Hey there. Welcome to my modest piece of cyber- space.

My name is Alex Wilson.

I’m a practicing management consultant and have been a part-time Internet marketer for quite some time; certainly long enough to have experienced the many difficulties, frustrations and rewards that Internet marketing can hand out.

But it was only about 7 months or so ago that I concluded that blogging offered the most viable means of Internet marketing success; and for all that time I have been a member of Andrew Hansen’s Firepow.

I’ve used the whole system. I’ve experienced its strengths and weaknesses and I recognize its huge potential going forward. I haven’t always been in agreement with the way that Firepow has been managed — and I won’t be in the future—but then, that’s one of the reasons management consultants exist!

I created this blog to provide well considered reviews of Firepow 2.0, its functioning, its management and its degree of success—without fear, and without favor.

I hope it helps you!If it doesn’t, please tell me here.

I’ll truly appreciate your courtesy.

 Mail this post

Technorati Tags: firepow, firepow 2, firepow 2.0, internet marketing, internet marketing success, review, strengths, weaknesses

Content… The continual need for content is the blogger’s nightmare. You either write it yourself—and that costs time; or you outsource it—and that costs money.

Time or money—essentially the same thing; either way you lose.

How many more people would turn to blogging as their main—even their only—means  of Internet marketing if it were not for the drudge of article writing?

How many people would, metaphorically speaking, give their right arm to be able to swap hours of daily article writing for minutes engaged in setting up a software program every, week—or even every month?

A program that finds articles, news items, even videos—and posts them to your blog or blogs, randomly or in a planned, systematic way, (you choose).

Sounds good huh? Too good to be true even?

Well is true and it does exist and it’s being used right now—all over the Web, and very successfully I might add.

I used it today for the first time and, in a word, it’s sensational!

I believe that once you became accustomed to using it, you’d breeze through setting up content for a blog in less than 30 minutes—max. And that would set up content dribbling into your blog for a week, or a month, or even longer.

This long awaited tool, the brainchild of that brilliant young Australian Internet marketer, Andrew Hansen, is already changing the face of ‘blogging marketing’

Firepow2.0 is suffering a few teething problems at the moment and that is to be expected, but that cannot detract from the fact that the program is turning ordinary people into extraordinary ‘Netmarketers.

Take a really good, in depth look at it right here.

Technorati Tags: articles, blogging, content, content blitz, firepow2.0, marketing Internet marketing, posts, videos

Yesterday I wrote more about the excellence of the facility provided by Firepow 2.0 for adding and editing posts to a blog.

The next feature will be of great interest to dedicated bloggers because it enables a simple and rapid Google Blog Search for posts that are relevant to your site.

Like the tools to find relevant pictures and videos, this tool also has three fields to complete: The first requires the appropriate keyword; the second the number of posts required (there is a choice of 5-100) and lastly, the length of the post (30-500 characters)

These posts are in valuable for giving ideas for articles and even for providing pieces of news content that can be added to your articles or posts.

Add/Edit Content also provides for the creation of additional pages such as About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy and so on. It has identical set up features to those provided for adding and editing  blog posts.

The last section of Add/Edit Content enable the creation of categories within blog, and the selection facility for the particular category in which you want to place your post.

Well that’s about completes the tour of Add/Edit.

Very closely associated with Add/Edit though is the page that allows for the editing of your blog’s configuration, and I’ll just treat quickly with that.

The page has three tabs:

 Edit Settings gives access to the blog’s title, keywords, description, Admin email, and time zone.

You can also select and change themes on this page and there are currently 95 from which to choose.

Edit Passwords allows access to FTP, MySQL and WordPress Admin usernames, pass words and other data

Update Plugins  unsurprisingly allows one click updating of all plug-ins requiring up-dating and the program automatically lists those plug-ins in need.

So that’s it. That’s the magical Add/Edit Content feature.

Make sure you go here to discover more about Andrew Hansen’s Firepow2.0, and thanks for reading.

Technorati Tags: add/edit content, andrew hansen, edit, firepow, firepow2.0, posts, video

Taking up from where we left off  in Firepow 2.0; Outstanding attributes—Add/Edit Content Wizardry (1), let’s move on to what has to be the easiest way you’ve ever seen to insert Google Adsense advertisements.  You simply select the color you want for your link and text from the accompanying palettes, choose whether you want the ad to be left or right aligned (or you can select ‘custom’ and then just drag and drop it where you will), click ‘Apply” and the job’s done!

