Many people who are not as ambitious may not realize their true potential to achieve what may seem impossible. What if it were foretold that tomorrow you will win the lottery in the amount of 2 million dollars. What would you say? What if someone told you that in 5 years you will be the CEO of one of the worlds most major corporations. Would you believe it?

What if…

What if we could all reenact the story of A Christmas Story by Charles Dickens, not to say that we are all scrooges of course. I will be the first to admit that the word "Bah humbug" doesn’t  exist in my vocabulary, but just imagine if you could take part in a real life Christmas past, present and future, only you’re looking at your entire future and not just your Christmas futures.

The Dream

Let’s fantasize here for a moment. Imagine that you had a dream and in that dream you were a major positive force in your community. You reach out and helped so many people and had major influence. Envision yourself coming to a wonderful dream home and driving a fancy car or two.  

You have awaken from that from that dream only to find yourself in a negative state of mind of disbelief that none of the things in the previous dream could never happen to you even if you tried. You are in a negative state of mind because it felt so good to achieve so much and accomplish so many goals with in the dream that it felt to good to be true. You wish you could achieve those accomplishments.

The Confrontation

As you prepare to get out of bed, you are confronted with a spirit… a spirit such as the ghost of "A Christmas Story"  This is not a spirit of life’s past, neither a spirit of life’s present but a spirit of life’s future. After announcing himself, this mysterious spirit leads you to a time in the future where you are able to witness the same achievements and prized possessions that you just dreamed about.

Your belief is now strengthening

Assuming that you’re still dreaming you’re not fully convinced that these things are achievable on your behalf but your belive is now strengthening. You are now seeing the affects of the hard work that you’ve put in to arrive at this level of success. You don’t know how you got here but all you know is that you are witnessing a whole new lifestyle that you never believed you would have.

After awakening once again, you embrace a brand new day with a totally positive outlook and a more powerful belief level in your abilities. In your dream you were able to see and feel what it is like to overcome obstacles and have a life of success. Your belief level is stronger, you now feel empowered because you’ve had a dream. A dream that you believe in so strong that you are willing to take avenues beyond measure to make that dream come alive.

It’s amazing that looking at the picture from the future end of the spectrum you are able to see the result of the hard work but you don’t know what you’ve done to achieve the success. Where as, from a present day stand point, you can envision the dream with a faith and belief so strong that you  realize that you won’t stop until you reach your goal. You know what it takes to achieve the success but you can’t experience that tangible part of dream.

I am here to tell you that you can achieve anything that you put your mind to do. Think for a second, what would you do if you knew your could never fail? The question is would you believe in yourself? Perhaps you would make an effort to start your own business.  Maybe you would invest in the stock market or start eating healthier and exercising.

I pose a lot of "What if" type questions throughout this article because my aim is for you to examine your ambitions. True self belief comes in realizing that you can indeed succeed at anything that you set your mind to do. It all starts with putting one foot in front of the other and going for what you want. It does take a dream to spark up the passion and want for success but it shouldn’t take a "spirit of life’s future" to come and show you the end result, your belief should be at a level that you approach everything you do with ambition knowing that you can only succeed.

The sky is the limit and It’s never to late to make a change for the better. James 2:20 says that "Faith without works is dead…" The most difficult part of starting a business is putting one foot in front of the other and shooting for the best. Once your belief level is such that you know you can’t fail in your business or whatever your aspirations maybe, making the first steps will put you much closer to your goal. Keep striving and aim for the best. Remember to keep a consistent prayer life and a positive mind set and you will find through a consistent prayer life you will realize that you can never fail.

To your success,

Jarrod Clark

Accessing the maximum potential of what the WassUp offers us, and using it to our benefit, can be a helpful tool in optimizing our blog site.

Today’s blogging entrepreneurs go through all the steps in optimizing their blog sites and with a little help from all the impressive plugins, it is a guarantee that our blogging experience will be more pleasurable. It’s no wonder WordPress has gained the credibility that they’ve rightfully earned. With the creative genius of quite a few WordPress plugin inventors, we have access to the perfect WordPress plugin tool WassUp.

Got WassUp?

