If you’re gonna crush it, you need to know whats going on in your game. You gotta be all over it.

That means keeping track of the conversation that are going on all over the web. Here’s how to do it with 2 free google tools….

Are you on top of your game? Do you know what your competitors are talking about – what they’re saying? and how they’re saying it?

New year, new decade and another opportunity to reflect and plan. A brilliant learning experience.

Of course I already have a lot of specific measurable goals for 2010 – I resolved to streamline my business and focus on a handful of key concepts. Then I stumbled across Chris Brogan’s post on 3 words to guide you – a brilliant thought exercise to address resolutions and plans for the forthcoming year.

I whittled down my shortlist of 19 and came up with these:

1. Leverage (but revised)

Everything comes down to leverage, usually using other peoples assets for your own benefit but that’s a little selfish and doesn’t quite sit with my new business ethos of altruism. My plan is to leverage any asset I can for the benefit of others. So in 2010, leverage stands for giving.

2. Team

The biggest struggle I experienced during 2009 was speed of execution. I have ideas coming out of my ears so that’s not a problem. Even picking the best ideas to implement isn’t too difficult, but the speed of implementation is my greatest handicap. Working solo (and part-time) it’s impossible to remain competitive and provide the level of service and value that I envisage. Solution – build a team.

3. Systems

I am now thinking about my business from a much higher level – I’ve trimmed back a couple of sites and now I can really see where everything fits together. Every site, blog post, email broadcast and Youtube video now has a specific purpose as part of an overall strategy to build my business. I have lofty mid and long-term goals and only by taking a 20,000 ft view can I realize the opportunities.

I urge you to give this a shot – it’s a brilliant way to sharpen your mind and tune into your goals.

What 3 words will help you focus your business in 2010?

Please leave your comments below.

Thumbvu is a new site developed by John Guanzon designed to help build your mailing list as well as your social mojo.

I hooked up with John for a sneak skype interview before the official launch and you can watch it here for free. No optin required, just pure content. Of course I’m giving away a special bonus for anyone who registers through the Silicon Shovel link – just read the intructions below the video.

The official launch date for thumbvu is 5th January 2009 but you can pre-register before then and you get exclusive access to an interview with Jon Olson, a true mastermind of the traffic exchange industry.

Click this link to REGISTER FOR THUMBVU

Silicon Shovel Bonuses

When you join thumbvu using the link above , you will receive a bonus of 2,000 credits at Jetstreamtraffic.

If you take the upgrade at thumbvu, I’ll match it with an equivalent Club Class upgrade at Jetstreamtraffic.

To claim your bonus, just leave a comment below (use the same email address as you have registered at Jetstreamtraffic – it will be kept totally private). If you have any concerns though, you can also leave a support ticket.

Of course, I’d love to read your comments on thumbvu and if there is anything else I can help with, please let me know below.

I recently posted my blog disclosure policy so the FTC police don’t abseil through my bedroom window at dawn-break and put me in prison to keep in-line with the recent FTC regulations recently enacted upon bloggers. Since I’m based in Ireland, I guess I didn’t really need to do it but I saw it as a perfect opportunity to help build trust (that sounds a bit weird doesn’t it? like I have something to hide – I don’t).

Most of my customers are based in the US anyway and just like the can-spam laws, it’s probably best to consider the FTC rulings as universal. Legally, not essential – just good ethical business.

If you’re looking for some more erudite information on the subject, check out what I’ve been reading to bring myself up to speed:

1. Most importantly, you should really read the official FTC press release regarding the rulings on affiliate disclosure and testimonials.

2. It’s pretty interesting (and entertaining) to read Frank Kern’s account of how he almost lost his shirt when his honest affiliate program backfired and his business was dragged through the mud by the FTC.

3. If you prefer to listen to an audio, Jim Edwards also conducted this interview with Rich Cleland, a FTC honcho.

4. Amongst the big bloggers, Brian Clark wrote a pertinent piece on leveraging your disclosure to build trust with your audience. David Risley published a similar piece on the opportunity presented by the ruling for those who are prepared to go further than simply towing the line. Yaro Starak created a simple 8-point checklist to ensure that your sites meet the laws laid down.

5. Tim Ferriss published a catch-all statement to disclose his affiliations and even provided a bunch of images that you can use if you choose and John Jonas translated the FTC ruling into simple-speak aimed specifically at bloggers.

6. Paul Colligan siezed the opportunity to relaunch his PaulRecommends.com blog specifically for promoting his affiliate marketing links with full disclosure and transparency. A smart move that I’m sure will become ever more prevalent amongst affiliate aiming to market through a strong customer relationship.

