My new website: www.thedisplacedafrican.com

I can now be found at the Displaced African website: www.thedisplacedafrican.com


My new website: www.thedisplacedafrican.com

The interconnectedness of things

I am amazed by how interconnected everything I am learning is. Anyone who is familiar with Jay Abraham's work knows that among other great things it centers around a couple of things:
a) Getting the most profit from the least amount of work and constantly scanning one's business and life for windfall profits that have yet to be discovered or exploited.
b) The strategy of preeminence in which the seller transforms into the customer's number one advisor and confidante.
Now contrast that with Yaro Starak from the blogging mastermind and his ideas:
According to him a great blog basically centres around two ideas:
a) Getting the most profit from the least amount of work: To this end, Yaros heavily suggests outsourcing anything that is not one's strength or competency. Side note: A lot of the articles that I have to read as part of Jay's mentorship program encourage one to discover one's passions and competencies and work on those while delegating or outsourcing everything else.

b) That a great money making blog has two components:
* Pillar content: First of all one must know which niche they wish to serve through the information they post on their blog. Then they must create content so compelling and useful to the niche they serve that it can be relevant to the niche years from when it's written and therefore act as an asset in the long term.
*Marketing:One must establish communication channels that will reach maximum numbers of people from the niche one serves. As you would probably know, Jay Abraham's great gift is in marketing.
Again, it's absoloutely fascinating how interconnected everything is and my force and energy is getting concentrated in one direction (financial freedom) with all sources of information guiding me in the same general direction.

Mwas

Internet Marketing

Hey guys,

Just thought I would recommend this site. It's one of the ways I got certain about wanting to be mentored by Jay Abraham it has a large number of free interviews with business and marketing experts. Below is a short description of it. Hope it is useful to me as it has been to me:


"Over 117 Hours of FREE Audio Interviews
With Sales, Marketing and Business Success Experts."

Michael Senoff's www.hardtofindseminars.com is the world's leading
FREE digital audio business library that uses the power of personal
interviews and storytelling to capture and relay the advice of
world-class business experts. Get free audio interviews of the
experience and guidance of business leaders on the subjects of
direct marketing, business buying, writing, effective
advertising, referral marketing, negotiating, product development,
marketing consulting, and the art of how to get free advertising.
Take the tour at now at - http://www.hardtofindseminars.com

Hope that helps,
Mwas

Quick update

Hey,
I have been busy moving forward and as a result I have been away from this blog for WAAAAYYYYY TOOOO LONNG but I am back to give a quick update on the huge strides forward I have made in recent days.

1) The articles I read by Dr. Covey and Brian Tracy continue to impact me deeply. I was due to submit my passive self-income audit (basically a 16 page questionaire whereI assess where I'm at) YESTERDAY but I have just been synethesizing and rewriting and as soon as I'm done here I will get right back to the work of finishing it up and sending it off.
2) The mentorship program has a plethora of articles. The articles have a plethora of useful, immediately actionable resources and information. I have decided, rather than going through the articles, 2-3 a day (which is what I have been doing, with limited success), I will go right back to the begining and try to suck every drop of usefulness out of each article especially the Dr. Covey article, the Brian Tracy articles and the current article I am chewing over:
3) John Dudeck on Highest and Best Use: The first idea alone from this article is immediately applicable in my life. It is a challenge for me to find my strengths (like Popeye with his spinach, lol) and my areas of flow. I can't comment on this article too much because it was after reading this first great idea that I immediately felt I had to go back and fully appreciate and integrate the great info I had read from the other articles.

4) I have been focussing on improving my health, diet and body...so far, great, my eating habits have dramatically improved, the 5 kilograms of junk that I took off during Unleash the Power Within(yup, for some reason during those 4 days I dropped 5 kilograms while eating about 6 meals a day and drinking water every half hour......I'm amazed myself). This brings my total fat loss to about 15 kilograms since the begining of the year. I'm working on consolidating the psychology neccesary to not only keep this going but push my body to places that previously would have been unimaginable (including dancing, endurance sports, martial arts etc etc)
5) I joined a Blog Mastermind run by Yaro Starak. Yarro's sends me audio and articles each week to read and APPLY and I have access to a forum where I can ask him and other members of the Mastermind ( we are about 240) questions that will help me commericalize my blog and make $4000-$6000 a month from 2 hours of work like Yarros.

