This is a recoding made be Earl Nightingale in 1956 he produced a spoken-word record, The Strangest Secret, which sold over a million copies, making it the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status. I’ve never a big fan of motivational stuff so I just heard this recording for the first time and it blew  me away.

Here is the video of the his famous recording…

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re in the deep freeze month here in Minnesota.  Check out the temperature yesterday at around 10:00 AM:

That’s about -25 degrees °C, for my friends outside of the U.S.  And that is the straight up actual temperature, throw in the wind-chill factor and it felt like -40 below zero!  While my friends were dreading the commute and getting outside to go to work at 7:00 AM, I just went down stairs to my basement/office in my t-shirt and sweats.

You just can’t beat that as a great benefit from working from home! Sure it’s not all peachy and fun all the time but on that morning I was all similes.

I’ve been working on my first product and I’m very excited! Even if I never sell any copies it’s a good experience. Affiliate marketing is fun but to be able to create your own product is very exciting.

It’s an informational product and my goal for launching it will be September 1st so I’m busy writing away. I’ll provide more info as I progress but I’ll give you the 411 as how this came about.

A lot of the successful folks in Internet market create their own products and I’ve been kicking around the idea of my creating my own info product for awhile but I have never taken action.

Hanging out at forums like the Warrior Forum and listening to the big guns like Willie Crawford and the lesser known Internet marketers like Michael Worthington really set a fire on my feet to finally take action on this front.

It’s a tough balancing act with working on my podcasts, affiliate marketing niche sites, and now this project but hopefully in the end it will pay off.

I’ll still find time to post here and keep everyone updated with the progress.

Peace out – Alan

I have blogged several times about Tim Ferris and his book The Four Hour Work Week. I just read in his blog that he is now in my home country of Costa Rica. That’s pretty cool indeed. Since he only puts in four hour work weeks he then likes to travel the world and now he is on my home turf.

In Tim Ferriss’s blog he has a picture of his view of the Arenal volcano. He says he is staying La Fortuna, Costa Rica. The Arenal volcano is one of the most active in the world.

You can learn more about Arenal and Costa Rica by checking out my podcast about Costa Rica.

Today is the U.S.A.’s 231st anniversary! I hope everyone had a great 4th. I’m full after a good BBQ! Anyway Happy 4th of July!

Special thanks to the men and women in the Armed forces for their service to protect our freedom!

Leave it to the scumbag scammers to come up with a new way to try to rip you off. I received an email from an eBay member asking me if I had shipped an item. The email appears to be generated from the eBay contact system the ones with the yellow header and looks like the real deal.

I haven’t sold anything on eBay in awhile so I though this buyer somehow sent this to me in error but I was a bit suspicious about the email so I hovered over the reply link and sure thing it’s not an eBay URL and it appears to be a sign in form. Now I’m convinced this a phishing attempt to get my eBay login details.

Email looks like the real thing (I blurred out the user name since it’s a real eBayer who is probably unaware his eBay Id is being exploited):

I went and Googled “ebay question about item email phishing” and I came across this forum post so looks like these are now doing the rounds.

I’m pretty skeptical but this was a good forgery so be careful. Never log in or give your info. If you’re suspicious go with your gut feeling and you’ll avoid getting scammed.

A very important piece of the Internet marketing puzzle is tracking your website stats and I’ve been trying out Google Analytics which is free and it’s phenomenal! If you need more detailed website statistical analysis tools you can buy software like web trends but for Internet marketing purposes and managing PPC Google Analytics is more than enough.

I’ve just now started using to track my wordpress blogs like this one you’re reading right now. I used this awesome plugin which was easy to install in less than five minutes and it works like a charm.

Google Analytics helps provides you data that lets you see how people are finding your website, how they are navigating through your site, and how visitors become customers. It’s an indispensable tool to track your Adwords campaigns and to help you manage your site to improve your conversion rates. The more you know the better you will convert visitors into customers.

