December 2015 – Top SEO Results Tool

Essentials of Marketing

Essentials of Marketing

Many people are puzzled when it comes to marketing, what is it you need to do. Marketing involves getting your message across to you potential customers, usually in the form of words, audio, pictures or video or combinations of the foregoing.

The tools you use can be in the form of email, circulars, advertisements, recorded messages, blogs, social media and radio or television. The changes in technology combined with the rise of social media, puts more emphasis on videos and shorter blogs due to screen sizes of mobile devices, however email and blogs remain important when it comes to the written word.

Not everyone has access recording studios to produce videos, however anyone with a bit of practice can produce a blog. The written word has been around for thousands of years and has stood the test of time, so if you are a marketer it is an essential skill you need to develop.

Where do you start you might ask. The first step is to gather information on the subject you plan to write about. Quite often this can be a challenge, if you for example,have just joined an existing online business, because you are also learning yourself. One way would be to write a kind of online diary of your experience to share with others. Another way is to read other members blogs and then rewrite them in your own words to reflect your opinion. One thing to avoid is cutting and pasting large sections of text and claiming them as your own. If you do copy text verbatim always acknowledge the source.

The first few blog posts are the most difficult and you should aim to write at least 200-300 words. About a year ago I carried out some research that blogs containing 600- 1000 words were the most effective, and whilst this might be true I am beginning to have some doubts, because it can depend on the screen sizes of your potential customers devices. I for one do not like reading emails on an I-phone in portrait mode.

David Ogden
Helping People Help Themselves
Http://markethive.com/david-ogden

David

Preparing for a New Start

The New year is now only days away and if you New year's resolution was to set about improving your financial situation by starting up an online business, then there is no time like the present to get started.

Many people find it useful to find a mentor, I did myself many years ago and it was money well spent. A mentor will guide you and help you avoid the pitfalls which will trap the unwary. So where do you find a mentor? Well you can search online using Google, however most mentors charge to help you and how do you know that you are going to get along with their method of mentoring.

MarketHive can provide a solution for you, the site has been developed over the past few year by a group of entrepreneurs many of whom will guide you with free advice on how to become successful online. The advantage of using MarketHive is you are not limited to just one mentor and the chances are you will discover other people with similar interests to yourself.

MarketHive is an intuitive site with a FaceBook like look and feel, however it has been built from the bottom up to support budding entrepreneurs with a range of essential tools to maximise your marketing efforts.

David Ogden
Helping People Help Themselves
Http://markethive.com/david-ogden

David

Wasted health, the tragic case of open dumps – Press Release

Report calls for alliance to solve escalating global health emergency threat posed to millions by open dumpsites

Open dumpsites receive roughly 40% of the world’s waste and serve about 3.5 to 4 billion people
Substantial rise in unregulated dumping of mobile devices, electronic appliances, medical and municipal waste accelerating scale of the threat and health risks
Uncontrolled burning of waste releases gases and toxins into the atmosphere
Open waste sites in India, Indonesia and the Philippines more detrimental to life expectancy than malaria2
64 million people’s lives affected by world’s 50 largest dumpsites (equal to population of France)1
In addition to human/environmental impact, the financial cost of open dumpsites runs into the tens of billions $USD

A new report presented at the ISWA World Congress today has revealed the global health emergency already affecting tens of millions of people worldwide is escalating in scale and impact. The report, published by the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) entitled ‘Wasted health, the tragic case of open dumps’, demonstrates how the problems of open dumpsites experienced in the developed world 40 years ago still exist in poor and emerging countries but are being additionally compounded by unprecedented new issues. These include the unregulated accumulation on a massive scale of discarded electronic and mobile devices, medical waste, and animal carcasses, which are routinely burnt.

While the risk of disease and illness to millions of people living in the immediate vicinity of open dumpsites is cause for concern in its own right, the impact of the gases and toxins being released into the atmosphere by burning the waste has global consequences. The report concludes that without a coordinated response to the issue through a global alliance of organisations capable of delivering real change, the problem will only worsen and quickly.

Read the full report here.

David

Planning your Life

Today is the shortest day of the year, Christmas is nearly upon us and the year end is in sight, so its time to start thinking about new year resolutions and start planning the year ahead.

Take some time this holiday season to carry out a personal view of your own achievements during the past 12 months.

One year ago we were living in Cyprus, I was working as a sailing instructor and we were planning on building our savings and improving Jay Education, little did we realise that 12 months later we would be living in the UK.

