I finished recording all of the videos for my new course today. I have installed MuVar, which is software I highly recommend you have for your sales pages. I’m in the middle of adding variables and writing as many versions of those variables as I can. I’m going to take a break over the weekend, and I should have my course ready to go on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

The course on how to set up a blog announcement list is just over one hour long. It will have 11 different videos showing you every step of the way. If you’d like to be notified when my course is released, sign up using the web form on the top right of this page. Stay tuned, and have a great weekend!

I started recording videos for my upcoming course today. I should be done tomorrow, and I will likely release it at the beginning of next week, or, I might release it to anyone on my announcement list for a special price. If you aren’t alright on my blog announcement list and you’re reading this blog entry, you can easily sign up using the web form on the right side of this page. Just fill in your name, e-mail, and click on the “Sign Ip!” button. You will receive notification as soon as my product is released.

I just noticed Eric Graham and a href=http://www.michelfortin.com/>Michel Fortin will be doing a live webinar together tomorrow for 60-90 minutes. It will be “sharing and discussing step-by-step how he (Fortin) tackles the actual task of composing a new salesletter from scratch.” Visit Eric Grahams Blog for more information.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend during that time, so I’ll probably be missing something phenomenal. If you can get there, let me know how it went. You won’t want to miss this.

- Aaron

More than a year ago, I probably believed that Pay Per Click was the best way of getting traffic to a website. The only problem with pay per click is the cost. If you are anything like me, you’d probably be more interested in free traffic. So far, that’s what I’ve done to get traffic to aaronbrandon.com. I’ve never spent a penny to get a visitor.

So where does one get free traffic?

My few main sources of traffic are:

• Search Engines
• Blogs
• Message Boards
• Articles

The four listed sources can easily provide traffic to any site on the internet, it doesn’t have to end up at a blog.

Since February, the number of unique visitors to my blog has doubled each month. It is my goal to keep it that way. However, I really would like to add more traffic sources to the list above, as well as improve on the fourth listed item, articles. I haven’t really published many articles which link to my blog. That’s a major problem, because articles have been proven to provide excellent traffic.

One more source of traffic I would like to see will come from affiliates promoting my products. That means I need to once again begin creating products for this market. In the weeks to come, you will see me begin to create products (weekly if I can) which will be added to clickbank for affiliate to promote them.

I visitor at my blog e-mailed me and asked which wordpress theme I used. I think a blog reader in a comment from another post was able to figure it out, probably by viewing the source code on this page.

The wordpress theme I use is titled tranquility-white-10 and can be downloaded at the URL below.

http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/2-columns/1154/tranquility-white-10/

If you do use it, don’t expect it to be exactly the same. I’ve made a few adjustments to the theme for my own satisfaction.

I was cleaning out one of my desks yesterday evening and found a bottle cap I saved from at least a year ago. I saved it for a reason of course. The reason being so I can talk about it on my blog today. Not really.

The bottle cap actually has a Chinese proverb on the bottom of it. It reads the following:

“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it”

The word “it” can be replaced by the following, or anything else you’d like.

• Living a dream
• Living wealthy without a job
• Making $1,000,000 in 24 hours
• Making money without lifting a finger
• etc…

Don’t let you or anyone else tell you something can’t be done. There’s a good chance someone else is doing it, or has already done it.

If you’re going to have an internet business, or if you already do, you need to know how to separate your computer and the tasks you do with it into two separate categories. The two categories I’ve gotten used to are Home, and Business.

Home

The home part can be used to check your personal e-mail. It can also be used to log into your bank account, browse the web, check up on news, and any other personal duties you do. These duties will have no relation what so ever with what you do during your business time.
Business

The business part should only be used to check business e-mail, business bank accounts, business related blogs, news, etc. Anything done in Business should improve upon your business in some way.

So, how does one separate their tasks into these two categories? Do you need a second computer? The answer is to keep the same computer, however, you need to create a second user account if you haven’t already done so. A second computer can be used, but I don’t have another.
I currently use two Windows XP user accounts. One is called aaron, and the other is called aaronbrandon.

The account: aaron, is only used to personal duties mentioned above under Home. My wallpaper and XP theme have been slightly modified for my own use when I had enough home time to change it. I have numerous bookmarks in my internet browser, most of them are useless and I never visit the majority of them. I allow myself to turn on my instant messenger when I’m logged onto this user account.
The second account: aaronbrandon is a user account only used for business use. I have never modified the Windows XP theme for this account because it would not directly effect the business. Activities I do under this account directly relate to my business. I check e-mail from aaronbrandon.com. I also record Camtasia videos using this account. I won’t check my personal e-mail from this account. It isn’t allowed by my own set of rules. Nothing get’s saved to the desktop unless it is an uncompleted project I have to finish. Otherwise, the desktop is clear from any distractions.

