Balance. Focus. Goals.

Balance. Focus. Goals. Good parameters for life in general. For the business blogger, they are vital.

Let’s face it. If you fall asleep at the business wheel because you’re having so much fun blogging and tweeting, you’re in for a massive crash.

How do I know this? I’ve experienced a bit of a crash, thankfully not massive, but just enough to know I needed to get myself in Balance, Re-Focus and Re-Evaluate my Blogging and Business Goals.

The Journey

I didn’t start out blogging. I started out just tooling around Facebook, LinkedIn and sometimes Twitter. I got some referrals and brand awareness from Facebook, but not much traffic to my website. LinkedIn connected me to business types, but again, not a lot in the referral department. It wasn’t until I found Gini Dietrich’s blog Spin Sucks that I finally ‘got it’ (yes, I know, I plug her blog ALL the time, but if you visit at all, you understand).

I got the social in social media and I felt like I had finally found my true colleagues, potential new friends, and trusted resources. Stumbling across her blog inspired my first video blog post, got her attention and well, things just started moving. I’m sure you’ve all had similar experiences.

What Happened?

A part of my brain that I hadn’t used in a while suddenly came to life. The part that gets really excited about possibilities. The part that loves to learn new things and actually craves it. The effective use of Twitter and better blogging for my business were about to happen.

I just didn’t know it at the time. All I knew was this was FUN and I was having a blast meeting new people, connecting across continents and discovering new content. I LOVED it. I began blogging more. I tweeted every day, all day and into the night. I was hooked. To add icing to my happy cake, traffic to my website was increasing each and every month by 75-90% over the month before. I could definitively see that it was because of Twitter and my blog.

No. Question. About. It.

Something Was Missing

This is great, right? Yes. And No. Here comes the part where I began to crash. It’s also the part where I just might lose some of you, or at least piss you off.

Yes, this was all freaking fantastic. Here I was having a blast, tweeting, connecting, and blogging. And my traffic to my website is blowing up (relative term here ). The flip side? It was taking a LOT of time. I’m talking way more than it should to keep clients well-serviced and my family in focus.

I was having trouble with balance. I was not focusing on the most lucrative and profitable side of my business. And my goals were shifting. I was craving followers, comments, and increased Klout scores. I was forgetting that all that meant nothing if I didn’t convert it to profitability and sustainability.

Reality Check

To have a successful blog and be in business, I need balance. To be brutally honest, I could see that I was starting to lose a grip on that balance. Something had to give and I couldn’t sleep less than I already was. Burning the candle at both ends was not going to result in more clients; it was in fact going to result in less.

I need to maintain a focus on my clients and their needs, while striking a balance that achieves my desired goals: strong networks, client referrals, and a sustainable business.

The Vitally Important Business Blogging Plan

Lots of folks tout the mantra to just have fun with social media, “give of yourself and good stuff will come.” Lovely. But that’s not a viable, VITAL plan for me. What is?

1. Know and understand WHY you’re online. Is it to grow your business? Become an Influencer? Feel like a rock star? Whatever it is, until you truly fess up to the why, it will be hard to grow and succeed because you won’t know where the heck you’re going, or even how to get there.
2. Determine your GOAL for blogging. Is it to augment your marketing? Become the voice of your company? Drive traffic to your website? Become a Power Adage Blogger? Own it. Embrace it. Make sure it plays well with your business.
3. Determine HOW to achieve your GOAL without sidelining your business in the process. If your goal is to be the best, biggest blog in the land, fantastic. Just make sure that by doing that you have a plan for your business. As Marcus Sheridan, aka The Sales Lion, recently wrote: if you want big, prepare for it.
4. MEASURE it. Check in. Make sure what you said you were going to do is what you’re doing. If it’s not, is it for a good reason? Things do change after all and that can be great. If your approach or your model has changed and there’s no measurable, viable outcome as a result of those changes, then figure out why and how to get back on track.
5. BALANCE it all out. Just because you’ve become the blogging darling everyone wants to have as their guest blogger, your Klout score is hitting new heights, and you have 4x as many followers as you did last month, doesn’t mean it’s good for your business. It is only if you make it so. Only if you can somehow turn those “feel goods” (and they DO feel good, don’t they??!!) into business and make them WORK for and SUPPORT your business, are they good.

