“So what do you do?” I’m casually asked as I pay for my meal at a local restaurant. I’ve heard this question a thousand times before and each time I’m tempted to say something simple, something easy. Sometimes I say I’m a writer. Other times I’m a business consultant. Once I even said I was a web designer. But do you wanna know the truth?

I’m none of those. And yet, at the same time, I’m all of them. You see I work full time from home in what is casually called by insiders the “Internet Marketing” niche. It’s not as pretty as some people make it out to be. In fact, some days it’s downright ugly.

Most people outside of a handful of us don’t know the lingo, the terminology, nor the hype that goes into most products, all to induce a feeding frenzy of ravenous buyers looking to sink their teeth into the next big thing.

Others are even worse. They are like crackheads on the street corner running around trying to get their next fix. Only these addicts don’t steal from others, they steal from themselves. They use their credit cards to rob themselves and increase their burden of debt, struggle, and bondage.

I see it all the time. These people think they can spend their way to success, but it’s not going to happen. There is only one way to earn success. One way and one way only. If you don’t do this, you…will…fail.

Hands down. You will fail. And what is this “Secret” as it can be so casually called by my ilk? What is this “New Revelation”, this “Startling Truth”?

It’s not what you think. It’s not even what you’d expect. The answer doesn’t involve any of the following abbreviations:

PPC

CPA

CTR

CPS

CSS

RSS

XML

HTML

SEO

SEM

SEP

Or even WWW!

To sum it up, it has nothing to do with anything outside of your own brain. The life you’ve been dreaming about is inside you and there is only one way to bring it out.

Action.

That’s it. That’s the ONE thing successful people thrive on. If they have an idea, they go to work on it immediately. They don’t wait around for everything to be perfect. I’m not saying to jump blindly into something, you must do your due diligence, but after that…just do it!

If you never take action, if you spend all your time in a world of thoughts, would have, could have, and should have, you will never experience the life you know you were meant to have.

I’m not saying this to discourage you. I’m saying it because I want to see you succeed. I spend my days helping people just like you change their life, and I want to see you do the same.

So, quit thinking about it and get out there and do it!

To my marketing friends,

There has been much speculation in the last few days about Inventory.Overture.com closing up shop and going it’s merry way. I must say that I have been trying to access the site for the last 14 hours and have not been able to get in yet!

There are some Inventory.Overture.com based tools that I have that are still working, so it appears their database is still available and working, but for some reason it’s been impossible to actually access the site.

Here is a link to the article that started all the fuss:

Goodbye Inventory.Overture.com

Many of us “marketers” use Inventory.Overture.com as a quick tool for researching a niche market idea. What are we going to do now? I’ve spent quite a few hours last night digging around seeing what I could come up with. Here is a short list of some sites you can use that are still working.

Inventory.Overture.com - Why did it have to come to this?

Here are the sites: Happy Searching!

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://www.nichebotclassic.com

http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ (Overture based, but seems to be working still)

http://www.KeywordDiscovery.com (Free Trial)

http://www.domaincountry.com/

https://adcenter.microsoft.com/Default.aspx

http://www.nichetaxi.com

http://www.vretoolbar.com/keywords/ (Overture based, but seems to be working still)

Mike

Update: This post has been getting a lot of hits! I have written a full article for EzineArticles.com that not only reveals keyword tools to use, it also explains
how to use the free keyword tools. Here is the link:
http://www.EzineArticles.com/?id=433628