Hot and Heavy?

So as being reported here and here its worth considering some cultural sensitivities before getting down to some heavy petting in Petra, having a jump in Jumeirah, or orgasming in Oman. Such activity may be happily entertained or even encouraged in certain places in the Med but you dont need to have a phd in middle eastern studies to know that any open sexual activity may not go down too well in arab islamic countries. Especially if you are caught.

Some basics for amorous couples in public:

• Dont snog
• Dont get into heavy amorous embraces
• Holding hands is ok in some countries

Also, it is slowly being accepted that men and women can greet each other with a European style ’mwah’ even if they aren’t married to each other, often to the surprise of arab men who saved this custom exclusively for each other.

The couple in the Dubai case have been hit with alcohol charges, public indecency charges and charged with having unmarried sex. They deny the last 2 but admit the first. They were subjected to some seemingly embarrassing DNA tests and the woman has been sacked from her job in Dubai. Not only that but they have had the embarrassing SKY News expose treatment.

They are facing a 6 year sentence but the Dubai authorities are saying it is likely to be a 6 month sentence with a fine. As their case has been delayed, it wouldn’t surprise me if there are some negotiations going on in the background to see them spared the jail bit. However anyone familiar with the BBC Grooverider case will know how hard the Dubai people are.

Yes people do bonk in the arab world. In fact anyone who has strolled through the old city of Sanaa late at night will be aware of the bonkfest that takes place, especially after the guys return home after a qat chew. It is a cacophony of pleasure that contributes to Yemen being one of the most child productive nations on Earth.

Know before you go people and if public bonking is your thing, go to Ibiza.

Technorati Tags: Advice, United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Sex couple, Caught having sex

The passive income strategies that i know deliver results, involve some work and strategic thinking on your part but in a very short time…e.g. weeks, can actually begin generating cash. Here’s an insight into how to create your own little collection of ‘oil wells’ pumping cash on a regular basis and some free pdfs to get you started:

A Bullshit Free Explanation

So, this is how it works:

The Revenue Streams:

1. Google Adsense: you create websites, you place Google Adsense code onto them, you get visitors, they click the ads, you get some money. Very easy this one.
2. Affiliate Sales: you create a website or build an email list. You find products that are relevant to your website or that your email list have a propensity to buy, you get an affiliate link, you promote it on the website or to your email list. They click the link and buy the product, you make money. Also quite easy to do.
3. Your own digital product: bit trickier this, but very doable. You create a digital product – usually some software or an ebook – you list it on one of the many sites that will promote it to their base of affiliates (see 2 above). They sell it for you, you make money.

Getting Started:

For any business getting going is the hardest, but once you understand the key techniques it is quite simple.

1. Keywords. This is where you begin to find out the markets that will make you the most money. You build websites around a particular theme, for example, weight loss. You find all related terms that people look for within the weight loss category e.g. weight loss pills. You can then expand the weight loss pills search term into other related terms eg. cheap weight loss pills, weight loss pills online etc etc.
2. Content. Once you have the keywords you then need content for a website. The easiest way to get content is to go to a free article directory and get everything from there related to keywords. You will want to rewrite it or pay someone to rewrite it for you.
3. The website. You need to register a domain name that has at least 2 of the main keywords in it. Find a host for the website. You then need to build the website around all the juicy content you got in step 2. You can use software for this or outsource it to someone who will do it for about $50. You will make this money back very quickly.
4. Promotion. Content is king, promotion is everything. Without people knowing about your site you wont make money, simple. Promotion of your website involves 2 techniques that the pros call ’onsite’ and ’offsite’ optimisation. Onsite means you have written your content with good use of keywords and meta tags, meta descriptions, meta titles and page naming. Offsite refers to building links in the appropriate way so that ’search engine spiders’ from Google, AOL, Yahoo, MSN etc can find your site and list it in their search results for your search terms e.g. weight loss pills
5. Monetisation. The revenues streams (adsense, affiliate sales, digital product) all need steps 1 through 4 carried out. Adsense is the simplest and if your site has visitors, you will make money straightaway. A pretty basic website done well will bring you in $10 a day. Affiliate sales make more money but less often. Some products will pay you well over $50 a sale. Again a pretty basic website could make you 1 sale every couple of days. Selling your own digital product on a regular basis is where the big money is in the ’passive internet income’ space. To have your $100 product being promoted by 10,000s affiliates everyday without any further input from you could bring in revenues in excess of $20,000 a month.

Objectives:

Most of the ’guru’s in this industry stress the setting of goals before you begin. As this is simply a ’numbers game’, it isn’t hard to do, it just requires some leg work or a small amount of investment in outsourcing the laborious elements such as website creation and promotion. Set yourself a start-up budget of just $50 per site and you should make approx $2000 a year from it. If you have the financial leverage to outsource to a remote worker and pay them $750 a month to build and promote 15 sites for you each month, at the end of year 1 you will have 180 units of ’virtual real estate’ that could generate for you in year 2 over $360,000 (180 x $2000). That is around $350,000 net profit.

Strategies:

The heavy hitters in this industry tell me that they are making over $1million a year in automated earnings using the monetisation techniques above. Due to the nature of this business, there is a very nice multiplier effect that increases earnings year on year. Here’s what they do:

1. They find multiple niches based on keyword research. They put their content together and surround it with Google Ads. They then build loads of sites like this.

2. They will also build a single page niche or product specific site that uses a ’squeeze page’. This will make visitors ’opt in’ to providing their email address. This then enables the visitor to receive promotional email offers through what the gurus call a ’backend affiliate sales strategy’. If you do this, each email you send out will promote an offer that features your affiliate link…..to make sales like this each product has to be relevant to the website they originally visited

3. If the site is promoting a product or an offer, they will use an ’exit page’ one time offer. This may or may not be related to the original offer, but usually involves a bonus or freebie of some kind.

