Here’s a really quick tip about how you can get your own Wordpress site or blog (like this site) indexed by the search engines. At this moment in time, Wordpress has this setting by default.

This may harm some newer blog owners who have no idea why they are getting no visitors even though they’ve got tons of content on their site. However, I believe they leave this on as the majority of blogs online are NOT blogs meant for others but more of a personal nature… like an online diary.

So, anyway, watch this video:

I recall hearing someone state that they’ve got a site up for several weeks but no one visits it only because when they updated their blog to the latest version -- somehow, this setting was reseted back to its default of “I don’t want people to see me” -- on a popular forum.

Simply log in to your own control panel. On the left side of the dashboard, you should be a ble to find a tab that says “Settings”. Click on that, look for “Privacy” and click that. Finally, choose the option that says to let search engines like Google, Sphere, Technorati see you and click on save changes.

Done!

Finally, the new look is up and ready. I’m excited as this is a great start to the site.

I believe in giving good first impressions and having a good site design is a great way to start things off. I’m happy with the new look and things are going to get much better from now on.

I want to give a shout out to Kerrie Bracey of PlanetTheme.com (as of this post, the site is still in progress) for the great work she has done.

Finding a great designer who has some internet marketing know-how as well as a good flair for design is a hard combination to find… not to mention absolutely affordable! She made me this design and inclusive of some other works for less than $200. Worth every penny, in my book.

She told me that she’ll be moving off from freelance design to creating premium designs so people can buy it off the shelf rather than having it customized. Great move, Kerrie! We all know that freelancing is only the start and shouldn’t be the final solution to creating a profitable, successful online business.

I found her on the Warrior Forums.

Now, the “Warriors For Hire” section is not just for designers, you’ll see people offering to work in 4 categories – Programmer, Webmaster, Design, Content. I was looking for someone to create a design so I paid attention specifically for Designers.

If you’re there and you want to get people to do your work for you, I highly recommend that you check for these things (applies if you want to outsource your work to someone else anywhere on the internet):

Check for testimonials/reviews – this means you aren’t “victim number 1″. Sometimes, some people here are new and offer their service at low, low, low prices. But that might bring you more headaches because they’re new at dealing with people. So, you might not have a pleasant working experience with the low pricing people. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that high prices will be better – but chances are better than a cheap one.

Shop around – the very first thread you open may not be the best service available. Check through as many of the different competitors as possible. Go on to page two, three and four even. Unlike most forums, people can’t get to the top of the forum by requesting others to post a response. They need to pay to bump it to the top – so be sure to check out the older threads.

Contact them privately – I’ve had this happen a few times, when I posted on the thread to ask something, I actually forgot about it. So, it’s better if you send them a private message and get them to carry on the conversation via email. You can ask more questions and it’s much faster, more flexible. Likewise, if I had created a thread, I would definitely send a private message in response to anyone who posts a reply.

Proportional payment – this only applies to certain threads. Don’t pay up the entire fee straight away. While it doesn’t happen much on this forum, once in a while, people happen to take the money and run. Do a 50-50. 50% of the money to be paid upfront and when the work is delivered, the rest of the 50%. This way, they are motivated to work for you to get the work done. If you send the entire payment, they might take their own sweet time to finish it – which is not what you want.

Remember, the internet is filled with people who can do great work at great prices. The only challenge is to find these people! You don’t have to do everything yourself – there are people in this world who can do things better than you.

Instead of trying to do a mediocre job yourself, get someone to do an excellent job in your place.

I just got in touch with a brilliant designer and will be having a brand new design to this site really, really soon! I’m excited to see what magic she’ll be bringing to the site.

Also, the PDF documents to the “Think And Grow Rich In 30 Days” is complete – all that’s left now is to create the videos and the matching workbook to give away.

A video promo has also been created and completed – uploaded not too long ago. I’m very satisfied with how it turned out… and it didn’t even cost me 50 bucks! I’ll put the video on to the right, just above the newsletter subscription form.