At the end of the day, it’s all about what you do with what you’ve got.

Twitter and blogging are powerhouses for networking and referrals. They’re also tons of FUN. The two don’t have to be at odds. You can have fun, grow your networks, and generate leads that ultimately help sustain your business. Just remember to stay in balance, stay focused and know your goals.

Credit Card Reviews: A Closer Look At Popular Cards

Ever wondered if your credit card is the right one for you? Of course you have, but how often have you actually thought about doing anything about it? The truth is, most of us think that once we own a credit card, we are committed to it for life. Many of us fail to look for the bigger, better deal, thinking that we will be rewarded by our credit card companies for our loyalty. However, the loyalty of credit card companies often lies with their bottom lines.

So, what is a savvy consumer to do?

Savvy consumers do exactly what you are doing right now. They search out the best deals on credit cards online or elsewhere. At The Digerati Life, we do our part to provide you with articles that cover the credit card industry and that review many of the top credit cards in the market. We try our best to ferret out all the best deals and limited time offers, and we come up with reviews of cards for every credit profile. We also detail how to use credit cards to your advantage and discuss ways you can control and manage your credit card debt.

And, while this particular category focuses on the card industry and its products, you may also find useful information in our other related categories, such as our Credit Card Comparison and Credit, Debt and Loans sections. So, take a look around and discover all the ways that your credit card or debit card can benefit you.

Need for a fair method for international remittances

Avaaz, an international civic organization that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, and religious conflicts, is calling on people from all walks of life to sign a petition addressed to Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek.

They argue that Western Union is taking critical money from the world’s working poor by charging predatory transfer fees. They further call on their members and all well-wishers to urgently shame Western Union into action by signing the petition. The petition reads like this:

As citizens from around the world committed to eradicating global poverty, we call on you to show true corporate leadership and take immediate steps to ensure crucial international remittances to the world’s poorest countries are subject to fair rates. Specifically, we ask you to lower your total fees to a maximum of 5% in all transfers sent home by workers to developing nations.

Because I am an avaaz member, I usually receive their emails in which, among other things, they ask their members to sign petitions for many types of causes.

I got their email on the Western Union petition on 31 December, 2010. I will reproduce it here so that those of you who are not linked to Avaaz members can take a look as well. It goes like this:

Dear friends,

This holiday season, Josh, a Kenyan student in the Netherlands, scraped together a year’s worth of savings and sent it home to support 10 struggling family members. Shockingly, the giant money transfer company Western Union skimmed off 20% of the cash meant for Josh’s family in fees.

Josh’s story is painfully retold every day, the world over, on a staggering scale — an estimated $44.3 billion worldwide was lost in transfer fees last year! The World Bank recommends that transaction costs not exceed 5% of the total, but Western Union has never faced serious pressure to lower its crippling charges. If we unite in a global outcry now, we can expose its predatory practices when its carefully crafted, family-friendly image is most vulnerable: the giving season.

Josh’s generosity — and that of millions of workers around the world — shouldn’t go to waste! Let’s call on Western Union to lower its fees to 5% for the poorest countries, and when the petition reaches 250,000 we’ll deliver it to the company’s image-sensitive board of directors. Sign now and then forward this to friends and family:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/make_giving_powerful/?vl

Sacrifices like Josh’s dwarf foreign governmental aid every year and provide a vital lifeline to the world’s poorest economies. Slashing the obscene profits of companies like Western Union would dramatically increase assistance flowing into developing countries. Instead, families around the world received far less than they deserved so that Western Union’s CEO could take home $8.1 million in 2009.

