By Brian Tracy

Why do some people retire rich and most people retire poor? This question has fascinated philosophers, mystics, and teachers throughout the ages. There have been so many men and women – hundreds or thousands, maybe even millions – who started with nothing and became financially independent that people are naturally curious to know why it happened and if there are common rules or principles that others can apply to become wealthy as well.

The Parable of the Talents is one of the stories told by Jesus to illustrate a moral lesson. The message in this case (from the Gospel of Matthew): “To him that hath, shall more be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.”

What does it mean?

In the modern world, we say it this way: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” The fact is that people who accumulate money tend to accumulate more and more. People who don’t accumulate money seem to lose even that little bit that they have.

Why should this happen?

The great success principle, the single idea that explains human destiny is simple: “You become what you think about most of the time.”

Control Your Thoughts

Whatever you dwell upon grows in your reality. You create your entire world by the things you choose to think about and how you choose to think about them.

It just so happens that wealthy, successful people fill their minds – most of the time – with thoughts, words, pictures, and images of wealth, affluence, success, productivity, and solutions to problems in the marketplace. These thoughts trigger the reticular activating cortex, the part of the brain that makes you more alert and sensitive to things that you have decided are important to you.

For example, if you decide to invest in a mutual fund, you will start to see news and information about mutual funds everywhere. Mentions in newspapers and magazines will jump out at you. These things have always been there, but now you have sensitized your brain to pick them up and draw them to your attention with far greater frequency and vividness. This is the function and power of your reticular cortex.

Think Like Wealthy People Think

Wealthy people, from an early age, think about how much they have, how much they want, and all the different things they can do to acquire and earn the money and things they desire.

On the other hand, what do poor people think about most of the time? Unfortunately, they fill their minds with thoughts of scarcity, lack, poverty, being unable to afford things. They are always thinking and talking about how little money they have, how much things cost, and how they wish they could be better off financially. What they think about most of the time is how little money they have.

Find Out How Rich People Think

Here’s a rule for you. If you want to become successful, find out what failures do and don’t do it. If you want to be wealthy, find out what poor people think about, and avoid thinking that way. Instead, find out how wealthy people think. Find out what they read. Find out how they spend their time. Study their lives, read their stories and autobiographies, and listen to their words when they are interviewed and on tape. The more you find out about what financially successful people think and talk about most of the time – and do the same things – the more rapidly you will enjoy the same rewards that they do.

Here are two things you can do to put The Parable of the Talents into action:

First, make a decision that, starting today, you will think and talk only about the financial success you desire. At the same time, you will refuse to talk about or dwell upon your financial problems.

Second, instead of saying “I can’t afford it,” you will ask the question “How can I afford it?” When you think of something that you want or need that you don’t have the money for at the time, the only question to ask is “How?” How can you get it? What can you do to achieve it? What are your options? How can you get from where you are to where you want to be?

It will change your life.

[ETR. Note: Today, make the decision that you'll end "poverty thinking." Instead, find out what the wealthy do and copy it. One "Mentor to Billionaires" can give you dozens of simple strategies that his billionaire colleagues used to transform themselves into master moneymakers. Learn more here.

Maybe you want to set goals for yourself - but don't know where to start. Now, success expert Brian Tracy will show you a proven way to set and accomplish even your toughest goals. Just follow the step-by-step instructions in his easy-to-use Maximum Achievement Goal Planner workbook. Start on the path to achieving lifelong success and abundance today.]

 This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

By Alexis Siemon

That’s why one of your New Year’s resolutions should be to become a master link builder. Today, I’m going to show you just how to do it.

Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). When you attract links from other relevant websites, that tells the search engines that yours is a site to be trusted, and, therefore, displayed for relevant keyword searches.

The process of building those connections can be tedious. First you have to find sites in your niche, determine whether they’re relevant and of respectable quality, and then figure out the best way to contact the people behind them. It can be overwhelming. But I have three simple steps to get you started.

