Paul Tobey's Blog

Archive for December, 2010

There are many people that I know about and of course many others I have not, who want to be professional speakers.

Whether they want to speak about personal development, motivation or even business strategies, there are a lot of people out there who believe it would be challenging, exciting and fun to get paid to speak.

However, how do you make the leap from being someone who doesn’t get paid to speak, to someone who does? That in my mind is the biggest challenge that face most professional speakers.

Having personally spoken in front of more than 20,000 people in the past couple years, here are some recommendations on how to fill a room so that you can get paid by your own audiences to speak.

1. The money’s in the list. I’ve always put a lot of emphasis in my courses and in my speaking engagements on the power of a mailing list.

It is now easier and more cost effective than ever to do that using current technology and what you need to do is; either on your website, or in person, you want to make people an offer in exchange for their contact information.

That offer can be anything from a free eBook to a free audio recording. Once you have them on your list, then whatever speaking engagement you have coming up, whether it is one of your own or somebody else’s, you would basically invite the people on your growing list.

This is my number one strategy on how to fill a room. It works amazingly and literally every time.

Would you invite people who have been to your speaking engagements before? Of course. Let them come as many times as they want.

2. The second strategy for how to fill a room is to piggy back on other peoples relationships. We call this grass roots marketing.

Start with a group a people either in your community or in another community that could help you fill a room in exchange for whatever it is you want to offer them, whether that is one of your free courses or just for the learning opportunity to understand all the elements on how to fill a room and put on a successful event

I’m currently working on one such event in Florida coming up next month, where I’m working with fifteen people in the Jenson Beach area and walking them through all the elements of event production and promotion.

3. The third really effective way on how to fill a room is to go into somebody else’s room and make an offer so that a certain portion of that room, ends up in your room.

Let me give you an example. Every week there are thousands of opportunities in ever community around you to practice your speaking ie; service clubs, business clubs or even you’re local Church or Synagogue.

These organizations literally host events every week, sometimes two and three times a week. You need to align yourself with those organizations, work with the person who books the speakers and practice your craft at the same time.

At the end of your presentations, make an offer for your free course. You would only be only be speaking for a half an hour to an hour which, generally isn’t enough time to sell anything or get them to buy into anything.

So, what you want to do is; get them out of that room and into your room. Have them sign a sign-up sheet, or collect business cards from everybody who wants to be on your mailing list.

The biggest problem I see with most speakers is that they want to make an instantaneous leap to getting paid $3,000 to $20,000 for a presentation, when they haven’t yet earned the right.

My highest recommendation is to stop waiting around for other to people to give you the opportunity; you create it yourself  by picking a date and using the three strategies above on how to fill a room.

Even if only five people show up, that is a good place to start. One day, you’ll wake up and it’ll be fifty people, then five hundred, and if your as good as you think you are, maybe even five thousand.

But, it all starts with you making the choice fill your own room first. It is a very rewarding thing to do, and you’re going to learn a lot about what the event production business really is.

To learn more about how to fill a room and public speaking opportunities, visit my presentation training and Train the Trainer course information.

Many people seem to fall into the same old day to day bad habits which, in many cases turn into additions.

However, in order to break bad habits and get a more positive result, you are obviously going to have to change because, it is your bad habits and additions that are currently creating your reality.

Of course, the ultimate question is how do you change? Here are five ways that I use to break bad habits and develop more empowering habits all at the same time:

1. Acknowledge that you have a bad habit. Whatever it may be, whether that is workaholism, alcoholism or television, ask yourself; are these things moving me towards my goal? The simple act of recognizing that you need to break bad habits begins the process of change. You can’t change what you can’t acknowledge.

2. Then, as soon as you recognize that your habits are not getting you what you want, you must ask yourself; if I am going to create a new habit, what is it that I want?The number one reason why people do not get what they want, is that they simply do not know what that is. This misses the point entirely because, the goal is the actual motivation that you need to break bad habits.
3. Set yourself a goal and give yourself 90 days to achieve it. Why 90 days? Because it is commonly accepted that it takes at least 90 days to create a new more empowering habit so that it becomes part of your everyday life.

For those of you who are practiced at creating good habits already, it will take a lot less time because you are more familiar with the system of change.When you choose a 90-day goal, make sure that it is risky, it is something you have never done before, and make sure the results are measurable. As much as you love world peace, how can you measure that in 90 days? So, pick something that you can measure.

4. If you are going to break bad habits and create new habits, my highest recommendation is that you find someone who has already created the habit that you want and has got the result that you are looking for.

