On Friday we took a trip back to the Arenal Volcano and hot springs. On the way there we stopped by a waterfall, a soda where we could see numerous hummingbirds, and another soda where we could see some lizards. A pack of coatimundi were at the side of the road a few minutes after we stopped by the hummingbird viewing area.

We didn’t go back to Tabacon hot springs this time around, we went to Balli hot springs which had a better view of the volcano. For dinner we went to the a restuarant which was close enough to the volcano that we observed lava flowing. Here are some pics:

Today Robert Phillips (cybercashology) and I took a trip down to Jaco which is an area of Costa Rica on the Pacific Coast. The weather wasn’t great, but it was definitely worth the trip.

The first stop was looking over a bridge to see crocodiles. We counted about ten of them.

Then we went through Jaco which is a pretty touristy place. Apparently it’s a “wild” place at night. Not my idea of a fun place to hang around. We then stopped by a soda where we drank coffee. The coffee there was definitely not the type of coffee you’ll often find at your local cafe in the U.S.  This coffee was amazingly fresh, and is delicious black.

After that, we went up to the very fancy Villa Caletas. It was pretty foggy, so we didn’t stay for the sunset which is supposed to be an amazing experience when clear.

Tomorrow we’re off to the Poas Volcano which has a very large crater, and then off to Arenal Volcano and hot springs there.

 - Aaron Brandon

Apparently an e-mail I sent to my list with a password never made it. I thought I had it in queue, but it wasn’t. Anyone on my list who hasn’t received the password, just wait and you’ll get it soon. If you’re not on my list, you won’t get it unless you sign up at the top right of the screen. The password appears in the confirmation e-mail (the e-mail which asks you to confirm your information).

 One person had a problem using the password. I can’t say why because it works fine for me in both firefox and internet explorer. If it doesn’t work for one, I suggest trying another.

- Aaron

I’m feeling pretty full… I just got back from eating at one of the sodas down the street from here. I ate there once before the other night and it was delicious. I speak very little spanish so I had to pretty much randomly pick something on the menu. I understood pollo which is chicken, so I ordered that. The entres were a mystery to me, so I picked something. The waiter thought it was a good choice (i think).

Dinner was chicken with vegetables and fries. Desert was a tres leche which is something like bread soaked in sugary milk…maybe. I just know it’s good, so if you’re coming to Costa Rica, that’s a good choice for desert.

I walked in the dark both ways. I wouldn’t do that in most places, but it’s no problem here. It was only 7pm, but violent crimes are very low here. The only thing to worry about is theft. Bars and gates are seen everywhere around here, but not to worry just walking around the streets. A pack of dogs ran by me on the way back home. In the U.S… especially where I’m originally from, the bay area in california, I might be worried about getting bitten/attacked. These dogs were harmless. They tend to hang out with their other dog buddies and walk themselves around town. They also know how to watch out for cars most of the time.

James wasn’t feeling well today, so I hung out with Jimmy and Peter (his little boys) and their nanny most of the day. I have a two year old nephew back in Washington State, so I always have a good time around children (throwing pillows around at any age is a blast).

Robert arrives tomorrow evening, so it should be fun to spend some time with him in Costa Rica. I’ve never met him before, I’ve only read his blog. Maybe we’ll discuss his “results” with that new traffic exchange application he (and everyone else but me) has blogged about recently.

I’ve been reading my e-mails and comments, and I wanted to thank those of you who have given me their suggestions for things to do in Costa Rica. That’s very kind of you! Gracias!

- Aaron Brandon

Yesterday we went to Tabacon to sit in 100 degree water warmed by the volcano which was easily visible from where we were. Occasionally the volcano shot out some smoke…but the lava never made it down the mountain to us.

We saw some howler monkeys and a basalisk lizard. (they run on top of the water).

So yeah…Tabacon Sucked!

- Aaron

A few days ago, James Brausch posted on his blog that he and Kristi were going to acquire a Costa Rican drivers license. But, the reason why they decided to get one was a secret. Here’s that post:

http://www.jamesbrausch.com/?p=772

He wrote that he wouldn’t be posting the answer on his blog. The only way to know the secret would be to either e-mail him through his magical e-mail address, or talking over dinner while in Costa Rica.

Yesterday he gave me permission to release that information right here on my blog, although he’s only allowing me to release the secret information to a limited number of my blog readers by creating a password protected post.

Either tomorrow, or in the coming days, I’m going to be creating that protected post.