Using Google Analytics is very easy. Once you’re account is setup you just click on “add a website profile” and you add the URL of your website. Google generates the code which you easily paste right above the </body> tag in your HTML code. If you use wordpress just just upload the googleanalystics.php file into your plugin folder and activate it then you add your Google Analytics account number from your wordpress admin dashboard and that’s it. Google will start to track the traffic to your website and you can manage all your sites from your Google Analytics dashboard. It’s awesome!

You can click this link to take a tour of Google Analytics. Check it out and start using this great free tool on your sites.

I’m baaack! I’ve been out of the country in Costa Rica for the past two weeks. It’s nice to be back in the USA. Costa Rica was great and I put my flip video to the test! I’ll be posting videos in the next few days as I get settle in. I’m feeling a little tired and I have a lot of laundry to do.

Now that I’m back home I’ll be posting my reviews of products that will get you going as an affiliate marketer. Stuff that I have found useful.

I’m not only going to share my internet marketing journey but also the tools that I use so stay tuned my friends.

Introduction to Stop The Internet Marketing Insanity blog 

Welcome to my Internet marketing blog.

You can read about me and why I’ve set up this blog here but I’ll sum it up easily here for you: I was fed up!

There is so much crap being thrown at us by all the Internet marketing gurus that one night I just got pissed. I was reading a post over at the CYN forums and these poor newbies were spending a lot of cash on all these programs and cookie-cutter generated “web sites” that they really don’t need nor will it make them any real money.

Now if they want to buy every IM guru product out there because they enjoy it and they can afford it that’s fine but these folks were financially desperate and it just pissed me off, I literally said to myself, these folks need to stop the Internet marketing insanity!

Next thing I knew I was over at Go Daddy checking the availability of StopTheInternetMarketingInsanity.com and just like that I registered it.

I didn’t do a detailed keyword analysis of this domain name to determine if it was good for SEO purposes or marketable (just look at it, it’s long and ugly!).

My Strategy 

I didn’t sit down and plan out my strategy for this blog. All the things you’re supposed to do before jumping into a niche, I did not do. I broke my own rules of setting up a site but that’s because I feel strong about the ideas and the purpose I have for this blog to actually help people.

The Internet marketing to Internet marketing niche is crazy overcrowded and uber competitive anyway so I don’t have any delusions about making a ton of dough with this blog, I just want to share with you my quest to become a full time Internet entrepreneur and help you weed through the pile of IM crap out there.

I don’t consider this my entry into this crowded Internet marketing to Internet marketing niche, it really is just my sounding board for my own journey to carving out my own successful Internet business.

No BS – Hype Free Zone

I’m going to be honest and straight forward with you. I’m not going to be dropping F-bombs but my posts will be to the point so if you offend easily this might not be the blog for you to read.

I’m going to share products that I believe are good and there are a lot of good Internet marketing pros out in cyberspace but there are even more charlatans. They might make a million dollar a day but they do it on the backs of hard working people. I don’t have any patience for these people so if you see me recommend something here, I will tell you why. And guess what, I actually have purchased and used the product-Mind boggling I’m sure.

Please don’t get the impression that I’m this bitter, ticked off dude, far from it. I’m not going to waste energy in posting negative crap about Internet marketing gurus, I just won’t blog about their products here.

I want to focus on the good people and the good products. How do I plan to make money with this blog? I’ll have my affiliate links to the products I review here. If you find it useful and you buy via my link, I’ll get a commission. But don’t think for a minute that I’m going to throw all these affiliate links at you , far from it. As said before, I really don’t have any high expectations for monetizing this blog (omg, I used the good ol “monetizing” IM term already). That’s not the point of this blog. I’ve thrown this together the last minute. It will be a great medium to vent my frustrations, share my successes and failures, and all the good stuff a blog is supposed to do. Offer content that you find interesting and helpful. You might hate it but at least I’m giving it a shot to keep this an Internet marketing hype free zone.

Take a deep breath and stop the Internet marketing insanity 

I’m not a super affiliate (YET) so I’m not making any promises that you will make millions over night. I haven’t. And that’s because it’s not possible. Despite the IM guru hype you can’t expect to not put in hard work and make millions. No way. Hopefully together we can find our way to our online business goals but first we have to stop the Internet marketing insanity.