I’ve been a member of Dan Raine’s Immediate Edge program since September 2007 and learned some amazing stuff about internet marketing.

It probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea because techniques are researched by their labs and presented as conclusions are drawn, which is a long way from the 30 Day Challenge from where many people looking to join will be coming.

Ed Dale created the 30 Day Challenge Plus as an entry level into the more advanced stuff, but still people have found it difficult to cope with the Edge.

That’s where the Edge Blueprint comes in

Designed to take internet marketers with some experience and some results, the Edge Blueprint aims to walk you through the entire process to earning enough money to quit your day job.

The good news is you can try it out for free by joining up now for the first few lessons, including a webinar on Saturday. If that sounds like your thing then go to the Edge Blueprint now.

Click here to find more about the EDGE BLUEPRINT

Getting things done – the problem with working at home

If you work at home like I do then you’ll know that how hard it can be sometimes geting anything done and that is compounded by the distractions available in this online world. Your good intentions can be completely sabotaged by taking a “quick” look at this website, clicking through to that website and by the time you know it it’s nearly lunchtime and so not worth starting anything just yet anyway.

This has been a MASSIVE problem for me in the past, but thanks to the easy availability of outsourcing anything I know isn’t going to get done I pay for; however, there are always things I need to do.

So how do we get the things we know we need to do done and avoid the distractions? Turn off Twitter; close down your email client; stop chatting of Skype.

That gets you so far, it’s true. But what about those tasks you are resistant to? The ones you don’t want to start, but experience tells you once started you will be able to get done? The ones you’ve tried to start but just sit staring at your monitor, knowing that there are plenty of hours in the day and it’ll get done later. Or tomorrow. Or whenever.

Let me tell you a little story

We spend every August on the coast with limited internet access (although that has got much better thanks to Vodafone). In fact I spend 5 or 6 weeks away from home during this period; which coincides with one of my really busy periods.

Luckily there isn’t too much to do in terms of customer service – last summer I took to answering my few customer service emails on the beach – but I do need to keep an eye open. Also, last summer I made the mistake of doing some SEO work for a client over this period. While the strategy was already in place and most of the work was outsourced, I did have to do a few things.

So, once every few days I would have a concentrated session on a laptop. And I was surprised to find out how much I could do in an hour as long as I was 100% focused.

I realised it was because of the time pressure – I wanted to do holiday stuff, not work, so I did it as fast as possible.

When I got back to Barcelona I started to plan my day to create artificial time pressure:

• Immediately start work for 2 hours on a long term client job and one of my long term projects.
• Once that was over do email.
• Go to the gym or swim for 2 hours.
• Work on a project for 90 minutes before lunch (15 mins)
• Unstructured time to catch up on internet marketing, secondary projects, play time, and experiment.

That means that before lunch I’d done 3 1/2 hours of solid work. It may not seem like much, but it was a huge leap in productivity.

And so I was interested to hear Ed Dale talk about the pomodoro technique to aid productivity and get things done.

The first time I tried it was Saturday night in Manchester. Back at my hotel I had a couple of hours to relax, get changed and have dinner, before meeting up for drinks with Dan Raine and the gang; and there was something I needed to get done that weekend if possible.

The task was quite simple; I’d written some stuff a few years ago for another (non IM) website. The website owners now publish a magazine and wanted to rework some of that content and so pulled out relevant bits from 3 or 4 articles I’d written for them; all I had to do was make sure the content worked in its new context and write some filler and bridging content.

I’d looked at doing up while on the train from London to Manchester – I just couldn’t face it. It’s not a big job, but the kind of job I like to put off.

Anyway, I was at my hotel and decided I’d never get it done in the time available. And then I remembered the pomodoro technique that Ed had mentioned (”Pomodoro” is Italian for tomato – Google it if you want to know why).

It’s pretty simple; set a timer for 25 minutes and work without distraction until the timer goes. When it does, stop what you’re doing, take a 5 minute break, then re-set the timer and work again.

The secret sauce

In almost exactly 25 minutes I had the job done and emailed – by creating time pressure I was able to get the job done. So simple. The secret sauce to productivity is… tomato sauce (BOOM BOOM)!

And now I’m back in Barcelona I work in chunks of 25 minutes – this blog post is now four minutes into its second 25 minute pomodoro session. It seems simple, but it is highly effective, so I’m definitely going to use it to boost productivity and move my game up to the next level.

Which is just as well because I’ve got so many ideas from the Coming Home seminar – and some great contacts – that I really need to be able to get more done.

And what about the Coming Home seminar?

OK, so in how many ways was the conference worth €500?

