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Issue #066 -- Week 09/08/15-15/08/15
August 19, 2015
Hello,

Greetings and General Information

Let me start with my apology for not being able to publish this e-zine yesterday, as planned. My laptop would not charge its battery during my work, and sadly, it continues being 'ill' until we find a cure for it - be it replacing the cable, or replacing the complete computer. It all depends on what the specialists have in the grand plan for me, but they need to order even the smallest bit, so the solution will have to be next week.

I could only work on a cyber-cafe computer today, which means, I can send you the lesson in website design today, but not our grammar section and our weekly game. I'm sorry about this, but I hope that by next time they'll have figured it out, so enjoy the present issue as from today.

A warm welcome to our new subscribers! I wish you will find My English Club fun and instructive and I look forward to welcome you as a new valued member soon. Read, learn and communicate around the world!

Please feel free to contribute to these pages when you have a minute. They are meant to be a platform for exchanging ideas, stories and opinions - an ideal medium for practicing your English, which should be used to the full. Together, let's bring it alive, let's make it the welcoming community you wished for, when you joined. Use the Comments facility at the end of every page and start making friends worldwide.

You and your friends can always subscribe individually through the form on My English Club If anybody mentions to you that they are interested in receiving it, please tell them this, with thanks. Also, they can read the previous issues on Back Issues for English Corner E-zine. Of course, you can also unsubscribe at any point, by using the link at the end of any issue of the e-zine, should you wish.

Now, I am fortunate to be able to send you this issue a in time today. However... given my intensive travelling since our last e-zine, you will have to excuse my inability to create a new grammar lesson for you today. Shall we all take a little break this week, from learning English grammar?

Well, without further ado, let's start our other lessons today.

Month 13 ~ Lesson 49

We started studying three subjects back in September 2014: pronunciation and grammar for improving your communication skills, as well as website design and development, for those advanced students of ours who would like to apply their English to building a business online.

Once we covered the basics of pronunciation, we started a new course in reading, which we finished in March 2015. Following some requests at that time, we started a section on educational games, to add the fun into your learning. I do hope you like these.

Announcement

Please note that we are also approaching the end of the course in website design by the end of August 2015, as planned. There are requests for a new course in writing skills, like we had the one in reading. Please feel free to send in your requests all along the month of August, just in case you have different preferences. I look forward to receive your comments - just reply to the email you receive from My English Club.

Until I'll have the time to write my e-books from these courses, you can enjoy our past lessons for free, as follows:

Pronunciation Lessons
Reading Lessons
Grammar Lessons
Website Design Lessons
Weekly Games

Grammar ~ Let's all take a break!


As I explained at the top of this email, I cannot upload a lesson for you on the cyber-cafe computer. Take a break, take is easy and I shall try to have my technical problem resolved before our next issue.

With my apologies.

Website Design ~ Implementing your Monetization Plan


If, as a result of what you’ve learned from our last session, you are ready to switch your business mind-set from providing quality unique information for free to generating income from your content, then you need to keep your income targets in mind and review your Monetization Plan we studied earlier on, in Issue 034.

You know much more about your Site Concept now, and your target audience. Different monetization models may strike you as being appropriate. Push your thinking and connect the dots, from brainstorming to customers' needs to people you meet (and what they do) and so on. You need to make your income happen.

No matter what your monetization strategy is, diversify to take full advantage of your PREsold traffic. Introduce at least two or three income streams (a month or more apart, to determine which ones are working well and which are not). This improves your chances of making every visitor to your site count. Here are some examples you may consider:

• Are you relying on AdSense? Move out of your comfort zone and create your own product. Hard goods seller? Create an e-book, How To Get the Best Out of [the product], and sell it, too! Or simply bundle up all of your top articles, add a cover, and market this new e-product.
• Are you a travel site owner with several finder's fee arrangements in motion? Sell quality videos, or market your own top-notch DVD as well.
• What about adding another income stream via joint ventures with non-competitive businesses?
• An affiliate? Offer special reports (they are less time-consuming to create than an e-book) that include your tracking links (DAY 9) to affiliate merchant products.

As you progress on your business-building journey, ask yourself this question often... "How can I get more money out of a higher percentage of visitors?"

Remember "the way of the Web"... Sooner or later, every visitor leaves. Monetize as many of them as possible. If they leave by hitting the Back button to return to Google, choose another site from their bookmarks, or close the browser window, you lose. If too many of your visitors are leaving your site, it's time to investigate your poorly performing pages...

Diversification also brings stability. Never put all your eggs into one monetization basket. Add each income stream one at a time, weeks or months apart. Assess each one. Optimize it. Keep building valuable content and finding quality inbound links while you focus on building more targeted traffic for your primary monetizer.

Once one model is well-established, add another. Take your time. Slowwwww down. Running too fast and adding a whole bunch of money-making schemes will get you nowhere fast. Next time, we shall look into how to regularly evaluate performance of your site and its monetization methods. By tracking your site's performance and experiments, you will know which strategies to keep and which ones to drop.

Game of the Week ~ Repetition of last week's game...


Well, the same applies to our weekly game, as to the grammar section - I couldn't upload a new game, due to technical problems I described in the introduction of this email. However, for our new subscribers I shall leave our last game on as an example of what we're doing in this section usually.

Last week I invited you to try your hand at the FunGrammar The Plural Girls game, a nice and easy vocabulary game, however... one in which you can actually select the level of complexity, from simple to tough - both in multiple choice as well as in filling the gaps type of exercises.


The rules are given before you start the game (the screen above), but in case you can't read this, in today's game, you will have to choose the correct words (the correct plural form of the word given) for you to return Pearl and Flora's friends, who were lost in the bubble machine.

You won't be timed during this game, but at the end you will get the time when you actually did the exercise, not the duration. Even this may confuse you, as it is the American time - so, don't worry about it...

Let us commence:


So, which one is correct if the singular is 'mongoose'? Look it up if you need, I would recommend never to guess, because this is how you learn more efficiently. Also, even if you get it right by chance at times, you would still not be absolutely certain when you need to use the word in your own writing.


If you get it right, you are told this and the words will not appear again.

However, look what happens if you get it wrong:


You only receive the correct form - the one you missed, but you are not given the singular form again, for you to be able to consider and internalize it. I would suggest for you to do your thinking and consult your dictionaries before you lose thew words from sight.


As you see above, this is basically the way the game goes, until the end. You get a string of little friends for the two plural girls - OK... this is a game aimed for children. However, don't be fooled - the vocabulary is quite complex, should you choose the higher levels!


At the end you get the number of correct hits, from ten and the chance to play again, as well as to change your chosen level.

Clicking on the 'Go' button will start another game, so go ahead, play the The Plural Girls game... challenge your kids to a turn :-D

This is it for now, my friends!

I hope you find this information useful and not too confusing. Even though you're at the stage of building on it, have patience at this point in your learning and you'll be able to reap the fruit of your work later on, whichever aspect of our lessons you are concentrating on.

Please feel free to comment and suggest your ideas by replying to this email - I look forward to hearing from you. If you wish to chat either with me or with other members worldwide, go to My English Club .

Everybody, have a great summer holiday, what's left of it anyway, and a good week ahead for those of you who returned to work by now!

All the best from me, until next time,

Lucia da Vinci

Founder of My English Club

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