You've got to find what you love (Part 2)

You've got to find what you love -- Part 1

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.

There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.

My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.

This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.

Beneath it were the words:

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios

You've got to find what you love (Part 1)

Hi folks,

Valeriu is here. Just the other day I pass through an extraordinary confession made by an extraordinary man. After the sudden, unexpected and painful death of Corey Rudl (which affect me to a level I never imagine), reading this story was like a blessing for me.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I cannot make any kind of comments right now, please do one single thing: READ IT!

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

(because of the length of this Commencement, I split it in 2 distinct parts)

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?"

They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.

So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.

You've got to find what you love.

And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it.

Don't settle.

You've got to find what you love -- Part 2

Zappos: the fastest-growing Top 400 web site (it's always about profits)

How Zappos.com achieves triple-digit growth year after year

Total online retail sales in 2004 grew 25% over the year before. But there were plenty of online retailers whose growth far exceeded 25%. And those sites with stellar growth from a percentage point of view weren’t just small sites gearing up.

In fact, of the 50 web sites with the fastest growth in Internet Retailer’s Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, fully nine were in the Top 100.

The largest site with the fastest growth was Zappos.com Inc., pure-play retailer of shoes and handbags. Sales in 2004 reached $184 million, up 163% from $70 million in 2003. But Zappos isn’t stopping there, says Tony Hsieh, CEO.

“We’re expecting to hit $300 million this year and in fact we are on track to exceed that,” Hsieh says. If Zappos hits that number, it would amount to 63% growth this year.

Other sites in the Top 100 with remarkable growth include West Marine, after Zappos, the second-fastest growing site, with sales up 124% to $86.8 million, as estimated by Internet Retailer; Northern Tool and Equipment Catalog Co., up 110% to $100 million; Overstock.com Inc., which grew by 107% to $494.6 million; No. 9 Newegg.com, which added $500 million in sales for 100% growth; eBags.com, up 91% to $73.4 million, as estimated by Internet Retailer; Netflix Inc., up 86% to $506 million; Costco Wholesale Corp., up 66% to $376.6 million, and Scholastic Corp., up 60% to $200 million.

Focus on service

In terms of dollar growth, no one beats No. 1 Amazon.com Inc., which had sales growth of $1.6 billion in 2004. Next was Staples Inc., up $600 million; Sears, Roebuck and Co., up $540 million, as estimated by Internet Retailer; then Office Depot Inc. and Newegg, each up $500 million.

Hsieh attributes Zappos’ continuing strong growth to Zappos’ focus on service, which creates a coterie of loyal repeat customers. 60% of buyers today have bought at least once from Zappos in the past, Hsieh reports, up from 50% a year ago and 40% two years ago. Last year, 45% of customers had bought something in the prior 12 months, up from 34% in 2003 and 27% in 2002.

And they’re buying more. The typical repeat customer in 2004 bought 2.36 times vs. 1.96 and in 2003 and 1.74 in 2002.

As a result of those loyal customers, Zappos spends little on marketing, Hsieh says, relying instead on customer referrals and word of mouth. 30% of first time buyers today come to the site through a referral up from 20% 18 months ago, Hsieh says.

“If you focus on providing the best service, people will talk about it on their own,” Hsieh says. Among the services that Zappos provides are free shipping, free returns and expedited shipping at no additional cost. “I’d rather spend the money on expedited shipping than on marketing,” he says. “That creates the best customer experience and results in repeat customers.”

It’s about the experience

Zappos has further expansion plans in the works—and not just increasing the sale of shoes. For starters, it has added handbags to its product mix. So far, handbags account for only a single-digit percentage of sales, Hsieh says. “But over time, they will be a major component of our business,” he says.

Products aside, Hsieh believes that Zappos can build its business on customer loyalty. ”We want Zappos to be not about shoes but about service and the experience we offer,” he says. “If we can do that, we can add whatever categories we want. That’s the plan going forward.”

Article by Kurt Peters published on Internet Retailer.

Go grab this shocking new internet profits report...

I'm not sure if you caught this last week...

My pal Jason Potash released a new report that's been sending shockwaves across the Internet! This report contains (controversial) information and raw truths about this business that no one has really spoken about until now.

Before the end of 2005... MORE websites will vanish, their traffic will plummet, lawsuits will be served, and entire online businesses will literally *sink* overnight.

