Hey there,

Welcome back to another quick, jolting and powerful episode of The Keyword Informer.

Toward the end of the year, a lot of people get really geared up and start thinking about the types of resolutions they're going to make. And I'm not sure whether the general public at large is getting ready with their list of resolutions so they have some pre-canned answer at a New Year's Eve party or whether they really and truly mean it.

But let's think back you and I.

How many resolutions that you made earlier in the year have you stuck to and are you truly passionate about right NOW?!

Seriously — think about it.

In fact, you may even have a hard time thinking about what those resolutions were unless you wrote them down.

Again — I reiterate and speculate whether resolutions are truly some sort of social manner to think them up as a conversation piece! I think they are.

Embarrassingly enough, I've done this once or twice back in my early 20's because I knew it would be a topic that would be discussed at a party and I figured I would feel dumb if I didn't have an answer.

Today — if you ask my thoughts about it — WHO CARES!!!!

Now let's understand why resolutions are out and are so passe.

When you think about a resolution — it's usually an example that follows:

1. I am making a resolution to stop smoking

2. I am making a resolution to stop my bad eating habits

3. I am making a resolution to not be in bad relationships

You see — the actual syntax, or the manner in which a resolution is usually formed literally spells disaster.

Why?

Because while the purest of intent is there to improve, the resolution focuses mostly on stopping or preventing a bad habit or some negative type of behavior. And this puts a lot of undue focus on the actual bad habit you are trying to prevent in the first place. The saying goes, the more you focus on something, the more of it you'll get.

Sure, you can easily create or restructure a resolution that focuses on the actual outcome you want to achieve, but let's take a look at another scenario.

A commitment — while paralyzing to some males in society — is a truly passionate and much more concrete position someone can take. There is no way to halfway to commit.

You either commit or you don't.

And when a commitment takes place, it can span six months, a year and sometimes even longer.

In fact, when you think about a commitment, it usually is long term.

1. The way someone commits to a spouse and raising a family.

2. The way an athlete commits themselves to the sport and to become a part of a major competition like the Olympics.

Commitments do not stray away from the promise that implied — there is NO straddling the line — there is NO gray area.

Let's take a deeper look into this.

One of the true core philosophies I teach when it comes to keyword research is to first get your "State of Mind" right before ever picking one single keyword. (To most people, this part would never occur to them and probably why 95% of the crowd fails actually achieving their ultimate goal.)

In fact, State of Mind is the first of the "10 Commandments To Wildly Successful Keyword Research and Leveling Your Competition" (philosophies which I have not even publicly published yet).

So why is State of Mind so important and what does it include? Let's analyze it together.

Most often, people start a project and do not have any set goals, any achievements they wish to reach and thus, they have NO target.

And this ultimately requires someone to make a decision about what their true intentions.

It is my personal belief that you must first decide to become successful at something before you ever reach that point. It doesn't just happen - it's a PLANNED event.

In my un-published article which touches on the first Five Commandments to wildly successful keyword research, I talk about the fact that the military would never go about shooting off a missile (which arguably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars) without first punching in the coordinates of the target. Right?

And I believe the human mind works the same way.

I'm sure you've heard the philosophy to… "Begin with the end in mind." When you do begin with the end in mind, it's almost like punching the coordinates of your target into the missile located in your mind that will end at a destination or your desire result, isn't it?

So this begs that you need to ultimately decide what will be the end result of your project, your new behavior, your new focus.

Part 1 of the first commandment I discuss above is to decide what you are going to do and write down a mission statement about it, making it clear and passionate.

Example: "I am going to launch a dog training site that I will position on the 3 major search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN for the top 100 most visible keywords that relate to the topic. I will make certain to engage in all conversations going on around me in the dog training field through the popular blogs and forums so that every site owner knows me by first name and knows how visible my website is. I will obtain 30 top joint venture partners in the field that will promote my products through my affiliate program. I will also submit 250 articles on this topic, whether done by myself or through outsourcing the writing and post my articles to the top article directories that will position me as an expert in the field. I will do all this within my first year and I will not stray from my objective no matter the mental or physical energy nor the cost."

Can you feel the passion behind that? I know I can.

Part 2 of the first commandment relates to deciding not to be a dabbler.

We've already discussed how passive we are with resolutions and how they seem to just become a thing of the past as soon as the first quarter of the new year comes along.

No! A resolution is not what is needed to make something stick and effect new change and develop a new pattern.

We must commit or make a solid commitment.

Doesn't a commitment sound more passionate and more resolved concrete?

In fact, when we make commitments, they are about things that we usually end up keeping strong for a year or sometimes even years.

