The basic article discuss how ideas have little to no value, it is all about the execution of an idea that determine how much the idea can be worth. The idea of a execution multiplier.

Derek Sivers explains with the following concept:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

“The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.
I’m not interested until I see their execution.” via oreilly.com

This is the most brilliant concept I have seen in a while and hit me like a slap in the face. I have millions of ideas day in and day out, but executing them, well I have been slacking in the department in the past, but trying to change.

Ideas are just thoughts, they need to be ironed out and eventually executed. Recently I had an idea about some SEO tool and wanted to executing them. Myself and another partner have been working on building these SEO Tools, that I am sure my readers would want to use. These SEO Tools have mainly been developed based on a idea of automating SEO optimization. I had this idea, but can’t be worth that much, but if executed, it can be vary valuable. So I want to improve on Derek Sivers post by discussion automation as in an Idea is worth little to nothing, executing an idea has a multiply and automation well, that can raise the number to a high power. The automation of a product can also be the repackaging of a product, just checkout 37 Signal’s post on Making Money Twice. You want to automate processes so you can leverage the idea/execution as another stream of passive income. As for my SEO Tools I am hoping to demo the product by end of month, but always looking for beta tests, so contact me if your interested and/or do some SEO work of your own.

A couple of weeks ago, my SEO idea was just that, and idea, but with some help, this idea can be executed and later automated to bring in a steady stream of passive income. While working on executing my own idea (or any idea) you need to surround yourself with like minded people who ask tough questions, give advice, and can help put you in contact with people who can help. Well, early this week I received an email about Ultra Light Startups and was blown away after I saw what Ultra Light Startups promote (Low permanent headcount, low overhead, low budget, and outsourcing) and how they can help (network,share ideas, work together). I have been looking for a group of entrepreneurs who help each other take ideas and get them executed and out the world, hopefully this is it! For myself I do not want to just see myself succeed in a business, I want to help everyone I can and make it a win/win. Much like cashflow, the goal is not to get yourself out of the “rat race”, you want to get everyone out of the “rat race”.

I will be sure to write up a whole blog post about the event. Ultra Light Startups is focused on ‘100% participatory’ and even offer a discount for those who “demo” a idea, how awesome is that. I will be attending their next meeting Thursday October 2nd 2008. So if you are in the NYC area and want to meet some entrepreneurs, register now.

I really am looking forward to this event and hope to meet other entrepreneurs who have taken ideas and executed them by building a low overhead business via outsourcing and working with one another. I am a big fan of multiple streams of passive income. By offering a group that encourages you to take an idea and act on it that requires small amounts of money, well.. I am just really excited. As I said, I will be posting the full story and review in my next post. I hope to see you there or at another meetup/networking event in NYC.

1. Feedburner FeedSmith - Do you want to put ads or monitor your RSS/Atom Feeds. Sign Up for Feedburner and you will have access to this. WordPress is great for creating feeds, but you need to monitor and see how many of those readers actually just read your blog and don’t comment. I know it has blown me away, and sometimes helps me get through the dips knowing there are a bunch of people who subscribe to my blog. Thanks!
2. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress - Seriously, who DOESN’T want SEO help. Adding this simple plugin creates your “sitemap” for your site and leverages the guidelines of sitemap dot org who now support the major Search Engines, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Just install, and bam, your SEO will go up as well as “get your blog out their”.
3. Sociable 2.0 - 2007 was the year of Social Networks, why not leverage them and get your posts published on digg, del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, and many more. You can pick and choose the ones you want to show up, for easy adding for users. Highly recommend it, you just need 1 person to use it to make it worth your time. Very simple to setup/install, so just do it!
4. TLA Inlinks - As much as I like to be that “volunteer” person, I have to say that blogging CAN and (prolly is) making you some money. I get the problems with Google Adsense and/or other Advertisements, christ I have (might) just be my own Advertisement and sell them through Google Checkout/Paypal, but have not done that (yet!). Making money blogging can be a part full time job. I enjoy blogging and it helps with seeing where I was in the past as well as offering the knowledge I have learned and giving to others. Text Link Ads pays a nice monthly figure, so why not leverage it if your not. Hey, bills don’t pay for themselves, and I know it’s a great way to leverage some passive income for bloggers.
5. WP-Cache - For those who WANT to be on digg, make sure you can HANDLE the load, or even stumbleupon, you need to KEEP YOUR SITE UP. Caching will do that, so download/install, and be ready for a lot of traffic. It only takes 1 story to send you 10,000+ page views, so be ready.
6. Back Up Your Data - Think of how much time you put into blogging, do you REALLY want to not have an “external” stored backup of your blog? The thing that should be valuable, other then the domain, is your content. I use this plugin to not only create weekly backups, but I also have them email them to a gmail account or offsite webmail. (A great place for simple/easy external storage of small files). I am not saying I use like 2 or 5gb of gmail, but I try and keep a couple of those compressed ZIP files in my inbox, just in case.
7. Popularity Content - Notice that list of 10 posts at the top of my blog, labeled, Most Popular Posts. Yea I use this plugin to create that, and actually change some of the backend numbers to “push” other content. Posting up your “best hits” helps by getting those new blog visitors to see some of your “greatest work”. I find that I average about 2 page views per visitor to my blog. This means that they stay for at least 1 more click to another view, (and not always just the homepage). Having that list might perk their interests and want them to check out some other “great work” I have done. I know I could leverage this plugin more with posting up within each category, but maybe I will look at that on the next “redesign” of this blog
8. Similar Posts - Something I just recently added and find it great! I do not have to do any work, it does some search/keywords matching and finds/list the posts. Pretty simple, but yet great for keeping the reader clicking on more inbound links.
9. akismet - Got comment spam? Yea, I know back in wordpress 1.5 and previously, this was a big problem. Having open commenting means that you are constantly fighting an up hill battle. Well thanks to Akismet, all you need is a wordpress account and boom, copy the API key to your plugin, and it takes care of this comment spam problem.
10. Dasher - Want to customize that Dashboard option in Wordpress to view various things when you login, yea this will take care of that. Pretty customizable, and just what I need when I log into my blog.

