I woke up a couple of days ago and checked my AdSense stats as a part of my regular morning routine. I was shocked to find out that my earnings for the day so far were less than 10% of what they usually should be.

Was my site down? No.

Were my AdSense ads showing? Yes.

Did AdSense send me an email about my account? No.

Was it just my site? Why were the bloggers I follow not talking about this?

What happened?

As it turned out, it was just a reporting issue on Google’s side. AdSense was still tracking clicks and making me money but was having problems displaying the data in the reports. Whew. It took a while to figure it out and I was relieved when I got the official word through Google’s AdSense blog.

The research I was doing, however, did send me to an interesting new feature that Google has just launched called AdSense Known Issues. According to Google the page gives readers a “list of currently known AdSense issues and possible work-arounds. Please know that we are working as quickly as possible to resolve these issues and appreciate your patience.”

I was pleased to see that my particular issue was known and being worked on:

Reports not being updated with current data. Last Updated May 6, 2008

Issue: Reports are taking longer than usual to generate, and aren’t showing complete data for earnings, clicks, and impressions.Work-Around: None at the moment, but rest assured that this delay in reports won’t affect your earnings or payments.

Updates: Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.

Network World put out a list of what the top CEOs from the technology world are making. Here is how some of the top execs lined up by their 2007 compensation:

• Steve Jobs, Apple, $1
• Eric Schmidt, Google, $480,561
• Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, $1.3 million
• Dan Heese, Sprint Nextel, $3 million
• Michael Dell, Dell, $4.5 million
• John Thompson, Symantec, $4.8 million
• Edgar Masri, 3Com, $5 million
• Matthew Szulik, Red Hat, $5.2 million
• Scott Kriens, Juniper Networks, $5.3 million
• Ronald Hovsepian, Novell, $5.4 million
• Edward Mueller, Qwest Communications, $5.6 million
• Dan Warmenhoven, Network Appliance, $6.4 million
• Greg Brown, Motorola, $7.1 million
• Richard Notebaert, Qwest Communications, $7.5 million
• Robert Beauchamp, BMC, $7.8 million
• Hector Ruiz, AMD, $8.1 million
• John Swainson, CA, $8.5 million
• Mike Zafirovski, Nortel Networks, $10.1 million
• John Chambers, Cisco, $11 million
• Paul Otellini, Intel, $11.5 million
• Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems, $14.1 million
• Ed Zander, Motorola, $17.3 million
• Joe Tucci, EMC, $17.3 million
• Randal Stephenson, AT&T, $22 million
• Sam Palmisano, IBM, $25.1 million
• Mark Hurd, HP, $25.3 million
• Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon Communications, $26.6 million
• Larry Ellison, Oracle, $35 million
• Gary Forsee, Sprint Nextel, $40 million
• Edward Whitacre, AT&T, $78.4 million

In his youth, Tom Watson was anything but the picture of success he would later come to be. He was asthmatic, shy and had few friends.

But, this loner would soon become one of the greatest and richest salesmen in the world.

As one of the most successful self-made industrialists of his time, Watson would turn the winds of fate, transforming his humble beginnings into a career whose legacy continues to this day.

When Watson decided to change the name of his company to International Business Machines, he knew that it was a big name for a small company.

But, over the next few decades, Watson would build the company to live up to its name.

From a traveling door-to-door salesman to CEO of one of the largest expanding companies in the U.S., Watson’s name has since become synonymous with not only the beginnings of the computer industry but with what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur.

How did he do it?

“It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success. On the far side.

Plan for the future…Have faith in the future. Resolve to stand for something big and fine outside of your business life.

Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right.

Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Every time we’ve moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.

Too many people are waiting for someone else to give them a push. We have tried to develop self-starters in IBM.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

You must guard constantly against those who lack vision. You must guard against the reactionary mind. Always cultivate and associate with persons of vision and with persons who believe that things are going to be better. When you do this, you take on the kind of vision, backed by the right kind of inspiration that you need if you are going to grow in this business or any other business.

It is impossible for any man, I don’t care how able he may be, to do the work and attend to all the details of a business – to accomplish anything – without the support of his entire organization. This business is such that neither I nor any executive staff can run it alone. It is too big. Our company has grown each year and succeeded because everybody has been contributing to its success.