Compatible with WordPress versions, 1.4.9 - 2.5, WassUp has taken many WordPress users by storm. By installing itself as an additional tab in the WordPress administration area, WassUp provides blog site traffic information to WordPress users indicating when and how often a visitor visits your site. It also provides detailed information such as what sites refer your visitors, which search engines referred those visitors to your blog, the visitor’s IP address, search engine spider, S.E.R.P and Keyword..

I must say it took me a while to really understand and appreciate the usefulness of WassUp.  While it was very helpful to be able to see how often I have a visitor and how they were referred to my site, I did not maximize the full potential of the plugin until I recently analyzed every specific detail of the information that it provided me.

It is nice to be able to keep a track on your site traffic progress, which ultimately was the reason I downloaded this plugin, however I want to share with countless entrepreneurs out there an idea that sparked my attention as I was analyzing one of the great features that this plugin has to offer.

I do understand, as a blogger myself, the importance of optimizing your site and keeping tab on how well your blog is ranking with the selected keywords. However, in addition to my chosen keywords, I found it interesting that my site is ranking fairly well for keywords and keyword phrases that I didn’t know it is ranking for.

The aha moment

As we all know, when someone is looking for information on a particular topic, they go to a search engine and type a keyword phrase based on that topic. That being said, wouldn’t it be nice to know how well your site is ranking with keywords that you didn’t even know you rank for.

If someone goes to google and keys in a keyword related to your site and they see your site in the Search Engine Results Pages (or S.E.R.P) and they click on your site, WassUp will let you know what keyword the visitor used to find your site. Which I think is a helpful tool when keeping tabs on what keywords your site is ranking well for. I was able to find quite a few keywords and keyword phrases that are related to my site. These keywords are very similar to my main keyword, only they differ in a slight variation.

WassUp will also tell you what S.E.R.P page those keywords will appear on. It turned out that many of the keywords that I discovered through WassUp were keywords in which my page landed on the first page of those Search Engine Result Pages.

WassUp is free and available for download at http://www.wpwp.org/

To Your Success,

Jarrod Clark

Previously I wrote a blog about search engine optimization and I mentioned the importance of optimizing your website. I provided some very key entrepreneur ideas about optimizing your site and entertained the idea of doing a google search on search engine optimization. However, at that time I didn’t want to go into many details about what you can do to better optimize your site because at the time I was intensely studying about it myself. After doing more extensive research, I decided to share with other entrepreneurs some of the tips I’ve learned from my research.

In my previous blog “Search Engine Optimization” I gave a reference as to where you can download the free Ebook, “SEO Made Easy” by Brad Callen. I have read and studied this book. It goes into more detail about search engine optimization and provides intuitive ideas for site owners or webmasters. To download the free Ebook “SEO Made Easy” click on the following link and it will take you to the site to download it: http://www.homebiz-direct.com/SEO-made-easy.html

To your success…

Jarrod Clark

While it is very easy to start up a blog for free, there are some things to take into consideration if you are seriously looking to explore blogging as an avenue to market your business. Although entrepreneurship and online business is the main focus for my blog, there are obviously many other genres of blog subjects that people are blogging about online. However, my goal is to provide topics geared towards entrepreneurs.

I want to share a couple of incidences in which I almost lost all of the content to my blog. It is not a good feeling when you have put so much hard work into your blog and it is all lost in an instant. After about a month of creating this blog I was attempting to upgrade my blog to WordPress 2.5 for the first time and I wound up somehow triggering something within the control panel of my hosting site for this blog.

Although I was only within a month of having started my blog, it felt like I put about 2 months worth of work into it. After all of the hard work that I put into my blog with in that first month I wound up loosing it all. I will never forget the feeling I had when I went to view my blog after so-called "updating it" to WordPress 2.5. Many WordPress users may still remember the very first custom blog entitled "Hello World", that comes with WordPress when a new blog is set up. That is all I saw when I typed in my blog address at www.JarrodClark.com. My blogs didn’t show up, my theme wasn’t there everything was lost.

I had another instance today (the day I published this blog). I was installing a plugin to the plugins folder for my blog, and although I was aware of the fact that after installing a plugin to your blog, you should always go back to your blog site and refresh the page to make sure that the plugin doesn’t interfere with the operation of your site.

