Well, the year has come to an end and I am looking forward to 2010. Not only is this a time for planning the upcoming year, but it's also a time of reflection when we look back at our accomplishments as well as our failures. I mention failures because they are just as important as our accomplishments.
Failures are the way we learn. My mentor, Alex Jeffreys, likes to call it failing forward. The important thing here is that you made the effort and took action. Thomas Edison literally had thousands of failures before he found the correct filament to create a working light bulb.
Determination and tenacity prevailed and the rest is history. But I have found that it's not just enough to to take action. You need to take "intelligent action". This has nothing to do with how smart you are, it's about being focused and sticking to a game plan.
Concentrate on the things that are working for you. Shut out the distractions as much as possible. More than likely you are like me and still work a full time job. Your time is very valuable so must make sure that you are productive with the little time you have.
This was something that I learned this year and it has helped me immensely. I easily tripled my productivity compared to what I was doing before. Have a "to do list" of your most critical action items. Turn off your email, Skype, Messenger, or anything else that might tempt you to deviate from the task at hand.
Then "Get Er Done!"
Of course, this is not easily done if you don't have a clear cut plan of attack. That is why goal setting and planning should be your number one priorities. Not only do you want to plan on a daily level, but you want to plan on a weekly, monthly, and a yearly level.
These will be your New Year's resolutions for 2010. Start big and write down your major goals for 2010 in 4 categories. Personal, Entrepreneurial, Business, and Income. You can later go back and write down what you will need to do to accomplish each goal. Once you do that you will have a huge list of action items that you can begin to add into your weekly and daily schedules.
I am not going to go into detail right now because that could be a novel in itself. I am about to get to the main reason for this post and it's already getting long.
Last year I made a comment on Garry Parkes blog. Garry is a fellow Alex Jeffreys student that has actually gone on to become an employee of Alex's. He was one of the first people in our class to really start taking action and his blog kind of became a gathering place for all the students.
The comment I made was on December 31st, 2008. Garry's post was about setting goals and attaching some kind of accountability to those goals. One of the ways to do this is to publicly announce that you are going to do something. You will then feel compelled to do what you say or you might lose credibility.
So I listed my goals for 2009 for all to see and now it's time to pay the piper and see how well I accomplished my goals. Here is a snippet copied from the comment on Garry's blog. (the annotations in red are the results)
Personal
1. Vacation this year to vist wife’s family in Venezuela. was a great success, I spent 2 weeks there and the wife and kids were there for 6 weeks. I also took a trip to Las Vegas to Alex's work shop and will be returning in 2 weeks to the second one. This time my wife is coming along and we are going to have a couple days set aside just for us.
2. Lose 80lbs. target weight is 250, currently tipping the scales at 330. I have absolutely failed miserably here. I still weigh 330. My wife and I have joined the local gym and I have a good start on this years goal which will remain the same.
Entrepreneurial
1. Create systems for all my tasks and start outsourcing. I don't quite have all the systems created that I want but I have employed the services of a few people and currently have them working on some projects.
2. Find at least 10 serious JV partners. I hosted my own JV Giveaway and created a list of JV partners plus continue to seek out new adswap partners.
Business
1. Build a mailing list of 7300 subscribers. (that’s 20 per day) My list now stands at 6300. I am about 1000 short but that is OK. The last 3 months I have been reserving my weekend adswaps for people just starting out with small lists. If I had not done this, I could have easily surpassed my goal. I just ran the stats for December and I am averaging over 45 new subscribers per day. This number only continues to get bigger so I am very happy with these results.
2. Continue to write for the Profit Pulling Project, re-brand, and distribute. I ended up only writing a couple of articles for Garry's news letter. As much as I would like to, time constraints make it unrealistic for me at this time.
3. Write my ebook series “The Web 2 Whammy” which I will use to build my list and then monetize with a follow up video series. I ended up writing an ebook on JV Giveaways instead. I am giving it away for free to build my list and am monetizing with a OTO and by using integration marketing on my download and thank you pages. I have some big plans for 2010 but will discuss that later.
4. Spend at least 1 hour a day oil rig hopping. 1/2 hour for students and 1/2 hour with Comment Kahuna. Once again I have failed miserably in this respect. I have also been slack when it comes to posting on this blog and my traffic stats reflect this. Time is a big factor but I am not making excuses. This is one thing that I should make time to do.
Income
1. To generate a minimum of $50,000 with my online business this year. I haven't tallied up the exact figures yet but I would say it's between $15,000 and $20,000. Not bad considering I was figuring in a product launch that didn't happen and I only work at this part time. The majority of my income was from affiliate promos and a direct result of my list building efforts. If you build a list, you will make money.
So you see that you will not always reach your goals. That's OK. I do think that you need to make your goals realistic but yet at the same time you have to challenge yourself. Don't be afraid to set your goals high. Make your self accountable!
I would like to help you do that right now. I am challenging you to go out on a limb and post your goals for 2010 right here on my blog. Put them out there for God and everybody to see. If that doesn't motivate you to take action then I don't know what will.