Your success will be determined by the manner in which you use the tools you have been given to work with. When practicing the art of selling use all your talents. Put everything you have into your efforts; above all put your personality into them. Never copy anybody. Be yourself.”

For this week’s Entrepreneur University we turn to Cynthia Minnaar. Cynthia lives in South Africa and runs her own online home business. She is the proud owner of www.cyns-home-biz.com, the online home business site for online home based business start-up ideas, extra income opportunities, internet marketing training, affiliate marketing solutions and resources.

Cynthia shares with us how online entrepreneurs can get started on a shoestring budget:

“The secret to start making money online with your own internet home business is in the actual marketing of your business and there are many methods of internet marketing that are highly effective and will cost absolutely nothing if you give yourself time to learn the ropes and apply them.

In actual fact, the running costs of an internet home business can reduce every month as you learn how to market effectively at no cost at all.

If you are serious about building an online home business income from a real internet home business then at the outset you need to be sure that you select a reputable hosting company for your website. This is one area where it is not advisable to opt for free hosting.

Your aim is to drive targeted traffic to your website and if you are on a budget this just may take a little longer than someone who has spare dollars to purchase targeted leads. But, rest assured you will gain a great deal of knowledge as well as achieve huge personal success if you learn the methods that drive targeted traffic to your site at no or very little cost at all.

Here are some highly effective internet marketing methods that you can start working on immediately to drive targeted traffic to your home internet business website and start making money online.

Choosing Relevant Keywords

This is the foundation of your business and you need to establish what keywords or keyword phrases people will type into the search engines to locate your website. There are many free keyword selector tools available on the internet to help you with this, for example you could use the free version of Wordtracker or the Google keyword tool or the Overture keyword selector tool.

Search Engine Optimization

Once you have established what keywords you are going to use then you need to optimize your website for those keywords. You can also obtain free software on the internet to help you optimize your website, for example WebCEO can be downloaded free. Once you have completed optimizing your website, open a Google Webmasters account for free, create a sitemap and submit it to Google. Keep your sitemap current by submitting a new sitemap whenever you make changes to your website. Also submit your website to the search engines and it is advisable to submit to the major search engines manually.

Blog, Tag and Ping

Ideally you need to post on your blog at least once a day and be sure to hyperlink your keyword into the post so that it points back to your website in order to build back-links to your website that will help you rank higher in the search engine results. You need to aim to continually build back-links to your website. Be sure to tag your posts and then ping your blog to announce to the blogging community that you have just added a new post. There are many free pinging services available on the internet. Add your Blog RSS url to your My Yahoo account as well, which will ensure the indexing of the links on your blog posts.

Post in Forums

Forums are another free method of not only advertising your internet home business, but where you can also gain a tremendous amount of knowledge and assistance. Set up your signature with your keyword linked to your website and this will be free advertising for you as well as adding back-links to your site. Get involved and constructively post and contribute 3 to 5 times a day.

Article Marketing

This is a very highly effective method of gathering back-links to your site and securing high positions in the search engine results. If you write an article or two every week and distribute it to as many article directories as possible you will notice a massive change in your rankings weekly. Be sure to write articles based on the theme of your website and use the keywords you have selected and hyperlink the keyword to your url in the author resource box. You may at a later stage want to spend a portion of your budget to pay to have your articles distributed or purchase an Article Submitter.

Directories

Search the internet for seo friendly directories and start submitting your website to them, try and submit to 5 directories a day.

In Conclusion If you get involved in learning these free very effective methods of driving targeted traffic to your website, you will not only start making money online but you will automatically find that you start learning and getting involved in other marketing methods such as RSS, Social Bookmarking, etc., which will take your internet home business to the next level.”

After the success of our last poll on The Top 20 Startup Mistakes that entrepreneurs make, we’re ready to get our new poll started!

This time I want to talk about raising money. It’s been said that there is no such thing as a startup with too much money. You need capital to invest in sales, marketing, staff, offices, research, etc.

Every business needs some startup capital so my question to you is what’s the best way to raise money?

I’ve created a new post in our forums where you can vote. Please take the time to share your thoughts and experiences as the results will help other entrepreneurs become successful in building their businesses.

To cast your vote and get involved in the discussion, click here.

