The Open Source Marketer

Tonight I’m in San Antonio Texas for a few days of fun and sun with the family at Sea World. It’s about a five hour trip from where I live so I had some time on the road to listen to audio books and think. I took in about four chapters of The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and I can tell you it’s worth the read, or download and listen in my case.

Tim often refers to people in his book as the New Rich. These are the people who have learned to maximize their time while minimizing their work hours to get the most benefit from their efforts. The point is to live your life without engaging in “soul crushing activities” for the sake of “being a hard worker”.

This got me to thinking about ways to reduce some of the less value added takes I perform. For example, when I upload videos to sharing sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, Blip.Tv, or Vimeo I usually upload them one at a time. But a better way would be to upload a video once and have it upload to multiple video sharing sites without any extra effort on my part. In fact, I could probably get an assistant to do the task for me.

The site I have my eye on for automating video upload processes is Hey!Spread.com. They offer an inexpensive service for uploading videos to multiple sharing sites and they have an application programming interface (API) that I can use to hook mulitple sites and software to the service. That means I could automate some of my video distribution tasks and possible create tools and services that others would be willing to pay for.

If you haven’t heard of them or haven’t been to their updated site recently, then give them a visit and see what they have to offer. They really have an impressive list of supported video sharing sites and they are adding services regularly.

Now, off to bed for me. Sea World awaits!

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

How many times do you bookmark websites and then forget to submit them to StumbleUpon? I know I forget all the time. So, I have a big list of Del.icio.us bookmarks, but my StumbleUpon profile suffers from lack of love. But all that changes today thanks to the urber geekls over at GreaseMonkey.

If you haven’t heard, Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. There are hundreds of scripts available for free. And if you like to tinker, you can also write your own. These scripts are fantastic and they can easily add days back into your life by making you more productive online.

My most recent discovery is the Greasemonkey script, Delicious Stumbles. The script adds a link to your del.icio.us page that helps you submit links on the page to StumbleUpon.

The great part is it takes what you’ve already written as Del.icio.us comments and it submits them to StumbleUpon. It does the same thing with your tags. So all you have to do is click the link, verify the info, and then submit the link to StumbleUpon. I’m telling you, the thing is genius. You can hammer out a few past bookmarks in seconds and keep your StumbleUpon profile well nourished.

Productivity is an important topic for me because I am easily distracted and I already have a lot that needs to get done. So anything that speeds my work and keeps me on task is worth it’s weight in gold. Greasemonkey is free, and the time these scripts will save you is almost like getting paid to do what you have to do anyway.

What’s your favorite productivity tool or Greasemonkey script?

Monkeying around,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Have you ever considered running an offline business? If you have, then you’ve probably been overwhelmed at some point with a list of things that you need to consider like legal, accounting, advertising, marketing, production, employee training, payroll, client relations, and the list goes on and on.

To avoid this list, you may have turned your attention to doing business online where the promise of a new way of doing business is continually promoted. The only problem is, at some point, you’ve found yourself applying an offline business mentality to online business ideals.

Why is it that when we think of running an online business we continue to try and apply the same mental process to a new methodology?

Maybe you decided to get involved with online business because you saw all those commercials in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s that portrayed the Internet as a place where all the old rules didn’t apply. But as soon as you got online you naturally started applying all the old ways of thinking to your online activities.

The problem is, we haven’t retrained our brains to leverage the new and let go of the old.

In 1998 my wife and I were going back to college as “non-traditional” students. Basically that means we were actually studying instead of going to the campus parties. And during that time she and I listened to an audio version of Robert Kiyosaki’s, “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” We absolutely loved the material and for a time I believe we actually understood a portion of what he was trying to teach everyone in that book.

But, when the time came to graduate college and go back into the work force neither of us applied what we had learned to the way we thought about our jobs. We continued to do what we knew was not going to relieve us of a 9 to 5 job.

That is what happens with most everyone who goes online to make their fortune. They think they understand the vision, but when it comes time for execution, for whatever reason, they miss the mark.

Do you feel like your missing the mark?

To drive home what I am talking about, and to give you an idea of how you can avoid it, I am posting this 90 minute video by Rich Schefren on the “Internet Business Process.” In the video, Rich lays out the reason people don’t make the money they want online and how they can change their thinking to begin earning what they have only been dreaming about. It is an eye opener for certain.

Rich recently released part 2 of his Attention Age Doctrine Report where he talks about the importance of understanding the value of people’s attention and how to get the right kind of attention in a market place that is tired of being sold too. If you haven’t read the report then I recommend you download it now, print it off, and read everything he has to say on the subject.

Keep in mind that the concept of an “Attention Economy” is not a new idea. In fact, Thomas Davenport wrote about it back in 2002 in his book, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.

Once you combine what Rich says in his 93 page report with this video you will have a crystal clear vision of what it is that you need to do to be a success in your online business. Everything else you may have read up to this point is technique and technical knowledge. What Rich is talking about is fundamental stuff that goes deep.

Personally I am still able to identify with the concepts in both the written report and the video. Hopefully you will too. In fact, I would love to hear what you have to say about both of these items. So, be sure to leave a comment on this post and let me hear your feedback. Or if you prefer a more private means of communication, then you can contact me using the OpenSourceMarketer Contact Form on this blog.

Be honest with yourself and see if what he is saying frightens you or excites you.

Assessing reality,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Blog comments are extremely important to the health of a successful blog. But responding to comments in a blog tool like WordPress can be time consuming and awkward. Today we’re going to talk about a WordPress plug-in that can make replying to comments painless.

Successful bloggers know that blogs are fueled by content. In fact, it’s been said many times that it’s important for the blogger to produce content on a daily basis. Publishing articles and short posts on a regular basis is what brings in new visitors and what keeps veteran readers coming back. But, did you know that comments are just as important as the content that bloggers create.

You see comments are free content that the blogger doesn’t have to produce. Comments create a sense of community and encourage reader participation. Comments are an active expression of the reader’s opinion that can add a unique voice to a blog beyond what even the blogger envisioned. Smart bloggers know that in order to increase their content, they must encourage and nurture comments from their readers. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we’re going to talk about Phrase Express and how this simple application can save you time and money by assigning common repetitive tasks to simple key strokes.

Phrase Express does this with the use of macros. Macros can be used for simple tasks like pasting in blocks of text, opening windows applications, and opening websites in a browser.

So, let’s dig in and look at a practical example.

Let’s say you have multiple email signatures. Certainly you don’t want to type each signature every time you send out an email. This alone would cost you in hours of lost time each day.

With Phrase Express you can assign your email signatures to macros and each time you enter a predefined set of characters, you’re corresponding email signature will appear.

Or another example is that you frequently visit websites to check stats, administer websites, get affiliate codes, etcetera. With Phrase Express you can assign a macro to each website that will open a browser, enter the website address, and navigate you to the website, all with a few simple key strokes.

Phrase Express has many features that let you customize the application to fit your usage and learning style. It has convenient pop up menus that you can use to quickly access predefined macros without the need to remember the auto-text you assigned.

Phrase Express is a simple to use and simple to own application. With a reasonable price tag of only $20 U S, phrase express is a must have for anyone who uses a computer. As an Internet Marketer, this application is invaluable to me and my business.