...and how can you be 100% certain it won't happen to YOU?

I think it's your right to understand how all this will impact -- or devastate -- your online business. So, I asked Jason if I could forward this report to all of
you. He agreed.

Just hit the link below and get ready for a dose of facts that will taste about as sweet as a tablespoon of cod liver oil. Here it is -- no artificial sweeters, no sugar coating.

Go and download the Internet Profits Shocking Report right now!

I hope you start diversifying your business after reading this...

Surviving Google's Aging Delay

Google has always been the search industry’s innovator and that’s just what Google’s aging delay symbolizes, the evolution of search innovation… yet another significant step forward for Google.

Google’s success as a search engine can undeniably be attributed to its ability to consistently return the most relevant search engine results. That’s what kept the search giant on top of the pack and leading the multi-billion dollar search industry & that’s what’s going to keep them there!

Now that said, is it any wonder why Google incorporated the infamous aging delay into their ranking criterion? The simple truth is, Google’s aging delay is a full frontal assault on artificial link inflation.

With the induction of multiple clever off-page reciprocal-linking strategies engineered to artificially inflate link popularity and PageRank, Googles aging delay wasn’t only necessary and long overdue; it was the next logical step in the evolution of search.

The confusion and misunderstanding of the aging delay among site owners is nothing short of amazing. Many of my clients are confounded because their new sites are well positioned in Yahoo, MSN & the other large search engines while their site is no where to be found in Google’s search engine result’s pages (SERPs)… except for perhaps on the most obscure search terms.

Current and unconfirmed speculation has been misplacing the blame on Google’s ‘sandbox’ effect. While this is a possibility I believe it’s also highly improbable.

The sandbox holding period is typically anywhere between 90 to 120 days, the aging delay appears to be much longer. I’ve seen new sites delayed for up to 6-8 months.

The premise of the sandbox delay theory suggests that new sites are being penalized for gaining too many links too fast. To date I haven’t seen a scrap of evidence to support that claim.

The sandbox theory is further disproved by the fact that newer sites engaged in procuring relevant links experience the same delay in climbing Google's SERPs as other new sites utilizing scores of purchased text links. This lends credibility to my thought that new sites are not being penalized on the premise of acquisition or quantity of inbound links and; supports my theory that it’s the reciprocated links that are being delayed by an aging filter.

It just doesn’t seem ‘reasonable’ for Google to penalize sites for acquiring legitimate directory listings & building an optimized reciprocal link based network. In my opinion, mainstream SEOs are confusing the existing sandbox effect, with Google’s new ‘aging filter’ that arrived on the search scene earlier this year.

It seems more likely that Google’s aging filter is weighing the ‘maturity’ of inbound links and not the new site itself. Meaning that in addition to the traditional ranking criterion, the age of a sites inbound links are also now considered.

My own theory is that newly acquired inbound links are placed on a ‘probationary’ status until they’ve ‘matured’ before they’re considered. For example, a new and relevant inbound PR 6 link would not be given the same weight or consideration as a ‘grandfathered’ PR 6 link until the aging delay expired.

By placing newly acquired links on a probationary period and delaying the ranking of newer sites Google has effectively offset the instant free ride to the top of their SERPs. Purchasing volumes of brokered links to that end is now a moot point. After all, your site will still be delayed regardless of the amount of links you purchase and you won’t see any return on investment (ROI) for at least 6 - 8 months.

Existing Site owners interested in immediate (ROI) are now strongly motivated to build new pages or expand existing sites in order to avoid Googles lengthy aging delay. With the ‘all-the-rage’ mini-network strategy shifting to more of a long-term commitment it seems likely that’s exactly what will happen!

Whether by clever design or not, the only alternative to riding out the aging delay that produces immediate results in Googles SERPs is to advertise through Google’s AdWords Program.

So it seems that Google’s solution vis-à-vis the aging delay has turned out to be an excellent vehicle to promote Googles own AdWords Program as well. Hmm…

How do you survive Google’s aging delay? By taking pro-active action!

I haven't seen any new sites with new domains appear at the top of Google’s (SERPs) since early to mid 2004. I've consulted with and tracked many of my clients’ new sites and despite the fact they have hundreds of #1 positions in Yahoo, Alta Vista, AllTheWeb & MSN for their keywords I’ve yet to see any remarkable results in Google until the 6 - 8 month period.

