Blog Income Life

Archive for February, 2010

Just a quick note – my trusty museum vintage computer died this morning … I am at the Future Shop store looking at a Samsung which the salesman tells me uber tops (the other one is a Toshiba.  Taking this opportunity to let visitors know that as soon as all is up and running all the reviews etc. will be continued .

Till then – To Your Awesome Life

Valentina

Short and Sweet.  After only a few months, Blog Income is on the block.

Regular readers here know that Monday night is my Internet MasterMind Group meeting – yes, skipped the ice dancing!  Never mind, making up for that today with a day down at the Olympics.  My friend Cheryll and I are going down early and see if we can get into the Canadian Royal Mint pavilion – that had a 7 hour lineup (no seriously)over the weekend and I hear that Russia House (as the hosts of the next winter Olympics) is pretty good too.

But I do digress.  To the point.  I had this site critiqued last night.    It’s something we do – one site a week.  The short of the long of it is that it is going to undergo a complete overhaul.  Even to me it was beginning to look cluttered and there were changes I wanted to make.  Visiting other blogs helps to polish and develop a discerning eye, but I had changed the theme only a few months ago and thought I could live with this one for a few more – oh say till June.

I got a lot of helpful comments from the group but the main thing appears to be the theme.  This time it won’t be an overnight change.  As with so many other colleagues who have recently undergone a similar metamorphosis, I will take a bit longer and will come up with something that will stand me in good stead for a year or perhaps even two.

I’m going to have some awesome people helping me – I hope you will join them.  I am looking for comments, observations and suggestions.  What do you like about this blog?  What should be scrapped altogether.  What needs to be added?  Any suggestions for themes?  Throw it all at me.  The more the better.   Together we’ll make a good soup.

I look forward to hearing from you – you awesome lot YOU!

Valentina

Nathan, dear boy, I love you  – honest I do.

I buy your products and visit your blog often but a recent post of yours  got my hackles up.  In your post of Feb 09 “Where 99% of Bloggers Go Wrong” you pulled no punches and pretty much told those of us who are blogging about blogging to pack it up.  The topic has been done to death and extremely well by uber bloggers who cut their chops on this subject and have entrenched themselves as experts for life.  They hold top positions and rankings with all the major search engines for just about every keyword associated with earning an online income and its not likely that any new blogger can add value or anything new to that which has already been written about in every which way except Sunday.

The “A” Listers have got it in spades and who are we to think that our humble efforts would ever see the light of day or  receive the blessings of Google and rub shoulder with the likes of Darren Rowse , Yaro Starak or John Chow – just to name a few.

Whew!  Nathan, you might be right.

That’s a lot of humble pie to eat.

But not so fast my boy.  At the risk of offending someone I admire – yes, you Nathan  here are my two cents worth, a retort if you will:

I am a “Z”Lister – no, you know what, make that a “Y” Lister (recently promoted myself).  I am a shameless hussy climbing the ladder to success and I notice that there are other aspiring bloggers blogging on blogging who are riders on the up escalator ahead of me.  I notice that they have good rankings of PR3 & PR4, and even PR5 with Alexa’s below the 100K mark.  That escalator is pretty crowded but my faves are:

Glen Alsopp of Viper Chill

Dave Doolin of Website in a Weekend

Gabe Young of Free Blog Help

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

Caroline Middlebrook of Caroline Middlebrook

There are plenty more and they all provide some valuable info.  Granted some of the above are not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to internet marketing, and they brandish some sharp cyber smarts, but for all intents and purposes their blogs on blogging are.

I have learned a lot from these potential usurpers to the number one spot which is not to say that I have not learned from the current reigning kings.  But here are the reasons I like to visit the “new” blogs:

