Happy as You Want to Be 04/23/2010
Almost everyone have heard the hit single 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' by Bobby McFerrin. The song has a very catchy way of conveying its message of being happy to everyone. Bobby Mcferiin's simple message surely made a lot of people by telling them not to worry. Living a happy, resilient and optimistic life is wonderful, and is also good for your health. Being happy actually protects you from the stresses of life. Stress is linked to top causes of death such as heart disease, cancer and stroke. One of the better things ever said is - 'The only thing in life that will always remain the same is change', and in our life we have the power to make the necessary changes if we want to. Even if we find ourselves in an unbearable situation we can always find solace in the knowledge that it too would change. Social networks or relationships are essential to happiness. People are different, accept people for who or what they are, avoid clashes, constant arguments, and let go of all kinds of resentments. If arguments seem unavoidable still try and make an effort to understand the situation and you might just get along with well with Happiness is actually found in everyone, increasing it is a way to make a life more wonderful and also more healthy. To be happy is relatively easy, just decide to be a happy person. Abraham Lincoln observed that most people for most of the time can choose how happy or stressed, how relaxed or troubled, how bright or dull their outlook to be. The choice is simple really, choose to be happy. There are several ways by which you can do this. Being grateful is a great attitude. We have so much to be thankful for. Thank the taxi driver for bringing you home safely, thank the cook for a wonderful dinner and thank the guy who cleans your windows. Also thank the mailman for bringing you your mails, thank the policeman for making your place safe and thank God for being alive. News is stressful. Get less of it. Some people just can't start their day without their daily dose of news. Try and think about it, 99% of the news we hear or read is bad news. Starting the day with bad news does not seem to be a sensible thing to do. A religious connection is also recommended. Being part of a religious group with its singing, sacraments, chanting, prayers and meditations foster inner peace. Manage your time. Time is invaluable and too important to waste. Time management can be viewed as a list of rules that involves scheduling, setting goals, planning, creating lists of things to do and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire. Laugh and laugh heartily everyday. Heard a good joke? Tell your friends or family about it. As they also say -'Laughter is the best medicine'. Express your feelings, affections, friendship and passion to people around you. They will most likely reciprocate your actions. Try not to keep pent up anger of frustrations, this is bad for your health. Instead find ways of expressing them in a way that will not cause more injury or hurt to anyone. Working hard brings tremendous personal satisfaction. It gives a feeling of being competent in finishing our tasks. Accomplishments are necessary for all of us, they give us a sense of value. Work on things that you feel worthy of your time. Learning is a joyful exercise. Try and learn something new everyday. Learning also makes us expand and broaden our horizons. And could also give us more opportunities in the future. Run, jog, walk and do other things that your body was made for. Feel alive. Avoid exposure to negative elements like loud noises, toxins and hazardous places. These are the few simple things you can do everyday to be happy. And always remember the quote from Abraham Lincoln, he says that, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Add Comment Submitting How-To Articles The Easy Way! 04/21/2010
Have you ever wanted to submit how-to articles to various websites, but you haven't had the time, or were even sure how to do it? Well here's a shortcut that's so easy, you won't make any more make excuses. The website is called Top7Business.com, a business-focused article site that only accepts articles in what is call a "tip sheet" format. The outline is simple:
For the Top7Business.com site, they want business-oriented articles that are a collection of 7 tips, secrets or strategies that fit one of these categories: Success tips Cool quotes Leadership Energy Vision Attraction strategies Innovation Management Personnel strategies Customer service Time mastery Self-improvement Selling tips Marketing Advertising Public relations Pricing strategies Negotiation Presentation tips Wealth building/Finances Email strategies Search engine secrets Web techniques Internet tips Computer suggestions To learn how to submit a set of "tips" go to their website and click on their guidelines. Easy to follow and quick to do! Once you've submitted one or more, you'll be amazed at how easy it is. And you can even use that tip sheet as the basis for a longer how-to article. This is the easiest format I have ever seen. Come on storytellers and speakers...let's show the world what we know! YOU MIGHT BE A STORYTELLER IF 04/18/2010
I have posted many of these over the year on various sites. so here is your chance to see them all in one spot! enjoy!