Not thinking I installed the plugin and about 10 minutes later when I totally forgot that I installed the plugin I went to refresh my blog and guess what… it was all gone. Those same feelings came flooding back from when I lost all my blogs the first time, I just couldn’t believe it. All I could remember was the hard work that I put into my blog. I tried to think if I saved all of my blogs on file. Then I thought to back track all of the steps that I’ve done. After deactivating one of my plugins and refreshing my blog’s home page, I saw that all of my blogs have been retrieved. Needless to say, I will not be using that plugin, ever again.

I was so thankful that all of my blogs weren’t lost. This was a learning experience for me because I am now making an oath to myself to save every blog post and organize it into a folder on my computer as well as the pages. This situation gave me a big scare, as it would scare anyone who have worked hard on their blog, because I just could believe that I lost it all again.

I took out the time to save the html version of every blog post and page in a folder and title them accordingly. I thought that by saving the html version instead of just the plain text version, I would also be saving the pictures, the links, related articles and the subscribe form that are at the end of every post. If you save the plain text version, you won’t save the pictures or the links you will only be saving the plain text.

I am not condemning saving the plain text version because after all,  saving something is better than nothing. However, I realized that if anything ever happened to where I lost all of my blogs again I would not only want to upload the text as it were before I would want to upload the pictures and links in the same way just as they were before.

I must say that it is not the fault of WordPress or Hostgator, (the hosting site I use). WordPress is the most amazing blogging resource and it is the safest most reliable blogging tool available, if you host your own blog. It was a mistake on my part number 1, for not knowing exactly what I was doing in the upgrading process of my blog and number 2 not having backed up my blogs in the first place.

If I could encourage you to do anything I would encourage you to back up all of your blog information, it could be a life saver. If you have many posts I would advise taking out some time to save just a few a day but nonetheless, save them all.

To your success,

Jarrod  Clark

I was having a very intriguing conversation with a close friend today. I will not disclose names as to protect the privacy of the individual but this person was talking about their dream of starting a business. As I was conversing with this friend, I realized the fire and passion that stirs up in an individual when making mention of their dreams and aspirations.

In fact I was so motivated, to say the least, in listening to the passion, drive and determination that was radiating through our conversation that I decided to write an article on this topic. Sometime ago, I learned that there is great power in dreaming big. There is a necessity in having a goal and keeping that flame lit and not letting it fade away.

I have gotten many responses in various venues such as myspace from people who desire to start a business as well. Then it dawn on me, there are so many people who have an entrepreneurial spirit and want to do something passionate outside of a 9-5, but they don’t know how or where to start. Then on the other hand there are some people who with a snap of the finger know exactly what they want to do,  they have the fire and the drive but for them it is a matter of when to start.

I am a firm believer in searching deep down inside and finding out what you like to do. Previously I wrote an article entitled: "Find Your Passion…It Will Change Your Life." In this article I went on to explain the idea of discovering and focusing on your passion and allowing that passion to be a window for success.

Success can be described in many ways. Many would relate success to the idea of being financially independent. Others might  relate it to achieving a goal that may not necessarily be money driven. For many, success can be just the idea of taking one step after another and not stopping until you reach the ultimate goal, (in other words, having many small goals inside of the ultimate goal).

The Ultimate Goal

Personally, I like the big picture, I like being able to envision the ultimate goal. However, I also like setting small achievable goals within the ultimate goal. There is something about having a goal to achieve, it gives you something to look forward to. You should strive to never be complacent always be striving for something better.

The ultimate goal that I’m relating to in this article is the idea of owning a successful business. Although the ultimate goal is to own a successful business indeed, I believe it would be a good idea to set smaller goals within the ultimate goal.

Start Small

Many people who want to own a business may be intimidated by owning a business. It is safe to say that many people believe that owning a business entitles them to take on a big executive type, franchise, CEO type role.

It’s a good idea for aspiring entrepreneurs to map out a plan of the business. For instance, maybe you have discovered a passion in arts and crafts. After discovering that passion and deciding that you would like to expand it to an arts and craft profession, take out the time and map out a plan for that what it is you are looking to achieve.

By asking yourself a few questions you will come up with a well thought out detailed plan for your business. Such questions to ask are:

• What is the mission for the business?  
• What are you looking to achieve in your business?
  
