My new love of the week- CrashPlan.com

May 22nd, 2009

About 3 months ago, my Mac did the impossible.  It crashed.  I don’t think my wife has forgiven me for some pictures of hers that are sitting on a crashed HD on the shelf.  I had the idea in my head that Macs don’t do those things.  I have since forgiven my iMac for doing that to me.  She has been pretty good.  About 4 months before the crash I stopped using Mozy.com for my automatic online backup.  I did it for a few reasons.   picture 2 My new love of the week  CrashPlan.com

1. It felt like my data was going into some magical land that I could only imagine.

2. I couldn’t put a face or impression in my mind of where it was going.

3. Tonz of other competitors were sprucing up and they had some cool features.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked Mozy.  They were my first love.  People always remember their first loves don’t they?

Now I’m onto my next love and this one is here to stay.  Her name is CrashPlan.com .

CrashPlan is pretty insane.  You can actually see where there storage is.  Pictures do a lot for me. At least I can beleive that those pics are legit.  They have the yearly option which is what I like.  They also let you have a free 30 days.  Hopefully I can back up what I want before that time is up!  Here’s the killer part that I think has it’s pros and cons.  You can back up your files to a friends machine…. it’s much faster and you can retrieve your info faster if it ever crashed.  While I don’t know that firends have enough space to be willing to “lend” the idea is still creative and provides an option to those who would actually do it.

Anyways don’t judge the pic I put up when it says 3.1 months remaining.  That number changes all the time.  At nights my upload speed is over 1000% faster on my settings.

Wicked iPhone app of the day: iBatStats Review

May 12th, 2009

picture 1 Wicked iPhone app of the day: iBatStats ReviewFor those that know me, they know I like to dig my cleats out around this time of the year for softball.  For those that really know me, know I love stats.  A few buddies of mine used to call me Statman back in jr. High and High school.  I was always an avid sports card collector.  I’ve got a few jewels that are collecting dust in my cases.  That’s ok because they’re supposed to.  Anyways, I always read the back of the cards and remembered the stats of players.  This was before the internet so stats weren’t that easy to get.  I knew a lot of stats and still do.  So that brings me to my point…

iBatStats is PERFECT for my softball team.  I haven’t told the guys yet that I plan on keeping stats.  Last year I wanted to do it but it never happened.  This year I have the iPhone and i went out and got the app.  It’s seriously freaky cool.  Simple.  Here is what it does that will help me.

- add as many players as I want from my team.

- have an ongoing agreggate of year to date stats for each player.

- I can email those stats to each player with clicks(taps) of a button.

- Unlimited amount of games.  I can go back and look at specific game stats for any player I log.

- If a guy is running late to the game, I can pick it up and call anyone on the team with the super cool “call” button.  Yes that’s nerdy but I don’t care.

-I can create a game and add plaers that are rostered for that game and that game only.  It will then give me a team and player total for stats.  So if somebody sucks for the day, we could technically look at the “stats” and give them a breather!

- I can generate stats for a whole season, certain players, within specific dates in about 0.04 seconds and then email it to whoever.  That’s rad.  It can show one players year to date stats.

This makes my softball experience that much better.  Call me weird, I don’t care.

Oh here’s the link.  http://idevelop.fullnet.com/iapps/modules/apps/ibatstats.php

They get my vote as cool app of the day.

Conversion tactics… Multivariate Test sites

April 5th, 2009

Multivariate tests are alot easier than people think.  Here’s a sweet way to look at it and some killer tools to use.

Use Google Website Optimizer if you want something free and it will work…. however, if you want to use some other tools, here are a few.

Offermatica I think they were bought out by Ominture.

Maxymister

Vertster

Split Test Accelerator This one comes highly recommened from Kirt Christensen with Manage My PPC.

Kaizen Track

Twitter cartoon….

March 31st, 2009

This is pretty funny.[media:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w]

March Madness Pools

March 20th, 2009

This is hilarious….. “nobody follows Basketball”

Everyone Loves March Madness

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Spoofs | Work Sucks

If you are a Celebrity and YOU’RE not on Twitter You Lose!

March 18th, 2009

CNN uses it… Celebrities use it… Twitter is everywhere and growing at a rate of 1000% everyday I hear.  Look at Facebook in the last few weeks.  They did an overhaul with a new look.  The new look resembles the microblogging platform Twitter uses.  The first thing we all see is FB status’. I will be the first to admit FB is getting it all wrong trying to be like Twitter.  They probably feel like they are losing market share to these guys at Twitte who haven’t made any money.

If you are a celebrity, Guru, or think you are… you need to get your Twitter “Real Estate.”

I’ve got two friends in the radio industry who are big on the Celebrity world and what’s going on.  Me… I could really care less about the celebrity world.

@jimmyfallon- 358,486 followers

@lancearmstrong - 326,999 followers

@MCHammer - 241,015 followers

@marthastewart - 150,575 followers

Do you think for one moment that MC Hammer would have buzz and media surrounding him if he didn’t have Twitter going?  He is on the resurrection on his career. And it’s booming fast.

Don’t delay… get on Twitter.

Double opt in? Only for idiots…

March 1st, 2009

I used to preach about double optin all the time. Infact I was so double opt in…. I loved and never had to worry about the settings that Aweber has set up. It’s defaulted to double… Whew…. I never have to worry about another spam complaint even if they are double…. whew…

That was then… this is now. If you are still using double opt in you are behind the times. First of all, you’re probably using double for a few reasons…

1. you’re scared you will get a complaint and be shut down.