We certainly did not not expect to move to the UK, as we managed to get Jay accepted in a private English School in Paphos, however planning ahead, job opportunities are limited. I also discovered that because I had been working in Cyprus we could move to the UK without having to pay for a visa. We applied for a Family Pass in the spring and were somewhat surprised when it was granted. We did the maths and although the cost of living is higher in the UK we would save on school fees and it might open up a path for Jasmin and Jay to apply for British Citizenship. The biggest drawback was the weather.

We chose to live in Derbyshire due to the fact that is a reasonable cheap place live and generally still maintains British values with some beautiful countryside. Returning to the UK after a 15 year absence is a definite shock, on a visit to Nottingham seeing a sign in Polish enforcing no drinking in public places. We are still struggling to open bank accounts,paying over the odds for car insurance and cannot apply for credit as we have not borrowed money. Values have certainly changed, no longer is a man's word accepted as his bond.

Looking ahead to the forthcoming year we have some challenges, the first being my son who lives in Manchester and was diagnosed with a brain tumour around the time we arrived in the UK, an operation to remove it ended up in failure and he is now partially blind and facing an uncertain future, with no prospect of work and mounting debts. Some good news came last week when he was accepted for social housing, however the apartment is an empty shell, so we need to see what we can do to help make it habitable. This will mean both Jasmin and myself need to find jobs to bring in extra income in order to recoup money spent on moving to the UK, helping my son and building up a reserve so Jasmin and Jay can travel to the Philippines to visit their family, they have not seen for some two and half years.

One part of my plan for 2016 is to expand my MarketHive system, which keeps me in touch will fellow entrepreneurs and allow me also to help people understand what they need to do to earn money from online business opportunities.

So now its your turn, work out what is important in your life and get it down on paper, if you like share your thoughts on MarketHive, make a positive move to improve your situation.

David Ogden
http://markethive.com/david-ogden
Helping People Help themselves

David

Britians Last Deep Coal Mine Closes

Britians last deep coal mine The closure of the last deep mining pit at Kellingley Colliery in Yorkshire, yesterday marks an end of an Era in the UK. I live in in what used to be a coal mining area in Derbyshire, there is still plenty of coal beneath the ground, however it is uneconomic to mine, because countries such as India and China have lower production costs, probably due to lower safety standards and wages, together with state subsidies

The UK government plans to shut down all coal powered power stations within the next 10 years and it is ironic that once again it is China who will benefit from a building contract for a new nuclear power station.

Yes coal is a dirty fuel, however, clean power such as solar and hydro power are also having subsidies reduced dramatically from the 1st January, which will make them less economical viable, for example a small hydro plant in a river in a Yorkshire village has just come online to supply some 40 houses. It will pay for itself in 10 years, however anyone planning a similar plant will need to wait 100 years for payback.

Mining has been a way of Life in the UK and it is sad to see it coming to an end, with the reserves underground miners thought it was a job for life but now have to seek other ways of earning an income to support their families. Nowadays the problem is that many job only offer the minimum wage and these are usually snapped up by foreign workers from Europe who are used to lower wages.

Miners like many others will either have to start looking further afield for work or take stock of their situation, examine what skills and interest they have and find a way of monetising them.

A few people who possess drive and enthusiasm might turn to the Internet as an alternative way of working, however it is a different kind of hard work, learning a new trade and there are traps in the way of the unwary in the form of Multi Level Marketing (MLM)schemes which promise a lot but from which few people can earn a living. If you want to earn a living online, it is easier to do so via an Affiliate system, earning a percentage of selling products and services.

Getting started working online can be a daunting prospect, and can raise many issues, so most people seek advice from entrepenuers who have been successful and are willing to help others succeed in a selfless manner.

I am connected to one such group of people called MarketHive, I was asked to explain this the other day, it a mix of a social media for entrepeneurs to share business and marketing ideas, like a Facebook for business but on a more professional footing such as LinkedIn. In addition MarketHive provides tools and widgets, to make the likes of WordPress better and enable anyone to get their message to the market place or customer via blogs, video or email

David Ogden
Helping People Help Themselves
MarketHive.com/david-ogden

David

How to gain more MarketHive subscribers on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?

How do you increase your number of MarketHive subscribers, or "children" if you will?

I think LinkedIn is one of the best ways to accomplish this. It seems at though, I may have finally cracked the LinkedIn code to do this, well sort of. I have been studying every LinkedIn training course I could get my hands on in the last six months. Today, I got 12 new invitations to connect with me this morning in my inbox, and I have added 981 connections so far this month. This is a fairly rapid increase, that I believe few people are currently doing now, on LinkedIn.

