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Just a quick post for you fellow Brisbanites or anyone willing to travel to Brisbane to come to a blogging conference this Friday (I should be there).

I remember hearing about a conference to be held in Brisbane earlier this year, then it got postponed, then I thought it was cancelled.

Suddenly this morning Des Walsh from the Thinking Home Business blog sends me an email asking if I am attending the event this Friday.

Australian Blogging Conference

To be held at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Queensland on 28 September 2007

This will not be a conference in the traditional sense. It will be relatively informal. Instead of lengthy presentations, people will be invited lead discussions on various topics throughout the day – some practical, such as how to build a better blog, and some theoretical on the role, influence and future of blogs.

Click here for full details…

I was communicating with Peter Black today, one of the event organizers, and if you plan to attend, please give him a shout to let him know.

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Everyone is a procrastinator on some level. Some of us are terrible offenders, spending hours doing useless things like browsing facebook or blogs or walking up to see what is in the fridge multiple times a day, all in an effort to avoid the work we know we should be doing.

Over the past few weeks I implemented a method to help get the most from procrastination. This technique means you still procrastinate, in that you do something that is not exactly what you know you should be doing, but you still get results from your activities rather than waste time on idle tasks.

I call this efficient procrastination and here’s how it works.

Your focus needs to be on action. The whole reason I started thinking about this technique in the first place was after writing my article - Are You Drowning, Treading Water or Swimming? - which made me realize as long as the majority of daily activities moved me forward in some way, I could count that day a good one.

Once you realize that action is key, the next step is to isolate actions that lead to results of some kind for you and your business. Generally some tasks require more work than others and some you enjoy more. It’s precisely because of the tasks that you don’t enjoy, yet are critical for your business to move forward (or for you to move forward personally - like say studying for an exam), that you look for ways to procrastinate.

When you are sitting down, working on something you don’t really enjoy or you are tired of and that procrastination urge hits, it’s time to go and do something else, however that something else is still an activity that helps your big picture. You must choose a swimming forward task, not a time waster.

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Well if this isn’t the most talked about topic in the blogosphere I don’t know what is! Every blogger is raving or complaining about how good or bad BlogRush is so I thought I should do a little follow up to my original post - BlogRush - Will It Increase Your Blog Traffic? - and throw in my opinion.

First though, let me share my BlogRush stats since a few people have been asking me how I am doing.

My credit balance as at today, Friday the 21st September Australia time, which is about 5 days of running the program:

As you can see I have no shortage of credits and plenty of bloggers under me delivering more credits. Quite frankly, as long as BlogRush doesn’t go completely under, I don’t think I will run out of credits in a long time since all the bloggers in my referral downline are delivering nearly 70,000 credits to me a day, and growing. At this stage, I don’t think BlogRush can deliver enough impressions to me to even spend the credits, although I hope that changes.

If you are wondering how I managed to build such a large downline, it really wasn’t that clever, I just blogged about it as soon as I could on the weekend and was one of the first to do so (of other bloggers I only noticed Jack Humphreys and Andy Beard blogging about it before me, although I know others did, I just noticed their posts about it in Google first - Andy went on to write two more posts about BlogRush - and counting!).

However the real clincher for me was having a targeted email list of nearly 12,000 bloggers who I emailed about BlogRush. As I wrote about in - Will Blog Marketing Replace Email Marketing? - being able to send an email is still more effective at eliciting a response than RSS is because email is “in your face marketing”.

People read their email on weekends, but they might not read RSS feeds and blogs, so I had a distinct advantage in that I could tell all my loyal subscribers about BlogRush before they read about it elsewhere. Plus people tend to respond to emails better than blog posts, click through rates are higher and they are “forced” to read it since everyone watches their inbox like a hawk.

If nothing else, this should serve as a lesson to every blogger - make sure you are building a loyal email subscription base at the same time as you build your blog readership. These two assets work brilliantly together. AWeber and GetResponse are great email autoresponders if you need an email list service by the way .

