In this post, I aim to clear up some of the misconceptions about what cloud computing is, and isn’t, and hopefully provide some useful pointers for how it could be deployed in your business.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a revolutionary concept because it can dramatically reduce the IT costs of businesses whilst sharply increasing their efficiency. Perhaps the greatest benefit it brings is that of infinate scalability. When you buy IT services through the Cloud, you only pay for what you use, from a single byte of storage, or a single user software license, to hundreds of terabytes and thousands of users.

It means therefore that IT costs can become variable instead of fixed.

It is especially appealing to small businesses because it means they don’t have to make disproportionately large investments in technology at start up.

Basically, there are three ways in which ‘the cloud’ is implemented and of use to us through the Internet.

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS)

This is the provision of a networked computer infrastructure over the web. So, instead of buying locally stored network server hardware and peer-to-peer access, for example, you can now pay a monthly fee for a remote host which is infinitely scalable, and which only you and your organisation, have access to.

2. Platform as a Service (PAAS)

The object of PAAS is to enable a complete development platform to be provided over the web. It is especially useful therefore to workgroups and teams who are sharing, and working on, data files concurrently.

Otherwise known as ‘cloudware’, PAAS is an alternative to companies who use workflow facilities for building software or web applications, or collaborative projects just as architechture. It also includes highly scalable hosting solutions (as an alternative to a dedicated server, for example).

3. Software as a Service (SAAS)

The days of downloading and installing software, or buying it in a box and installing from disk, are coming to an end.

SAAS is perhaps one of the fastest-growing industries in the cloud, and already there are hundreds of applications which can be run efficiently through your web browser instead of locally.

Google docs, for example, now provide a real (free) alternative to Microsoft Office. There are other software services available too, for graphic design, brainstorming and flowcharts, help-desk, appointment and event management… and the list is growing all the time.

One of the main advantages of SAAS to the software provider is that new updates can be made seamlessly, without the need for the customer to install patches or upgrades. Everything required to run the software is held remotely and so minimal processing power is required on the local machine.

Following is a list of recommended SAAS resources:

Email list management:  Aweber

Online survey design and management:  Survey Gizmo

Brainstorming/Mindmapping: MindMiester

Helpdesk management: Zendesk

Email + Office-like apps: Google

Graphics: Aviary

Diagrams/Flowcharts: Gliffy

So what’s next? What comes after the so-called Web 2.0 era?

Whatever it is, it seems likely that the biggest player in the game, Google, will have something to do with it. And my guess is that Chrome will too, Google’s latest innovation.

Chrome currently is a mere web browser. It does the same job as Internet Explorer (Microsoft) and Firefox (Mozilla), or for that matter, Safari on a Mac. The purpose of a browser is to bring the Internet to you, on whatever device you use, be it a computer, a PDA, an iphone… without a browser, a computer is a stand-alone device with no global interactivity and without the web.

So Google’s plan is to change all that. With Chrome OS, it aims to turn the model on its head. i.e. instead of running a browser on Windows, the browser *is* Windows. The browser itself is the operating system and all the programs we currently use on our local machines, like word processors, spreadsheets and email clients, are actually run far away on webservers.

If you have an account with Google’s mail service – Gmail – you might already be familiar with the Documents feature. With this, you can accomplish almost everything MS Word and MS Excel do without paying for them, all through your web browser. And if your web browser happens to be Google Chrome, then you might experience a slightly faster service using these tools than with other browsers.

With the backdrop of these services behind us, its not difficult to see where things might lead. New lightweight computers – netbooks – are already on the market. At the moment they are loaded with Microsoft Windows, like virtually every other PC which is sold. But in the future, it looks likely they, and other light-weight devices, will come pre-loaded with Chrome OS. When this happens, we will all be using remote applications and storage to generate and save our files.

And when that happens, a new level of interaction and search will become available. One which makes the current method of Internet search almost, but not entirely, obsolete.

Imagine, for example, what the implications would be if whenever you saved a document you could choose whether to make it public to your associates, to senior management, to your friends or to the whole world. And when you save it, that’s it. Its done. You don’t have to FTP it to a website, or publish it as a blog post or attach it to an email.