It's probably why females don't ask a man for a resolution to stick with them, they ask for a commitment!

Now, I understand how some men may have an aversion or problem with the word commitment, but a commitment is really a good thing even when it comes to improving your life or just improving a particular area of your career or just one area of your abilities.

Let me give you an example.

Back in 2004 after having struggled a number of years online already and having had no grounding or skill in developing website traffic, I got fed up. I was done, I was tired of all the B.S. No, in fact, I was sick and tired of really being sick and tired. (This is really one of the best places for you to finally go to because this piles up some serious leverage for you to change something in a massive way and swing the pendulum in the other direction.)

So I came across a paid publication that made a lot of sense to me and discussed how to do reciprocal linking. It made so much sense to me that it finally got across the concrete understanding of how search engines read text on a website and how they follow hyperlinks from one link to another. I finally GOT IT and the light bulb went on that search engines actually read the TEXT (aka anchor text) when they follow links. And that the best way to get ranked for a keyword phrase was to find a way to get hyperlinks located outside of my webiste on other people's website with a specific keyword phrase pointing at my website.

That was like an epiphany from all the bloated B.S. on website promotion I had been reading at the time (back in 2004).

So I decided that this one website promotion tactic would be the one thing that I would focus on and this one thing only. Everything else would be ignored until I gained my desired results. So I made my decision and loaded the coordinates into the missile inside my mind for the target I was going to reach at the time.

But I knew this wasn't enough.

I then took the extra step that most people never take. I made a commitment for 6 months to lock my credit cards up in my safe and not spend another dime beyond the software tools I needed to get the job done for my one tactic I would be utilizing called "reciprocal linking."

There were some rocky times during this six month period. There were some times I even doubted myself that this stuff would even work. Shoot, I even took the risk of my wife even calling me a spammer because I was contacting so many online businesses to attract as many link partners that I could.

What was the actual website I tested this on? My testing bed was the very keyword research site that began back in 2004 — NicheBOT.com.

In fact, back in 2004, I was very glued to my Google PageRank toolbar when PageRank was more often updated then it is now. And I saw my PageRank go from a PR0 to a PR6, back down to a PR0, back up to a PR5, down to a PR3 and back up to a PR5 until I just finally started ignoring the radical shifts. But it was enough to drive a newbie nuts!

Throughout these trying times, it was my commitment that kept me on track and kept me burrowing forward.

Sure, there's a lots of boring and mundane tasks involved with any type of website promotion, tactic or strategy. But through all those six months, I am proud to say that I produced many top 10 search engine positions and learned a great many things about website promotion, got out of my comfort zone, met a great many number of people and even learned that I could stretch myself further than I thought I could. So it was a great self-learning experience.

What also came out of it — and I touched upon this in my recent post called "Do not buy ANOTHER product unless you read this" — I was able to fluently discuss the topic of reciprocal linking. So much so, that I created an 8 day course call Total Niche Market Domination that unveiled the entire system that I created around this first tactic that I truly committed myself to. The end result was a course that I shared with over 6,000 people (and the beginning of my first real mailing list) and product that yielded my first real affiliate commissions that accumulated to over $20,000 in the first year.

I think the preceding paragraph is also a great monument that if you promote something that you truly believe in, the money will follow.

The underlying point is also that once you develop a particular skill, you can write about it fluently and ultimately create a really great themed site around that topic.

The other underlying point there is that doing such a thing could also get you labeled as an expert in that particular area and topic. And that can have most positive consequences, too.

And this whole story all stemmed from a commitment.

A commitment to a tactic that developed a skill.

A commitment to myself — not to be a dabbler and jump from one thing to another.

A commitment to keep my credit cards at bay and lock them up in a safe until I reached my target destination and ultimately the results I wanted to achieve.

A commitment to finally gain traction and build some marketable skills.

In fact, once you master one skill, the next skill or tactic you learn is that much easier to master or pick up. The main reason is that you develop a confidence that ANYTHING is possible and you have opened up new neural pathways to learning.

Inspiring — aint it?

So before the new year comes upon you and I, let's not think about a list of resolutions that we can make and become passive about.

Let's take the time — even an entire day — to think of maybe on or two things that we can become committed to for the next year and beyond.

It may be something that is uncomfortable to you. That's okay.

But one thing is for sure — this commitment will make sure to take you out of your comfortability level and show you that things truly are much more possible than you believe them to be today.

And on that note, I leave you to become a truly committed person.

Best wishes for the new year and beyond,

Jim Morris, Founder

NicheBOT.com — "Finds exactly what people search for."