New Look for IBGS Site!

If you have been out and around then you have seen that I am in the mist of overhauling my IBGS site. Needless to say, it is well over due. I am not sure what it is going to exactly look like, but I am hoping it will be different.

For this project I am taking an international approach. My friend and leading international internet marketer, Paul OFlaherty will be serving as General Contractor for this project. He will be keeping an I on producing something that answers my perpetual questions…Is This Really ALL Worth It?

Seems Paul is asking himself that questions a few hundred times a day and since our series of podcasts on all of the problems we have found on the internet feels that this project will give him a chance to develop something that will visually help with providing viewers a look at all of the stuff I offer people professionally as well as personally.

I get excited thinking about this new change and even more excited to ending the year with something new and positive to build on for the New Year.

Taking a glimpse at the New Year, I see several things cooking that hopefully make this project Paul and I have been working on something we can sit back and say Is This Really All Worth It?

Look for an announcement soon of the launch of the new IBGS site.

Now This Really Happened!

WalMart APPLICATION

This is an actual job application that a 75 year old senior citizen submitted to Walmart in Arkansas .

They hired him because he was so funny…..

NAME: Kenneth Way (Grumpy Old Bastard)

SEX: Not lately, but I am looking for the right woman (or at least one who will cooperate)

DESIRED POSITION:  Company’s President or Vice President.  But seriously, whatever’s available.   If I was in a position to be picky, I wouldn’t be applying here in the first place

DESIRED SALARY:  $185,000 a year plus stock options and a Michael Ovitz style severance package.  If th at’s not possible, make an offer and we can haggle.

EDUCATION: Yes.

LAST POSITION HELD:  Target for middle management hostility.

PREVIOUS SALARY:  A lot less than I’m worth.

MOST NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT:  My incredible collection of stolen pens and post-it notes.

REASON FOR LEAVING: It sucked.

HOURS AVAILABLE TO WORK:  Any.

PREFERRED HOURS:  1:30-3:30 p.m.  Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL SKILLS?:  Yes, but they’re better suited to a more intimate environment .

MAY WE CONTACT YOUR CURR EMPLOYER?:   If I had one, would I be here?

DO YOU HAVE ANY PHYSICAL CONDITIONS THAT WOULD PROHIBIT YOU FROM LIFTING UP TO 50 lbs.?:  Of what?

DO YOU HAVE A CAR?: I think the more appropriate question here would be ‘Do you have a car that runs?’

HAVE YOU RECEIVED ANY SPECIAL AWARDS OR RECOGNITION?:  I may already be a winner of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, so they tell me.

DO YOU SMOKE?:  On the job – no!
On my breaks – yes!

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE DOING IN FIVE YEARS?: Living in the Bahamas with a fabulously wealthy dumb sexy blonde supermodel who thinks I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Actually, I’d like to be doing that now.

NEAREST RELATIVE….7 miles

DO YOU CERTIFY THAT THE ABOVE IS TRUE AND COMPLETE TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE?:  Oh yes, absolutely.

   ***Old People Rock!

Blog Pirating: Another Form of ID Thief

If have just landed on this planet then you are probably not aware that I blog on a number of my own sites. Why? AHHHH…because I want to and I like to. But really it allows me to say things differently or talk about different things I am interested in instead of cluttering up one blog site with all kinds of stuff.

But that is not the point of this blog. I am writing to mention a problem that is going on with most everyone’s blogs. There seems to be a growing number of sites being created on a number of different blog platforms that are hosts for Blog Pirates. Yes, these people sale the high seas of the internet looking for blogs that have a popular theme and cut and paste them to their site to draw that traffic. How I hear what they will do is Google a keyword or two and who ever comes up on the first page is the target of where the Pirates sale. And once they find your harbor they drop anchor and just churn the blogs off your site like they were on a conveyor belt to their site.

Yes, they capture your blog, in some cases will editing down, but on the most part just post the blog to their blog like they wrote it.

This has been going on for sometime now and you veterans of the blogsphere are going to say live with it but since I have come back to fulltime full choke blogging I am seeing a lot of pings to my sites from these Pirates. When I go check to see who they are …BAM, there I am on a blog site that is about what I am talking about, but of a different name. Where I had pictures in my blog they are all gone but the links are still live.

Now I am not foolish enough to give you some of these URL’s since all that will do will give them what they want more traffic.

I know some of you SEO’s guys will say I should be honored for someone finding out my real popularity of the subjects I write about and wanting to capture some of that for their site.

All that is OK, but when I get an email from a fan saying they saw the same blog posted on a site for some guy name Abdul, they wanted to know if I ripped his blog off or if Abdul ripped my blog off.

So, you see, there is a problem with that which is part of a credibility issue.

So now you know about it you can start looking for these Pirate Blogs. And if you are reading this on a site with the name other than Is This Really All Worth It, then you are looking a Pirated blog. Really, is this really all worth it?

