Zulit

I Love This Picture of My Mom

Posted by terryzulit on January 8, 2010

This is a really cool picture of my Mom. I’m taking a photo of her on a Skype call when my wife and I were in Palm Desert recently. I love this picture because it’s my favorite face expression – sort of a ‘gleeful curiosity look’ is the best way I can describe it. See how her eyes sort of squint up like that? Sort of like a cat that just got a fresh saucer of milk.

Most of us love our Mother’s (I would hope), and I think it’s important to have a favorite picture of each of our parents. So…..I’m going to pick out a favorite for each of my parents. Mom’s is the first. Click picture to Enlarge!

It’s funny that this picture is one of my favorite expressions of my Mom and it’s on a Skype call. I suppose I like it too because we are both in the shot.

My Mom was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has moved around B.C. all of her adult life with my Dad (Brian). My Mom’s name is Louise, and she loves Dad, and her boys right down the core of her being. She is an amazing artist, and I will show some of her paintings online someday, but I don’t think she wants them publized as of yet. Take my word for it – they’re AMAZING! Maybe I’ll sneak one of them up here though……shhhh!

There are so many things I admire and love about my Mom, and here are just some;

1. Sincerely gives love to her sons and husband (no phoney stuff)
2. Selfless in so many ways
3. Taught me how even sensitive people can learn to be strong
4. Smart sense of humor (likes British Comedy)
5. Can have a stiff upper lip one minute, and completely collapse the next minute
6. Great cook (but she thinks she sucks)
7. Sharp eye for detail
8. Talked to me ALLOT when I was a little boy (answered ALL my questions)
9. Natural Artist (not a pretender)
10. I always know she is there to help me no – matter what
11. She fed me when I was little boy
12. She changed my diapers when I was little boy
13. She hugged me when I was scared when I was little boy
14. She taught me what was right and wrong when I was little boy
15. She cleaned up my room when I was little boy (and bigger)
16. She did my laundry when I was little boy
17. She helped me with my homework when I was little boy
18. She helped my tie my shoes when I was little boy
19. She watched T.V. with me when I was little boy
20. She came to my sports games when I was little boy
21. She watched me play from her living room window when I was little boy
22. She always called me for dinner when I was little boy
23. She always made me feel loved and special when I was little boy!

Topics: Family | No Comments »

Perfect Job for Musicians or Ex-Musicians

Posted by terryzulit on January 4, 2010

If you are a musician or songwriter and you are starting to wonder what you are going to do for a living (how you are going to make some money for a change), this may help you.

If you’ve decided to “pack it in” and your equipment (drums, guitars, keyboards, piano, violin(s), microphone(s), typewriter, or notepads have been put aside, then I think I have a job for you.

If you have been trying to “make it” for years, and you are tired of having no money, I think I have a job for you.

If you have finally “come to your senses”, and realize you need to start thinking about ways to make some money, doing something that is fun, creative, with a potential for high earnings, then I have a job idea for you.

This post is for musicians who have been trying for years to make a living in the music business, and are starting to wonder if there is another way to make a living besides “working for the man”. First of all, let us explore why, and how, we got here in the first place.

Why We Wanted to be Musicians in the First Place

The first reason musicians fall in love with music is for the pure enjoyment of making music, listening to music, and creating music. Just the simple act of playing a guitar, a piano, a set of drums, or perhaps singing into a microphone, can be so inspiring and beautiful that it’s hard to explain in words. I know that when I was a young boy, at the age of 10 or 11, I watched my father play guitar for the first time and was very curious. Eventually I started to pick up his guitars and plucked a few strings. Over the years of my adolescence when I picked up a guitar it had more and more meaning. Soon I was able to play a full song on the guitar, and then I was completely addicted to music (for years to come).

What I’m getting at (slowly) is that our (us musicians) first initial motives for getting involved with music were absolutely pure and clear of ego. I am talking about the actual good musicians out there, and not “fly by nighters”. I’m talking about musicians who actually develop their craft well enough that they become accomplished, whether that be in the art of recording, songwriting, or just playing a single instrument. These are the musicians and songwriters that usually accomplish something in their chosen field — the ones that truly love the act of playing music, at their core, are not just gratifying their egos.

There are some musicians that certainly gravitated  towards music making for purely egotistical reasons, such as a way to meet girls, a way to make money, or a way to get attention. Even the musicians who start playing music out of pure love, can (and usually do) become seduced by the ego side of the music business at some point or another. In fact, if the ego takes over completely, it will destroy the initial love for music that the musician had at the genesis of their early inspiration.

So the reasons (motives) are varied, but in this post I am talking about the musicians that had a pure love for music from the very beginning, and were not that wrapped up with the ego side of things.

We Wanted To Do What We Loved For a Living

Obviously all human beings would like to do what they love for living, and this is what drives most serious musicians towards their ultimate goal. We want to be able to make a decent living playing music, recording music, or writing music. At least we think we do.

All of the different motives that drive us to play music, and be part of the music industry, can change over time, and the ones that keep being full-time musicians the rest of their lives, usually have to pay a price. It is very difficult to try and make a full-time living being a musician. Usually there is lack of money. Usually there is lack of support. Often there is a lack of respect from society as a whole.

As young aspiring musicians we all dreamed of living the ultimate dream. We dreamt of making millions of dollars, playing our own music for millions of people, and never having to “work for the man”. This last aspect (of not wanting to work for the man) is a big, big, big, deal! We never wanted to spend a day of our life doing a job we really don’t like, and taking orders from somebody else just to make a little bit of money. In fact, this was a true nightmare for me and my young friends when we were growing up as young musicians.

There are psychologists who suggest that sex is the driving motivation behind all males in human society. I don’t believe this for a second, but when I was a young teenage boy, playing in teenage bands, I did meet some musicians that were solely concerned about how well they did with the girls. These musicians never lasted long, and they soon splintered off and left the music scene altogether.

There are other musicians who believed that with fame and money they could get any girl he wanted (or woman) and this was another ego driving force behind their motivations. These guys never lasted long either. They usually became frustrated very quickly, and after their first couple of bands failed to “make it”, they left the music scene altogether.

The musicians who usually make music their full-time occupation, and their total income, are the ones that have two main motives behind their actions.

1. They have an absolute pure love for making music
2. They want the freedom that some highly successful musicians appear have

Unfortunately, musicians who think succeeding in the music business gives them freedom, soon find out that they are simply working for the man anyway – that is if they get that big recording contract and sell a few millions “units”. See the rest of this entry…

Topics: Blogger Lifestyle | No Comments »

List of Canadian MPs in Calgary To Vote Out if They Don’t Push To Get Our Troops Out of Afghanistan

Posted by terryzulit on December 30, 2009

OK. Enough.