6) The Blog will be moving to Wordpress: The first lesoon from Yarros is on how to transfer to Wordpress and the advantages of using Wordpress. Therefore, this blog and my MAS blog will be moving over there over the course of the next week.
7) I will eliminate my book review/story time blog for lack of time and merge it with this financial freedom blog and my MAS blog.

Finally, I am searching for a life coach because I am getting to the point where I am juggling way too much and my time management skills are very poor. I need someone to help me organize my life better, quantify the important areas of my life with greater clarity, help me uncover the MOST IMPORTANT AREAS TO WORK ON and things I simply shouldn't even work on. I have found a lady who seems quite promising and I will keep you posted on how it all goes.

And, oh yes, I am, also looking for a personal trainer in the health and fitness side. I just finished going through Pete Sisco's ebook. I first heard about Pete and his training methods about four years ago but in my mind I simply assumed he was a con-artist. After emailing a couple of personal trainers, hearing about his methods from Anthony Robbins and doing a bit of research on the net, I have come to see that his training methods are simply controversial but far from pseudo-science or con-artist scams. Therefore I have decided to go through the workouts proposed in his e-book, using, his online strength coach service as a guide. However to avoid mistakes I made in the past including poor form and 'over-exubarance', I'll get a personal trainer. I'll write this up more in my MAS blog

PS: I updated my networth to incorporate the remaining equity in my credit card (so far, I have spent about $4,000 and have about $700 left).

Networth IQ

You may notice that to the right, there is a scale indicating my financial net worth. The straw that finally broke the camel's back on putting that on the site, BEFORE I start earning money was a coaching session by a man known as Scott Harris who is a trainer for Anthony Robbin's company and the interview I read of Brian Tracy by Jay Abraham. Boiled down into one simple, easy-to apply step it's this:

In any field of human endeavour, there are those few key behaviours that will produce the most singificant change, find out what they are and make sure you measure (i.e. QUANTIFY) your progress because measured behaviour improves whereas unmeasured behaviour may dissipate

With that in mind, I have decided to buy a journal, and I am going to work even harder to get a morning ritual that involves visualization and recording and measuring my progress in my journal. This journal will also record my health and fitness goals which I talk about in my MAS blog.
The legendary Dr. Wayne Dyer

Anyway, just a quick update.

Enjoy,
Mwas

Update on Jay Abraham's mentorship program

Hey,
I am so excited because I have been busy as a bee on cordial; Jay has sent out about 30 documents for us to read by the 8th of November when we'll have our first mentor call. I am really getting impacted by articles on having a vision and defining life exactly as I want it. So far I have made the following changes:
1) I had planned to make the money first and THEN go after my life's bliss and purpose.
Instead the articles I have read thus far have really challenged me to INTEGRATE my vision for my life with my financial goals and let the passion from my life's desires spill over, no better yet, drive me, towards my financial goals and that way I'll achieve quicker. It's for that reason that I am now rewriting my life's plan synergizing even further my spiritual, financial, physical, achievement and other goals. Challenging stuff! Below are some key points on articles I have read thus far:

Dr Stephen Covey on Passion
Key insight: Start by thinking about your mission in life and gear EVERYTHING in your life around that. My goal coming into the program was to get passive income streams going AND THEN start pursuing my life's purpose. However Dr. Covey has inspired me to realize that I must pursue my life purpose FIRST and then check and see if passive income is in alignment with it.
Key action step: I must rewrite my self-assessment audit form beginning with my life mission first in mind rather than focussing on passive income first and then life mission second
Key questions: How can one make life planning fun? To me it seems like such a tedious lonely process. What ways have people managed to make it fun?
Jay Abraham interviewed by Anthony Robbins
Key insight: The infinite possibilities for growth if one is willing to measure and quantify the key areas of their life and constantly re-evaluate and re-measure these areas.
Key action step: Begin to quantify the key areas of my life - emotional. physical, monetary, spiritual???- and work out a fun plan of measurement and constant reevaluation.
Key questions: What are the fun systems that already exist to measure key areas that I can model and copy and how can I incorporate them into my day to day life?

