In the IM Mentors class we were taught to stay in touch with your mailing list. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But my question is, how often do you email them? Personally, I stick with no more than three times a week.

But what’s up with some internet marketers? Some of them (actually quite a few!) seem to be going over board a bit. Lately I’ve been getting emails from some marketers three and four times a day! A couple of them even send the exact email two or three times! I mean staying in touch is fine, but give it a rest with the multiple emails every day! Knowing perfectly well how it feels to have people unsubscribe from your list, I really don’t like doing it. But I will unsubscribe from everyone that is sending multiple emails. Apparently these people don’t actually care about their subscribers, only about selling something.

And the other thing that bugs me is those emails that start with “Hi {name},” “HI (FIRST_NAME),”, or something like that! Don’t these people even take enough time to check their emails before they hit the “send” button?!? Those are the other ones I will unsubscribe from!

I understand that people want to make money (who doesn’t) but use some common sense! I don’t know of anybody that appreciates either one of those practices. Of course, if I’m wrong, please feel free to comment on this blog and let me know.

Thanks for listening (actually reading ) and letting me get this off my chest. Until next time!

In the first week of John Thornhill’s Master Class (which by the way is coming along quite nicely) he asked us to study several other blogs which I did. For hours! I got completely sidetracked with everything contained on those blogs (wondering if I’d ever be able to create something like that) and signed up as a subscriber on a few of them. Being new to this whole thing, I didn’t realize (even though I should have!) that every time I signed up as a subscriber I’d end up on a list! Of course, everybody gives you a free gift for signing up which I collected in a separate folder.

Then the emails started coming! Of course, almost every email contains an offer for more stuff – some free, some not. And every time you click on a link for a free item, you’re asked again for your email. And that leads to more emails and more offers! And so the circle begins – and it never ends! By now I have a whole collection of reports (traffic blueprints, website advertising, resale rights, SEO, etc.) that I have absolutely no idea what to do with! It’s just too much information and not knowing what is good and what isn’t doesn’t help either!

Had I gone into the Master Class forum more often, maybe I’d have seen the question where somebody asked if it is okay to get other materials while attending the Master Class and the answer was, John discourages that. That, if he feels we need something, he will get it for us either for free or at a discounted price. Ooooops! Really need to get into the forum more often!

So I filed everything neatly in a folder and won’t look at any of it until after the class, when I have a better idea what to do with all of those reports, which to keep and which to get rid of. And I will unsubscribe from most of those lists except for the ones that John recommended.

Once again, I had to learn the hard way (I seem to have a tendency of doing that)!

Looking forward to Week 7 of the Master Class.

That’s it for today – til next time!

Since we moved here over twelve years ago, on and off we’ve been having problems with people speeding up and down the street. On weekends when there are ball games at the high school, people will park along the street on both sides which narrows the street down to one lane. And even under these conditions people still speed up and down that street! After several calls to the City we finally got 25 mph speed limit signs.

Over the past few months another problem has materialized.  Apparently, now some teenagers and young adults started to consider this street to be their personal race track!  I have seen them coming down in cars and on motorcycles with speeds a lot higher than the posted 25 mph.

When I got home this afternoon, there were police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance in the street, in front of my neighbor’s house. And a man laying on the side of the street! First I thought maybe a heart attack or something, but that just didn’t feel right.  After talking to my neighbor Chris, I found out that the thing that the neighborhood was worried about, finally happened! Two cars (neither of them had license plates!) were speeding down the road. The neighbor, trying to slow them down, threw a big piece of wood in the street when they turned around at the end of the street and came back. Instead of slowing down, they went around the wood – one on the right and the other on the left! The vehicle on the left hit the neighbor’s friend which was standing next to the street on private property. He was thrown on the hood of the speeding car (just like in the movies according to Chris!) and then fell off when the vehicle swerved back into the street. Neither of the cars even bothered to slow down much less stop! We don’t know yet the extent of the injuries the friend sustained, but he was taken to the hospital by the ambulance. So, when exactly did this street become a race track?

Chris was extremely upset. Not only did his friend get seriously injured, but it could have been his six-year old daughter or any of the other neighborhood kids! We (Chris, myself, and hopefully the rest of the neighborhood) are now petitioning the City to install some sort of traffic calming measure, like warning signs or speed bumps. Personally, I don’t think the warning signs will do any good since apparently the 25 mph speed limit sign isn’t slowing anybody down! But getting the City to install speed bumps is going to be an uphill battle!  Chris said if the City won’t install any, he’ll pour concrete on the street and create his own speed bump!

More on this after our battle with the City!

As part of the Master Class (homework for the first week of the class) John Thornhill asked us to get and read the book “The Go-Giver“, preferably before the next class started. And he was very persistent in this request. Okay, so I order the book. Of course it didn’t even get here until after the second week of class! And by the time I got done reading it, we were already in the third week of the class. I am normally never that late with an assignment! But once I got started on the book, I finished it in one afternoon.

Joe, the “hero” of the book, is a hard-working ambitious young man, a “Go-Getter”. He has a deadline, needs to meet his quota for the quarter. But no matter how hard he tries, it doesn’t seem to be happening. Even trying to call in favors fails. So, desperate, he seeks the advise of the Pindar, an extremely successful consultant.

Instead of being intimidating, Pindar turns out to be very likable, and after Joe agrees to Pindar’s condition, Pindar decides to share with him the secret of his success. The book then takes you through the following week, where Pindar, together with some very successful “Go-Givers”,  teaches Joe the secret of his success. Joe learns about the “Five Laws of Stratospheric Success” which will change Joe’s life. That’s about all I can say about the book without giving everything away.