You can help get our troops out of Afghanistan by sigining this petition, or use the info below to contact your MP and make your feeling known.

We need to get ALL of our Canadian troops out of Afghanistan ASAP. This has gone on way too long, as we go on supporting a defunct American political machine. Below is a list of the MPs for the Calgary area who need to be emailed around the clock (click here for the complete contact and email list of all Canadian MPs you can write, email, and/or phone). The best way to apply pressure on these MPs is to use snail mail.

List of Calgary Area MPs To Contact

• KenneJ@parl.gc.ca
• AblonD@parl.gc.ca
• AnderR@parl.gc.ca
• ObhraD@parl.gc.ca
• RichaL@parl.gc.ca
• HarpeS@parl.gc.ca
• PrentJ@parl.gc.ca
• Shory.D@parl.gc.ca

Prime Minister of Canada’s contact information;

House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Telephone: (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900

eMail: HarpeS@parl.gc.ca
Web Site: www.pm.gc.ca

Constituency Offices

1600 – 90th Avenue SW, Suite A-203
Calgary, Alberta
T2V 5A8

Telephone: (403) 253-7990
Fax: (403) 253-8203

I have begun a campaign to have these MPs removed from office if they are found to be promoting any further activity by Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan. We never should have been in Afghanistan in the first place, but thanks to weak-kneed politicians in Ottawa, we followed along with the Bush administration (and now the Obama administration) into war.

Canadian politicians (starting with the ones in my home city of Calgary) need to be voted out if they support any further wars just because the USA says it is required.

Canadian voters need to apply enough pressure on these MPs to reverse their stance on this issue.

Topics: Politics & Money | No Comments »

SEO in 2010 – Artificial Linking Is Dead

Posted by terryzulit on December 27, 2009

I can hear the chorus of the SEO specialists now. First of all, natural, REAL linking is never going to be dead and I’ll explain why in this post, but “linking for the sake of linking” is very much deceased in my opinion. Here is a rather long article explaining why I believe this. This post got a little out of control at over 7100 words, so if you want to read the entire piece, you may want to print it for later.

The theories on SEO in 2010 (primarily linking) are shared by many bloggers and SEO specialists the reign supreme, but would not want to share some of these theories with their clients (or risk going out of business). Nevertheless, a new Internet is upon us and we will sink or swim by the new algorithms and by the choices we make going forward. I hope you enjoy the read.

This is the index of this post as follows (you can add the word “my theory” to precede each of these bullet points if you wish);

1. Why reciprocal linking is dead.
2. Why reciprocal linking software is a waste of time and money.
3. Why 3-way linking is dead.
4. Why article marketing is dead.
5. Why link wheels are dead.
6. Why link spamming is dead.
7. Why blog commenting is dead.
8. The nofollow tag attribute.
9. Why trackback links are dead.
10. How link aging effects your web site.
11. Stop listening to Matt Cutts. (no offense Matt)
12. What is the safest method of linking?
13. One more on the old SEO methods.
14. Examples of successful web sites.
15. Our site/blog (wife/me) niches.
16. What you should do to succeed.
17. Final comment.

Why Reciprocal Linking is Dead

The old school reciprocal linking is certainly passe because simply swapping links is so readily and easily discounted by Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and all other major search engines. This old style of linking was very effective for a very long time, because webmasters were creating many hundreds of links from different websites, convincing the search engines their domains were popular. Well over a decade ago the Google algorithm began discounting many of these kinds of links. Basically, this kind of old-school reciprocal linking only showed Google that you had a lot of man hours put into link requests, and you were a hard worker.

Now I know that many people who are in the Internet business find this to be the most frustrating thing about Google and all other search engines these days. The very fact that you can work, and invest in, creating links to your website by doing trades is not rewarded. You would think that Google would reward those who work the hardest, which is what everybody has been led to believe since we were born.

The simple fact is that just working hard, and investing hard, doesn’t mean Google gives you any benefit in their search engine results. What Google cares about the most is ideas – the modern search engines don’t care how hard you work, but more about the unique ideas and compelling content you have on your website. By discounting most of the linking strategies webmasters and companies/corporations are using, the search engines are making sure that a particular page on your domain is truly, and absolutely, popular because of the natural inbound links going to it. If your domain has thousands of inbound links that were created in the most natural way (from other webmasters linking to you) then the search engines can tell the page is truly compelling. This is “old hat” to experienced webmasters.

Furthermore, the search engines are sophisticated enough to recognize any kind of link strategy and scheme using any kind of modern linking software. Even three-way linking, which I will get into next. Google can see that there is a relationship between different domain names, hosting IP’s (or Class C-Blocks if you prefer). There are only so many IP’s out there that you can manipulate as you create artificial inbound links, and this is why the traditional link exchange software applications worked for so long. The requirement now, if you want to create any meaningful inbound links to your domain, is to let go of the idea all together (we’ll get to that later in this post).

Search engines can tell (especially Google) what kind of links you have coming in, and if those links were created because the webmaster(s) who linked to you was genuinely interested and compelled by your page. I know that many so-called SEO experts and software gurus will disagree vehemently, because they base their entire SEO strategy (or Company/Business) on creating artificial inbound links between web sites. In the long run, we will see who is right and who is wrong.

Reciprocal Linking Software

We (well most of us webmasters) would spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on reciprocal linking software and then hunker down for many hours a week requesting links, approving links, submitting links, and checking links. Most of us hated it (I know I really hated it), wondering at the same time how much of a waste of time it might be. In the back of mind I always thought the link swapping game was going to be a dead end endeavour someday.

The major search engines can see these scripts in action, and they discount most of these kinds of links. Most of the links to your site are placed on pages that are not even cached, or have very little PR value. The end state of all these hundreds of hours of linking is not good – it truly is a waste of time these days.

This kind of artificial linking will get your site “found” by the search engines, so for the very short term you could call this a positive thing. However, if you are using blogging software to run your site, you never need this in the early stages of a domain. Blogging software Pings, so you will “get found” very quickly. With a Wordpress blog, you will be found after half a dozen posts, and that is right out of the box before adding extra pinging services to the list in your Wordpress Dashboard.

The next phase of reciprocal linking was Three-Way Linking.

Three-Way Linking Is Dead

Many so-called smart SEO specialists and webmasters soon discovered that simple link trading wasn’t really that effective anymore. They put their heads together and discovered an ingenious way of creating artificial links that Google (and competing search engines) would see as unique and natural. They came up with three-way linking, which means that you have Website A, linking to another webmaster’s domain or page, and that webmaster returns a link to your Website B. It is as simple as that.