Next you have a choice to insert H1 and H2 tags that are added to the code of the post you are editing, and will be more relevant that those inserted by WordPress.  The relevant video will explain this more fully.

Do you have trouble finding and downloading relevant pictures to insert in your blog posts? Well not any more. This natty tool makes the task quick and easy. You insert the relevant keyword, choose from one of three sites from which to download the pics (or select ‘All”), choose the number of pics you want to consider, select those you want and click ‘Add’. Simple huh?

Videos? Yep. Add/Edit Content does YouTube videos too. It’s much the same deal as choosing the images, except that you can choose between the number of views the video has received, the highest rated videos or the video most relevant to your keyword. You also

get to see a preview if you want—sound and all. Once again, pressing the ‘Add Content’ button completes the job.

And there’s more… much more! I’ll tell you about it next day.

In the meantime, learn more about Firepow 2.0 right here.

And thanks for reading.

Technorati Tags: add/edit content/ h1 h2 tags, firepow 2.0, youtoube videos

The control you have; the amazing things you can add to your content; the formatting tools that are available; the simplicity of it all! This is the magic of ‘Add/Edit Content’ in Firepow 2.0

 And what is more, there are excellent training videos available for every facet.

 Let’s look at some of these things:

 When you open up your ‘Blog Posts and Pages Manager’ for a particular blog, you’ll see all your blog posts listed; and for each blog you can see the category it’s placed in; whether it’s been published or is in the queue to be published on a date in the future that you’ve set; it’s social bookmarking status and the date that it was created.

 Hovering over the post’s title will bring up three choices: ‘edit’, ‘delete’ or ‘sb submit’ (submit to social network site bookmarks).

 I’ll tell you all about the incredible integration with social networks another day in the near future; and deleting needs no explanation; but clicking on the edit link will open up a quite amazing prospect.

 Firstly, you’ll see all the formatting tools you’ll ever need: Bold, italic, underline, strike-out, justification, text color, highlight color, headings 1,2… , font family and size, bullets and numbering, paragraph indent, cut, copy and paste, paste from MS Word, undo and redo, remove formatting, clean up messy code, insert/edit link, unlink, insert/edit anchor, insert/edit image, insert custom character, toggle spell-checker, ‘read-more’ post break and HTML source edit.

 It’s amazing! To tell the truth, I never knew about many of these tools until I wrote this post. Clean-up messy code? Wow! Post from MS Word. Geez! Text and highlight color I didn’t know about! I’ll have to be careful to curb the over-use of these aids, or my posts will look like Xmas trees!

 There’s so much more to tell you about this wonderful ‘Add/edit Content feature, and I’ll do that next day.

 Do take the time to read what Andrew Hansen, the creator and owner of Firepow 2.0 has to say about this brilliant program—and thanks for reading.

Technorati Tags: add/edit content, andrew hansen, firepow, firepow 2.0, formatting tools

I’m both sorry and disappointed to say that it darned well looks like it.

 Here is what Andrew Hansen says in his sales page:

 As a Firepow member you’ll have access to 24 hour a day LIVE support.

That means you’re playing with Firepow at 2am and you run into an issue… there’s someone there to talk to immediately, WAITING to help you.

No waiting days to get your problems solved, period.

 Wouldn’t that be nice?

 Well, here’s the current reality:

 I have only seen live Support for 2 days, and that was immediately after Firepow 2.O was launched.

 I used it twice during that time. The fist contact resulted in a directive to leave a message about my problem. I did… and that was the last I heard. The second time somebody was in attendance and I received good service.

 Since then Support has not been ‘live’ any time that I have visited it. I have had to post my query and wait for an answer. I usually get a reply (always courteous and helpful) around 4-10 hr later. By Internet standards that’s not bad, not bad at all. But by the standards promised by Andrew, that’s nothing short of appalling.

 If we look at the forums (which is where a lot of people seek help) we find that one person seeking help at 10:48PM on the 21^st (All times and dates are GMT +10—Australian EST) and another person at 3:49PM on the same day, still haven’t received answers up to the time of writing—11:00 AM

 Now they may have received help in the meantime from Support—I have no way of knowing that—but I think that is most unlikely.

 This is why: I lodged a ticket myself at around 6:00 PM yesterday (the 21^st), and I still haven’t received a reply. That’s 17 hr.

