Personal

Ban People Who Forget to Use Their Real Name?

Quick question:

Should I delete comments from people on this blog who post with names like "Affiliate Store" or "Forex Business Credit"... a handle instead of their real HUMAN name?

When you do that on my blog, I feel like I can't use your name when I reply to you... I feel like you're only here to get linkbacks to your site, and it messes with my search engine relevancy.

You market the most effectively when you can show you're a real person... that's why so many people put their picture on their sales letter, create video, use their real names on forums, post blog comments with gravatar images, and sell using webinars.

Should I delete those comments, yes or no?

Robert Plank Retires!

I mentioned this in passing in a couple of blog posts recently, but after meeting Joe Lavery in Orlando, he had no idea I'm now doing internet marketing full time, so here it is:

I Quit My Day Job on March 25, 2009!

I should have quit a year ago, or even sooner.  The only things holding me back were: health insurance (my self-employed plan is now $125/month), money reserve (I have enough to last me a couple years), and pissing off the people who trained me (which was a stupid reason anyway).

March 26, 2009: Immediately after quitting my day job, I stepped on a plane to Dallas, Texas for AM 2.0 to meet Armand Morin, Ryan Deiss, Ray Edwards, Ryan Healy, and Mary Wilhite for the first time ever.

I was totally ready to tell Armand that I quit my day job so I could attend as Jeanette Cates's guest, but the only interaction we got to have was him yelling at me for pricing my stuff too low.  At least I got to tell Ryan Deiss that fact, even though I'm not sure he knows who I am.

The next two weeks after returning included knocking out as many points as possible for Armand's AM 2.0 Platinum 100-point checklist, launching our most profitable webinar ever ($17,000 on the launch), and updating Action PopUp, WordPress Crusher, 47 Hour Report, creating Split Genie, and running a couple webinars with Ryan Healy and Derek Franklin.

April 17, 2009: Back on the road... flew out to Austin, Texas for Eric Louviere's MemberSnap seminar after super-programmer Henry Fuentes invited me.  I brought my business partner Jason Fladlien along, especially because Marlon Sanders had been e-mailing us but liked him way better, so I figured the three of us could hang out.

We sat in the seminar a grand total of 25 minutes all weekend, and talked with Marlon most of the time.  He taught me most of what I know now about "branding" (yuck) and positioning and basically made me paranoid about everything going on with internet marketing.

April 23, 2009: Mass Control 2.0!  I only had a couple of days to stay at home before waking up early Thursday morning and heading south on California Highway 99 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego, California... six hour drive from Turlock.

I wasn't registered for the conference so I made sure to stay far, far away from that conference room.  I chilled with Lance Tamashiro most of the weekend, and got to meet David Risley (who confused Frank Kern for Kid Rock), met Jason Moffatt for about ten seconds (who was busy macking on some chick), met Alex Jeffries (who I'd never heard of but he was a big hero of Lance's), Ryan Wade (ViralTweets), Joe Lavery (long time customer) and who could forget Dale Maxwell the colon cleanser.

April 29, 2009: Time to co-host my own workshop at the Impact 100 event in Orlando, Florida.  Through a strange twist of fate I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at ten years ago when I was in high school for the Future Business Leaders of America.  Jason Fladlien, Mary Wilhite and I hosted the "Niche Riches for Beginners" workshop.

Jason talked about the niche selection system, Mary presented on webinars, I dissected list building and traffic, Jason explained copywriting, I talked about product creation and basically got in everyone's face and made sure all 16 participants gave me their name, phone number, webinar topic, and time and date they were going to present that webinar.  We presented from 9AM to 5PM (with breaks).

Joe Lavery was there again, so was Charlie Fry from the Video Sales Tactics class... he flew out from Philadelphia just to see us which I thought was cool.  All theparticipants in that class were AWESOME... and the three of us had so much fun that we are hosting another workshop, the "Action Seminar" in Dallas, at the end of May:

Dallas Embassy Suites
4650 W Airport Fwy
Irving, TX 75062

Friday, May 29, 2009 from 9AM-5PM (Workshop)
Saturday, May 30, 2009 (Networking Breakfast)

I'll have more info about that later including where you can register.  It will only cost $97 to attend and we'll have Jeanette Cates (the Tech Tamer) and Marc Harty (PR Traffic) onboard as guest speakers.

That's what I've been up to for the past month and a half since I retired from my day job: four seminars in a month.

I heard once that if you quit your job, the LAST thing you should do is immediately sit in front of your television set... either get a new job or go on vacation, so I went on vacation.

