Meanwhile, those who actually attended The Freedom Class, are up and flying with their new-found viral web businesses. It is still only three weeks since the class, but they’re uploading products, building lists and making sales. They’re doing things many people still haven’t done after years of marketing on the Internet.

In fact, perhaps that’s where the problem lies. Too many of us have difficulty breaking down the wall between being marketed to and being the marketer. Inevitably therefore, there are thousands of people who have been online for years and spent a small fortune on Internet Marketing products without ever making any money themselves.

It was with this in mind that The Freedom Class was conceived.

So if you’d like to have me show you exactly how you can break down that wall, and build a web-business you can be proud of, then keep an ear to the ground for more about the Action Freedom Pack.

More coming soon…

Oh – and if you’re one of my invited JV partners, please go here and use the password I gave you.

Yesterday Yahoo! rejected another Microsoft Bid. This time it was driven by Carl Icahn through Microsoft chief, Steve Ballmer.

It was made on Friday and gave Yahoo! 24 hours to make up its mind.

The offer required the immediate resignation of the Yahoo! board so Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! said, “While this type of erratic and unpredictable behavior is consistent with what we have come to expect from Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the best interests of our stockholders.”

Carl Icahn is clearly working closely with Microsoft to try and sculpure a deal before Yahoo! are cushioned by their revenues from the Google advertising deal.

As far as Yahoo are concerned however, Microsoft and Icahn’s offer is against the interests of Yahoo! shareholders. (Even though Icahn’s stake now exceeds 4% of Yahoo.)

Bostock also said, “This odd and opportunistic alliance of Microsoft and Carl Icahn has anything but the interests of Yahoo!’s stockholders in mind. Clearly, Microsoft, having failed to advance in search, is aligning with the short-term objectives of Mr. Icahn to coerce Yahoo! into selling its core strategic search assets on terms that are highly advantageous to Microsoft, but disadvantageous to Yahoo! stockholders.”

Officially, Microsoft’s offer to Yahoo! was rejected on the following grounds:

– The revenue guarantees suggested, which are conditional and subject to reduction, are well below the search revenue that the Company is expected to generate on its own and in association with its announced commercial agreement with Google. That agreement alone is estimated to generate $250 to $450 million of incremental cash flow for the first twelve months following implementation, while allowing Yahoo! to remain a principal in paid search;

– The success of the remaining Company is critically dependent on Microsoft’s ability to effectively monetize search;

– Microsoft/Icahn’s proposed Traffic Acquisition Costs rates are below market;

– The proposal calls for Yahoo! to sell its industry-leading algorithmic search business and its related strategic and valuable intellectual property portfolio for no incremental consideration; and

– Many of the components of the headline value that Mr. Icahn and Microsoft put forward, such as the spin-off of the Yahoo!’s Asian assets and the return of cash to stockholders, are steps that could be taken by Yahoo! on its own and the Board continues to evaluate these options.

Tim Brocklehurst Explains The Automatic Business from Tim Brocklehurst on Vimeo.

Thats right: So many valuable tips aren’t passed on, because too many of us presume others already know about them…

Well – if you know about this, great – glad you’re enjoying it too, but if not, let me introduce you to a free tool which I use uncountable times during my working day.

Its called Sparky…

This is an attachment to my browser window. It will work with IE or Firefox, whichever is your preference.

When you go to a website, there are a number of things which might strike you about it straight away: Appealing graphics, a hard-hitting headline, good/bad copy, industry logos, testimonials etc… but none of them give you a clue about how frequently the site is visited.

And don’t you think that’s important?

Put it this way: when you’re thinking of using a service, or buying a product, it helps to know how many others have used it too. We gain assurance in our purchase by knowing this. Or we realise we’re taking a risk. Either way, its worth knowing.

This is as important online as it is off. Social proof is a great way of converting sales, and its never better than when it is provided independently.

For example… if you find a site that is offering something, and claiming thousands of people have had success with it, then you should expect it to be quite a popular site, no?

So what if you could know, straight away, whether they were telling the truth or not?

Well, one of the dangers when we start out working online, is that there are many sites like that. And the only credible way of knowing how well it is visited, is by checking its Alexa rank.

The google rank helps too. That is a measure of how many other sites link to it (and what their rank is too), but that’s for another post.

