Is it just me, or do most of these web 2.0 social sites simply turn in to ways of making sure we get less done each day..?

Like time sucking black holes..

I’ve had to cut back severly on my time spent on facebook simply because I was loosing hours on there, just just playing with the different “apps”, but also cleaning up my “Fun Wall” that people keep insisting on posting crap to, as well as dealing with endless application “requests” or invites.

The new feature to “delete all” invitations in one go is probably the most useful new feature they’ve added there..

On the other hand I’m starting to like Twitter, it takes up so little time and is real simple, just make a quick short post as to what you’re up to or what you’ve found that you wan to share.

You can check out my Twittering here:

Matt Garrett on Twitter  Read more... (371 words, 1 image, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Many affiliate marketers seem to just use the standard promotional emails that they’re provided with by a product owner and simply blast it out to their list.

You’ve gotta ask yourself whether they’ve actually taken the time to read the report, or check out the product, that they are promoting to see if it’s good or not.

I know this can be tempting as it’s a lot quicker and easier than the alterntive, which is to actually review the product, but I prefer to take the review route as it has some pretty cool benefits..

Earlier this week JD Swanson and Jason James launched a new report called Mafioso Marketing.

As I’ve worked with Jason a few times in the past he was kind enough to give me a copy of the report to review.

The report is 69 pages long and I ended up writing over 1,500 words about it, which took me over 3 hours, I didn’t just skim the report..  Read more... (425 words, 2 images, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

someone recently asked me why I have so many seperate blogs, especially one’s related to internet marketing, when I could easily have one blog with seperate “Categories” instead.

It’s a good question, and I had to think a little while before answering.

The obvious downside is that I need to post to all of them on a regular basis which is time consuming.

It’s also necessaty for me to do SEO and marketing work to promote them all and get traffic, rather than just one, but that’s something which can be turned in to a “process” and outsourced, so it’s not a “biggy” imho.

Having one blog with multiple categories would also mean that blog would get higher traffic overall and a higher alexa rank, therefor it would also be likely to rank better in the SERP’s and potentially get more traffic as a result.

So to a degree I do regret the way I’ve set up my different blogs to cover different “topics” within the internet marketing “niche” and if I was starting fresh I would consider doing things differently.  Read more... (475 words, 1 image, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

I’m just claiming my blog on Technorati,

Technorati Profile

If you’re wondering why you should take the time to claim your blog on Technorati, it’s quite simple, you’ll get extra visitors to your site,which is always a good thing, and they’re likely to be pretty targeted visitors, people looking for exactly what you’re blog is about, so the best kind of visitors you can get!

It only takes a few minutes to do and you can add the Technorati widget to your sidebar which adds a whole bunch of extra keyword based tags to your blog.

There’s also the “social proof” aspect, as the widget can display your Technorati “Rank” and the higher it gets the more likley people are to see you as an expert in your field.

If you haven’t claimed yours yet, check out the video I made on BlogTactics to see how:

Why You Should Claim Your Blog On Technorati

the video’s not very long and it shows you how to go through the whole process, including how to add the widget to your sidebar, so go get it done already!  Read more... (186 words, 2 images, estimated 45 secs reading time)

There was a time when I was “scared” of using outsourcing for my online business, not anymore..

Working online is fun, but to really turn it in to a profitable business you have to “leverage” your time as mush as you can, and the best way to do that is without a doubt to use cheap outsourcing services to get a lot of the basic (boring) day to day stuff done.

I now have at least one job or product of some sort being worked on for me somewhere in the world at any one time, usually more than one, but taking that first step can be a bit daunting, for the same old reason that doing anything “new” can be difficult, it’s out of our “comfort zone”…

With outsourcing though I’ll warn you right now that it can quickly become quite addictive to get other people to do all those boring tedious jobs for you for just a few dollars an hour, like getting backlinks..

but the most profitable way of outsourcing is to have products developed for you.  Read more... (591 words, 2 images, estimated 2:22 mins reading time)

It’s a good job I spent some time last week setting up some blog posts ahead of time, I seem to have fallen behind a little bit, sometimes it’s hard to find the right balance between working online and living “real life”..