The World Bank recommends that transfer companies limit fees to 5% of the amount being transferred, but some banks and companies have astronomical hidden charges. Perversely, the neediest countries coming out of war or disaster suffer the greatest losses, because of transfer companies’ monopolistic privileges and exclusive deals with local banks.

The yearly savings of men and women laboring in hospitals, construction sites and restaurants end up padding Western Union’s profits. The company funds charity projects to improve its corporate image – but these do nothing to hide the massive inequity that their business model perpetrates. Let’s raise our voices loudly to support true generosity during the holiday season – and help bring immediate benefits to workers and the relatives they sustain. Together we can make sure that needy families – rather than CEOs – benefit from holiday giving:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/make_giving_powerful/?vl

When citizens around the world stand together to protest injustice, we can force back unchecked greed and inequality – as we’ve done together before. Buoyed by the warmth and empathy of the holiday season, let’s make sure that generous gifts arrive where they’re most needed.

With hope and gratitude,

Luis, Stephanie, Graziela, David, Paula, Ben, and the rest of the Avaaz team

They cite the following sources at the end of their email:

1. Western Union CEO’s pay more than triples in 2009, Associated Press
2. Past Time for Remittance Justice, ACORN International
3. World Bank Remittance Pricing resource

I would like to commend the folks at Avaaz for this effort. At the time of publishing this post, more than 330,000 people had signed the petition. Their target is 500,000.

I have never used Western Union before, but I have signed this petition. My experiences with international remittances through banks are always painful. Their charges are very high. As if that is not enough, the exchange rates that they use are also dubious.

Banks out there, you also need to take note of this petition. We understand you are in business. You have to make profits to survive. But then, if we do not bring our monies to your doorsteps, you will run out of business. We need a fair deal!

These days, I do not send my money to my relatives through banks. I just use my networks. I deposit my few Yens into a friend’s account here in Japan, who in return asks his relatives to deposit an equivalent amount Malawi Kwacha in my relatives’ account in Malawi.

I am aware of several Africans, mainly from Nigeria, here in Japan who do exactly the same thing. The problem is, however, that you need to have a big and trusted network of friends and friends of friends in order to be doing these kinds of arrangements with ease and urgency.

After reading about how Western Union is milking off folks who use their services, I am beginning to think that we, the people, who send our hard earned cash to our home countries, can come up with a fair global company that will be competing against the likes of Western Union. Is there anyone out there who is thinking like me?

Related posts:

1. International Airtime Transfer to African countries
2. On issues of fair trade in Malawi
3. Mobile Money service thrives in East Africa.When will it come to Malawi?
4. Malawi’s stand at the African fair in Yokohama
5. Yahoo! mail, what’s up???
6. International Courses at the United Nations University in Tokyo – 2009 Session

Chiquita #CrushedIt Swap Your Snacks Mission

You may remember my recent experience with the Chiquita crushed fruit snack product! We did a ton of landscaping in the yard, and as a reward, we had some Chiquita crushed fruit snack product. To quote my 4 year old, “it’s so yummy in my tummy”. Since I enjoyed the Chiquita crushed fruit snack product so much, I took on the mission to replace my normal snacks (you know, Doritos and Cheetos) with Chiquita crushed fruit snack product. I’m in love with the Strawberry Chiquita crushed fruit snack product, so that is the flavor I used. The first thing I noticed is that they are filling. You aren’t hungry after drinking a bottle of Chiquita crushed fruit snack product. You can’t always say that about a bag of chips. I’m all about making small changes in my life to be more healthy (since I am not a huge fruit fan). I love how easy it is to get a great drinkable snack! It’s just as easy to grab a Chiquita crushed fruit snack product than it is anything else that isn’t as healthy!