Alexa is a web information company. It continuously researches every site it comes across on the Internet and monitors how frequently it is visited. Not only that, but it also gathers information about other related sites which carry a similar topic, so you can visit them too.

The Alexa toolbar, as it was, or Sparky, as they call it now, is a very cool tool for uncovering more about the webpage you’re looking at.

With it, you can not only tell how popular the site is, but also how its traffic has grown, or declined, in previous months.

The alexa rank is just that, a rank of popularity. The most visited site on the Internet (Google) has an alexa rank of 1. As I write, Facebook has a rank of 6. This means it is the 7th most visited site on The Internet. This is how it is displayed in the task bar of my browser window.

As a rule of thumb, if you can get your blog, or a site of yours, to show an alexa rank of less than 100,000 – you’re doing well: Its a good thing to aim for.

The page you’re looking at, my blog, used to have an alexa rank of around 60,000 – when I was updating it daily. Now that I do it less frequently, the rank has dropped to 280,000 or so.

Would it help you to know how well you’re doing in the traffic rankings – at a glance?

If you think so, or even if you would like to know more about any site you visit, and what other similar sites are, I strongly recommend you get this cool free tool.

The simple fact is this: If you’re marketing online, its helpful to know how your site is ranked against your competitors’. Using this tool, you can do that easily: visit both sites, and note the alexa rank of both. The one with the lower number, is visited more frequently than the other.

You can download and install Sparky on your web-browser at this link:

Hope you found this helpful. Either way, please let me know.

Have you got other tools you find useful in your day-to-day work… let me know with a comment below -

Oh, and by the way – if you don’t want me to moderate your commment, please make sure it doesn’t contain an affiliate link.

I’ll be interested to learn what delegates think of their impending position in the Internet Marketing community because it seems to me that Malaysia and Singapore are sitting on the mother of all gold mines in this industry.

Today’s newspapers spoke again of the impact on the world of increasing oil prices. For the third time in a generation, we are told, we are heading towards an oil crisis with global implications as the price per barrel teases the symbolic $100 mark.

But this time it is different. This time the price increase is driven by demand. Previously it has been caused by political pressure or constricted supply either in the Middle East, or Russia.

China’s consumption of oil has trebled since 1980. The current oil price, and potential increases in the future, are in correlation with the rise of the middle class in China and India as it steadily replaces mass poverty.

Look at these charts to see how oil consumption in China compares with Europe and the Americas:

And what else, aside of oil, do middle class consumers need?

Information… The Internet.

I believe the staggering increase in oil shown in China over the past 20 years is nothing compared to the forthcoming increase in Internet use in that country.

And when it comes to Internet Marketing, who in the world is best placed to teach them?

The cultural and language differences between China and the western world make it difficult for the main-stays of Internet Marketing to have a role in China’s growth. It seems more likely that it will come from her neighbours, in particular Malaysia and Singapore.

I’ll be speaking about this later today to the delegates of World Internet Summit Malaysia, and I will be interested to gather how prepared they are for their role in China’s Internet growth.

http://www.immainevent.com

I will also be at Brit-Pack Live in Coventry, UK on 5th, 6th, 7th October as one of the main speakers.

http://www.britpack-live.com

And in the meantime, to hear me discussing MVS, the concept, and what you can do with it, catch this live teleseminar with me and Bob Jenkins

Well – the bonus was so popular it gave me a thought: I’m investing heavily in MVS at the moment and a good method of raising the cash might be to do a sale. MME3 buyers paid $1,000 to get their hands on all my products (and MME3), but I might come down from that figure significantly although the total value will be in the region of $2,000.

If you’ve got any thoughts about this, again, please let me know – and say so if you want them kept private: just jot a comment below, it won’t appear automatically.

Best wishes all…

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The Upward Spiral is available here:

http://www.theupwardspiral.com

The current version is a 90-page document, providing a detailed 7-step plan for bringing unstoppable growth in traffic and sales to any website in any niche…

This ebook brings together a variety of Internet Marketing principals and calls on the teachings and expertize of many in the field to give you a concise yet total understanding for how to apply the most effective viral marketing techniques to your site…

Go ahead – get your copy now…

It is an explanation, with step-by-step instructions, of how you can build a business on the Internet, in any niche, using the power and leverage of rebrandable ebooks, squeeze pages and offer pages.

Listen out for how, and where, you can get your copy…

Coming Soon…