The trend I’ve noticed suggests that new sites are initially indexed; ranked accordingly in Google’s SERPs for a week or so and then literally vanish from the SERPs for several months. In most cases they can’t even be found with the most obscure search terms… including their own name and address.

If you’re launching a new site don’t panic. Once you’ve registered your domain name and configured the hosting, you should set up a few temporary pages. Obtain links to them from other sites in Google's index to start the aging delay count down. I recommend launching a site immediately with enough content to set up and facilitate the requirements for directory listings to start. The sooner Google is aware of your domain the better. Just don’t hold your breath waiting to see results… It could be as long as 6 - 8 months!

Gauge your optimization efforts by where your site ranks in the other search engines. Provided you’re not engaged in unethical practices and followed Google’s Webmaster’s guidelines this should give you a ballpark indication of where Google will rank your site after the aging delay, just be patient.

To that end, don’t keep tweaking and changing your pages source code and trying to manipulate your rankings until your site has been in Google’s index for at least 6 - 8 months. In other words, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here because it doesn't seem to matter what you do, your site will still be delayed regardless.

Don’t keep submitting your pages to Google either! It won’t make any difference.

Check your server logs to confirm Googlebots’ crawl and then forget about it. Googlebot will find your site again if you’re actively reciprocating links so your time would be better served building an optimized reciprocal link network to get your site out there and linked to as early as possible.

If traffic from Google is crucial to your marketing and promotion plan, and I don’t know anyone who would argue otherwise… budget to run an AdWords campaign for a few months until the site is indexed and positioned.

You might even consider running an Overture campaign as well! If you purchase non-directory links, reallocate that advertising budget to Adwords or Overture.

It’s pointless to purchase links when you can invest in an AdWords or Overture campaign. Purchasing links is an investment you won’t see a red cent ROI for at least 6 - 8 months while an Adwords campaign will drive targeted traffic to your site that can convert immediately. Keep in mind that Lycos, HotBot, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Iwon, Netscape & Teoma also receive paid results from Google! MSN, AllTheWeb, AltaVista & Yahoo receives paid results from Overture.

Do other search engines have an aging delay?

Google provides primary search results to other search engines. It only seems reasonable to expect that your site may be delayed in Google’s partner sites as well.

One-way you may be able to work around this, and I can’t emphasize this enough; is to make sure you submit your site to DMOZ, the open source directory. Google, in addition to the other major engines, receives directory results directly from DMOZ.

Yahoo and its partner sites don’t seem to be utilizing an aging delay, nor does MSN, so focusing your early efforts on these search engines might give you a competitive edge in the Yahoo network.

At the end of the day when it’s all said and done surviving Google’s aging delay is just a matter of time. The days of purchasing instant link popularity and PageRank are over and in due course you will see Google give your site the recognition it deserves.

Article by Lawrence Deon, www.rankingyourwaytothebank.com

Inspiration from a Soap Box

Like most success stories, mine is one of hard work, adaptability, and a lot of trial and error. The problem is, people tend to lose sight of this when I tell them that I turned a $25 investment into a $6.6 million online business that attracts more than 1.8 million unique visitors per month.

The "mom & pop" business opportunists gleefully slide to the edge of their seats, sure that I'm about to reveal (finally!) the secret to overnight success, while the jaded investors of the e-commerce shakedown assume I must be selling more of that hot air that cost them their life savings.

Both groups are, of course, wrong. I offer neither instant wealth nor the Brooklyn Bridge.

But I don't really mind the snap judgments, because my story has become my soap box - it's what allows me to climb up, grab the attention of real people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, and inspire them to pursue something "bigger." Sharing the secrets behind my proven successes -- and the mistakes behind my most dismal, costly failures - brings the dreamers and the doubters back to reality, but with a new glimmer of excitement in their eyes that still thrills me every time.

It's the same glimmer I'm sure I had when I started my business in my bachelor apartment.

Getting Started

My first venture into online marketing was basically a move of desperation. I had written a book about one of my biggest passions -- race cars. I'd had it self-published, so I had a garage full of copies. And I'd spent big money (more than I could afford) buying advertising space in some pretty popular race car magazines. But all my efforts were going nowhere. I was down to my few last dollars, and no one was buying my book.

Then a friend suggested I try selling my book on the Internet.