• Perhaps you are looking to get into a business of selling arts and crafts, ask yourself what venues am I looking to sell my products in? Do I want to market and sell products online or do I want to go brick and mortar.
  

These are a few questions you want to ask in an attempt to taking the steps to achieve the ultimate goal.

After mapping out a plan for the business it would be a good idea at this point to study ways of putting your collected ideas into action. You can do this by doing a search on how to start a business. For instance, if you are looking to market your arts and craft business online, you may want to do a study on what avenues are available to promote your products. 

A personal business website is a great way to market your products and promote yourself. There are other markets such as ebay and amazon. Many successful entrepreneurs have come about through marketing products through ebay and amazon but you have to keep in mind the cost of selling on ebay verses owning your own website. You might want to do some comparison studies between the two and weigh the options of which would be better, to market on ebay and amazon  or through a website.

Cost of Starting a Business

Another overwhelming factor that plays a part in taking the first step to start a small business is the cost of starting a business. Although it may vary, depending on what type of business you’re looking to start, most entrepreneurs will look to spend anywhere between $1,000 to $5 or $10,000 to start a business, but again you will want to do some studying for yourself to find out what it will cost start your own business. The biggest part in discovering the cost of starting a business is having a detailed plan of what you’re looking to achieve, I can’t stress enough that without a detailed plan it will be hard to come up with an exact estimate.

I choose to look at, the business start up cost as an investment. For instance, buying a home is one of the greatest investments you can make because of equity that can be built from it. $1,000 or $10,000 is a lot of money I would agree, but it is a worthwhile investment because one the benefits of starting a small business is your ability to earn a 100% return on your investment. There are many government grants for starting a new small business or business loans in which you can apply for but make sure you study up on the right type of grant or loan because there are many scams out there.

Taking the First Step

As I mentioned earlier, there are some people who want to own a business but don’t know what they want to do, but on the other hand there are others who know exactly what they want to do but for them its a matter of when to start.

I know it takes time in getting the funds of starting a business, but the first step to achieving the goal isn’t in paying the business cost and opening the doors of your business, the first step is in developing a business plan. You will be surprised at the encouragement you feel once you get plan mapped out on paper. Once you see the overview of your business on paper you will feel the sudden urge to take the next step in getting your business started. By doing this you will be on your way to the success that you’ve always yearned for.

To your success,

Jarrod Clark

I can not express the importance of partnership and building relationships with individuals. Some days we all need encouragement and it just takes a boost to get back in our element of what we do best. Having a close knit team of individuals circling you and encouraging you to do your best is the way to achieve success in any business. It’s good to know that when you are having your days when you are feeling a bit less than up-to-par that there is a team of people there to motivate and encourage you to strive your best in any area of your business.

As I mentioned, teamwork is one of the best ways of achieving success in a business, it also has it perks in other areas. Maybe you’re not looking to hire a whole slew of people to work in your business but you are nonetheless seeking help. Consider having a couple people to partnership with you rather than paying them to work for you. Doing this will take much of the burden off your shoulders.

Perhaps you’re not good at accounting. It would be nice to have a partner in business with you to do your paperwork, handle your bills and bring a sense of organizational structure to the business while you focus on the contacts and direct sales part of the business.

Collective Ideas brings a Collective mind set

Having a partnership is a perfect way to run an efficient business. With a collective group of people in a business you’ll find that a collective group of minds will benefit the overall business as each individual will bring something unique to the table and provide a different perspective in certain areas of your business.

Instead of taking out business funds to pay entrepreneurs to work for you. Consider offering them in as an addition to the company and allow them to generate more revenue for the company by taking on some of the direct selling aspect of the business. With more entrepreneurs generating money for the business it creates a synergy that can’t be created with just one person alone. For instance if you are running a network marketing firm. Take sometime to have someone working side by side you in an effort to generate more money collectively. Between the 2 or 3 of you, you will making more money collectively for the business than just one of you alone. That will be great for residual income.

Networking through MySpace

MySpace is a wonderful way of networking and meeting other entrepreneurs. The response that I have gotten on MySpace from others just wanting to share ideas working for a common goal is outstanding. It can be very encouraging when I get messages from others on MySpace.