How To Build Your Own Digital Store 04/16/2010
What good are your products if you don’t have a place where you could sell them, right? Think of the internet as one big marketplace. Naturally, to be able to sell your wares in a venue like this, you will need a store… a digital store. This digital store takes the form of your website. A website that sells information products does not have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler it is, the better it would be. Designing your website would depend on what products you’re selling, and how many products you’re actually offering. If you’re just offering one product for sale, you could simply host one page for the same. This page is called a sales page, or a sales copy. A sales page is where you could try to persuade your visitors to purchase your products. This can be done in a variety of ways. Usually, internet marketers hire a copywriter to prepare a sales page for their goods. However, copywriters don’t come cheap. Some of them charge thousands of dollars per sales page. Some even charge a percentage of the sales you’ll be able to generate, as their fee. If the copywriter is good, trust that whatever he will come up with would most certainly result in quite a number of sales, and eventual profit, for your online business. The question that needs to be asked, really, is if you have the resources to procure the services of one? Even if you don’t have such allotted resources for such, you could still prepare your own sales copy. Simply keep in mind the following guidelines: Your sales page should start with an attention grabbing headline. If you’re selling an eBook about dog grooming for example, you could emphasize on the best benefit that your readers would be able to derive from the same. Here is an illustrative headline: “Finally, An Ebook That Reveals Easy And Comprehensive Steps In Keeping Your Canine Companion Squeaky Clean!” Remember, a headline should be able to grab your visitors’ attention to compel them to read the rest of what you have to say. Always be guided by this rule. After your salutations (“Dear Sir/Ma’am;” “Dear Internet Friend;” Dear Valued Customer;” etc.), you should first introduce who you are and what your business is about. This would make your readers know that they are dealing with a credible expert in the field. Also, this would diminish the anonymity that sometimes makes them hesitant to trust you with their hard-earned money. Establish the necessity for the product you’re about to offer. Discuss the market and why there is a need for your goods. This can be done by enumerating some problems with the way things are. With our running example of dog grooming, you could create a semblance of necessity for your eBook if you would discuss the rather unpleasant smell that unclean pups would leave in the house, or the fur that comes off their bodies because of their lack of grooming, etc. Introduce your product. Include the specifications for the same. Enumerate ALL the benefits that could be derived from the use of your product. Lastly, create a sense of urgency. Many internet marketers label this as a “call to action.” This is where you would be able to get them off their seats, in a manner of speaking, and punch their credit card details to order your product. This is the most important component of your sales page. A sales page can easily become the entirety of your website by itself. Simply add a payment button that would lead your would-be customers to the payment processing page. This is dependent on the merchant account you will procure. PayPal, 2checkout, and ClickBank are the most popular payment processors for online businesses. If you’re offering multiple products for sale, you would need a sales page for each of them. Your landing page (the page that would load up when the visitor would type in your URL) should contain links to each of your product’s sales page. As a side note I have set up a sales digital sales store two places: Reverbnation-It's free and easy to use! http://www.reverbnation.com/store/artist_46803 and at Lulu.com-Super easy to use and free! http://stores.lulu.com/mikemiller You may have a new website you want to get indexed with the various search engines at the soonest possible time. Or you may have an existing website which you want to position well in the search engine results. Or you may have a good performing website which you want to remain competitive. Whatever your reason may be, you’re sure to benefit from the blog and ping combo. Now, you may have heard or read about this before, but your never realized how it works. Or this may be the first time you have been acquainted with this surefire technique. Regardless, much can be learned from this article as we discuss the basics and the mechanics of the blog and ping strategy. It All Starts With A Blog Web logs, or blogs as people have fondly referred to them in recent years, were originally designed for social purposes. People used it as online diaries where they could post their thoughts, the events of their days, their secret desires and the likes. But blogs possessed some very special qualities that internet marketers found hard to dismiss.
