Stuff I’ve Been Reading, Watching, and Listening to Lately

I’m currently working on a hardcore, start to finish podcasting tutorial! I’ve already put in over 15 hours of work into writing and recording this tutorial, but I have much more to do so it’s going to take a while before it’s published. You can, however, watch the first video in the series of videos I’m shooting by clicking here, if you’re interested. ?

As a result of dedicating my time to this tutorial, I didn’t have time to write a “normal” blog post, but that’s okay because I have a lot of cool and interesting resources to share with you in the meantime.

Here’s what I’ve been reading, watching and listening to lately.

Google EMD Algo Update – Early Data (by SEOMoz)—As many of you probably know, Google recently updated their search algorithm, once again, to target lower quality Exact Match Domain websites. A lot of you have been asking how my sites have faired. I actually don’t have too many EMD sites—most are scrap sites that were created for tutorials or demonstration purposes, and rightly so – they were hit by this update. The ones that I am actually keeping up with, however, were not hit. My “almost EMD” sites like SmartPassiveIncome.com and SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com were not hit either, and in fact my security site jumped quite a bit in rankings for many secondary target keywords—probably as a result of other EMD sites that were ranking highly before getting pushed aside due to the update. (See screenshot)

The algo update by SEOMoz gives us some early data from a pool of websites about what was effected, and was was not. Clearly, there are mixed signals, so we’ll probably have to wait a bit longer before we know exactly what’s going on. Such is Google.

Please Don’t Kill Feedburner – In other (Google) news, you may have heard rumors that Feedburner, the widely used RSS subscription server, is dying. It does seem like that’s the case since Google didn’t renew Feedburner’s Japanese domain, they stepped away from their Twitter account and got rid of Adsense for Feeds. If Feedburner died, it would definitely make a lot of people upset—both bloggers and podcasters who use the service. This page I linked to about explains more about the situation, hoping for someone on Google’s end to respond, which I know from my experience is highly unlikely, but we’ll see.

Here’s another recent article by Cliff Ravenscraft about Feedburner too.

Why I Love the FitBit Ultra – Speaking of Cliff Ravenscraft (two time guest on the SPI Podcast and dear friend of mine), I have to thank him for introducing me to a sweet little device called FitBit. It’s a small little electronic pedometer that you attach to your belt or just stick in your pocket and it keeps track of how many steps you’ve taken during the day, calories burned, and miles traveled, among other things. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

The best part about the FitBit is that it wirelessly updates your stats online so you can keep track and compete against friends. Since using this for the past 4 days, I’ve been addicted to upping my step count to out-step other people who I know use this device. You may recognize some of these names:

(That’s Cliff leading the pack right now, followed by Mark Mason from Masonworld.com, Erik from the Beyond the To Do List Podcast, and Mike Stelzner from Social Media Examiner. I’m on my way though…I haven’t had mine for a full 7-days yet.)

The FitBit is an amazing way to motivate myself to make sure I get out there and exercise during the day, and for a work-at-home dad with a two-year old and a newborn in the house, this is exactly what I need right now.

You’re welcome to join in on the fun – if you’re up to the challenge!

Dumb Pricing Mistakes (by Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com – Derek has been stepping up his game recently with a set of well-produced, very educational and entertaining videos on his blog. This one in particular, about pricing strategies, is fantastic and I know from experience that pricing products and services can be very scary and confusing. Derek sheds some light on some of the biggest mistakes people make when pricing things, so don’t miss this one.

Samsung Shows Complete Marketing Genius and Ignorance with Attack of iPhone5 (by Marcus Sheridan from TheSalesLion.com) – I own an iPhone 5 myself but was very impressed with Samsung’s recent television commercials, the one’s mocking people who stand in line waiting for a new Apple product. Marcus Sheridan dissects what Samsung did right, but also what they fell short on with their marketing campaign, which is a shame. Definitely a must read, and please subscribe to Marcus’ stuff—it’s awesome!

Affiliate Sales for SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com – I found a company that was doing online training for security guards (only in California). They had no affiliate program but I worked with them to get one up and running, and now I’m making sales! They had developers take care of setting up the affiliate program on their end through an existing aMember setup for their training courses. It looks like this could be a good stream of income for SGTHQ! Now only if all 50 states had or allowed online training. Not all do, but I’m currently finding similar options around the U.S.

The Talk to the Top – The Talk to the Top is an online event put on by The Rise to the Top host, David Garland. I was interviewed for his show a year ago here and at the end of this month I will join an amazing speaker list that includes Andrew Warner, Derek Halpern, Corbett Barr, Amy Porterfield, Lewis Howes and more! If you’re going to this online event, you can use the coupon code patrocks to get 50% off your ticket, which you enter on the checkout page. I so look forward to this!

Social Media Marketing World in San Diego, CA – April 7, 8 & 9, 2013 – I’m extremely pleased and excited to announce that I will be speaking live in my hometown of San Diego, California at Social Media Marketing World from April 7-9 next year! This is an event put on by Social Media Examiner and it’s going to be awesome! I’m honored to be a part of it and if you end up going, let me know and we’ll hang out together sometime during the event in a place soon to be determined, somewhere in my hometown. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

That’s all I got for now! Thanks for the support!

Fun fact: 90% of the post was written with one hand (and a sleeping baby in the other). #parenthood #ilovethisstuff #onehandedninja