This short 15-second video was designed fr the homepage of www.mpora.com, a young, modern and stylish online bike and board shop/community.

Here is another short, but inspiring video that uses simple computer graphics to get a message across.

Caroline had a WordPress website already set up that she was using to share her latest happens and promote her work, but the site needed a facelift. After speaking with her about what she wanted, I redesigned her site to feature a modern design, automatically scrolling featured images on the homepage, and set up additional featured photo pages, which show off her images in four very separate categories: snow, water, lifestyle and published images.

The new website also features an improved blog area, fixed social media icons, and a dedicated links page where Caroline plans to post links to her sponsors, friends, etc.

See the website for yourself at www.carolinegleich.com

For more than a year now I’ve been talking with my neighbor, Mark, about working together to create a website about homebrewing beer. Mark has been homebrewing for several years now and it was he who turned me on to the world of homemade brew.

While I don’t drink beer myself, I do know a lot about Internet marketing. So with Mark as the beer expert and myself as the Internet expert, we’ve decided to work together on this new website – the goal of which will be to teach people how to make their own beer at home. Mark is going to do the writing and I’m going to do the web work. We’ll be targeting beginner beer makers, sharing homemade beer recipes, and will hopefully sometime soon have an ebook/book that we can sell to teach people how to create their own batches of beer.

That said, Mark came over to my house yesterday and we sat down for about two hours to work on our new website, which we have dubbed www.drhomebrew.com.

While Mark was over yesterday, he worked on the website’s first article, which is simply some introductory information about what homebrewing is all about, how it got started, the benefits of brewing your own beer, etc. And while Mark was doing that, I started working on the design of the website.

Now that I know quite a bit about website design, CSS, HTML, etc, I know what I can and can not do when it comes to website design. So I drew up the first draft of the website in Photshop (see the picture above) and it is this template that I will use to eventually create the finalized Dr. Homebrew website.

The tricky part with the website design is going to be the logo. The image you see above is just a stock photo that is sold on iStockPhoto.com. We could buy the rights to this particular image and it would cost us about $25 for a standard license or about $150 for an extended license. But because the logo isn’t exactly what we want it to be (we would prefer that the Doctor was holding a pint of beer in his hand) we are going to try and get Mark’s girlfriend, Rebecca, who works as an illustrator, to draw up a similar logo for us. This may take some time and work to actually get, but if we can get a custom made logo for the website, that wil definitely be beneficial in the long-run, as we plan to use that logo on everything we do in the future – book covers, social media icons, videos, business cards, etc. And when it comes to these sorts of things, it is always best to have as much control as possible. If the website becomes really big, we don’t want to be using a piece of stock that we bought for $25. We want something unique!

There are three main thing that I should point out about this initial design of the Dr. Homebrew website.

1. In the header of the site you can see that there is a 728×90 pixel advertisement. While it is usually best to start a new website with no ads on it at all, I tend to think about 25 steps ahead of most people, and so I’ve inserted the ad unit in the header for the time being. I’m still not sure if we are going to put ads in the header at this point or not, but if we don’t I will have to drastically alter the design of the website’s header.

The sidebar of the website has also been designed to fit a standard 300×250 ad unit in the future if we so choose to ad that type of advertising to the website. These are the sorts of things that I think about when designing websites from scratch these days.

2. My second note also has to do with the ad unit you see in the header, but it also has to do with the green navigation bar that seems to drop down from underneath the ad unit. You see, I’ve designed the navigation bar to almost pop out from the bottom of the ad unit because I want people to be clicking on that navigation bar as much as possible. But I also want them to be clicking on those ads. So by positioning these two parts of the website right next to each other (the navigation bar and the ad unit) I am increasing my chances that some of my readers who move their mouse up to the header of the website in an attempt to click on the navigation bar, will accidently click on the ad unit and I’ll make a little money in the process. Even if the user doesn’t accidently click the ad unit, he or she is more likely to see the advertisement (rather than be blinded by it) due to its proximity to the navigation bar and the website’s main logo, and therefore be more likely to click on the ad.

3. Finally, you will note that the colors on the website are not exactly what you expect to see on your typical beer website. After looking at dozens of beer blogs, websites, etc, I quickly realized that almost all of them are designed with a piss yellow or brown sort of color arrangement. Mark even wanted to follow suit and copy what the other beer sites were doing, but after I showed Mark this new, colorful, modern design, even he agreed that what we had here was a whole lot better than the stereotypical yellow colors on our competitors’ websites. Hopefully our future readers will enjoy the bright bursts of colors that we have decided to use as well.

Other than that, the rest of the website design is pretty straightforward. We will certainly change things a bit as we go along, but this is just the first step.

