Mind Map Software – Bubbl.us Review

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If you are looking for a very simple and easy-to-use mind map software, then bubbl.us might just be the answer for you.

I have got to hand it to the developers of this software. They have made it extremely easy to get started. When you fist load up the website, you see a button in the middle of the page that says “Start Brainstorming”. You click that button and you’re immediately in editing mode for your new mind map. Brilliant. No sign up necessary, but of course once you start creating a mind map, you decide you want to save it and you sign up.

 

Here is a quick video walkthrough of the software showing various different aspects of it. There are a few little quirks I found such as the Pin/Unpin aspect that made it quite difficult to work with large maps, but overall I think it is an excellent platform if you are looking for something simple and easy to use, and best of all… FREE.

 

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pld4pKlllOY

 
Here is an example of the HTML embed option:
 

Some of the other mind map software available is FreeMind, MindMeister, MindNode, iMindMap, Mind42, MindManager, & SimpleMind.

If you like this post and would like me to review other mind mapping software, then please leave me a comment below.

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A Measure Of Success: Your Rejection Rate

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How do you handle rejection? It’s definitely something that is not easy to accept for most people but something that is key to success in business. It’s what separates the top earners from everyone else who jumps from one idea to the next in the hope that their new idea is going to work. Here’s how to measure your rejection rate: How many rejections or failures does it take for you to quit a proven method or strategy?

Most people’s honest answer is 1.

Here’s a story told to me once by a wise man to illustrate the point. If you were to put in two dollars (for argument sake) into a vending machine and click the button for a coke, what would you expect to happen? You would expect the coke can to pop out the bottom right? Say you passed this vending machine everyday and you bought a coke everyday for a year and each time it popped out the bottom just like you expected. Then one day you came to the vending machine just like normal and put in your two dollars expecting a coke can to pop out the bottom, and nothing happened. You shake the machine, give it a kick and a prod, but still nothing. What would you think? You just spent your hard earned two dollars and got no return. You now have doubts about this vending machine. Maybe it’s broken, maybe it doesn’t work anymore. The question is, are you likely to return to this vending machine the next day? Probably not, even though this machine has worked perfectly for the last year, your faith in this machine is now shaken. That’s the point. All it takes for most people to give up and look to something else to be the answer is one rejection or failure.

Smart business people know that rejection is part of the game, and persistence is key. They have built up a high rejection tolerance. It takes more than one ‘NO’ for them to quit.

That’s an important lesson. You got to stick to the plan when things get tough and it seems like they’re not working.

Think about that story again, and ask yourself the question… What’s my rejection rate?

If it’s one, then it’s not enough. Think about how you could increase it to two, and then three, and then when you achieve success, solidify this idea in your mind so that when you move onto bigger projects, you know and understand that rejection is just part of the game.

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A Glimpse of Australian Internet Usage and How It Can Affect Your Business

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The Internet only become more and more important to business owners in the last 5 years. Although 5 years doesn’t seem like a long time. It’s surprising to see just how far technology has come in that short space of time.

The internet has made communication easier. Dissemination of information and other data has became almost instantaneous. People from all around the globe can now be connected. It has become a solid platform where people can transact and conduct business twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. There’s no restrictions on opening and closing hours and it has opened up the doors to essentially millions of people who can visit your business page.

In this article, I am going to show you a glimpse of the current trend of internet usage specifically for Australia.

 

Australia
Internet Usage Stats and Telecommunications Market Report

Internet Usage Statistics:

17,033,826 Internet users as of Aug/2009, 80.1% of the population, according to Nielsen.

Facebook Users in Australia:
9,520,960 as of August 31, 2010, according to Facebook.

Internet Broadband Subscribers:
4,700,200 Broadband subscribers (connections) as of Sept./07, 22.8% of the population, according to OECD.