Chiquita crushed fruit snack products are made when Chiquita bananas are crushed together with another fruit like – Mango, Strawberry, Blueberry, Pineapple or Acai – to create a delicious drinkable snack. Here’s my #CrushedIt experience (shopping trip and sharing it at a barbeque). The Chiquita crushed fruit snack products were a huge hit! The overwhelming favorite flavor was strawberry with mango a very close second. My father-in-law loved the pineapple Chiquita crushed fruit snack product. He even came up with a couple of ways to mix it up (like adding chopped ice to it).

The Chiquita crushed fruit snack products are a great hit at my house and with others. I recommend trying Chiquita crushed fruit snack products!

How to Find a Hacked WordPress Plugin

When your WordPress blog suddenly starts displaying ads for various pharmaceuticals, chances are good that the site’s been hacked. A quick check using the “View Source” option on your favorite browser will probably reveal that a large list of links to dubious sites has been inserted somewhere into the HTML generated by WordPress, probably wrapped in a

tag that shifts it off the displayable area of the screen. This lets Google and other search engines see the links but ensures that the viewers of the site don’t — this kind of hacking is done specifically to get some link juice flowing to those dubious sites.

If you have a pre-hacked backup of your system, the easiest fix is to revert to that backup. But that’s not always an option. At this point you’ll need to start looking at the PHP files that run your WordPress blog, looking for hacked files. (If you’re not techie, this is the time to engage the help of one of your techie friends.)

Check the Theme

Start by looking at the files included with your current WordPress theme. Hacking the footer.php file is a favorite option, for example, or the sidebar.php. You can quickly look through these files directly from the WordPress dashboard using the Editor option under Appearance.

Not There? Check the Plugins

If you can’t find anything in the theme, it’s probably a problem with a plugin. WordPress has a nice extension mechanism that lets plugins add content directly to the generated HTML. Chances are good that one of your plugins has been hacked and is injecting its links via one of these “hooks”.

Grab a copy of the wp-includes/plugin.php file from your site and stash it somewhere safe as a backup. Then make a second copy. Now open that copy with your favorite text editor and look for a PHP function called add_action that looks like this:

function add_action($tag, $function_to_add, $priority = 10, $accepted_args = 1) {
 return add_filter($tag, $function_to_add, $priority, $accepted_args);
}

Insert three lines so it looks like this:

function add_action($tag, $function_to_add, $priority = 10, $accepted_args = 1) {
     echo "\n\n";
     return add_filter($tag, $function_to_add, $priority, $accepted_args);
}

Save the changes and upload the modified file to your blog, overwriting the existing plugin.php. Now reload one of the pages in your browser and view the source to the page. You’ll see a bunch of HTML comments inserted into the generated HTML, like so:

This shows you exactly who is adding a specific hook into the system. The example above shows the Akismet plugin adding a hook. It’s probably OK. There are a lot of hooks that get added, so it may take a while to find the offending plugin. You’re looking for something suspicious like this:

What’s suspicious about this? First of all, the name of the hook is “echo_links”. Second, it’s coming from the Duplicate Content Cure plugin. Third, it’s a “runtime-created function”, which is definitely unusual. So it’s worth a look.

Luckily, the backtrace dump above — the list of all files and functions that were called by PHP in order to add the hook — points me to the file duplicate-content-cure.php on line 80.

To quickly see if this is the culprit, restore the plugin.php to its original state (upload the original you had stashed away somewhere safe) and then disable the plugin in question from the WordPress dashboard and see if the offending content disappears from your site.

Secure Your Site

Once you’ve found the bad plugin, delete it from your site. You may want to install a replacement version of the plugin or find an alternative plugin with similar functionality. Only install plugins (and themes) from sites you trust.

After cleaning your site, be sure to harden your WordPress installation in order to prevent this kind of hacking from occurring in the future.

Beware: Affiliate Marketing Can Jeopardize Your AdWords Account

As I mentioned in the last post, my AdWords account has been “permanently suspended” for landing page and policy violations. Given that I haven’t actually advertised anything for over 6 months, I was surprised by this. Why would an inactive account be banned? I sent in the question to Google (via the AdWords contact form) and eventually got this reply back:

Thank you for your email. Your site ‘burnthefat.com’ has been flagged for Unacceptable Business Practices and was consequently disabled. Because this is considered as a serious violation, your Google AdWords account has been suspended. As a result, your ads will no longer run through the Google AdWords system and that any newly created accounts may be subject to the same suspension.