Two weeks ago I offered free SEO advice to Supper Thyme USA. I’m going to continue my SEO Advice series today by helping out another YoungEntrepreneur.com blog reader, Mark from TheLocoMono.

TheLocoMono - http://thelocomonowebsite.com

I would like to take you up on your offer for SEO advice. I have been reading your blog for some time now so I am curious to hear what you have to say. My website, TheLocoMono Website started out as a popotouri of topics and last month I simplified these topics into sub-domains so along with a remodeled design using a paid WP theme, it is starting to look a lot better, traffic is somewhat the same as it was before but more spread out across the sub-domains and main site.

I am curious to see what I can do to increase traffic to my sub-domain and/or somehow tie them into my main website. A challenge but neverless shoot for Pluto as I like to say.

–
Muchas Gracias,

Mark

My Recommendations

1) Pick Better Keywords
I like your category idea but you should pick keywords that you have a change of ranking for. As an example, look at your Just Business section. Are people really searching for “Just Business”? Use keywords that are related to the topics you are writing about but will also drive targeted traffic for you because you can get on page 1 in Google for them.

2) Use Your Pictures For SEO

Your images can not only help you rank for select keywords, they can also drive some serious traffic to your site through the Google image search. Your logo is called TLMlogo.gif and your alt tag is “Logo”. Change your pictures around so that the file name and, at the very least, alt tags are helping you with your SEO efforts.

3) Increase Your Keyword Density

If you don’t use your keywords on your page in multiple locations it will be hard to get Google to pay attention. Look at your Just Personal Finance Page. You have the key phrase Personal Finance in your title tag, in your url, and your H1 tag. Then you don’t use Personal Finance anywhere else on the page. You need to make sure that your posts mention the keywords you are trying to rank for. If your posts aren’t related to personal finance then consider changing the topic name to something that you are likely to write about in your posts (and a key phrase that is not as competitive as Personal Finance).

Good luck Mark!

Readers, what do you think about TheLocoMono’s website?

To learn more about how to get SEO tips for your website please read my post: Need SEO Advice? Submit Your Site!

ConversationMarketing.com recently put together a list of the 38 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started In Marketing.

Here are the author’s top 10 things you should know:

1) No one has a clue how to market anything. We are all winging it. It’s just that some are better at winging it than others.

2) Corollary: Seth Godin, et al are brilliant about the high-level stuff. But on a tactical level, everyone fails, most of the time. Learn from it.

3) That which you doubt becomes a trend. When I started, I hedged my bets that this internet thing was a fad by writing copy for print pieces, too. Cough.

4) Today’s hot trend vanishes like a fart in the wind. The flip side of doubt is that the hottest trends often die so fast the universe forgets they ever existed. Remember ‘push technology’? Wired does. In 1997 they were shouting how push would replace the web browser. 11 years later, RSS adoption is around 3-8% depending on who you ask. Don’t jump on every new thing. The trick, of course, is knowing what to jump on, and what to jump over.

5) Get a bookkeeper. My wife is a Chartered Accountant (a Canadian CPA+). She did our books for about 2 years. After two years of her harassing me for receipts I knew I’d lost and me driving her crazy with my squirrelesque accounting practices, I hired a part-time bookkeeper. Best money I’ve ever spent.

6) Get a retainer. Clients you think are the nicest folks in the world may have painfully slow accounts payable departments. Get 30%. Up front. No matter what.

7) You are right. When in a discussion, assume you are right. If you waffle, there’s not much point in discussing anything.

8) You are wrong. Don’t be so blockheaded that you can’t change your mind when you’re clearly wrong.

9) Buy a really nice monitor. Definitely buy a humungous monitor. I love mine, and I’m far more productive for having it.

10) Work with people you like. No matter how much someone’s paying you, if you dread talking to them the relationship won’t last.

What additional thoughts would you add to your list of “things to know when marketing a business”?

“I started eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby basically, while I had my day job,” recalls Pierre Omidyar. An unexpected success, that side hobby has today become the world’s largest personal online trading community.

The website hosts nearly four million auctions every day, with almost half a million new items being added for sale every 24 hours. Omidyar’s personal net worth is estimated to be roughly $10 billion.

“When you look at the accomplishments of accomplished people and you say, ‘Boy, that must have been really hard,’…that was probably hard,” says Omidyar.