Webmasters who had the means, and were fairly highly ranked (with enough green bar showing in the Google page rank information tool) were in a position to leverage one highly ranked website for the purposes of three-way linking. The problem is that Google has figured that one out too. Google’s algorithm engineers and coders simply added a plug-in (if you will) that recognized three-way linking based on IP’s, and relative patterns.

Even further, if you are using any Google application (such as Gmail, Adsense, Adwords, etc.)Google can see what IP your working from. Once again, I can hear the skeptics of my theories here screaming that there is no way Google can see what IP you’re working from, uploading files from, and blogging from. Their algorithm obviously sees this information, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put this kind of tweak into their algorithms.

So now Google can see what you’re up to and what is going on in your little Internet business. Of course these technologies are not perfect and they can’t be absolutely accurate in regards to what you are doing, especially if you are using proxy IP’s when working online. Still though, they could see the activities of the IP’s and the domains in play, and even that is enough for them to make a judgment call on the kind of a web property you are running.

Like all artificial link strategies, the three-way linking schemes works for a short time, and maybe even for months, but that is not good enough when it comes to the Internet. Everybody wants a piece of the ultimate income, and the competition is coming at you fast and furious. You are up against corporations and large, small, medium businesses who are outsourcing their SEO and I’m sure you sometimes think that “little ‘ol you” is never going to compete. But don’t get discouraged, there is a brilliant and sparkling silver lining in this cloud.

So what do you do if reciprocal linking, and three-way linking, is a waste of your time and money? Many of us turned to Article Marketing.

Article Marketing Is Dead

Article marketing has two basic schemes that come into play. One scheme is that you have other webmasters put up a piece of content in the form of an article on their site, and create a quality link in the article back to one of your domains. The second way of article marketing, which is very popular, is when you submit articles to article directories such as Ezine Articles, with an inbound link to your website in the article. Both article planting schemes must be done in such a way that the link created in the article uses your target keyword(s) as the anchor text.

It doesn’t work very well unless every article you write is perfectly 100% unique, original content. That is the first problem, and using content spinners and article re-writers doesn’t work either. I will get into why content spinners and re-writers don’t work on a another post, but you can take my word for it (or not at your peril) for the time being. So basically, just putting your articles up on article directories (spinning them or rewriting them if you wish) doesn’t do much at all for your web property anymore. Google knows what is going on and discounts almost all of the links you getting from these directories. Once more, because there are small number of decent link article directories out there, your point of no return comes quickly.

When the search engines see hundreds of links going to your website from one directory, which is running on one hosting IP, they begin discounting links. Just the IP aspect of the Google algorithm discounts these links, let alone the fact that the search engines are now discounting links from article directories – period.

The best way to do article marketing is by writing unique, fresh, 100% original content, and having it put on thousands of different domains with different links, using different text anchors. This could work if all criteria were put into play, but now you are in a Catch-22 situation. If you are going to create 100% pure original content on other websites and blogs, would you not be better off putting it on your own domain(s)? My belief is yes, you are better off putting this kind of content on your own domains and letting other webmasters link to you over time.

So what do you do when traditional link exchanges have gone by the wayside, and three-way link exchanges have gone by the wayside, and article marketing has gone by the wayside? I guess the answer that most webmasters have these days is Link Wheels.

Link Wheels Are Dead

I know that my opinion on link wheels will perturb many webmasters, because thousands of SEO gurus think that link wheels are the modern answer to search engine ranking. Sorry – Link Wheels were dead coming out of the gate, and I would have to say that if we want to keep using the life and death metaphor, Link Wheels were stillborn.

Why are Link Wheels fairly useless in the long-term? Because once again, when you create artificial inbound links using blog farms and other third party sites, you are getting your links from small pool of IP’s. The same problem you have with Article Marketing essentially. Blog farms, and their usual counterparts (Link Wheels) use third-party domains such as Blogspot, Hub Pages, and Lenses on Squidoo are all part of the same animal, and I can guarantee you’re wasting your time. How do I know this, because I’ve tried every black hat technique known, and I was a damn good link spammer too.

Link Spamming Is Dead

Link spamming is dead and I don’t say this because I fancy myself as some kind of “purist” expert (I just established that right) – I say this because all mey tests showed one outcome – limited and temporary gains with the possibility of huge losses. You may as well be a bank robber I suppose. If your market niche is something like pornography, gambling, or drugs, then I can see why link spamming is you’re only option for getting inbound links to your domains, but get ready for a long hard battle spamming forums and blogs everyday of your business. Get ready to spend a stupid amount time changing IPs, and IP locations, as your sites will soon enough be banned.

Link spamming has reached new heights because of some fairly clever software developers around the world who create scripts that entice competitive webmasters into investing hundreds of dollars on applications that spam forums, blogs, etc., creating hundreds and thousands of inbound one-way links to their domains. All in the hopes of wiping out their competition and rocketing to the top of the search engines.

These software developers, and black-hat tool creators, will swear up and down how wrong I am about the futility of this activity, but go ahead and try it for yourself – you’ll find out how temporary this kind of linking is. Sure, you can temporarily get a domain ranked high for competitive keywords, and make a quick buck because of the traffic you get, but that buck is getting smaller every month, and these domains are getting banned quicker than ever before. The gig is up when it comes to black-hat techniques and a new day is now upon us.

Not only are the search engines becoming more sophisticated and wary of these kinds of links, and this kind of IP activity, the platforms for managing and running blogs and running forums and directories are more sophisticated, and are managing to block these kinds of spam linking tools in their tracks. Furthermore, users such as you and I are learning to use our scripts and software on our platforms more effectively and we manually check for spam on a daily basis. In the time that I wrote this post, Askimet snagged over 2 dozen inbound spam comments.

With the more advanced technologies for stopping spam, and the change in behavior as far as webmaster vigilance goes, it’s making the ROI (return on investment) for spammers a dwindling effort, and the point of diminishing returns comes quick like.

The very fact remains that the world is recognizing the ultimate income is made on the Internet. When you have a web property that makes money around the clock 24/7/365, it is much too valuable an asset to be risking with outdated linking techniques and SEO schemes. Even if using black-hat techniques guaranteed your website had a three year run ranking high in the search engines, it still isn’t really worth it, when you consider having a real white hat quality web property, running safely and indefinitely, is by far the more prudent endeavor. All of the SEO specialists and so-called black-hat artists are understanding this, even if they won’t admit it to you, and fiercely argue that their techniques will always be around for manipulating the weaknesses of search engine algorithms.

So if traditional reciprocal linking is dead, 3-way linking is dead, article marketing is dead, blog farms and link wheels are dead, and link spamming is dead; what works now? I guess the old commenting on blogs is OK still right?

Commenting on Blogs for Google PR is Dead?

