Internet Business Blog by Jack Keifer

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably run across the occasional sales letter or even blog post talking about finding niches and dominating them. Or that if you buy that mega cool keyword research tool, you’ll discover great niches with little to no competition, which you can completely dominate! Wow! Can you imagine being the top dog in the designer ball bearing niche? Imagine having little to no competition in your newly discovered niche!

Sounds pretty great right? I would have to say, eh, er, um… NOT!

It’s a big internet universe out there. First of all, you have to step back and ask yourself why there is no competition? To think that designer ball bearings is an undiscovered niche just sitting there waiting to make you the next internet millionaire is just pure fantasy. Yet many people buy into this very niche mindset.

Perhaps there’s another reason that a niche has little to no competition. Remember in the last post when I wrote about the word exchange game? Try exchanging “competition” for “interest“. Exactly. The niche has little to no interest.

Competition is an indicator of interest in a product. If you have lots of competition, then its a pretty safe bet that there is a demand for this type of product. You have a REAL market.  Competition is a good thing… really! In fact, in any major market, let’s say “internet marketing” for example, competition is really just an illusion. The other people in your market shouldn’t be thought of as competitors at all. Instead, let’s use the word switching game again and substitute “competitor” for “JV Partner”, “link exchange”, “affiliate”, or even “traffic source” as few basic examples.

As you can see, taking different perspectives on things, including your internet business is a very important lesson to absorb into your life experience.

The next time you want to create a product or if you’re looking for a new market to expand into, do the opposite of what the “gurus” are teaching. Go jump into a really big market with lots of “competition” and stake your claim. See what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results!

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet BusinessNo Comments.

I was reading an excellent post yesterday while getting my James Brausch fix on his blog. I started out reading an excellent set of posts. The first one is entitled “That Doesn’t Make any Sense”. This was a follow up post from the previous day called “Thinking About Words Used“. I went on to read the original post which involved a word replacement game, where you would replace emotional trigger words in a sentence with another one. The general idea is to open your mind beyond the conditioning that we regularly receive from TV, family, peers, etc. and seeing things from other perspectives.

This post made me think back to a book I read as a teenager called “I Can Sell You Anything” by Paul Stevens. In one chapter of the book, he elaborates on the use of “weasel words” such as helps, virtually, up to, as much as, etc. For example, “Virtually spot free”. Most people would think of a clean surface with no spots. Let’s check out the definition of virtual from a dictionary.

virtual adj. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo.

OK, so another way of saying “virtually” could be “almost” or “not really”. Almost spot free… Not really spot free. Hmmm, paints a different picture, eh? Of course, technically, weasel words are necessary in advertising to protect the maker of the product. There are no absolutes with a pain reliever for example. For Novartis to claim that you will be free of pain in 15 minutes after popping two Excedrin would be marketing suicide.

After reading that book way back then, I started word replacing all the weasel words that I would pick up on in the commercials I would see on TV, or in printed Ads. This really helped me to become more aware of exactly what the product was really about, & not what you are led to believe. I started seeing advertisements in a whole new light and I was suddenly much less vulnerable to being snowed.

An entirely new perspective was opened up to me that I never saw before. Kind of like the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” with Robin Williams, where he played a college professor who, in one scene, had his students stand on top of their desks so that they could see their every day surroundings from a different perspective. That was the same kind of “ding” moment for me way back then.

This same “ding” moment can come about in any aspect of communication if you play along as James Points out in his post. I apply this concept pretty much unconsciously all the time. I never really gave it much thought before reading James’s post. TV really is a dangerous medium for conditioning because we simply absorb what is being spoon fed into our brains. This is why TV is such an effective advertising medium, because you can insert “where’s the beef?” directly into the brains of the public and suddenly, millions of people know that Wendys is the place for big juicy hamburgers.

When you think about it, everything the average person really knows about world affairs, politics, government, etc is by what they are fed by the media. Whether true or not, people then regurgitate that info back to their peers as if it was absolute fact, just because they were told it was so by the media, without any “real” first hand proof to back it up.

Check out Jame’s post in the link above and play the word exchange game the next time you watch or read the news, an advertisement, or are copywriting your next sales letter. If you apply this to key facets of your internet business, you will tap into a new level of creativity that you never knew you had.

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet BusinessNo Comments.

One thing that makes the marketing of information so popular on the internet is the quest for the “magic pill” mindset. 98% of those who are looking for information, especially in the areas of self-improvement, internet business, marketing, weight loss, etc., tend to make their purchases based on the hope that somehow this info will magically take care of everything for them. If any new skill sets can be absorbed by osmosis, all the better.

In the movie “The Matrix”, Morpheus offers Neo either the blue pill or the red pill. If he takes the blue pill, everything will remain the same. He will continue on with his relatively comfortable life as he knows it, but never achieve his true destiny. If he takes the red pill, however, then the illusion of reality will be lifted and he will learn the secrets of the Matrix. It will not be a comfortable, easy transformation. All the brainwashing and comfortable false security will be gone. See any parallels?

