Then there’s something like this:

I’m currently using the Planets theme, as its one of the themes which is supposed to change according to location and local time. Right now it’s showing an image of the giant planet, Jupiter. Maybe tonight I’ll get to see the icy rings of Saturn.

The themes are mostly developed by Google themselves, with 3 themes being developed by external artists. Chances are Google will be allowing more external artists to come up with new themes as time goes, but whether or not Google will allow users to come up with their own themes is still uncertain (but you can always use GreaseMonkey for that if you’re on FireFox).

The themes feature seems to have just been launched and not everyone will have access to it at the moment. If you are one of the lucky few, you would immediately notice a change in your Gmail’s appearance and there will also be a notice saying that you can now change your Gmail’s theme. If not, try checking whether there is a “Themes” tab under your Settings option.

It’s All About Focusing

If you are doing too many work, or task, do you think you will be able to learn anything from it? No, you won’t.

You will put yourself under pressure and it is just plain stupid for me. Rich Schefren, known as “guru’s guru”, talked about focus in many of his blog post. He also released few e-books on how scarce our attention to something.

That’s why getting into IM game is getting harder and harder everyday… but it’s not an end to those who haven’t plunge in.

The Power of One

When you’re trying to figure out which money making tricks that will make you most money, you must remember, if you are not fully pay attention to details, you will see a below-expectation result from your little experiment and you will make a wrong conclusion.

That’s just wrong to me.

How Many Things There Are To Be Tested?

If you want to talk about tactics, there are too many of it. Here’s what I have in my head right now on what you can use just to bring traffic to your site:

SEO (for Google, MSN, Yahoo), PPC (Adwords, YSM, AdCenter), Social Media (Digg, Reddit, Del.Icio.Us, etc.), List, JV, and Video (Youtube, Google Video, Dailymotion)

There are six categories that I could think of right now, and they can even be divided into their own respective niches (for example, in SEO you could divide it into three main ones, and in social media… there are just too many of them!). To test all of them at once is a sure-fire way to kill yourself. And by testing all of them at once, you can guarantee that you’ll learn almost nothing from it.

My Own Mistake

Here’s one stupid thing I’ve done recently. Do you know about NiagaKit recently launched by Team Flarebiz?

It is sold for RM500 (USD143) and it is made for someone who wants to make their own online store fast, and they even custom designed your store just for you. It’s a bargain, if you need to put up your own store fast and without touching too much of the technical details on your store and if you have the money in your pocket.

I promoted it, and I got one sale. For a fat RM100 commission.

The problem is: I don’t know where that sale is coming from!

I tried everything (well, actually, I only used two techniques, using forum before anyone else did mention about it, as well as emailing my tiny 15-people only list) and I get a result that I’m damn proud of.

Hey… I only have 15 people on my list and remember it’s a RM500 package I’m selling here!

Even though I got the sale I wanted (I expect I got nothing), I didn’t get what I needed most, which is to discover which type of traffic that converts most.

Don’t Make The Same Mistake As I Am!

The whole point of this post is to reiterate how important it is to focus only on one thing at a time. Just do one thing at a time, so that you know which one is making you money, and which one is not.

Whatever thing you want to try right now, make sure you have some ways to measure it so that you can duplicate the process the next time. You don’t want to waste a lot of time trying to do the same things twice.

As Albert Einstein used to say:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

This is a guest blog post by Abdul Rahman. He is a freelance copywriter and you can visit his blog at Memoir Penulis or his English blog at Copywriting, Salesmanship in Print and Marketing