• Learning about the pomodoro technique was worth €500 alone!
• I got drunk with Dan Raine. Seriously, how cool is that? And I’ve got the photos, so I’m expecting lifetime free membership of Immediate Edge ***
• Like Lisa Hartwell I hadn’t realised how tough it can be working online, and got a €500 boost. Sometimes you just carry on doing what you’re doing with nobody around who really knows what you do (my other half does, pretty much, although she’s never actually done it and I’ve seen her out-talk an SEOer at SEO!!! – but talking it isn’t the same as doing it).
• The quality of the people I met was unbelievable. I’m not too much into networking events because  I get a stack of cards that I never bother following up with, but I’ve got some great contacts with people who seem to be just as keyed up about getting stuff done AND I think I can work with AND have complimentary skills to my own – now that sounds like a team!
• Direct access to Ed Dale, Dan Raine et al – how much value do you think there is in spending time with them and really grilling them with questions? The kind of questions you would never see in an IM forum, let alone get a sensible answer…
• And I almost forgot – the seminar content was great. I even learned a load about Market Samurai, which I thought I knew inside out (and it was great talking to Eugene Ware on Saturday night). And if you attended the conference and weren’t already using it Eugene said in his first presentation that you just needed to go and talk to him and he’d set up a a free licence for you. What a pitch that was ****

Now, I know I am pretty much an Ed Dale and Immediate Edge evangelist. I know that what I say is biassed. I freely admit to being an Immediate Edge affiliate. And you can bash me for that if you like.

But, am I doing anything unethical or illegal?

NO

Am I ashamed of doing what I do?

NO – I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.

Am I a scammer?

NOPE – I deliver what I say I will and I have thousands of happy customers.

Is Immediate Edge suitable for IM beginners

ABSOLUTELY NOT. And while we’re at it steer away from 30 Day Challenge Plus unless you’ve gone through the entire FREE course first.

If I write an ebook about my cat do you think I’ll be able to make a fortune and kiss my job goodbye?

Actually, I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it. Find something people actually DO want to buy – that’s the key to success.

Can Ed Dale and/or Dan Raine – or any member of their team – walk on water?

You know – that’s a good question. I never thought to ask/force them at gunpoint to try it even though we were in a bar right next to the canal. HOW DUMB AM I? *****

Disclaimer – lame joke alert!

Sometime people don’t get my humour, which has had massive (but unintended) consequences for at least one big internet marketing launch, so I’d better spell it out despite the fact there is no launch that I know of. Well, maybe Xmas – now who thought that one up??? – and I’m pretty sure I can’t derail that

* Not as far as I know. But he might be.

** I know next to nothing about NLP. So there.

*** Joke about the free membership – he did get seriously drunk though.

**** A FREE pitch. Wow that’s what I can tough marketing.

***** You knew I was kidding. Right?

However – I am working on a project that came right out of the seminar, which I want to test in practice and then make available for a few dollars. If you attended the seminar then I’m let you have it for free and I’ll run it past a few eyeballs to make sure it makes sense before releasing it.

What is it?

Think flippa

However, for most of us it isn’t that simple and even with apparently simple step by step guides, there is always something missing that can’t be written down – it’s called experience.

So, it doesn’t matter how many courses you sign up to, newsletters you read, or SEO forums you participate in – most of which are a waste of time IMHO anyway – there is no substitute to actually rolling up your sleeves and taking action.

By acting on those internert marketing courses you are doing you are getting real experience – even if you find out what doesn’t work.

But where do you begin? Who is right?

Probably as good a place to start is with the 30 Day Challenge. And there are some great reasons for taking part:

• It’s free
• It takes you through the process step by step
• There are loads of people doing it, so plenty of opportunity to get advice
• You gain experience
• If you’re successful you make your first $10 online

But what else?

• Download Affiliate Masters Course – it’s free and a good introduction to affiliate marketing.
• Learn about linkbuilding from James Martell’s Backlinks Workshop. He talks a bit too much, but the PAD method does work.
• Listen to Internet Marketing This week. Some great info in a free podcast, although it is slightly irregular.
• Sign up for Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge Plus. It isn’t free, but he knows his stuff.
• Sign up for Immediate Edge. It also includes 30 Day Challenge Plus, it is for advanced internet marketers with a price to match, although I would also say that I haven’t seen much useful info from the Edge for a while and may cancel unless they start delivering useful content but it does also have an automatic social bookmarking tool that is very useful.
• Outsource your directory submissions with Directory Maximizer – a great cheap service from India.
• And while you’re at it do the same for your social bookmarking with Social Maximizer.
• Outsource your content with Need An Article. Sometimes the quality isn’t so good, but often it is excellent. And it’s a bit over $5 per article.

There are probably some others I’ve missed, but that’ll do for the moment.