1. Inspiring.
   I can relate to these dudes.  Yes, they are ahead of me but not so far that I need to genuflect at the altar of their blog.  If they can be where they are in less than 2 years, and in Gabe’s case less than half a year, glory be.
2. Timely Information.
   Yes.  I can visit the uber bloggers blogs and go through their archives for content that is relevant to where I currently am in my blogging career.  But quite honestly, that content is somewhat wilted by now.   I realize and recognize that the basic info hasn’t changed, but I like the fresh approach that the new lot is bringing to the make money online market.  They are not so far ahead that I have to dig into back issues to understand what they are talking about.
3. Fresh Perspective
   Did I mention fresh approach?  No matter how grand the symphony a young conductor can infuse it with a new richness, a new energy, show a side that the audience may not have heard in quite that way before.  I also think of the new covers being recorded by no-name artists of the Beattles classics – and you know what?  Great as the originals are, the covers are smokin’
4. Community
   No offence here but what are the chances that a fledgling like myself would ever be noticed by oh say the likes of Darren Rowse (hey I like the guy and have opted in for the membership).  Those lower down the food chain still have the luxury of being able to mingle with us babes in swaddling clothes and actually helping us – they reciprocate with visits to our sites and leave valuable comments, they private message us with helpful suggestions, they give of their time in a way that the A Listers cannot if for no other reason than that logistics just get in the way.
5. Potential Alliances
   Just like the A Listers, this new lot is active and aggressive – they have products in the pipeline, we mere PR oners do too.  Can we ride on their coattails?  You betcha!  Can we form strong strategic alliances?  Ditto.  Can we eventually look to joint venture partnerships?  You bet your sweet bippy we can!

I don’t know why the current upwardly mobile bloggers blogging about blogging  got into that saturated niche.  My guess is that they felt it isn’t so saturated after all, that they had something of value to say.  Maybe they’re just an ornery lot who look at the face of impossibility, stare it down and grapple it to the ground.  I dunno know but I thank them.

I do know why I got this market.  Actually I was visiting Caroline Middlebrook one day and noticed that she was just blogging about her experience in blogging, talking about her success and failures and things to fix and so on.  I thought that was rather brave of her – moreover I liked her online voice, felt the sincerity and thought, hey, I can do that too.  Yup!  I quickly appropriated the idea and wrote and told her so.

By blogging about blogging, or at least my trials and tribulations and ultimate small granules of success I have learned things I probably never would have otherwise.  You see, I had been trying to get into the internet marketing arena for some time (well at least two years prior) and took course upon course.  In retrospect some of those courses were damn good, but honestly, I wasn’t fully up to them.  Almost without exception the early chapters were easy (they seemed to get easier with each course) but within a short period of time the eyes would glaze over and the brain would go on strike.

I thought about that and about Caroline and came to the conclusion that blogging would be the best way to put into practice that which I know – and I felt I knew plenty after all the credit card statements supported that feeling.  So I began my blog about blogging.

By applying things I knew I found holes.  Moreover, now that I was writing something, I had to do some checking to make sure that what I was saying was indeed so.  My atrophied internet marketing muscles began to gather strength.  I have laid a foundation, one that I can now build on.  I have launched other “niche” blogs which blush, yes, do bring in some shekels, but it is this blog that I look to as my flagship.  It is this blog that makes the others possible.

From this blog I learn.  It is my practicum.  Along the way I hope that my experiences are relevant to bloggers newer than I, that my content is helpful to them.  Because of my newbie status I still speak in a language that is devoid of blogspeak although I have caught myself drifting that way occasionally.  I am still at that place of my blog career that fledglings can look at me and say “I have a chance.”  And that is all I want.  It is a right of passage – maybe we will never sit side by side with the Darrens and Yaros and John’s, but we’ll have learned a hell of a lot by trying.

Nathan, forever your admirer …………..

Valentina

Vancouver swathed in night light show. Photo courtesy of Chrissy Graham.

Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not.

I am watching these Olympics with greater interest than I ever have in the past – I mean, hey!  We’re the hosts. As I watch the different events I have come to the conclusion that the world athletes, just like the rich, are definitely different from you and me but maybe not quite in the obvious ways.

Of the events that I have watched some of the most iconic moments to me are the images of the athletes when they’ve nailed it.  Watching Alexandre Bilodeau slicing through the moguls to Canada’s first gold on home turf was special but what I really got a kick out of is the way mogulists’ (is there such a word?  No? ok. There is one now) knees are well so bobbly, like those bobble dolls that people put on their car dashboards.  So mogulists are different from you and me because they got knees that are different from yours and mine and when not shushing down mountains they hold secret day jobs riding in cars perched on dashboards and pretending they are dolls.

