What makes the human brain so hard to copy is its ability to recognize patterns. We are able to see patterns both visually and conceptually in what would otherwise appear to be unrelated bits of data. To a great degree your ability to be open and understand patterns will determine how successful you are at what you do.

Search engine optimizers pick out patterns in test sites to see what works and what doesn’t. Programmers recognize patterns in chunks of buggy code. Cinematographers know what will put the audience to sleep and what will pick them up by the seat of their pants.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word pattern as “A model or original used as an archetype.” Archetype as “An ideal example of a type; quintessence” And Quintessense, what the heck does that mean? “The pure, highly concentrated essence of a thing.”

When you see the world around you is it a world of chaos or order? Is the conflict in the Middle East an example of nonsensical mindlessness or the consequence of very real events that have happened in the past?

The way you view the world will determine who you are and what you become.

For thousands of years religions pointed to lighting as a powerful force of the gods. Lighting that hit buildings resulted in explosions of fire, death, and destruction. Benjamin Franklin said nonsense and invented the lighting rod.

When your eyes are new to the world of making money online everything appears as if it is complete chaos. All of this jaron is like a foreign language. Even as things begin to make sense the pathway between failure and your goal appears non-existant.

To the uninitiated paranormal events are viewed as a force of magic and success is seen as luck.

Pattern recognition in this industry is the ability to see what works, what doesn’t, and then apply that information to yourself and your projects. Once you have a successful site, just being lucky seems a little silly.

The unexplained is always explainable. Recognize patterns of both success and failure and you can master any element of this business or life in general. This is the quintessense of reality.

Its very true that you should take anything a blogger says with a grain of salt. Typically I don’t care what bloggers outside the publishing & affiliate marketing circle say, but this post is just silly.

Brian White over at WeblogInc/AOL’s BloggingStocks.com calls PPC arbitrager’s “landing page con artists” “fraudsters and criminals” while accusing them of exploiting Google “in hopes of building a small fortune.”

Message to Jason Calacanis: exercise some quality control over your bloggers for hire.

There is nothing wrong with buying traffic from one source and sending it someone else. That is not fraud, its efficiency.

In a super competative environment niche rules. Over the past six months I have been watching many niche social networking sites pop up around the web. Today Mashable reported another one, Elhood for Hispanics. Thats not all. There is Inked Nation for tattoo enthusiasts, The Golf Space for golfers, MuslimSpace for those that practice Islam, and the list goes on. (On a side note, yes some of these sites are violating MySpace’s trademark and it is a matter of time before they get prematurely shut down.)

I tried to send this message in my controversial post about the threats to small publishers. The web is changing very fast. A year or two ago dating sites were experiencing unbelievable growth and the industry was looking great. Today between Myspace and free sites like PlentyofFish, the online dating industry no longer looks so healthy.

When Myspace was bought out by News Corp (NWS) many people believed it was just another fad like geocities and other trendy sites. Last week Myspace became the number one site on the web in terms of traffic. No people are changing their mind about News Corp’s buyout.

Guess what, you don’t stay at number one forever. Just like stocks and commodities everyone thinks its a hot buy when the price is going up. To me #1 says this is the peak and it is time to move on to new ventures. Rupert Murdoch and Levinsohn need to view Myspace as a peak of the mountain rather than a sign of eternal web dominance. Right now this is like owning the hottest nightclub in the city, not owning the city itself.

Change is happening fast online and off. Futurist and very accomplished inventor, Ray Kurzweil, points out that progress is exponential. When people imagine what the next 50 years are going to look like, they try to project the changes experienced in the last 50. Rather, the next 50 years of change and growth is going to happen in a mere fraction of the time.

Myspace appeared out of no where almost as fast as Alex Tew made a million dollars off of his much-copied pixel selling site. Combine rapid growth with a super-inflationary asset and monetary environment and get rich quick has never been more true.

A lot of sites want to be the next Myspace. The ones that try to pull in everyone will fail — if they are not already experiencing huge success. The sites that go after the niches will mop up the markets Myspace has missed. Whats next? Its already happening, its just below most of our radars.

I can’t tell you whats next, but I will give you a few hints about social networking. First, niches can be topical and geographic. Orkut dominates Brazil. MySpace dominates the US. Bebo dominates the UK. There are already plug-ins for vBulletin that make it function very much like Myspace with comments, friends, all on a profile page. There are also a few other pre-made programs such as AlstraSoft E-Friends (which I am told sucks), a “Myspace Module” for Drupal, Buddy Zone by Vastal, phpFOX, and the list goes on. Personally, I suggest adding social networking functions on to your existing content sites rather than trying to be the MySpace of [insert niche here.]

This isn’t new but I just found it. Amazon.com has a site were you can submit very repatative jobs for real people to do.

The site is Mturk.com, which stands for mechanical turk. The story goes that in the 1700s a man went around with a machine that played chess and almost always won. The “inventor” claimed it was just a machine when the reality was a real person was inside.

The cool thing here is that Amazon has an actual API that you can use to insert this in to your site. Typical jobs pay between pennies up to a dollar or more. The possibilities could be anything from moderating user photos to finding information that requires a telephone call to a local business.

Something really stuck out at me here. Most of these “queries” pay pennies. 562 tasks at 3 cents a piece for a total of $16.86. 1 pod cast transcription for $1.47. These aren’t first world wages.

I’ve just spent the last few hours reading post after post on Mashable.com, a blog about Web 2.0 sites. My head is filled with a lot of bright colors, round shapes, and big text running through my mind.

Two things are clear to me: a lot of sites want to be the next Myspace and a lot of investors want to own the next Myspace. Some of these sites have killer ideas, others would just be silly if millions weren’t invested in them.

I’m no programmer, my ability to compete with any of these sites is limited to non-existant. Good news, I’m not interested in competing.

Rather, as publishers we should use Web 2.0 sites to build relationships and drive traffic. Just as with the dot com boom sometimes companies subsidize another companies profits at their loss (think start-ups spending pouring billions in to Oracle.)

Empty forum? Head over to Myspace and look for people who talk about your niche in their profile. Just as blogs are critical to launching a new forum for affiliates and publishers social networking sites can be used to target other audiences.

Happy 4th to my American readers; I’m keeping busy so I don’t have time for a lengthy post. Check out this very cool tool from Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com: SEO for Firefox.

This tool lists a ton of different things within the Google and Yahoo search results so you can see how the competition weighs for domain age, incoming links, .edu links, social bookmarking, alexa rank, and a lot more. While I wouldn’t put too much wait on individual items, like Google PageRank, seen as a whole these stats give a very good picture of what your up against.

Lee Dodd is running a contest to launch his new internet income forum, EarnersForum.com. There will be a total of 5 winners, each winning: $1,000, a content site with 500 pages, 1 hours consultation with Lee, and more. Total value of all prizes, as given on the site, is over $20,000. You can see the full list along with forum rules at their contest page.

Some people have expressed skepticism at launching a forum with incentives. In a competative market offering forum members rewards for participation can go a long way in getting a forum off the ground.