I should call this post “Email Marketing Tips - Edition 2 continued”, but that title wouldn't tell much. Indeed a strange thing happened.

When going through the submissions for the latest edition of my Email Marketing Tips Blog Carnival, I though Terry Dean's article about “Cutting Through The Internet Marketing Noise” is fabulous. I emailed Terry right away, thanked him and let him know that it will be in the Carnival.

Then I prepared the Carnival and posted it.

Later in the evening I met with a business friend for a drink and we talked about many different things. At some point I mentioned the Carnival and recommended that he should read Terry's post.

Anyway, he emailed me this morning and asked, “Where's the post you were talking about yesterday?”

Ups!

I simply overlooked it. Shame on me. I'll correct the mistake in the next couple of minutes, but if you don't want to wait. Here is Terry Dean's excellent Blog article.

Cutting Through the Internet Marketing Noise
by Terry Dean

Enjoy.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Sorry, Terry.

As usual I am posting my fake carnival of carnivals which have used my posts in their editions. You have guessed right, it's just about rewarding them with a backlink.

In previous posts about blog carnivals I have mentioned that I feel the quality of carnivals seems to degrade over time. More and more blog carnivals have become almost automatically created collections of links without much editorial effort. And I had to throw out a number of carnivals for todays post, because they simply did not meet their schedule.

Here is the list of reliable carnivals, that used my mind mapping post this month.

Right before the weekend I have some sound tips for you. I keep it very short, because everybody's time is very valuable. The tips are for the areas:

• Personal Development
• Search Engine Optimization
• Getting Paid by Clickbank

I thought also, it is finally time to use that rainbow photo I had taken several weeks ago. It was sitting idle on my server for quite some time. Do you share my association between that rainbow and those tips?

A friend told me about an online mind mapping tool that helped him to organize the 1,000 ideas in his head. So let me pass on this little productivity tip to you.

Without further ado, here is the tool he recommended to me.

MindMeister.com (↑)

Mind mapping allows you to lay out your ideas and thoughts kind of visually. Related items are close together. Therefore, you don't need much space and keep the overview easily. I am not going into the details of mind mapping (sorry), but some advantages of using an online tool like the one my friend recommends.

Advantages

• It's easy to rearrange items. You don't run out of space, like you would probably on a sheet of paper.
  
  
• Major advantage: You can share your maps with a team easily.
  
  
  
• Your data is accessible from anywhere.
  (Check terms of service, etc. and make your own decision about the risks of outsourcing your sensitive data that way.)
  
  
• MindMeister.com (↑) offers a free basic version, besides that the rates are very reasonable.

I have signed up for a free account today. I just started to check it out myself. I am not affiliated with MindMeister.

Have a nice weekend.

Yours
John W. Furst

Update: Vic Gee left a comment pointing to his extensive, great resource about various mind mapping tools. You definitely should check it out.

• Web Based Mind Mappers (↑)
  
  
• The master list of mind mapping & information management software (↑)

Thanks Vic

Nobody can win all the time, every time! Facing obstacles is the norm when walking down the road of life

I just discovered this motivational, timeless video with Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple and Pixar Animation) telling 3 stories of his life.

Take the 15 minutes that it takes to watch this video, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

“Don't live other people's life…
Have the courage to follow your heart ...
Stay hungry, stay foolish!”

Yours
John W. Furst

A couple of days ago I have written, “Your Business Needs To Grow Continuously”. Today I want to combine that important fact with a very easy to do management or personal development practice, that helps you to achieve your goal, tune out distraction as you learn to focus on what's really important.

You will see it's not about time management or life management as some call it. You still have to come up with a way to use your time efficiently. Of course you can refer back to my original series of articles about Productivity and Time Management, “Touch It - Do It - Get More Done”. I wrote a total of 4 articles on that subject and they are available combined into a single PDF report in the download area for my newsletter subscribers. Actually the PDF contains some extra content that is not released on my Blog.

Might be the right time to sign up to my newsletter, right now. (To my existing subscribers: I'll send you the download info as soon as I have finished this post.) Sorry for the little detour.


Let's get back to productivity issues. The little, but nonetheless important advice I'll give you fits almost everybody.

It is the norm to think a virus or an infection is something very bad. This is true for most cases, but my ‘blogger-friend’ Aaron Potts writes on his Blog today, that you actually should seek to get infected by a very special kind of virus.

I was drawn into his article right away and thought that you could benefit from that great post, too.

Here it is.
In case you get an “500 Internal Server Error”, just hit the reload/refresh button. It's a kinky technical issue that should not stop you from accessing Aaron's valuable content.

Enjoy reading.

Yours
John W. Furst