In my own personal observations, I’ve noticed that people generally want the best of both pills. They want the comfort of the blue pill, remaining stagnant and unchanged. At the same time, they want the results of taking the red pill.

This is one reason why prescription drugs are such a huge market. For example, many people with high blood pressure would rather pop a pill every day for the rest of their lives, rather than make a lifestyle change and cure the root cause of the problem. This would require effort. A deviation from the comfortable pattern that we have molded for ourselves into.

This is the very thing that you have to consider for your online business! Even after taking the red pill, Neo had to take action and work to fulfill his destiny as “the one”. Once he understood the matrix, he could have simply lived out his life in obscurity in his new found world and died an unknown.

When you purchase that needed tool for your current business, or that course on how to build an internet business online, remember, if its good information, you may be getting the red pill, or at least some diluted form of it. Now its up to you to act on your new knowledge, and fulfill your destiny.

The secret to success is that there is no magic pill that will do it all for you. There is no system that will allow you to input nothing and get millions back out. The real secret, the real magic pill is action. Get a mentor. Learn all you can about being successful and then apply it.

If you’re an info junkie, then you may already have a goldmine of information just collecting pixel dust in your hard drive. Dust off those e-books, go back through them, but this time ACT on what you read. Getting a successful internet business off the ground takes work. It takes dedication. Don’t let anyone B.S. you into thinking that it doesn’t.

With that said, its really not that hard once you take action and start making those baby steps towards your new future. You must start by having a “take action” mindset as your biggest priority. Now build your business, stick with it even through the failures, and freedom will be yours.

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet Business5 Comments

The wait is over! Xingla Pro is now available. If you have your own blog, or you’re contracting yourself out to submit to blog carnivals, then you will instantly see the value in this software.

Blog carnivals are one of the most effective ways to monetize your products whether they’re your own products or affiliate promotions.

Back links are a major ranking factor for the search engines, especially Google. If you want to crank out major back links to your blog without having to endure the time consuming repetition of completing this procedure, then you need to get this software now.

Blog carnival submission should be a required procedure for any serious internet business owner.

Xingla Pro will be available for the next 24 hours for only $35. After that the price will increase to $100.

If you’re serious about your blog, you can get the software here:

http://Kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00E7GLZ7

The special will end at 11:30pm EST (-5hrs GMT) on April 30th. At 11:31pm it will be too late.

-Jack S. Keifer

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I was surfing around some of my favorite blogs today & I came across two different posts relating to some cool WordPress plugins that I never paid attention to in the past. The first one I discovered was noted in Mohamed Bhimji’s Blog called alinks. This awesome plugin will automatically create a link from any keywords that you choose. As you noticed above - Mohamed Bhimji and alinks were both auto-generated by alinks. Somehow, I missed Mohamed’s post on the 16th and I’m glad I found it. I immediately installed this plugin and started creating my keywords.

This is especially valuable for creating some back links to your other products and web sites. Alinks will automatically update your entire blog to show the proper back links from your chosen keywords. For example, I have a number of posts that references AmazingCloaker, my url link cloaking product. In one instance, every reference to AmazingCloaker has been automatically updated to link to my product website.

You may have also noticed that the keywords such as “AmazingCloaker” only auto links once within a post. Another smart feature to prevent inadvertent anchor stuffing, which would have a reverse effect on your SEO. You can even opt to not display keywords past a certain date. Oh, did I mention that it’s FREE? This is a definite “must have plugin!

Then I was off to Kenton Newby’s blog. As usual Kenton always has great posts to read, and today, coincidentally, he had posted an article about a couple great plugins that he’s added to his arsenal as well.

The first one is called KeywordLuv. This cool little plugin allows your commenters to insert keywords into the Name field without being flagged as spammers. For example, in the “Name” field, you would insert your name, then an “@” symbol followed by your keyword phrase. For example, if you wanted to use the keywords “Internet Business Blog” as your back link anchor text, and your name was Joe, simply type in (without the quotes) “Joe @ Internet Business Blog”. Everything after the “@” symbol is stripped out into anchor text for your back link, which corresponds to your website info that you then enter into the URL field.

In order for this to work, you need to become “dofollow” friendly. By default, WordPress uses the “nofollow” tags which doesn’t give responders the full benefit of the back link from their comments. I downloaded a “dofollow” plugin called Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin which seems like an excellent “dofollow” plugin. It has many features such as minimum response requirements and other things to discourage link spammers.

The other plugin that Kenton mentioned was WP Ajax Edit Comments. This allows you to edit your comment within a certain time after you have posted to the blog. I can think of many times when I’ve responded to a blog post, submitted, and went back to read it only to find spelling errors, or something phrased wrong, but it was too late to change it. WP Ajax Edit Comments will solve that problem for your readers.

