Apr 22, 2010

1982 Latour Is a Big Part of My Retirement Plan

I just added a bottle of 1982 Latour as part of my retirement plan.
I first learned about 1982 Latour from Kevin O'Leary when he wrote about his drinking this fine wine at Grille 23 in Boston.
Kevin in his 2008 Globe and Mail article about Hedge Fund Madness indicated that legend has it that you don't get a hangover from 1982 Latour, regardless of how much you drink.
That is not why I added it to my retirement plan, however. (Incidentally, this fine wine starts out at about $1,600 a bottle in liquor stores.)
I added the experience of drinking a bottle of 1982 Latour while having a fine meal at Grille 23 in Boston in exchange for an hour coaching session with me to my retirement plan because it is one of those "unreasonable goals" that I want to achieve before I die.
I have added a number of goals that other people would consider unreasonable to my retirement plan and you should do the same with your retirement plan.
Another of my goals is to create a Blue Porsche Boxster S from side projects with my paying cash for it. (I don't believe in financing cars because this is playing on really low level of intention.)
Here are a few more items that I have included in my retirement plan:
  • Write the book Life's Secret Handbook (for Being Great Instead of Ordinary)
  • Hire a V.A. (Virtual Assistant) and a G.W. (Ghost Writer)
  • Live in Hawaii for 2 months during one winter.
  • Independently publish my books Look Ma, Life's Easy and Life's Secret Handbook and create bestsellers out of both of them.
  • Get a book published by Workman Publishing.
  • Publish the book Life's Secret Handbook for Having Great Friends and sell 500,000 copies on the Friendship Cafe.
  • Travel to Prague, Buenos Aires, Paris, and Boston.
  • Sell over 1,000,000 copies of my books (I have sold over 650,000 copies of my books so far).
  • Generate an income of over $300,000 a year for 5 years straight.
  • Sell over 500,000 copies of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free (This book has sold over 125,000 copies so far)
  • Make $1 million dollars as an Internet marketing expert.
  • Own a winter home in San Diego, Ensenada, or Hawaii
I hope my retirement plan helps you formulate an exciting retirement plan with many "unreasonable goals" in it as well.
Note: Have you noticed that my retirement plan does not include winning the lottery (the retirement plan for dummies)?

Apr 18, 2010

Exchanging Website Links Is for Losers



I get a lot of e-mails from people wanting to exchange website links, particularly to my retirement-related websites.

Most of the time I turn these people down.

Here is an e-mail I just received:


    Hi,

    I have found your website when searching the web on the topics related to my website theme. I must say your site content is very good and I think we would benefit much from possible partnersip - for example link exchange. This would bring more targeted traffic to our sites, plus increase our websites' weight at the search engines, as they give greater value to the links from the topic-related sites rather than irrelevant backlinks.

    My website http://www.readingforyoursuccess.com/ is definetely related
    to yours.

    I would be glad to link to your site in return to you linking back to mine.

    Please feel free to email me direct to discuss the details on the possible partnership.

    Hope for the fruitful cooperation

    Best regards,
    Scott Dinsmore
    http://www.readingforyoursuccess.com/
First, this guy tells me his website is related to mine and doesn't even mention which website of mine. It could be UnrealJob.com or Retirement Jobs at Real Success or any of the other 20 plus websites I have.

This guy also doesn't know anything about the power of website links.

This was my reply:


    Hello Scott:

    First, I am not sure which website of mine you are referring to but frankly I don't care. (I have between 15 and 20 websites).

    When you approach people for a so called link exchange or any business proposition, may I suggest that you offer some great value.

    Fact is, you are not offering me any value.

    Worse, what you are offering could hurt me.

    I checked out your website.

    Your home page may have a Google Page Rank of 3 but where you place links to
    other people's websites ( http://www.readingforyoursuccess.com/our-link-partners ) actually has a Google Page Rank less that zero. When the google bar has nothing but white on it, this is zero. When the white doesn't even open up, it's worse than zero.

    If you offered to place a link to any of websites from that webpage for free, I would decline. In fact, if you placed any of my websites on there, I would demand that you take them off.

    This webpage can be looked at as a link farm by Google because it has nothing but links on it and Google will penalize websites that appear on link farms.

    Perhaps you think that I don't know what I am talking about but I do.

    My retirement related websites such as The Retirement Quotes Cafe and The Joy of Being Retired get about 120,000 visitors a month and I have never used PPC.

    I also don't waste my time with link exchanges because I know that this is a very low results way to make things happen.

    In fact, exchanging website links the way you are doing it is for losers.

    I could go into this with a lot more detail, but I would be wasting my time.

    Ernie J. Zelinski
    The Creativity Guy Too Prosperous to Do Mornings
    Best-Selling Author, Innovator, and Unconventional Career Expert
    Author of the Bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
    (Over 150,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
    and the International Bestseller The Joy of Not Working
    (Over 250,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)
Here is another e-mail that I received:


    Hi,

    My name is Ashley. I've just visited your website Fun at Work and was wondering if you'd be interested in exchanging links with my website. I can offer you a home page link back from our "Office Humor" website. The site has been online since year 2000.

    I hope you find this link appropriate and useful. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

    Sincerely,
    Ashley
This was my reply:



    Hello Ashley:

    I turn most website link requests when I see that the Google page rank of the webpage where they are offering the link is less than 3 because where they are asking that I put a link to their websites is on one of mine that has a page rank of 3 or 4.

    Often the Google Page Rank bar doesn't even show white on their webpages which means the webpages have a Page Rank of less than zero, as several webpages on your website have.

    I do link to websites that have given me some value, even without them asking for the links.

    For example when I found by accident that Quintessential Careers had placed a great review of my book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on their website, I linked to their website from over 10 of my various retirement websites, giving them at least 25 links. This got their webpage with the review to a Google Page Rank of 4.

    See the review at: How to Retire Happy Review

    When you are prepared to offer something that is this valuable to me, I will
    return the favor.