Is that a bird?  Is it Superman? NO!  It’s Shaun White!

I have also developed a new level of respect for the sport of snowboarding.  Yay for Maelle Ricker as she clearly led the pack to her gold, but the one that had my eyeballs glued to the screen was Shaun White.  I had no idea that a human could defy gravity to that extent.  Shaun’s snowboarding specialty is in the halfpipe.  If you haven’t seen halfpipe snowboarding take a look at this video  Shaun White Vs The World – Olympic Halfpipe Countdown

Being at the top of his game, Shaun pulled  in a cool $8M in sponsorships  last year.  Red Bull, one of his sponsors, built a private Halfpipe run for him up on the mountains in Colorado – the only way to get there is by helicopter.  That makes Shaun both rich and a world athlete!  Up on two counts.   Halfpipe Olympians are different from you and me because they have nerves of steel and are the secret love children of Superman!

I just don’t get the whole bobsleigh, luge and skeleton sport thing.  It is a sport that is played – one usually “plays” sports, but I use the word loosely with the greatest of literary license I am sure – on a spiraling  refrigerated track with curves that would make a grand prix driver blanche with fear,  from mountain top to bottom.

At least the bobsleigh riders are sitting in a sled with sides and the driver can manipulate the runners but in luge and skeleton there is precious little between the body and the track except a thin slice of fiberglass with fixed handles – luge the athlete goes feet first, skeleton is head first.

Bravery?  With all due respect to the athletes how about nuts?  Speeds get up to 160 KPH – that’s a hundred miles an hour!  On nothing but a slice of fiberglass!  And they steer with their feet or shoulders!  These guys and gals are just different.  Period!  It’s not about nerves of steel, its more like a brain disconnect with body and reality.  Yup! Truly,  they aliens from another world so of course they are different from you and me!

Of course I enjoy watching all the typical winter sports especially the downhill racing and the figure and speed skating.  But I have to tell you, the three I just wrote about held me in an absolute trance.

To Your Own Difference!

Valentina

Olympic fever has swept the city – never mind that we are having a record warm winter and snow had to be trucked in to one of the local city mountains where the snowboarding competitions were held.    Downtown Vancouver has turned into one big party hosting visitors from all over the world.  The hundred plus pavilions have lineups  from here to there, cordoned off streets are jammed with revelers and everyone is having a rip roaring good time especially as Canada  has brought home 4 golds so far making this the first Olympics that we have copped the elusive metal for the first time on home turf.  Another week – I’ll definitely be spending more time enjoying.

Did get some blogging done.  Here is the Review of the Week that Was , a summary of the the new posts published here since February 14.

Sunday Morn Musings:  Valentine’s, Gung Hay Fat Choy!  The Smell of Gold – 14/02/10
A potpourri of topics:  St. Valentine and valentines and China and Valentina (yes, me!) and the welcomeing of the year of the tiger, an animal that is lucky, vivid and incredibly brave.  Talked about Chris Farstad a former Olympian and what he told us about athletes and how he figured that this year the Canadian athletes would fare far better and why … they have.  Hop on over to Sunday Morn Musings and read the full article.

Affiliate Marketing:  Write the Ad 15/02/10
This post takes you through a five step process of writing an attention grabbing ad that will have your visitors clicking and buying your affiliate products.  Nothing like the sweet  sound of a click to enrich your blog income bank account.

Affiliate Marketing:  Plan Your Campaigns 18/02/10
The nine steps to a successful campaign – from inception to fulfillment including time lines and a little known marketing ploy that will take you from obscurity to success with direct financial benefits to you.  The starting point for your passive income.

Yes, I did work on my own campaign to start March 01.  This is the first time I will actually be promoting one of my affiliate products not just on an ad hoc basis, but according to a plan.  I will establish my first “control”

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life.

Valentina

Growing your blog income through affiliate marketing is an ongoing process.  Seasoned affiliate marketers plan their campaigns months and sometimes even years ahead and often have several running simultaneously for each of their niches or affiliates. It takes time to get to this level of expertise and efficiency – and money to automate and outsource.  Take a deep breath.  You do not need to start at that level but if you want to earn a healthy online income then start you must.