 There’s a bunch more things I could say about the lack of Admin’s presence in the forums yesterday and so far today, but I’m not going to take the time. What I’ve said is evidence enough of a faltering support system

 Quite frankly I’m gutted by this demonstration of over-promise and under-delivery. It’s simply not good enough, and the whole sorry affair is exacerbated by the fact that there has been no apology or even a notification that live Support could not be maintained, not to mention that together with that should have been an indication of what in fact could be expected in the future.

 Do I think this detracts from the real value of Firepow 2.0?

 No I don’t. Not to any significant extent. It’s a fabulous program and I wouldn’t be without it.

 There’s nothing wrong with Firepow that a good management consultant and a good instructional designer couldn’t fix. Absolutely nothing.

 I just wish that Andrew and his team, intelligent, honest and possessed of remarkable IT ‘smarts’ though they undoubtedly are, would realize that nobody can be good at everything, and it is crucial that some management processes, apart from law and accountancy, are outsourced.

 Over-promising and under-delivering is a damaging management fault that significantly undermines customer confidence. It is a practice that simply has to be eliminated.

Technorati Tags: andrew hansen, firepow, firepow 2.0, forums, instructional designer, live support, management consultant, management team, over-promise, support, under-delivery

In a previous post, “How to Easily Set Up a Blog in Two (2) Minutes Flat”, I wrote about how quickly a blog could actually be built using this amazing program. But that only created the bare bones. To flesh out those bones, there a few more processes to follow, and today I’d like to introduce you to  “Manage Sites”, the feature that will enable you slash your blog management time.

Before Firepow 2.0 was launched, much was made in the pre-launch advertising of what was referred to as the “Control Panel”. In the event, that feature is indeedin place, but is now referred to as ‘Manage Websites”

But “Control Panel” would have been an arguably better name for it. It is very cool. From it you can access all relevant features for managing your blogs. For example:

•    All your blogs are listed in front of you and you can be taken to the blog itself by clicking on the title.

•    Each blog is on an individual line, and along that line is up-to-date information about that blog as well icons that link to relevant tools.
•    You can see how many posts have been made to that blog, and when the last post was made.  This is very useful when managing large numbers of blogs.
•    The latest version of WordPress is indicated, with the facility to upgrade to the latest version by a click of your mouse. Or you can select all you blogs and upgrade them all at once with two clicks.
•    A single click shows you the WordPress log-in details for each site, and another icon on the same line takes the blogger to the WordPress Dashboard for that site
•    There are icons to take you to the subject blog’s main configuration edit facility. Still others that enable you to edit and post content, and back-up that blog to a zip file.
•    More icons on that blog’s line take you to Content Blitz (itself worth the subscriptions to belong to Firepow) and RSS content
•    The Blog Network (I’ll write about it soon), RSS submission, social bookmarks and Yahoo answers can also be reached by icons relating to each site.

“Manage Websites” is a magnificent facility that will save you at least half the time you now spend attending to blogs. It’s simply brilliant.

Read what the creator and owner, Andrew Hansen, and many other very successful people have to say about the incredible value of Firepow 2.0

Technorati Tags: andrew hansen, blog network, content blitz, control panel, firepow, firepow 2.0, manage websites

Today I set up my fist blog with Firepow 2.0.

 It took me a tick over 2 minutes, and I’m not exactly the fastest worker in the world. So it’s many minutes faster than the original software that’s for sure.

I first of all inserted the required data into a template I’d created in my word processor, opened the word processor and Firepow 2.0 in separate tabs on my browser and simply copied and pasted the data from one to the other. 

The template I use for blog set-up by the way is very useful. It allows you to get all your data together as a separate, focused task; but more importantly, it ensures that any copy is ‘spell corrected’, thus saving a possible future edit. It’s also useful to have filed for future reference.

If you would like to have a copy of my template you’d be very welcome. Simply send me an email from the ‘About Us’ page, and I’ll shoot one off to you.

But back to blog set-up Firepow 2.0 style.

I took the opportunity at this stage to look at the videos that Andrew Hansen (Firepow 2.0 creator and owner) has produced to guide needy people (like me) through the mysteries of blog creation. He’s done a pretty good job too. But I think real newbies (I’m sort of an advanced newbie) would still be left stranded by jargon.  I’ll make that the subject of another post, another day.

But don’t get me wrong—they’re still pretty darned good videos. Some are excellent.

So what are they?

Well, apart from two videos about setting up a blog on a domain per se, there are two more dealing with the tricky bits of set-up when using an add-on domain. Very useful stuff.

