In internet marketing lingo, the flow of visitors to you site is called traffic. Building Traffic is of primary importance to any internet marketing endevor. However Judith and Jim, over at Bridging Heart and Marketing recetnly asked on their blog “Do you like being called ‘Traffic‘?” and initiated a contest to come up with another word.

I applaud this line of inquiry. My first thought was “guests” and several other posted in kind.  For the sake of coming up with a unique contribution to the contest I pondered further and came up with “beneficiaries” This is in accord with one of the central themes of Alchemical Marketing and that is to make what ever marketing you do beneficial to whom ever comes in contact with it regardless of whether or not they  buy anything and to aim to only get those who will genuinely benefit from you offering to buy it.

Since August 1st (and before if you include pre-season) I an an large number of other people have been participating in the 30 Day Challenge put on by Ed Dale and Dan Raine with the support of several of their friends giving generously of their time. The Challenge, which occurs annually  is to make your first $10 online in the 30 days. In the day leading up to the start the team introduced us to a host of free tools and have since the start been leading us step by step in how to use those tools, plus new ones they have been introducing along the way, to make our first $10 dollars online. It has been great and I’ve learned a lot. I still haven’t made my first sale but in truth I have not used all the resources that have been provide to full advantage. For example I failed to join a team and I only just started to avail myself of the forum which has proven valuable.

While I am very much a beginner at IM, I have been follow the field long enough to know that some of the tools they have introduced during the challenge are revolutionary. The step by step, day by day, leading has been an incredible gift. Also while they have started working with Google Adsense. Everything up to that point has been free to use. Their is not cost to participate in the challenge and the team goes to great lengths to make that clear and keep it that way. It has been ideal for someone like me with very limited funds. Thanks Ed, Dan and the Rest

While it is well underway it is not to late to sign up. All the lessons are downloadable and you can follow them at your own pace. I believe they can still be accessed even after this years challenge is over.

In my last post I bemoaned the lack of aesthetic appeal and functionality of the blogs in my Global Alchemy Blog Matrix. Well I still have to work on the functionality part from an internet marketing point of view but they all got a major boost in looks. This was facilitated by Wordpress Direct, which made it esay to give all my blogs a new look. They have about 1,500 themes. For several of my blogs I found themes that really reflect thier content; for a few the match was decent; for a couple I am not satisfied but still better then default Wordpress theme in both look and functionality. I imported them all into Wordpress Direct, which is not the optimal use for Wordpress Direct as I had to do by hand much of what Wordpress DIrect does automatically when you use it to build the Blogs from scratch. Building blogs from scratch is where Wordpress Direct’s real value come to light. I builds a SEO (search engine optimized) with several handy plugins for monetizing your blog.

I eventually want to build themes that exactly match the tone of each blog but I feel that these are good enough to show the world now.

I decided to use blogging as the first step in utilizing the internet and internet marketing as part of the Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment primarily for economic reasons. It would be entirely possible to begin with no money what so ever. There are several free blogging options. I choose to get my own domain because it only costs $1 (recurring yearly) to register it and only $8 monthly to host it (at Hostgator) . Having it on my own domain was recommended as a better long term strategy and having my own domain will be need for many other IM strategies anyway.

I am using Wordpress, again on recommendation from Lynn Terry’s Self-Starters Forum gang- which I highly recommend along with Lynn Terry’s ClickNews blog as a valuable IM resource. (Lynn Terry will be getting her own post in the next day or so as one of my favorites in the world of internet marketing teachers because she definitely embodies all of the qualities I named as essential for the kind of IM teachers I want learn from in my Introduction to this blog.)

By creating what I call my blog matrix I have been able to post a lot of interconnected information without having to spend any money on a web designer or learn web designing myself. In the long run, I think it will behoove me to transfer a lot of this info into static format (as in a typical website) as it is suited to that but this has at least allowed me and continues to allow me to get the information of my hard drive (both my computer’s and the one in my head) into a place I can share it with other without any additional costs.

I have been working on this blog matrix for a couple of months and I have only just posted to this one because the others create the context for the particular angel I am approaching internet marketing from. I am excited that I have reached the point that I feel ready to start posting to this blog.

I haven’t started trying to get any traffic to any of the blogs of this Blog Matrix yet because, (as you can see if you are finding this post anywhere near the date of this post), it is not yet ascetically pleasing and it lacks several components for it to truly function as a marketing tool . I am currently using, the default theme, (WordPress allows you to change themes and there are hundreds of prefabbed themes available.) which, besides being boring is unsatisfactory in several other functional ways. I attempted to use Cutpress, but lacked the necessary know-how to make it fit my needs. In short I need to make some major changes before this or any other blogs in my Blog Matrix are ready for general traffic. I am hoping that in the next week I will be able to make enough of those changes to begin applying traffic driving and list building strategies.

I am exploring internet marketing as part of the The Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment. I am using internet marketing as a tool for communicating the visions of Project Global Alchemy, as an aspect of the vision itself  and as way to create cashflow for the experiment. I have given an account of my reasons for all of these on the Alchemical Wealth Building Blog in the Post “Reasons I am Focusing on Internet Marketing“

This is the first aspect of my “Alchemical Wealth Building experiment” (which is a part of my Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment) that deals with what I label as first attention-outer skillful means (strategies) of wealth building.

If you have read the introduction to the Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment Blog (which is the umbrella blog for the whole matrix of explorations and experiments) you know that I am, at this beginning phase, unemployed, indebt and without savings, or available credit. So if I am successful at creating cashflow via the internet then it is possible for just about anyone to do it.

Since this part of my Alchemical Wealth Building experiment this will be an experiment in what I call Alchemical Internet Marketing which is simply the application of the principles of Alchemical Wealth Building (and the Global Alchemy Template) to the activities of Internet Marketing. The inner focused activities are mostly the same for all Alchemical Wealth Building Strategies so this blog will be mostly concerned with specific strategies of Internet Marketing I am learning and using and how to use them in the way most congruent with style of Alchemical Wealth Building

What I have to offer those who may find their way to this Blog -or- who might be especially interested in my explorations in this field:

I am a beginner to Internet Marketing but…

• I have been following it long enough to have a basic grasp of all the major aspects.
• I have a knack for understanding underlying structures of methods and patterns of relationships between divergent methods
• I am exploring Internet Marketing from the specific point of view of how to use it as a tool for building a sustainable global civilization which includes using it as a source of revenue for projects aimed at the needed transformation and for the individuals who are, themselves, engaged in building a sustainable global civilization

Basically you might find this exploration interesting if you:

• want to know what internet marketing teachers are (and aren’t) teaching IM
  • in a way that expresses values in alignment with the kinds of changes in how business is done that need to be adopted if we are to create true sustainability
  • in a way that encourages integrity
  • that expresses Heart Value
  • in a way that reflects what they actual use to market their own stuff – ie they practice what the preach and preach what they practice.
• want to know what a beginner has found useful
• have a vision that you are trying to share with the world
• If you want to join me in my experiment in using the internet as tool for sharing heart centered visionary expressions, while simultaneously creating cashflow in a way that is aligned with aspirations for sustainability of the global civilization.
• If you are interested in “conscious business” and would like to know about tools and resources that someone else who values “conscious business” has found useful. (I explore conscious business as whole on the Alchemical Business&Entrepreneurship Blog)