About a month ago, I remember reading someone's opinion that Hillary Clinton was a sure bet for the next Presidency. Right now she's slipping behind in the polls. I've seen and read in a few different places that she's becoming emotional, even tearful, and vowing to struggle on.

There's a theory that nothing the Clintons do is unplanned. Everything is supposedly mapped out in incredible detail. If you take Mrs. Clinton's emotion at face value, it seems very normal. She wants so badly to win that even the thought of not being able to take America in a new direction is enough to bring tears to her eyes. But maybe there's more to this.

Yesterday I saw a clip on a news program about what Hillary said when confronted with a statement along the lines of, "What do you think about voters siding with this other guy?" Her response was, "That hurts my feelings." It was at that moment that I realized she was probably advised to play up her differences as a woman, when compared to a man. The old stereotypes say men are stoic, and women are emotional. So Hillary was probably coached into making it as obvious as possible that she's a leader of a different caliber, and since most people are looking for change, that's a big selling point.

But here's where things get interesting. Hillary has fallen behind (or it seems that way, or it is being made to seem that way), so she gets emotional. That garners her more attention, and the more attention you've got, the more likely you are to gain public favor. If you're unknown, nobody cares. If people are aware of you, they'll make up their minds one way or another. So to win an election, it's best to get as much attention as possible.

I once read about a memory test done with average folks who sat down and looked at some names of people they'd never heard of. Then they took a break of an hour or two. After the break, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding celebrities. The form had a bunch of names, and boxes that were to be checked off if a name belonged to a famous person. Most people ended up checking off names that weren't famous at all, but did in fact appear on the original list of random names. The conclusion was that the people looked at the questionnaire, recognized a name, assumed they knew it for a reason, and marked it as famous. This could work in politics, as well as with marketing your blog.

They say no press is bad press. A blog was once involved in a lawsuit. The "negative" press sent major traffic to the site, and it ended up earning record revenue. My theory for how this applies to politics is this: When you're falling behind, you need to get back in the public eye through any means necessary. The more people who are aware of you and what you're about, the more votes you'll get. That's a potential reason for why Hillary is hitting the media with a display of emotion. She wants more attention, which could lead to a reversal in her recent slippage trend.

How does this help us bloggers? The idea is pretty simple. Get as much attention you can, for reasons that appear on the surface to be entirely natural. If you come across as wanting attention, or obviously trying to pull some media stunt, it won't work. Hillary's getting attention because her emotional behavior is interesting, but not unbelievable. To put your blog on the map, you've got to be just like a Presidential candidate, and get enough attention and publicity to win over your fair share of voters and visitors.

There are lots of people out there who have become very wealthy with the internet, just by thinking ahead. These people came up with new ideas and techniques that very few others were thinking about. Lots of times it's easy to see someone's success and wish you could duplicate it. The internet is moving so fast these days that duplication can be hard to accomplish. It takes just a couple of years for a brilliant idea to be all used up, with little money left to be made. Many lament the fact that they can't do what the wealthy and successful people did. But you can!

There are stories about domainers, people who specialize in buying, selling, and monetizing domain names. If you owned candy.com, you'd be sitting pretty. Tons of people type their search terms right into their browser's address bar. So if someone wanted candy, they might just type in "candy" or candy.com and get taken to your site, which would just be a parked page. Then they'd see ads. They might click on one, and you've just made a few cents. With such a generic term like "candy," lots and lots of people do the same thing, and all end up arriving to your site as type-in traffic. So you've got heaps of traffic, which equates to heaps of clicks, and heaps of money. Good deal!

That's the kind of thing that attracts so many to domaining. It's the prospect of setting yourself up with a few good domain names, and then sitting back while they earn you money. But there's a problem. Most (or more likely all) of the key generic term domain names are taken! Darn, wish that industry was still young…

See, right there is an example of discovering a past success with making money online, getting enthusiastic and interested, and then realizing that most of the really big opportunities are gone. But there is a hidden truth that many people often overlook.

In other stories of domainers, there's a tale of a man who thought ahead. He set himself up with self-made software programs that would buy up massive amounts of domains. He was doing this before practically anyone else, and was able to get his hands on highly valuable domain names after they expired and were re-released for sale. He made millions.

So here's the deal. Most people focus on the actions he took. He bought domains, made millions. But with the internet moving so fast, actions get old fairly quickly. What we can do to adjust for this is to focus on his thought process. He thought ahead, and made millions. That's what we need to do.

Take YouTube as another example. When it was brand new, only a handful of people knew about it. Not many others were thinking about video sharing. File sharing was growing, but video sharing wasn't being talked about much. YouTube's creators had a vision, saw a need, and built a site to fill it. Their thinking was ahead of most people's. So now that we all know about YouTube, we're caught up right? Don't be so sure… There are still new ideas out there that most people haven't even thought of yet.

Some people would say, "Man! I wish I had thought of that. I should have invented YouTube! But it's too late. All the good ideas are taken!"

People have been saying there is nothing new to be made for hundreds of years, and yet we keep advancing! There are some individuals who are constantly looking for the next big idea. They don't buy in to the "It's too late, the opportunities are taken," mentality. They know that the real money to be made is on the cutting edge, and where there are no opportunities, they make them.

People who think ahead get ahead.

Previously, I've explained how downloading the Alexa toolbar will boost your Alexa rank. Now I'm going to delve into how the redirect works.

It's pretty simple. You basically send traffic through Alexa's site, to yours. That way, anybody who gets redirected counts as a visitor, even if they don't have the Alexa toolbar. Using the Alexa redirect is a great way to make Alexa aware of all the visitors you have that Alexa usually can't keep track of.

This is the code for the redirect:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect? + your chosen URL

So to redirect to misinterpreted.org, the link would be:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.misinterpreted.org/

Great, so now that we have the code, how do we use it? There has been a lot of debate over whether it's a good thing to use it in links coming in from outside your site. Some people think the redirect will kill any transfer of PageRank, which would be bad. Others say that Alexa transfers PR no problem. But since the jury is still out, the risk is there. Another potential downside has to do with your ranking in the Search Engines. If you were to put a normal link somewhere out on the net, Google would eventually find it, and count it in your site's favor (usually). If you use the Alexa redirect, the theory (or fact?) is that Google wouldn't be able to see that link as being in your favor, and you'd lose out.

So, the Alexa redirect will boost your Alexa rank at the expense of PR and Search Engine placement.

But there are places you can use it where the negatives won't be a factor. Some bloggers change their in-site link to their home page, and use an Alexa redirect instead. There is some debate concerning whether the PR from all your pages can count toward your home page when you use a homepage Alexa redirect. My take is that there's probably not as big a risk concerning PR when using the redirect within your own site.

Another way you can use it is if you control a link that a lot of people use to get to your blog. If that link is very popular, you might try making it into an Alexa redirect. That way Alexa counts all the people who come through it, and you only have to change a single link.

If you decide to make use of this trick, keep in mind that every link you change will now rely on Alexa to work properly. So if Alexa goes down, the redirects won't work, and the links will be dead.

Update, 1-28-08: Looks like the Alexa redirect is gone for good.