Just wanted to play off my last post and add a "Happy New Year" to everyone. I hope you had a fun, safe, and exciting 2008 but here's to 2009... and going for more!
Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Next up, New Years! :)
Sure all those new gadgets on your wish list are cool but what good are they if you're not around to enjoy them? Why not give yourself something that is free, will make you feel great and help you live longer so you can enjoy all your toys.
Give yourself the gift of Health. So cheesy I know... you do love cheese right?
(You were probably expecting me to promote one of my products weren't you... not this time hah!)
I ran across this new study (via Donklephant) that outlines the risks of being overweight and it's effects on heart failure. Yea, no new shocker there but some of these numbers blew me away.
From the article:
"Overall, the risk of heart failure increased by 180 percent in men who met the definition of obesity according to their body mass index (BMI of 30 and higher), and by 49 percent in men who met the definition of overweight (a BMI of 25 to 30)."
We all know that being overweight is bad but these results are pretty scary. I'm no Arnold but I do make it a point to work out every day. If that's a little too much for you, take it down to 2 or 3 times per week. Surely you can give yourself 3 hours a week to keep healthy... right?
I know how hard it is at first, but make it part of your "routine" and it gets so much easier. You'll feel better, look better and have more confidence. Where's the downside?
Happy Holidays everyone!
PS- Yes, I know the downside is you have to "work out" =)
Stuck in the same old routine and dying to break out? Hold on there slugger. You might want to rethink your strategy.
Many of the worlds top entrepreneurs use daily routines to keep on track and make sure you continue to make progress. The idea is so simple but it is difficult to get settled into a new routine.
Let's look at an example. 2009 is right around the corner and when that comes a whole list of new year resolutions will be right behind it. A good chunk of those resolutions will be involved with getting in shape, losing weight, etc.
It happens every year without fail. Jan 2nd I'll see a whole new group of people in the gym every morning. Two weeks later about 75% of those new people are still showing up. Another two weeks later were down to about 25% of them left. After six weeks I'd guess that around 10% of those people are still at it. It's those 10% that will continue on and likely meet their goals.
Why? Because they got "set" in their routine. The first 6 weeks are the hardest but after that it's so routine that it's done without thinking about it. As a result you hit your goal of getting in shape.
Running your business or managing your tasks is no different. Try to give yourself a routine to follow and watch your productivity rise.
Set aside a time to do your writing, handle your email, take and make phone calls, work on your marketing, write your code, whatever.
This is an example of of a routine for "How To Write Better Copy, Faster!" from the The Gary Halbert Letter website. Perfect example for setting a routine for your tasks to get better results in less time.
I'd be lying if I said I was on a daily routine like this... But it is on my resolution list for next year :)
It's no secret that internet marketers make heavy use of PPC marketing. With the steady rise of online advertising the PPC competition has really heated up. Making your campaigns more expensive and tougher to get visitors to your website.
A few weeks ago I found an awesome report called Digging For Gold that discusses a few techniques to find profitable "natural language" keywords. Because these are long tail and phrased in a natural way, the competition for these phrases is very low — or doesn't exist at all.
The report costs $7 but I would of happily paid triple that and walked away happy. It details a few tricks and also has a pretty clever way to use Google Analytics to see the exact phrases searched for when your ads were triggered and the user clicked your ad.
Remember, google only sends the "keyword" match but not the actual phrase that was searched. There is a huge difference there. Using Google Analytics to track patterns will let you know what long tail phrases to bid on and chances are you will get extremely cheap rates on those ads.
I don't want to give away how to execute the trick so go get the report. Definitely good stuff.
Just a quick note here... Looks like My Corporation is offering FREE document processing this week. This means that if you want to form an LLC or Corporation you can get this done for free. You just have to pay the state filing fees so you can save $149+ on the cost of the processing.
Of course, you can always do that yourself for free and some states even offer it online so you may have no need for this. I'm lazy so I used LegalZoom for the services I needed. I've been thinking of restructuring a bit so maybe this would be a good time for me to test out My Corporation.
If you're planning on setting up an LLC or Corp next year, now may be the time to have it done.
Technorati Tags: business, free, llc, corporation, savings
Yea, I said it. I said OFFLINE.