However, remember what I said at the beginning – the most important thing is to take action – if you’re not going to do anything it is a waste of your own time and money if you sign up for any of those, even if they are free. And once you’ve started taking action, keep on at it, outsource the bits you are weak at or hate doing, a bit each and every day until you see some kind of result.

So don’t buy an internet marketing course ever again unless you’re prepared to do some work.

One thing I have done since the summer though is to go through John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 and Stompernet’s Stomping The Search Engines 2.0. As a reminder, TS 2.0 cost $500, caused me a few problems and had lousy customer service, STSE 2.0 cost $10 or $20 postage when I subscribed to The Net Effect, Stompernet’s new magazine, so while there is no contest in terms of price it is interesting to compare them side by side.

Traffic Secrets 2.0

I must admit I was expecting big things from John Reese, as I’ve benefited from some of his pearls of wisdom in the past dispensed in interviews etc, but TS 2.0 didn’t do it for me. There is far too much filler and quite frankly I couldn’t concentrate on the videos for long because of that. The content was added to the website in MP3 format, which at least allowed me to listen at the gym, but still, it is all too vague and lacking the killer content I was expecting to find although maybe I’m not who it’s aimed at, so perhaps there are people who have genuinely benefited.

I also got a couple of DVDs from Frank Kern with Traffic Secrets 2.0, which are quite something. If you’ve come across Frank in the past you’ll pretty much know what to expect, but he really holds your attention and has a completely off the wall sense of humour.

Stomping The Search Engines 2.0

I’ve had issues with Stompernet in the past and for me they come across as being far too corporate for their own good, but I thought I’d check out STSE 2.0 anyway – for that price I’d have been stupid to miss it. I had listened to the original course, so had an idea of what to expect. The course is far more compact that TS 2.0, and better for it IMHO.

Among other things it really gets down to the nitty gritty of keyword research, on page factors, off page factors and a very strong section on link building by Dan Thies. I’ll also say that I had no problem with the order process and delivery of The Net Effect and STSE 2.0, although there are many people who have had issues and are really fed up with Stompernet for it – one of my big complaints previously.

Why is good customer service so elusive?

It seems to be a common problem for internet marketing companies to have extremely poor customer service, and I don’t know if it’s genuinely because they are taken by surprise by the number of orders they receive, poor planning, scalability issues, they’re let down by delivery fulfillers or they just don’t care, but one essential piece of the marketing jigsaw is customer service – get this wrong and it can crucify you.

And I’m amazed that it isn’t talked about more, until just recently I came across Lynn Terry through Internet Marketing This Week, also with Ed Dale, Paul Colligan and Michelle Macpherson. Lynn’s big bugbear seems to be lack support for both customers and affiliates, the latter of which resonates with me as I have been unable to sort out an issue with the Immediate Edge affiliate program that I first raised in September. To be frank, that is pissing me off and I really hope that it is sorted soon and while I value my membership of Immediate Edge, I certainly won’t continue to promote it, let alone push it more.

If you like it then you can continue with the full price after that – BUT get in early to ensure you lock into the current price ($97/month) as they are considering increasing the price to $147. And if you’re not impressed by what you find there you can cancel your trial – simple.

Immediate Edge is about to kick off in a new direction, cunningly titled Immediate Edge 2.0 (wonder which genius though that?). It looks like the addition of a new project manager on board is going to really ramp up the learning, plus you get access to software and other resources for free inside the Edge.

Try it out now – visit the Immediate Edge website.

As usual they have some well produced videos, but my experience with them is that they don’t really deliver on all their promises and are far too corporate. If you do want to join then go join through Ed Dale’s link as you get Immediate Edge membership and some other cool stuff thrown in too.

And if you are an absolute beginner to internet marketing then neither of these is for you – join the Thirty Day Challenge, which is FREE.

One of the tools mentioned – in fact the only tool so far – is Microsoft’s Commercial Intent tool, which has yielded some surprising tools for one of my niches.

In fact, I’m going to see what happens if I use it to screen keywords in the Thirty Day Challenge/Immediate Edge niche research stage, as it may help identify really strong keywords that are off the radar at the moment.

Anyway, go and watch the video, if you’re doing PPC then you won’t regret it.

This weekend Dan Raine and Ed Dale have announced some amazing new tools for members of the 30 Day Challenge, which I would urge you to join if you are remotely interested in online marketing – and it’s completely FREE. The tools, which have been a few months coming, are designed to cut out the tedium of social bookmarking by doing it all for you automatically and will save a ton of time.

At the same time they made an enhanced version available to members of Immediate Edge and another great reason to join.

All in all 2008 is a great time to be an internet marketer – I’ll see you inside the 30 Day Challenge or Immediate Edge.