When you first have an idea about something, like IDK, maybe something like a social network for baby boomers, or a speed dating services using web cams, you need to understand that buzz will build, but buzz can’t build if it’s only fun for a million users. You need to take and have an idea that is fun for 1 to 10 people as well as scales for 10,000 to 1 million.

Not to get into any specifics, but I attended a networking event and someone was discussing an idea they had (which I think could work, I do not think there are bad ideas, just bad implementations) and how if they could get 1,000 or 10,000 users it would be fun. Well let’s think about that for a second, 1,000 users.

Do you have at least 1,000 people in your address book? Would those 1,000 actually USE the product/service your pitching? How fast do you need this product/service to spread before people use it daily? Does this concept scale, would it be fun with 1 million people, or is it more for a small startup business.

Okay, so not to shoot down the product/idea, but you need to keep your feet on the ground before you swing for the fences. I know myself I have had these moments and then started to realize how HIGH these numbers can get, but you need to KEEP these numbers realistic of people who would use it daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Thinking an idea will work if only 1% of China’s population works, well duh! If a lot of people use it, then YES it could work, but how are you going to get 1% or 10,000 users using it before people just forget about it. Hey I am not one to say it sucks, but … bubble? just watch the video. Friendship bracelets and newspapers!

Okay, sorry for that small rant, but building traffic and getting people to use something is hard! So you built your product/service and now you want the buzz to grow, well how can you make it a Purple Cow and get it out there. You blog about it, you get your friends to blog about it, maybe you get some PR from sites here and there, but it can easily takes 6 weeks to build up 100 or even 1,000 users. Even if you average over a million page views a month, having 1 or 2 ads that pitch the site still will only give you about a 2% signup rate.

The hard part IS building this network, once you are there, you can leverage this network for the next one. In fact, you may want to join or get contact lists from others who are in a similar niche market. But getting that “first burst” is very hard and I hate to see so many people work on ideas that would ONLY work if there are a LOT of people. I know for myself, this is something that I have really started to focus on. Why build it, if you need a 10,000 users to make it fun. Build it so that it’s fun with 10 users, and build up the buzz.

I would also recommend the idea/concept of “stand on the shoulders of giants”. How? Well, as I recall APIs and Mashups are the new pink, so try and leveraging “members” from facebook or Develop it with open social.

So yea, almost every idea is good when you have a lot of people using it but building up that “network” of users, is hard and should NOT be the focus of a concept. Think of something that you use everyday, is it fun for 1 to 2 people to use it, maybe a small office? Does it scale so when 10,000 of your “friends” are using it, its still fun? Then hey, go with it, but don’t waste time on an idea that only works with thousands/millions of users. And if you ARE that passionate, leverage a network like Facebook or Open Social.

Now being a Green Thinker I would suggest going with a ereader but ALL OF THEM SUCK, BIG #@%$!