And when you have saved a document like that, it becomes immediately searchable, but only to the group you made it available to.

The broader implications of this are huge. Especially when you consider all the new devices which are bound to come through for viewing the Internet with. When local processing power isn’t necessary, we could begin using a device like the current ebook readers from Sony and Amazon to do all our work on. They, at least, have a big enough screen. Alternatively, we may find technology leans towards paper-like screens which are foldable yet still touch-sensitive and equipped with high-speed wireless access to the Internet.

There will always be corporate websites. But in this new Internet generation, they will need to be a lot more interactive than they are now. The traditional website-as-a-brochure method will simply not be enough for companies to compete, and for organisations to work, efficiently.

But there are still some crucial outcomes required for all this to become reality:

1. Can Google really get away with it, or will its monopoly be too much for the world to swallow?

2. Will security issues prevent it catching on?

3. Will people be ready enough for it?

4. Will bandwidth speeds be fast enough?

5. Will the broadband network cover enough of the population?

In my next post, I will aim to answer each of these. If you have any more, please post them in a comment below.

Yet exponential growth is around us all the time, and always has been, because it is a force of nature.  But it has never been more evident than in the past 30 years or so.

In 1965 Gordon Moore, one of the founding partners of Intel, observed that the number of transistors on a single computer chip had been doubling approximately every two years (growing exponentially), while the cost of production had been remaining static, or even reducing. He concluded that this trend would continue indefinitely.

His prophesy became known as Moore’s Law and it has held true for almost half a century, with little sign of abating for another decade or so.

This technological advancement is happening so fast that we can experience the effect of it in a very short space of time. The computer I’m using to write this with, for example, is two years old and already a quarter as powerful as one I could buy today for less money.

Remember when mobile phones where prohibitively expensive? – when only people who had to have them, had them… when people used to say “I’ll never have a mobile phone, why would I need one…”.  Remember that?  As I write, it was but 12 years ago, and yet now there is barely anyone above the age of fifteen who doesn’t have a mobile phone.

Technology is the broad term we use to describe the methods and inventions which make our lives more comfortable. We have been driving it since time began. Or rather, our evolution has been driving it.

The stone age lasted more than 10,000 years. For hundreds of generations, there was very little noticeable evidence of advancements in technology. All they had was stone, sharp edges, and fire. That was the first technology, and since then, it has been evolving in a parallel space alongside human biological evolution.

With the Iron age came more effective tools. Armed with these, we were able to speed up the process of providing shelter and food.

Next came the first farmers in an age when agriculture displaced hunter-gatherer economies, and later still came an Industrial age, when we discovered ways of using ancient deposits like coal and oil, to power machines that could automate the work for us.

The interesting thing about these ages, is that they each lasted less time than the previous one.

So in other words, the rate of technological development is getting faster. In fact, these days it takes us a single year to make the same advancement in technology that would have taken approximately 250 years in the Industrial age, and 25,000 years in the stone age.

For technology therefore, the rate of exponential growth is growing exponentially…

Can Moore’s Law really continue for ever?  There’s a limit to how small a chip can get, and  how many transistors it can carry.  When chips are down to the size of an atom, and laden with a billion transistors, perhaps then it will end. And by then, there will be something else, something even faster, to replace it. Have you heard of nano-technology? Its very much in its infancy now. Its what happens when machines are making machines, and we can expect it to be mainstream by 2020 or so.

As technology quickens, so companies grow bigger, faster. It is no coincidence that the fastest growing companies are all technology and information businesses, or those who supply them.

Lets consider the length of time it has taken businesses to grow in the last hundred years.
With increasing velocity, each of the companies below, reached net capital of $1Billion.

Time taken to reach net cap of $1bn

General Motors: 40 years
IBM: 20 years
Microsoft: 10 years
Google: 5 years

Does it make you wonder what will be next? It’s too late for Facebook, founded in 2004. Even Twitter isn’t monetized effectively enough yet to be capitalized at £1Bn, although it might sell for that much soon. Whatever it is, it will have to net $1Bn within two and a half years. Something which, until very recently, might have been considered as unattainable as travelling at the speed of light. My guess is, it either hasn’t been started yet or it is still relatively unknown.