I didn’t spend a lot of money on the whole deal… I went to the Warrior Forums and shopped around for a designer – someone who can do great work for affordable prices. Most people think that you’ll need to spend several thousands of dollars to get a site up and running…

That can’t be any further from the truth.

While I could have designed and made the whole site myself (as I did at one of my previous sites), I decided that my time was worth much more in the marketing section than in the design section.

A key concept to which I believe will lead people to success is something I learnt from Mike Filsaime – he called it the Hedgehog Concept. It’s basically the Hedgehog VS the Fox.

• The Hedgehog is not smart and its only real talent is to roll into a ball of sharp spikes.
• The Fox is smart and it always tries to find new ways and methods.

He likens a lot of people to being Foxes… where they set up different sites and try this method and that method and every other method under the sun. They do everything and if it doesn’t work, they try something else.

What he describes is quite aptly, the Entrepreneur. And Entrepreneurs (like me) like to get their grubby little hands on EVERY SINGLE THING. Dan Kennedy,  says we need to be Entrepreneurs and Marketers of our business, working ON our business instead of IN our business.

The Hedgehog does one thing well and that’s to roll into a ball. The Fox may try to poke at it or do whatever but whenever the Fox comes around, the Hedgehog rolls up and the Fox would rarely, if ever, end up with a meal.

I recall spending hours and hours on my site, doing the design and then re-designing it because it wasn’t good enough. I spent a lot of time on the site and when it was done, I realized that I could have made more money by sending traffic to it instead! The design doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough.

Now, outsourcing wasn’t something I was totally comfortable with until I watched a video by Tim Ferris a year back. Step 3 of the video is outsourcing your life and he made perfect sense to me. Here’s the video.

It was a great idea a concept back then but when I got into it, I realized that the true hard work behind that outsourcing… is to find reliable and competent people, as well as keeping them with you. Once you and I can find that person whom we can outsource the work to, the next level is to then maintain the relationship.

Money can be used to start the relationship but whether he/she decides to stick with you – is another matter altogether.

That’s it from me for now, if you’ve any thoughts, feel free to leave a comment and make sure you subscribe to the newsletter (form on the right).

Take care, stay Awesome!

Watch out world – Singapore has a new batch of Firewalkers!

In this post, I’m going to recount the time I spent during Tony Robbins “Unleash The Power Within” 2009 4-day weekend seminar held at Hall 2, Singapore EXPO.

I learned a whole bunch while I was there – watching Tony Robbins teach and helping some people out of their own personal problems LIVE in front of a crowd of 5,000 people from 16 countries. He spoke to and helped a Japanese wife who couldn’t give birth by helping her to see that her happiness does not lie in a child that might never come; another 22-year young Hong Kong woman discovers why she is constantly depressed and over-emotional and how she’s trapped herself into a never ending cycle.

Here’s a quick video I made about my Firewalk experience. Enjoy!

As for me, there were 2 things in particular that I would like to point out here.

1. “Who We are Today is the Result of the Choices We made Yesterday,
Who We Become Tomorrow is the Result of the Choices We make Today”

That simple statement sums up a lot of the things that we do to ourselves – because of our own limiting beliefs and thoughts, we often tend to hold ourselves down. Not letting us go forward and doing what could be better for us… because we are afraid. Afraid because of fear… fear of failure, fear of success, fear of unknown, fear of loss, fear.

There was a session where we had to write down what were the negative decisions we made before and how it has benefited us in anyway.

I wrote that I had decided that I will avoid making mistakes others make by learning from theirs – while this has benefited me in terms of not having to experience what pains they go through… I also lose that exact experience. Without the experience, I won’t know how precious and important it really is!

Then I recalled something amazing…

When I was 15 years old (that’s 10 years back), I…

• was lonely,
• got angry easily,
• was pretty vulgar,
• was very violent,
• spoke my mind and hurt people without knowing it,
• had no understanding…

The good thing is, I went to church and started to change but I do believe I was 15 when I said… “I don’t want these anymore! I want friends! I want to be happy! I want to laugh! I want to enjoy life to the max!” and I decided to change my life.

