in his business ~ down to telling you exactly how much he makes each month and from where. This blog is a good read and very informative. This is also where I found the great tutorial on how to create a fanpage over at Facebook ~ so thanks again Pat.

Smart Passive Income

Ok ~ there’s some of the great things that have passed by my radar recently. I know everyone doesn’t have time to spend hours reading other stuff ~ and it’s not necessary but sometimes really good stuff shows up and I like to share. If you read only 1 thing from this page make sure you read NO BS Branding and the Sustainable Empire of YOU. It’s a MUST read.

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How much support do you have?

Many times family members are not supportive. I know there’s not one person locally who would know what  I was talking about if I said my maxblogpress optin adder plugin is giving me an error at the database, or even if I said I couldn’t find the address to use FTP.

How about you?

It’s hard to be out there in front of your computer, by yourself day after day, finding the strength to keep going and the determination to stick with it when you don’t get a little positive feedback, a little encouragement, a place to get the answers to the nit picky little things that can grind a thus far productive day to a perfect standstill.

Where do you find support?

Forums.

Plain and simple it’s always been the place I’ve been able to meet and connect with like minded people and find support. When I look for a “forum” I really am looking for a community. A community of like minded individuals who are friendly and welcoming and don’t get exasperated by “newbie” questions ~ no matter what the topic.

When I first started out online the first community I found was TheGreatestNetworker.com. It was owned by John Milton Fogg ~ it was a fantastic community. At the time I was doing network marketing and there were a lot of network marketers there. What I really loved about that community was it wasn’t really about the work ~ it was about law of attraction, personal development, making myself a better person, and the people. That’s where I met my dearest online friend Mary K. We’ve known one another going on 8 or 9 years now, we’ve met in person and talk daily. I don’t even have “real life” friends like that!

That community led me to Powerful Intentions where I continued to grow and learn and build all the pieces in me that needed building. It’s also where I met some other fantastic people that I still call my friends ~ you can meet a lot of them if you run through my friends list over at Facebook!

Who cares?

I get it … what the heck does this have to do with building sites, and internet marketing? Let me tell you.

Those communities and the people I’ve met within them have helped me create my business, my way. If I hadn’t had the support from the people there, I would have quit many times I’m quite sure. They help me look at what’s working in my business instead of letting me wallow in “oh man this is never gonna work”, they give me a good kick in the pants when necessary and help me get back on the right track.

While I don’t spend much time in those forums anymore the relationships I created there have come with me. I have since started spending more time in forums that will help me directly with my business. That’s right internet marketing forums.

I tell you it’s really HARD to find a place that feels like a community out there in the internet marketing world. I have spent time in the Warrior forum, but it’s pretty intimidating ~ you can get your head chewed off and handed to you on a platter if you’re not careful there. There is also so much misinformation that I just never knew what to believe and if someone knew something worked or they had heard it from a blog who heard it from another forum that they thought it might work. Believe me, the WF is somewhere I really wish I could spend more time ~ it would probably be great for my traffic numbers if I could get in there and duke it out ~ I mean that place is HUGE! It’s just not something I can do though.

I’ve spent time over at Wealthy Affiliate too. The forum over there is pretty big and active and I found myself getting lost in all of it. Spending hours and hours searching and conversing without really getting any work done. I don’t know, that was a couple years ago so maybe I am in a different mental state now ~ and it could work for me, but information overload is still something I struggle with.

There are many other forums and I’ve been to most of them I tell you. I opted in to the Problogger.com forum. YIKES. I was expecting a pretty friendly community but that is not what I found. I paid for a month but only stayed around a day.

So where do I hang out to get support and information for internet marketing? Only one place these days.

Lynn Terry’s Self Starter’s Weekly Tips forum.

I found it a few months ago and started hanging out there off and on. I found some really friendly people there. People who were supportive and friendly and willing to help out.

Lynn offers many cool things within the forum. Here’s just a few things:

Weekly brainstorming webinars ~ brainstorm with some very successful marketers  each Tuesday at noon.

Freelance job board ~ whether you’re looking to work or to hire someone

An active and helpful forum ~ whether you have a quick question or need support you’ll find it in the SSWT forum.

That all comes for free!

The other thing that Lynn offers is the Elite Membership. This membership allows you to enter the private forum area where there is some really great brainstorming going on. There are case studies people are working on, people asking questions about just about every part of internet marketing ~ and getting real help and feedback.

Lynn also gives Elite members a monthly “challenge” which has ALREADY helped me move my business forward and tackle some of the goals I had for this year.

I love being able to be open about my business ~ which is more difficult on other forums. I like to be able to ask specific questions about what I’m doing, and how I could do it better. I love being able to partner with people ~ whether it’s for guest posts or product launches ~ I find all of that in the Elite forum.

The Elite Forum is a monthly fee of $27. It has paid for itself already time and time again for me. But it’s an add on ~ if you don’t want to do the elite forum, don’t worry ~ you’ll find TONS and TONS of helpful stuff in the free forum.

Lynn is there quite often and takes an active roll in answering people’s questions as well as the other members of the forum are there to help as well.

That’s one other thing I particularly like about this forum as apposed to some others is this:

It’s run by Lynn Terry. I like her. I trust her. I know she walks the walk, and doesn’t just talk the talk. She monitors the forum, so you know the people and information are going to be up to Lynn Terry standards, and that means something to me.

I hope you stop by and say hi ~ feel free to ask questions and participate in the conversation. (Don’t forget to add a signature to your profile so people can take a look at your site! I get quite a bit of good traffic this way ~ but make sure you are contributing to the conversation!)

Head on over now and say hi!

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Basic backlinking strategy

Backlinking Mind Map and Strategy

Why are you linking and where should your links point?

How to find out if you’re indexed (with images)

Nice list of Backlinking options

Different ways you can create backlinks

How to make anchor text links

How to Build Backlinks with Article Marketing

The reasons behind article marketing

Building lots of  links with articles

How to Use Ezinearticles.com for Links

How to Build Backlinks Using Blogs

Using Free Ad Blogs for Backlinks

Creating a blogger blog for linking

What to write on your backlinking blogs

The wrong way to use blog comments

The right way to use blog comments for linking

Where to get Zemanta and more ways it builds links

How to use Zemanta on your blog for even more links

Blogroll Exchanges

How to Build Backlinks Using Web 2.0 Sites

Basic overview of using Web 2.0 sites for backlinks

How to use wetpaint

How to use Google knol for links

How to use hubpages for links

Using Instructables for backlinks

What is social bookmarking and how does it give me links?

Easy system for social bookmarking

Big lists of social bookmarking sites

Blog Catalog for links and traffic

Using forums for links and traffic

Using myspace for links and traffic

Using RSS for backlinks

What is RSS and why you should be using it for links

How to find your Squidoo lensmaster feed and use it for backlinks

Staying Motivated!

How to manage the mind numbing tasks of backlinking

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Have an amazing day.

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