Here’s a fact: Technology feeds off information and vice versa.

Got any views on which company will reach net cap of $1Bn within 2.5 years?

Let me know with a comment below.

For readers of The Self-Propelled Business, go ahead and shout about what results you have achieved from your article marketing exercise with a comment below…

Thank you.

Click Here for the next private consultations.

All too often I hear people telling me they suffer from information overload, or that they know exactly how to set up and run an internet business but still can’t get off the starting block…

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Fact is, you can get all the information you need pretty quickly.  And once you’ve got it, no one ever tells you, “you’ve learned enough now -  you can make a start”.

Did you know that attending a single well-chosen Internet seminar can give you all the information you need. Just don’t leave it thinking you’re a beginner, and that you have to learn even more before you start. Its not true. You’re no longer a beginner. Its time to use your knowledge to strengthen your confidence in making a start.  Trial and error helps.

Its your actions which earn money, not your learning.

Of the advice I give to my clients in Action Time sessions, much of it they already know. So the difference between the people who actually succeed with Internet Marketing and those who don’t isn’t what they know, its what they do.

And that is the point of these action sessions: to break it down into clear, easy-to-follow, action steps. Big as the Internet already is (1.6 Billion users with 500 million buyers, at the last count, and still growing exponentially) there are gaping opportunities for entrepreneurs to grab a huge slice of profitable niches as long as they perform good keyword research.

There are several reasons why good keyword research is so important, but the truth is, if you don’t do it, you can’t expect to succeed. It would be like building your house on sand: You know you can do it, but it will fall over.

And yet the most amazing thing is most people (99%) don’t actually take the time to do it! There in itself is the opportunity: Do keyword research well and you can find yourself ranking among the most established businesses in your niche very quickly.

Keyword research: vital to the growth of your business

Keyword research isn’t just picking four or five phrases which you imagine your customers might type into a search engine so you can use those words in articles on your site. Well, that is keyword research of a form, but its very basic. Its not going to help much. So here are some pointers, some ways in which I do keyword research, which I have found to make a real difference.

1. Brainstorm your target market thoroughly

Brainstorming for keywords means more than just picking a few words and phrases off the top of your head. It means thinking hard about your customers, their age, their habits, what they wear, what they earn, and creating a complete profile of them, because then you’ve got to get inside their brain. When you’re in the brain of your precisely-defined target customer, you can imagine exactly what keywords they would use. For example – might they miss-spell or use foreign spelling? – might they abbreviate? – might they include a location, a city or state, in their search phrase?  Or perhaps a date, or year…?

Consider these things and more when drawing up your first list of keywords, and make it a good, healthy and long list of twenty or thirty – more if you can, which you consider to be good base keywords for your niche. Don’t think about long and short tale at this stage. (Long tale keywords are the ones which are more specific. They get less searches, but they are prone to convert better because they’re more precise).

2. Expand your keyword list using Google’s free keyword tool

Once you’ve got your base list, open the free keyword tool at google, and enter the keywords to get Google’s list of related keywords. Enter them one by one and do a search with each one. Pick through this list, adding keywords you don’t already have – and are relevant – to your existing list. In a separate list,  and with the base keyword as the header, make a list of all the keywords in the Additional keywords to be considered column. This is found underneath the list of Related Keywords. The reason why I recommend google’s free keyword tool and not wordtracker, for example, is because Google controls the indexing of web pages, Wordtracker doesn’t. So when Google help us with keyword lists, either related, or to be considered, its actually telling us which phrases it is most likely to index us well for. Wordtracker is a great tool too, but overall, I have had more success with Google’s free keyword tool and Fabian Lim’s excellent Keyword Research PRO software (which uses Google and Wordtracker).

3. Store your keywords somewhere safe and somewhere you can share them

You will want to have quick and easy access to your keyword list, and so will  anyone you employ to create content for you. I use a spreadsheet in Google Docs to store my keywords, that way I can access them, and add to them, wherever I am, and share them directly my article writers and video creators easily so they can be working when I’m not.

4. Set up your content stream

Now that you have the keywords which you know will draw traffic, you can use them in several ways. They will be useful for pay-per-click contextual advertising but my interest, for now, is to get organic search traffic without having to pay for it.