The strategy goes like this:
Blogs produce RSS feeds. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, a technology that would allow you to broadcast any changes on your blog to subscribed systems. This is actually the heart of the blog-ping combo. You have to learn how to syndicate your RSS feeds. If you’re using blogger, it’s easy. Take your blog’s URL. For example, it is: www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com Now, all you have to do is to add the extension atom.xml. So, it should appear like this: www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml This is the URL of your RSS feeds. Now you need an RSS aggregator somewhere which could pick up your RSS feeds. Preferably, it is a website that can be easily crawled by search engine spiders. The perfect spot for this is www.my.yahoo.com . Simply create a Yahoo account, then go to the said page. Find the ADD RSS button, then press on the same. Then paste the URL of your RSS feeds. Every time you’d update your blog, RSS feeds would be generated and displayed in www.my.yahoo.com . Now It’s Time To The Ping Once your www.my.yahoo.com is set up, every time you’d post a new entry on your blog, you’ll have to go to www.pingomatic.com . Fill up the appropriate fields, then submit. This will inform a lot of blog directories that your blog has new entries. And this would drive the search engine spiders on a feeding frenzy. It’ll be a reminder for them to check out your blog come the next relevant query. Again, you have to do this every time you will post a new entry. No exceptions! How powerful is the blog-ping combo? Your new website will get indexed in Yahoo within 5 days. This is guaranteed! And with Yahoo picking up your website, and with www.blogger.com being owned by Google, it wouldn’t be long until the world’s most widely used search engine would index your new website as well. And if the blog-ping combo could do this for new websites, just think of the possibilities it could provide for older ones. Fantastic, isn’t it? Freelancing: Skills For Cash 04/14/2010
Freelancing refers to the process of offering your services for someone else on a per project basis. The best way to explain this is through an example. Supposing you possess excellent writing skills. There are millions (and I’m not exaggerating) of webmasters and internet marketers out there who are in need of fresh content and new products on a daily basis. Their demand for digitally written works is so great that even if they are blessed with just as much writing prowess, they won’t have the time to come up with everything that they need. Hence, they resort to outsourcing. And this is where you enter the picture. As a freelancer offering your writing services for a fee, you could take in some projects they will give you. You will be paid per delivery, and once that’s done, you could take in more clients for consistent earnings. But freelancing is not only limited to writing, or ghostwriting as it is technically known. There are other services that you could offer, depending on the area of proficiency you possess. Here are more examples: ·graphic creation and design ·web creation and design ·software development ·data encoding ·translation to specific languages ·marketing consultancy ·strategic placement consultancy There are more, of course, ranging from something as complex as creating advanced scripts to something as seemingly trivial but as surprisingly effective as forum posting (yes, I kid you not! You’ll get paid per post you make!). The bottom line is, if you have some services to offer that can be delivered digitally, freelancing is always available for you. There are advantages and disadvantages to this earning opportunity. Let’s take a look at the distinct benefits you can reap from this option. You can work anytime you want, from the comforts of your own home. Your only concern is to deliver high quality products on or before the deadline your client has set. Freelancing requires minimal investment, or none at all. Promoting your services can be done without spending a single cent. But as with everything else, the best advertising vehicles are often those which you have to pay for. Be that as it may, you won’t be promoting heavily, and any financial investment you will be forced to make will not cost you a fortune. You have the liberty to accept the projects that you want, and turn down the projects you’re not happy about. Orders will come from your clients, but you remain your own boss. It’s not entirely a bed of roses for freelancing. Let’s take a look at the disadvantages of this trade. You will earn an amount equivalent to the work you have done. If you could only do so much in one day, you could only earn just as much. Surpassing that threshold is quite improbable. You will have to work, many hours on occasions. Freelancing may afford you certain liberties, but the same principle applies: no work, no pay. Expansion is also quite improbable. You’re only a single person. There is only so much you could do. Your orders would be dependent on how efficiently you market your services. There are other earning opportunities that promise more rewards for less work using the same marketing vehicles you will be forced to take. If you want to dabble in freelancing, here are some splendid places where you could advertise your services and solicit some clients: www.elance.com www.rentacoder.com www.scriptlance.com www.guru.com The choice is yours, dear friend. If you’re looking for sure profit fast, then freelancing is a great option indeed. But if you want to plan long-term, I suggest that you explore other earning opportunities as well. How To Write A Tall Tale 04/11/2010