Brian Tracy on Paying Yourself What You're Worth
Key insights: When engaging in any economic activity, ask yourself, "how much am I earning per hour doing this?", "Figure out the skill you are weakest at and make it the area of your greatest strength."
Key action steps: I will engage in the goal setting exercise set by Brian Tracy this evening.
Key questions: Perhaps some anecdotes in regards to the weakest skill exercise to support his ideas.
Stephen Covey (Dr. Covey's son) on Trust
Key insight: Trust causes expediency, we should see trust as a way of speeding up the lifting of everyone towards their goals.
Key action steps: Must dedicate myself to the study of how to build rapport with a wide variety of people as opposed to the narrow scope that I currently build rapport with; will begin the search for 'relationship and rapport' models
Key questions: Who are experts in the field of relationship building and rapport that I can model.

Excited!

Mwas

Thank God for Problogger

A few additional distinctions from the Problogger article on Darvas box theories (again these are my scribled notes)

Thank God for Protrader. Within their Darvas box tutorial they perfectly explain how to create a box:
Search for an all time high in a stock and if that price is not exceeded for a predetermined number of days –for Darvas it was 3- then that was the top of the box.
To create the bottom of the box we search for the lowest price not touched or exceeded for the last 3 days i.e. we do the same thing as finding the top of the box but in reverse.

I must create a trading rule regarding allowable capital risk per trade.

Calculate one’s break even

(Total cost of trading=(Parcel size*stock price)+ entry brokerage+ exit brokerage)/Parcel size
Here one can calculate the number of shares they need to buy and the price they require to break even-have no loss!!!



How to select an industry?
Darvas tended to trade in ‘expensive’ stocks believing you should buy dear and sell dearer and liked to invest in emerging and expanding industries.

I am now a member of Jay Abraham's mentorship program!

Part one of an interview with the richest man in Europe and 5th richest man on Earth


Just an update on what I have been up to:


a) Got access to materials from the Jay Abraham mentorship program. Great stuff! So far I have read through his ideas on preeminence and I have also read a transcript of one of the first exposures I ever had to Jay: an interview he did with Anthony Robbins. As we speak I am also reading through an interview he conducted with Dr. Stephen R. Covey.
b) I spoke about how I finished reading the Nicholas darvas classic: How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market. Darvas box theory was a bit complex to me and so I scampered about the net looking for some video or document that summarizes it. Then....another 'law of attraction'-type moment occured:

A couple of weeks back I had been searching for share trading educators and brokers so I could attend their free seminars and I found a company known as Protrader which sent me a free copy of their trading software package. As I was searching the net, looking for a simplified source of information on darvas box theory I began installing the Protrader software. Lo and behold, right there in the tutorial section was an explanation of the darvas box theory and how to apply it using Protrader. I have been going through the book again the last couple of hours trying to summarize his system and below are my scribbled notes so far:

Step one: Look for a stock that has recently reached a 52 week high.
Step two: Check for a stock that has had low trading volume and has suddenly had a huge surge in trading volume.

The reason we do this is because we assume if a stock is at a new high and more people are trading it, it’s a sign that more people are interested in that stock for one reason or another.

Step three: Make sure the stock you select is lively.

NB: If a stock moves from a higher to a lower box immediately sell it; SET THE STOP LOSS AT THE TOP OF THE PREVIOUS BOX OR IN BETWEEN THE BOTTOM OF THE CURRENT STOCK AND THE TOP OF THE PREVIOUS BOX.

Step four: Wait for the stock to move from the box you found it up into the next box and then buy it if:
a) It’s trading volume is high, increasing and is dramatically higher than a year ago and previous months.
b) That’s had a surge of price following its arrival at a 52 week high.

Step five: Different stocks have different ranges that define the bottom and top of their boxes.

Step six: When you purchase place a stop loss immediately and if you won’t be available to buy the stock make sure you place an “on-stop” order for the stocks you would like.

Step seven: When a stock jumps into the next box, change the position of the stop loss to the top of the previous box.

Step seven: Select stocks from industries with high growth.

Remaining question: How to set the limits of the box? How to select an industry?

I should committ to my first trade some time in the next few hours......