I talk a lot about building long lasting relationships with others.

I have come across many people on MySpace with wonderful ideas. Many times people want to pitch their business opportunity to you on MySpace. I totally understand that because as an entrepreneur in network marketing, I see the benefit of marketing through MySpace and when building relationships there comes a point in time when the question arises of what our businesses are all about. I personally would rather approach people without pitching a sells pitch out of respect. However I do like to hear what they have to say because I see it as a learning experience. I do believe that reaching out and learning from others is key in building your business.

Find your Niche on MySpace

There are many ways to find your target crowd on MySpace. One of the ways is going to the MySpace groups tab at the top of your home page. There you can search groups by categories. Someone like myself might click on Business and Entrepreneurs, but if you are into health and fitness, you might click on something like Health, Wellness, and Fitness. From there you can see a listing of all the groups under your selected category. Another great tool to explore is the MySpace forums. You can go in and read what other entrepreneurs are saying about a particular topic. You can also start your own topic in the forum which is a great way to gain an audience and get others to reply to any questions that you might have about an issue or concern in relevance to your business.

Studying to gain knowledge

Take out some time to study and learn new ideas and techniques for yourself.

I think about many college students and as they go off to college and study in the hopes to build a great career. They are studying for a brighter future and a better paying job. It would be very difficult for a student to become a doctor when they don’t know anything about medicine. Being a doctor is one of the highest paid professions in the world but there is a lot of studying that goes into achieving the title of being a doctor.

The same thing goes for business owners and entrepreneurs. I am a firm believer in the saying "What you don’t know can hurt you." Much of the success of being an entrepreneur comes from gaining knowledge. The more you learn the more you can apply to make your business thrive and make your goal more obtainable.

It is very important to study and gain exposure. As you build your business it can be rather difficult just keeping up with everything that you need to do in order to be in operation. However, I can’t stress enough the importance of studying to better your knowledge in business building. When searching for entrepreneurs to partner with observe the positive mind set of the individuals. Always look for someone who sees the glass as half full. Owning your own business doesn’t guarantee that the everyday business ventures will be smooth and easy. It’s important to keep a positive outlook on the issues that you will encounter in your business and it always helps when you are surrounded by people of the like mind set.

 To your success,

Jarrod Clark

You may want to choose a general theme, topic wise, for your blog so that you have room to level a more numerous audience and gain more connections to your blog but not such a general topic that you wind up forfeiting the very market that you shooting for.

For instance if you are writing about health, and you happen to be a fitness instructor who is writing an article about the importance of an aerobic benefit, you will want to choose something a little more specific. Comparatively, you may want to try health and fitness or fitness tips as a keyword. You can settle up on any keyword you want, the main focus here is to narrow it down to a specific keyword.

Just a side note

Staying Focused

After coming up with a keyword niche that you feel comfortable using as a theme for your blog, hone in on that keyword and center the topic of your whole blog around your keyword. This is why it’s important not to choose something to narrow as you will have more blogging room. You will want to optimize your article pages with those keywords including proper keyword density. Read my previous blog Search Engine Optimization for tips on optimizing your page in a way that search engines will easily pic up on your page.

Keep in mind that you must focus on writing good article content and not focusing too much on the traffic. Remember there are thousands and thousands of people keying your keywords as search terms into search engines looking for your information. All you have to do is focus on presenting them with the information they’re looking for and before long you will notice your audience growing.

Once readers come to your site and see good quality content, they will be enticed to come back for more articles. It is up to you to stay focused on the topic of your blog.

I chose to insert an excerpt of Robert Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken" below as a prime example because I thought it is the perfect analogy to the journey we take in the beginning of designing a blog. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new and interesting ideas. You never know what works for you until you take a risk and branch out or should I say take "The road less traveled by."

Much of starting a blog is all about experimentation. Before you settle on a topic you will find yourself varying from topic to topic until you find a topic that is comparable for you to settle on. Once you settle on a topic, cling to that topic and you will began to see a major growth in your audience.

To your success,

Jarrod Clark

This blog is a spin off from a previous blog post of mine, "The Benefit of Backing Up Your Blog." In the risk of sounding redundant, I will skip the whole reprimand about how you should save a back-up copy of all your blog posts. Although it’s a good idea, I will not elaborate on that idea. I will allow you to take a look at that blog post to get an understanding on why you should back-up your blog and the benefit of doing so.