Step two is to get our official custom Dr. Homebrew logo drawn up. We want the logo to look almost exactly like the one above, but we’d like the Dr. in the logo to look more like Mark (since we plan to feature Mark in some of the videos we are going to shoot for the website) and that the doctor have a beer in his hand. Once the logo is drawn up, then I can take the Photoshop image I created and transfer that over to the website we just registered. That’s when the fun begins!

Now, I’m smart enough to know that this one article isn’t going to bring me a huge amount of new customers right away, nor is it going to get me coverage in some larger press or media outlet right away. But an article like this (any article like this) is a good thing to have out there on the Web.

An article like this, where they’ve linked back to my website, gives my website yet another positive link from a high-ranking website. This alone can improve my rankings in the search engines and boost my profile overall.

An article like this is also just another way for people to find out about me and my business. The more articles there are like this on the web, the greater my chances of being discovered when people perform searches for “bicycle touring” or “bicycle traveler”, etc.

Plus, I can use an article like this (and others like it) to get more press in the future. If I ever want to contact a larger media outlet, I can collect all the press and media articles that have already been written about me and use this large collection of articles to prove to a bigger network that I’m worth talking about.

That said, I was shocked this week when I strolled into Huaraz, Peru and talked to the owner of local bike touring company located here in the city. I told him about my bicycle touring website, how I have nearly 40,000 monthly readers from all over the world reading my site, and how my site is currently ranked #2 on Google for the keyword “bicycle touring” and #1 for hundreds of other search terms.

I told the owner of this particular bike touring company that I was in town for a couple days and that if he’d let me, I’d like to tag along on one of his day tours, take some photos, and publish a FREE article on my website about his business (I normally charge between $250 and $500 USD for this sort of review on my website). All I asked was that he not charge me the $60 fee to participate in the tour.

Incredibly, the man refused my offer. He wasn’t willing to give up $60 worth of money right now in order to get $500 of free advertising and a potentially huge amount of press for his business. I couldn’t believe it!

What I’m continuing to realize is that very few people truly understand the power of the Internet.

If this one business owner had simply let me tag along on one of his tours, the total cost to him would be very, very little. Probably less than $10 USD. Plus, I could have written an article about his business that would likely rank in the #1 or #2 positions on Google for the key phrase “bicycle touring in huaraz peru” or something like that.

Even an article of this kind with photos and a detailed description of the tours he offered, coming from a high-ranking site like mine, would be worth thousands of dollars over the long run for his particular business. But he turned it all down because he wasn’t willing to give up his $50 profit and let me tag along to write a free article about his business.

The lesson this week is this: If you are given a chance to receive free advertising for your business… take it! You’re an idiot if you turn that stuff down.

Thumbnail Image by Alex E. Proimos

But this isn’t the first time a hard drive has failed on me. In fact, I’ve had so many hard drives crash on me over the years, I really shouldn’t have made this kind of mistake.

The mistake I made was that the files on this one external hard drive were on this one disc… and this one disc alone. In otherwords, I hadn’t made copies of the files and backed them up in another location (like I should have).

I don’t think I need to go on and on about the importance of backing up your digital files. But this should serve as a reminder: If the data you are storing on your computer is important to you… back it up!

Store your data on two or more hard drives (in case one crashes, you’ll have the other)… keep your backups in different locations… and use an online backup service such as Carbonite or Mozy to automatically backup your important computer files.

For only $2.50 per hour, my new digital assistant is going to take a huge amount of work off my hands (work that I don’t like doing in the first place) so that I can concentrate on the stuff I really need to be doing.

If you too are interested in hiring a competent International worker to perform tasks for you or your business at a low  hourly rate like I’ve just done, then please keep reading. This article has been written just for you.

How To Find Your First Digital Worker

There are a number of websites, services and companies you can use to find cheap International workers (Read The 4-Hour Workweek for more information), but I chose not to go that route. I was fearful that getting assigned a random worker from an on online agency might not be the best way to go.

Instead, I went around and asked all of my Internet business friends and mastermind partners who they were using for their outsourcing. I knew that several of my business contacts were already using workers in other countries to help them perform simple and repetitive tasks within their businesses, so I contacted these people first and asked them for their assistance.

I got a lot of good advice from my business friends and mastermind partners. One mastermind partner in particular really helped me out. He said, “I’ve been working with this girl in Thailand. Her English is really good. I’ve only been working with her for a few months, but she’s doing a really good job thus far. If you want, I’ll give you her email and you can contact her and see if she can help you out.”