 

Internet Growth and Population Statistics:

YEAR Users Population % Pop. G.N.I. p.c. Usage Source
2000 6,600,000 19,521,900 33.8 % $19,992 (’00) ITU
2007 14,729,191 20,434,176 70.2 % $21,650 (’06) Nielsen
2009 16,926,015 21,262,641 79.6 % $32,220 (’06) Nielsen
2010 17,033,826 21,262,641 80.1 % $32,220 (’06) Nielsen

G.N.I.p.c. = Per Capita Gross National Income in US dollars, historic series.

Australia Internet Demographic Information:

Population:

20,507,264 (2005 est.)

Age structure:

0-14 years: 19.8% (male 2,116,875/female 1,943,563)

15-64 years: 67.2% (male 7,085,692/female 6,695,189)

65 years and over: 12.9% (male 1,193,435/female 1,452,002) (2005 est.)

 

Median age:

Total: 36.56 years (2005 est.)
Female: 37.4 years
male: 35.74 years

According to this data, Australian internet users are mostly in the 15 to 64 years old age bracket. This only means that most of them already have the capacity to purchase.

People in Australia alone spend 11 billion dollars in online purchases. The question now is: “Do you want your business to get a portion of those 11 billion dollars that our fellow Australians are paying for online products and services?”

The statistics I have gathered clearly shows that Australians are not shy when it comes to purchasing both goods and services online. Australia is now the third highest country in the world when it comes to utilizing e-commerce.

The internet isn’t a story of how beneficial it is for home usage anymore. The internet now presents an opportunity for your business to step up and reach out to more potential clients. Internet marketing is not easy as it seems but through the proper marketing techniques, and strategy – you’ll reap the harvest of your investment.

The key to internet marketing is to go where the people go. Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo groups are only some of the social media sites that we can use to reach out to the potential clients and eventually drive traffic to our site.

 

Australia’s Fastest Growing Social Media Activities
Activity 2009 2008 YOY Change
Read messages on Twitter 23% 7% 16%
Interacted with a brand via social network 38% 23% 15%
Read a wiki 72% 61% 11%
Posted on Twitter 13% 4% 9%
Browsed/followed brands on Twitter 14% 5% 9%
Interacted with people on a social network 63% 55% 8%
Watched online video for product/service 63% 57% 6%
Updated a social networking profile 57% 51% 6%
Looked at a social networking profile 73% 67% 6%
Posted pictures online 68% 63% 5%
Source: The Nielsen Company

 

The opportunity to take your business online and reach thousands more customers is already in your hands.  It’s either stay in the traditional OFF-line market where people sell and advertise through newspapers with less and less readers each week, or we reach out to the entire country through a website, or social media platform which is open to thousands or even millions of visitors. It’s time to think outside of the box.

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SEO Content Rewriter

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The quest for creating unique content has taken people down many different avenues over the last few years. There are dozens of spinning tools and software out on the market now, and they each work well to varying degrees.

One of the best ways I have seen to create quality spinnable content is to rewrite content based on sentences rather than words. This makes your article much more readable and human friendly.

Most of the services out there are independant software apps or membership websites. When I was searching for tools and software for content spinning I came across SEO Wordspinner by Zack Katz, which is a wordpress plugin that allows you to show different sentence combinations each time your page is refreshed. It works by putting brackets around each sentence and then the pipe character between multiple versions of that sentence. I thought this plugin was a great idea since most people will be putting content and articles on their wordpress blog.

One thing lacking in this plugin was the ability to easily create rewritten sentences. I had been using a very popular service called Article Ranks which has a fantastic editor for rewriting sentences. So, I thought why not create a simple visual editor plugin for wordpress that gives users an easy way to rewrite their articles just like this service and make it compatible with Zack’s SEO Wordspinner plugin.

So, here it is… 100% free for you.

Click Here To Download SEO Content Rewriter

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Is the Pen mightier than the PC

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I’m talking productivity here. The question is… Is digital actually better or worse for brainstorming, organising, and planning your thoughts into actionable processes?

As technology abounds in today’s society and everyone is using word processors, spreadsheets, mind maps, and slide presentations to communicate ideas, it’s not a matter of choice anymore. Digital is it, but is it really the most effective way to explore your own thoughts and achieve the highest productivity out of your own time.