7. Finally, if you want to spend a little cash on learning about the FTC decisions and display a trust badge attesting to your sites’ compliance, Attorney Kevin Houchin has released a product explaining how to make your business FTC compliant . Obviously that link there is hardcoded with my affiliate ID so I’ll get a kickback if you buy it. To be honest, I haven’t even tried it myself so I’m not in a position to offer any advice that might influence your decision to buy.  But James Holmes grilled Kevin in a brilliant podcast interview to explain how it can help clear up some of the finer points of the FTC statement.

Whilst thousands of marketers are scampering away in fear of the FTC’s December 2009 decisions, I genuinely welcome the changes because it simply spurred me on to write this long-overdue post on disclosure.

I am a true believer in full disclosure because transparency always wins out in the long run.

Affiliations – Brass tacks

As well as promoting my own sites, I sometimes suggest products as an affiliate and I might make some cash when you buy using my links. If you are unsure or I haven’t stated any affiliation, just assume that every link is an affiliate link and you can’t go wrong. If that makes you uncomfortable, fair enough, just please don’t buy through my link. That being said, I’d like to disclose how I select products to review / promote…..

Primarily, I write about products that I have tried out myself and found that they solved my problems. The product comes first and if it has an affiliate program, then that’s gravy. Faced with a choice of two programs that are equal but where one would give me more of an affiliate commission, the greedy (human) part of me might make me sway towards the cash. My more ethical side would say that I’d present a neutral stance, focus on value, and leave the decision to you but that’s subjective anyway.

I will always try to present the most objective point of view I can but we are all human and our perception of value can differ. Be responsible for your own decisions. At the end of the day, I want to recommend the right products for you because if  I don’t help solve your problems, I have failed.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a little trickier. Subjective, opinion-based feedback is 100% acceptable to the FTC but fact-based quantitative feedback isn’t. It is no longer acceptable to present an image of a 12-stone man holding out the waistband of a massive pair of jeans and disclaim “results not typical”.  Instead, you must state the actual typical results that the average person should expect. This exacting level of reporting is near impossible (in fact there are probably data-protection laws that prohibit the use of such info).

The easiest thing to do is to avoid results-based testimonials altogether. However, based on the Pareto principle, it is safe to say the the average result approximates to zero. Most people who purchase a product will never implement it and will never see any results. Ergo – zero output.

Where do I stand? – exceptional results take an exceptional people. That’s why we’re not all brain-surgeons and nuclear physicists. But if you want to succeed at anything, you have to be better than average.

Disclaimer

I am not a lawyer and have not sought the advice of a lawyer on this subject – to me it’s just common sense. Don’t sue me.

PS. If you think that’s fair, unclear or totally misleading please let me know in the comments below. And if you think I’m simply digging a hole for myself, please chime in and save my ass.

TED is like YouTube for smart people. Smart people who think and act big and make their mark in their world. The videos are usually less than 18 minutes long and cover just about every subject you can imagine from the greatest thinkers in the known universe.

If you really need some motivation to get your big ideas off the ground stop what you’re doing, go watch some TED videos and return to your work. It’s guaranteed to make you think bigger.

Here I handpicked 5 of my recent favorites to get you started. I promise you’ll find something amazing.

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

How forward thinking turned a simple mouse into a go-anywhere minority report. Then gives it away.

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

Hilariously entertaining. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

David Logan on tribal leadership

At TEDxUSC, David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form — in schools, workplaces, even the driver’s license bureau. By understanding our shared tribal tendencies, we can help lead each other to become better individuals.

Michael Pritchard’s water filter turns filthy water drinkable

Too much of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Engineer Michael Pritchard did something about it — inventing the portable Lifesaver filter, which can make the most revolting water drinkable in seconds. An amazing demo from TEDGlobal 2009.

Robert Lang folds way-new origami

Robert Lang is a pioneer of the newest kind of origami — using math and engineering principles to fold mind-blowingly intricate designs that are beautiful and, sometimes, very useful.

Entrepreneurs are naturally creative and ideas can quickly explode. Allow these seeds to grow too far too fast and a project becomes massive and nothing will ever happen. The best providers can drill down to the most potent part of a business and strip it back to its core function. It’s far simpler to sell a single idea than a sprawling mass of ideas, no matter how good they are. The best material survives the cull and the remainder can be repurposed for either future versions or separate products.