Further Reading:

Two of my friends have done very well in this business and have given me the right to give you 2 of their ebooks that talk in depth about the passive income techniques i mention above, free of charge.

Brad Callen has written an excellent book called Adwords Made Easy Understanding Keyword Strategies (downloadable pdf by clicking the link). This book is packed with lots of info on how to use keywords to build sites and generate traffic.

Michael Cheney is a heavy hitter at making websites that bring him in $10000s a month in Adsense earnings. Michael Cheneys Adsense Videos Free Ebook (downloadable pdf by clicking the link) will help you understand how generate traffic and revenues.

Download the books, print them out, read them on a plane or in your hotel room. Good luck!

Thankfully it seems that at the time of writing, Gillian Gibbons will shortly be on a plane home from Sudan having received a presidential pardon for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammad. The British Foreign Office and two muslim peers, Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi (members of the House of Lords) did sterling work in securing her release.

As i sit here in Yemen, an islamic country, and 10,000s of other businessmen and adventurers are similarly in places where culture and religion intertwine, one has to reflect on the sensitivities we must have when guests in foreign lands.

And i believe that is how we must consider ourselves. Just as it would be wrong to burp, fart or do other socially unacceptable behaviour when a guest at someone’s dinner party, we must also learn what the faux pas are when we are guests in a foreign land. It easy to make the mistake of thinking that if something is alright ’when at home’, its alright when we are on our travels. This all seems obvious, but when underpressure, disorientated or confused in a foreign land, it is easy to forget.

Using The Name ’Mohammad’

Muslims have very strict rules for how to use the name of their prophet (and the other Prophets including Jesus). To call an animal e.g. a Pig after any of the Prophets would cause great offense and be considered an intentional insult. Likewise naming a dog with a Prophet’s name would also be offensive. However it is common that Muslim children give names to their teddy bears, toys, dolls etc and that many of these names are the same as religious names. Things can get a bit confusing when Islamic countries lay down there own rules, and this is what seems to have tripped up Gillian Gibbons, as countries themselves can rule that no object is given a religious name. I think it is fair to say Gibbons’ faux pas was spotted long after the event and then used for political reasons both within Sudan and internationally. 

However, one has to wonder whether we are all provided with a sense of what feels right or wrong. In the responses to the Gibbons case, many have commented how wrong it would ’feel’, if a teacher was to call a teddy bear ’Jesus’. Interestingly, according to the BBC, the second most common name for new born boys in the UK is now Mohammad. I don’t remember meeting too many Jesus’ at school.

The use of the name Mohammad and the sacrilegious connotations are too complex for the west to understand. The simple answer is to not attribute the name to anything that just ’doesnt feel right’.

What Else To Look Out For

The experience of new cultures and traditions is what makes adventure to far off lands exciting. The chances of a businessman or foreign worker ending up in a Gibbons type situation are pretty slim, however it is important to consider the wider issue of etiquette, manners and behaviour when in foreign lands. Here are some tips for travellers and businessmen heading into the Middle East and South East Asia, if you get them wrong you shouldn’t end up in prison, and have your most embrassing photos slapped all over Sky News, but it counts for a lot if you get them right:

1. The Left Hand. Dont give anything with it or take anything with it. If eating with no cutlery, dont eat with it.

2. Dealing with foreign women. Always be chivalrous. Let women take your seat. Dont get too close. Be on the look out for segregated seating in airports and other communal places. Dont accidentally wind up in the wrong place. When with a male colleague or host, dont ask about his wife or daughters.

3. Tea and Drinks. In meetings both formal and informal, if offered a tea, take it and drink it. Sometimes a meeting wont end until you have finished your tea. If offered a refill, accept at least one top-up.

4. Feet. If invited to relax in a majlis or a diwan, you will need to remove your shoes. Make sure you have socks with no holes in! Think about your feet positioning and dont point the soles of your feet at anyone. As well as in Arab states, this is a big no-no in Buddhist countries too.

5. Temper. Across the middle east and into asia, it is usually a deal killer to get angry. If you have meetings you will find the meeting is interrupted due to an ’open office’ style. Papers will get signed, phonecalls taken and even friends will visit the host of your meeting during your powerpoint presentation. Stay calm, stay cool and adjust, because this is how it is.

6. Patience. Doing deals outside of Europe and North America requires patience. Things may seem to be delayed, but this is because your potential partner or customer is wanting to build trust and familiarity with you. Do not set yourself, or your business, restrictive deadlines. If your people back at HQ dont get this, educate them a little on the culture.

7. Bargaining. In most Arab cultures, bargaining is part of the process and is considered natural. It may seem tough at first but after awhile you will enjoy it.

8. Political and Religious discussion. In the current climate, this is a tough one. You will find that your business host or colleagues wont embarrass you by asking you for an opinion, but the ’man on the street’, he may ask for your opinion on Bush, Blair etc etc. If the debate is in English, agree with him. If it is in a foreign language, say ’I dont understand’ in the appropriate way.

9. Dress. I usually find this is the toughest one for the girls. It is surprising actually how revealing the standard western business uniform of women is. They arrive in the Middle East with low cut tops, split to the thigh skirts and various other risky outfits that are pretty standard in the western office. Dress conservatively and keep cleavage well hidden. Men should always where a suit.

10. Alcohol. Some islamic countries allow some alcohol consumption by westerners in hotel bars or other designated areas. You may meet an arab who also drinks in his own home. In some arab airports you can also buy alcohol and take it into another Arab country. Tread very carefully with this and make sure you know what is allowed, by who and where. Get this wrong and you could get into trouble, like this guy.

Technorati Tags: Gillian gibbons, Sudan, Business etiquette, Arab business