Chinese New Year - Gifts and Downloads

1. This is the 4th consecutive year I am doing a Give Away event on a Chinese New Year. When I did this for the first time in 2006, there were only gifts from 7 online business partners, myself included. As the Give Away event progressed I contacted more reputable business partners. And today, Awesome Fun Gifts return with more than 30 of us.

2. I am aware that a lot of beginning Internet Marketers visit this blog, and so are those who are still in the making. This is why I think you should pay Awesome Fun Gifts a visit: http://amloh.com/recommends/CNYGifts

3. I have contacted more than 30 business partners whom I’ve worked with online, and they have each agreed to put some of their finest wealth building tools and downloads up for grabs. And the condition is that they’re to be given away free of monetary charge, except for only a small catch, which is joining their list.

4. Many of the gifts displayed on that page are relatively new. And myself, I’m in the process of adding a new gift too.

5. So if you’re still building your Online Business from scratch, you will benefit a lot from downloading a wealth of business-building tools, products, membership passes, and downloads from this site. Take note though, it’s up for only 7 days starting today. After the 30th January 2009, I have to fulfill my promise in removing the gifts from the page:

Australian Internet Marketers: Meet Up in Sydney? (updated 3rd Feb)

1. I will be visiting Sydney, Australia on 7th - 14th February 2009.

2. I don’t have a fixed agenda for most of the trip since this is mostly a holiday trip. But I won’t pass up the chance to meet Internet Entrepreneurs who hail from Australia. If you’re free on the 8th, Sunday, then let’s meet up. My friend and business partner, Aurelius Tjin, is organizing an informal meet up:

3. Details below…

Date: Sunday, February 8th
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Blackbird Cafe, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Harbour, Sydney
(http://www.blackbirdcafe.com.au)

Blackbird - Map

Confirmed Guests: Myself, Aurelius Tjin (host), Frank Bauer (ViralURL.com), Anna (Affiliate Marketer)
Might Attend: James Schramko, Derrick Siu + more…

4. RSVP by February 5th - so Aurelius can make final bookings for tables. Either post a comment to this blog post to confirm your attendance or if you’re a member of the Warrior Forum, reply to this thread here. You may bring along anyone you wish, just let us know how many will be coming.

5. Agenda of the Meeting: as said, this is an informal gathering. There will be brainstorming, sharing of ideas, potential partnerships and Internet Entrepreneurs socializing with each other.

6. Don’t be surprised if you strike a lucrative Joint Venture deal over a drink! Aurelius, Frank and James are already heavy hitters in what they do, and I have high regards for a lot of marketers coming from Australia; they are certainly in a class of their own and I too look forward to learning from you guys.

Other Related Posts:
http://frankbauer.name/hot-summer-meet-up-update

*** UPDATE: 3rd February 2009 ***

The location of meeting has now been changed to:

Adria Rybar and Grill: http://www.adriarybarandgrill.com.au/adriabarandgrill.htm

The Promenade, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Harbour Opposite Lindt cafe where the small water fountain is.

The time and date are still the same i.e. 8th February at 1PM. So far 17 people, myself and Aurelius included, will be attending the informal meet up.

Interviewed by Rob Toth: The Future of Info Marketing 2009

1. I don’t often like the idea of getting interviewed, unless the questions posed are challenging. This was why agreed to be interviewed last night by Rob Toth of FutureOfInternetMarketing.com. The questions were thought provoking, and I had been forced to look further in vision.

2. The call was short - about 15 minutes. While the transcript is being made at this time of writing, I can offer you my quick insights when answering the 3 questions many Internet Marketers are looking answers for in accomplishing their 2009 goals and resolutions. I’m publishing my quick answers here in advance.

3. What is YOUR vision and prediction for where the Future of Information Marketing is headed? I think that Information Marketing will only get more profitable, but it will be more challenging than it is was for the past 3 years altogether.

4. The theme of 2008 that many people around the world can associate is recession. The news and the media were echoing the same “sky is falling down” message. Admittedly, I was worried. After all, the US Dollar was getting weaker and primarily, all sales online made are in US Dollars.

5. I broke my mental barrier nonetheless. Because if you would just look back at the recession period that hit most of South East Asia in 1998, which is only slightly more than 10 years ago, while certain sectors were hit there were those that gained to profit from it. Did you know that Amway made an unusually lot of sales revenue during that period?

6. I also think that one of the main reasons why people were put into the wrong frame of mind is because they spent too much time watching the news and reading the papers that are echoing doom and gloom. It’s just not healthy for the mind, and the time is best spent on productive things like building a solid ‘recession-proof’ business and looking for ways to supplement your income.

7. The news were still talking about global financial problems, when I made my $100,000 in sales in 10 days with Stephen Luc, and I did $18,000 in December 2008 alone, without doing a launch or created a new product. What did I say about spending too much time at the TV and paper?

8. The financial problems world wide is still far from over and we’re still living in turbulent times, nonetheless. The best hedge against it, for Internet Marketers, is to be building a business in more than one area this time and preferably in currencies other than the US Dollar.

9. If you already built a substantial business, there is no better time than now to start investing the money elsewhere. Before this, Internet Marketers would typically expand to the Self Improvement area, or speak in offline events. Yet I see a lot of potential in Forex, a 3.42 trillion dollar industry in its own league. This is why I am going to enroll in a Forex class middle of this month.