Why and What Are People Looking For On The Internet?

I am always asking questions…and on the most part, they are good ones. Like the one I am asking people here…

What do people come to the Internet to find?

Sometimes I can answer my on questions but sometimes there is no clear answer to the questions so I take it to the street..or in this case to you on the internet.

Of course, this is if the answer to the questions for you is you have come to the internet to learn more about what the internet is all about. Or you have come to the internet looking to learn more about how golf can be used as a business tool. OR, better yet you hvae come to the internet to find me…which if that is the case I can solve all the reasons you came to the internet for…

Unfortunately, there are too many people who come to the internet trying to rip someone off. And there is an ocean of people coming to the internet for romance…either with romancing them self over some girly photo or from finding someone else to a converse with in hopes of scoring a date.

Yes, the internet is filled with sick-o’s. However there are many good people here trying to help provide answers to serious questions. People like me.

So why do people come to the internet and what the heck are they looking for here.? It surely is not me they are looking for are they would have found me by now. So what are they here for?…hummm. Guess I will never know if this is really all worth it.

If you are interested in find out more about me go to IBGS.

A Major Change in Social Networking has Started!

(Yaw, I am back blogging, but not fulltime. I need to find something that pays the bills, so I will be back from time to time to fill ya in on what I am finding out around the offline world.)

If you are a member of a social group, are you active in that group? You probably were but gave up when the only person you found that replied to your friend’s request was a friend of a friend named Abdul.

Social Networking is huge right now and in most cases it is off the friggin charts with the number of groups that are being formed each day. How many social networking groups does a person need to join anyhow?

In a podcast that is currently in the editing room that I recorded with my good friend Paul OFlaherty a few weeks ago we talked about this issue and discussed the trends in social networking. Hopefully I can find out what the technical glitch is and get this fascinating podcast out to everyone really soon.

Seems there is a huge push back from people in social networking groups who finally are asking themselves the question on why they need to join more than one or two groups. The movement is backed by the logical thinking of how many people can a single person network with at one time and the connection being real and not a passing hello.

In fact, do people who are members of Facebook really think they are going to connect with everyone on that site? The answer is NO, in case you did not know.

What is taking place is people are starting to look for smaller groups that have members who are more compatible in their thinking and live close by. Soon the mega groups will be losing members to these sites that take the bold step of providing a site for just a small number of people.

The same will go for the groups that are for a certain issue or niche market. More sites will be formed for the growing need to make the internet a REAL place to socialize.

These sites will be 100 times more active due to the simple fact that everyone in the group knows each other. These smaller groups will be more regional which will allow the members to have offline meetings of the membership. Even advertisers who I have talked to say they would enjoying the opportunity to focus their offers to these smaller groups and get out of this .001% return on their advertising dollar.

All of this is good. I applaud this movement and look forward to getting involved in a group that is smaller and everyone makes an effort to get to know each other. Maybe now that Paul is back form his honeymoon he will show me what I need to do to get this very interesting podcast out to for review.

This change in direction in Social networking could make all of this really worth it.

Learn more about what I have to offer at IBGS.

Taking a Business Break

I am going to be out looking things over and searching out in Arizona if all this is really worth it. If I find something that is really worth it I will jump in with that breaking news. I’ll be back in a week or so. Until then, check out my IBGS Blog.

It Is Who You Know, Not What You Know!

When you look at blog stats for some of the top bloggers on the internet it comes to no surprise that their volumes of comments are based on who they know and not really what they know.

The question then becomes, how do the writers of those blogs get to know the people who read or comment on their blogs?

Surveys show that most of the followers of a person’s blog site (84%) are personal friends. Then 10% are strangers interested in the subject. That leaves 6% to people who just stumble upon the site.

So, it seems that the more you tell friends about your blog the more people are going to start following what you have to say. This also confirms what I have been saying for over a year now that there has to be some crossover to the offline world in order to make the online world work.

Now, if your friends are all offline and do not participate online for any reason then the problems turns to getting offliners online. Why is this a problem? Well SPAMMING and other forms of deception are not helping. Estimates show that there are over 500 million people in the world who have been online, got so feed up with the trash, deceit, deception and the spam they have left the internet for ever. That means that there are a lot of people who know how to get online and are capable of doing so but choose not to because they see no value to being online.

So, getting friends to come online to read your blogs is near impossible.

How about making new friends who are online? Well that is also pretty tough given the fact that over 83% of the people online are looking for an angle or driven by something other than reading blogs. The number one thing that people come online for is to find someone of the opposite sex to communicate with or look at. This closely edged out scamming by just a few decimal points. Give all of this I see why most people are finding it hard to attract strangers to their sites.