But now for the more important question: how do I manage my time now that I don't have the day job to hold me down?  How do I make sure I get enough accomplished, still have enough free time, and don't goof off with my newfound free time?  I've already got that covered, and I'm ready to explain my day to day system to you for free, but I need something from you first:

1. Ten comments under this blog post.
2. Ten tweets about this post (Twitter icon is on the bottom of the post)

Once I those those two things from you guys, I'll spill the beans about exactly how I manage my time and how I maintain my business day to day.  Thanks guys!  Leave your comment below...

$30K Month: Success!

Some of you guys have been asking how I did on the $30K month for February... the answer is: I passed with flying colors!

I made it past $30K on Thursday the 26th, with two days to spare.  Here's a breakdown of it:

• Day job: $2,500.00
• Launches and trickle sales: $22,207.03
• Affiliates: $4,846.44
• Membership site: $869.06
• Webinar future payments: $2,000
• Total: $32,422.53

Affiliate sales are way up, just about quadrupled.  I planned to a product launch, resale rights offer, price increase, and e-class per week... but the two product launches went very well and I took a little bit of Eric Holmlund's advice and focused devoting 80% of my time to marketing.

I hit $30K with just two product launches that went VERY well, two resale rights offers that went VERY well, and one e-class.  Here's a list of my accomplishments for the month:

• Made 986 sales.
• Wrote 5 sales letters.
• Wrote 6 blog posts.
• Sent 33 e-mails to my list.
• Paid nearly $1000 in PayPal fees!
• Recorded 50 videos on one Sunday.
• Wrote 2 guest posts, a 9-part guest video series, hosted a 90-minute webinar with a stranger and appeared on 2 interviews.

Tell me why I work a day job again?  When I just made more in one MONTH from internet marketing than I make a whole year the day job?  Oh right, "health insurance." (rolls eyes)

Instead of going on and on about myself, I'll leave you with a few lessons I learned from the $30K month that you can apply in your business right now:

Lesson #1: Focus on what makes money first. If freelance makes you the most money, freelance first to hit your daily goals and then work on long-term stuff like product creation or joint ventures when you're ahead.  Personally, I got a product launch out of the way and then I was free to go about promoting it.

Lesson #2: Have a weekly goal. $30K broken down into 4 weeks is $7500 per week.  So each week, all I had to do was think, what did I need to do to get that $7500?  Usually a couple of product launches and affiliate sales.  $7500 in a week is much less intimidating to me than $30K in a month.  If you're not on that level yet, try for even $750 in a week.

Lesson #3: Have an accountability partner. I couldn't have made it this far without Jason kicking my butt every step of the way, and Jason couldn't have made it to $20K without me asking him why he hadn't launched anything that day.

Lesson #4: Never complain. Another big timewaster and a great way to waste the entire week feeling bad about yourself.  If you have time to complain, you're not busy enough.  This doesn't mean giving up your personal life or anything like that.  But if you sit at the computer 3 hours a day, you had better be working on internet marketing all 3 hours instead of complaining!

Lesson #5: Do as much with the time you have as you possibly can. Get an early start to the day if possible, and NEVER EVER do any internet marketing work at your day job unless it's before, after, during lunch or on breaks.  My girlfriend wakes up at 5 AM most mornings to babysit, so I got her to wake me up before she left so I could work without any distractions.

What did you think? Do you have close-ended monetary goals for each month and each week?  An accountability partner?  If not, maybe you need my Time Management on Crack productivity report and videos to get you where you NEED to go.

What's my goal for March 2009?  $31K.  What's your goal for this month? Please comment below with your goal and how you plan on getting there.

Sorry, But You’re An Idiot!

A while ago I dealt with a guy on a public message board (not the one I usually frequent) who said something along the lines of this:

I've never seen a sales letter actually implement any of this JavaScript or PHP interactive sales letter stuff.

Every time I see one of these sales pages, I check out the site for every person leaving a testimonial.  The truth is that nobody is actually using this stuff... is it a case where the emperor has no clothes?

What a dumbass question!

What proceeded was, several of us replied to him but he seemed to be off in his own little world.

Guess what, if you go to the Clickbank marketplace and choose the top sellers in ANY niche... most of them use some sort of pop-up, lead capture, survey, peel away ad, walk on video, or chat agent setup.

Most of what goes on is invisible to you because they'll use all kinds of personalization, landing pages, dynamic autoresponder follow-ups, sublisting, and all that.