So getting back to the idea of a online or electronic magazine, do you think their is a niche market for these. A blog form that has and posts daily stories, but also creates a weekly PDF you can download/print, or even prints out a monthly version you can buy online. I know for myself I am still attracted to reading articles in magazines and physically holding the paper while I read. I can only tolerate so much pain a day while staring at a screen 17+ hours a day. Since going to college and now having a computer almost always in front of me, my vision has been taking dramatic leaps towards going blind. (For those in the eye profession, I started at a -1.75, Im at about a -5.25, in about 4 years, yet its bad)

So thinking about all this content out there and even looking at building a user submitted magazine, ($%&@ the social network part) but a site focused on content as well as provided content that you can print and bring with you. Does this interests people? Do you enjoy having instant interaction with the write and/or submitting your blog posts and getting published in a emagazine?

I know in the past many emagazines have failed, pretty badly, but I think they are trying to use technology that is NOT already adapted by millions of users. Looking at a wordpress magazine adii was discussion, he would use wordpress to syndicate the stories, and just write the content. So maybe the idea of a emagazine is just a web 1.0 style and a user submitted online/print syndication is more of dare I say web 2.75?

So I have a couple of user submitted sites that I will be launching later this week, as promised, but just keep thinking about this news aggregator site that encourages you to print their stories and offer a printed magazine version too. Obviously I would focus on a IT topic, like ruby on rails, news, or something that interests me.

I have been using wordpress for well over 2 years and have always saw it as a content system rather then blogging. So taking the idea of submitting a “horror story” to a blog/content system that you could post comments to and link to, hence a “bitch to system”. Yes, I have created the ultimate system for posting up great stories about the cellphone carriers as well as other issues you find with your phone, etc. People love to read these types of stories and post feedback/comments/etc. So the system is pretty easy, you send an email and it’s posted to Wordpress. I get notified and review it (weed out that spam) and post it up. This system is totally automated and I WILL hire a virtual assistant once I get tired of reviewing them.

This system is pretty slick and simple, I spent a total of 1 day (more like 4 hours) customizing off the self software (Wordpress, some plugins such as postie and draft notification, a cron job, and some php skillz for the ladies). I have a LOT of ideas with this system not just for sell phones but more for a “bitch to service” to help people get $#!^ off their mind as well as premium content (something funny to read) and hopefully some useful content that will help users get over their woes of the cellphone industry.

I haven’t built a customized template yet, but found a nice simple iPhone template. I will be working on this more and post up about it, but just wanted to tease my readers with some new projects that are DONE, just doing some testing and waiting until after the holidays to release them. So if you do have a cellphone/mobile horror story, send it to submit@mobiwoes.com. I haven’t written out all the “cool” automation that is built in (mostly thanks to postie) but I will be sure to discuss this in full in the next 2 weeks. Until then, enjoy spending some time with (or without) family/friends, etc and be sure to RELAX and DEstress yourself!

Resource Links
Postie plugin for wordpress.
Draft notification plugin notification for wordpress.
Pending Reviews what are they and how can you leverage them.
Fix Categories for Wordpress 2.3 with Postie This was a HUGE help and started to do more hacks with Postie due to this. Thanks!
I also used a cron job, but wanted to thank Russell Heimlich for his post about dreamhost and cron jobs. I always enjoy seeing a simple way to do something technical, so if your on dreamhost and want to use (levearge?) postie, check out his quick tip that will make your life so much easier.

Early this week I got pitched a business like this and it just blew my mind. I have heard of the buzz around network marketing, but thought, scam, etc, well I was wrong. I have already broken even with just 2 sales! Basically you are signing up for a ebook that you can sell for $67 and you get a 50% rip! Think about it, you sell 2 and you just broke even, better yet that 3rd sale is pure profit of $33.50. This system WORKS and is exactly what most people want. Simple, easy, and a great stepping stone with online marketing and sales. Just to give you a taste of the product, I want to give you a FREE 35 page ebook about the lies of Network Marketing. Just click here and scroll down and fill out the Name and Email form. If you like what you see, you can then continue on and order the Renegade Network Marketer. I do NOT want to pressure you into buying anything, hey you DON’T have to. I am just saying, if you every wanted to even TRY and start a small business, why not now and why not online.

If your thinking I am pitching you, well you can take it or leave it, but just keep in mind, you can build passive income today that pays for your life tomorrow. I seem to be spending more time getting back into the business and NOT saying NO! (I know I need to “be like Tim” and say No to people as well as FOCUS on what I am trying to accomplish.) I need to build/start a business that is making money for me right out the door. This network marketing system works, and you get access to all the “how-to’s” and information you need to make money as well as learn their system and how to rip this system off and create your OWN! Think about this as a short term investment, start a business with a $67 investment, break even with 2 sales of $67 bucks. Read what they are teaching you and build your own system in which you use affiliates to spread the word and create a viral marketing campaign.