How do the blogs sites explain having tens of thousands of friends? Over 78% of the blogs sites that have thousands of real people viewers are on the subject of Technology. Blogs sites that discuss subjects pertaining to anything new or are fashionably popular are going to draw the few hundred thousand people who roam around the internet after going to their friends sites to read. So if the search engines pick up a keyword on Britney Spears or other popular celebrities or subjects they will send them to those blog sites.

So, back to why it is who you know more than what you know. Getting to know anyone online is getting tougher and it only makes sense that if you are wanting to make a go of being online then you need to bring your offline friends online. If that does not work then you are going to have to make friends offline who are interested in what you have to say and are interested in coming online to read about it. So to make blogging worthwhile you need to get started build on the list of people you know off line.

To learn more about this subject and more on business and golf, check out the IBGS Site.

Burnout: Blogging to No Avail

OK, I know there are a bunch of you out there. I see your blog sites. You have reach or gone pass the Burnout stage, haven’t you?

How can I tell? Well your site has not had a new post in six of more months or years. I really don’t blame ya. It is a shame. There is a lot of good information being written out in the blogsphere that is really good to know.

I have found that there are a large number of people who have been writing about what I have been writing about here for a long time before I started writing about it. That is depressing in itself, but the fact is, there more to this blogging thing than loading up a WP site and getting with it.

Nope, as I am reading from other people this blogging game that people use as part of their internet marketing is just one side of the coin flip.

Over the past three years I have been keeping my eyes open to learn more about what this blogging thing is all about. What I have learned and many before have written is in order to get to be popular online you have to have two things…a lot of online friends and, more importantly, some sort of OFFLINE group you are part of that has more people in it than you have online friends. That is the only way this game will work. Being just only online only works for Spammers.

For some of you this might have come as a surprise, but for us seasoned vets this becomes relevant about six months after your start blogging. That is about how long it takes for you to start thinking Is This Really All Worth It…

You can learn more about this and other relevant subjects at the IBGS site.

Affiliate Programs: Do They Work?

I get people telling me that with as much as I blog I should use some sort of an Affiliate Program to profit from all of the views to my pages. That is all in good thinking, but WTF is an Affiliate Program.

Naturally, I went out to Google and checked out what an Affiliate Program is about. I read until my eyes were red, which is about 30 minutes when I am bored and still have not gotten a handle on what the big deal is about being part of an affiliate program.

I saw where there were these huge conferences on affiliate programs. I watched video’s on how people were excited to go to the conference so they could network and meet clients. Now, I like conferences and they do generate a lot of businesses if you go to the right conference, but None the less, who are these people networking with and who are their clients?

As I understand it, and I could be wrong here, an affiliate program is where you advertise something on your site for sale and you get a commission for sending someone who saw the ad on your site to the site you are affiliated with to buy something. OK, that sounds good, but how often does that happen?

According to my market studies only .01% of visitors to a web-site click on one ad on a site. If there are hundreds of ads, they only click on one….OK, now, out of that .01% of the total views to a page, .001% click on more than one ad. Now these figures dramatically contradict what these affiliate programs say is standard and the studies I have done are based on hard facts from interviews I have done with many people online and even more offline.

So, where is the money? How are these sites making the money they say they are making? I am not saying they are lying, I am saying that they would have to have over a million page views to each site they have an affiliate relationship with to get to the sales they say they are getting. Those are numbers that are hard to believe…so there has to be more to this that they are telling.

Maybe that is what goes on at these huge conferences…or maybe they are just going to the conferences to play business golf. I could believe in them playing golf at one of these conferences to sell their products more than I can believe in the number of hits they will have to get to their sites.

Now, I would be interested in one of these affiliate programs if someone could show me the money?

Where Are The Bloggers Going?

One of the many things I do each day is check out other people’s blogs. I have read a lot of good stuff and I have seen things that make me questions a lot of things. However, out of all of this it is surprising to find how many of the people I have met over the past three years online are now gone.

Recently I have been able to find a few of the people I communicated with frequently to ask why they are no longer online. Most report what I have been reporting for sometime now that there just is not enough people interested in what they have to say to make it worth their while furnishing their thoughts on a subject or expertise on an issue.

Now, this comes to be a surprise in most cases I reviewed especially where the people I am talking to provide the ever popular information on what is going on in the tech world. In the cases where the person was just blogging on subject related to what they did everyday, like this blog, it was understandable they would not have the huge volumes of viewers.

So why aren’t people reading other people’s blogs anymore? Could it be that with their being 165 Million web-sites on the internet right now there are just too many places for people to go to read? Could it be that what people come to the internet to do is not check out what other people are writing? Or, is there other reasons?

Truly, I would say times are changing on the internet and where it is going today is anyone’s guess. Last year it was blogging, then it turned to podcasting and then it turned to VideoCasting and now the internet is….who knows what it is . The point is there are a lot of good ideas and good people leaving the internet who have a lot to say on things about issues that matter. I am sure they leave after asking themselves, Is This ALL Really Worth it.

Read more at IBGS.