Normally, I try not to bog down my blog with too many plugins. You’ll find people out there that have nearly every widget and plugin under the sun running in their blog. I’m always wary of what consequences that this could cause in regards to search engine indexing or just bogging down the mySQL server. However, the above plugins seem to be very friendly not only to me, the blog host, but more importantly, to you the reader as well.

If you have a blog, do yourself a favor and check them out!

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet Business1 Comment

Well, after a night of watching over Tingting, and trying to get comfortable in a front heavy wooden rocking chair for half of that night, I’m dazed, but a happy daddy. Kevin arrived at 8:01am this morning! This morning being April 21st, 2008.
He is 7 lbs 1.4 ounces and 20 inches long. Here’s a slideshow of Kevin’s first day.

Tingting did the hard part, but I’m the one that looks ragged… go figure!

Tingting labored on throughout the night. She was pretty comfortable at around 10:30pm. Her mother & I went home for a few hours & then returned at around 2:30am. I had her mother use the recliner to doze off in. The remaining option for me was a heavy wooden rocking chair that seemed to only rock to the front. Probably to make it easier for new mother’s since they are quite sore. Nonetheless, I think sleeping standing at full military attention would have been more comfortable, lol. Luckily, about 15 minutes later, a nurse offered me a bed in the room that Tingting was to be moved to after giving birth. Much better! Tingting appeared to be pretty comfortable so I went to catch some sleep.

I awoke at 6:30am, and walked in to see a much different scene than just a few short hours ago. Tingting had a wet towel across her forehead and was blowing out controlled breaths of air during a contraction. She was obviously in pain. It was almost “go time” and she was terrified. A few hours prior, her epidural began losing some of its effect as the baby was dropping lower. She was now dilated to 9cm. At around 7:15am, the doctor happily told her that in 15 minutes, she would be ready to push.

He left the room and about a minute later, another woman who was giving birth in the next room began  screaming at the top of her lungs. The echoing sounds resembling a woman being tortured and ripped apart from the inside out had Tingting in tears and shaking. She was terrified. This is her first baby after all, so there were many scary unknowns floating around in her head.

While crying, she asked me if the same thing was going to happen to her in 15 minutes. I explained to her that the other person didn’t have any kind of anesthetics, and that this wouldn’t be happening to her. She asked me how I knew that. Uh… with some quick thinking, I told her that she just arrived an hour ago & there was no time for her to get an epidural.

A few minutes later, the doctor came back in and confirmed to Tingting what I said. We both breathed a sigh of relief. I was pretty much bluffing my way through that question showing confidence only to keep Tingting calm, but I really wasn’t 100% sure myself. I only knew that last night, there were no other patients there along with Tingting. I gambled on the side of logic.

I was in the action the whole time. Standing on the left side of her, pulling back her leg during the pushing and keeping the delicate balance between encouragement and reassurance for her. She was pushing for over 20 minutes, maybe longer. Kevin finally had to be helped along with some forceps. Along with the post appeasiotomy stitching, these were the most painful parts for her. I have no idea how to spell “appeasiotomy”, but its the procedure of cutting the vaginal area to increase the opening.

Watching Kevin come out and jump into life for the first time was an amazing site. When the doctor pulled him out into the open, he plopped out like a mucus covered rubber doll and was facing up in his hands. In that instant, he “popped” into life with a deep breath while opening his eyes widely, looking right at me. I know, scary first site! That was enough to get him crying and showing us what a healthy boy we have.

The doctor then clamped and cut the umbilical cord. Giving birth is a pretty messy business, and I wasn’t sure beforehand how I was going to handle it, being right in the trenches, so-to-speak. Compared to what Tingting was going through, my part was nothing. I got to be the first hand witness of a miracle. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It’s been an amazing day, and now I’m off to take a nap before starting my next “dad” shift with my new baby boy!

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet Business14 Comments

Tick…tick…tick… That’s the sound of the clock in the background as I’m sitting here in the hospital delivery room with my wife Tingting. The big day has arrived! Tingting seemed to be showing signs of labor yesterday (April 19th) and I took her to the hospital maternity ward to have her checked out. They suspected early labor, but since we are only 5 minutes away from the hospital, they let us go back home to see how things go.

Tingting got pretty much zero sleep last night so it was back to the hospital at 8:40am this morning. Our doctor told us that today is the real deal. The plan – induce and manage the labor and have the baby today. He induced labor at 12:15pm today (April 20th).

Her labor pains were getting pretty excruciating around 4:30, so we had an epidural for her. Now she’s resting comfortably, and she’s a much happier girl. It is now 9:26pm and she is dilated to only 3cm. Will he be an April 20th baby, or a 21st baby? Hmmm, time will tell.