10 years down the road to today… I see the results of that decision. Wow. Time flies. I am who I am today because of the decision made 10 years ago. Of course, I had a lot of help and support from the folks at church, but nevertheless, the decision started from within me.

And the second thing is… hrmm, what was the second thing?… Oh yes…

2. “Learn to Burn Energy like Coals, not Lighter Fluid”

Huh? What’s this got to do with anything?

You see… attending this seminar took EVERY OUNCE OF ENERGY outta me. I was completely, utterly, spent. When Tony said “Go to level 110, go berserk” – I took it literally (part of the whole ‘enjoy life to the max’ mindset I got going). And physically went ape-wild.

So, being already physically worn down due to the high-level activity and being sleep deprived, I caught a bug from one of the members. I met that members’ friends on day 3 and they told me he was down with fever.

Day 3 was 50% screwed because I caught that fever. It didn’t catch on strong until I did another activity by Tony Robbins.

It’s quite like a “deliverance” seminar I’ve experienced in church – without the laying on off hands and casting out of demons and stuff.

After that “deliverance” effect, I was 110% overspent on energy and I almost collapsed. The last time I felt that physically worn out was during my army training days at the Standard Obstacle Course (S.O.C.) training.

The energy we’ve got to burn can be used in 2 ways… either we burn them like coals – where it’s slow, constant but long-lasting. Or like lighter fluid, a huge powerful burst but gone almost instantaneously. To go further in life, one’s gotta maintain the energy so one does not burn out too early!

Tony’s been doing this type of whole-weekend seminars (with only 1 break for the whole day) for the past 32 years and it amazes me how much energy he’s got. The only other people I know who could possibly be on par or higher are the Pastors from church.

So as it turns out, I missed out on day 4 totally as I had to recover at home… I had fever and I lost my voice. Nevertheless, I got what I needed during the 3 days.

So, anyway, now that I’ve recovered, I realized that 15 September is only 5 days away! And I’ve got LOTS to work on.

Look forward to the next updates! Take care~

Asher “FIREWALKER” Aw

Just a couple of hours ago, I have officially walked on fire! Tony Robbins is here in Singapore for this weekend and I have the privilege to hear him speak live for the first time since his last visit to Singapore (which I think was 5 years ago).

It’s going to be 4 days of Tony so I’ll post up a video of what happened… eventually. For now, here’s a video of Tony Robbins available on the internet.

One of the most important things is to create something called a squeeze page. This is basically a web page that has the singular goal of getting the visitor’s contact information.

The squeeze page should be very simple and should not make the visitor jump through lots of hoops such as typing in his complete home address and preferences, etc. It should be simple and quick – the user does not have to do a lot of things except finding out what the offer is and what they are supposed to do next.

So, here’s the video on how to create a squeeze page.

How To Create A Squeeze Page

I’m still working on it – but it’ll be up… really, soon.

Before I end… 2 things:
1. Post a comment and let me know what you think (it’s only what… 3 days since I made this blog – just saying)
2. Put your name and email address into the form on the right to receive updates on when there’s new content… PLUS – I will send you the Think And Grow Rich audios once I’ve finished with them.

This is the very first video I’ve made for this site – it’s about how I bought this domain and how I linked it to hosting.

I also include some tips on why I don’t use GoDaddy to do my domain name research. If you are already an expert about buying domain names and linking them to hosting, there’s not much you’ll learn from this video.

Here’s the video. The actual video size is 640×480 resolution but I am using 400×300 currently because the video will break the theme layout. EDIT: I decided to upload the video into YouTube instead since buying a domain name and linking to hosting is a pretty simple process to do.

I recommend HostGator as the hosting package of choice.

Feel free to let me know of your thoughts… there’s nothing much to about this video – I’ll admit. But, you can still say what you like about the video!