There is a lot of buzz these days about ways to use the internet as leverage to build a large and steady income offline. When I started selling my latest product Mom and Pop Money to the "offline" crowd I honestly didn't see the buzz that was already building for these sort of systems. While MAPM does require use of internet marketing, there are many ways to make money offline with the help of the internet that don't necessarily require any internet marketing skills.
A great example was given away for free by David Preston on the Warrior Forum a week or so ago. The thread is now 17 pages long and has so much information on it that you can literally build a small consulting business from it. Check it out if you have any interest in this sort of thing.
The reason I brought up this thread is because David also wrote a report called Offline Goldmine that goes into how he has turned himself from a "marketing" consultant to an "internet marketing" consultant in less than a year. That's right, David has only been marketing and doing business online since May of this year (2008).
He's built up quite a name for himself. Well, David and I were speaking recently and we thought it would be cool to "trade" our products. I got a copy of Offline Goldmine and he got a copy of Mom and Pop Money (MAPM). Fair enough.
As someone who is fairly new to the whole "IM" scene I feel like I've picked up a ton of knowledge, especially in the last year or so and am pretty comfortable with my ability to market a product online. I've never done a thing in the "offline" world of marketing so reading Offline Goldmine was sort of an awakening for me.
David has a lot of ideas and strategies that really make it easy to pickup some offline clients who write nice fat checks. He also shows how the majority of this work can be outsourced. It's pretty clever, I have to admit.
If you're looking to get into some offline consulting then I really recommend Offline Goldmine. Even if you're an "old hat" guy, you will pick up some very unique strategies in this report.
Check out Offline Goldmine Here.
Technorati Tags: business, consulting, internet marketing, make money offline, marketing
I should preface this post by noting that this is not for the "average" internet marketer. This is more designed for Python programmers with a love for the Django framework. Real geek stuff. If you got the stomach for it, then read on...
Serving Secure Signed Files With Expiration Times
I wrote a simple class this morning to handle secure signed Amazon S3 links with expiration times. This is very useful when you want to serve files from Amazon S3 that are part of a membership site or a digital goods purchase.
I have been serving files from my digital purchases through a custom Django view. This isn't a very strong method because for every file served (purchased) my server has to load that file into memory. I would much rather give that task to S3 since it's more reliable, very fast and so cheap that it's a no brainer.
Of course I haven't migrated this class into my payment and delivery system yet but I'll do that some time this weekend.
Django DateField To Handle Credit Card Expiration Dates
I've now built several systems for taking payment via credit card. One of the problems that consistently comes up is when a user wants to update their credit card information in the database.
Providing the interface for that is easy, but the default display for a Django DateField will display their expiration date like this:
YYYY-MM-DD
Now on your credit, or debit, cards the expiration date looks like: MM/YY. So I created a custom field to display and accept input in the MM/YY format.
Totally got rid of the customer problems when updating their account with new credit card information.
Get the code...
You can snag both snippets at my account on DjangoSnippets. They are free to use however you want. You can also see example usage of them on their individual snippet page.
Go here to download the snippets.
Technorati Tags: django, ecommerce, internet-marketing, python, snippets
Well, I went and voted about an hour ago. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to vote and go. I was a little worried actually about low turn out but the volunteers told me there was a huge rush for most of the morning.
Here is a goofy picture of me after the vote. My wife took it with an iPhone so..
(click to enlarge)
I hope you voted too (assuming you're American, of age, and eligible). Now I'll be glued to the news to watch the results.
Technorati Tags: election 2008, goofy, history, vote
You and I both know that you're secretly stalking me. Come on, admit it. Right? OK, good, thanks for being honest.
Because I want to help you out, let me tell another way you can track me... Using Twitter.
If you don't know what Twitter is, it's basically a micro-blogging tool that allows you to post messages that are 140 characters or less. It's an awesome tool and useful for social marketing or just keeping friends & family updated with your day.
I've had my Twitter account for over a year but only recently started getting addicted to it. I've been posting pretty frequently and it's interesting the way conversations develop. Yes, you can "converse" with other Twitter users.
So to help me make more use of my Twitter account, I went and bought the domain FollowPeter.com which redirects to my Twitter page.
So go register yourself an account, head to my profile and follow me
Technorati Tags: social marketing, social network, marketing, twitter