Commenting on other blogs use to be a fantastic way to create high quality inbound links to your web site or blog, but that too is going by the wayside thanks to the Google invented “NOFOLLOW” tag attribute. Google soon realized that we (us webmasters) could created PR on our domains by commenting on related blogs and creating inbound links of quality. The blogging platforms soon added the nofollow attribute to all commenter domain addresses (URLS) and that put an end that game in a hurry.

Major web properties such as Wikipedia soon followed with the nofollow tag attribute as well, and a the rest joined in to stop link spammers from using them for easy links. This includes ALL major sites like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, etc. etc. There is of course the exceptions like Squidoo, Hubpages, and Ezine articles, but these “true links” (without the nofollow tag) don’t really help your domain much more than just letting the search engine robots know your web site exists. A great way to get your site or blog found of course. Nothing wrong with that still.

If you want to know more about nofollow tags and structure, read here. (you’re welcome Yaro)

So this commenting game was over on all user-hosted blog platforms (listed below), and 3rd party hosted platforms as well;

List of User Hosted Blog Platforms

• b2evolution
• blosxom
• Django
• Dotclear
• DotNetNuke
• Drupal
• Frog CMS
• Elgg
• Habari
• HelixBlog
• Jaws
• Joomla!
• Livejournal
• LifeType
• Movable Type
• Nooto
• Nucleus CMS
• PivotX
• Serendipity
• SimpleLog
• Slash
• Subtext
• Textpattern
• Thingamablog
• Typo
• WordPress

So now what does the savvy webmaster and so-called SEO expert do to artificially create inbound links that pass page rank to a domain? We’re quickly running out of ways to game the search engines here and it feels like we might as well pack up our laptops and throw them in the river right? Nope – this story gets better, so hang in there.

The Nofollow Tag From Deep Inside Blog Posts (OUCH!)

Even some blogs are not passing PR to your domain anymore when they give you a REAL and NATURAL link. Why? Because they may have a plugin running on their blog platform that adds the infamous “NOFOLLOW” tag to the link going to your site. These bloggers don’t do this to be stingy or anything, it’s just that some plugins for Wordpress (like SEO Smart Links) gives the blogger an option to add the nofollow tag to ALL outbound links. Many platforms enable bloggers to do this now.

BUT, if you have a web page that has some very compelling content, you will still have hundreds of other webmasters linking to it that don’t use the nofollow tag. You will still be golden.

TrackBack Spamming (Linking) is Certainly Dead

TrackBack linking, or spamming, no longer works and never really did for very long. About the same time that the nofollow attribute was added to blog platforms in the comment sections, the same thing happened with TrackBack links. TrackBacks used to be a great way to show that one blog was referencing another blog, and would link them up accordingly. The Wordpress system is really simple for creating TrackBacks because all you have to do is link to another WordPress user’s blog page and the TrackBack was automatically created. Of course, the spammers ruined this too because this became nothing more than a tool used by manipulators of the system to create powerful inbound links to their websites, and the websites of their clients who they were performing “SEO services” for.

Even with the new spam protections that blogs have incorporated as per the norm, you don’t see very many serious bloggers with high-quality web properties approving TrackBacks anymore. When I link to another blog or website it is because I believe that their particular page has perfect relevance to the posts I am writing (or I just like them or they are a friend of mine). I believe this to be true for all serious bloggers.

If the blogger allows the TrackBack, that is just great, but I know that the TrackBack link has a nofollow tag applied so there is no sense in trying to link to another blog just for the sake of a link. Google’s idea of the nofollow attribute was brilliant in that it stopped people from linking just for the sake of linking. So that was it for TrackBack spamming.

Thank god that all the work we did getting high quality links in the past will help our web sites indefinitely. Hmmmm……you guessed it.

How Link Aging Effects Your Web Site

Here is the really big ugly that drives home my theory layed out later in this post. This makes any webmaster want to throw up after all the work they have done over the years begging for links and investing countless hours learning how to use link exchange software. There is a time limit on the value of inbound links to your domain. Once again, we will hear all of the naysayers scoff at such a theory, but in my opinion, this is exactly what is going on.

The search engines are now looking at how old the inbound links to your domain are, as well as the value of where they are coming from. Basically, the websites that have the most recent inbound links and the most valuable inbound links, will win the rankings game. This may not seem fair if you consider the work aspect that I described above, but if you really think about it this makes sense.

If a URL address has a consistent flow of new high quality inbound links pointing at it, is obviously the latest and the greatest as far as the search engines evaluate page rank. Just because some domain has thousands of inbound links pointing at deep pages within the site from years ago, doesn’t necessarily mean it is still the authority website anymore. This one aspect of the page rank algorithm will makes most webmasters shudder at the thought, but it is something we have to deal with. Even though this will greatly affect web properties everywhere, there is still a way to make things work for you and beat the competition any time, and any day of the week. We will get to that soon enough here if we just listen to Matt Cutts — right?

Stop Listening To People Like Matt Cutts

Webmasters have been listening to people like Matt Cutts for a long time now, as they try to decipher what he is saying and it’s getting to be ridiculous (and pathetic) over the last few years. The truth is that the Google algorithm has so many sets of criteria involved that no Google employee can truthfully tell you what effect their algorithm is going to have on your website, except to say “if you build a quality website you will do well”.

As far as the way the Google algorithm ranks the pages of your website’s and blogs – Matt Cutts might as well be speaking in parables. He says something vague regarding the Google algorithm and all of his minions instantaneously begin analyzing his every word hoping it will give them a window into how the Big G is ranking webpages. It is a complete waste of time.

And on top of this, there are thousands of self titled SEO experts that claim to understand what Matt Cutts is “really saying”, and what Matt Cutts “really means”, and they will usually have so-called test sites to prove the new theories they have about the Google algorithm. Webmasters like myself used to spend hours each week listing on every word that Matt uttered in the hope that he could shed some light on what direction we should be taking with our search engine optimization strategies.

The whole term “search engine optimization” (or SEO) is misleading to the newcomer. Suggesting that you can optimize your site, is synonymous with saying that you can manipulate search engine results. This is why Larry Page is famous for creating his Pagerank model.

No matter how you try to optimize your website with artificial linking, and internal linking, you still have to deal with the fact that you have to have hundreds (thousands usually) of inbound links to the pages of your domain that were created naturally, and you have to have enough of these inbound links coming from “good” sources to eliminate the possibility (in Google’s eyes) that the links are not artificially created for search engine manipulation. If you take into account the way Google judges incoming links from different IP’s, you can see how futile it is to create simple Blog Farms and Link Wheels to get around their algorithm.