Making First Contact With Your New Worker

So, that’s exactly what I did. I emailed the young girl in Thailand and explained to her exactly what I needed her to do. And because I wasn’t sure how good her English would be, I did my best to make my email short and easy to understand.

This is what I wrote:

Hi ________,

My friend _________ gave me your name and email address. He said that he has been working with you for a while and that you are doing a really good job.

I am looking for someone like you to help me with some simple website stuff for my business and I wanted to see if you could help me.

At this point, I would only be looking for about 4 hours a week from you. You could do all 4 hours of work on 1 day.

The work I would want you to do at this point is to simply read from a list of blogs and websites that I would provide… and then you would need to leave comments on those various blogs and websites. And at the end of the 4 hours you would report back to me and tell me how many comments you left on various websites. In the future I may add more responsibilities (such as checking and responding to emails, adding photos to blog posts, researching various topics, etc) and more hours, but this would be a good place to start.

If this sounds like something you are capable of doing… and you have the time to work with me for about 4 hours a week, then please write me back and let me know how you would like to get started and how you would like to work out the payments, etc.

Thanks for your time… and I hope to hear back from you soon.

The girl in Thailand then wrote back and we exchanged about 4-5 emails where we talked about how much I would pay her, how exactly I wanted her to go about her work, etc.

Explaining The Work That Needs To Be Done

To make things even easier for my new worker (and to make sure she did the work exactly as I wanted her to), I created a step-by-step instruction sheet that detailed everything I needed her to do while leaving comments on other blogs and websites. I created the document using Google Docs and then emailed the final product to her as a PDF document.

After emailing the instruction sheet to my new virtual assistant, she wrote back and said she would give it a try.

I responded by saying:

Hi _________,

Yes. Go ahead and do 4 hours of blog commenting using the instructions I sent you in my last email. Just leave as many comments as you can. After you finish the 4 hours of work, send me an email and let me know how many comments you were able to leave during those 4 hours. After you do that I will send you the money via PayPal for the time you worked… and we can talk then about having you do more work like this in the future. Thanks!

And so now, at this very moment, my new VA is doing her first four hours worth of work for me.

I had her start small because at this point I have no idea what type of performance she is going to give me. I told her I’d like to get about 40-50 comments from her during these first 4 hours of work, but whether she will be able to do that or not is still the big question.

If worst comes to worst and the performance of my new virtual assistant is less than stellar, I’m only out $10 USD and I can move on to another worker who is capable of performing to my expectations.

So, step one is done. I’ve hired my first International virtual assistant and I’ve created a document that can now be passed on to new VAs in the future if this current one doesn’t work out.

Now I just have to wait and see what kind of results I get back. And if the results are good I’ll give my new worker more tasks to perform, which will free my schedule up even more, and the end result of all this will hopefully be a lot less work for me… and a whole lot more money in my bank account.

Stay tuned for more in the future! I’ll let you know what happens with my new virtual assistant.

Thumbnail image by permanently scatterbrained

Whatever the case may be, these moments usually require you to reach out and ask another individual for assistance.

What I’ve discovered by traveling through Peru for the past 4 months is that, more often than not, the person you reach out to for help won’t agree to help you unless them helping you is of direct benefit to them… and them alone.

For example: If you ask a shoe salesman where you can get some socks… and he doesn’t carry socks in his store, he’ll tell you there are no socks to buy anywhere in the city.

Or if you want to catch the night bus and the company you are asking about tickets has already sold out their evening bus ride, they won’t direct you to a competing bus company with plenty of open seats. Instead, they’ll lie to your face and tell you that the only way to get to Cuzco is to wait until morning when they do have a bus with open seats available.

If it isn’t any direct benefit to them, they won’t help you. No matter what! And frankly, that’s a pretty shitty business model.

What I learned this week (and continue to learn over and over again) is that the main goal of your business should be to help other people – whether or not helping that person benefits you in some way.

On my bicycle touring website, for example, I get hundreds and hundreds of emails each and every week. And most of those emails are unnecessary because the person emailing could easily find the answer if they did a quick search on the website… or even better, if they bought my book on the subject of bicycle travel.

But I get the emails anyway… and even though I’m tempted to write back to these people and say “Buy my book and you’ll get your answer”, I take the time to write back to each of these people individually. I give them the answer they are looking for… or at least point them in the right direction… and then if it seems appropriate, I let them know that I talk about this subject a whole lot more inside my book and that if my email answer back to them was not sufficient, maybe the information inside the book would be worth checking out.

This approach seems to work… and I get a lot of positive comments because of how I handle the emails that I receive. People thank me for taking the time to respond to them personally. They remember that I went out of my way to help them. And many of those people do eventually go on to purchase one of my products, or (at the very least) tell their friends about my website and products/services that I offer.