What struck me about this is that they’re complaining about a site that I promoted (unsuccessfully) as an affiliate in the past. I don’t own burnthefat.com. It’s the site for Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, one of the most (and maybe only) legitimate weight-loss programs available on ClickBank. There are a lot of sketchy things for sale on ClickBank, but I don’t think this is one of them. That said, I wasn’t successful promoting it — weight loss is a very competitive market to break into.

I’m not sure what BurnTheFat.com has done to get itself flagged for “Unacceptable Business Practices”, but apparently I’m collateral damage now. Looking through my AdWords account, I can’t see anything wrong with the ads I placed, which were all similar to these:

• Burn The Fat
  Most Powerful Fat Loss System
  - Official Site
  BurnTheFat.com
• Burn The Fat
  Feed The Muscle!
  - Official Site
  BurnTheFat.com

These ads are nothing special (no Cleos for me!) but I don’t think they’re deceitful. I was doing simple direct linking.

Later in the email they said this:

In a review of your account history, we found at least one submitted site that violated our Advertising Policies. Although you may have removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a history of promoting these types of sites are still subject to account-level suspension.

Again, I’m surprised that burnthefat.com was the trigger and not some of the other ClickBank sites I’ve promoted. Very odd, I wonder what they did? A quick look through the Warrior Forum shows that I’m not the only one who’s had their AdWords account suspended.

After exchanging further emails with Google, it appears that there is no appealing this decision, and they also make it clear that opening a new account will just result in that account being banned as well. So it looks like I’m out of AdWords entirely at this point, which is a bummer. I always liked reporting on the AdWords side of things when talking about AdSense because they’re two sides of the same coin.

It seems draconian to me to be punished for being a past affiliate of a site. Google’s always had a love-hate relationship with affiliate marketing, and now it looks like they’re doing their best to discourage its use with AdWords, especially direct linking.

My recommendations:

• Get a new account: If you’ve promoted affiliate programs in the past, you might want to close your current AdWords account and get a new one in its place. That seems to be the only way to get rid of the historical aspects. Use a different credit card to be safe.
• Avoid affiliate marketing: Probably the safest thing you can do is only promote things you own and create. And make sure your sites are compliant with AdWords policies.
• Don’t direct link: If you must use affiliate marketing, don’t link directly to the vendor’s site. Create your own landing pages and make sure they are compliant.
• Avoid sketchy or controversial topics: Again, if you must use affiliate marketing, stay away from topics like “weight loss”, “gas from water”, etc.

Again, I’d be curious to hear from other advertisers who’ve run into the same issues. It’s too bad they don’t give you a warning first!

Lebron James's Life

LeBron Raymone James (pronounced /ləˈbrɒn/; born December 30, 1984) is an American professional basketball player for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "King James", he was a three-time "Mr. Basketball" of Ohio in high school, and was highly promoted in the national media as a future NBA superstar while a sophomore at St. Vincent – St. Mary High School. He was selected with the number one pick in the 2003 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers and signed a shoe contract with Nike before his professional debut. Listed as a small forward, James has set numerous youngest player records since joining the league. He was named the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2003–04, NBA Most Valuable Player in 2008–09 and 2009–10, and has been both All-NBA selection and an All-Star every season since 2005. In 2010, a much-publicized free agency process ended with James signing with the Miami Heat. He became the third reigning NBA MVP to change teams and the first since Moses Malone in 1982.
The focal point of the Cleveland offense, James led the team to consecutive playoff appearances from 2006 through 2010. In 2007, the Cavaliers advanced to the Conference Finals for the first time since 1992 and to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. James has been a member of the USA national team, winning a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics and gold at the 2008 Olympics.