Internet Business Blog by Jack Keifer

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

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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.

[slideshow=1]

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

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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

4 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

4 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

2 Comments

I was chatting with a friend a while ago about different aspects of running an internet business. I asked him if he was ever going to create any products of his own or just keep doing the affiliate marketing thing. He stunned me when he said that he had already written a couple e-books and was working on a how-to video. I asked him where his sales page was so that I could check them out, after all I was quite impressed that he already had two products. I didn’t know that he even had one! Then came the reply that explained why I didn’t know about them. He never released them. When I asked him why, his reply was that he didn’t think that they were probably good enough to actually sell to the public and that he would like to tweak them up someday.

Huh? After sending me copies of his work I was really astonished that he had never released them! The information was excellent and the e-books were very professionally done. Without trying to sound like that I thought he was crazy, I asked “are you freakin’ nuts? Why would you let these sit around like this?” Here he’s got two and soon to be three streams of income just sitting on the virtual shelf collecting dust.

I can’t help but to wonder, is he a rare exception or is this more common than I think? How about you? Have you started on a product and never finished it, or finished and not released it? I find this astounding. Why would one go to the trouble of making a product and not release it? Putting your product out there for the world to partake of, I suppose can be a scary thought to some. Before I released the AmazingCloaker , I recall thinking in the back of my mind “what if no one likes it?” “Suppose my refunds are 90 or 100%?” Sure, those can be intimidating thoughts, but I think everyone wonders whether their product is going to be well received or not.

The way I see it, if you never try to sell your product, you have already turned it into a loser. It’s like creating gold bars straight out of thin air, and then stashing them away vowing never to use them for life. Even if your product was more like copper coins rather than gold, coin is still coin, so to speak.

Don’t waste your talent or your time because of anxiety over how people will react to your product. If you put a sincere effort into your product which is useful to someone, you have a good product. Some people won’t like your product and will promptly ask for a refund, that’s just a fact. The majority will love it and you will begin getting great feedback out there from your customers. That is also a fact.

If you happen to be in this same boat, now is the time to get past this and get your product out there. Just creating products does not an internet business make. Selling and promoting them does. You took action to run with it, now complete it by taking ball over the goal line and making that touchdown.

-Jack S. Keifer

1 Comment

The beta testing slots are now full. I appreciate your help. I’ll be emailing out the beta version today after completing the intro video and making a couple final tweaks.

-Jack S. Keifer

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Xingla Pro is now in beta and I am looking for 10 people to beta test my new product. Xingla Pro is a Blog Carnival submitter designed to take the tedium out of submitting to blog carnivals. If you would like to test out this killer app, just reply to this post. There are only 10 slots open. I will accept the first 10 comments.

By becoming a beta tester of Xingla Pro, I would like a testimonial if you like the software. If you don’t like the software, some constructive criticism would be an acceptable alternative. By giving your testimonial, you’ll agree to let me use it in my promotions of Xingla Pro. If you are serious about your internet business and wish to participate and give me feedback, then let me know before the slots are closed.

BTW - Those who hold up their end of the bargain will receive the full version upon release for free!

Xingla Pro will sell for $100 and will debut with a 24 hour special for $35. Subscribe to my blog announcement list if you don’t want to miss the special!

-Jack S. Keifer

11 Comments

James Brausch made an interesting observation about an apparently dead blog at sabrinajefferson.org. Although the actual reasons aren’t really clear in Sabrina’s case, James suspects self-sabotage. Thus the subject I would like to touch upon. I’ve seen this myself on a few occasions where one is beginning to really get a successful foundation laid out when all of a sudden, things start going wrong. The spiral continues downward until finally, the business owner makes the command decision to discontinue the business and go back to a J.O.B. or start something else. With a little objective analysis, you’ll see that in many cases that those things that were going wrong were actually self-created. Sometimes the self-saboteur has no clue why the business is taking a nosedive. They trash themselves totally unconscious that the root cause is from within themselves.

What is the source? Negative beliefs. You can recite all the positive affirmations in the world to convince yourself that you will be successful and that your subconscious will be magically reprogrammed through these affirmations. Unfortunately, if your core beliefs say that you aren’t worthy or good enough for success then you will continue the cycle of self-sabotage until you can erase these limiting beliefs which shape your subconscious. Remember, you ARE your beliefs.

One way that you can help turn these negative beliefs around would be to set a high goal for yourself, and then break it down into small bite size pieces. Each time that you succeed in each baby step, you are slowly proving to your subconscious mind that success is something that you can make into a reality. Your confidence will grow with each baby step. Soon you will erase the old self-defeating belief and realize that you are capable of true success. Your belief will change and your subconscious mind will reprogram itself for success. Now you can begin to build a real business.

If you find that you continually crash your projects and never follow through on really building a lasting business, consider this. Your goals are probably not focused. They may not be focused because you really don’t believe that you will accomplish them anyway. Take this simple technique and map out tiny stepping stones for each day, building one upon the other to complete the big picture. Then simply do them every day. You’ll be surprised how many days of small forward progresses will propel you far beyond your expectations. As a result, you will see yourself in a completely new light. Suddenly, when you look in the mirror, you will see one of those successful people that you thought you could never be, starring you right back in the face. Trust me, you’ll love the feeling!

-Jack S. Keifer

4 Comments