So do yourself a favor and remove Matt Cutts’ blog from your favorites and move on to the only safe and sound method of maintaining your domains. Let us now discuss what successful web property owners have done to succeed beyond their wildest dreams without using any of the old and new search engine optimization schemes we have been discussing.

So What Is The Safest and Most Powerful Way of Linking?

Their really is only one method left if you want to rank high in the search engines indefinitely and enjoy the traffic and the income that traffic creates. The smart webmasters have understood this from the time they launched their very first website and/or blog. They wrote compelling content (articles and posts) that were irresistible to search engines and human readers. They wrote content that was compelling enough that other people wanted to link to it. Even if you had only one stellar article (bloggers often call them Pillar Articles) on your website or blog, but enticed thousands of other webmasters to link to it, that would make your website a high value domain in the eyes of the search engines and real people.

So some so-called white-hat webmasters and domain managers who understood this, only published unique and original content on their domains and it paid off. You can imagine their disappointment when even this didn’t put them ahead of their competition. Even if they have a decent number of inbound links from repuatable IP’s, and their content was 100% original, they stopped ranking for most of their competitive keywords. So what could that be? The answer is simple – quality content that is in definition 100% original and unique is still not enough to beat all the competition.

You have to have all of these factors and your articles have to be so compelling that other webmasters are linking to them in a flurry. Of course this is very difficult to do unless you have something special to say on your blog and/or websites. I hope that by now in this article you don’t feel like throwing your laptop or desktop into the river, off a cliff, or into the ocean, because there is hope.

Hope is Dead

Just kidding — hope is very much alive.

Yet More Of The Old Linking Theories and Strategies

When I was taught how to build websites I was told to create (or have somebody create) 300 to 500 word articles and publish them on my domain over time, covering most of the keywords you are targeting for traffic and search engine attention. Then it became 500 to 1000 words, and now some believe you need to have 15000 words to win with the search engines. There is some validity to this theory in my opinion. I do believe that if you have a longer article, or longer piece of content,  due to visiting commenters, and visiting TrackBacks, you will do better than much of your competition that has a smaller and less significant post as their piece of content. But even this is no guarantee of winning the battle for search engine superiority.

You must have an article that is extremely detailed and complete, which shows the search engines that you are really covering the subject and providing more information than any competing page on the Internet. Most importantly, this content must be so compelling that others will link to it eagerly to show the interesting slant you have on the subject. The combination of these two factors is what works on the Internet and always has. I seriously doubt that if you cover these two critical factors you will ever see your traffic disappear and your online business model fade into oblivion.

Examples of Successful Web Site Owners

You can see my theory on this for yourself any time you go on the Internet and see the most successful websites and domain properties that are succeeding in demolishing the competition every day, week, month, and year. No linking software or scheme will ever make your domain name appear above theirs for long. These kinds of blogs and websites have extremely useful information and they have inbound links from hundreds and thousands of different hosting IP’s, which no linking software will ever imitate in the long run and for the duration.

So in 2010 I see the only way to succeed in the long-term is by writing substantial pieces of valuable and compelling content on a well designed blogging platform such as Wordpress (or any other dynamic content management system). If you are working alone you are going to be maxed out at two blogs/domains – maybe three of the most. If you have a writing team and financial resources to exhaust, you could manage more blogs, but you are always limited by your manpower. You can use some helpful tools if you can’t type very fast, such as speech recognition software which I’m using right now to create this post. This will help you maintain a couple of good blogs, if you can’t type very fast and don’t have the money to hire good writers to write your content.

The corporations and the large companies can afford to have a budget for writers and webmasters to create compelling content on a frequent basis, and they will always be difficult to compete against, but if you write articles that are extremely compelling then you can beat a complete team of writers any time you want. You can throw all the money you want at writers, but if they don’t have the unique ability to write compelling articles you won’t be getting the flood of inbound links to your domain. This is why the Lone Wolf bloggers out there can succeed where corporations don’t. They have the time, freedom, passion, drive (like succeed or don’t eat), experience and the know-how to write such powerful pieces of content that they wipe out Fortune 500 companies on a regular basis.

If you want to be in this business for the long haul, you better learn how to do this. Of course this means you will have to be writing about something you know fairly well and have some kind of passion for. (How many times have you heard that one?)

Our Market Niches and Strategies

Our money making blogs are on subjects we never “tell the world about”, and cannot be found using Whois or any other filtering system to track the domains we manage. We see visitors to Zulit browsing through all of our different domains that are hosted from this particular hostings company’s Class C Block, but the truth is that the blogs we make the most money from are with different hosting company servers in different areas of the United States, using private domain hosting. The sites that we share in the blogs that we talk about making money, make an extremely small percentage of our overall income. Quite simply put, we like to have some sort of example to point at to show visitors how to make money online, but we can’t take the chance of advertising our main money making domains. We learned this the hard way about 4 years ago.

These real money making blogs make 90% of our income, and they are on varying subjects, some of which are very lucrative, some of which are moderately lucrative, and some of which are modestly lucrative. They all have one thing in common though – they have over 1500 words added to them every second day, every week, every month of every year. This content is researched and written on in length, and the subject matter is highly searched for online. I can’t stress enough how important using your own keyword research methods are. We of course use all of the typical keyword research tools to be found on the market these days, but the most important keyword research tool is our imagination.

You just simply have to imagine what people would be looking for on the Internet to find the lucrative niches out there. Most of our niche blogs have a high demand for traffic and an extremely low competition level. There was a time when I used to share all of our domains, and nothing was ever private, so anybody could use the Whois service to poke around all of our different money making domains. This kind of frustrates some of the people that come to Zulit.com and see our last month earnings reports, but I can assure you we are not leaving out any information on how we create our income. We creat traffic exactly the way I suggested in this last section.

What Should You Do To Succeed Online

There is one particular way you can succeed online and will never fail over the long run. You will never see your hard work get flushed down the drain by the latest search engine algorithms that are designed to filter out manipulative webmasters and domain managers. There is only two aspects to this proven method of working online.

a) The first thing you need to do is use a content management system that is advanced – preferably free and open source coding . I suggest using the WordPress blogging platform on your own domain, but you may want to use a hosted blog like Blogspot. You can use different content management systems, but make sure that all of the spam protections, updating systems, and plug-ins work seamlessly. The only reason I suggest WordPress is because that is what I know, and I can tell you that they have come a long way, making it easy to manage your web property.

b) The second thing you need to do after you’ve chosen a content management system, is work in the right way. Completely disregard everything you have ever heard about so-called SEO techniques, and put an end to using linking strategies, reciprocal linking schemes, and black-hat SEO traps. Even better, just quit thinking about linking altogether. All you want to do is write compelling content. The old days of just throwing up quick posts into your blog for the sake of pinging servers is over. That just won’t do it anymore. Take a look at any good article, on any subject, and you’ll notice that it’s always a lot more than 500 to 600 words.