2. It’s what everyone else is doing.

3. Cuz you see others saying, “white list my email and check and confirm and yadadadada….”

I’m doing a campaign right now to a squeeze page. I’m in the test phase. I do that so I can set up my split testing. I’m looking at a 20% opt in rate to my UGLY page. Seriously it’s so ugly.  It’s so ugly… I don’t want to show you. JK… I don’t like showing my niches.

Here’s the math.

120 hits in one day

24 signed up with a legit email asking for more info in exchange for my bribe.

= 20% opt in rate.

********* ONLY 3 DOUBLE OPTED IN AND CLICKED ON THE LINK IN THEIR EMAIL*********

Pathetic. So let’s do the Math again…. that’s 2.5% opt in rate. I won’t go anywhere with that. Get single opt in from now on like I do. 20+% vs. 2.5%??????????????

I died laughing at this one

February 17th, 2009

Was a free Denny’s breakfast worth waiting in line?

February 3rd, 2009

Did you hit up Denny’s today?

I actually didn’t even think about it.. but then again I really haven’t eaten at Denny’s for a while so it’s not like I missed it.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dennys

You can see the twittersphere was lit up today for people who went to Denny’s knowing they would get a free Grand Slam meal.  The things people will do for a free $10! I wonder how many people skipped out on work to go fight the lines. I can only imagine. Someday I’m going to write a post on the things we do for free money even if it’s under $5.

30 Day Internship with Russell Brunson

January 29th, 2009

Some of you know this and some don’t. This may be long… if you want to hear about why Russell is successful, you may want to stick around. I don’t make any apologies for this long post.

I spent 30 days working with and for Russell Brunson. Back in October, I got in contact with Brent Coppieters (he is actually another Canadian who doesn’t say eh) after always reading up on his emails. Brent and I shot emails off and on a few times before Oct. For school I needed to do an internship and basically the stars lined up. I wanted to document a few things that I learned from my experience.

First off… The gang here at DCS is really cool. Russell has set up a great company and he has the right people to do it with. He was even willing to train people to become experts at what he needed done. He hired one guy who had no prior experience in area of need and trained him personally. Now that one guy is an expert at what he does. He did this many times over with his company. To me, that shows he is patient and willing to teach.

Secondly, Russell is actually a really genuine, classy guy. I had this thought before that he probably wakes up at 8 or whenever his kids get up and come rolling into work around 11 and stay until 3 or so. The thought didn’t last that long after I was here the first day. He actually gets to work most days around 7 or so after working out and stays pretty late.

We sat down the first day I got here and chatted. He asked how my IM and video knowledge was. I said,” I am pretty good” but I wanted to learn more. 2 weeks later I found out I knew a lot less than I thought. From my time here I had the chance to observe a lot. Russell opened the doors to everything. Basically my butt got humbled after day 3 or 4. That’s when the light came on in my head. I really didn’t know a lot.

I NOW have a different view than I did 30 days ago.

Here’s what I learned…

- Always have a plan for your promotions and strategies.

- It’s all about the back end system. Create a sales ladder.

- Again have a plan way ahead… I know I said this already, but it’s what I saw over and over.

- Outsource everything you can.

- Draw out your sales flow.

- Build a relationship with your list.

- Get smart people around you.

- Be super focused.

- Read good books.

- Create content all the time. Whether it’s video, articles, blog posts… etc…. do it all the time.

While here, I was able to see a lot of aspects of his business. I saw the successful launch of Do you suck at making money. The strategy behind the launch was really cool. Every angle of that launch was planned to the smallest detail. I also saw how late he stayed up to make everything perfect. You should have seen the next day. He was running around getting all the last minute details sorted out for the noon launch. Even though things looked pretty wild, I bet he was loving it. The launch did pretty good for the company but it also did well for the Affiliates.

The top ten affiliates got a sweet prize.  From what I heard, Justin Brooke, who was one of his interns a few years back came in top 10. I think Keith Wellman took the grand prize. The top 10 affiliates get to go to Pirates Cove. The owner of Nu Skin made this vacation home that is modeled after Pirates Caribbean… it’s pretty sweet from the video. I think the video is on Youtube somewhere. |Apparently he actually bought costumes and statues from the movie and planted them around the vacation home.

They set up a one day conference here in Boise where Kirt Christensen, Matt Bacak, Justin Brooke and Russell spoke. I grabbed good nuggets from all of those guys. I have been following Kirt for a long time online and finally got to meet him. Super cool dude. Matt was killer as well. He opened a whole new avenue for traffic that I didn’t know much about. Justin was just plain sick at his SEO tactics. BTW Justin, I’m coming for you dude! We’re now part of a small and rare group of Brunsonites.

Yesterday I got to sit down at lunch with Russell. I asked him for some advice and that’s when the can got opened. The dude just flows. I can tell when he starts talking fast that he is getting ramped up! Watch him on his Ustream shows and when he starts talking fast, you know one thing… his passion is kickin’ in. It’s pretty obvious. I’ve personally seen the chats on Ustream where people are saying “talk slower.” He’s just passionate about IM and helping people. It’s pretty funny.

So you wanna know how his company makes so much money?

1. Hires the right people and trains them well. Whether it’s outsourcing or his own employees, it’s all the same. He also surrounds himself with people who are smarter or around the same level as he is.

2. Freakishly focused on one system.  90% of his efforts go into his continuity program. Yesterday, he recommended a book he swears helped him get super focused.  “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Wow. I got through half of it last night.

3. He takes massive action. If he learns something he does it. The dude has tried it all too.

There you go. That’s the recipe to success in this industry.

Russell, thanks alot.

Keep your heads up… I’ve got something that is killer. After all, if you spent 30 days with a genius, wouldn’t you have something killer coming up too? :)