So I used my last $25 to cover my first month of Web hosting, and I launched a web site called "Car Secrets Revealed." In that first month, I made $200. That might sound like pocket change, but at that point it was enough to get my attention!

When you experience your first success, even if it's a small one, it's easy to get a little cocky. So after that first $200, I thought I must really know something about marketing. And it's true that I did -- after all, I had spent thousands of dollars educating myself, learning from the great masters of direct marketing, like Jay Abraham and Ted Nicolas. The problem, as I was about to discover, was that I didn't yet know anything about Internet marketing.

But neither did anybody else. The Internet was so new as a marketing medium that there were no experts for me to learn from. Now for someone who has always been a voracious learner, this was a little bit of a challenge. I had to find new ways to educate myself -- so I dove in head first.

Building A Solid Knowledge Base

If I had to pick one thing that was really critical to my success, the one thing that everything else was built on, I'd have to say it was what I learned through trial and error during the 18- and 20-hour days I spent testing theory after theory.

I quickly learned that although some offline marketing techniques translated beautifully to the Internet, some were dismal failures. And what really surprised me was that it was virtually impossible to predict which would work and which would fail. That's why I'm such an avid proponent of testing everything! I did so many tests in those early years that I could hardly see straight!

No matter what kind of dream you have, testing should be a prominent part of your plan. The great thing about building a business on the Internet is that you can see results incredibly fast. Everything moves at light speed online, so you can start to evaluate the success of any promotion after only 24 hours. In the offline world, it can take months to determine the success of a single advertisement, so it takes a lot longer to compile accurate results.

Every time you test a new theory, you learn a little bit more about what will work for your business. This education is an incredibly valuable asset -- and if you do your testing online, it's virtually free.

Turning The Dream Into A Multi-Million Dollar Business

The knowledge base I built in those early years has paid off enormously. That one-man operation in my bachelor apartment has grown into four online businesses that earn $6.6 million a year. I get over 1.8 million visitors to my Web sites every month. But you know what?

I'm still learning. And I'm still testing. I don't kid myself -- I know I'm nothing special (Valeriu's note: Wrong Corey, you were VERY special!)

I don't get millions of visitors to my web sites because I'm some sort of genius. I get those millions of visitors because I consistently test everything! If something stops working, I change it. Even if something seems to be working well, I test new ideas to see if I can make it even better.

I'm just a small-town guy who likes (okay, loves) race cars. When I started out, I wasn't privy to any inside information. My customers didn't just start dropping millions of dollars into my lap. I really worked hard (I'm not kidding about the 20-hour days!). I suffered many failures along the way, but I chalked them up to testing, adjusted everything based on what I learned, and eventually I knew enough to create success way beyond anything I'd ever imagined.

Fast-Forwarding Your Success With Today's Resources

Today, of course, starting a business online is a whole lot easier. There are lots of tools and resources to help you get the ball rolling. And you certainly don't need to start from scratch like I did, because you can learn from the trial and error testing that's already been done.

Remember that soap box I mentioned back at the beginning? Here's where I get up and shout my most important message:

Take advantage of the lessons that have already been learned!

It's true that I still encourage every business owner to do their own testing, since no one can say exactly what will work best for a specific business marketing to a specific group at a specific time. However, just as there are "rules" for creating successful businesses in the offline world, there are now rules for creating success online. If you don't take advantage of the knowledge base that has already been established, you'll find yourself working your own 20-hour days, and learning some pretty painful lessons along the way.

Final Thoughts

I don't have the magic formula that creates instant wealth. What I do have is an in-depth knowledge of the online world - based not on academic theory, but on my own testing and research.

When I started out in my bachelor apartment, writing about race cars, I never had any plans to become an "Internet marketing expert." I just wanted to sell my book. But as more and more people started coming to me, wanting to avoid the years of testing I had already done, I knew my life was headed in a different direction.

I still love cars. But now, instead of writing about them in a tiny apartment, I get to race them! (I don't have to work 20-hour days anymore.) And I'm pursuing another passion: learning through testing and research, staying one step ahead of my competition, and passing everything I discover down to people who are just starting out - the new Internet entrepreneurs who
simply don't have the traffic or resources to do the same kind of testing I can now do so quickly.