One of the easiest ways to plan affiliate marketing campaigns is to center them around events, seasons, celebrations etc. The obvious are Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s, Mother’/Fathers’s Day … and so on.  No matter what your niche is one you can definitely work one or two of these special days into your marketing campaigns.

But why not separate yourself from the pack?  Everyone is selling at Christmas and it’s not to say that you shouldn’t, but did you know that there are dedicated “days” or months to just about anything  and everything under the sky?  The narrower your niche, the more bizarre the relevant topic day, the more attention you can draw with your advertising.

An example might look something like this:

Niche:  Left handed people
Domain:  LeftHandedPeople.com

Is there a Left Hander’s Day? Yes.  August 13.

Now is the time to start preparing for an all out campaign that should launch sometime in July.  But you need to start to have all your tools in place and there is no better time to start than now.

1.  Do you have a mechanism to capture leads?
If not think about what it might be that would entice your blog reader to register and leave their name and email.  Here are some possible options:

- weekly or monthly newsletter
-  e.report on being left handed: 17 – 20 pages on what it means to be left handed
-  e.book on famous left handed people – write one yourself, or check around to see if there is one that is available for PLR(Private Label Rights): 50 – 70 pages.

2. Decide what your offer is going to be.
What about left handed mugs – message on the mug appears to the right of the handle.  Or left handed scissors?  Left handed golf clubs.  The list is endless.

3.  Dedicated domain name.
You do not need to buy new domain name, you can have a sub-domain that would look like this:

LeftHandedPeople.com/August-golf
LeftHandedPeople.com/August-mugs
LeftHandedPeople.com/August-scissors

4.  Contact your affiliate vendor.
See if you can work out a one time offer for their top selling product.  Now you have a special price  for your unique market: the lefties.  It is estimated that 7% – 10% of adults are left handed.  That is a narrow niche yet a significant market.

5.  Write your ad:
Write your copy for the sales letter – this is the long sales letter telling your prospects why they need a new set of left handed golf clubs. Check and see if your affiliate vendor already has one.  If you are going for more than one item have a separate sales letter for each one, as in example  #3 above, it should be a different sales letter and domain for  golf clubs, the mugs and the scissors.  Not everything has to be different, just a few words and phrases to reflect the offer.   Have these ready to go for first week of August.

6.  Marketing blueprint:
Decide how you are going to market this.  Start warming up your prospects.  Pre-write a set of autoresponder messages that will start going out mid-July.  Space the messages by several days, decrease the spacing as August 1st approaches.

7.  D-Day
August 01:   the mass promo goes out to everyone on your list. Put up banners on all your relevant sites.  Put out a press release :  “Lefties Rule August 13″ and submit to all press release directories.  If you have the budget by all means submit to those that are fee based, but if dollars are scarce use the free directories service.

8. Daily Activity:
Have something happening on the net every day until the 13^th – newsletters, blog posts, forums, see if you can get guest blog space on some of the more popular blogs.

9.  August 14:
Tally up your sales.  You may still have some straggle in after the date but the majority of your sales should be in by the 14th.  Review everything:  what sold, what promo delivered most traffic, what venue converted most, which gave the biggest return on your time/investment.  Make immediate notes and make the tweaks to next year’s promotion while they are still fresh in your mind.

File away till January or February of the following year.  Dust it off then, make changes, add new things you may have learned in the interval.

For a list of holidays/bizarre dedicated days etc. go to:

http://www.brownielocks.com/month2.html

For example, did you know that February is National Start a Business Month?  I didn’t either.  This morning I was pleasantly surprised when while  doing  my blog rounds I read this post on Pat’s  Smart Passive Income blog.  The article is on whether you should form an LLC for your business.    You will notice that this is part I.  Now Pat is a real savvy blogger who pulls in significantly more than just coffee change from his blogging.  Dollars to donuts he has shingled several posts and put a small campaign together that will garner him some extra sheckels, I mean, who isn’t interested in starting a business these days?