“And conversely, when you look at something that looks easy, that was probably hard. And so you’re never going to know which is which until you actually go out and do it.”

Whether Omidyar’s accomplishments look easy or not, they are undoubtedly significant, having not only revolutionized the way people do business, but making a multi-billion dollar fortune along the way.

How did he do it?

“I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion. It is not really work if you are having fun…that was the case with me. I always wanted to be involved with computers. Like most software people, it is very much passion more than anything else. The ability to create software that could have a benefit or an impact on people that used it was what was driving me.

You’ll fail at some things – that’s a learning experience that you need so that you can take that on to the next experience. What you learn from those challenges and those failures are what will get you past the next ones…I was the pretty consistent bull and the cheerleader on eBay actually.

Whatever future you’re building, don’t try to program everything. Five Year Plans never worked for the Soviet Union – in fact, if anything, central planning contributed to its fall. Chances are, central planning won’t work any better for any of us.

By building a simple system, with just a few guiding principles, eBay was open to organic growth – it could achieve a certain degree of self-organization. Build a platform – prepare for the unexpected…you’ll know you’re successful when the platform you’ve built serves you in unexpected ways. To truly prepare for the unexpected, you’ve got to position yourself to keep a couple of options open so when the door of opportunity opens, you’re close enough to squeeze through. 

We believe people are basically good; we believe everyone has something to contribute; we believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people; we recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual; we encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated. I founded the company on the notion that people were basically good and that if you give them the benefit of the doubt you’re rarely disappointed.

So the only thing you can do is have a certain set of values that you encourage people to adopt and the only way your customers are going to adopt those values is if they see that you’re living those values as well. It’s all about treating each other the way you want to be treated yourself so that you can do business with one another.

We have to do it internally at eBay at the company as well, because if we don’t then eventually that seeps through, and customers will see that and that will harm our business. So our business is based on that. Nice guys, a responsible company that has its heart in the right place – that’s run by real human beings – it has to be successful, because if we weren’t that way, eBay would not be successful. eBay wouldn’t exist. It would not be possible. 

You should pursue your passion. If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful. You have to really believe in what you’re doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you’ll be successful.“

For this week’s Entrepreneur University we turn to Virden J. Thornton. Virden is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. a 23 year old firm specializing in sales, customer relations, personal coaching and management training and development. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Deloitte & Touché, Bank One, Jefferson Pilot, and Wal-Mart to name a few.

Virden shares his thoughts on how to increase your closing rate:

“A closing question asks for a final decision. A trial-closing question is one that asks prospects for an opinion. Trial-closings should be non-threatening questions that ask how your prospective customer feels about what you have presented. Typical trial-closing questions can build in their directness as these examples illustrate:

• “How does this approach sound?”

• “Which of the two demonstrated packages do you like best?”

• “Do you see how this approach can save you money?”

• “What are your feelings about our guarantee program?”

• “Do you need additional information before making a decision these products and/or services?”

Ron Willingham, one of today’s top sales trainers has stated, “From the time you begin your demonstration to the point you feel a close is appropriate, your objective is to get opinions, reactions, feelings or feedback.” Without asking trial-closing questions you’ll never have enough information to effectively close a sale.

When a sales or service industry professional closes after a presentation, tying off a sale is made much easier when trial-closing questions are executed throughout the presentation phase of your discussion. For example:

“Paul, how do you feel about our program as it has been explained to you?”

- or 1 “Paul, can you see how the cost savings in our plan will more than offset the cost of installation?”

When you close on an appointment, tying off an appointment (sale) is made much easier when you use trial closings throughout the conversation. For example:

“Bob, with your busy schedule, would an afternoon or early morning meeting time be best for you?”

- or 1 “What this means to you, John, is that you can receive a free analysis on your present services with no obligation to purchase our services. Can you see how a 15, no more than 20 minute meeting might clarify some of your issues with your present vendor and give you the information you need to make a sound decision?”

As you receive a favorable response from your trial closings, it really makes it difficult for your prospects to give you an arbitrary “no,” when you later ask them to purchase your product or package of products that you have demonstrated. As you practice using trial-closing questions, you’ll watch your closing ratios and profitability dramatically improve.”