I wasn't going to do any work on Christmas day but when my wife got me a Flip Video Mino, which is exactly what I wanted, I had to give it a test run. For those of you who are wondering, a Flip Video is a little bigger than a cell phone and will record about an hour of video.

It has a little usb connector that flips out when you press a button. You plug it into your computer and can upload videos directly to YouTube, MySpace, or AOL. How cool is that? You'll have to excuse the video. I didn't realize that it was on at first and I had it zoomed in when I made the recording.

Today my fellow students and I had a 7 hour brainstorming session with our new mentor Alex Jeffreys. I had some prior commitments and figured that I would just have to listen to the replay when it gets posted in the members area. The session started at 2:00pm and I didn't get home until 6:00. I logged into the webinar and it was still going on.

I have to give Alex credit. He kept going until almost 9:00pm. Seven hours of answering students questions and he stayed energetic and inspiring til the end. Considering the measley $497 I spent on this coaching program. Alex has already over delivered and we have only just begun. I have been trying to make money online now for a little over 3 years so I am one of his more advanced students.

I know how to set up hosting, auto responders, websites, and am good at most of the "techie" stuff that really hinders newbies. Alex has designed his coaching program to take a complete nube and turn them into a successful information marketer. Because of this some parts of the first 4 modules have been a tad redundant but only on the technical side. The methodology behind the marketing has really opened my eyes in some instances.

I am lucky because the implementation has been easy for me because of my experience. This has however, enabled me to help a lot of my fellow students that are struggling with the set up of their blog and their "profit pulling platform".

What is really cool though, is that the very first module has been the biggest help for me. The first module was all about planning and being productive. Don't confuse being busy with being productive. I was working hard and kept myself very busy, but I wasn't getting very much accomplished. Alex was very wise to pick this topic for the first module. So many people waste time by checking emails and responding to IM's.

I have a year plan, a 90 day plan, a monthly plan, and a weekly plan, although these are constantly changing because of the tasks that Alex assigns us with each module. The use of a daily schedule and a "Daily Did Sheet" has made the biggest impact on my productivity. The Daily Did Sheet is an actual list of what you accomplished versus what your To do List said you should do.

Comparing the 2 will let you identify the distractions that are keeping you from accomplishing the desired results. It's like having an accountability buddy, only you hold yourself accountable.

Twitter has absolutely taken the internet by storm. The other night during module 4 of Alex Jeffreys coaching program, Alex recommended that all of us get on Twitter and start tweeting away. I have been on Twitter for better than 6 months now but probalbly have not been using it as much as I should.

I would like to give some tips to my fellow students,  and any one else that might be interested, on how to use Twitter. Before I give you the tips, you need to go do this right now. There is a plugin for WordPress called Twitter Tools. This plugin totally integrates Twitter.com with your blog. Set this up right now and start using it.

If you don't know how to set up a plugin or this gives you trouble, I will be posting a "How To" video later today.

Now for the tips:

1. Do Not Use bots, auto posters, and other black hat methods with Twitter. They have become very wise to this and will ban your account. About 20% of the people that were following me have been "suspended for strange activities".
2. Tweet on a regular basis. I recommend at least once a day. Here is where Twitter Tools comes in handy.
3. Interact with the other members. If all you do is pimp your blog posts or products, every one will soon dismiss you. Make tweets about your personal life. The question is "What are you doing" Answer it!
4. Make sure you upload a photo.
5. Make sure you set up your profile.
6. Look for other people that have like interests and follow them.
7. When some one follows you, follow them back.
8. If some one is following you, you can send them a direct message by putting the @ sign at the very begininng of your tweet.

Follow these tips and you should do well with Twitter.

Watch for a video later today.

I just finished my 2 week trial of "Google Wealth Maker" and I have to report that I will not be continuing my member ship, especially at $77 per month. If you are an internet marketer, I am sure that you have heard about this product. First of all, let me say that the sales page is pretty mis-leading in that the product doesn't really have that much to do with Google. The software is an auto poster for Twitter that creates "tweets" from Google news based on your keywords.