If a small-town guy like me can build a multi-million-dollar company, armed with nothing more than a $25 investment and a passion for race cars, I firmly believe that armed with all the information, resources, and automation technology that exist today, anyone can start a highly profitable Internet business.

Remember: you don't need a lot of money to get started online; you simply need a desire to learn and a commitment to succeed.

Article by Corey Rudl, founder of MarketingTips.com, the man who inspired thousands of Netpreneurs. The guy I will miss a lot. My hero, my model...

An Entrepreneur and a Life To Be Remembered

I was reminded of my own mortality today. I guess you can say I had a near death experience, though the death I experienced was not my own.

No, I was never in any danger, nor was my life ever threatened. In fact, I was sitting in the air conditioned comfort of my home office sipping a nice cup of coffee and watching the dogs run around the yard when the moment came.

The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Life was going along just fine.

Death was the furthest thing from my mind.

Then the news came that Corey Rudl had been killed in a high speed crash at a race track in California. At the moment of his death at the young age of 34, Corey was a passenger in a Porsche that hit a retaining wall at over 100 miles per hour, killing him instantly and the driver shortly thereafter. The track had been rented by a local car club so that Corey and his buddies could take their expensive, powerful cars to the track to see how fast they could go.

Corey died doing what he loved. Those closest to him say he would not have had it any other way.

Corey Rudl was not a professional race car driver. He was an entrepreneur, and one of the best of his breed.

Most of you who read this column probably have no idea who Corey Rudl was or what he accomplished during his short life, and that’s OK. You also have no idea of the imprint he made on me and millions of others who make our living (at least in part) as online marketers. Again, that’s OK.

For all his accomplishments, those who knew him well have said that Corey was more concerned about building his businesses than being a public figure. By those accounts, Corey never really cared about being in the public limelight, even though he was probably the most visible and successful entrepreneur in his field.

Perhaps that’s why Corey Rudl was so successful. He knew what was really important when it came to building a business. The limelight came easy to him, but his focus always seemed to be on making his business stronger, serving his customers better. He also knew that there was life beyond business, and he pursued that life with a passion and energy that most of us can only imagine.

Corey Rudl’s story is the classic entrepreneur’s tale. He started his business from his kitchen table just a few short years ago selling a homemade booklet he had written on how to get the best deal on a new car. From that modest start Corey built an internet marketing empire that has generated $40 million dollars in revenue in just a few years.

Corey was the definitive internet marketing guru. He was young, energetic, and highly passionate about his business and his industry. He wrote and spoke frequently on the topics of internet marketing and business success and that’s where he and I briefly crossed paths. We were both expert columnists for Entrepreneur.com and exchanged several polite emails, nothing really personal, mind you, mostly swapping compliments of each others work.

Much of Corey’s time in recent years was spent teaching others how to do what he had done: build a successful online business from scratch. For a man of just 34 years, he packed in decades of expertise and knowledge and he shared it with anyone who would listen, including yours truly.

I never personally spoke or shook hands with Corey Rudl, but I was his customer, his student, and ultimately an admirer. I can attribute much of the success of my own online business to Corey’s teachings and principles. He was one of those rare birds that you didn’t have to meet to feel like you were on a first-name basis with him.

Everyone in my little circle of internet marketing friends simply referred to him as “Corey” and we spoke of him warmly, as a friend and mentor. He set the bar for all of us. We wanted to achieve his level of success. We wanted to hit his heights. We wanted to be the entrepreneur that he was.

Corey had just recently married the girl of his dreams. He was a millionaire many times over. He had a big house and fancy cars and a future so bright he had to wear shades. His business was thriving. Life was perfect. Corey Rudl truly had the world by the tail and there was no chance he’d ever let go. I imagine he was holding on tight until the very end.

The lessons we learn from the death of Corey Rudl are the same lessons we always learn when someone so young and vibrant is suddenly taken from us. As entrepreneurs we should take those lessons and apply them not only to our own lives, but to our businesses, as well.

Lesson One: live everyday as if it is your last, because it just might be.

As entrepreneurs we often think that our businesses have to come first on our list of priorities. It’s not until a tragedy reminds us that life is too short that we think about making time for the things in life that are really important. Get out from behind your desk. Go play with your kids. Hug your wife. Call your mother.

Lesson Two: be passionate about business, but never let it eclipse your passion for life.

