I first discovered Easy Marketing Newsletters about six months ago, in December 2008. I thought it looked interesting, although I found the sales page to be a little “not-my-kind-of-sales-page”. I am not sure why, I just didn’t like it. But I kept reading, and I searched Google for some reviews, and I looked at a few discussion forums for opinions. I discovered that the guy behind Easy Marketing Newsletters was Ryan Even, a well-known marketer with a great reputation.

I decided to test it.

As I am writing this review, I have been a member for more than five months, and I can’t say enough good things about this membership. But I’ll try to explain what it’s all about.

This membership is for people who’d like to publish their own Internet marketing newsletter, and especially people with not much time to do it. Usually, if you are going to launch a successful newsletter, no matter what niche you’d be writing about, you need to do a lot of research and writing.

Marketing Articles

With Easy Marketing Newsletters, close to everything is done for you. You get five fairly long articles every month. You can publish the articles directly to your newsletter without doing any editing at all, you can publish them with ads or without ads – the ads are related to the topic of each article.  If you publish them with ads, all you have to do is add your clickbank id to the link at the bottom of each article.

So, you get the five marketing articles each month, but what else?

Audio

You also get one audio Internet marketing tip each month. You can copy and paste this link directly to your newsletter, or you can download it and host it yourself. It’s one topic each month.

Video

Each month, you also get a series of videos. You can either publish them directly to your newsletter, or you can edit them (usually they come with PLR-rights) or you can sell them.

Niche PLR articles

You also get access to many new niche PLR articles every single month. The topics varies from health, sport, recreation, food and education (and many many more). You can do as you wish with these articles, because they come with unrestricted Private Lable Rights.

Products you can sell or use yourself

Every month you’ll get three fairly new high quality products that you can either sell (include them in your newsletter) or just use them yourself. They come with Master Resale Rights, so you’ll be earning 100% commission on each product. As I am writing this, the three products for May 2009 are: Quality PPC for Beginners (video-series), EZ eBook Template Package V9 and Operation Affiliate Cash. 

Is it worth it?

The monthly cost for Easy Marketing Newsletters is $29.95. I believe that this is cheap, it’s easy to understand this just by looking at all the content you’ll get. It’s fairly easy to earn way more money than the monthly membership price by selling a few of the products you get access to, or by publishing a few affiliate links to the ads related to the articles.

I was inspired by reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, and since then, I’ve been looking for a task management software for Mac. My life has been fairly chaotic, especially at work. I think that I have had (and still have) too many tasks, and I don’t have any system regarding how to manage them or how I should be prioritizing them. The book by David Allen opened my eyes and my mind to this challenge, and I realized that I had to buy a task management software to help me get things done.

I tested a few first, and Things from Cultured Code, was the one that really got my attention. It was due to some of the reviews I read, the video I watched on their sales page, but also due to the fact that Things was also available for iPhone.

Features

Things got everything I was looking for in a task management software, and then some. I especially like the quick entry, where I can add tasks very quickly, even though I am using a completely different software. Once I get something on my mind, I like to get it off my mind as quickly as possible, and that’s when I add them to Things.

Things makes it easy to add tasks, and it makes it easy to manage them. I think it’s because of how easy it is to view all the tasks, either by viewing the inbox (unsorted tasks), viewing the tasks sorted on a time frame (today, next, someday or scheduled), or by viewing them based on projects or areas of responsibility.

To me, the features of Things when it comes to task management is perfect.

Syncing

With Things on my Mac and on my iPhone, I am able to sync and always stay updated. I use my iPhone to add most of my tasks, because I don’t spend that much time using a computer anymore. It seems like I am always on the run, at least when I compare my schedule now to my schedule about a year ago.

I sync using my WiFi network at home, it took me about two minutes to figure out how. And it works great, all I have to do now, is open up Things on both my iPhone and on my iMac at the same time, and the software syncs right away.

The sync feature is not perfect though. I tried the same at work, but nothing happened. I have been trying to figure out the problem for several days, but so far, I have no clue why it doesn’t sync with my Mac at work. I think it has to do with the WiFi network at work, I’ve had some other minor problems with this network earlier (so, I guess I shouldn’t blame Things for this).

Mobile Me

I really think that Things is an amazing piece of software. I am using it several times a day, and so far it seems to be flawless (except for the part about syncing at work). The only thing I can think of, that needs to be added, is support for mobile me. Because to me, syncing within my local WiFi is not enough.

iDisk

Even though I couldn’t get Things to sync at work using our WiFi, I managed to sync it using iDisk. What I did was copy the library of Things to the local version of iDisk. The iDisk folder syncs automatic with Mobile Me, and when I share the Things library at work and at my computer at home it turns out exactly the way I was hoping for.

Price

I first thought that it was fairly expensive, with $49.95 for Mac and $9.99 for the iPhone . But after downloading and using the free trial for several days, I decided that it was worth every dollar.

Alternatives to Things

I have tested several other task management softwares, but I have only found one very interesting alternative to Things when it comes to task management software for Mac. This alternative is OmniFocus. I am not going to say that Things is better, because I believe that both seems to be excellent. I decided to buy Things, but I know other people that decided to buy OmniFocus… and they are just as satisfied with their software as I am with mine.

I just have to start by saying that I didn’t know what to expect from Commission Blueprint. I had never heard of any of the creators, both Steven Clayton & Tim Godfrey was totally unknown to me. And the product was also fairly unknown to me, although I’d heard a few raves about it at some discussion forums.