Needless to say, Xingla Pro’s is on hold for the moment while we eagerly await our new arrival. If Kevin arrives tonight, then I will be uploading to Kunaki tomorrow (April 21st).

I’m writing this as Tingting and her mother are napping in the background. She’s waking up now, so I’ll be back to add to this post later if Kevin doesn’t make his grand entrance before then.

Well, back to my wife’s side. Wish us luck!

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet Business4 Comments

Xingla Pro is finally ready! I’ve run into a number of stumbling blocks to get this out, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it was worth the wait. I’m getting the details together tonight to upload the software to Kunaki. Xingla Pro will debut most likely tomorrow evening (Saturday). If so, it will be a 48 hour special, because of it falling on the weekend.

If you regularly submit to blog carnivals, you will certainly appreciate how this will save you a ton of time. Here’s a video of Xingla Pro in action.

-Jack S. Keifer

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You’re starting your internet business, or you’ve already started it, but you’re working full time to pay the bills while your business gets off the ground. This is the predicament that most of us find ourselves in. How do you build your business when you have 40 - 60 hours per week tied up in trading your time for money (a J.O.B.)? In prior posts you’ve read different techniques for getting more time freed up for your business, such as ditching the TV, turning off the phone, avoiding forums, etc. But then what?

How dedicated are you to really building your internet business? Is there anything more important than your freedom? James Brausch wrote once that by walking out on your J.O.B., you would have the time and the freedom to really build your business. Imagine if you reached this level of freedom!

The typical reaction of course is “huh? Just walk out? Yeah easy for a millionaire to say!” Ok, with a mortgage, bills, and in some people’s cases, monstrous credit card debt, one would have to be pretty gutsy to cut off their only stream of income. On the other hand, one has to be pretty gutsy to have only one stream of income - a J.O.B.!

Ok, how motivated are you right now to start your internet business? How motivated are you to take your existing ones to a full time income? With a mild comfort level that a J.O.B. creates (false security), the sense of urgency isn’t really there for most people to get that internet business really cranking.

So now I’d like you to try something. Did you ever mess around on one of those trading sites like ScottTrade and sign up to play their stock market software with pretend money so you could learn the ropes of stock investing?

Try doing the same thing with your internet business. Pretend, right now that you just told your boss to stick it sideways where the sun doesn’t shine. You just walked away from your J.O.B. Now you have no income what-so-ever except for what you might be making online. Now what? How hard would you work now to build your business? Would you work like your life depended on it?

Let’s play a mental mind game called “I just fired my boss!” Put yourself in this scenario for the next two weeks and work your business as if your J.O.B. doesn’t exist, and there’s no J.O.B.s available anywhere.

Tell yourself that you need to make “x” amount to cover your expenses this week. Can you do it? Set a goal at covering your virtual expenses and start creating that video product. Now think about how you’re going to promote it. Post a preview on YouTube, start an eBay auction, blog about it. If you don’t have a blog, then start one. Promote your blog via blog carnivals. You get the picture. Play this game seriously and really challenge yourself.

If you don’t do very well the first couple of weeks, play again and see if you can top your results. If you play this game seriously enough, you will reach the level where you can tell your boss to go pound salt for real!

Need some more tips on how to start from scratch? Check out this book and put yourself in his shoes.

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet Business3 Comments

The final release of Xingla Pro is ready to debut. I’ve received some outstanding feedback from those who have taken the initiative to test the software. I’ve made some big changes since the beta and I am feeling that Xingla Pro has reached the stage of completion.

Xingla Pro has an automatic update feature so users will always have the latest improvements. I’d like to thank those who participated, and you are certainly welcome to keep sending the feedback as long as you wish. I really appreciate all the useful information that you shared with me. This will enable me to give the greatest value to the users of this product.

I think that I will make this product a physical product available through Kunaki. I’ve been very impressed with the results that I’ve seen from James Brausch’s “conversion” from digital to physical, as well as others who have followed suit. The graphic pictured above for this blog post is my draft of what the CD cover will look like. I snapped this pic a couple years ago when I was in Beijing. I came across these figures as I was walking down a side street in the Bei-Hai area of Beijing. Beijing is in China for those of you who flunked geography class - LOL .

I will be submitting the software this weekend and will be run a 24 hour special at launch time. Xingla Pro is designed to save you a ton of time and automates the process of submitting to blog carnivals. At the same time, it allows you to keep your lists relevant to your subject matter so that you don’t get yourself banned from carnival hosts.

If you need serious back links and traffic to your blog, which also results in higher search engine ranking, then blog carnivals are among the best techniques for getting both. If you want to take the pain out of submitting to blog carnivals, then be sure to take advantage of the 24 hour special coming very soon. 

-Jack S. Keifer

Tags:   Internet Business · Xingla Pro2 Comments