Chances are that the first year you do this, the results may be less than sterling. Here is what you will have achieved:

-  an affiliate marketing model centered around specific holidays
-  established control(s) campaign for your left handed market niche

For a list of holidays/dedicated days etc. go to:

http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/index.htm

Don’t go hogwild now.  You probably want to mix them up – you know, the odd ball days with the more mainstream ones, don’t forget Christmas or Mother’s & Father’s Day!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Growing

-

Today’s blog income post will be a follow up to last weeks Affiliate Marketing: Establishing A Control .  I will examine the process to step 1 in establishing a control: advertising.

But first Today’s Olympic Moment! Brought to you by Blog Income!(another benefit to owning a blog – being your own sponsor!) – Smell of Gold Turns to Taste of Gold!

Canadians across the nation are doing the rain dance, whooping, hollering and stomping it up as they celebrate  “Alexandre the Great” in winning the first gold for the host nation at Vancouver’s Olympics thus ending the country’s drought of winning gold on home turf.  I mean Canadians are known to be nice and hospitable but we have to draw the line somewhere!   Sweet!  Congratulations Alexandre!

Now to the topic at hand: 5 steps to a successful ad.

1.  CREATE OFFER
What is the offer?  Speak Spanish in two weeks!  Travel in luxury on a pauper’s budget!  Whatever your offer is you need to capture the interest and curiosity of  the viewer so that the ad is clicked on.

2. WRITE THE AD
Obvious as it seems I have seen in the offline world where people just throw something up without giving much thought to what they are saying.  I suspect the same happens here in the online world. The shorter the ad, the more important it is to fine tune it as much as possible.  Good ads come in three parts:

The Headline.  Lets see what we can do with traveling in luxury on a pauper’s budget.  Here are some options:

- Broke Student Travels in Style:
OK.  Nothing terribly compelling but the general idea is intact

- Luxe Travel on Student’s BudgetGetting stronger. But what about

- Luxe Travel on Pauper’s Budget
I like the word  pauper more than student, I think it is stronger and more likely to arouse the curiosity.

The Body. This is where you write about the offer in two to three sentences at most.  Make it interesting and compelling.  Punch it up.

Call to Action: Download your free report now.

3. PLACE THE AD
Another obvious.  Look at your options.  Do you have a budget?  If so look at Google Adwords, Ezines and Newsletters that take advertising.  If you are new to affiliate marketing chances are that the budget is slim to none.  The first place is to put it up on your own site or blog.  A banner is more likely to attract attention than just text.  You can design a cool ad for free at http://www.addesigner.com/

4. TRACK RESULTS
There are lots of ad tracker services on the internet, many for free.  Just do a Google search for “free ad trackers”.  One that looks good to me is http://www.clickaudit.com/ .  Wordpress also has some free plugins that can help you track your ads.  I use Pretty Link which is proprietary to WordPress Direct.

Track your results. Congratulations, you have now established your first control.

5. REPEAT
Repeat the process.  Make a few small adjustments.  Don’t revamp the whole ad and its process unless it gave you zero results.  Success comes in fine tuning and fine tuning is not a re-haul.

To Your Success in Affiliate Marketing!

Valentina

Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not.

Valentine’s Day! Gung Hay Fat Choy! Smell of Gold!  Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana playing in the background. … more like odds and sodds today.

Happy Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day!  Images of lace and hearts and chocolates and flowers and lovers and  poor ol’ Charlie Brown with nary a card … and then last night between surfings on the telly, veiled muslim women in black burning cardboard hearts and cards as a hateful infiltration of western culture upon theirs.  Whatever.

It is my birthday this week.  Yes I am a February child.  An Aquarius if on the cusp, but an Aquarius nonetheless.  No.  I was not born on St. Valentine’s day.  I was christened on St. Valentine’s Day … whoa!  If my birthday is still to come how could I have been christened today?  I was not.  Stay with me.

My background is Russian.  I am Eastern Orthodox.  When the rest of the Christian world moved from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, Russia’s Eastern Orthodox did not –  that is why the Russians celebrate Christmas on January 07.  It is the custom in the Russian Eastern Orthodox to christen children on the feast of the saint for whom they want to name their child so St. Valentine is my patron saint.  My friend Cheryll gave me an early birthday present:  Red Mitts!