Do you see how taking a little time and doing the right thing (helping others) can actually work to improve your business – if not in the short term, then in the long term at the very least?

These positive consequence don’t come about when your motive is money first and helping people last. When you turn away potential customers and refuse to help them find the information that they need, you leave a lasting negative impression with that individual. They aren’t going to come back and do business with you ever again (not if they can help it). They aren’t going to tell their friends anything postive about you. In fact, they’ll do quite the opposite, they’ll move on to a better business and quickly spread the word of just how aweful you and your business really are.

I could go on and on with examples here, but I think you get the point.

If your business is suffereing right now, maybe you need to take a step back and reevaluate what it is that you are REALLY doing with your business. Is your first and most important goal to help other people? Or is your first and only aim to make as much money as possible?

When your only goal is money, the business suffers. Plain and simple. But when you concentrate on heping people with their problems, the results may not be immediate, but the long-term affects bring about the money and joy that you initially dreamed of when you set out on day one and started your business in the first place.

Give it a try. Help someone today. Or a lot of people. And let me know what happens… how it makes you feel… and how it affects your bottom line!

For this first installation of “What Did You Learn This Week?” I want to talk about food. Peruvian food to be more specific.

What you probably don’t know is that on top of running the business here at Silver Mountain Marketing, I’ve been traveling for the past three months through the South American country of Peru. And during my travels here I have eaten a whole lot of food. Unfortunately, I can count the number of good meals I’ve had during the past three months using the fingers on just a single hand.

The problem with the restaurants here in Peru is that they try and offer every type of food imaginable. A single restaurant, fr example, will be serving Italian, Mexican, American, Chinese, Traditional Peruvian Food, and maybe a couple others.

While that might sound great to a traveler in search of food from back home, the reality is, this attempt by Peruvian restaurant owners to offer every food imaginable only results in a menu of inedible food items. In other words: The food sucks, because there is no way on earth a single chef can excel at cooking 100 or more different meals. It just can’t be done!

The worst part about the restaurants here in Peru is that they all do the same thing. They think they are competing with one another by each having hundreds and hundreds of meal options to choose from. They think that by offering more meals than their neighboring restaurant, that more people will eat at their restaurant than at their competitors’.

In the end though, no one eats at any of these restaurants because they know that a restaurant serving 100 or more dishes with a variety of meals that spans from Italian to Chinese, can’t possibly be serving anything of quality.

In reality, all it would take for a restaurant to stand out in Peru is for someone to come in and do ONE THING REALLY, REALLY WELL.

Just imagine if you wanted to get some food for yourself. Would you want to eat at the pizza place that makes AMAZING pizza pies? Or would you want to eat at the restaurant that serves every type of food imaginable, has an impressively long menu, but doesn’t do any one thing very well?

My guess is that you’d be eating at the pizza place.

The thing is, this desire to offer up every product (or service) imaginable isn’t a problem found only in Peruvian restaurants. In fact, it is a problem that businesses all over the world struggle with from time to time.

So my question to you is this: Are you offering your customers too many products? Too many services?

What is the ONE THING you do REALLY well? And is that ONE THING the ONE THING you are known for?

Is that ONE THING the thing that your business is centered around? Or are you distracting your customers from that ONE THING by offering them too many other choices?

I’ve just recently announced that I’ve finally figured out what that ONE THING is that makes Silver Mountain Marketing so unique… and me finally figuring that out is going to make a huge difference in how I run this company in the future.

Maybe it’s time for you to figure out the ONE THING that makes you and your business so great… and stop getting distracted by all the other products and services you COULD be offering? Maybe it’s time for you to figure out what you are REALLY GOOD AT… so you can start focusing on that ONE THING?

Things here are Silver Mountain Marketing are busier than ever. We have a ton of new projects that we’re working on… and the old projects that we have been working on for years are going better than ever… and making more money than ever before!

The real reason I haven’t updated the website here at Silver Mountain Marketing in such a long time is because I have been trying to figure out what it is that makes Silver Mountain Marketing unique. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes our little company here different from all the other web design, blog, and internet marketing companies that exist in this world.

The good new is, I finally figured it out! And this revelation has prompted me to start writing again.

Over the next several weeks I plan to share with you exactly what it is that makes Silver Mountain Marketing so unique… and I plan to give you some insights that will hopefully help to improve your business as well – whatever that business may be.

But for now, I just wanted to say… I’M BACK!

Thanks so much for visiting our website here… and I hope that you’ll come back soon, work with us in the future, and stay tuned for all the exiting stuff we’ve got planned for the futute.

Here’s to yours… mine… and OUR success!