The Go-Giver is well written and will make you think twice about the way you’ve been doing business! Once you get started on it, you’ll have a hard time putting it down! Go check it out!

Horses are really funny creatures. Considering their size, it is really strange that they are pretty much afraid of anything that moves or makes noise unless they are really familiar with it or they are trained not to freak every time they hear or see something. That of course brings up a whole other subject – training horses. But that is for another time.

Horses are amazing creatures. They are so beautiful and graceful and I just love watching them. Sometimes they just start running for no reason whatsoever and if one starts, the rest of them immediately follows suit. They are herd animals and normally, if one gets going, so do the rest of them. One time, I was working with Sassy, a 2-year old at the time. For some reason, the rest of them starting running like crazy, and she couldn’t stand it because she was on a lead and couldn’t run after them. I don’t think she had any idea why the rest of them were running, she just wanted to run because they did!

I have never been able to figure out how something that big can be so graceful at the same time. I just love being with them and wish I could do that all the time. When I go out there, all my troubles and problems that seemed so big before  just stay at the gate. The second I walk through that gate, everything else stays on the other side.

Sometimes I just spend time with them, brushing and combing. Sometimes I work with a couple of them. But, no matter what I do with them, it always relaxes me and makes me feel better. Well, except for mucking out the stalls – that part is not so great! Of course, when I do that I always have a couple of them standing around, watching everything I do, knocking over stuff, and getting into things. Basically, they are like little kids. And then there is the jealousy! Whenever you start paying attention to one of them, they all want some which does get kind of tricky sometimes, if there is only one of you and four or five of them. But it is so worth it!

So, here is my reason for starting the Internet Marketing. What’s yours?

Til next time!

While studying her website, I ran across her book Emergency Surgery: Operation eBook. The title grabbed my attention and I took a closer look. Clicking on the link got me to another page with the headline “Desperate Housewife Performs Emergency Surgery on Herself Without Anaesthetic!“  Now the book really had my attention! The way the page was written totally fascinated me and I purchased the book, thinking if the book is written like the ad it would be different from all the other marketing materials I had seen so far. And it is!

After downloading it I began to read it. The book begins by telling you a little about Paula. It is written in a light-hearted way, yet very informative and helpful. In a humorous way, it takes you through the process of writing an eBook step by step. Along the way, Paula keeps encouraging you and lets you know that yes, you can write an eBook, even if you think you can’t. She also has included interviews with other successful marketers about how they started out writing and created their own eBooks. In addition, the book includes worksheets for every step of writing your own eBook.

I have seen other books on how to write an eBook, but they all seemed very dry and boring. Paula makes it fun, yet drives home the points you need to be aware of in order to write an eBook. All in all, I am very happy with the book and will definitely use it to help me get started writing my own eBooks. Thank you, Paula Brett!

Before I even posted a single item, we found out about the Marketing Master Class. After debating it for a few days, I decided to join the Master Class.

On the first day of class, I ran into the first problem: I already had a website under a business name. John was asking us to set up the website under first/last name. What to do? I contacted John to find out about the reasoning behind the first/last name. John got back to me fairly quickly, explaining that your name works better for a blog. Then I contacted D9 Hosting to find out if I somehow could use the other website. D9 explained that all I needed was an Addon to the first website. Problem solved!

The rest of it was fairly easy, especially since I already had some of it through the other program. But even with that, I still learned some stuff that it would have taken me alot longer to figure out by myself.

Week 2: The first couple videos were easy – already had it through the other program. Then the fun started and I learned all kinds of new things that I knew nothing about. The way he walks you through the steps also makes it real easy to follow along. I also like the fact that the class is shown on videos that you can stop and rewind as often as needed.

Looking at the other blogs he recommended, I got totally sidetracked and spent much more than just half a day on these sites. I especially liked Paula Brett’s site and bought her book Emergency Surgery: Operation ebook. At Dave Nicholson‘s site I signed up for his newsletter and got free ebooks to resell or give away as well as a re-brandable book. The way they are set up and the content – there is so much to learn from these sites!

All in all, so far I am impressed with the way the Master Class is being taught and look forward to Week 3 (just as soon as I am finished reading the book assigned in Week 1 and the blogs from Week 2)!

I had been playing the free version of Pogo off and on for years, never once considering to actually become a member. Without being a member you can play a lot of games, but quite a few are for members only. After getting an invitation as a guest, I found all kinds of games that can only be played as a member. So I finally gave in and joined Pogo. The price was actually reasonable – about $40 for a year.

The thing I really like about Pogo is that you don’t just have games – you also have chats and can meet people and “talk” to them! I have met people from not only the US, but all over the world and have become friends with a few of them. You can put people on a ”Friends List” which shows you if any of them are online and which game room they are in. And if you are trying to avoid someone that can be done too – you just block them and they can’t find you unless they go from room to room!

Another cool feature in Pogo are the Minis. Pogo Minis are online characters that you can design to represent you (or what you would like to be). There are cool backgrounds, fashions, goodies and even pets, all of which can be purchased in the Mini Mall! The purchases are paid for with the tokens you earn by playing the games.

Badges are another thing I like about Pogo. Every week there are 2 challenge badges to be had as well as a Personal Badge. Pogo decides the games (and the badges) for the 2 weekly challenges, you pick the Personal Badge  you want to get.  One can become a real “Badge Hound” with this feature.

So, if you are interested in online games, go check out Pogo!