I don’t know about you but I keep a simple notebook on my desk to write down a list of tasks that I want to achieve every day. It’s a great way to keep focused and I’ve been doing it for a few years now, so it’s something that I’ve developed into a habit and find it very useful.

I find writing with a pen is much more intuitive and thought provoking than typing on a keyboard. I guess because it’s a little more creative, a little faster, and it produces a greater mind-body connection. The problem is that you can’t just copy and paste that text, format it, and transfer it to another application. Of course there are various new hardware devices like the Livescribe pen making this idea more of a reality today, but that is topic for another post.

Today I did something a little different than just writing tasks in my notebook. I decided to write down everything I was thinking. I would be half way through writing a list of action steps and then I would hit a step that would spur a new thought process. Instead of trying to keep focused on the bigger picture and bury those new thoughts, I wrote them down and continued that thought process until it was resolved. I found this actually helped me to work through a lot of things that my brain would usually not be able to focus on, either because the thought was too large and I needed to break it into smaller chunks or because it might be an area that my subconscious was avoiding. That is also topic for another post but I found instead of letting my mind go cloudy, I would write questions to myself, and then I would answer them. Once I had answered or eliminated all my objections, I was able to return back to my action step list and proceed.

In just half a day I had already written 10 pages of scribble, which is something not really worth doing in digital form, or something that you wouldn’t bother doing in digital form because it’s all about concise, to the point text, and reducing the number of words needed to express an idea. Creating digital content definitely has it’s advantages as you can easily segment content, add new content to previous sections, and create a document that’s easy to share with others, but if you are stuck on a idea and can’t seem to work out the steps you need to take to make it happen then definitely try just writing in a notepad.

It’s a great way to establish that mind-body connection and really explore your deepest thoughts and objections that may be holding you back from achieving your goals. Even though it can take longer to write every thought out on paper, and then rewrite some of that content into digital form, you might just find that your actual productivity level shoots through the roof.

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How To Get Started In Domaining – Interview With Kenny Goodman

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Domaining is something that is becoming a hot topic among online entrepreneurs. Not just internet marketers, but big corporate enterprises as they are noticing a huge trend toward the online sector.

One of the “go to” guys when it comes to domaining is Kenny Goodman. I managed to jump on a call with Kenny and interview him on exactly what he sees as the future of domaining and how he has managed to build a solid business through lead brokering and buying aged domains.

If you’re not familiar with the term “domaining”. It’s simply the acquisition of multiple domains.

You can either “park” those domains or develop them into content sites, or as Kenny points out on this call, you can get really creative and do things like lease options on your domains. This definitely takes things to a whole new level, and some of the concepts Kenny alludes to on this call are absolutely fascinating.

Some of the things Kenny talks about on this call, I have never heard before, and it’s always a refreshing change to hear real world business strategies applied to online marketing and website development rather than the typical gimmicky stuff about making thousands of dollars overnight through the latest spam technique.

This is big business, and has the potential for huge paydays in the corporate market.

I also get Kenny to run through his latest online software called DomainFace. I must admit, when I first started using this software I was a bit lost, because if you don’t know what to look for when finding an aged domain then all the stats don’t really mean much. So, on this call I got Kenny to run me through exactly what criteria he looks for when searching for an aged domain, and that has made a huge difference for me. I’m sure it will make a huge difference for you too.

I hope you get as much out of this call as I did, and please leave your comments below to let me know if you enjoyed the content.




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How To Setup Google Analytics Conversion Goals

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Here is a quick walkthrough video of how to setup google analytics conversion goals. Most internet marketers have google analytics installed on their websites, but few actually go to the length of setting up conversion goals to measure what percentage of their site visitors actually complete the desired action steps needed to reach the end goal, being purchasing your product.

This is a basic walkthrough of analytics and the typical scenario that most internet marketers will have. I detail exactly which options to select inside google analytics, how to setup google analytics tracking code on your wordpress blog, and how to setup your analytics goal funnel.