I guess I’m fortunate that I’ve been doing this internet marketing thing for some time and my income isn’t totally reliant upon sending out affiliate marketing promotions to my subscribers or posting stuff on my blogs.

I’ve got a whole bunch of “niche” sites that bring in a nice “passive” income from sites in other non “internet marketing” markets, like health, computers, games and even stuff like tattoos and hairstyles!

Many of these site haven’t been touched in months, if not years, and still bring in affiliate commissions on auto-pilot. I guess all the time I spent learning about SEO (search engine optimization) was worth while after all..

Most Newbies don’t seem to realise that it’s actually easier to target these “Niche Markets” to start making money online, rather than going straight in to the internet marketing niche.  Read more... (445 words, 1 image, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

As I’ve got several info products, now and more on the way, I decided a little while back to get a support desk system set up.

I tried using a couple of the free ones that are available in the cPanel Fantastico script library, but couldn’t get the one’s I liked the look of to work properly, so I ended up doing some research in to other free scripts that are available.

I picked one from MaianScriptWorld in the end and I’ve been very pleased with it so far.

It’s not as sophisticated as many of the paid one’s, but it does allow for different “departments” (for different products), ticket tracking, different admins, so you can outsource the support and keep an eye on your outsource staff, as well as a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and email notifications of new support tickets.

It’s actually been well worth the time to set up, as people seem more willing to wait for a support ticket to be answered than they are with an email.  Read more... (389 words, 1 image, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Internet Marketing is a lot easier now than it was just a few years ago simply because of the level of automation that can be used.
 
This post was actually posted to my blog while I was out looking for a new place to live, as I’m in the process of getting divorced and moving house..

I wrote it (or am writing it) on Wednesday evening and set it up to auto post while I was out.

Using WordPress for blogging means I can write several posts in one session and then set them up to automatically “appear” on my blog over the next few days, so I can forget about it and get on with other things.

I’ve done a video showing how to use this feature of wordpress here:
Useful Blogging Tutorial Videos

You can do the same thing with newsletter broadcasts using AWeber, setting up a week or more’s worth of broadcasts in one go and then forget about it until they’ve all been sent.  Read more... (398 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Giveaway events have become very popular in internet marketing as a quick way of “building your list”, so much so that it’s actually hard to keep up with all the ones that are going on, let alone take part in them, as to be effective you really need soemthing of value to offer to each new one.

There’s a new one launching today, as usual I’ve posted about it on my internet marketing reviews blog, and this is one that I am involved in, as one of the marketers behind it is a guy who I chat with about marketing and blogging a great deal, Dan McGonagle.

Stuart Sterling and James Brown are the other two partners behind this and they’ve put together some pretty high quality stuff for the freebies, including a pretty special offer from your’s truly that’s part of the “One Time Offer”, and Dan twisted my arm quite hard to get this one out of me, as it’s something I wasn’t planning on doing..

you can check it out here:
IM Giveaway Event  Read more... (407 words, 2 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

In my last post I mentioned how important it is to check products out before promoting them, sometimes going so can actually help out the person who’s product it is..

Last week Ben Shaffer, another marketer who I do respect, contacted me to ask if I’d test out a new product of his, as he knows I have sites on quite a few hosts, so I could test it out on some that he hadn’t been able to.

The first host I put it on threw up some problems and we managed to get the sorted out, which has probably saved him a few support headaches down the line.

The cool thing for me is I’ve eneded up with a free copy of a script that is VERY useful for my business, you can read about it on my internet marketing review blog, but it’s basically a script to automatically check your Clickbank account(s) and let you know when you make a commission, which saves me quite a bit of time each day..  Read more... (328 words, 1 image, estimated 1:19 mins reading time)