I am constantly reading books (or ebooks) about make money online and actually focusing on the fact that I NEED TO MAKE $100/day in Passive income by Feb 2008. How am I going to do this, well there are a lot of ideas, but this one, is just icing on the cake. I have always wanted to get into selling and pitching ebooks, but have not dived in deep with them. I wanted to build a test system that would help teach me what I need to know. Well after paying $67, I have a system that DOES ALL THE THINGS I NEED AND MORE! I have all this knowledge about the internet and IT, but I am not monetizing it. I am getting beat by a 14 year olds in the Philippines. (Imagine that!) Who is REALLY making money online.

So if you are a reader and do not want to be pitched, well wait for the next post, but if you are interested in trying to start a business and don’t want to drop hardly any money and take a small risk, what better opportunity then the renegade network marketer. Seriously, what business can you start and break even with 2 sales of a product that almost sells itself. One thing I have learned this past summer is Google Adsense makes hardly enough money to pay for beer. You need to think big if you want out of the “rat race”. Selling something like an ebook which pays for itself after 2 sales, DO IT!

I know your thinking, but John I do not want to get into selling ebooks, I have a passion for (insert topic here). Well let me first start by saying, you need to learn sales to be a successful business person. If your not selling, your not making money. So why not practice and improve your sales techniques as well as LEARN something for a low price of $67! Seriously, you could be making money right now by using their proven system. I do NOT plan to start pitching these type of affiliates on my blog and am working on starting up a couple of separate blogs, but I know that their are entrepreneurs that read my blog and looking for another source of passive income.

So take a look and signup for a FREE Copy of “The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing” an ebook that taught me a lot about network marketing!

I have been online since 1996 and have built various websites, blogs, etc, but never got my feet wet into e-commerce. (imagine that!) I have always wanted to setup my own online store, but never had a simple product to sell. Most people have ideas for a t-shirt or a custom bag, but starting a business around it can take a lot. So starting small by selling 1 or 2 items is something everyone should look at. Some ideas such as clothes, hat, bag, widgets or whatever, can be resold and start your niche online store with little to no money down.

Late last week while catching up on the drama between John Chow and Shoemoney, Shoemoney posted a very interesting article about setting up a niche storefront in minutes. After reading through and seeing how this “storefront” is really just a ebay/item aggregator with some ads on it, I thought well, there is no “tangible” products he is selling, but links to items other people are selling.

I know in college I was always interested in cafepress because I could create something in photoshop and put it in a t-shirt and buy it for about $15. Everyone has ideas for T-shirts with funny sayings or something that everyone would want to wear. I even bought a couple of these type of T-shirts while at college like an absolute UVM (University of Vermont) shirt.

So if you have those ideas (everyone does) why not dive in and build a simple site with 1 to 3 products and take some risk with little or no upfront cost. Well thats my plan for the month of December. I guess the timing is a bit off, I should have done this in November knowing that I could have made more money during the beginning of the Holiday season. Anyway, here are my thoughts on building a simple niche online storefront with little or no money down.

So I am guessing you have a blog, website or can put together something with mozilla composer. If not I think this should work with blogspot or blogger, but depends on the Terms of Service. Anyway, I found Fat.Free.Cart today and just was blown away. This is exactly what I was looking for in terms of a simple online e-commerce software. First off the software is FREE, and its integrated with Paypal and Google Checkout. This software is built on xHTML,CSS, and JavaScript (ajax) so you don’t need to be a Geek Guru to use it. They not only offer free code examples but also created a code generator. So with Fat.Free.Cart and a blog/website you have your shopping cart, payment system, etc rolled all up. The only thing you have to worry about is sending out the products and keeping track of inventory. I would HIGHLY suggest creating a separate GMail account and using it for everything from product receive, inventory, payment, etc. You can utilize the auto labeling for incoming purchase as well as paid and shipped items.

So now that I blogged and posted my plan to everyone about how I will be doing this, its time to take action and DO IT! I recently was told about a networking event where a person was talking about staying on track and finishing projects. Their idea was to call up people you know and tell them what you plan to do, this way the next time you talk to them, they will prolly ask you how _____ is going and have you finished the project. So by posting this blog entry up, I hope that not only my readers, but friend will keep me on track and actually FINISH my idea of my own online store.

Since I was 1 of 67 bloggers who entered into the Lists Groups Writing Project for a chance at $100, I figured I should also compete in posting up my top 3 articles that I find very important.

