Bootstrapper Notes

Want a FREE iPhone?

Now that I have completed the requirements for a free iPod Touch, I thought I would share how you can easily get your own FREE iPhone.  I have also started to do much more with video - both screen captures and video of myself talking.  This is a good example of what I am doing with screen capture....

Get Your Free iPhone Here!

My Son is 10 Years Old Today!

My oldest son turns 10 years old today, and I am doing a bit of reflecting today - so this is more of a personal post than I usually make here.

You see 10 years ago today he came into this world much to early.  He was born 11 weeks early, topping the scales at 1 pound 10 ounces and was just 12" long.  My wife had been in the hospital for a few days before he was born.

You can imagine our shock, first time parents, and what we had imagined having a baby would be like was shattered that day.  Here was our baby, so tiny we could not hold him for two weeks - a machine breathing for him, monitor wires everywhere - but still a beautiful little guy!

I remember vividly the day my Wife could leave the hospital.  That had to be the quietest 30 minute drive home we have every had.  To take your Wife home after giving birth with no baby in the backseat of the car was very difficult for both of us.

He had many ups and downs during the 8 weeks he was in the hospital. In fact it is still hard for me to really talk about it without getting a lump in my throat.  As I look back, I still don't really understand how we made it through that time.  We barely slept, we spent hours at the hospital and still had to do the normal stuff like paying bills, mowing the yard etc.

Someone gave us a quote that is still on our refrigerator that says:

"Sometimes God calms the storm, and sometimes he lets the storm rage and calms his child. - Unknown"

How true is that!  Even though at times we had every reason to be consumed with worry, we still had a peace that carried us through.

Just 8 weeks later he was able to finally come home, weighing a whopping 4 pounds!

I really cannot put into words the blessing we have been given with him. 

Now a normal healthy 10 year old boy, a good student, and is turning out to be a serious little entrepreneur himself!  He truly has been touched by the hand of God, and we thank the Lord for him everyday!

Thanks for letting me share!  Have a wonderful Friday!

Wow- Big JV Opportunity in the works....

Things are going VERY well here at Bootstrapper Notes!  I have been working very hard on my MLM niche, and things are absolutely exploding on all fronts - I even have dozens of listeners to my MLM Podcast (iTunes Link => MLM Podcast), I just finished the second episode.

But the exciting news is that I received an email a couple of days ago from a BIG TIME MLM GURU - yes, even bigger than me :).  He is releasing a new product shortly and is soliciting bonus materials for those that purchase.

I have never been a part of one of these big launches before, so it immediately perked my interest.

He says he has a list of 22,000 in addition to all the heavy hitters that will be promoting this as well. 

The entry level product will be under $20 and I would get 100% commission - the upsell would be around $50 and I would get 50%.  To have my product included as a bonus I must agree to send 2 emails to my list on launch week, and one follow-up later on.

The real benefit for me is that the customers will not be downloading my ebook directly from his site, they would have to go to my squeeze page to get the bonus - which is an interesting twist to the typical "bonus" model I see on most sites.

So I send traffic, get affiliate commissions - and have the added benefit of getting hundreds or potentially thousands of new subscribers to my list on the backend.  Not a bad deal!  Also I get to start building a relationship with a heavy hitter in the industry that could be beneficial down the road as I create my own products.

I think this thing has the potential to be huge for me, we will see.  I am very excited to see how it all pans out.  I will be sure and let you know how it all turns out.

MLM Podcast is LIVE!

My podcast is finally listed in the search function over at iTunes!  New subscribers are already being added, it will be interesting to see where this goes.

Here are some direct links to my podcast:

Internet MLM Pro Podcast <= must have iTunes installed

MLM Podcast <= links to category on my blog where you can listen or grab the feed.

I would love some feedback!

Podcast, Articles, and Ebooks.... Oh My!

Lots accomplished here the last couple of weeks on my Internet MLM Pro site:

1. I distributed about 10 articles to a couple of article directories.  They are already generating subscribers to my list- starting within about 30 minutes of them getting approved!  I have about 10 more to distribute this week.  I found that distributing batches seems to be the best approach for me.
2. Published my first podcast!  You can grab the feed for the Internet MLM Podcast or listen at my blog MLM Podcast.  It is not listed yet in iTunes, but hopefully it will be soon.
3. I also finished off my $7 report called Internet MLM Pro Secrets.  Already selling like hotcakes! 

These three things will continue to build my brand as the Internet MLM Pro!  I will be doing 2 or 3 podcasts a month.  I hope the MLM Podcast will start to generate more and more subscribers to my list over time.  The podcast is fun, but I still have a lot to learn!

Anyone else out there podcasting?  I would love some feedback, and would be interested in your podcast link as well.  Just post a comment!

Pimping out my Blog

Yes, I have crossed over to the dark side and pimped out my blog.  Don't worry, I am not going to do a ton of these, and I promise to continue to post more often with very relevant content and tips.

But you see, I really want a the Sigma 70-200 lense for my Canon Rebel XT Digital SLR.

But I need to generate this income in alternative ways, using the current sites that I have available.  So this pay-per-post stuff is one way I am going to do it.

Using IDrive-E for External Backups

I use a thumb drive daily to transport my internet marketing business files around with me.  I usually work on building my internet business over the lunch hour at work, so this works well for me.

My thumb drive right now has around 600 meg of information on it - it is basically the life blood of my business.  It has my sites, articles, ebooks, etc - if I lost it I would be very very very sad!

Every so often I do back it up to an external USB hard drive, but no often enough, and the hard drive is not available from any location I might be working from.

So I have been looking for a way to backup this drive to a service that offers Online Backup.  Recently I was invited to review IDrive-E.  Here is their description:

a leading online backup service provider offers encrypted online backups for free (up to 2GB) and Unlimited storage (for $4.95/month). It is easy to use, fast and secure.

So I headed over and within a couple of minutes signed up for a free account which offers 2 gb of storage for FREE.  There are also options that allow you to have unlimited storage.

I did read up and feel very comfortable with their encryption.  Once you have signed up you will need to download the application to do the restores and backups.

So I loaded up the application and started a backup for 581 meg of data for a complete backup of my thumbdrive.

I have not tried the file and drive sharing - because I am doing this on my work computer but I will probably try this from home.

I must tell you that now I can sleep much more comfortably at night knowing I have a backup of this data.  I am going to set up a scheduled backup for this drive, so that once a week it will automatically backup the changed files on the drive.

disclaimer: I was paid for this review.  However, I do really like the service and will continue to use it.  I encourage you to try out this service as well.

Several Irons In The Internet Marketing Fire!

No I am Not Dead!

I have been really busy working on about several things at one time:

• Hired a 25 page report written on a product that I sell in my Network Marketing company.
• I am writing a 25 or 30 page report on how to use the internet to generate MLM leads.
• Started a MLM blog and auto responder for generating MLM leads online.
• Modifying a PLR ebook for a follow up product to one my first infoproduct sites.
• Researching Podcasting for a future project.

So as you can see, I have plenty of irons in the fire right now - it should be a good summer!!

In case your wondering, yes I am using this post for a bit of link bait :)

Been busy building my lists and outsourcing...

It has been a while!  I have been hard at work learning new things and building my lists.

I tuned into a conference call a few weeks ago, and came away with a few new ideas, that I immediately put to work.  I am not ready to share the tactics yet, but I may eventually in the form of an info product.  The good news is that with just one tactic I added 56 subscribers, that are business builders, to my list in just 7 days - and I have already made money from the list ($3.00).

Joining my friend Jon - I have also had a couple of  projects outsourced that I needed done that will further allow me to expand my list building empire.

How to Build a List of Subscribers

If you are trying to build your own list, it can sometimes seem hard to actually get subscribers.  I was approached by someone this week, asking me to help them build their list - it was an interesting technique so I thought I would share it with you.

Basically this guy sent me an email in regards to my site that deals with dogs.  He said that he had a newsletter for dog owners and was approaching other people with products in the dog niche. 

He said instead of just promoting my site as a one shot deal, he wanted to put two emails into his autoresponder series "forever" so that all new members of his newsletter would receive the pitch for my product. 

What he ask in return was that I add two emails "to the end" of my series to promote his newsletter landing page.  I thought it was interesting that he asked to be added to the end of my series, because then he could capture a all of my list.

He said that over time I would benefit from the growth of his list, as his list will grow as other publishers like me pitch his newsletter.  He hopes to have 10,000 members by the end of the year.

I subscribed to his newsletter just to see what it was like.  It was good, and yes, he does pitch mostly ebooks to his list, along with plenty of free information.

I thought this was an interesting idea, but I have not decided if I want to participate yet.  He even game me one of the two emails that he would like me to use.  This guy is smart, but I just wonder how many others have decided to do this.

The biggest problem I see with it is that I am basically helping a competitor. 

Please share your thoughts on this idea!  I would love to hear what you would do.