10. What is your #1 success tip for anyone considering information marketing or already involved? Many experts would echo typical advice like ‘be focused’ ‘create your own products’ and such. While I agree those are good advice, if I have to pick only one success tip, which I think it’s irreplacable and without it everything else will not fall in place, it’s about having a bigger mission and being committed to it.

11. When my parents were divorced in 2003, I was 16 going 17. Long story short, my mother’s highest qualification was only MCE (or SPM) thus the only jobs she could find would fetch a monthly salary of 1300 - 1800 MYR max. My sister and I had to leave high school prematurely and as a result, we led vagabond lives in the UK and later back in Malaysia but in Johor instead. I made it my own mission since then to solve my financial problems caused by my parents. While I also liked the idea of making money for myself, the primary motivation came from being committed to what’s left of us.

12. People who go into business only for themselves very often don’t make it or their success would still yet to realize their full potential. In contrast when I studied some of the more successful figures in business, they had a bigger mission and bigger mind when they started out small and humble.

13. And what is the biggest challenge or pitfall that you feel holds individuals back from success in Information Marketing? I had recently done a survey with my members and subscribers and the results were… shocking. I couldn’t find a better word for it. What’s stopping most people, as given in the survey of almost 400 participants, is that they either lack the money or lack the skill sets.

14. I still find that those problems are only on the surface. At the root, the problem is not being focused. Or putting it another way, their priorities are wrong or jumbled up.

15. I don’t have a discipline problem because it’s the least of my concern. I don’t have to drag my feet to an evening jog. And I make my mind up easily and make my decisions fast. I know I couldn’t afford to dilly-dally because had I done so 5 years ago, everything for me would have just gone to hell, and I will never see this ladder in success today.

16. That being said, be ready to expect Year 2009 to be more challenging than all the years before. It can be more profitable and worthwhile for you and many, if and when you overcome your weakness in procrastination and putting your life priorities in order.

You Just Have To Love GMail

8068 archived mails later, I took a nostalgic look all the way back when I started using GMail. 1st March 2007. And yet, I only wonder why I didn’t use it earlier.

Before this, I would log into the webmail feature under my website’s cPanel to check my emails. And as I started to have more and more domain names, it grew harder for management. I found myself logging into 6 different webmails, all opened in each browser. I had more than 6 domain names and because of the hassle, I tried to reduce my email account count.

That was before Internet Explorer 7 came about. And even with the introduction of IE7 - which made tab browsing a little bit more convenient (I use FireFox now) - it was not effective use of time waiting to load each webmail account that belong to various domain names.

One of my old Webmail accounts back in 2005. I stopped using it and forwarded the current mails to my GMail account in 2007.

Since every time I start a new domain and hosting, there will be a minimum of one email account assigned.

And as you know, spam is always imminent so I had to constantly clear them out from each email account otherwise eventually they take up the hosting space, plus the fact that I’m a neat and organized person.

I was going to pull my hair.

So I asked a friend for a recommendation, if there was any way I could log into all email accounts from one centralized location, and do it from any computer, anywhere, anytime. And not only that, I wanted all mails to forward to that one unified account, and when I would reply an email it could be from any of my corresponding email address (i.e. @domain.com instead of @gmail.com).

“Use GMail.” And that was it.

I signed up for my free account - at that time if I recall correctly, you have to be invited by an existing GMail user to open an account with them. But even though I signed up for a GMail account, I didn’t know how to use it to even its half full potential yet. Another month of wasting too much time to checking multiple email addresses later, I decided to learn up the bit for good. And damn, I didn’t know it was that easy.

GMail makes handling multiple email addresses in one a lot easier and convenient.

I grew to like using GMail ever since, for many reasons:

1. First, it solved one of my main worries. That was the hassles of opening and checking multiple email addresses from different domains. Now checking everything is one username and password away.

2. I had all my mails from main email addresses from other domains forwarded here ever since (including the spams). So with those email accounts void of new emails, it won’t take up hosting space and I don’t have to go back to clear them out every now and then.

3. Speaking of spam mails - GMail has a smart feature that detects spam mails and automatically forwards them to the Spam folder, making it all too easy. Before this, all the important mails and spam were grouped together in the Inbox, so I wasted some more time there just going through the mails carefully, hoping not to delete the genuine ones by mistake. (On a sidenote, GMail’s spam detection feature isn’t 100% perfect, so I had to occasionally check the spam folder once in a while but hey, it’s just one account!)

4. As for the unimportant email accounts, especially the ones that get created by default every time I make a new hosting account with domain name - I set them to be forwarded to :: blackhole :: meaning any emails going there and non-existent addresses (usually spam) will be gone.

5. When replying emails, I can choose which email address to reply from. This wasn’t possible earlier because I didn’t want emails from other domains forwarded to GMail only to be answered by a GMail account (it shows a little less credibility in business).

6. GMail’s smart feature to automatically label, filter and archive certain emails on automation - like online sales, newsletters, emails from JV Partners - all these make a huge time saver in addition to living up to an organized work style.

7. I can check my account from anywhere, including my hand phone, with GMail’s Mobile Phone feature. So even when I’m away from the computer, I could easily check my emails. It also help make bank errands easy whereby I don’t have to print out papers before going to the bank to pay Joint Venture Partners.

8. And just late last year, GMail went through a slight change and now you can even change your own theme for your account. Cool, huh?

I know many people are using GMail, and many have done so long before I discovered it. There are probably other equivalent solutions out there (like POP3) - but I’m not about to change my loyalty, not any time soon. And it definitely beats opening many webmail accounts in several browser tabs.