It was from this mistake that I learned to seek guidance next time I make an attempt to upgrade my blog. I realize that the learning process of developing a blog is in experimenting and trying things out. All of the changes that are done to my blog are done by me, I don’t have a webmaster.

That said, WordPress is a very safe and convenient resource for blogging. And hosting your WordPress blog is the best thing that you can do. If I can use an analogy to describe the importance of hosting your blog site, I would say that the difference between hosting your blog and using a non-hosted blog is the difference between owning an insured restaurant verses owning an un-insured restaurant.

If your restaurant burns down overnight the insurance will pay to have it rebuilt, however if you own an un-insured restaurant, which most restaurant owners are too smart not to have insurance, the cost of the rebuilding will be your out of pocket expense, thats if you decide to rebuild.

There are many people who own free, non-hosted, blog sites and there are some very successful non-hosted blogs with very worthwhile content on them. Blogger.com is free to sign up, however Blogger.com is an example of a non-hosted site. It doesn’t allow outside hosting capabilities. There are many stories of people who have had there content taken down by the Blogger.com due to unknown reasons. This is where the benefit of hosting your blog comes in hand.

WordPress is free to use as well and it allows you to sign up for free. However, the great thing about WordPress is that it allows external hosting capabilities.  By personally hosting your blog through an external hosting site, you have total control over your blog. Where as with blogger for instance, the company has the option of removing your blogs at their discretion. When you host your own WordPress blog, you have total control of your blogs, WordPress can’t remove content from an external hosted blog.

I will say this in Blogger’s defense, there have been many successful blogs that have come about through Blogger. Many blogs have been in existence for many years now through Blogger. Blogger won’t remove your blog for no reason, they have terms and conditions that they have to abide by. If you breach the terms and conditions they will remove your blog site. If you own a blog through Blogger, make sure you read the terms and conditions and make sure you are abiding by them.

I would encourage you that if you are into serious blogging, it is a good idea to host your blog site. It gives you the assurance and total control of the existence of your blogs. I personally use Hostgator to host my blog and I pay about $7.98 per month and it is well worth it. I simply view it as as added insurance for my blog. To find a list of web hosting sites go to webhostingfever.com.

To Your Success,

Jarrod Clark

Yes it is true that even some of the greatest article writers have the case of writer’s block. However, many of the greatest writers have taken out time in the beginning to discipline themselves to write everyday about anything. As an aspiring blogger, I can voucher for the fact that beginning stages can be difficult when it comes to forking up the topics that will feed your audience and make a difference in their lives. It has been said that if you do at least some writing everyday you will improve the right side of your brain, also known as the creative part. It doesn’t have to be a full blown out article and it doesn’t have to be perfect. I’ve learn that if you try to produce a perfect article on the first draft you will only frustrate yourself and it doesn’t help your creativity.

 Just Write

 When you sit down and write, do just that… WRITE! It doesn’t have to be formatted correctly or it doesn’t have to have to perfect structure. You might even have grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, don’t focus on those, yet just write about a main idea and focus on that idea. I am a musician and I remember the days when I first started playing drums, it wasn’t something that I learned over night. Making music, or any other craft for that matter, is a skill that has to be practiced. It takes time to improve on your craft.

 It’s A Craft Too…

That said, blogging is something that requires practice. Writing is a craft such as being a musician, painting masterpieces or anything that takes skill. It takes practice and diligence to become a pro blogger. Mozart was a great genius and composer but nonetheless, for the genius that he was, he didn’t become the skilled musician that he was overnight, it took practice, discipline and diligence to achieve that level of success.

I want to encourage you and to take out sometime to write just a little everyday. Don’t feel like you have to finished the article, you can write a half article if that’s all you can fork up, just write something. Don’t attempt to publish your first draft. Come back the next day and try to improve on that first draft. As the day progresses, write down blogging topics that come to your mind. It doesn’t have to be all business oriented it could be personal topics, topics centered around politics anything. When as you get better at blogging about anything, your creativity will open up with content and topics in ways you never deemed possible.

To your success,

Jarrod Clark