50 ways to start a conversation by dee

Her blog title should say it all, don’t be shy. I know for myself, starting a conversation with a stranger takes me out of my comfort zone, but most people are shy like this. Dee posted up some great questions as well as ideas to help me(and my readers) step up to the plate and meet new people. I will be blogging about your comfort zone in the upcoming weeks, but be sure to check out her blog and post about 50 ways to start a conversation.

I also enjoyed how she broke down the 50 ways into various categories or topics such as, First date conversation breakers, and finding common ground conversation starters. I also started to read through some of her blog entries and found that my role model, Tim Ferris is also mentioned on her blog about challenging your comfort zone.

Great work on all these lines that I will probably use in my upcoming networking events as well as trying to get a phone number of a lucky lady.

7 tricks you need to fight procrastination by Samir Bharadwaj

When it comes to procrastination, I am pretty much a winner. I find that I push off a lot of things due to some of the smallest challenges. This has been something that I have been trying to fight and redo some of my daily routine because of it. I will be writing about this in the upcoming weeks too, but one book that I just have to mention is Crazy Busy by Edward M. Hallowell. I recently got the chance to meet him and listen to all his various incite into how to couple in this busy world. Dr. Hallowell specializes in ADD and ADHA, something I know I have a little of. Anyway, it’s a great book, and I will be doing a complete review for the Geek Guru Book Club soon enough.

Anyway, Samir breaks down each of the 7 tricks into easy digestible ways to fight procrastination. One of my favorite of these tricks is Fight distractions. I am constantly jumping around from task to task and have trouble focusing 100% of my energy towards a task. I have been trying to change this as well as only focus on 1 or 2 specific tasks a day, as if my life depends on it. This way you DO get these task done and by putting so much value on it, that you don’t get distracted as well as keep your focus small and limit it to a couple of tasks. Its interesting that Samir posted how one should do something active as soon as I think about slipping and procrastinate. Something active may include doing laundry, feeding the dog, or maybe even a blog post. This way if you do get sidetracked, something that you NEED to do still gets done, while giving your mind a break. I also know for myself that sometimes I just need to think about it in the back of my head while I am driving or eating. Thanks Samir for the great post and incite into fighting procrastination.

18 tips to become a productive blogger by Monika Mundell

Being a productive blogger is something that I have been trying to do, but have been getting sidetracked. I know sticking to one blog post a day is hard for me when I get a ton of work dropped on me at once. Setting a side the 20 or 30 minutes to write can be hard. I also know that good quality content is better then quantity, to a degree.

Monika posts some great tips that I plan to use to help grow my own blog. Her 2nd tip for productive blogging is, “Think ahead: plan monthly, weekly and daily”. This is something that I NEED to focus on. I was recently reading what does your drafts folder look like? on shoemoney and noticed that mine is almost always empty. Seriously I get posts in my head, write them down and post them. Recently I tried to write them down each night and post them each morning, but if I have an event or get home late, I normally crawl into bed forgetting to post a new entry on my blog. So taking this idea of thinking ahead is something I need to take to the next level, I am going to try and post up 7 to 10 entries which I can always post if something came up, but focus on writing my weekly entries on the weekends. This way I know that I have 5 to 7 articles to post next week and have already committed the time to them.

Number 12 on her list of productive blogging also hit me like a rock, “If you want to make money, you will need to start each day by focusing on your income producing tasks first.” Last month I posted how I was planning to make $100 a day in passive income in the next 3 months. Well I need to focus and work at this money maker each day and be sure to stick to the plan. I think I enjoyed Thanksgiving a bit more then I expected and chilled in NYC for almost 5 days straight. I thought I was going to be sitting at home, board writing blog posts, but instead I was out finding cool places to eat, meeting up with some friends, and checking out the coworking scene. If I am serious about making all this passive income, I need to stick to it and focus on grown my blog as well as FINALLY LAUNCHING A WEBSITE.

As for her post of number 18, I just had to talk about it, “Have fun: take fun out of the equation and you might as well pack your bags!

Please understand that things don’t just improve overnight. Implement what works for you and see, where this will take you.”

I know for myself I am always thinking, hey if I do this, I should be able to bring in $x in a short period of time. Well most of the time, $x is more like $1 or $5 and not $50 or $1000. Having fun is also something to think about, I know I have changed my life dramatically in the past 6 months due to the fact that I wanted more by doing less. Also opportunity presents itself daily, but the implementation can take time, so knowing that I will NOT be an overnight success sucks, but if I keep at it, something is bound to happen.