Here are mine for 2010:
Personal
1. Lose 80lbs. target weight is 250, currently tipping the scales at 330.
2. Take family on week long vacation to Disney World
3. Go golfing at least twice a month. (driving range once a week minimum)
Entrepreneurial
1. Put together a team to handle all technical functions of my online business.
2. Become part of a master mind group. (or create one)
3. Begin investing in other income vehicles (stocks, real estate, etc..)
4. Continue to expand my JV base by attending live events.
Business
1. Continue giving list building #1 priority. New target is 30K by end of 2010.
2. Use PLR products to set up an affiliate program designed to build my list.
3. Post on the blog at least once a week. Start incorporating more videos.
4. Start a corporation for tax purposes and to insulate my personal assets.
5. Launch a product.
Income
1. To generate a minimum of $100,000 with my online business this year. This is what I need to do to be able to walk away from my current job and become a full time internet marketer.
Ok there you have it. Now it's your turn! Leave a comment and list your goals for 2010. Let the world be your "accountability buddy".
Filed under Ramblings by 
Alex Jeffreys coaching program has re-opened! My friend and mentor, Alex Jeffreys is taking on a very limited number of new students. To sweeten the deal, he is going to give the first 100 students a substantial discount.
If your in a hurry, than click on the link and Watch The Whole Video.
Alex is offering the exact same, life changing, training that I received a year almost a year ago. By following his lead, I have established myself in the Internet marketing community and have a self sustaining, profitable online business.
Even though I have done better than most, (95% of people who try to make money online fail), I still feel that my success has been limited. This is because I work a full time job and have a family.
I am only able to commit about 5-10 hours a week to my online business. I want to be a full time marketer but I need to be able to replace a 6 figure a year income before I can walk away from my job.
I am not quite there, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My online income continues to grow every month and becomes more consistent as I bring in money from various continuity programs. I have some things in the works that are really going to accelerate my progress.
Maybe I can catch up to some of my fellow students that were also in Alex's coaching program with me. There is a list of people that have actually quit there jobs and gone full time internet marketer.
People like Jit Uppal, Dean Holland, Michael Ottman, and Garry Parkes. There are a slew of others that have also seen success but aren't quite ready to go full time.
There may be even more that have quit there jobs but I haven't heard about it yet. All I do know is that a lot of people who were struggling and ready to call it quits, are now growing an online business that is actually generating cash for them.
You can do this too! But you need a mentor. Getting help from Alex was the turning point in my online career. If you don't join Alex Jefferys coaching program then make sure you get help from someone.
If you were in Alex's coaching program or in another mentoring program, please take a minute and leave a comment to share your experience.
Filed under Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program by
There is a good chance that you may be letting potential subscribers to your email list slip through your fingers. It has nothing to do with your copy writing skills or the way your squeeze pages look. It is because of the popularity that Firefox web browser has gained and one of it's most widely used add ons.
This may or may not effect you depending on which autoresponder you use and how you add your autoresponder code to your squeeze page. I use Aweber as do a great majority of the Internet marketers that I know. When you create a web form in Aweber you click on a link to get the html code to put on your site.
The page defaults to a "Javascript Snippet" which is recommended. The reason for this is because you can make changes to the form and you don't have to make any changes on your website. The other option is the "Raw HTML Version". This code is easily customizable. You can change the look and feel of the optin form to better match your website.
I think that most people go with the recommended "Javascript Snippet" which can be a very costly error. Let me explain why. Firefox has become very popular and I would say that it is more popular amongst Internet marketers than IE. The number 1 downloaded add on for Firefox is called "AdBlockPlus".
This cool little add on blocks all kinds of advertisements which slow down your browsing. It blocks banners as well as javascripts that power a lot of advertisements. It will also block out your opt in form. Your squeeze page will show up with everything except for the little boxes where people enter their name and email address.
When I discovered this little tidbit, I realized that I had lost hundreds of potential subscribers to my list. (Thanks go to Rodger Hyatt for pointing this out to me.) I have always used the javascript code for all of my squeeze pages. If you are too, you need to get off your butt and change them right now because you are losing subscribers.
I am curious to know how many of you have fallen into this trap. Please leave a comment and tell me about your experiences with this. Maybe I'm the only dummy who has been doing this.
Filed under Email Marketing by
StomperNet Live 8 starts tomorrow at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta. The entire Stompernet team will be there along with an incredible line up of speakers that includes, Rich Schefren, Russell Brunson, and Jeff Johnson just to name a few.
Here is the cool part. I just got an invite from a friend of mine who has a free ticket that I can have. He also mentioned that he and "some friends" would be going over to Brad Fallen's one night. I took that to imply that I could join them. Pretty awesome huh?
Well, here is the really crappy part. There is no way in hell that I will be able to make it. Even though my Mother and my children from my previous marrige, (both in there twenties), live in Atlanta. I just took a 2 week vacation a month ago, so getting time off from my job is not an option.
The drive from West Palm is about 10 – 11 hours. If I left after work on Friday I would roll into ATL at about 3 or 4 in the morning. I would probably sleep through most of Stompernet on Saturday. Likewise, I have to be at work early Monday morning so that pretty much shoots Sunday in the foot.