This is an outline I use in one of my workshops on Storytelling. Use it and pass it on! A tall tale is a humorous, simple story which tells of extraordinary, impossible happenings. The characters and action in a tall tale are exaggerated. The tall tale is a type of literary work which originated on the American frontier. THE KEY TO A TALL TALE IS EXAGGERATION! Your first step is to choose a tall tale hero-you might invent a new character (maybe a character based on a legendary hero from your area). Remember, the key is to EXAGGERATE your hero's characteristics. Make him or her bigger or stronger or faster or smarter than anyone else! Now you need an adventure for your tall tale hero. Once again, the key is to EXAGGERATE. The main event of a tall tale is not something that can happen in real life. If you need some help with your story, try filling in the blanks of the tall tale story form below: (Name of tall tale hero) was the (describing words, like toughest, smartest) man/woman in the state of (name state). Everyone for miles around knew (hero's name) and loved to tell and retell of his/her amazing feats. Now one day (hero's name) went to visit Grandfather (or whomever). Grandfather had been having big problems with (Grandfather explained his problem.) That was all it took. Right away (Hero dug, rode, whipped,built, made, cooked, etc) (How the hero solved Grandfather's problem) Grandfather's problem was solved, and the folks in (the state you chose) now had a new story to tell about (hero's name) How To Write a Blues Song! Funny! 04/01/2010
attributed to Memphis Earlene Gray with help from Uncle Plunky, revisions by Little Blind Patti D. and Dr. Stevie Franklin) 1. Most Blues begin, "Woke up this morning." 2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, 'less you stick something nasty in the next line, like "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town" 3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes ... sort of: "Got a good woman - with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher - and she weigh 500 pound." 4. The Blues are not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch; ain't no way out. 5. Blues cars: Chevys and Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft an' state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die. 6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis. 7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in St. Paul or Tucson is just depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain. 8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cuz you skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg cuz an alligator be chomping on it is. 9. You can't have no Blues in an office or a shopping mall.The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster. 10. Good places for the Blues: a. highway b. jailhouse c. empty bed d. bottom of a whiskey glass Bad places: a. Ashrams b. gallery openings c. Ivy League institutions d. golf courses 11. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit,'less you happen to be an old ethnic person and you slept in it. 12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues? Yes, if: a. you're older than dirt b. you're blind c. you shot a man in Memphis d. you can't be satisfied No, if: a. you have all your teeth b. you were once blind but now can see c. the man in Memphis lived. d. you have a retirement plan or trust fund. 13. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Gary Coleman could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues. 14. If you ask for water and Baby give you gasoline, it's the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are: a. wine b. whiskey or bourbon c. muddy water d. black coffee The following are NOT Blues beverages: a. mixed drinks b. kosher wine c. Snapple d. sparkling water 15. If it occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack,it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or getting liposuction. 16. Some Blues names for women: a. Sadie b. Big Mama c. Bessie d. Fat River Dumpling 17. Some Blues names for men: a. Joe b. Willie c. Little Willie d. Big Willie 18. Persons with names like Sierra, Sequoia, Auburn and Rainbow can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis. 19. Make your own Blues name (starter kit): a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example, Blind Lime Jefferson, or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.") 20. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own a computer, you cannot sing the blues. Ten Tips For Telling Stories 03/25/2010
1. Tell the story with expression in your voice. 2. Use body movement as you tell the story. 3. Welcome the listeners, using a carefully controlled voice, neither to high or too low. 4. Relax. 5. Have all preparations which need to be made in advance completed before the audience settles down. 6. Make sure that everyone is comfortable, and that they can see you. 7. Background to understand the story may in some cases be required. 8. Keep eye contact with your audience. 9. Make it as fun and interesting for your audience as possible. 10. Enjoy it! |   Mike MillerMike is a Full contact Free Range Speaker, Trainer & Storyteller based out of Charleston, SC ArchivesMay 2010 CategoriesAll  |
Seed Newsvine