• 18 Tips to Become a Productive Blogger by Monika Mundell
• 7 Tricks You Need to Fight Procrastination by Samir Bharadwaj
• 50 Ways to Start a Conversation by Dee

So these are my 3 Top Posts for the Lists Groups Writing Project and are in no particular order. I figured I should also give some link love and post up the other 64 entries below (including my own). Please take the time to read some of them, I know I have read all of them and enjoyed each one. I know I have gotten at least 1 vote and hope that maybe I can win the $100, but even if I don’t this has been a great experience and hope to do more blog contests just like this one.

• 5 Surefire Ways To Increase Comments On Your Blog by Vijay
• 35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers by Fred
• 5 Ways To Win A Blog Contest by Erz
• 5 Reasons Why I Bought a Domain by WishBoNe
• 5 Ways to Become the Perfect Idiot by Lori
• 12 Wordpress Editors you can choose by Karthik
• 100 Ways To Promote A Startup by Jason Drohn
• 17 POWER Tips For StumbleUpon Beginners by Dr. Mani
• 15 Tips to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by CSS
• 100 Motivators for Informal Learning by Marcel Ackermann
• 10 Ways to Survive the Writers’ Strike by Cynthia Boris
• 100List - 100 Things I can do to make more money. by Dj Wright
• 21 Punching Tips On Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization by Etienne Teo
• 8 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople by Daniel Sitter
• Your Top 10 Inspirational Quotes by Sparky
• My Top-10 Personal Development Blogs by Marco
• The Quitter’s Checklist by Em Dy
• Thirteen Reasons Why WordPress is Superior To Blogger by JHS
• Get out of debt Quick: 7 Tips by Tejvan
• Six Simple Steps to Remembering and Living the Abundant Life You are Meant to Live by Anita Pathik Law
• To Do To Make Tomorrow Better by Bob
• 10 Ways To Work Through Your Workout by Gal Josefsberg
• 7 Powerful Tips to Overcome Failure by Donald Latumahina
• Top 7 Paid Review Writing Mistakes You Can Avoid by Prince John
• 9 Ways To Achieve Success in Life by Adebola Oni
• ten things i didn’t know until last week by Blaiq
• 40 ways to make your mind your playground by Fier
• 5 Crash Course Tips in Viral Marketing by John Murch
• 100 Sites I Seek Inspiration From by Iain Hamp
• 5 Things That I Believe To Be Lies by Krizza
• List of Classes by Priscilla Palmer
• Top 23 Motivation Tips, Tricks and Tactics from the Blogosphere by Mike Ambrose
• Twelve Days of Classic Country Christmas by Scott
• 5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password by Aseem Kishore
• 10 Things To Consider Before Acting As Your Own Contractor by Shawn Van Dyke
• A Tester’s Dream - 5 steps to revive a Rejected Bug! by Debasis Pradhan
• My Five Wish-list Classes I Would Enroll In by Al
• 100 Resources To Improve Your Career, Relationships And Money by Lawrence Cheok
• 10 Ways To Improve Your Personality by Z Hereford
• The Top Ten Internet Business Ideas by John
• 3 Ways to Bring Back the Joy to the Holidays by Karen Lynch
• Best 101 Lists by Pearl
• 13 encouraging questions by Isabella Mori
• 100 Things To Write A List Of 100 About by Kotsengkuba
• Lovecraft & Cthulhu Christmas List by Cullen Bunn
• No Cost Business Tools: 37 Free Applications That Make Your Life Easier, Free of Charge by Levi
• List Of Why Blogs Are A Female Gender by Domtan
• 100 Things to do Before I Die by Joseph Gibbs
• 5 Blogging Ups, 5 Blogging Downs, and 10 Blogging Tips by Albert Foong
• 10 Life Lessons Learned While Camping by Ad Tracker
• 150 Funniest Resume Mistakes, Bloopers and Blunders Ever by Jacob Share
• 10 Productive Ways for Moms to “Relax” by Neena
• 10 Tips on How to Watch a Horror Movie When You are a Scaredy Cat by Migraine Chick
• Escape the Rut by Catherine Kunst
• 100 Ways to Personally Conquer Chaos at Work by Judy Martin
• Six Savvy Reasons Why You Should Travel Light by Sheila Beal
• How to prepare for Christmas by Ajay
• 26 ways to change the world by Chris
• 3 Things I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now by Stephen Hopson
• 5 reasons (not) to drink coffee by Lodewijkvdb
• 7 Seven tips for students to success by Xoel Cardigan
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Wikipedia defines viral marketing or “refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.”

Viral marketing leverages peoples act of discussing or talking about various brands. Some of this marketing can be just telling a friend who tells all of his friends (its pretty simple.). Basically any way of encouraging people to “pass it on” or “pay it forward”.