Gung  Hay Fat Choy
That’s Happy New Year in Chinese.  Yes, today is also the Chinese New Year.  Enter the year of the Tiger.  I looked up the Chinese Zodiac to read up more on the characteristics of this sign.   The Tiger is said to be lucky, vivid, lively and engaging. Another attribute of the Tiger is his incredible bravery, evidenced in his willingness to engage in battle or his undying courage. Western counterpart zodiac sign: Aquarius (not to be confused with your own Chinese Zodiac sign based on your birth year)! Hey!  I like that.

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a feast of delicious dim sum with my friend Lee at one of the many Chinese restaurants in Richmond.  He was off in a week to Malaysia for a month or so to visit with his family.  Eventually our conversation turned to Valentines.  He told me that the Chinese have an equivalent and it falls on Chinese New Year’s day which this year coincides with St. Valentine’s.

Chinese history goes back over 6000 years.  Centuries and centuries ago, men and women did not mingle.  As in so many other cultures men went off to hunt and fight wars to provide for their families and keep them safe.  Women stayed at home. There was little opportunity for young men and women to meet except for New Year’s day.  It was decreed back then that men and women should be out together to welcome the new year.  Lee told me that that was the one day when boy meets girl stories were born.  That tradition is still carried on today … if from a somewhat different perspective.

Olympics
Day three of the Olympics. The podium has honored athletes from eleven countries so far with their wins.  Plenty more to come.  Earlier in the week I had the pleasure of seeing Chris Farstad speak at my monthly real estate MasterMind Group.  Chris is a former bobsleigh Olympian.  He competed in Albertville and Lillehammer Olympics.  It was interesting to hear him speak about how the athletes are feeling right now.  He knows. He was there.  But then he told us something that shocked me – he took us back to when he was competing.  Athletes when interviewed always put on a positive face for the cameras and the press, but back in the athlete’s village, when alone speaking with each other in hushed tones they whispered the unspoken and that was  that they did not believe in their heart of hearts that they were good enough to win.

Not believing is the kiss of death.

Coaches bring out the best in an athlete but they have not been where the athlete wants to go, they do not know what it is like to rub shoulders with your competitors, to face the moment of truth whilst staring down a slope, stepping on the ice or skiing cross country with rifle in hand to aim and fire.  Neither have sports psychologists.  In the eyes of an athlete talk and training are cheap in the moment of heat.

Not any more.  In addition to coaches and sports psychologists, athletes now have a mentor, a former Olympian who has felt the adrenalin rush before the run, smelled the octane fuel of victory, had feelings of doubt and dealt with them.  They have been exactly where today’s athlete is and where he wants to go and are able to talk them through the walk.  He thinks that this will have made a difference to Canada’s athlete’s this year.  Yeah!  They’re a gutsy lot and I love them all.

Carmina Burana?  Every Sunday as I write my musings, I have the CBC FM on.  The music is most often spiritual.  It is right for a Sunday morning.  Today it is Carmina Burana, which is strong in sound and heroic and victorious.  It has been a favorite of mine for a very long time – today, I think it is most appropriate;  for the athletes: yes,   for you and me: absolutely!

Sun is bright.  Over and out.  Have a great day!

Valentina

What a week!   The city positively crackled with excitement as sidewalks spilled over with visitors from all over the world here to attend the Olympics .  Energy is high.  Hopes and aspirations  at levitation level.  Whether you live in the city or the burbs its hard not to catch Olympic fever.  Even though I crow with glee at the sight of blooming crocus, a slight drop in the temperature wouldn’t be all that bad – would do wonders for the mountains where the shushing events are taking place.  Ironic that last year at this time we had record cold temperatures and gobs of snow on the peaks – well we do have gobs of snow on the peaks, just not the ones where the events are scheduled!

This was the last week of my Internet Marketing Bootcamp.  Learned a bit more about Wordpress which I will be putting to use within the admin area of my Wordpress Direct program.  Polished up a few things on this site and I just might start a site on Wordpress.org, just to put into practice the whole meal deal.

Participated in some Olympic revelry – planning on more over the next two weeks.