When I do this, I find I can get between 3 and 8 listings in the organic Google search for terms which Pay-per-click advertisers have bid a dollar or more for.

The trick is this: Get a consistent stream of good content on your site, with a main keyword in the title of the article and between 3% and 7% keyword density of other related keywords - which you got from the Google Keyword tool, plus a splash of the Additional keywords to be considered, to help Google’s LSI (Latent Semantic Index). Then you will find that you can begin pulling traffic overnight to a wordpress blog with the All In One SEO plugin installed.

In my next installment, I’m going to show you how you can start getting that constant flow of content without having to create it yourself. Once you get it right, it can all be put on autopilot. In the meantime, be sure to get Sparky, Alexa.com’s browser toolbar. It gives you the alexa rank for every site you visit, and you’re going to want to watch the rank of your own site. As a rule of thumb, you should aim to get it below 100,000 first of all (i.e. be within the top 100,000 most visited sites on the Internet). Once you start doing this basic SEO stuff right, with good keyword research, you’ll be surprised how quickly the Alexa rank will move.

TIP: Keywords on your site are only any good if your site is being seen and indexed regularly by the search engines. It can take a while for a new domain to be indexed by google, so here’s a quick way to speed it up:

Download the Google Toolbar and install it in your web-browser. Then, enter your domain in the toolbar search box. If your site isn’t returned then its not indexed by Google yet. However, the action of entering “yourdomain.com” in the search box, or “yourdomain.info”, for whatever yourdomain is, places it in Google’s index so it will reach your site when it next sends the spiders round.

I hope you’ve found this helpful. Let me know with a comment below, and listen out for the next part in the series, when I show you how to put your entire content and high-volume organic traffic stream on autopilot.

Until then, I recommend having a look at Fabian Lim’s new Keyword Reasearch Pro Tool… I’ve been using this recently, and I’m impressed…

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That single word is the biggest hurdle for most people trying to earn an income online: Action.

And yet, once you’ve done it, everything can fall into place.

Everything that is, if the action you take is the right one. If not, it could be an expensive waste of your most precious resource: Time.

Its funny – we all know we can only earn an living if we do something, but on the Internet, when there are so many different things you can do, the act of doing is often so difficult.

Why can that be?

Well. Much of the time, its down to information overload.

Consider this: Marketing copywriters will often tell you not to give customers a choice when buying something. Their reason is because if customers have to make a decision, it adds a layer of difficulty to the sale. Sometimes its better just to present them with a solution, with no choices, so they can either take it or leave it. When you do this, more customers will take it than if you had given them a choice to make first.

How you spend your time is as important as how you spend your money.

If there are several different things you can do at each step towards reaching your objective, it makes that objective a lot harder than if there is a single choice at each step.

When presented with too many options, you’re more likely to do nothing, and remain in a state of uncertainty about which one to do, than to pick one for all the right reasons and invest your time in it…

Does that dilemma sound familiar?

I remember my driving instructor telling me once about a young woman he was giving a lesson to. When they reached a roundabout (traffic circle), she asked “which way do you want me to go here?”

The driving instructor replied: “If I don’t give you directions, you are to go straight on”.

So she did. And they ended up in the flower bed in the middle of the roundabout!

It all happened in an instant. She was just following what she *thought* were her instructions, and she didn’t have time to reason with herself that going straight on at a roundabout wasn’t a normal thing to do.

When in car headlights, bunnies are prone to stand stock still instead of run left or right, even though they remain in more danger that way.

In the heat of the moment, reasoning doesn’t come to them.

Tell me this: How many times have you seen a fantastic opportunity online, invested in it, and then done nothing with it? Belive me, I’ve read thousands of sales letters and seen some amazing opportunities. I’ve bought them many times only to end up doing nothing with them. I don’t do it so much any more because I have conditioned myself away from it, but sometimes its still hard not to.

In the heat of the moment, especially when pressed with urgency or scarecity, we will often make decisions which are, like the rabbit in the headlights’, irrational. Ill-advised even.

This is just one area in which mentoring can help.

With a good mentor, you should expect to reach your goal and save thousands in unnecessary expense. Yes, thousands. Tens of thousands even; and then you should end up earning double the amount in half the time it would otherwise take.