Be blessed
Mwas

Darvas BoxesVisa, Amazon.com and Jay Abraham

Just thought I would send out an update on what I have been doing since I finished stage one of optimizing my blog for adsense.

1) Visa: The credit card I applied for came in. To maximize leverage I was expecting between $10,000 - $50,000 but instead I got a $5,000 limit. Now this doesn't give me the amount of $$ I was planning to spend or the emotional leverage that the $10,000 - $50,0000 would have given me but it was sufficient for me to sign up for:
2) Jay Abraham's mentorship program: That promises to teach me within 13 months how to be completely financially free. Does this sound like something credible coming from the 2 billion dollar man.
Yup! I first heard of Jay Abraham through Anthony Robbin's Powertalk series (which I talk about later).when he was interviewed by Anthony Robbins Later I heard of him through Stephen Pierce and Michael Senoff.
After hearing about him enough times I was convinced this was a guy to take a chance on and now I am a part of his 13 month mentorship program. Will keep you all posted!
3) Amazon affiliate: I am now a part of the self-proclaimed most succesful affiliate program on the Web; the Amazon affiliate program. I signed up for my Book Review/Story Time blog because I intend on using it to review books that touch me in addition to writing stories.

So what have I done with my Visa $ since I got it:
1) Bought Anthony Robbins Powertalk series: There are 66 CDs and I got them for about $330 dollars. I decided to get the series as I have listened to a few of his Powertalk interviews and decided I would like to model his interview style when I begin my own podcast show (I was forced to post pone this until early next year.)
2) Paid off a library fine from many years back: $300
3) Signed up for the mentorship program, giving it a 30 day trial: $3,300

4) Darvas Boxes: I finished reading Nicholas Darvas book. Great stuff! He completely breaks down his trading system that he used to net $2,000,0000. I have done some minimal research online and through my Technical association group and discovered that his ideas have stood the test of time. Therefore in the spirit of modelling success I will take time to fully understand his trading system and then begin "test trading" (with small amounts of money) either tonight or tomorrow night. Will keep you all posted.

Mwas

Optimizing adsense ads design and positioning

When I first signed up for Adsense, the first thing I did was work on my ads design and positioning so that it blended seamlessly with the material. Therefore, it is for this reason that I skipped over Problogger's tips on optimizing positioning and design of adsense ads. Oddly enough, now that I have come to the end of the Problogger guide to maximizing adsense revenue, my adsense ads on all my three sites have disappeared. I am hoping I did not do anything to offend Google but I will keep you all updated. The next book I am going to read, or rather re-read is the E-myth by Michael Gerber because eventually I want to systemize all my passive income streams so that I can go out and focus on doing other things. Below is a video of a talk by the author Michael Gerber


Mwas

Part 3 of Opimizing Adsense Revenue: Relevant Ads

Today I skimmed over Problogger's tips to making sure the ads on your site are relevant (i.e. they are in line with the blog content and therefore optimize on adsense revenue). Here are some things you can do to make sure adsense gives you relevant ads:
1)Increasing key word density: Once you have gone through the process of identifying keywords that produce high paying ads, make sure to include the key words in the title, first pargraph and sprinkle it throughout the article making it bold,underlining it etc.
2)Check your articles, sidebars, headings etc to make sure that you're not regularly using keywords that have nothing to do with your blog topic.
3) Block irrelevant ads.
Below is the most watched video in Youtube history -61 million views- the Internet definitely has potential for communicating ideas, no doubt in my mind.

High Paying Google Adsense Words

I skimmed over the Problogger guide to getting high paying adsense ads because I decided that I would focus on the final two factors that influence adsense revenue namely relevant adsense ads and optimally designed and positioned adsense ads. These are things that I can implement and apply immediately and easily and so I will finish them off before coming back to obtaining high paying ads and increasing blog traffic.