In order to receive the password, you’ll need to sign up to my blog announcement list. To do that, simply put your first name and primary e-mail address in the form at the top right of this page (just under the picture of me) and hit the subscribe button. In the confirmation e-mail, you will receive the password for the upcoming protect post. (You can do that right now.)

Stay tuned!

- Aaron

Yesterday, our driver drove us around town for most of the day.

We were near a massage business, so I decided to get a full body massage. The ladie was also a chiropractor, so I had my body snapped into position as well!

Before yesterday, I had never had either a massage or chiropractor care done by a professional.

That probably sounds fairly expensive to have done.

It was…for about $10 USD (about 20 in costa rican money). At the end of the massage, after feeling incredible, I handed her 20 colognes and a bunch for a tip. I don’t even know how much I ended up tipping her, but she tried to refuse that much money.

We also picked up another maid (this one to take care of James and Kristi’s children).

Dinner was down the street from the place I’m staying. We went to a “soda” which is a restaurant. The food was awesome, and desert was a banana with cheese. Delicious!

I think we’re all off to a volcano tomorrow. I’ll post some pictures and maybe a video.

- Aaron

Well, I got into Costa Rica last night. I already know it sucks. There are potholes in the roads everywhere, it was raining last night, and there are no sidewalks! Ahg!

Alright, the roads back in Seattle are maybe a little bit better than here, and I’m sure it actually rains here more than back home. I think this place actually has a lot to offer. I have not gone out and experienced anything yet, but apparently everything is easily affordable. Maybe I will get a 90 minute massage today. It’s like $10 US dollars.

The temperature hasn’t really been anything below 70 degrees, and it’s pretty humid. Perfect.

I will try to post some interesting stuff while I’m here for the week.

Maybe I will make a new course?

 - Aaron

It’s no secret that my online business intern program is now available! 

If you’d rather experience working on an online business instead of only learning (which is all you’re going to get out of any ebook or course), then I encourage you to join my program. You will be assigned tasks to complete in e-mail messages. The tasks are very simple. Any tasks that do involve a bit more guidance come with video and written instruction for your convenience.

One thing’s for sure: you don’t have to spend any more than 3 hours on a task a day! Even if you still work a day job, you’ll be able to fit the tasks into your schedule.

This is an unpaid internship, but if you sign up right now, and you’re the first intern who completes all the tasks in my program, you will receive:

- Glyphius 2007
- MuVar 2007
- The Blogcast Course
- Market Research Vol. 1
- Life Management
- Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter…
- The Attractor Factor By Joe Vitale
- No B.S Time Management for Entrepreneurs By Dan Kennedy
- The Irresistible Offer By Mark Joyner

And on top of that, I will provide one month’s personal e-mail mentoring. I don’t currently offer this service anywhere else at the moment.

There you have it… that’s over $500 worth of books and courses. All this can be yours! (as long as you’re a “doer”)

Just sign up below to start. What have you got to lose?

I’m expecting you.

As some of you may know already, earlier this year I was stuck in a retail position along with other slaves and time wasters/vampires. While I was in that position, I decided to take a weekend off and take James Brausch up on his offer to join him on the cruise ship “Paradise”. It was quite an experience having dinner each night with James, his wife Kristi, Eric Graham (the conversion doctor), Eric’s wife, and Phil, all who I had never met personally before then. I had a blast!

Not long after that, I decided to end my job and work on my internet business full time (which is far less than full time at a retail store). I have to admit, it was quite a relief. No more punching in at a stupid time clock, no more driving through traffic every day with so many a-holes on the road who don’t know how to drive, no more running into time wasting customers who looked down upon you bragging about how much more money they made then I did (yes, a customer did that to me once!) and the list goes on. Oh, and no more nightmares (not joking).

Actually, most of my co-workers were extremely jealous of me when I told them I was about to go on a Carnival cruise to Mexico. I told them all they had the ability to leave for a weekend and do the same. I guess they didn’t believe me or something? I don’t even think the whole trip was much more than about $500. It took less than a week to make that amount at the j.o.b.

So, of course after James invited his blog readers to join him on a trip to Costa Rica, I couldn’t resist. I ordered tickets over a month ago, and will be leaving a week from now. How much did the plane tickets cost? Under $600.

Is having a job, a child, a pet, an apartment, etc. an excuse not to travel? Of  course not!

 - Aaron Brandon

On Friday I asked my blog readers if they had any questions relating to online business. The reason being, I’m going to be opening my intern program up very soon… maybe in the next few days. I wanted to see if there were any questions I could use that would aid me in creating a few more tasks in my intern program.