In addition, all of those new connections have been invited to join MarketHive. (I am currently getting nearly a 1% response rate on invitations to MarketHive). I am actively trying to find a way to increase that percentage, but it is resulting in nearly one new MarketHive sign-up per day.

I don't know how many entrepreneurs realize that their first level connections are already in their sales funnel? Everyone looking to market on LinkedIn needs to think this way. Ok, it may not be exactly the same, but it is very close to it. Everything depends on what you do with those connections.

Some kind of automation is needed here for sure. The manual way of messaging in LinkedIn will take you nearly forever (well, not exactly. but it could easily take 3-4 hours perday) to send invites, messages, shares, posts, and all of the tasks you need to do on a regular basis. Even if you send messages to your 1st level connections and you have 1000, it will take several hours a day and 4 days to complete the task.

Btw, the LinkedIn limit for invitation requests per day is 40-50 maximum with a free account or a paid account, (Sales Navigator has a limite of 100 per day). There is a limit of 250 messages per day to your 1st level connections on all LinkedIn accounts. If you do that every day manually, it is a very time consuming process, for sure!

I am in the process of setting up a step-by-step training program on how to use LinkedIn to promote Markethive. I may also expand it to a complete LinkedIn training as well, depending on the level of interest. In any case, this is something anyone can do. It can be done, even with a free LinkedIn account. With additional low-cost automation software solutions, the process can be greatly accelerated.

All for now. Thanks for your interest.

Best possible sucess in all your endeavors!

John Lombaerde

David

IMF quota reform approved by Congress in spending bill

China to get more power under reform deal

IanTalley

Getty Images

Long-awaited IMF reform was approved in Congress.

WASHINGTON–U. S. lawmakers look set to ratify a five-year-old international deal to overhaul the governance of the International Monetary Fund that gives emerging markets such as China greater power at the emergency lender.

Lawmaker approval would resolve a long-running grievance by emerging powers that their voice and vote at the shareholder institution doesn’t represent their growing economic heft in the world.

Congressional leaders agreed early Wednesday morning to include the changes in a catch-all spending bill, which could become law in the coming days.

“We look forward to the outcome of the legislative process,” said IMF spokesman Gerry Rice.

U.S. lawmakers have stymied modernization of the fund’s shareholder governance for years, fomenting resentment among the IMF’s emerging-market membership.

An expanded version of this story is available at WSJ.com

David

The Cryptoconomy Cryptocommerce and Cryptofunding

Expanding the implementation of my cryptocommerce pursuits, I now have 2 sites started. One, as I have said in the last article, is an cryptocommerce WP website for retail. The other is a crytpofunding WP site for a worthy project.

Setting the crypto donation system up has become rather interesting process. The site, the “crypto” payment gateway, they all come together rather normally. The crowd funding campaign, using cryptocurrencies to fund, has a different kind of aura about it. It developed while I was creating my own unique currency basket.

Think about the opportunity an entrepreneur has with the ability to create a unique personal or business alternative means of business exchange.

Setting up the wallets takes time.

I have, in my business exchange, 7 wallets for 7 cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Dash, Reddcoin, Paycoin, Peercoin. Each of them has a little different personality, some are focused on trade, some social and some just as a currency of value.

These icons are linked to the home site of each.

Establishing your “basket of currencies” should be a careful process. Do you Due Diligence. Know your exchange. The wallets take time to established.

I follow a simple rule when asked if I take a different cryptocurrency than I have listed. My answer has become, I do if it is listed on an established cryptocurrency exchange.

I like Cryptonator, Take a look here: https://www.cryptonator.com/

For Cryptocommerce payment gateway I am using GoUrl plugins for WordPress. GoUrl is the only cryptocurrency payment gateway that I found and was comfortable with managing.

GoUrl.io is an automated payment processing system for the bitcoin, dogecoin, litecoin, reddcoin, feathercoin, vertcoin, potcoin, vericoin, darkcoin, speedcoin currencies. It enables online merchants to accept cryptocoins, as a form of payment, just as easily they accept payments from credit cards, debit cards, or Paypal.

This is the official website: Gour l.io

I am using the Woocommerce shopping cart on my cryptocommerce site with GoUrl as the payment gateway.

For the cryptofunding site I am using the GoUrl Bitcoin Paypal Donations – Give Addon plugin for WP.