The search engines have taken this into account as well. They know that generally speaking a short little snippet of content is not really doing it for the visitor. This is why writing long and in-depth articles will put you in a better position with the search engines when compared to article directories, and other bloggers who write small little trifles just for the sake of putting something up. But keep in mind, even if the article is extremely lengthy (like this one is becoming) this doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to win the search engine war against your competitors. You still have to have others linking to the article on a regular basis if you hope to keep your position in the search results.

If you look closely at the search engine results, you’ll notice that the pages that rank high have a few things in common;

1. the page is on a highly ranked domain with a good repuation, or;
2. the page has more inbound links to it than other competing pages focusing on the target keywords (or subject), or;
3. the page is on a domain which has some directly related inbound links to the actual keyword(s) and the domain is extremely narrow in scope (niche), or;
4. the page has more content on it regarding the requested search query

So what you want to have on your websites are pages that have a great amount of content on a particular subject (obviously longer than five hundred words) that are compelling and add another slant to the subject matter. Even if you have a brand-new domain and the search engines are just beginning to spider your site, and the search engine robots are beginning to index pages, and you have no inbound links from other web property managers, your end state goal should be in play already – making sure your articles are interesting and compelling enough that others will want to link to them. This ensures that your website or blog is covering all of the above criteria listed.

1. the search engines will notice that your content is in depth, 100% original (not spinner or a re-writer content), and that your article is lengthier than most all of your competition.
2. the search engine will notice that your domain is new and they will be excited (well as excited as an algorithm can get) to see this new domain and this new content for themselves.
3. if all the content you load to your website or blog is of high quality, the search engines will notice and this goes to creating a good reputation with them.
4. the next thing that will happen is that the search engines will give you that chance to be seen (and believe me if you write decent content they will give you that chance) and you will be found for particular search engine queries made from real people – the all-important users, and webmasters.

If your content is adding something, to the ongoing discourse on the Internet, that is unique in its approach, and other webmasters see it as compelling, you will slowly begin to gain real and valid inbound votes (links). The search engine algorithms will see this slow building inbound link pattern, and you will gain even more ranking with the search engines, solidifying your so-called “good reputation”.

So as you can see above, all of these most important attributes of a successful web property automatically come to pass if you follow one simple rule – write in-depth content that just has to be taken seriously.

More Tips

From what I have seen watching my competitors blogs, and my blogs in action, you are better off writing longer, in-depth articles of discussion, then simply out doing your competition in frequency. You can see this if you look at the other high ranked web properties out there. I certainly don’t waste my time looking at blog posts that are only 200 words long. I will only link to an article that I believe covers a subject in depth. Even if I don’t agree with the blogger in question I will still link to their post because it covers an in-depth idea and opinion. Often, I will try and link to two diametrically opposed blog posts that completely contradict each other, showing the diversity of the subject in question.

So don’t worry about the old adage of creating three articles a day on your blog. Take the time to think about a subject you want to sink your teeth into and write about it in-depth. Surely you will spark the imaginations, the minds, and maybe the hearts (hmmm) of other bloggers who either strongly disagree with you, strongly agree with you, or at least see the value in your thought processes. Either way you slice it they will begin to link to you. You will begin to get a good reputation with real humans and real algorithms

Patience becomes the all important factor if you are a simple Lone Wolf webmaster. You run a small business that is just yourself – perhaps you and your spouse working (this describes my online businesses). You have to realize that you can’t compete in multiple markets and subjects ALL the time. In the beginning you have to focus on one particular subject and stick to it for a couple of years, so it had better be on a subject that has a fair amount of interest, and it better be subject matter that isn’t over-the-top too competitive (like gambling for instance). This is not to say that you can’t compete in the long run with the most competitive websites on the Internet – it just means that you have to be that much more patient, diligent, hard-working, and creative.

The days of going from 0 to 60 in six months time are over. Big time over. You will have to learn to enjoy creating content, whether that be by typing, or using some sort of speech recognition software to lavish your blog with heaps of original content that you feel passionate about. Of course, you can become passionate about a subject if you start to research it and find the beauty in that topic of interest.

For instance if you found a great subject that had a lot of traffic from real users searching it on the search engines, you could read up on the subject until you were well versed and could add to the discussion online. There is only so much to know about any topic, and you would be surprised at how quickly you can become an expert. I go to this extent when I create new niche blogs. I order books online, videos, etc., to learn all about the subject so that I can write about it in my own words and then dominate that niche with my blog.

Even the people who have been studying that topic for years will respect your website and link to it because you have done your homework and you know what you are talking about.

In Closing

If you are like me, and have been in the Internet income business for awhile now, I suggest you consider these theories I am writing about today. The time that we spend using linking software, and scripts, designed to trick the search engines into thinking a domain is completely unique and managed by a human, could be used to simply write compelling content for our visitors, and the visiting search engine robots. You can see clearly now how this theory is true with some of the big moneymaking blogs on the Internet these days. If you focused on writing one 3000 word article, with unique and compelling content, once a week, you will be further ahead than any linking, article marketing, or auto blogging scheme can get you. This is why concentrating on one or two blogs is so important when you start out.

Topics: SEO Series | No Comments »

Once Self Employed – Always Self Employed?

Posted by terryzulit on December 22, 2009

I was having an interesting discussion with my brother-in-law the other day. He was telling me about one of his good friends who used to be self-employed and made millions of dollars doing so. Recently, because of an addiction, this friend of his lost all of his money (almost his life), and had to look at getting some work as an employee again. This guy is a good guy (like most right), and extremely talented in many different ways, so it makes sense that he would be a fantastic employee -- yes……no?

Well this guy, who I will leave nameless for privacy reasons, went to work as a salesman at my brother-in-law’s company, and things seem to be coming along quite nicely for the first couple of months. Ironically, at the same time I was working for him too on a temporary basis. I had decided that I would lend my hand with some computer related stuff, and I we’ll get to that story soon enough here on a different post. I am 46 years old, and my guess is that this fella is close to 50 years of age. We both have one thing in common in that we were self-employed recently, and now were trying to work as employees again.

So the other morning I asked my brother-in-law how his friend was working out as an employee in his company. He said that his friend wasn’t working there anymore, and then went on to mention his theory on self-employment versus being an employee.

He said something to the effect of, “Once self-employed -- Always self-employed”.

Well his language struck a chord in me for a couple of reasons. One, I had recently quit working for him on a part-time basis, and deep down inside I realized that I didn’t like working for somebody else (no matter who it was) and I felt like I had failed my brother-in-law and myself by slowly disengaging from his company. Of course, it never dawned on me that there are millions of people my age who have been self-employed, and try to work for somebody else again with damp results.