Feature creep can be one of the biggest killers of simple projects so if you get the chance, go back and review your websites, businesses and blog posts and strip them back to the core.

Just look at twitter – back in the early days, it was pretty unstable and had a very limited set of features. Nobody really knew how it was going to turn out, who would use it and how. But twitter didn’t launch saying “look at us, we’re bigger and better than anyone else” – instead it started simply with the open messaging posting function and left it to the users to interpret and shape the future. The users chose how it was utilized and even invented new languages (twords) and syntax (like hashtags) to fulfill those needs.

The API enabled third party clients to spring up to help manage the stream, categorize tweets and organize the noise. Again this development was all offsite without the intervention of twitter. Entirely in the hands of the users. Pure democracy.

Twitter is now in a position to rollout it’s new features which have been introduced in the past 8 or 9 months and new additions are drip fed to the community… Slowly. And that’s the key – by allowing the functions to evolve outside of the main site, when changes are finally implemented, they are should be 100% functional and respond to the consumer. All the dross is selected out and the fittest survives. Nothing is superfluous, everything is dictated by the audience and nothing is wasted. Absolute simplicity.

It’s a great lesson to learn and apply to your business. Keep it simple and allow the user to lead the way.

“Books are souvenirs. There is nothing that can be found in a book that can’t be found on the internet”

Information is instant and the only reason for buying a book is as a trophy. Seth talks about his outlaw distribution methods to put his 10 books in front of millions of readers. Not to make money from books, but to play with the flow of information in the silicon age.

“The enemy of the author is not piracy, but obscurity”

Godin doesn’t write books to compete with hundreds of thousands of other authors on the bookshelf. Instead he gives away the content for free and starts a conversation based on the permission of his audience. This allows him to use free channels to reach the people that want to be reached and then leaves the rest up to human nature.

And of course, tribalism helps.

Google Wave invites are in high demand right now but hold tight and you should get yours sooner or later. I only registered about a week before Wave went live and I received my invite shortly afterwards. But I’ve got something even better that should be able to speed things up and help you get a google wave account as quickly as possible.

Here’s the deal…

Get a Free Google Wave Invite

I have 17 invites for wave and I’m giving 10 away for free to readers of Silicon Shovel.

All you need to do to Get your invite to Google wave is follow the steps below

Sorry – You’re too late the contest is closed

1. Follow @MarcEglon on Twitter,
2. Add a comment below telling us why you want an invite. The quirkier the better,
3. Tweet this post,
4. [Bonus #1] If you want extra Kudos and an even better chance of getting an invite right away, link back to this post from your own blog.
5. [Bonus #2 *] If you really want to increase your chances, send a tweet from your Tweetglide account.

Simple as that.

Every tweet will count as an entry and you can tweet as many times as you like as long as you don’t spam the joint.

I’ll announce the winners in the next few days and I’ll send your invites immediately. Then it’s in the hands of the mighty G.

Good luck.

* Just added on 31st Oct

Winners Announced

I decided to give away a few extra invites so that means that everyone who took part will get their invite.

Thanks for all you comments and tweets and helping me give these away.

There is just one more thing you’ll need to do though. I only get one chance with the email so make sure it goes to the right email address, please enter your details in the form below. Don’t worry – you’ll not be added to any mailing lists (there is a separate form for that at the top right of the page which is 100% optional).

Please do this right away because I’ll be sending the invites tomorrow.

One last thing – I have no idea Google will take to send you my invite so just sit tight. I promise to do my part.

Thanks again, you ROCK.

How much Does Aweber Cost?

Aweber added a new pricing structure around a year ago so you to get started for less than $20 a month. You get all the advanced tracking data and the cost grows with your list.

There’s also a 1-month test drive so you can try it out for only $1. This is a really cute bit of marketing because once you start using your autoresponders, you’re unlikely to want to switch – especially when you see how cool it is. Even if you do decide you want to leave Aweber, most other services will let you bring your list with you.

Aweber Discount Coupons

Aweber is a premium service so they do not offer any discount coupons. The standard monthly price is only $19 though so everyone can afford it. But I recommend that you save 20% by taking the annual subscription option (currently $194.80).

Disclaimer

Of course I’d like you to buy Aweber here because that way I’ll make some money. Woohoo. But that’s not why I wrote this. I pick affiliate products very carefully so I can stand by them with pride and integrity. Aweber is just a great service that I use every day. But if you are looking for a fair comparison, I haven’t tried any other autoresponder so I couldn’t possibly comment on those. But the fact that I haven’t needed to use another service speaks for itself.