If you are trying to tell me that adding PHP has no affect on your sales, or hurts them?  Gimmie a break!

You can still sell a product with good copy and no PHP and JavaScript tactics.  But good copy plus PHP scripts?  Unstoppable!

You could add an exit pop-up to turn lost sales into opt-ins.  Or simply add a countdown timer or interactive sales letter... it's up to you.

Dual Monitors

One thing I forgot to mention the other day about my Camtasia PowerPoint process is that I now have a dual monitor setup:

On the left is my new computer that came this week.  It's one of those iMac ripoffs where the whole computer is contained within the monitor.  It's an AVERATEC F1 D1002UHCE-1.

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E4600, 2 GB DD2 memory, 320GB SATA hard drive, 22 inch monitor, Nvidia GeForce 8400 256 MB graphics card, built-in wifi, memory card, DVD burner, webcam, TV tuner.  I upgraded from a Shuttle, little toaster shaped computer I bought a couple years ago.

I like tiny computers... less clutter.

But I plugged my 19-inch monitor from the old computer into the back and now I have a second monitor.  Great for recordnig those Camtasia PowerPoints as you can see in the picture.

I configured PowerPoint to display the actual slide show on the right monitor, and show "presenter view" on the left so I can see what slides are coming up next.

Yep, if you go to "Set Up Show" in PowerPoint you can not only specify which monitor will display the presentation, but also what resolution to resize it to... I tell it to resize to 640x480 for the presentation.

What's more, if you use the REAL PowerPoint (not OpenOffice like some people named Jason) and you install Office first, then Camtasia, they will add a little button to the "Add-Ins" tab of Camtasia to start the slide show and start recording with one click.

I click ONE button, it resizes my second monitor to the low resolution for recording, starts the slide show, and starts recording.  As soon as the slide show is finished, it resizes the monitor to the old resolution and asks where to save the Camtasia recording.

Super cool, right?

The one-click thing might sound stupid, but I'm recording so many videos for the Daily Seminar that I'm at the point where I need it.

I've used dual monitors at work for over a year now and it makes you way more productive in other ways.  You can code in one window and read instructions in the other... edit graphics in one window and write in a document on the other.  But Camtasia recording is by far my best use for dual monitors.

Do you have a dual monitor setup?  If you don't, why not?  What desktop setup do you have to get the most productivity?

Am I Evil For Working At a Day Job?

My question to you today is: does working at a day job make me evil?

I have been balancing the day job and internet marketing thing for years.  It's not that bad.  I'm getting my first 3-5 year computer programming job on my resume, lots of free training that would otherwise cost $5000, really good health insurance, and a reason to get up in the morning.

I don't always work 9-to-5 hours.  Some days I work 6AM to 2:30PM, or 10AM to 6:30PM.  It's also not the most challenging job.  I don't have to work overtime, I'm not on-call, I don't take my work home.  So I'm free to do internet marketing stuff after work, during lunch, and on weekends.

Quick Story:

Sometimes I forget to pick up my paycheck at my day job.  Last month when I went to the receptionist to pick it up, one of my co-workers, a really cool woman in her 40's, noticed I'd taken a while to pick up my check.

She commented, "Someone else must be making those Mustang car payments..."

I told her nope, I pay for my car, but I wasn't making payments on the car... I bought it for $20,000 in cash last year.

She was surprised. I shrugged and said I'd saved up some money.  I forgot to add that I own a home at age 24, or that I pay double into my principal every month.

I also kept quiet the fact that I'd launched a product the night before, and made more in 90 minutes than she made in 30 days.

How about the fact that I dropped two months worth of pay at that job for a one week vacation in Hawaii during the winter break?

No one at work knows my secret, that I make more than my boss, his boss, and his boss.  Out of 800+ employees at my place of work, the only people who take home more money than me are the president and his 10 vice presidents.

When do you think I should quit?

When I have a year's worth of income in savings?  Don't give me that, "Quit when your internet job has replaced your day job" line.  I did that years ago.

I'm not going to be one of those guys who quits without health insurance.  When did you quit and do you have health insurance?  Who is your provider?

Once you lost that "time crunch" to get back to your day job, did it kill your productivity?

I am completely lost here... I had planned on being self employed right out of college but this REALLY nice and easy day job fell into my lap.  Some days it keeps my busy, some days I get bored and wish I could take a road trip or something.

Stay or quit?  Please tell me in the comment box below.  If I don't get ten replies maybe I'll just quit regardless.