Link-Building Step #1: Link Research

The first step is to do a bit of research. What kinds of sites do you want to get links from? How do you go about finding them? There are several strategies, but one that will get you going in the right direction is to research your competitors’ links.

Let’s say you just launched a new site selling homebrew supplies. You would likely know that a popular competitive supply shop is NorthernBrewer.com. By finding the sites that link to the Northern Brewer website, you would instantly have a list of relevant sites that would potentially be willing to link to your site as well.

And you don’t need any fancy software. Both Google and Yahoo provide ways to perform this link research right from their websites:

• Link research on Google. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Google, you would enter the following in Google’s search box:

• link:http://www.northernbrewer.com

• Link research on Yahoo. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Yahoo, you would go to a special section of Yahoo’s site called Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) and enter Northern Brewer’s URL in the field at the top. Make sure to click the “inlinks” tab to get the list you are looking for.

Now Google is a little stingy with their information. They will typically display only a portion of the links that they have in their database, which is why it’s a good idea to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer as well. In our example, you’d see that Google shows only 352 links for Northern Brewer while Yahoo shows 62,810.

Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of links. Now the hard work starts. You have to go through all those sites and determine which ones you want to have link to your site. Why not just pick them all? Well, just because a site is linking to Northern Brewer doesn’t mean they were asked to do it. Remember, any website can link to any other website for any reason at all… and without the site owner’s knowledge. There can be some link farms and other dubious low-quality sites in the mix, and you definitely don’t want to get links from them.

Link-Building Step #2: Link Quality

You want the good links – the high-quality, relevant, highly trafficked websites. So how do you weed them out? There are a few online tools that can help you make the distinction between a good link and a bad link.

• Alexa.com and Compete.com.  These websites give you a general idea of the kind of traffic a particular site gets, and that can help you determine the quality of the site. High traffic typically means high quality.

• Google Toolbar PageRank (PR). Always controversial in SEO circles, many debate whether this particular little number means anything at all. Whenever I mention it, I always recommend taking it with a grain of salt. But a site with a higher Google PR is seen by Google as a higher quality site with a respectable number of links. In other words, a website you would want a link from.

These are good tools to have on your side, but not the only ways to determine the quality of a potential link. You can also use a kind of website common sense.

• Does the site have quality relevant content?

• If the site makes it possible for users to leave comments about its content, are they participating? This can be a sign of how active the site’s community is – a sign of quality.

• Does the site consist of nothing but links to other sites? If it’s not a known directory like Yahoo, etc. it’s likely a link farm – so stay away.

• Does the site have good design and navigation? Or does it look like it was patched together with FrontPage in 1998 and left to die?

Once you’ve identified the websites you definitely want to target for links, you have to determine the best way to approach each one.

Link-Building Step #3: Link Request

Gone are the days of the generic link request form letter. E-mails addressed “To Whom It May Concern” are usually deleted automatically by website owners

Link requests are now a request for a kind of partnership. That doesn’t necessarily mean reciprocal linking, but it does mean that site owners want to know that you have a genuine interest in their sites, not just in the “link juice” they can pass on to you.

Try to get familiar with the sites you want a link from. If you are targeting a blog, read it. Make some non-link-related comments. If you become part of the blog’s community, you’ll find the site owner much more receptive to a follow-up link request. You may also find that other commenters on that site have their own sites – and they may be willing to link to you.

If you find that you have no choice but to send a cold e-mail, try your best to find the e-mail address of a person to send it to. Not just a webmaster@ or info@ e-mail address. And when you write to that person, make it personal. Talk to them about why you like their site and why you think a link to you would be a fit for their readers/customers. Spouting off stats about your PageRank and traffic could be a turnoff for the site owner. If those things are really important to him, he knows how to do his own research (and will).

Link building may be a slow and tedious process – but it’s an absolutely necessary part of a successful SEO initiative. Knowing how to get started will make it much easier for you to build the links you need. And once you start acquiring some really solid quality links, you will no doubt begin to see improvement in your search engine rankings, your website traffic, and even your sales.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.