The software does not create the Twitter accounts automaticallly, which it should for $77 a month. The "tweets" are often off topic and not always coherent. There is an option to set up your own tweets but that kind of defeats the purpose of automation. The only value that I see with this software is the back links that it can build. The problem is that because you have to create the accounts manually, you might as well use a tool like Web 2.0 Submitter.

I use Bookmarking Demon which was a one time payment of $97. It does more than Google Wealthmaker ever thought about. It will auto create accounts and lets you rotate the information in your submissions to give it a "natural" look. The crappy tweets that Googlw Wealthmaker created looked anything but natural. It reminds me of the programs that create adsense sites that are basically unreadable gibberish to the human eye but very appealing to the search engines.

I do not recommend Google Wealthmaker at all. There are quite a few programs out there that $77 a month could be spent on you would reap much greater rewards. One that comes to mind is The Authority Site Center by Jack Humphrey. If you are gonna lay out that kind of cash every month, make sure you are getting your money's worth.

If you are reading this blog then you are more than likely a big fan of Social Marketing and Web 2.0 Strategies. As such, you probably already have a copy of the "Authority Black Book" that was released by Jack Humphrey last year and went on to become one of the most downloaded free e-books ever. It turned into a sort of Social Marketer's bible. I know that I found tons of useful information and resources inside and have implemented some of the strategies found within.

Well I just found out that Jack has released an upgraded version with lots of new information and all of the old stuff as well. I thought I would get the word out to all my readers so they can get the newest version of the social marketer's bible now known as: Authority Black Book 2.0 for 2008.

I have talked about this a little bit already on this blog. Hopefully, you have at least signed up for the free version of Squidoo Secrets. If you have been following this blog, you should have already signed up for a Squidoo account and a Hub pages account. You will need them for this. Here are the basics of the strategy:

• find a product that you would like to promote that hasn't launched yet
• claim your real estate on Squidoo and Hub pages (the ideal lens or hub has the product name in the url…"www.squidoo.com/product-name" or "hubpages.com/hub/product-name")
• use the techniques in Squidoo Secrets to make your lens irresistible to the search engines (most of the techniques will work for your Hub page too)
• ping your lens and hub page at pingomatic, ping goat, and other pinging services
• submit a story, (a review of the product works good), about your lens to Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and any other social news sites you can think of. ( I use Web 2.0 Submitter, but you can use Social Marker as well )
• bookmark your lens everywhere: Technorati, Delicious, Only wire, you name it
• make your review into an article, with links to your Squidoo lens and Hub page, and use this free article submitter to distribute it to over 300 article directories (not all at once, 5-10 directories a day looks more natural)
• if you have a blog, make a couple of posts with links to your Squidoo lens and your Hub page.

If you do the first 5 steps a couple days before the launch and then follow up immediately with the rest, you will have at least 2 listings on the first page of Google results when the product launches. The sooner you get your sites up, the better chance you will have. The search term you will be ranking for is the product name itself.

I have found that usually the first Squidoo lens built about the topic will be the one that Google displays. This will change over time and the lens with the best content and optimization will win out. If some one beats you to the punch at the start, make sure you build a lot of back links to your lens and Hub page via the social bookmarking sites and by making blog comments.

Also, once the product launches, make sure you go back and update your lens and Hub page. I would make it a habit to add and/or modify your content on a weekly basis. This will give you the best results, especially in the beginning. After all, the search engines love fresh content.

I ran across this awesome social bookmarking tool the other day and just had to share it with everybody. I have promoted a tool on this blog, called Web 2.0 Submitter. Web 2.0 Submitter lets you semi automate the submission process to 10 different social bookmarking sites. It is a great time saver in what can be a lengthy, drawn out process.

Well this new tool I ran across submits to 47 different social bookmarking sites.

It's called "Social Marker". OK, it doesn't automate the process as much as Web 2.0 Submitter but it will shave some time off the submission process. The big difference is that it is free. My recommendation is to use them both together. You can use the Social Marker to do the bookmarking sites that Web 2.0 Submitter doesn't cover. You will be able to create a ton of powerful, high page rank back links to your sites in know time.