Mentorship like this is worth tens of thousands, but usually you can get it for around three or four. And considering what it can give you – a lifetime of freedom and prosperity, fast – it is a tiny amount to pay.

When you receive direct advice from someone who has already trodden the path, someone who has reached the goals you want to achieve, someone who can give you the most direct route to your aim, you are taking a positive step towards quicker, more tangible success.

Mentors are therefore valuable assets, and believe me, you won’t find anyone who has succeeded, and I mean really succeeded in life, who didn’t have a mentor to help them.

Think of it this way: No one is ever going to give you a working business. Sorry, that just isn’t going to happen. but a good mentor will pass you their torch, still burning brightly, for you to run with towards your goal.

In doing so, they are giving you everything they know to help you succeed, and mapping your course so you don’t waver from the path.

Who you choose as your mentor is an important decision. It has to be someone you can trust, and who’s presentation and style you can relate to. It should be someone who you know you can learn from, someone who has reached a place where you want to be.

But that’s not all. Too many mentorships allow huge class sizes in which the mentors don’t actually get to know each individual customer. If you find yourself on the receiving end of this type of mentorship, you are being fed unpersonalized information: Information of the type which may or may not apply to you personally, information which you may have to be selective about. And if you have to be selective about what information to act on, you’re less likely do it… remember?

So here’s my advice:

Book an Action Booster session with me. Let me hear what you want to achieve, no matter how far or near you are to achieving it, and I will set down a recommended set of clear-cut action steps which you can do straight away to make it happen.

This isn’t a difficult decision. I’m not going to ask you for thousands in payment. You can try it out and see if it helps. If it does, you’ll find yourself on a fast-track to success, with nothing to stop you achieving everything you set out to do. If it doesn’t, you’ll have learned some valuable traffic generating tips, the ones I keep closest to my chest. You’ll be able to use them time and time again to grow a series of income streams in the same way I have.

Either way, you’re going to get my time at a fraction of its normal price because I’m on a mission to see more people get ahead faster. Less floundering, more action. That’s what I want to see, and that’s what will make you succeed.

Here’s what you’ll get with your intensive Action Booster session:

1. Pre-session preparation. In a phone call with my office, and using a specially prepared online form, you will relay to me your hopes and dreams, plus give me a handle on what you’ve already achieved and what you already know. We will also give you helpful tips and guidance in how best to spend your intensive 30 minute Action Booster, so that you come away with as much as you can carry in the way of action steps, chunks of solid advice and tips, and tailor-made help.
   
2. An intensive 30 minutes consultation (either face-to-face in London or on the phone), structured specifically to give you a clear set of actions. Things you can do starting straight away, that will carry you along the most direct route to your goal.
3. Post-session de-brief. Here’s when everything you’ve got from your session will chrystalize into a meaningful series of tasks. This is one of the most important parts of the process, for it is here when everything takes shape and you can see the straight road ahead of you.

Whatever your goal is, whether it is income-related (three hundred thousand per year, for example), or product related (to sell a thousand copies of my e-book), I will help you using direct consultation and personal advice tailored specifically for you and you alone. Nowhere else will you find such a dedicated personal service, so specific to your acheivement than myactiontime.com

To book your appointment at a fraction of my normal corporate consultation rate, click below and select an available appointment date.

Choose Your Action Time

PS: This is a highly personal service so there will only be room for a small number of clients. Please be sure to book your Action Booster as soon as you can to avoid disappointment.

PPS: There are numerous surprises awaiting all members of MyActionTime.com. If you have what it takes, you may find yourself in my innermost-circle.

You may download it here as a PDF file:

The Internet is growing faster now than it ever has, and it will grow faster tomorrow, and faster the next day. There is exponential growth going on and yet still people are not taking action to apply what they know to the easy streams of revenue obtainable online…

Why? – well the reasons are explained below, but in the meantime, all I can tell you is: There is an easy solution.

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If you have ever wondered whether your time will ever come, or felt that you know so much but don’t know where to start, or perhaps don’t know enough but want to start anyway… this will change everything.

Or if you’ve got a great idea and just need direction to make it work… this will give it to you.

