Barack Obama has convincingly won the Presidential election over his Republican opponent John McCain. The outcome of the election has given hope to not just the American people but also the world.

Obama is seen as a real symbol for change and as a result he has a lot to live up to. In his victory speech in his adopted hometown of Chicago he said change may not happen in a year, it may not even happen in one term. With this statement he is framing the expectations of the people so that do not expect too much too soon.

Following the American Presidential election from here in Australia was an interesting event. Everyone at work was talking about the election as if it was for our own political leader. I must say that people showed more interest in the US election than they did in the Prime Ministerial election last year.

Australians know that our country is closely linked with the fortunes of the USA. You only have to look at our stock market each day. If the US market shoots up so does ours, if the Dow Jones goes down sharply, guess what? So does ours.

Not that Barack Obama has become the President elect the world waits to see what he can do for the American people and the citizens of the world. It was noted in the concession speech by John McCain that he made no reference to the outgoing President George W Bush.

Bush will go down as perhaps the most despised President in history. Maybe only Richard Nixon could beat him for that honour.

I look forward to seeing Obama take office and what he brings to the Presidency of the United States of America.

The show is hugely popular nowadays as the guys have an entertaining way of doing car reviews and giving info about cars. My favourite show was when they had a race between a sports car and someone travelling by boast from England to Sweden (I think). Things like that make it entertaining.

If you are lucky enough to live close enough to the cities listed above you can grab yourself a ticket to see Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond will present Top Gear Live. If I can arrange it I will be going to the Sydney show.

The Sydney show is going to be held at the Acer Arena from 5-8 February, 2009.

Here is what they say about the Top Gear live show.

Top Gear Live combines an action-packed 75 minute live version of the internationally acclaimed and multi award-winning BBC TV series Top Gear. Fans can join Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond with their irreverent approach to motoring and humour, awesome super cars, crazy stunts and the smell of burning rubber. Top Gear Live is set to take live theatre to a ground breaking new level. Or crash attempting it.

So if you are a car fan it is something your should not miss. More information is available at the live Top Gear website. If you are in Australia you can pre-register for Top Gear live Sydney by going to the Ticketek website.

Mike Filsaime has created a new site that takes care of both of those requirements. ButterflyReports.com has only just been launched in the past week. Already thousands of people have joined.

One of the main ideas behind Butterfly Reports is to incorporate a viral aspect. You can download great reports that you can then rebrand and distribute as you see fit. Another awesome feature is that you can upload your own reports and have other Butterfly Reports members distribute them for you complete with links to your website.

Instead of telling you more about this you can watch this video that has all the key information about Butterfly Reports and how it will benefit you.

A better option is to use blogging software like WordPress, TypePad or Movable Type hosted on your own domain. By using one of the previous blogging software programs you can install them on your own domain. By going this route You also have total control over the site.

If you do decide to go with this option the problem that you now face is that you have to manage all of this yourself. You need to know how to register a domain, setup hosting, setup the blog and then design and optimize the blog, and that is all before you even think about what to write.

If you have a technical background all of the above is quite simple, however you may just end up with an ordinary looking blog as it takes some skill and experience to take your blog to the next level.

Sherman Hu is one guy who knows what he is talking about when it comes to blogging. I first heard of Sherman through my involvement in Stompernet. He is on the faculty. More recently he became a Facebook friend and I have been keeping an eye on the stuff he is working on.

Just the other day I came across an interview Sherman did with Jerry West. Sherman is asked 10 important blogging questions as asked by Jerry West or his members at WebMarketingNow.com. You can listen to the interview or read the transcript if you go to ShermanLive.com.

It is well worth a visit as there is a lot of great content relating to blogging. I suggest you head over and check it out.

If you are like me and really want to get inside WordPress and learn from a pro, Sherman has a great site dedicated to taking you to the next level with WordPress. You can see for yourself at WordPressTutorials.com. It is worth a visit just to sign up for the free tips.

Andrew Fox is giving away a free report that gives you a sneek peek at some of his actual emails used to market some of the products that stuffed his bank account full of cash. He has been so successful that he has been able to buy himself so quite nice cars. How does Ferrari and Porsche sound to you?

In his report Andrew also gives you a step by step plan to potentially turn $100 into $9000. The key here is “potentially”. To make it happen you have to execute everything. Even if you can only turn that $100 into $1000 that is not a bad return.

The plan is there, are you willing to take action to make it happen? That is the key to success with internet marketing. Have a plan and follow it through. Concentrate on just one thing and get that working before trying anything else.

The report is free. To get your copy of the Affiliate X Factor report from Andrew Fox go here:

http://www.robkeating.com/recommends/fox

P.S. By the way, you can also make some easy money
after downloading the report you can get your affiliate
link and spread the word making $1 on the first tier
and $.50 on the second tier.

A while ago you could go many a blog and post a comment and this would give you a link to your site. People were guilty of posting spam comments. To help stop this practice the “no follow” tag was introduced. What this does is it stops the search engine spiders from following the link in a comment to another site. The no follow tag has made it more difficult to get links back to your site.

The people at Portal Feeder recently created a piece of software called “Comment Kahuna”, which is used to search for keyword related blogs that you can then leave comments on. The latest version (1.6) can be used to find blogs without no follow. I have been using Comment Kahuna for several months with good results.