Bitcoin/Altcoin & Paypal Donations on Your Website. Provides a Bitcoin Payment Gateway for Give 0.8+ – wordpress donation plugin. Easy to Use!

It is easy to use but only when you have a donation campaign designed. It is flexible enough to fit almost any campaign. The campaign dictates elements that have to be considered when developing the cryptodonation platform.

This site is not being developed to engage any of the established crowdfunding websites.

Both projects highlight how cryptocurrency provides a new way for consumers and investors to support interesting projects.

I am raising funds through my own platform seeking funding from a distributed group of backers for an ecological project.

A great thing about cryptocurrencies is that each wallet has the capability to generate and unique hashcode that can be identified to a campaign or to a person or a unique instance as needed to receive payment. In this case, I use different sets of my cryptocurrencies for the cryptocommerce site and crowd funding/cryptofunding project.

I can track the purpose of the different currencies by campaign or source of payment received.

David

How are Elon Musk and Orbital Velocity like the life of an Entrepreneur?

Embed from Getty Images

Strange title, this one, I know. I remember a famous tweet by Elon Musk saying that getting to space is relatively easy. He explained that you need to achieve Mach 3 to be able to reach space and escape the earth's atmosphere. Then you would come back down to earth again.

In order to stay in orbit, however, you need to be going much, much faster. You need to be traveling at Mach 30 in order to propel yourself fast enough to stay in orbit around the earth.

Here is a link that provides some explanation about this phenomenon.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

I thought, this is similar to many Internet Marketing hype headlines. You know, the ones that say "Newbie Internet marketer makes $20,117.30 in 60 days with no previous Internet experience!" Well, maybe this headline is all hype, but again, maybe this person did achieve this result in 60 days.

Ok, sounds good, but what happened after that? Did that person fall back to earth again, after achieving that success and never managed to make a dime again after that? No one wants that kind of "one-hit wonder" success, right?

The headline would be so much more impressive if it said, "Newbie Internet marketer achieves 6-figure sustainable income, within 60 days, and is still going strong after 3 years". The headlines never say anything like that do they? They are always about the push-button, easy way to success, right?

So don't bother to open that email with a fantastic rags to riches headline. Who cares about flash in the pan success? To be truly successful, any start-up must exceed their intial altitude and achieve a self-sustaining orbit. Isn't that the goal?

In his book Startup Leadership: How Savvy Entrepreneurs Turn Their Ideas into Successful Enterprises – Derek Lidow has studied this phenomenon, and currently teaches Entrepreneurial Leadership at Princeton University. He uncovers the gems of principles that can be applied universally across industries, cultures, and geographies. He separates those that are merely entrepreneurs from those that can be considered entrepreneurial leaders that are able to create self-sustaining businesses.

There are unique skills required to nurture a start-up, and there are additional skills needed to navigate any company beyond the initial phase into continued success. Derek Lidow's book is highly recommended. (Available on Amazon and elsewhere)

Best of success in all your entrepreneurial endeavors!

John Lombaerde

David

MarketHive December Special

MarketHive the social meeting place for entrepreneurs invites you to attend a free webinar this week to discover more about how the system can help you build your business, together with an insight into its affiliate program which launches in January.

The new single level BeTheAlpha affiliate program will enable those who upgrade from the free system to earn money from introducing fellow members and helping them develop as entrepeneurs

, there are seven achievment ranks leading up to Alpha founder.

A special offer has recently been launched and runs to the end of the year allowing members to purchase an existing Alpha Founder Legacy position for a substantial discount which provides both advertising and also a share in revenue from MarketHive prior to the launch of BeTheAlpha.

Thus being the coming Alpha Affiliate Program in 2016

The new Alpha Founder position @ $5000.00 in the new affiliate program will offer the following:

One time deposit of $10,000 in ad credits
$200 per month ad credits for life
50% commissions on all financial transactions by your children
1 share of 5% of the company’s revenue pool shared with unlimited Founder members.

The current 2015 Alpha Founder, now referred as Alpha Legacy @ $1200.00 offers the following:

One time deposit of $3000 in ad credits
$200 per month ad credits for life
50% commissions on all financial transactions by your children
1 share of 5% of the company’s pool (limited to 250 shares; members)
Share of new children (customers) from corporate marketing and advertising campaigns

Alpha Legacy Year End 50% off sale. There are a limited number left and we are selling the contracts for $600 each. You can use these contracts to apply the terms to any number of Markethive Accounts, yours or someone you transfer the contract to or sell it to.

David