For example; if you need to, or want to lose weight, you’ll have to find a trusted and credible source. Then you must study, learn and practice their system.

There are many of them out there and how you choose one is ultimately important. Find one that is not only trusted and credible but also FEELS right. Ask yourself: do I feel like following this system? If it is a difficult system, you likely will not follow it. Find a system that saves you not only time but money as well. That will make it easier to follow.

5. You will have to practice your new habit; that is how it becomes a habit. The best way that I have found for practicing a habit is of course to do it everyday. Some of you may not want to do it every day and it does not need to be every day, but it definitely works the best.

Start with something simple like three times a week. What is it that you are going to do differently three days a week that you currently do not do? Do that for 90 days and it will become a habit, and in many cases it will increase from three days to five days, and sometimes even to seven days a week.For example, I am writing this article while I am walking and I am speaking it into a portable digital recorder.

Why did I create the habit of walking? Because, I did not like being slightly overweight and I did not like having a constantly aggravated sore knee.The last time I was slightly overweight and had a sore knee, I walked across Spain back in 2004. I simply decided one day that I needed to re-develop the good habit of walking.

Of course, I had to carve out time out of my day to do it. So early morning it is! This article is being written at 7:30 in the morning, on the coldest winter day of the year so far. It seems to me that I have taken to this habit pretty well.

I really believe that last word on this is possibly something that you have heard before: do not put of until tomorrow what you can choose to change today; the essential word in that phrase being the word CHOOSE.

The bad habits that you have developed have been a choice, and the habits that could empower you, are also a choice. If you are going to bread bad habits then you must first choose to do so. Then, simply follow a proven system and before you know it, you’ll have much better habits than you do now.

Have a great day,

Paul Tobey

P.S. If you need more information on how to break bad habits, click here to read about the Art of Deliberate Creation.

This is post #5 in a series of blog articles focusing on a Google Experiment; how to rank keyword phrases on the front page of Google using 2.5 hours a week for a maximum 90 days.

If you want to read this series from the beginning and learn some of the “how-to” steps which were taken, click here and enter to win.

So far, this week I spent a half an hour doing keyword research. I have spent no time outside of my normal time to write a couple of articles and I’ve spent an hour getting those articles completed and posted online. So how did I spend that second hour exactly?

I leverage a system of marketing articles, more commonly known as “article marketing.” The system allows me to take an article and publicize it on various article sites online. Some of the sites I use includes; Ezine articles, Go Articles, Article Dashboard, Article City and many more.

So, your probably asking yourself, if you’re publicizing your articles on all those sites, how come it only took an hour?

Because I use an efficient system for marketing articles, which saves time and ultimately money. The marketing article software that I use is called Article Post Robot and I came across it about three years ago and have been using it faithfully ever since.

Here are a few of the things it will do automatically;

a) It posts content onto various article websites by logging you in automatically.

b) It then takes the content you have written and posts it on each respective site.

c) And, it automatically logs you off eash site and goes on to the next one in order.

One of the main benefits of marketing articles with this program is launching your campaign with the click of a single button. Although the software takes some initial set up, it creates long term time saving and benefits.

Many people talk about marketing articles, yet few offer up the answer, on how to save time and get a big result. Part of the software’s initial set up includes; registering for article sites which are more relevant, valuable and more popular than others.

Other great ideas on how speed up your marketing articles process are; auto-filled forms, as well as other easily attainable software and plug-ins that will help you through the process more efficiently.

So yesterday, here’s exactly how I spent my time. I signed up for two new article sites, which I had not been a member of previously. Normally I do five, which doesn’t take that much longer, but I only had an hour.

I modified the context of the article to work better with search engines.

There are several ways to do that. One of the best ways is to make it seem as though you are not posting duplicate content. You must do this because search engines such as Google, like to see different content, and not duplication.

If you want to know how that works exactly, you’ll have to purchase a copy and work your way through it. The end result will be; your content spread around the internet. The value is that people will click the links in the bio section and follow the link. The multiplied effect is that when a search engine crawls the article, how it sees your strategic links which then affects your search ranking results.

If you want to know more about the marketing articles software and purchase it at a 30% lower cost than retail value, click here to leverage my buying power and get this extremely valuable marketing article software working for you today.

Also as a bonus, when you purchase the software, you will also receive a video I created, which explains how to configure the article marketing software to work even better than what it was designed to do. In other words, I’ll share with you my unique proprietary marketing articles formula in one highly valuable “how-to” video.

To learn more about participating in a Google Experiment, where you can actually try out this software, you must click here to enter to win.

This article marketing post was developed by internet marketing expert, author and trainer Paul Tobey on December 7th 2010.