Financial Freedom? I am not alone

First of all, I changed the names and descriptions of my blogs. This was done for the sake of optimizing my blog to comply with high value key words.
How did I know whether a word is a key word? 1)The first method suggested by Problogger is to go to 7search.com and type in key words that you would like to use in your site to see the number of searches on the 7 search site and the amount of the top bids.
2) The second is to go to Google, type in key words that you would like to use in your site, check the number of results and check the number of sponsored links as the number of sponsored links is....the number of advertisers bidding on a particular key word.
The great Napoleon Hill whose mega-classic Think and Grow Rich moved me at the core of my being


The reason I changed my blog's name to financial freedom is because of the following stats:
1) 7 search statistics on the term "financial freedom"
2) Google statistics on the term "financial freedom"

Secondly I am not alone! In the last hour I have found and subscribed to five blogs on financial freedom and it is so encouraging to see that we are a community. I will post their links on my site and attempt to get linkbacks from them. So look out for a box full of links to other great personal development blogs.

Mwas

I Have Stopped Increasing blog traffic

I have finished going over Problogger's tips for increasing traffic from the Adsense optimizing series. Clearly I still have a lot of work to do; at last check I was at 400 visitors. I have decided to maximize the other less interactive elements of my blog and still have the fundamentals covered on those so that I can come back later and focus 100% on increasing traffic to my site.


Mwas

Blog Search Engine Optimization and some recommended reading

A couple of days ago I posted a list of blog search engines that I would subcribe to. I just thought I would post my progress with that:
Blogger Talk- added myself to blogger talk, posted my blog on the introduction page and tried to trade links with 2 users, awaiting reply.
Blogger Forum - joined and introduced the community to my blog.
IceRocket - signed up and registered my site,awaiting registration.
Bloglines- couldn't sign up will try later
BlogScope- couldn't sign up, will try later.
Sphere: couldn't sign up, will try later.
Time for a break. Let's hear some wisdom from Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda (he must have been born in Kenya, he carries himself in a manner so similar to Kenyans)

I signed up for the Blogger Help Group and added my blog to the share your blog section
I just signed up for a service known as Blogrush. I was refered to the service by the Blogger Talk Forum Please go to their homepage and have a look at their introduction video. It looks promising. Anyone with any information on this. Let me know.

I just got an email from a fellow member of the Unleash the Power Within alumni in which she recommended the book the One Minute Millionaire by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen. I will probably borrow it sometime this afternoon and post a review on my Story Time blog. Below is an interview with the man behind the marketing of the mega-best seller the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren,

He he he silly me

I already had a social bookmarking icon that would allow readers to bookmark my blog, I had just added it as a page element for the entire blog instead of adding it at the end of each post. I have corrected this now and if you wish to socially bookmark any of my posts, you are now able to do so.
I have now registered and joined the Digg and delicious communities so that I can be a part of the community and get more traffic to my blogs as a community member.


Mwas

Dig and del.icio.us

I am now registering with Digg and del.icio.us. I have seen these two social bookmarking sites popping up all over the place. As would be expected Digg and del.icio.us are mentioned in my make-money-from-blogging-bible Problogger
The movie above talks exclusively about using del.icio.us and the videos below is on social bookmarking in general.
Enjoy,
Mwas

The video below talks about how to add a number social bookmarking icons to each of your articles. Prior to watching the video below read this article on How to Add Social Bookmarking Icons in Blogger from the Home Business Wiz website.

Google Webmasters

I have added yet another feature that I don't fully understand in the form of Google Webmaster Tools which I currently believe is a service that crawls over my website and gives me important statistics relevant to search engine optimization.

I have also began adding labels to each of my posts. I think this will make search engine optimization more effective.
I will quit working on search engine optimization for the time being so that I can go through the rest of the problogger adsense tutorial
Mwas

Ping-o-matic

There is a great pinging website known as ping-o-matic that allows one to optimize their blog for search engines by pinging to various search engines. Check it out, it seems great!

I won't lie, the sign up process for the various pinging services is easy but I have no idea what the consequences of what I have done. I am sure it will come together one sweet money filled day :-)

Mwas

Search Engine Optimization

If you go to Problogger there is a great link to a series on the website Search Engine Journal on how to optimize one's blogger blog for maximum search engine optimization. Remember that according to problogger, 95% of his traffic is as a result of search engine optimization. I'll tell you how it all goes.

Mwas


Some great tips gathered so far:
1) Link back to other related sites
2) Use bold and hyperlink text as often as is humanly possible
3) Make sure you use often searched terms often in your article.
4)