Christmas Time Review

I trust you’ve had a great Christmas time and are preparing to get even more drunk as the celebrations continue towards New Year (I kid! In fact I rarely drink, honest )

I’m heading off on a mini vacation to finish the year, a short drive up the coast from where we are here to a beautiful beachside town with another marketer buddy and the girlfriends. Chances are I won’t be here for a couple days so I thought I’d write something.

It’s been an interesting holiday period.

As some of you know, I like to take this time of the year to do everything BUT work. I like to work pretty hard through the year and I have to FORCE myself to take this short break from the business to spend time with family and friends, reflect on the year gone by and mentally prepare for the year to come.

Not to mention partake in as many as possible activities that are as far detached from the computer and internet as can be

Anyway, some interesting things to have been happening:

I got a Happy Holidays card in the mail from Google…

Not quite a special Google wallet like John Chow, but I like to think they appreciate me… Whether it’s the money I paid them for Adwords ads or the revenue I generated for them through my Adsense clicks, (haha, it’s probably just for having a free Google account) I figure a greeting card is the least they can do for me.

Thing is though, it’s the most ridiculous card ever, not even my name printed inside, but instead the words I’m guessing something like happy holidays from Google, written in 100 languages but NOT english… interesting.

Moving on:

After purchasing a new home theater package about 6 weeks back, I’ve become quite the compulsive film critic.

The theater setup is cool… Not so crazy that you’d say it’s RIDICULOUS – like you’d probably see on John Reese’s blog or something – but it’s pretty awesome considering it’s in our bedroom for the time being! It’s 41 inch LCD, 4 surrounding Sony towers, a front speaker,  amp and subwoofer not to mention a new Sony Dvd combo and a PS3 (I actually picked up the PS3 from Singapore earlier in the year at almost half the price you’d pay here in AUS!) Crammed into the small room, it packs some severe punch

This is half of the setup while engaged in an episode of the new Singstar PS3 (I don’t mind a bit of Karaoke either!)

Anyway back to the movie critic part, I’ve really been getting into it for some reason. I’ve browsed all over the web for best movie of all time kinds of lists and I’m slowly ploughing through them one by one. I’ve recently watched:

Munich: With Eric Bana, about the killing of those Israeli athletes at the olympics in Germany in the 70′s I. Pretty cool movie, little slow in parts and didn’t really come away with any kind of message from the story but an interesting watch all the same.

Goodfellas: The 1990 classic with De Niro, Joe Peschi etc. I bought it because it was supposed to be one of the 100 greatest films of all time but I really didn’t feel the same way… Some great old school gangster violence but a jumpy plot, and was more just a random group of gangsta tales than a start to finish story but also not bad.

Hot Fuzz: lol did any of you see this? The most stupid, yet for some reason entertaining action/comedy I’ve seen; the highlight being a bunch of random old people tearing a town apart with viciously heavy artillery – weird yet strangely watchable.

The Departed: Matt Damon, Leo Dicaprio, Jack Nicholson. Apparently the best movie of 2006 and I must say, if you haven’t seen it yet, DO SO asap! All round the best film I’ve seen in a while. Gangster action movie, real edge of your seat drama and an ending that makes your head spin. Scorcese at his best!

Why have I chosen to post my dodgy film reviews on my internet marketing blog? I don’t know! I told you it’s become a compulsion! If you’ve seen any good movies lately, let me know what they are.

What else?

Oh yeah, I also received a mystery package in the mail just before christmas – a big box, brought to the door by a local delivery company, not FedEx or anything, so I was quite suspicious…

It was strange because I hadn’t ordered anything that big and I’d no idea who would have sent it.

I kid you not, I opened the package with caution thinking that it could be some harmful object sent by someone who didn’t get their download link for one of my reports or something!

Turns out it was a christmas gift from one of my customers! A nice couple I’d met with earlier in the year for a chat and some help getting their online business started. I was going to take a picture of the nice package and embarrass them because I know they’ll be reading but it’s now been massacred and is unrecognizable (ie, it contained chocolate)

I was so touched – reminded me of that same ol’ fact – we’re often so isolated in this business, sitting on one side of the world while our customer orders from their computer screen on the other side – but behind it all there are REAL people – real people who send real christmas presents! (which reminds me – if you’ve bought something of mine this year and you didn’t send me a christmas gift… maybe you should pick up your act huh? )

Last interesting thing that happened is that I sent out affiliate payments today…

Not that interesting, I do it every month.

But I noticed that my top affiliates for the two products Article Speed Writing and Niche Marketing on Crack earned the same this month as they did more than 6 months ago – even I was surprised.

I’m convinced that the nature of both of these products and the (forgive me for bragging) strong sales copy ensures these products keep selling month after month. I also bring these two up because I’ll be updating the two reports to ensure they are current for the new year. If you’re a customer of mine you’ll receive notification of this shortly into the new year.

Anyway, if you have a related blog or list and are looking for something good to promote, it might pay to check them out

Before this blog post drags on any longer, I wish you a safe and prosperous new year. See you soon!