Yesterday I received an email with details about a similar software program. It is called “Real Link Finder”. It is distributed by Neil Shearing. I downloaded the program and set it up on my computer. If you refer the free program to a friend you get access to a short training video. I did this and also checked out the video. It provides some useful information however you can survive without it.

This evening I have been running a side by side comparison of the two programs. I used “tennis apparel” as the first search term I wanted to find blogs on which I could leave comments to link to my tennis website. With Comment Kahuna you can specify what PR you want the blog to have. In Real Link Finder you say how many comments you want about the post it is searching for.

After hitting search in both programs Real Link Finder came up with no results. On the other hand Comment Kahuna found quite a few blogs with relevant posts that I added comments.

Next I entered “flight to Beijing” which I wanted to link back to a page with tips for finding a cheap flight to Beijing. Once again Comment Kahuna came out in front. It found more than 20 blogs, compare this to one from Real Link Finder.

I tried a few more search terms and Comment Kahuna always seemed to find more blogs. Both programs have a basic interface so there was not difference in terms of usability. The main criteria I judge this comparison on is the number of blogs I can find to leave comments. Based on that I have to give Comment Kahuna the thumbs up.

You can get Comment Kahuna for free from the Portal Feeder website. Real Link Finder is available at RealLinkFinder.com.

If you have used one or both products leave a comment and let me know what you think.

The aim of giveaway events is to build email lists for the contributors and to giveaway great free stuff for the members. In the past I have added close to a 1000 people in a few days to one of my lists.

Simon Leung a former employee of Google actually got himself over 5000 people on his list from a giveaway promotion. He used a combination of the giveaway and Adwords to build the list. He shows you how he did this step by step in his Adwords List Building product.

I have purchased this product for myself and highly recommend it as it gives you a solid understanding of Adwords and how Google as a company treats internet marketers. If you are looking at getting into Search Engine PPC internet marketing Simon Leung’s guide is money well spent.

If you could not afford that sort of cash but still think Frank is an internet marketing genius, well maybe that is going too far, lets just say he is good at marketing. You should listen to Mass Control Revealed.

In case you have not heard of this beach bum, Frank Kern, he is the dude behind some of the biggest internet marketing launches. Stompernet and Pipeline Profits were pretty good…

Wanna grab your copy? Check out this site for Mass Control Revealed. It tells you more about this interview with Frank.

The cat became ours and would come in and sleep around the house. He seemed like a friendly cat and they thought he would not cause problems. Little did we know what lay ahead.

The first time I wanted to strangle the cat was when I came home one day and found a surprise on our bed.

Some time later we moved to our new house. My wife decided to take the cat with us. We thought he was not toilet trained however he seemed to use the litter tray as he should. As time went on we noticed some cat urine smell. After sniffing around I could not find anything.

A bit more time went by and the cat pee smell was stronger. This time my wife and I pinpointed the smell. There we were sniffing around on our hands and knees like little puppy dogs. Quite a sight. To our dismay the more we sniffed the more it seemed this cat had peed. We then noticed a smell upstairs, not again! He had left his cat spray all along a wall upstairs.

Now this was driving me crazy, the smell had by now got quite strong. We had to do something. I started hunting around on the internet for a solution to the cat urine problem. I came across several free solutions and gave them a try. Several days later still the smell persisted.

This time around I looked at some of the paid options and purchased the cat urine remedy and followed the guide. So far so good the smell has gone. I am now studying the guide to try to work out why this cat is peeing everywhere and stop it happening.

I think the best option is taking the cat down to the local lake and seeing if he can swim. I won’t be worried if he can’t. The only problem is I don’t think I can do that, also my daughter also like the cat.

Joel personalized the list to first person, so repeat after me…

1) I will clearly define what I want my Internet business to look
like in one year and set specific attainable goals to make it
happen. (You can’t get where you are going without a roadmap, so
chart it out)

2) I will follow those who have succeeded, emulate their successes
and learn from their mistakes. (We all need mentors. Be sure you
are following people who have honestly and ethically found success)

3) I will stay focused and not get distracted by all the “bright
shiny objects” (Just because an ebook, course or software product
is great, doesn’t mean it is going to help in your specific
business. Be discerning!)

4) I will use the product I have purchased before buying anything
else. (Do you have unread ebooks? Read ‘em! Unused software?
Use it! Unwatched DVDs? Put them in the DVD player!)

5) I will prioritize networking relationships with others in my
industry, as it is people and not websites that make my business
successful. (This is the secret to my success…)

6) I will make every effort to attend at least one Internet
marketing live event in 2008. (And this is where I discovered the
secret to my success!)

7) I will wisely invest time and money in my business. (If you
aren’t willing to make sacrifice, you probably aren’t going to
achieve your goals)
I will THINK BIG! (The opportunity is seemingly endless. Don’t
be satisfied with small successes… go for it!)

9) I will not give up! (Nothing happens without action. Never stop
taking action.)

10) I will pay it forward. (It is more blessed to give than to
receive, and I’ve found that when you help others it always comes
back to you with good stuff)

I hope you find these useful as you enter 2008!