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

Keeping things like important files and bookmarks synced between multiple computers took just a little planning. For instance, the ever-wonderful Dropbox keeps all my important – and not so important but still useful – files available anywhere I am while backing it all up to the cloud for me. Saved my ass more than once!

Bookmark sync is another of those areas I absolutely need a synced backup between my various systems, and have been a long time user of Xmarks, even back when it used to be known as Foxmarks. The recent announcement of their upcoming shuttering left me scrambling for a replacement. Everything I’ve tried has left me frustrated at best or pissed off at worst. (Yes, I’m looking at you Firefox Sync –your inability to do much of anything wasted far too much of my time over the couple days I attempted to get it working!)

But news of Xmarks potential resurrection brought a smile to my face today. I’ve pledged my support for them today. If you ever find someone who provides a great service that just flat out works for you, don’t hesitate to pony up a few bucks to support ‘em!

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?]

Returned the middle of last week from a great couple of weeks wandering with the family through the Colorado wilderness, with more than a fair share of time spent recouping at the wonderful Cheyenne Mountain Resort between stops. If you ever make a trip to the Colorado Springs area, I have no hesitations recommending the resort — the cost may be a little steep, but the service was amazing. Plus, we got a hell of a deal when we booked through Expedia and ended up paying no more than we would have at a decent national chain hotel anyway.

So the last two weeks’ reports were right — I got absolutely nothing done towards my goal. Exactly as planned. Hell, even though I brought along my netbook, and free wifi is pretty much anywhere people congregate, I didn’t even bother to check my email for a week+. I was on vacation, damn it — we spend far too much time tethered to our tech as is!

Anyway, now that I’ve returned, it was time to get back on the saddle:

• Threw my hat into the ring for the next Blast Challenge. The latest challenge started while I was on vacation, so I missed out on the first week and a half, but I’m shooting for a full 100 blast by the end anyway. Because, as you may or may not know, THE holiday is coming much sooner than you realize, and I fully intend to take maximum advantage of the opportunities around. A ton of preliminary work was completed, but the first official blast of the challenge hasn’t went live as of yet.
• Since I missed out on the last Earn1kADay seminar because of scheduling conflicts, I’ve kept my eyes open for something similar that didn’t absolutely break the bank. I believe I found it with the Practical Profits seminar happening in a couple weeks. Looks like some great presenters, so signed up to attend and just have the hotel room left to finalize. Which I intend to do as soon as I finish this update!
• As I was gone for a couple weeks, I had a couple weeks worth of stats from the various programs I earn from to process. The system I have in place to aggregate it works pretty slick, but there is a little bit of effort involved in bringing all the pieces together. In the end, had some great days and some not so great days. But then, this time of the year has been all over the place earning-wise since I’ve been doing this, so no big surprise there. Plus, even those not so great days were at least profitable ones. You do recall I was on vacation and not even checking email during that time? Sounds like some pretty passive income to me…
• Oops, forgot about some homework for my class. Scrambled to squeak it in under the deadline!

Onward to week 30!

[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?]

Took it a little easier than normal last week, spending quite a lot of my free time celebrating our independence by joining my son in blowing some things up and setting other things ablaze. The 4th definitely brings out the inner child in me! Nevertheless, I did manage to get some work done:

• Started doing what I do with the reports my outsourcer returned to me, and managed to set up 45 landing pages. The other 35 will be done this week, and then I will work to blast away at ‘em.
• Working ahead on my online class before we take off for vacation in a couple weeks. I still will probably have to do a little work on the road, but hoping I’ll be able to finish it up while riding through a bit of emptiness. If it takes much more than that, it just ain’t getting done, I’m on vacation. I’m at that point in life that what kind of grade I get in class really matters all that much anyway…
• Did some work building out a couple long neglected domains. I’ve been playing around with a trial of Market Samurai and the Nanocontext concept, and realized I have a couple domains with some pretty substantial Adsense potential.

Oh, and for a great bit of thought on independence, check out the inimitable Johnny B. Truant’s latest post! Hell, check out all of Johnny’s stuff — makes for some inspirational if irreverent reads. My favorite type…

[What is this all about?]

Another Monday arrives, which means another accounting of my time has come due. So, what have I managed to accomplish this week?

• Didn’t get done with ‘em by Wednesday as planned, but managed to get another 65 landing page blasts alive n’ kicking. Got distracted by a shiny metal thing — a lesson to not open your email when you have other things needing your attention — and so didn’t get them all finalized until Saturday.
• My outsourcer finally finished the eighty sales reports I expected, oh, four weeks ago. Lesson to take from this one: set a deadline. No big deal, really, as I have a ton on my plate anyway, but was beginning to worry the task would never get done. That said, the final product is always great from her, so going forward I’ll just make sure to have a tighter schedule in place. Plan to go through the reports over the next few days, and see what kind of progress I can make this week.
• Continue to plug away on my online class. The focus over the next few weeks appears to be writing up a business plan based around an actual idea we intend to implement. Decent idea, but far too in depth for how I work. Lots of focus on selling to business idea to investors or justifying to potential profit to lenders for my online endeavors. On of the main points of these mini businesses I am building is that they don’t require a heavy investment in capital. In my mind, if it take years or even months to see a positive return on the investment, my time is better spent exploring other ideas in my list.
• Set up the horseshoe set I received for Father’s Day, and spent a hot afternoon trying my luck. Let’s just say more practice is definitely in order…

Enjoy the 4th everyone, and try not to blow off too many fingers!

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?]