For any updates on software, please visit the Paul Tobey Recommends page.

Are you ready for the Google Experiment Contest?  To register and participate click here.

We have currently used up 1/2 an hour of our 2.5 hours a week. If you want to know how we have used that half hour so far, click here to start from the beginning.

Enter to win means that you must enter this challenge in order to get the result that those have already accepted the challenge will get. If you are an internet marketer then this series of articles will help you be a better one based on the outcome, which is using only 2 hours and half hours a week, one person, for ninety days, to get a significant quantifiable and measurable result.

One of the bench marks of creating an SEO goal, which you can read up on from earlier chapters, is to pick a result that you currently don’t already have, with a new keyword phrase that you are currently not using and currently not ranked for. Do it and you will see how well the system works and at the end of this chapter I will tell you how to enter to win.

While we haven’t exactly decided what the bonus prizes will be, if you do the work, the prize will be traffic for your website. However, as the recommendations are continuing to come in from the people who are participating, many of them would like extra motivation. At the end of this chapter I will give you a hint as to what this motivation might be.

Many people won’t eat a carrot until their hungry. Well if you’re hungry for a result you might not need that motivation. But some people are very comfortable with where they are at and wouldn’t take action, not matter how big the carrot was. If that is you, I might suggest you might go back and start reading some of the other material on this blog and find out how this type of business (this type of marketing) is being done.

My version which is a version disseminated from many areas includes delivering value. And regardless how good you think it is, and regardless of the result you do get, the intent to create something of value is enough. And in order to initiate that process, you have to make a choice to enter to win. I suggest that you do it now, make the choice to be part of a strategy that no matter what, you’ll win.

There is no losing in this type of marketing, no matter what you believe is your result. What you do care about however is when you make a choice to enter to win; you are making a choice to deliver value to others. That is a winning intent, which will ultimately receive a winning result. This is a no lose situation. The only time you can possibly lose if you choice not to take positive action, because you are either:

A: Lazy

B: Overworked

C: Underpaid

D: Unhappy

E: Stressed Out

F: Frustrated

G: Comfortable with all that

And the fact that you may have made this type of misery your best friend, I am offering you an opportunity to learn a step by step strategy to getting a better result. And the first qualifier of your will to create something different, will be to enter to win this challenge.

I will put an entry form on my website (click here to read the rules) and understand what you get when you enter to win.

This article’s keyword phrase, which you may have guessed already is; “enter to win”. Yesterday’s keyword phrase was “making money online with the internet”.

In this article we are doing the exact same keyword density strategy. If you want to know more about keyword density you can take one or both of these home study programs: 12 Essential Lessons on Internet Marketing or Jump Start your Internet Presence.

The additional information that I am going to reveal in this article is, “what are the extra qualifiers that I know will help me choice a great keyword phrase?” And, of course, that is; how well is the competition doing, not only in terms of their content, but their off site optimization as well.

This is a strategy known as: link popularity. It’s basically a voting system. Who ever gets gets the most votes gets elected. And how does Google know that other people are voting for your website? It follows links from other websites to yours.

But, it’s not just any type of link. It’s a very special king of link called anchor text. If you want to know in detail how it works, click here for more information.

For now, lets understand the basic concept. How does Google find it’s way around the internet? It either follows links which you have placed on your website to other websites, or it follows links from their websites to other websites and sometimes it follows a link from another website back to yours.

How does it qualify votes? By the number of times the googlebot lands on your website from a different place. Then it also says to itself, “what place was it that you were linked from?” How powerful is the vote, in terms of how many votes they have, and what type of votes they are giving you?

That’s why it’s such a great system, because its algorithm is unbiased in that it has been designed to seek out good content and more votes. The keyword phrase for this article, “enter to win” has no link popularity on my site currently, none.

So this article is a new page, creating content on my website, which I will now seek to bring backlinks; link popularity to my website from other places. And it is entirely possible that one of the criteria to win this Google challenge, in terms of any prizes we give out, it might be mandatory to have a link from your website to mine.

While this might sound self serving, and ultimately, only history will tell that, what is the message you will get when you enter to win? Reward. That’s why it’s called a challenge, because in order to win you must fulfill some of the terms of that challenge.

I am already giving you my strategy to rank on Google if that weren’t enough I could also entice you with reward in term it could be monetary, it could be information based, we could have many winners, we could have many categories such as: Advanced Internet Marketers and Beginner Internet Marketers.

And, over the next little while I will reveal what you will win, when you enter to win.