What have YOU done to separate Business from Home?

James has another 24 special going on right now. He is offering MuVar 2007 for $50. I’m sure you won’t see it priced that low again. So if you’re not multivariate testing your product pages, go get a copy now. He’s already thinking about raising the price to $250 after the special is over.

I just read an interesting post at Sheppard Salter’s blog. He talks about how telephones are more of an interruption/invasive device. I can definitely see where he’s going with this. However, there are ways to stop a phone from being invasive. If you have a cell phone, turn your ringer off all together. Now you have a portable answering machine that can make outgoing calls. My ringers are now always completely off.

One might like to argue and say that you could miss an emergency call from a family member. The answer to that is, if it’s important enough, someone will get in touch with you. The same way an relevant news gets to you.

I would also like to add that adding a comment to a blog is not invasive unless that blog is being completely bombarded with irrelevance. I’m just thinking that Sheppard should allow users to register so they can comment on his blog.

That’s all.

A visitor recently commented about my blog announcement post from November. I think the problem was that the post wasn’t thorough enough because a visitor can’t simply read that post to set up a blog annoucement list. The reason why is simple. I just won’t spend the time to lay out the numerous simple steps it takes to create one. It’s one thing to say it or record it with a video, however, it just isn’t worth the energy to write it all out here on my blog.

So, I’m wondering if anyone who reads this blog would like me to create a blog announcement course. The course would cover how to set up a blog, how to sign up to Aweber, and how to send an automatic blog announcement message to subscribers each time a blog entry is written. Would you pay for something like this? I would like to get some feedback on this. Please do this by posting a comment.

Sorry for the lack of blog entries. I was helping my brother and his wife move into their second house this last weekend so I haven’t had much time to blog.

Anyway, I’ve decided to make today free traffic Monday. Today I’m going to mention a free way to get traffic to your blog, sales page, or wherever you’d like it. It isn’t a brand new technique, so don’t be disappointed if you’ve seen this mentioned elsewhere.

The source of the traffic comes from a site called StumbleUpon. If you haven’t heard of StumbleUpon before, just download the toolbar at www.stumbleupon.com and check it out for yourself.

Once you’ve downloaded the toolbar, you can either click the stumble button which will cause your internet browser to be sent to a random website in the StumbleUpon directory. Users with the toolbar can rate any site by hitting a thumbs down or thumbs up button. Doing so will cause StumbleUpon to match the websites you like with similar websites.

On the other hand, it can be great wastes of your time if you decide to have a toolbar choose where you should be going on the internet. But, the main point of this blog entry is free traffic. So, let me just get to the point.

If you want free traffic, sure, you can stumble and rate your own websites. In my opinion, that’s silly because you can only do it once, and, it’s cheating. The best way to get this free traffic is to get other people to rate your website. So, I’m asking anyone who reads this entry to rate my site.

Here’s your benefit. If you rate my site, post your own blog entry with a trackback to my blog mentioning you stumbled my website. In return, I will give your site a rating using my StumbleUpon toolbar. Doing this will add your website into StumbleUpon and you will see an increase of traffic to your website. Just note that traffic tends to vary depending on the type of site you own.

Here are your step by step instructions:

1. Go to stumbleupon.com
2. Click the large “Join StumbleUpon Today” button
3. Enter a username, e-mail, and anything else that is required
4. Click the join/download button
5. After installed, click stumble button. Rate the website using the thumbs up/thumbs down button. Do this to at least three websites.
6. Then, go to www.aaronbrandon.com
7. Click the thumbs up or down button 8. Post a trackback to my blog from yours so I know you’ve done this Then it’s my turn to do the same for you.

What’s stopping you from writing an article to submit? Or, writing a post on your blog? Or, recording an hour long Camtasia video to sell as a course?

Are distractions preventing your from doing any other these tasks?

This happens to everyone, so don’t think you’re alone. Maybe it’s your dog that barks while trying to record an audio. Or, you’re embarrassed to create a video or audio file because there is someone else in the same room. Maybe, there isn’t enough time to fit it all in between your j.o.b.

Here’s a simple solution. Get a hotel room for one night.

It shouldn’t cost more than $100, probably less than $50. Book a room at the nearest hotel. Bring your laptop and any equipment you need (like a microphone). Spend at least one hour of continuous focus on getting that task done, whatever it may be. Let me know how it went.