Here is my referral downline:

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You know how sometimes you get that uncomfortable feel when reading marketing materials, especially long sales letters and hypey emails, and how that feeling can transfer to the marketer so you have this icky feeling about them and what they sell?

I think you know what I am talking about.

There’s one Internet marketer who I have never ever felt that way about and he’s actually the guy I first came into contact with (well his materials anyway) when I began studying Internet marketing many years ago now.

His name is Perry Marshall, and chances are you know him already, probably as the guru of Google AdWords.

I’ve been on Perry’s email list for a long time. I bought his Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - I think it was the first e-book I ever bought online. I also joined his Renaissance Club marketing print newsletter, which is the first product I ever promoted as an affiliate on this blog and still continues to pay me ongoing commissions.

Perry has a certain style and I like it. His information is honest, valuable - he tells a great story - and at least for me, I never have that “hype” taste in my month after reading his materials. In fact it is Perry’s style that I model my own email newsletters and promotions after. You can learn a lot from just mimicking how this guy plies his craft.

Simply put, Perry has my respect.

Work With The Best

If you currently have a Google AdWords campaign and/or a successful business that has cashflow, then you are in the right situation to consider Perry’s Google AdWords Intensive Coaching that Starts September 25.

This is NOT a cheap program and it’s by application only, most people reading my blog probably wouldn’t qualify. However if you are in charge of a somewhat successful online business and you want to take it to the next level and work with Perry personally, this will interest you.

Here are the details direct from Perry -

Is Google AdWords an important part of your business? Do you want to pay less for every single click and earn more from every visitor?

If so, you’re entitled to a rather bold guarantee: If you’re accepted as a team member in Perry Marshall’s 12 week “Bobsled Run” and if you complete the homework assignments, you’ll recoup your tuition by December 2007 (through AdWords cost savings and increased sales), and you will make at least $25K more next year than you would have without the course, or your money back.

Step by step, you will master:

-Google AdWords: Discover the nuances of the most powerful advertising medium since television, and walk away with complete mastery

-Google Analytics: Find out exactly what’s positively persuasive on your site, and what’s not, and plug all the holes (this is where much of the profit-making wizardry is!)

-Google Site Optimizer: Try different headlines, colors, graphics with ease - get double-digit improvements to your opt-ins and sales nearly overnight

-Email, Autoresponders and Copywriting - find out how to develop powerful bonds with customers over time, further distancing yourself from me-too competition

-Sales and Pricing Strategies for maximum profitability - in most cases it’s possible to increase your sales 30-40% and profitability by 60%, with my plan for extracting maximum profitability from every click

-Live workshop in Chicago, October 6-7: Accelerates your learning and implementation with hands-on, in-person expertise.

The course starts September 25. Find out all about it at:

perrymarshall.com/adwords/personalcoaching.htm

Yes this is an affiliate promotion but like I said, Perry is a guy I have no problem recommending to you and if I was a heavy user of AdWords right now I’d be signing up for this myself just for the chance to have Perry as a guy I can call a contact, even a friend, and get to know personally.

Anyway, that’s enough Perry’ lovin. You will know if this program is right for you and if so, please go check out the details and consider applying for a position in his program.

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Read previous articles in this series:

• Part 1: Build Your Preeminence
• Part 2: Communication Channels
• Part 3: Technology
• Part 4: Content and Pricing
• Part 5: Triggers
• Part 6: Prelaunch and Launch
• Part 7: Dealing With Attrition

The hard work is done. After a successful prelaunch and launch process your membership site is operating at full steam ahead. You watch your attrition rate, test and tweak your marketing, and continue to monitor feedback from your members so you can determine how best to meet their needs.

Depending on what you offer, whether it is education, physical product, software, news content, audios, videos, private label rights articles - anything, and whether you prepared in advance or you are creating what you provide “on the fly“, will dictate how much ongoing maintenance you have to do. Obviously no one wants to work forever, so you need to consider an exit strategy or set up an automation process so you can separate yourself from your membership site.

If your exit strategy is to sell your membership site, you will attract a larger price if your membership site is automated, so really, unless you need to sell urgently, you should be thinking about how to automate.

Systematization

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