Corey was a true entrepreneur whose passion for business was unparalleled, but by all accounts he also knew that a life devoted strictly to business was a life not lived to its fullest. Corey died doing what he loved. Some will argue that his passion killed him and in a way that’s true, but I have to believe that before he knew he was in danger Corey had a smile on his face a mile wide. He would not have lived his life any other way.

As I finish this column my oldest daughter has come in to ask if I’d like the honor of taking her out to Sunday brunch. She’s seventeen now. She has a job, a car, and a life that is very much her own. Chances to be graced with her presence grow rarer with each passing week. Still, any other day I might have weighed her invitation against the eight million business-related things that need my attention.

Today, however, the decision is easy.

I usually end my column with the words, “Here’s to your success.” This week let me end with, “Here’s to your life.”

Tim Knox, http://www.prosperityandprofits.com/

Google's AdSense a bonanza for some Web sites

Canadian software developer and part-time humorist Eric Giguère made fun of the avalanche of Internet arthritis drug offers on his Web site last year. For his efforts, he received a $350 check from Internet search giant Google.

Giguère has one of those ubiquitous "Ads by Google" links on his site, offering ads the search giant considers of interest to readers. You might think that people rarely click on them, but they do — and often.

"For my own, personal humor writing, I got paid," Giguère says. "It certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities that were out there."

Google has a simple proposition for anyone who owns a Web site: Let it put up links to its ads, and Google's AdSense program will give you a piece of the action when someone clicks on them.

It's found money for many bloggers, small e-tailers and huge businesses — from small personal sites such as Giguère's, to those of big-time corporations such as Amazon.com, the New York Times and About.com.

Giguère was so inspired, he wrote a book, Make Easy Money with Google, coming in May from Peachpit Press. Hundreds of online forums and Web sites are devoted to AdSense tips and tricks. The downside of the AdSense economy, critics charge, is that the avalanche of ads has created a new form of spam and is destroying the integrity of sites.

"This is a program that rewards people not for creating the best content, but for how to create sites to attract more advertising," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch online newsletter. "AdSense has nothing to do with search. It effectively turns the Internet into a billboard for Google's ads."

Google, whose executives often say their mission is to organize the world's information, naturally begs to differ. "If I do a search for the New York Times and see an ad offering a subscription discount, that's useful to me," says Susan Wojcicki, Google's director of product management.

Web site publishers don't disagree.

"Say I write an article about a Braun shaver," says Chris Pirillo, who runs the Lockergnome.com gadget Web site. "I publish it, and within minutes, I have targeted ads about shavers on my site. Someone who reads the content may feel compelled to pick one up. That helps me and the reader."

Tales of AdSense riches range from a few hundred dollars a month to $50,000 or more a year, though high-dollar paydays are rare. They require a Web site with tons of traffic and the ability to put in 18-hour days working the system.

Pirillo, who has a following from his former role as a host on the now-defunct TechTV cable channel, says he's clearing more than $10,000 a month.

Before AdSense, which began in March 2003, bloggers and other small Web publishers had fewer options to make money. They could put banner ads on their sites for a host of non-related products, or commission programs from Amazon and eBay. "It was a lot more work, and you didn't get much of a return," Pirillo says.

With AdSense, "You write content, publish it, and the money starts to pour in," he says.

When he published the now-defunct Silicon Alley Reporter magazine, Jason Calacanis says, he used to suffer from insomnia, worrying about his monthly $200,000 to $400,000 printing bill.

He now runs a company called Weblogs, which publishes 75 Web sites on such topics as cars, gadgets, digital music and video games. He sleeps much better, he says, because "with AdSense, you know you're always making money. Your life gets a lot easier."

In his first four months of Web publishing, AdSense brought in $45,000. Some of his blogs produce $3,000 a month. His best do "four figures," Calacanis says, though he's reluctant to fill in the exact numbers. "And that's with zero marketing," he says.

How it works

Google and Yahoo dominate the booming online search advertising business, which is expected to grow to $5.6 billion in 2008, from $2.7 billion in 2004. Profit from search advertising enabled Google to more than double its revenue in 2004, to $3.1 billion.

The concept — text ads that appear next to search results — works on a "pay-per-click" model. Advertisers pay only if someone clicks on an ad. To use the programs, advertisers buy "keywords" for anywhere from 5 cents to $100 a word. Those are the terms people type into query boxes when they're searching, such as "Atlanta wedding photographer" or "Omaha Italian restaurants."