So this poses a question I have for myself, and for my readers;  “Once we are self-employed, are we never to be employees again?”

I hope not. The reason I hope not, is because it is a frightening thought believing that you could never be happy working for an employer again. When you are self-employed there is always that nagging fear, which is subdued in the good times, and greatly heightened in the bad times (good times being high profits, and bad times meaning negative profits), and you are always thinking about what you would do if your business model completely collapsed. I am sure there are self-employed people who would disagree, and claim that they never have these fears, but I seriously doubt it they would never let some fear drift through their minds at some point in their carreer.

My brother-in-law said that he believed once somebody has been self-employed they are “ruined” and can’t be told what to do. They can’t be coerced, empowered, inspired, driven, or led anymore. He said once you have had a taste of “running your own show”, you never want to look back. I have to admit, that as much as I don’t want to believe this, I have a sneaking suspicion that he may be right.

Like I have said before, here at Zulit.com, if our current online business model(s) one day failed, we would sell our house, our motorhome, and completely leave our traveling days behind us for a few years while we built up our new business model. We would be in a position to sell our house, and buy a smaller house and be mortgage free, but we would be really tight on cash if our current business model ended. Luckily for me, my wife agrees with me that she would rather be free and self-employed, than have the so-called security of being an employee again. I would be much more anxious if she insisted on maintaining our current lifestyle no matter what happened in the future.

Up until this experience (working again on a part-time basis) I’ve imagined myself going back to work for somebody, or some company, earning some money to pay the bills. I naturally figured that it would be no problem for me to do that and get right back into the rhythm of going to work each morning. I’m not so sure about anymore. I think my wife and I (and our dogs) would rather live in single wide trailer, with no vehicles were expenses, and nothing but our laptops with a high-speed Internet connection. We know that the Internet is here for the rest of our days on this earth, and somebody’s website has to be on top. Somebody’s website has to be in second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th place in the search results. We know there is room for us in the sea of Internet websites and blogs. We have never been worried about being rich or living carefree lifestyles -- we only wanted to be free, not rich. As it turns out, we have made a lot more money than we ever imagined we would, and we are extremely grateful for that every morning we wake up. It’s really easy to get used to getting up in the morning and working on whatever project you feel like at the time.

In the past when I’ve mentioned this scenario (“living in a trailer park with nothing but an Internet connection”), deep down inside I truly wondered how miserable I would be if this scenario ever came to pass. I guess I really don’t know the answer to that, and I may never know the answer to that. One thing is for sure though -- we will stay self-employed regardless of whatever lifestyle we end up living. I really think that “we drank the Kool-Aid”, as my accountant put it when I first started working at home.

I have been concerned over the past five years about getting too used to the lifestyle we have. This last year I only worked 2 1/2 months where I scheduled posts in our different blogs just to keep things fresh and keep our traffic levels up throughout the year (Zulit -- not so much because it’s not in a great niche, and it’s never been pushed that hard). Outside of those 2 1/2 months, we didn’t look at any different avenues of traffic, didn’t build many new blogs, and didn’t even pile on a whole bunch of new content. In short -- he got lazy.

Now perhaps this is all it takes when you have an Internet business established. All it takes is to have some fresh content on each one of your web properties every few days, every week, or even as little as once a month. Perhaps this lifestyle will continue for many years, and who knows, maybe this lifestyle will continue the rest of our lives. More will be revealed.

The Realization of Freedom, and Where I Came From

I remember three years ago all of a sudden realizing that I could go buy some golf clubs and afford to pay 80 -- 100 dollars for a green fee twice a week. I really felt like I was living in a dream when I was on the golf course with my friends on a beautiful summer’s day. The last time I had ever slept at night (I usually worked night shift when I was an employee) and was up during the daytime, and playing golf, was when I was 17 years old. As soon as I was no longer a junior member of the Gorge Vale Golf and Country Club in Victoria British Columbia, I couldn’t afford to play. I suppose that since I worked as a pizza delivery boy and a dishwasher when I left high school, that didn’t help much either.

I got pretty darn good at being a dishwasher, and a floor mopper, and eventually I graduated to higher aspirations and became a pizza cook. For the longest time I wished I could say that I gone to University somewhere (anywhere), or had worked in some IT department somewhere. I also wished that I had some kind of credentials in business so that I could say I came by my current lifestyle “honestly”. I don’t know why I felt that way, but I suppose I was ashamed to tell anybody that I was a very poor student in school, had no post-high school education, and was working jobs at the lowest levels of society.

Even when in later years I had a job as an aircraft engineer (really just an aircraft mechanic, but they use that “engineer language” to try and convince young, big egoed, men and women to work night shifts for garbage money) I felt that I was “less then” the other mechanics because most of them had gone to college or school to learn for three years, before they ever walked on to a hangar floor. I still felt like the “bad student and dishwasher” no matter where I went and no matter what I did -- and no matter how hard I worked.

I suppose the one thing that my life experiences have taught me -- is that if you have a passion for something, whether it be a dream, a job, a lifestyle, or whatever, you can overcome almost anything to succeed. The key word here is “almost anything” (I don’t believe in the tripe marketed in the book “The Secret” -- sorry) But, I don’t believe we can reach great heights in any field or endeavor if we are not satisfied and grateful for the baby steps we take in the beginning. We have to be satisfied and grateful when we accomplish our first tasks, and see our first meager results. Satisfied -- but not to the point of “resting on our laurels”, as they say.

Now I look back on my meager beginnings as a dishwasher and floor mopper with a strange kind of pride. The first five years of being out on my own (18 — 23) I lived far below the poverty line. I had a dream of being a musician so I never even worked these extremely low paying jobs for more than a few evenings a week. I had no vehicle, no spare change, and lived a reclusive existence except for the odd gift of a roommate here and there. Two of those years I lived alone with the same kind of income and I have to admit that was extremely difficult. I did become very depressed, and thought I was actually going out of my mind at some point.

Maybe I am so frightened by the prospect of ever living so poorly again that I work my butt off to avoid it, or I am NOT afraid to live on the cheap and I’m willing to take my chances with self-employment. Just swimming in the currents of the economy at large. But let’s face it, it’s probably fear that keeps me going. I wouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t work with a computer for a living. This is a factor as well -- I LOVE doing this. I love watchin text go up in a screen, and I love the feeling of a quality keyboard tickling my fingers as I type. (using a SONY VAIO now which I highly recommend if you must us a PC and not a Mac)

So there I was three years ago realizing I was able to afford the purchase of a brand-new set of golf clubs, and afford the cost of playing golf again, pinching myself in disbelief at what my lifestyle has come to. It actually caused me some weird sense of anxiety because I must’ve feared losing this privilege. But no, the business has continued onward and upward. Next thing I know, we are buying a much nicer vehicle to get around in, and then purchasing a motorhome to travel in most of the summer months between places like Palm Springs, the California coast, and good old Coeur De Alene, Idaho. My wife and I have the freedom of a retired couple living comfortably off their pensions. Most of our neighbors are much older than us, and most of the people we meet and greet when we are traveling are much older than us. I suppose this would be called financial freedom at this point. I don’t talk too much about our lifestyle anymore when I talk with friends, family, and stangers (well I try not to anyway) because it sounds like obnoxious bragging, and I honestly think it makes people want to puke. I reserve these kinds of discussions on our business progress for this blog.