Enjoy 🙂

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P18kuCeU_4

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How To Setup A Custom Facebook Page For Your Product Or Service

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As I was going to setup a new Facebook page for my new product “Domain Digger Pro”, I realised I had totally forgot how to do it. I setup my last page with the static fbml application and used the hidden content fb tag to require users to like my page before they could see the hidden content. It’s a great way to get more “Likes” on your page, but I had to research everything about how to do it all over again.

I have made a quick screencam video so that if you’re looking to setup a new Facebook page, this will make things a walk in the park for you, and also for me next time I setup a new page.

Hope this helps you out.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikjcpU_K2zw

I have included the actual html content I used in the static fbml box below so you can copy this layout for yourself. You’ll notice I have linked to some external images on my own domain. If you want to use these generic images, that’s cool, just please upload them to your own server first. Don’t leach off my server. Thanks!

<style type="text/css">
<!--
	.signup-box {
		background:#fbf6de;
		border:solid 1px #d9ce9a;
		border-radius:10px;
		-moz-border-radius:10px;
		-webkit-border-radius:10px;
		padding:20px;

		width:350px;
	}

	.border-box {
		border: dashed;
		padding:10px;
	}

	label {
	color:#0060c2;
	display:block;
	font-weight:bold;
	margin-bottom:5px;
	text-align:center;
	font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	}
-->
</style>
<h1 align="center"><strong><font color="#CC0000" size="+3" face="impact">&quot;Like&quot; This Page</font><font size="+3" face="impact"> - And Download Domain Digger Pro Free Trial Below </font></strong></h1>
<h1 align="center">&nbsp;</h1>
<h1 align="center"><font size="+2" face="Courier New, Courier, monospace">Just click the &quot;Like&quot; button at the top of this page and you will instantly see the hidden download links for Domain Digger Pro Free Trial Below. </font></h1>
<table align="center" width="360px">
        <tr>
          <td>
            <div align="center" style="margin-bottom:-20px"><img src="http://www.easiestaffiliatewebsite.com/images/arrows.gif" /></div>
            <div class="signup-box" align="center">
              <fb:visible-to-connection>
  <div align="center">
    <h3 align="center"><a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pokckeeaaghdocnkhilldllmdboikimp?hl=ene"><strong>Google Chrome</strong><br>
                <br>
                <img src="http://www.domaindiggerpro.com/images/googlechromelogo.png"  border="0"></a>                </h3>

    <p></p>
			  </div>
			  </fb:visible-to-connection>
           <label>Click The Like Button <br>
           To See The Hidden Download Links Above</label>
           </div>
		  </td>
        </tr>
</table>
	  <p>&nbsp;</p>
	  <table width="95%" border="1" align="center">
	    <tr><td>

	  <div class="border-box">
        <h3 align="center"><strong>
        About Domain Digger Pro:</strong></font></h3>

        <p align="center">Domain Digger Pro is perfect for you if you are interested in buying a keyword targeted domain for your new website. If you are looking to build your portfolio of domain names or simply just doing keyword research on your market then you are going to love Domain Digger Pro.

</p>
        <h3 align="center"><img src="http://www.domaindiggerpro.com/images/chromextensionscreenshot2.jpg" width="400" height="275"></h3>
        <p align="left">This extension takes any input keyword phrase and searches the top keyword research sites to find relevant related keywords. It then checks to see if those keywords are available to purchase as domain names. You can quickly check 100 high volume keyword phrases relating to your target keyword phrase in less than 3 minutes.

          </p>
        <p align="left">You can also do further research on your keyword phrase by switching back to the tabs Domain Digger Pro automatically opened to gather related keywords. Their is a wealth of information that you can source using this software, but that's not all.

       </p>
        <p align="left">Domain Digger Pro automatically collates the highest volume keywords into a table so you can see exactly which keyword phrases get the most searches each month, and you can also see if those phrases are available for purchase all in one place.</p>
        <h3 align="center"><img src="http://www.domaindiggerpro.com/images/chromextensionscreenshot.jpg" width="400" height="275"></h3>
	  </div>

</td></tr>

</table>

Did this help you out? Let me know in the comments?

