Hmm, going by this blog my “status” as a “professional” blogger may be under threat, as I’ve only made 7 posts here in the whole of 2009!

but to be fair that kinda sums up the year for me, as I didn’t really get an awful lot of work done until the last few months of the year, when I finally managed to get my head straight and find the right frame of mind to move on after my divorce, mostly thanks to a couple of good friends, who know who they are, thanks guys!

so what’s that got to do with getting out of my comfort zone?

easy, one of the things that I did do more of this year was go to internet marketing events, and as always, it proved to be a good thing. I’ve met many great new friends, people who I am already working together with on different projects.

as an example of that I’ve already got a great interview done with Jit Uppal (who I met at Lee McIntrye’s workshop) as the giveaway in preparation for my next new product - http://adswaplistbuilding.com

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One of the biggest differences to my working day over the last year or so was starting to keep a daily “To Do” task list.

Now I do have piles and piles (I can count 23 right now) of post it note pads with list after list of things that I need to do, which I’ve tried several times to feed in to a spread sheet for the sake of improved efficiency, but that’s not what I’m actually talking about.

I have a little A5 size notebook that at the end of each day I write down the list of tomorrow’s tasks that I want to get done. Admitedly most days I don’t get them all done, but having the list sat in front of me helps me keep on target and remember what I most need to accomplish each day.

It also happens to be a great kick up the bum if I get totally off target (e.g. lost in warcraft for a few hours), as it’s sat there staring up at me…

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I was going through some notes I’d made a little while back last night and came across a little golden nugget that was given to me by fellow marketer Simon Hodgkinson..

Simon’s a pretty smart marketer with a fairly impressive array of products, which you can check out on his Hodgkinson Publishing site, as well as his own book

Simon was checking his Gmail account while we were sat at the bar and mentioned another marketer (who’s name I can’t remember) who had his gmail account broken in to after accessing it on an unsecured network at a hotel, and subsequantly had many of his websites, servers and other business assets attacked!

The problem is that gmail is accessed via http instead of https (secure encrypted) as a default, so if you use Gmail I recommend you take a moment and go in to your “Settings” (from the top right hands side of the page when you’re logged in) and then scroll down the page to the bottom to find the option to change to logon via https as a default.

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“Too many emails!”

that’s the most common comment I recieve from people who unsubscibe and it’s not surprising.

one of my subscribers mentioned recently that he’d had more than a dozen emails about Mike Filsaime’s Traffic Fusion on the launch day, which actually put him off.

I had to admit that I’d had around 3 times that many, but then I’m on just about every marketers list, including all my JV partners and adswaps partners, it helps to be able to spot the best stuff out there and find new JV/adswap partners, but it can get a bit much, even as a full time marketer who doesn’t have a full time job on top.

For anyone still juggling a “job” and their new internet marketing business it can be a killer…

In fact, receiving too many emails is also the best reason for unsubscribing from peoples lists, as With so many offers for the best new thing” flying around it’s very easy to get distracted and lose focus.

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Wow! What a weekend!

I don’t make it to many internet marketing “events”, but this weekend I had the chance to help out Tim Brocklehurst with one of his TheFreedomClass workshops.

The workshops are designed to get people totally up and running with their own MyViralSpiral3.com site, including a blog, their own info product and affiliate program and show them how to start getting traffic in to build their list virally.

So by the end of the weekend they’ve got everything in place to start building a REAL online business that will last.

I’ve had MVS3 for a while now as I recognised how powerful it is when I saw Tim present it at Robert Puddy’s BritPack seminar last year, but hadn’t had time to get to grips with it properly, so the weekend was also the ideal opportunity for me to do the same as the students, get it all up and running and building me a list virally.

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John Thornhill Offers Some Sound Advice…

I read an excellent post from John Thornhill last week called Is This Why You’re Failing Online

There’s some cracking tips in the post to help people actually “take action” and get things done..

but the reason I’m mentioning it is because he quotes a classic “plea for help” email he received from one of his subscribers, and whilst his reply to the subscriber and the reply he got back is sadly typical, it’s one of the lines in the original email that caught my attention..

“I’ve tried everything and I’m at a loss”.

I’ve also tried everything and I can say from my own experience that it’s not the right way of doing things if you want to be successful and build a profitable business online.

The more things you try, the less you actually get finished.

My business is far healthier since I decided to concentrate on just one or two areas of internet marketing, specifically writing information products of my own and building email/subscribers lists, although I admit I do still sometimes get sidetracked myself.

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Do you ever switch off your PC or leave it sitting idle doing nothing?

I do sometimes, but most of the time my PC is doing something for me even when I’m not there..

I’ve posted about using technology in your online business to automate processes like email broadcasting with aweber, but that’s not the only way you can make your life easier.

I get a lot of traffic to my blogs and sites from videos that I’ve created and uploaded to video sharing sites, but when I started doing this I quickly realized doing it manually was just too time consuming to be practical.

So I went looking for an automated solution.

There are a few systems that will automate the process of uploading videos to video sharing sites, so it did take me a while to compare the different features and benefits and the relative price points.

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I’m still not sure I do..

I’ve been using Twitter on and off for a couple of weeks now, I’m still updating on a fairly sporadic basis I’ve not quite got in to a habit yet, although adding the Twitter plugin to this blog has helped to remind me.

I actually signed up for an account at the end of Jan, but when I logged to check it out, I really didn’t get it..

It was only thanks to Matt Backak  deciding to “follow” me that I went back for another look, partly because I had no idea you could “follow” someone, and partly because I had no idea how Matt had found me or would want to follow my “Twitters”, I still don’t know why..

I checked out Matt’s page and suddenly “got” the idea of following someone else’s twitter’s so promptly started “following” a whole bunch of people who’s name’s I recognized and suddenly started to “get” it, a bit, although it does seem that people use it quite differently.

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should you include personal stuff, like what’s going on in your life, in your emails to your list?

most marketers don’t seem to, probably on the basis that they want to concentrate on the “marketing message”, which I can understand and appreciate, and I do it myself on most emails, but then there are days where I just gotta share…

I keep track of the click thorugh rates for all the emails I send out (yet another spreadsheet), partly so I can see which subject headers work well, and partly for tracking the conversion ratio, as well as trying to judge the level of “interest” in a topic, and I have noticed that click through rates do seem to go up when I’ve included something about what’s going on in my life.

I steer clear of doing it just for the sake of it and limit “personal stuff” to when there’s something vaguely interesting to write about, or something that fits in with (or compliments) the subject of the message/promotion.

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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.

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