A plane ticket on this short notice was $650. I have just spent a huge sum of money on bribes and travel expenses to assure that my wife gets her passport in time to make her flight out of Venezuela this coming Monday. There for a while it looked like she was going to be stranded down there for a while. Nothing happens fast in South America of it's own accord.
Luckily, (if you can call it that after wasting $2000), you can always get what you want in South America with the proper some of money and a few insider connections. My wife will be getting a provisional passport that will at least let her leave the country on the 10th and make her original flight. I will be glad when this entire fiasco is finished. We really take a lot of things for granted living in a modern country like the United States.
Any how, the good thing is that the wife and kids will be home Monday and there are always plenty of Internet Marketing seminars to go to. You see before I got the invite and free ticket offer to Stompernet, I had just found out about the World Internet Summit which is also going to be held in Atlanta the 20th-23rd.
I have enough time to make some plans on this one and can probably arrange an early exit on Friday or maybe even a day off. If I miss a day or so of the event it's no big deal. The real reason I am going is to network. Sure there will probably be some very good content presented. I am sure of it. But 99% of it will be things that I already know. The real benefit of these events is to make connections and JV partners.
I would have never had the opportunity to go to Stompernet for free if I had not gone to Alex Jeffreys workshop in Vegas. I can honestly say that I have made around $1500 as a direct result of that trip to Vegas and that is only the beginning. Going to these types of events and meeting your fellow internet marketers will open doors that lead to places that you can only imagine.
It's too late for me to make Stompernet but I will be at the World Internet Summit. I urge you to do the same. Getting out and making the JV's is what will make or break your online business in the end. Beleive me I know it isn't easy, especially if going to the event requires you to take an airplane and pay for a hotel. It is in fact a business expense and can be written off on your taxes.
At some point in time you will realize that making money online is just like any other business in that you have to make an investment in order to see a return. Now if you can't make then you can't make it. I would start a little fund and make it a goal to go to one of these events in the near future. For now, I have found something that will help you to make some connections without leaving your office.
Charles Mullaney has started a joint venture networking site at http://www.jvme.com. It's free to join and there are already a number of big name marketers who have joined. Joel Comm, Jason James, Harris Fellmen, just to name a few. I have already set up 5 adswaps with people I met inside the members area.
This would be a good place to start branding your name. Click on the link and go ahead and get signed up now. Once your inside, get your profile set up and start making friends. Make sure you check out the "Groups" link in the navigation bar. What ever you are into, there is probably a group that will interest you. If there isn't you can start one!
Filed under Joint Ventures by
I have been using JV Giveaways to build my list ever since I first downloaded the Profit Pulling Platform that Alex Jeffreys gave all his students back in December of 2008. The ebook that came with it, "List Building With Alex", is all about how Alex used JV Giveaways to build his list when he first started out.
I have been using giveaways ever since and added 2000 subscribers to my list since then. There have been a few developements on the JV Giveaway scene that have caused more and more people to use JV Giveaways. There are also a lot of people who are hosting there own giveaways then before.
That is good news for me and you because we have more list building opportunities. I myself am going to host my own giveaway the end of this month and also have one in the works with some of my fellow students that we are going to co-host.
Hosting my own giveaway event should make my list swell up considerably. What I have found is that now that I actually have a list of sorts, I have an asset that I can use as levereage to add even more subscribers to my list. I use my list to send traffic to other people and get paid for it.
Now I can actually get paid cash, (already had a couple offers) but I would rather get paid in subscribers. What I am talking about is ad swaps. This is where I send your email to my list and you send my email to your list. Very simple, but very effective. This is something that you don't here the guru's talk about much but it is going on in the background all the time.
When I was at Alex's workshop in Vegas, I met Jit Uppal and Lance Tamashiro. Both of them were telling me about how they were having great success using ad awaps to build there list. They told me about a site called IMadswaps where you can find other internet marketers who are looking for ad swap partners.
This is a great way to diversify your list building strategy and to meet other Internet marketers. Making contact and doing a successful ad swap can open the door to many other joint venture partnership possibilities.
One thing I have seen is that the internet marketers, that are making big paydays, are doing it with traffic from JV partners. They are not submitting articles, using traffic exchanges, safelists, press relaeases and social media. Ok, well they are in the pre launch phases to cause a buzz but the server crushing traffic on launch day is coming from joint venture partners mailing to their lists.
That is why you keep hearing over and over and over again, "the money is in the list". My mentor Alex Jeffreys told me that if I only had one thing that I must do, it is build a list. List building takes precedent over all the other things in my online business right now.
Your email list is not only your greatest asset, it is the same as having currency that you can leverage with other Internet marketers. Another thing that Alex told me, "look for ways to leverage everything you do".
So if you aren't building your list yet, then get off your ass and start doing it now! If you don't know how, download my ebook, read it and start using JV Giveaways. That is by far the easiest way for a beginner to start building your list. Once you have a list of a couple hundred, you can start doing adswaps with other people and your list will grow even faster.
If you have any questions please leave a comment and I will respond. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject and I am always open to new ideas. If you leave a comment I will respond within a day so be patient. I don't do this full time yet so I am at work 8 hours a day.
Filed under List Building by