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How To Setup and Manage a Profitable Outsourced Team – Interview with James Schramko

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Have you noticed the number of people in the internet marketing community talking about outsourcing?

I wouldn’t exactly call it the latest buzz word, because it’s something that has been widely adopted as “leveraging your time” for quite a few years now, but the concept is definitely becoming more and more talked about.

It seems as though everybody knows about it, and a lot of people have tried it, but very few are successful at it. I think this is primarily because a lot of “internet marketers” haven’t come from a high end management job or position that required them to manage a team so they lack a lot of fundamental skills needed to actually manage other people effectively.

One person that has successfully put together a highly productive team of outsourcers is James Schramko. James came from a high end management position at Mercedes Benz where he was required to manage up to 100 people at one time. He has excellent management skills which has obviously helped him grow his online business to a 7 figure per year income in just 2 years.

I’ve been picking up on a few of the things James has said about the way his team works and his approach is very different to the way the internet marketing community has taught how to outsource in the past.

James was kind enough to let me interview him on exactly how he has managed to grow his team, establish a great camaraderie between his workers, and basically put together an effective system where he only needs to chat with his team for 5 minutes each day. It’s truly amazing what he has accomplished and I get new inspiration and knowledge from James every time we chat.

I hope you enjoy the interview below… and let me know if this interview was helpful to you by leaving your comments.



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The Simplest Time Management Technique

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I thought I would start off with a uniquely simple time management tip that has helped me get a surprising amount of work done in a short period of time. I’ve come to hear of this technique from 2 different sources over the last 3 months. I first was introduced to it by Ed Dale in his mentoring program. He calls this CFT or Critical Focus Time. I was also told about this technique just last week from Nic Lucas, a good friend of mine who was talking about the Pomodoro technique. They are basically the same thing. The Pomodoro technique was coined by Francesco Cirillo in 1992. I’m not sure when Ed coined the CFT.

Here’s how it works:

The idea is to time yourself in 30 minute intervals. 25 minutes of Critical Focus Time and 5 minutes break. Ed explains that he knows this technique is used by some of the top internet marketers and business people in the world. Critical Focus Time is specific though. You have to be doing something in that time that directly grows your business. This could be writing a blog post, contacting JV partners, developing a product, or anything that will directly grow your business now or in the future. It doesn’t include things like reading a book, learning about social media, chatting to friends on Skype, or browsing on the net. The idea is to do one CFT or Pomodoro per day, or if you can’t manage that, do one per week. The main focus is consistency and committing to it.

It takes a little while to get used to this technique. Ed stresses the importance of taking a break for 5 minutes. For me, I use this technique for writing blog posts. I set the timer on my iPhone to 25 minutes. I do find it hard to stop at 25 minutes though. I usually just take 10 seconds to write an entry in my CFT document and then start the timer again. Being a coder, I’m used to working in 2-4 hour blocks focused on completing a particular feature or entire program but I find just the task of timing myself gives me a goal and I know that I’m going to complete a blog post without interruption. I will usually do 3 CFT sessions per day back to back. That’s usually how long it takes me to write a blog post, but I’m noticing that I’m getting quicker at it, which I wouldn’t know if I wasn’t timing myself.

I think Ed specified one CFT per day to accommodate most people doing his Challenge who might have a full time job and can only put aside 30 minutes per day. I believe he also sets a benchmark of 5 CFT sessions to get out 1 blog post. So, that’s one blog post per week. For me, I aim to get out a new blog post every day. I think once a week is not enough, but it’s a good benchmark to aim for if you haven’t done anything like this before.

I find doing 3 CFT’s and getting out one new blog post before I start working on other things is a good way to get a sense of accomplishment for the day. I’m usually in a better mood for the rest of the day when I feel like I’ve definitely achieved something. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve been working all day on programming, site design, and sales copy but still haven’t achieved much. This technique helps to give me a sense of achievement.

What do you think of this technique? Are you using it already? What sort of things do you plan for your CFT sessions?

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