Might I suggest that you come up with some good prizes. What do you have that we could make a prize, that could help your marketing? Something of value perhaps?

If you want to sponsor the challenge, we can also talk about that. But, I can tell you that based on past promotions, this one will create a firestorm of activity based on everyone winning.

So send me an email, actually send me your proposal when you enter to win, if you have something to give of value to help promote yourself and your business, send me the suggestion in the enter to win form.

Click here to read the rules and regulations.

This is a continuation article in our series called ‘The Google Experiment’. If you want to read the series from the beginning, please click here.

Yesterday I came up with the goal; that goal being an Internet project which would take me 2.5 hours a week for three months, 90 days. In order to carry out any goal you will need a mechanism, part of which is this article.

It may be difficult for you to see how big a part this article is in the entire picture – I assure you, it’s big. But the ultimate goal, is of course; how to make money with the Internet.

I have always used a system, which includes Google’s organic search results to bring me targeted traffic, based on the content of the articles.

How I used my half an hour yesterday was to do some research on a keyword phrase that represented this article. I believe strongly that before you post any content online you should do your keyword research as well.

I use Market Samurai for the task because it gives me a very clear picture of any keyword phrase that I can think of, and a whole bunch that I cannot, on how many searches per day those keyword phrases get. Also, how much traffic you would get as a result of your searches, depending on where you are in the list of search results. It also gives me a very clear picture of my competition, on what they are doing, or what they are not doing to be currently ranked on Google.

I have heard many versions of keyword research; this software, that software, this strategy, that strategy. I talked to a lady in New York a few weeks ago who had paid $10,000 for an Internet Marketing course, and when I asked her what they were teaching her, she conveyed to me a strategy which did not make any sense to me whatsoever. I have of course only experience to draw upon and I can tell you, the strategy that she paid for will not work.

Market Samurai, on the other hand, is about as clear as you can get as a starting point for SEO. Everything online is trackable, and based on how we track and how we measure, Market Samurai gives us a very clear picture of how to create a positive outcome in terms of a search engine optimization.

The keyword phrase that was revealed by my Market Samurai research is; ‘Making Money with the Internet’, which is fascinating when you think about it.

Why? Because, Market Samurai showed me that the keyword phrase ‘Making Money with the Internet’—which is basically a long tail five-word keyword phrase would get 2,278 unique click throughs if this blog post was ranked #1 on Google.com. Look at this screen shot of the results from the Market Samurai.

Why is that amazing? Because, I can tell you, I would have never come up with that keyword phrase on my own or by asking friends. Even if I accidentally stumbled upon this keyword phrase, I never would have guessed that it gets that much traffic.

And, while that information is extremely powerful as a starting point there are other metrics to consider such as; whether it is a phrase to broad match, how much completion does it have in terms of the number of websites that appear on the search results pages and many other ways to refine the value of a keyword phrase.

While other SEO people are telling you to qualify the keyword phrase in terms of whether or not it has 300,000 competing websites or less, I only want to be on the front page. Being number one is where the most traffic comes from.

You are probably saying to yourself: ‘there must be some pretty heavy competition on the front page’, and there is. But Market Samurai tells me how well the top 10 are currently doing and whether they are ranking by design or by default.

In this case, Market Samurai is telling me they are somewhat ranking by default, because none of them in the top ten have used that keyword phrase, not one time, neither in their website and certainly not in the most important places that Google looks for it.

Google comes to your website and seeks out information and gives your web page ranking based upon information that it finds. Here is a situation where the top ten website on Google.com have not used a system to be found by the way that Google searches.

Therefore, that keyword phrase ‘Making Money with the Internet’ is the main keyword phrase of this article. I repeated it a few times, but I also placed it in very strategic places, and this very blog article will soon be the only one in the top ten that has actually followed the contextual rules.

In addition to on site optimization rules and where you place your keyword phrase there is another layer of optimization that must occur offsite. That method is called link popularity; a voting system used by Google’s algorithm to verify the authenticty and popularity of your content.

In my next article, I am going to reveal exactly what Google is looking for off site. And, in addition to keyword phrase, ‘Making Money with the Internet’, I will choose another keyword phrase which will be the standard by which this entire Google experiment will be measured.

Google loves content! Yes, but in my next article, I will talk about how it really qualifies content based on what it finds outside of your site and how it finds its way to you.

I will also reveal how you can participate in this experiment and get your own results. And, I’ll even up the ante by giving you something to get seriously motivated about; enter to win.

Paul Tobey

P.S. In you’re interested in making money with the internet, I suggest you go back and read this series from the beginning. You’ll need to know each and every step if you’re ever going to get there.