When I decided to buy it, I was thinking that I’d be using the 60 days money back guarantee, if the product was not worth the money.

Now, let me tell you why I think that Commission Blueprint might be one of the best products I have ever bought. I’m not kidding, this product is very powerful, although you need to understand what it’s all about first, before you understand the real power of the product.

It’s really all about Pay Per Click (ppc) advertising. Commission Blueprint is an extensive Internet marketing course, and I believe that it will tell you everything you need to know about ppc advertising. They have included “all” the hidden features, “all” the loopholes and every secret you can imagine when it comes to ppc marketing.

I was really impressed by this course, and especially since everything was documented using high quality videos. And, not only did they teach me a lot about pay per click advertising, but they provided some excellent resources, such as ready made opt-in page (just re-write the text, add your own image, and add your autoresponder code) and a pre-sale page.

There are a lot of information, both through all the videos, but also provided via several pdf-reports, like optin-page secrets and pre-sale page secrets.

I have heard several people talk about Commission Blueprint as an affiliate course, and that it’s really about how to make money by combining products from clickbank with Google AdWords (ppc advertising).

Well, I guess you can say that it’s a lot about ClickBank and AdWords. And that’s because the 14 videos that I watched was narrated by Steven Clayton, and he described in details how he has become a super affiliate at ClickBank, and how he did it by using AdWords. I am not sure if it’s possible to do a better job of describing how he became successful, he goes into specific details about how to be setting up your marketing campaign, and provides really valuable information on how to be selling “anything” online through pay per click campaigns.

When I bought Commission Blueprint, I had to pay a one time fee of $77, and I received access to the 14 videos (you’ll also get the slides for each of the 14 videos), three pdf ebooks (optin page secrets, presale page secrets, and review page secrets), and several other resources (like the templates of optin pages and presale pages). Now, Commission Blueprint has turned into a membership coursem, and I think that’s a really smart move.

You’ll get access to everything I received, but you’ll also get updates each month. The price for the membership is $4.95 for the first seven days, think of it as a seven day trial. If you don’t find the information valuable, then just quit (you have 60 days money back guarantee as well). After the seven days, the membership price is $67 a month.

I really don’t have anything negative to say about the course, other than there might be too much information, and some of it might be a waste of your time. But, on the other hand, they have covered everything I could think of when it comes to pay per click marketing, and especially when you combine it with earning money from selling products from ClickBank.

Update: Commission Blueprint version 2.0 has been launched. I haven’t tested it, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a lot more impressive than version 1.0.

I have just finished reading The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian. To me, a completely unknown book, by a completely unknown author. To my surprise, it was completely awesome.

I have to admit, I could see myself as the author. If I would write a novel, it would probably be a lot like this one. I could also see myself as Josh, the seventeen year old boy that created this hugely popular website about consumerism and waste. I was just as shy and felt the world as a really awkward place when I was seventeen.

The website is run by Larry, Josh’s Internet alter-ego. Nobody knows the identity of Larry, but soon, the “whole world” is chasing him… almost true paparazzi style.

At first, I thought this book would be all about fun and entertainment. How Josh could hide behind Larry, and how the world would go nuts over his cool website (even Bono did go nuts), and how Josh finally got Beth, the girl he had been in love with for years. But the book was a lot different, it had some moral dimensions.

Josh set out to make the world a better place, but ended up being trapped instead. Larry started out as a cool alter-ego, but ended up as a character that everyone was trying to figure out the identity of. For a second, I almost wrote the ending… but I won’t.

I urge you to read The Gospel According To Larry, it was different, and a whole lot more entertaining and inspiring than most of the books I’ve read.

I have read a lot of books, but Scar Tissue really stands out. It’s the story of Anthony Kiedis, the lead vocalist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It’s a fascinating and very inspiring journey, through drug use and struggle.

Inspiration is the keyword.

Anthony Kiedis is one of the most famous lead vocalists in the world, and Red Hot Chili Peppers is sort of like The Beatles of this decade when it comes to popularity.

I decided to read the book because Red Hot Chili Peppers has been one of my favorite bands the past 20 years. I wanted to understand the story; how they got started, why they changed their music, their breakthrough, and how they are living their lives.

I was in for a ride, as close to a rollercoster ride as possible when it comes to autobiographies. The Red Hot Chili Peppers was launched by coincidence, Anthony Kiedis was not a singer, he was more of an announcer on the concerts for his friends. He was doing drugs and hanging around on the clubs, when they started jamming together just for fun. He had always had a way with words though, and writing his own materials and having a performance packed with energy really helped. They decided to try it.

They launched the band in 1983, and since then, it’s been a story of a lot of drug use. Their original guitarist, Hillel Slovak, died of an heroin overdose in 1988. Since then, Anthony Kiedis and Michael Peter Balzary (aka Flea) are the only original members still in the band. It’s been a very interesting journey from the start in 1983.

The reason I say it’s inspiring, is due to the fact that they have had a lot of problems, probably a lot more than other rock bands. They never gave up, even when it looked like they had no chance to recover as a band. Anthony Kiedis have been close to dying on several occations, most due to his drug use, but I think that the strong friendship and bonding between Anthony Kiedis and Flea is what really saved the band and made it such a huge success.

Obviously you have to be creative and highly competent in order to have success, but the story of Anthony Kiedis and the Red Hot Chili Peppers also shows that you’d need to hang in there, no matter how hard it may seem. Never give up, and only then, you’ll discover the true meaning of success.