Well… there were four questions in all, and they were pretty good. So, what I thought I would do, is just go ahead and answer them in this post. I wasn’t able to make any new tasks with them, but I think I’ve pretty much completed making all the tasks that I’ll have in the program.

Here are the questions/answers:

How does the Alexa toolbar aid in traffic generation?

The Alexa toolbar doesn’t work the same way as say the stumbleupon toolbar. Alexa is a website that uses user based information to predict the amount of traffic a website is receiving. So, getting users to install the Alexa toolbar and to come to your site is likely to cause the Alexa rank to increase. Though the Alexa toolbar doesn’t increase the traffic to a page, users who surf the web monitoring the Alexa ranking of websites may see your website with a high Alexa ranking and can assume that site receives quite a bit of traffic, therefore they may:

- See more value in your website 

- Go to your site more often

- Link to the site

- Post a comment on the site

- Review your site using the alexa toolbar

etc.

That’s my take on it anyway…

On the social websites like Digg and Reddit, do you use your real name when promoting your own blog/website/product or do you use a pen name?

 I have never used those websites to promote my own blog and products. I would much rather have my readers make comments.  With that said, is it a bad idea to digg or reddit your own site? No. Just make sure you’re following the guidelines of those websites. Apparently it’s OK to Digg your own sites and posts, however digging all of your posts may “make you a spammer”. I imagine Reddit is the same way.

So if I did use those websites to promote this blog or a product of mine, I don’t see why I should create a pen name unless I would prefer to remain anonymous.

How do you decide what to price a video information product initially?

Initially, my information products are priced very reasonably…$10 or $15 dollars as a timed special. That way, most of my visitors and customers can get a great deal. If the product is good, it will often be promoted by my customers on their own blogs as well as affiliates if it’s a downloadable product on clickbank.

How do you set up information product price tests? 

That can be done with MuVar so your product will automatically adjust the price to figure out what’s more profitable.

For a product on clickbank, you can go to the “my products” page and make more products under the same account. The products will all be the same course, just priced differently. Add these as different versions of a variable for your order link in MuVar, and you’re set.

Thanks for the questions!

- Aaron Brandon

My blog has been pretty quiet lately, so I’ve decided to post an update on what I’ve been up to…in case anyone thinks I’ve suddenly disappeared and wasn’t going to return. Hey, it could happen. 

These last couple weeks I’ve been putting together an internship for my online business. It’s been on my to do list along with a few other things, and decided to get it done. So… likely sometime next week I’ll be able to open it up to the public.

The internship currently includes tasks related to traffic generation, copywriting, and product creation. The three key factors of a successful online business, right?

However, I’ve decided to work on it a little bit longer than anticipated. I’ve decided to put more into the program so it would be much more of an experience. I added a few procedures that are more hands on… the kind of things I do with my own internet business (blogging, product creation… etc.)

I’ve also decided to create an incentive to get interns to complete the program all the way through.

What’s the incentive?

I’ve decided to put together a package of courses and books to help those who know they’re serious about wanting to quit their day jobs and work on their own internet business full time. That was my goal. I did it. I finally quit my job in an awful time/life draining retail position a few months ago and I feel great. I always dreaded having to be at work at X time and having to deal with a bunch of time vampires while at work.

Anyway, the special package (at least for now) includes:

- Glyphius 2007
- MuVar 2007
- The Blogcast Course
- Market Research Vol. 1
- Life Management
- Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter…
- The Attractor Factor By Joe Vitale
- No B.S Time Management for Entrepreneurs By Dan Kennedy
- The Irresistible Offer By Mark Joyner

And maybe a few more I can find laying around here. All of that will be a prize for the first person who completes all the tasks in my intern program when it’s open. I haven’t taken the time to add up the total value, but that’s at least $500 worth of material.

Want to be notified when the intern program opens? I’ll make sure an e-mail is sent to you when I post a new blog entry. All you have to do is sign up to my blog announcement list. You can do that by simply typing in your first name and e-mail address in the top right corner of this page (just under my picture) and hitting the submission button.

P.S. - Is there something you’ve been really wanting to know how to do in an online business? Something relating to traffic, product creation, or copywritng? I would like to hear your questions so I can add a few more tasks to my intern program. You have until Monday to provide me with any questions you have. Just post as many of them as you can as a comment below!

Stay tuned!

- Aaron Brandon