But that’s not all, there are three more videos dealing with buying a domain name, buying a hosting package and setting up nameservers.

In summary, Firepow 2.0 makes setting up a blog from go-to-whoa impressively quick and very, very  easy—except (arguably) for the very, very new blogger.

 Andrew and his team are to be congratulated.

I strongly recommend that you read Andrew’s introduction to the program

Technorati Tags: add-on domains, andrew hansen, blog creation, blogger, domain, domains, firepow 2.0, hosting, nameservers new blogger, videos

I like to look at guarantees.

Guarantees on the Internet remind me of some of the lyrics of the old ‘70s song Games People Play, by Joe South:

Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean

I experienced the loss of US$50 when a very well-known man, selling an e-book in a very well-known forum, offered a money back guarantee if the purchaser didn’t think it was the best e-book on the subject he had ever read. Well, to be truthful, I didn’t think it was, and so I asked for my money back. I didn’t get it… nor a reason why.

Being very surprised about this I felt the right thing to do was to let the forum owner know about it, especially as he was urging people to buy this product. Well—he said he’d look into it, and to cut a long story short, he hasn’t answered my last two attempts to contact him: one by personal message in the forum and the other by posting to Support. And I still haven’t got my money back.

Naturally I’m now very skeptical about people who offer guarantees, and I empathize with people of the same mind. I also encourage people who are too trusting to be very much more cautious about them.

So what conclusions have I reached then in relation to the Firepow 2.0 guarantee?

Well I suppose I’m a bit biased. I’ve known the program creator and owner, Andrew Hansen, for a number of years. I’ve only met him the once, and that was about 5 years or so ago, but we have had a number of dealings over that time, and I’ve found him to be a most personable, likeable and highly intelligent young man of substance and profound integrity.

But more than that, I’ve experienced an occasion, without going into details, when a mistake that I made left Andrew in the position where he could have lawfully and even morally withheld a three figure sum from me. It was clearly my fault. But I asked him to consider refunding—he didn’t hesitate for a minute. That money came rocketing back to me instantly.

To me, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

So, with respect to the Firepow 2.0 guarantee,I would just say this: Read the guarantee thoroughly—don’t just gloss over it. Keep an accurate journal of all you do to honor your side of the guarantee, and if the program doesn’t deliver, Andrew will–to the tune of 110% of your investment.

You simply can’t lose.

Go here right now, and read the guarantee for yourself.

May you prosper!

Technorati Tags: andrew hansen, firepow, firepow 2.0, guarantee, money back

Since the original Firepow was launched, and to this day of Firepow 2.0, I have seen and heard a number of people complaining that the program is too expensive.

 And at $127 a month, I can understand that a lot of people would feel that way. But in reality, we have to look very closely, not only at what we are getting for our money, but also at what it would cost to get a similar result at a conventional learning institution.

 So let’s begin by looking at some results of the members of the original Firepow. Now I personally know four people who are making in excess of US$100,000 a year, and quite frankly, there are many more whom I don’t know personally, and who are doing just that. So let’s just keep that figure in mind for the moment.

 I live close by a university city in Australia where I am the principal of a management consultancy, and I’m here to tell you that if someone who’d just completed a 3 year Bachelor of Business degree at the University of Southern Queensland  went looking for a job paying AU$100,000 a year, that person would NOT be successful. That sort of money is just not paid to a recent graduate. And the total fees for that degree would have been AU$26,000.

Let us then send the graduate back to qualify for an MBA, which might, just might, get him or her a job at AU$100,000 a year. That’s another 1.5 years of study and a further AU$13,000 in fees.

 Total time studying: 4.5 years. Total fees: AU$39,000.

 AND, there’s no guarantee of success OR a job. If you fail the course you lose; if you don’t get a job after you graduate, there’s no refund of fees.

 Now let’s go back to  these people who are making in excess of US$100,000 from blogging Firepow style. 

Firepow’s only been around for about 18 months, so they’ve got their US$100,000 job after 1.5 years of study and it’s only cost them about US$2800. And we’re not taking into account the profit they made while they were learning!

 On top of that, they were guaranteed that if they didn’t get what could only be described as a reasonable result after 60 days, they would get 110% of their money back.

 I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, and we’ll look closely at Andrew’s guarantee. In the meantime, click on the Firepow banner in the left column and get a really good handle on what truly is, a fabulous program. Have a great day.

Technorati Tags: firepow, firepow 2, firepow 2.0, guarantee