Or if you have NO ideas for a product and need some help to create one… together, we will do it.

All of the above will come with step-by-step guidance so you can move forwards with confidence… I am about to launch something which has never been seen in the Internet Marketing arena before. It is something which ensures results more completely than any thousand dollar course you might buy, and if you can get in early, it will come to you for less than a tenth of the price…

It involves me and you, it happens face-to-face, and it provides the best possible way for you to succeed. But more than that, I can not say… So if you want to be kept in the loop, get on the early notification list for when this game-changing service will be launched.

These are intensive private, face-to-face consultations to clear the path towards your success, so there will be very few places available, and the first ones in will be rewarded with a huge discount . Make sure you’re among them – sign up now:

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To understand how Traffic Fusion works, its important first of all to have a basic understand of what Internet marketers mean by Integration Marketing.  Mark Joyner is credited for coining this phrase and applying it to a specific area of traffic generation which is available to anyone with a product to market online.

The way it works is this: Say your product is a healthy-eating recipe book for people trying to lose weight. A good way of marketing it would be to approach someone selling a similar fat-loss product and offer a JV. (You promote their product and they promote yours).

Typically, a JV of this sort would involve you mailing each other’s list with an affiliate link for each others product. However, with Integration Marketing, the relationship runs deeper and continues for longer…

It could mean that you promote each other with emails in your autoresponders. This way, ten days (say) after someone signs up to your site, they will get a promotion for the other product.

Another way, is to place a link to your JV partner’s product on the thankyou page (download page) of your product, or perhaps within your members area as an “unadvertised bonus”.

Here’s where Traffic Fusion comes in.

Using the hyperjava technology in Traffic Fusion, product owners can now make a snippet of code available to their affiliates in the same way Google does with adsense.

Affiliates can then place this code in the html on a page at their site and when displayed in a browser, it shows an advertisement (typically a discount, or free offer).

So the ad can be populated with whatever message the product owner wants to issue, and uses the promoter’s affiliate link automatically.

Things you should know about Traffic Fusion

1. Traffic Fusion requires you to have a product.

There’s no point buying Traffic Fusion unless you’ve got a product to sell.

You can only do JVs with other Internet Marketers when you’ve got a product with an affiliate program behind it so you can pay commissions. If you don’t have a product, don’t buy Traffic Fusion. Simple as that.

Or, if you want a fast route to getting involved with JVs and need a product to get started, you can pick from one of the 180 Internet Marketing products we have available to Gold Members of The Freedom Class.

2. Check your site regularly for updates to your hyperjava snippets.

In the same way as changing your Adwords ad with Google updates all appearances of your ad on the network, so your JV partners can change the look of the ads, and what it offers, on your site.

For this reason, its important to know and trust the partners you do JVs with.

3. Traffic Fusion’s usefulness to you is limited by the amount of products and pages you have up on the web.

Someone with 20 products, and 20 back-end members areas is going to benefit from Traffic Fusion more than someone with only one or two.

The more pages you have, the more ad-swaps you can do. The fewer pages you have, the fewer JV partners will be interested.

This is all about ad-clicks per page. For example, if you have just one hyperjava ad on your page, it will get a great deal more clicks than a page with 3 or 4,
so it therefore provides more value to your JV partner. If you have too many, it dilutes the page, reduces the click-thrus, and in turn, reduces the value of your JV relationship in the eyes of your partner.

Overall, Traffic Fusion is a good product and something which can raise your game significantly.

Integrated marketing works well. I’ve used it to increase my own sales many times. The main benefit is that it provides a total set-it-and-forget-it system.

Once you’re promoting your JV partner, and s/he’s promoting you, you will benefit from any spikes of traffic they receive and vice versa.

You can watch and learn more about Traffic Fusion at this link.

Already got Traffic Fusion? tell us what you think with a comment below…

The exodus at Yahoo! continues with Kiersten Hollars, its Communications & Communities Director leaving to head up Digg’s communications team. Hollars was previously in Brad Garlinghouse’s department, but he announced his departure in June. Before him, she reported to Bradley Horowitz but he left for Google in February.

This is the second reported departure from Yahoo! today. More are expected.