AdSense works as a part of that keyword model; it's an offshoot of what Google calls its AdWords program, which competes against Yahoo's Overture unit.

AdSense is a bonus program for advertisers who use Google AdWords. Through AdSense, Google clients get to tout their wares beyond Google's home page — potentially reaching more than 200,000 participating Web sites.

Small Web site operators have flocked to AdSense as a way to attract advertising. To participate, they sign up at Google, which reviews the site. Once a small piece of computer code language is implanted on an accepted site, Google does the rest — matching ad links from its warehouse of clients to appropriate sites.

There's an art to optimizing a site to attract more links — and generate more revenue.

Gay Gilmore, who runs Seattle-based recipezaar.com, says the trick is to attract ads next to recipes beyond the main page. "The ads need to be targeted," she says, "so that when someone is reading about chicken soup, an ad for one of the ingredients is of keen interest."

Web site publishers need to be creative, says Dave Lavinsky of TopPayingKeywords.com, an AdSense advice site. A house painter advertising his services on a homemade site is leaving money on the table if he mentions only house painting, he says. "'Housepainting' is a 20-cent word. 'Home improvement' is worth $2, so you should create content for that."

But Sullivan says keyword tricks hurt the editorial integrity of sites. Another problem, he says, is the proliferation of computer-generated directories with links to hotels, restaurants and entertainment and no real editorial content, fueled by the availability of "Ads by Google" checks.

Wojcicki says Google tries to review all sites in its program, and removes offenders such as the directory sites. Critics say the site reviews can sometimes result in an FCC-like "family friendly" filter. Bloggers complain about being rejected for discussions of sexuality and use of four-letter words.

"I begged, argued and appealed to reason for months," says author Susie Bright, whose site discusses sexuality issues. "I pointed out that all my postings were things you could easily read in ... any number of mainstream magazines that cover sex and politics from a fairly sophisticated point of view. And I pointed out that my readers like to buy trousers, go on vacations, purchase ink and basically buy all the same things that everyone else does."

Wojcicki wouldn't address the specifics of Bright's concerns, but says AdSense isn't for everyone. "We're very careful about who we let into our network. We reject sites with content some people may feel uncomfortable about."

With pay-per-click ads, Google and Yahoo are locked in a bitter battle for advertiser dollars. But Yahoo doesn't compete with AdSense for small publishers — yet. Yahoo says it will introduce an offering later this year.

For now, Google's most notable AdSense competitor is privately held Kanoodle, which accepted Bright's site. It works with small publishers and big ones (including USATODAY.com and MSNBC) and differs from AdSense in that advertisers can choose topic areas of the sites where they want their ads to appear.

"The search advertising market is red hot right now, and publishers and advertisers want more," says Kanoodle CEO Lance Podell. "We offer them more places to show their ads, and they love that."

How long will search sizzle?

Google's initial public stock offering last summer was a Wall Street sensation. The stock opened at $85 a share and now sells for around $180, down from its 52-week high of $216. Some analysts fret that the red-hot paid search market could start to cool down.

Forrester Research, revising downward earlier projections, expects 30% growth in search advertising revenue this year, after a 45% jump in 2004.

"Click fraud" is another nettlesome issue for Google and Yahoo.

Advertisers pay for ads only when they're clicked, but it doesn't always work that way.

Some competitors click ads just to run up the other guy's bills. Web publishers with AdSense get their friends to click ads so they can get more money. Some savvy webmasters have set up automated clicking models called "Hitbots" or "Clickbots," which click away all day, and cost the advertiser.

Such efforts "threaten our business model," Google CFO George Reyes said at a recent industry conference. "Something has to be done about this, really, really quickly."

University of California professor John Battelle, who is writing a book on search, says the success of AdSense has built a "growing, extremely sophisticated offshore industry."

"There are more of these sites than you can imagine," he says. "The robots click on the ads and then none of the clicks turn into leads for the advertisers. That's not how it's supposed to work."

Google and Yahoo say they are working on the problem, but Battelle doesn't think that's enough.

Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online have banded together on several occasions to fight e-mail spam, and Battelle says Google and Yahoo should show the same kind of joint leadership. "Because if they don't, it will end up biting them in the butt."

Article by By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY