Like many internet addicts, I’ve gotten very good at merely scanning anything I run across rather than, say, actually reading the thing. A little tip to get you to actually start reading again, especially those longer articles:

Instapaper + their Read Later button + their Kindle integration + your Kindle = Simply a Better Way to Read Long Online Articles

As a continuation to my comments concerning the food we eat from earlier today, this was today’s randomly chosen podcast that came up for me to listen to on the way home from work: From On Being – Driven By Flavor.

May as well finish the day’s theme out and pull up Food, Inc. on Netflix…

Last week shows me PPC blasting, attending Practical Profits, finishing my class, and spending too much time in airports:

• First half of the week found me very busy campaign blasting. Haven’t broken through that 100 blast goal quite yet, but made some serious progress towards doing so. Another six days left in this round, so I’ll see if I can find enough focused time to get it done!

• Last half of the week found me in ridiculously hot Vegas for the Practical Profits conference. Luckily, spent the hottest part of the day inside with some of the smartest internet marketers out there! Made lots o’ notes, met lots of interesting people, drank lots of water… The mind is still reeling, but I’ve got at least another 50 different directions to try out if I’m ever in need of ideas! If you’ve never been to a conference like that, don’t hesitate. The cost was insignificant compared to what I learned. And I can say without a doubt that applying just a little of what was put out there would pay me back a hundred-fold. Give me a bit to tidy up my notes, and I may just pass along a tidbit or ten…
• Between checkout time and when I needed to catch my flight from Vegas, borrowed the hotel’s wifi and finished up the last of my entrepreneurship class. Definitely picked up a few pointers. Along with a renewed hatred for all things PowerPoint. Swear to god, PowerPoint is the death to anything deeper than surface knowledge, and being forced to use it to create something that would be much better conveyed via a few simple paragraphs worth of text just drives me nuts. Nevertheless, the bits of info picked up made the time invested in the course worth it in the end.

Anyway, must get back to blasting! So what did you do last week?

[What is this all about?]

PPC campaign building, list marketing education, and my online class were in order as the wife and son were out of town for half the week. Basically, two less distractions from getting things done, even if they are my two favorite distractions. Took full advantage of the opportunity, loaded up iTunes and cranked it way up, had me a few dozen cups of coffee, and worked far too late into the evening morning almost every day they were away.

• Got in gear on my late start to the latest blast challenge. No completed blasts are live as I type this, but as always, I’m batching the steps of my process, and am well on my way to finish a healthy chunk of my goal. Will I finish up the whole 100 that I set as a goal for myself? Who knows, but I’m certainly going to make a concerted run at at…
• Signed up for Andre Chaperon‘s AutoResponder Madness. Still working on the whole list building thang, but have heard good things about this course from more than one source that I trust, so thought it’d make a decent investment. The trickle feed style of providing the information personally drives me a little nuts, but it’s a great example of the type of system he suggests anyway.
• Spent a fair amount of time scrambling to get ahead on the last few weeks of my online class. This weekend has me at the Practical Profits seminar in Vegas, and next weekend has me in KC for the baptism of my niece, so not a lot of free time to devote to it otherwise. Still have a handful of assignments to finish, but I’m essentially done with the class.

About time to decide what I need to take with me to the conference, and see if I can get a few of those PPC campaigns live before I get on board the plane! Wish me luck…

[What is this all about?]

Not that it is part of the goal other than this weeks distraction from it, but finalizing the pre-vacation to-do list and beginning to collect what we need was front and center last week. 10+ days wandering east to Iowa for a few, back through South Dakota & Nebraska, and quite a while wandering in the mountain country of Colorado before returning home will make for plenty of time to decompress. Just me traveling would involve a duffel bag containing few changes of clothes, a fully loaded iPod, a camera, my wallet, and maybe a book or two. But traveling with the wife and son? All of a sudden the back of the Jeep’ll be loaded down, I imagine…

But I did manage to get a few more things done this week despite that distraction:

• Finished up all my pre-blast work on the remainder of the 80 landing pages from last week, and started loading the keyword info into my handy dandy PPC campaign builder. I’ll finish that up sometime in the next day or two, and have everything chugging along before we leave on vacation this weekend.
• Set up a quick split test on an idea or three for my landing page templates.
• Spent a good chunk of my late night free time researching content for a couple Nanocontext sites. It definitely helps that I’m personally interested in the niches, so I find myself delving pretty deep into the topics. Should be a fun pair of sites to put together!
• Class. What can I say? It’s not a terrible class per se, but it definitely focuses too hard on the ol’ brick n’ mortar world than the direction I’m interested in working towards. Focusing right now on lots of complications that simply don’t matter, or often even exist, in a virtual world business. So I have a hard time putting in a ton of effort. A trait every entrepreneur needs is the ability to decide what needs your attention and what can do without it, and a big part of this week’s assignments found me in the latter camp…

As I’ll be who know where, next week will likely see this update MIA. Have a great one everyone!

[What is this all about?]

Ack, forgot about this, and this one got automagically let go with the ‘Feel Free to Berate Me’ message. But in reality, hey, I did get a few things done this week:

• A whole crapload of research on additional landing page topics. Spent a good chunk of this evening doing more work on them, but none are totally complete yet. Nevertheless, another 65 will by done by Wednesday!
• The online Entrepreneurship class I’m taking is eating up a chunk of time every night. Probably more than I need to spend on it. My experiences over these last couple years makes a lot of this early material almost laughable in its naivety, but I still sink too much time answering things the way I’m sure the professor want us to. The tendency of mine to perfect things before sending ‘em out sometimes drives me nuts! I mean really, what the hell, whatever grade I get in this class won’t change my life one iota…
• Continue working on my initial nanotext blog. Fun topic to me, so it doesn’t really feel much like work!

See, not a total waste…

[What is this all about?]

Ah, another early summer week, and continuing to progress towards my goal:

• My landing page build ‘n blast binge goes forward. Another fifteen are alive, and another forty or so are at least somewhere in the process of getting to that point. Because of these efforts, I believe the substantial slowdown I have seen during this time of the year in the past appears to have stalled. While I may not be gaining a bunch of ground compared to, say, January, holding pretty much steady during this time is a success as far as I’m concerned. Once things begin to ramp up again later this year, I should be in phenomenal shape…

• In years past, I have done a little to keep my mind sharp by taking a formal class or two. It’s been a couple years since the last one. Decided to pull the trigger on another one when the regional community college’s quarterly mailing arrived in the mail and signed up for an online class. Last week was the first week in my Intro to Entrepreneurship class. Seems a little odd to be taking an intro class in it as I’ve been running this entrepreneurial enterprise profitable for a couple years now (and at least marginally for a few years more). A few new insights will make it well worth the effort! Plus, not caring about the grade you get makes a class a helluva lot more interesting as well as fun. Wish I would have realized that the first time around, might have gotten a ton more from my college experience!
• More work tweaking my flavor of a nanocontext system when time permitted. Meaning not a ton, but I did work in a few interesting twists at least!

Oh, and don’t forget: your quarterly estimates are due in the mail, um, today… :/ While it sucks to write big checks to anyone — especially the gov’t — one also should remember that doing so just means you are doing well!

[What is this all about?]

In my neck of the woods, mid-May means it’s high school graduation time. Which also means it’s time for every little community newspaper to run a few page spread giving everyone in the area a few tidbits on each of the graduating seniors. Things like class offices held. Sports participated in. What scholarships they’ve received. You know, all that important-only-to-the-graduate’s-parents minutiae.

But there is always that one section that drives me a little nuts: Future Plans. Generally listing the college that the graduate is going to be drinking at this fall, as well as, most troubling to me, the field he or she is intending to study.

An 18- or 19-year-old making more than a stab at what he wants to be when she grows up just seems patently ridiculous to me. I’m not all that far off hitting forty here, and I still haven’t decided on that one yet. Invariably, the answers generally fall into a few categories:

• The young ladies going into elementary education or english lit or journalism at pricey private colleges. Apparently they all skipped any personal finance classes their high school offered, as the cost/benefit equation wasn’t even considered here.
• Another group of young ladies, hellbent on becoming nurses. Or, more likely, backed into it because nothing came to them when the question was asked.
• The absolute plethora of young men shooting for that mystical ‘business’ degree. Because that’s precisely what we’re missing in this country — more middle management material.

Just once, I would love to read an honest ‘No Fucking Clue‘.

I may just have to set up a scholarship fund and seek one of those individuals out…

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
– G. M. Trevelyan