1 ) Offer a FREE service or product

One great way to do this online is via an ebook. One of the biggest viral marketers I know (not personally, yet) is Seth Godin. Seth has written a number of great books from The Dip to Purple Cow. Seth understands people want something of value for FREE to let them know how good it is. Most people then will buy the next book due to seeing value in the previous book. I had never heard of Seth Godin until someone sent me the idea virus. Its a FREE eBook from Seth Godin. So go download the idea virus and learn about viral marketing from the genius Seth Godin

2 ) Scalability and How-to Spread the Word

Getting people to do something is like pulling teeth, but with the internet only a click away and you need to leverage it. The internet connects millions (billions?) of people with just the click of a mouse. You need to leverage this by building a website or blog and posting up your content and offering a simple scalable solution to spread the word. Putting a simple signature to a free ebook can impact your target market because every time you send or reply to an email, that signature goes with it. This can become HUGE if you start (I know I hate chain letter) a chain letter and give out a FREE ebook on a topic you know lots about and to tell people who download it to “pass it on” or even add their own signature in all their emails. By putting an ebook or offering a free service you need to make sure you can scale from 1 to 20 download to 2 million downloads in a day. When I think of scalability I always think of digg and how getting your link on to the front page can bring in hundred of thousand of page views. This is great, but only if your server scales and can handle the load of all those request. Most people solve this by using various caching methods, but you need to be able to scale if you want utilize viral marketing to its fullest.

3 ) Exploit the “coolness” factor

If everyone is wearing a pink shirt, you want to “fit in” and wear a pink shirt. Exploit the “in” factor by jumping on the band wagon and promoting your product or service. Making it to the front page of digg is something to blab about, why because everyone and their mother wants traffic and getting on the front page of digg results in this. Other “coolness” factors include making it on sites like slashdot and even techcrunch for any and every startup.

How can you get on to these major news and network aggregators by leveraging the web 2.0 community. Using and posting technorati tags on your website to promote your product or service. Getting the blogging community to write about you in exchange for a free swag or a blog exchange. Bloggers like John Chow make a LOT of money by blogging everyday and posting how much money he makes. People are fascinated at how spending little time a day can make a LOT of money. Money is the drive for most product and services, but you need the “coolness” factor, such as a (web 2.0 buzzword) idea to get it rolling.

Now understand most people are NOT an over night success, but over the course of a couple of months, you too can bring in large amounts of traffic. I brought in over 2,000 page views in 1 day just by posting a blog entry to ajaxian on running javascript benchmarks on my iPhone and my Macbook Pro and comparing them. Since this post I also average another 500+ page views a month due to high google page rank and the “coolness” factor of the iPhone. Look at my basic video blog review of the iphone. I posted 3 videos on youtube and have over 30,000 views! Viral marketing is not only putting yourself out there with some free information, but its utilizing the “coolness” factor by getting people to write about you and spread the word, in this case the iPhone.

4 ) Leverage Current Web 2.0 or (Buzzword) Technology

I previously posted about technorati, digg, and techcrunch. These are web aggregators that bring in lots of people and redirect them to other pages via their story or link. For vial marketing you need to leverage these current technologies to use or buy your product or service. Think about something simple as twitter where your goal is to post WHAT YOUR DOING! The “coolness” factor of twitter as a FREE service gets people to use it and for this and most services, its only fun when you have all your friends on it, so you sign them up (Viral marketing at its simplest). Now you and all your friends are on twitter but you want to exchange files between each other at work, well from most of the same people at digg, they created pownce where you can exchange files as well as post your status. Okay so you are understanding all these new websites about updating your status and need to think of a way to leverage this concept and create a viral marketing campaign. Well, The Brian Shaler built a simple fun game that leverages twitter called twitlibs. Twitlibs is not even a product, but a simple service of posting up various fun and entertaining mad libs that is running on wordpress. There is not expensive coding or marketing campaign, just a fun little game that is using viral marketing by leveraging twitter and all your friends on twitter by sending out a mad lib and having everyone participate. So basically you need to look at the new technologies or websites that everyone is flocking to and find a way to leverage this new technology.