The week in review:

Musings On a Sunday Morn:  Done? Never! 07/02/01
Carlos Velez posted a comment which prompted a rebuttal and I had a bit of fun on how dishes never get done!    This was strictly off the cuff but apparently I hit on something somewhat accidentally: linking to comments!  Full Musings on a Sunday Morn reading

Affiliate Marketing:  Establishing a Control 11/02/10
What is a control?  In its simplest form a control is that system, process or campaign that produces the desired result; in affiliate marketing that result is sales.  The campaign that delivers the best sales results becomes the control. In this article I write on how to set up your first control.

The Mitts That Were Seen Around the World: 11/02/10
Went off topic – had a good time!  Actually, what was not off topic was how “co-incidences” happen.  I believe that  “coincidences” are not accidental at all and had alluded to that in a previous article when I wrote about my friend and author Wendy Atkinson. Back to the mitts … read how the lowly mitten has become the fashion item of the season & more.

Coming up:  This week nose to the grindstone – err… fingers to the keyboard. Setting up my affiliate marketing campaign so that I can establish a control for it.  Target date is to have it up and running March 01.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Uber fashion statement of the season:  red mitts!  Yup! The lowly mitt is the hot, “must have” accessory of the season  and has been seen hobnobbing with the best on the Great Wall of China, in front of the Eiffel Tower, in Moscow’s Red Square and on the hands of Kerrisdale cafe patrons, Barbara and Jane!

Whoduv thunk?

Red mitts with the Olympic logo on one side and Canada’s  Maple Leaf on the other  are the official 2010 Vancouver Olympic Mitts, the hottest, or should that be the coolest, fashion item this winter.  The marketing was pure genius.  Stores just can’t keep them in stock!  Friends and relatives from afar ask but for one thing:  “Please send us your red mitts!”

Onward!

The usual Thursday at The Point today was pre-empted by the Olympic Torch run.  Regular readers here know that Thursday afternoon is my friend Cheryll’s and mine Mastermind of Two at the Café Capanna in Point Roberts.

Tonight is the eve of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics opening.  The Olympic Torch has been making its way from Athens for many months now.  It passed through my neighborhood yesterday.  I missed it.  Today it was scheduled to pass through Cheryll’s neighborhood – damn it!  I certainly wasn’t going to miss it again!

We didn’t cancel our MasterMind of Two – we simply moved it to a café in Kerrisdale where we worked on our internet marketing as we do every Thursday.

Then a series of “What are the Chances” followed.

As we are about to wrap up for the afternoon so as to stake out our spot for cheering on the Torch Bearer at 4.43 p.m precisely at the crossroads of West Boulevard and 45th Ave,  a couple of women walk into the café.  They order their lattes and sit across from us.  Aha!  I spy the red mitts!

Could I take a picture?

Yes…

Cheryll looks at the women and thinks that she may have met one of them.  Turns out that they were neighbors years and years ago!

Next.  We are standing on the sidewalk milling with the crowd waiting for the Torch to come through. Another friend of Cheryll’s whom she hasn’t seen for a long time arrives.   Chit chat, chit chat.  Pat is her name.  She and her husband have moved away to one of the islands and maintain a small condo in the city.

The Torch is run in relays.  In the photo to the right the arriving torch bearer lights the torch of the next runner.  It was such a small thing.  Took only a moment, but that moment was electrifying.

We continue to chat with Pat.  This is her second viewing of the Torch today.  She had gotten up early in the morning and made her way to a burb clear cross town and then some to watch her son run the torch at 6.00 a.m.  We learn that he is a former Olympian.

Hmm.  Just the other day I met a former Olympian. Chris Farstad, a bobsledder.  He was our guest speaker at the monthly Real Estate MasterMind group that I belong to.  He gave an outstanding  inspirational speech.  I thorough enjoyed it and to boot I learned more about bobsledding in the twenty minutes than I knew in a lifetime!

I am curious.  I ask Pat what sport did her son compete in?

Bobsledding.

Vancouver is not exactly a hotbed of bobsledders.  What are the chances?  What is his name?

You guessed it.  Chris Farnstad!

What are the chances?

Don’t you just love it when chance and life meet?  I think that much of what we do in life is like that – but it isn’t chance at all, at least I don’t think so.

Wishing you many “chances” of success in all that you do!

Valentina