What this realization has taught me is that self-employment can be the ultimate way to live your life if all is going well. When the bad times come and your business model is in the dumps (or in a deep valley) it’s time to get back to work and in a big way, but there is a certain FUN in those times as well, because now you are challenged again. The challenge of maintaining a successful business is extremely exciting and this is why I’m always encouraging people to go out on their own, and eventually become self-employed.

There is something about that feeling of satisfaction when all of your hard work comes to fruition. It’s even sweeter when you begin making 2 to 3 times the amount of money you made when you were at the top of your pay scale as an employee. When you have a good accountant (preferably a CA) and a good bookkeeper, and you play by the tax rules, you soon realize that self-employment is the way to go. When you can write off so many different expenses legitimately you begin to wonder why you ever decided to be an employee in the first place. For me it was natural to become an employee because nowhere down the line of my family tree did I see a big push for self-employment. In so many ways we are born into our lifestyle, and it’s tough to leave the employee mindset. I had being raised with the example that security was found in a corporate carreer.

Raised With The Employee Mindset

I know that my parents were deeply concerned with my choices throughout my life, and when I quit working for the airlines I think they were worried that my vision of working from home was nothing more than a pipe dream. I suppose if they had been self-employed their whole lives and their parents and their parents were business owners, they would have been happier to see that I was taking the chance of leaving the so-called security of a job for self-employment. I know that when I spoke to other people who were self-employed during my early years of trying to get this business going, they were very encouraging and supported me in my efforts. Don’t get me wrong on my parents -- they have always supported me in any endeavour I’ve taken on.

I remember my father dabbling with self-employment when I was a kid, and I think that this little bit of dabbling he did must have affected me to some degree. I remember him speaking of friends he had who were working out of their basements to make an extra income (besides their employee income), and he would speak of these people with great respect and passion. The look in his eyes when he would talk about the smart and enterprising ideas these people had must have left that impression on me.

My father looked at different ideas, and he actually did act upon them sometimes, but because of the very early age he took on the responsibility of a wife and two children (my brother and I) he decided that he didn’t want to take any big chances. I have often wondered what my father would’ve done if he hadn’t been married and had children at the age of 21. He is extremely passionate and very smart -- let alone a perfectionist and capable of working insane hours on a project. He has built his own airplanes, built his own classic style kayaks, maintained aircraft and machinery, was an electronic technician for his carreer, and on top of that was one of the best managers that B.C. Tel (before Telus) ever had (think some family pride is eeking it’s way in here now -- sorry if this making your gag reflex go off).

When he used to be involved with minor hockey (and like usual as all men in our family, became very serious about it) he saw an opening for a self-employment idea that would create more income for the family. He discovered, at the time, that there was only a couple of decent places in Terrace, British Columbia where you could get your skates sharpened. Being the perfectionist that he was, he was often not satisfied with how well these businesses sharpened our skates. He decided to buy his own grinder and system for sharpening skates in our basement. We, as a family, were charging people around $1.50 for every pair of skates that we sharpened. I think that we charged two dollars to sharpen figure skates (it’s to foggy now). I remember him teaching me how to sharpen skates and I tried to make sure I did as good a job as he did. Of course, I never got as good at it as he did. My father is the craftiest and smartest man I know, and have ever known. This doesn’t just come from the love of the son, but from what other people have told me over the years growing up in my parents house.

The reason I bring up the self-employment idea is because as a child I really didn’t think that getting paid a buck-fifty (this was the mid-1970s which I can’t believe is so long ago now) for every sharpened pair of skates would add up to any substantial amount of money. Years later, I remember talking to my Mom about our little family enterprise and she told me that it did wonders for our family income. She said that the profit margin was really fantastic and it made a huge difference to the family. I honestly think my father created this small business to pay for all of the hockey expenses that my brother and I had.

Not only did he create an extra income for the family through this business model, but he was very good at what he did. I suppose he could have kept on doing the same thing, but for reasons I don’t know, he let it go. I think now that this must’ve left a lasting impression on me, and finding out years later from my Mother that it turned out to be a financially fruitful venture, left an even greater impression.

I have often seen these small businesses operating throughout my life and I have always wondered how they could possibly make a profit when they don’t seem to have many people in their stores and shops. What I have learned from my small business is that it comes down to the pennies every day that trickle in, and as that volume increases and decreases all those pennies add up. As long as your expenses are under control and you don’t go completely insane with spending on personal luxuries, you can be your own boss. This is how I look at any business now. You don’t have to be the best of the best, but if you consistently provide a reasonable service at a reasonable price, the world can be your oyster.

I don’t know what kind of small business I would start again if I couldn’t use the Internet for my income, but I have slowly grown a small list of ideas that I would consider “just in case”. They would all involve the Internet but some of them involve teaching people how to blog, and how to create their own trickle of income. I think it’s very important for people starting off in an Internet income business to appreciate the trickles. In the end these trickles really do add up, and they are what our complete profit model is based on. When you have a website that’s making a small trickle of pennies everyday, it must be looked upon with great respect and gratitude. It is a residual stream of income that has to be appreciated fully, and then sprinkled with a little bit of attention once in a while to keep it going. I better stop talking about websites or I will be going right off track again. Besides, you don’t need to hear yet “another dude’s theory” on how to manage Internet income streams (we can continue that on another post, and you know I will).

So Is It True

So is it true that once we are self-employed we will always be self-employed? I ask you to think about this if you are self-employed right now, or have a strong desire to become self-employed. As I said above, I really don’t know what I would do in the future if I couldn’t be working at home on my computer and living the lifestyle I am right now. I speculate on the “single wide trailer” scenario and I speculate on the “going back to work as an employee” scenario, but unless that day comes when I have to make a change, I won’t know.

I know that I could become an employee again, and that is not a problem, but what kind of employee would I be? Would I be nothing but a miserable pain in the backside? Would I challenge all authority as did as a young employee? Would I quit soon after I started? Would I be productive? Would you -- could you.

Topics: Self Employment | No Comments »