5 ) Take advantage of other peoples resources

One way I help get my blog out their to the massive blogging community is by writing a blog review for a well known blogger. I started by writing a review for John Chow in exchange for a link back to my blog. This improved my Google Ranking as well as promoted my site to John Chow’s readers. This is a simple viral marketing trick because you are leveraging someone else’s resource, in this case John Chow. Viral marketing is all about leveraging various services or products to promote your product in a fast way. The internet can drive traffic to any website, but it’s finding the sites that have a LOT of traffic that you need to leverage. Another great service is del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website. You can save bookmarks to your website or blog using keywords which help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and driving traffic to your site. del.icio.us also uses a network of “friends” (much like twitter) where you subscribe or feed other people’s bookmarks and share. This means if you bookmark a cool site, your friends will be notified about it. You can also drive your friends by using a for:username tag to send specific links to your friends or members. I have over 20 “follower” who subscribe to my bookmarks, so I can use viral marketing by posting up, this is a amazing site you need to checkout and get my “follower” to view them and pass it to all their friends.

Using common keywords or typos can also drive traffic. How many sites have you been to where you spell a word wrong and visited someone else’s website. It happens everyday, but if you know this you can leverage this. You can also use common keywords to leverage your views and/or options about a topic. For example, I had a very bad experience with Dominos Pizza back in May 2007. I was pissed and took action, in the form of SEO. So I though about the thing that PISSED ME OFF and utilized the common keywords, such as 555 deal and dominos 555 deal. Everyone is interested in peoples experiences with a product and what they think before they buy. I used Google Analytics to help see what search keywords are bring users to various parts of my blog. By leveraging SEO I was able to average about 400+ page views a month from people who are looking for deals on dominos. I have also used this technique to get a high page rank for keywords such like Free Solar Power. I know there is an ethical approach to SEO, but I do not think that I have stepped on anyone’s toes when blogging. Let’s create a buzz and stir up the crowd and get others to talk about it, leveraging other peoples resources. Utilizing other peoples resources can help drive traffic, even something as simple as posting a comment on a blog puts a link back to your blog or website.

So while writing up this (dare I say, Amazing) 5 Crash Course Tips in Viral Marketing I decided to enter it in the Lists Groups Writing Project for a chance to win $100 USD. I was reading Luciano Passuello blog litemind and saw a contest that I might enjoy entering. I was almost done writing this post, so why not compete and see if people like it. I also posted a simple and sweet post of 10 ways to Eco-Pimp Your Home Green, but think this viral marketing post is more appealing. Since this contest you can only have 1 post, I decided to use this one. Feel free to jump on this content and enter for a chance to win $100 USD!

Please let me know if you have any feedback because I will be using this as the base for an eBook.

So with my giveaway of an autographed copy of Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Work Week I will also be running some other blog promotions. I am offering up a FREE as in BEER blog review of any blog site. I need to get my blog out there and get a top 50,000 blog on technorati. I am currently ranked at 143,900 and have Authority of 53.

My blog seems to be all over the place so i think its time for me to focus and stick with 1 main topic. So from now on I want to stick with what’s happening on the web, from new websites to ebooks that help you code a new (insert buzzword here) website. I feel that I have a large background in blogging, social networks, and am a del.icio.us addict, so why not!

So let’s kick start this blog and migrating to a web 2.0 news cental website. I will post up various websites, blogs, links that will help my readers know whats happening on the net rather then sifting through it.

So news that I should cover is the fact that Google is giving away money. Well kind of, Google recently launched android an open source mobile phone platform. Google is looking to get geek guru’s to code and build applications, games, etc for andriod. I must say this is pretty cool and the fact that you bank $25,000 USD for being one of the 50 most promising entries. This project has caught the eye of many bloggers (including this one) who plans to set some time aside and put together something that puts the iPhone to shame. If anyone is interested in working together or if you want to throw idea off each other contact me.

I am always willing to talk about cool ideas and startups. I know I have previously thrown out the idea of $1000 for a startup, but only a couple of people (as in friends I talk to weekly) applied and discussed this idea. I know ycombinator has built up some great ideas as well as made some nice bank selling them, but I always seem to have amazing ideas, but never FINISH them. So if you are a FINISHER or a person who MUST FINISH projects they start contact me.

Another pretty nice web 2.0 site is Songaz. Songaz is a internet music search engine that allows you to not only search for the music, but to listen to it and create a playlist of your own tunes. I find that I am always listening to music and enjoy my Sony MDR-V600 head phones that I use while coding, surfing, etc. So if your a music whore who doesn’t carry his entire (3TB+) music collection, check out songaz you will definitely enjoy it.

So to conclude this challenge and to change myself, I need to start making sites that Make Money as well as self promote myself. I plan to launch at least 1 more blog as well as start daily blogging. I also plan to work/launch on some of my ideas soon, so keep checking back to see some of them! I also want to send out this challenge of $100 a day in passive income to other bloggers who are NOT already making this much money. Oh, and if your NOT a blogger or want to be one, but want to take place in this challenge, please post a comment and describe what your selling.