Rob Bell's Notes from a Yorkshire Internet Megalomaniac

Today is a big day for some, and a day like any other for many. Unless you’re a Social Media nerd, you probably couldn’t care less, but Twitter reached an important milestone today.

Ashton Kutcher went against Larry King and CNN and fought to become the first user to have 1 million people following them.

At 7.15 (ish) GMT this morning, Kutcher won! EA had offered to give all their games for a year to the person who was millionth to follow him, which resulted in so many people trying to follow him at that point many struggled to follow in time, and he shot to 1,000,300 in the time it took me to refresh my screen from the point he was at 999,976.

Kutcher broadcast live via Ustream as the moment approached, and a party began straight after his victory speech, then he was up dancing away with wife Demi Moore to ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang (incidently, I share the same name as the lead singer – Robert ‘Kool’ Bell – different middle names though!!!)

The battle was watched live on CNN and on the web via live-stats analysis provider Chartbeat (see below)

In his victory speech, with fellow twittererati P Diddy on speakerphone, Kutcher talked about how it’s a victory for new media – no longer are we confined to having to rely on tv and newspaper news because the people can now reach each other with no help from the media at all, and one person can reach out to millions easily. He played down his individual victory, declaring it a victory for the new information age against the old school.

Kutcher also passed 1 million followers on his Facebook account yesterday, without actually promoting it.

When I wrote The Ultimate Guide to Twitter, I documented the top 10 Twitterers – Obama was at the top with almost 250,000 followers. Now, just 2 months later he has almost 750,000 – but Kutcher and CNN have both overtaken him to become the two most followed accounts. The growth of the service in those 2 months is phenomenal, and it’s predicted to continue – especially given the fact that Oprah Winfrey is about to become the next celebrity twitterer, with Kutcher helping her send her first tweet live on her TV show later today. We’re expecting a big influx of stay at home Mums turning to Twitter along with Oprah today. I wonder how long it’ll take her to hit 1 million? I daresay it’ll set records…

Kutcher promised to donate $100,000 to help Malaria for his win, and showed the cheque, already printed, live in Ustream

Read more about Ashton Kutcher’s 1 million followers  on Mashable

Since November last year, my natural sleep pattern – always a source of great annoyance, because I don’t appear to have one – has gone downhill again. The current time zone I’m living in has the following characteristics:

Wake up mid afternoon, and go back to sleep until dark. Wake at 6pm noticed it’s dark and 6 so it must be morning time – too early to get up…. then spot the 24 hour clock and realise you’ve actually slept all the way through daylight, except for that bit you saw streaming through your window just before you went to bed.

Swear lots because that’s another day you’ve missed and most things that involve people have to be done between 9am & 5.30pm – the traditional time for work, yet not the one used by this dojo!

After an evening meal as breakfast, sit at the computer and start the day’s business… continue until 2.30am then contemplate going to bed to start getting bodyclock back to normal times. Then sit back down at PC, end up really getting into something that could wait until morning, and end up staying up until 9-10am (it was 9.23 this morning!) before going to bed and struggling to sleep before mask is applied that keeps light from your eyes. Sleep very heavily, with phone unable to wake me up – doorbell has a better chance, but it’s still not guaranteed!

Wake up at 3, but feel it’s cold so sleep again until 6 – go through exactly the same as yesterday!

That routine is fine when you don’t need to be to do anything, but this week I’m attending 5 lectures and an employment discussion – all starting at 9.30 in the morning – which has been my bedtime for some weeks… It’s really snowy so that could be a great excuse if I miss it, but it’s only 1/2 mile on foot, which may take some time and be a little painful thanks to my cripple’s hip, but at least I’d be there…

If I get off the computer now and go to bed I could get 7 and be up at 8…. although lets face it I have only been up for 5-7 hours today so I’m not exactly tired. Solution – popped a sleeping tablet, and will be sleeping after all!

So I have to attend lots of daytime events this week for which I must become a daywalker once again! This means I won’t be around as late on the US conferences and seminars I tend to follow – most don’t even start until 1 or 2 am here.

Working online can be great fun, but once you adjust to the later nights (due to our being 5 hours ahead of
Easstern Time) it’s hard to get back without pulling at least one all-nighter-and-next-day-too, where you stay up until 10 pm then go catch up on 2 days of sleep. Unfortunately, that night’s sleep oftens lasts 14-16 hours so you lose the next day and are still on nightwalker duty!!!

Last week was increasingly frantic as we finished all the server moves to their new all-singing, all dancing and full-featured new home at RobBellHosting

Just a few problems with transferring the .co.uk domains away fron Lycos and onto 123-reg – Lycos have promised me twice to update the data that’s stopping the transfer, and they STILL haven’t done it having had over a month and 9 letters requesting they get a move on. Lycos have ruined their relationship with me over this – they were always a good company, with an, albeit limited, grip on customer service. Now I won’t use any of their products henceforth – the profitable ones they haven’t closed down, that is.

At least the data’s all moved though – and everyone’s running off the new ips. Yay, glad that’s over – too many all-nighters pulled in 1 week, IMO!

Can’t believe the snow outside – good few inches on the ground everywhere, it looks great – might take my camera out in it if I get the chance tomorrow… between the 2 courses I’m taking. I’ll show you some of the sights in Wintery Wakefield, many of which are truly beautiful – the city always looks lots better with snow covering it!!!

I’ve been using a lot of Traffic Exchanges this week to build subscribers up for my mailing list – go to Rob-Bell.com’s About Rob page to subscribe if you’d like to get my fifty favourite free sites and tools for making money online too. I don’t generally finding TE work to be the most exciting, but it’s fine if there’s something on TV – yes I do both at once! Seen considerable increase to the subscriber numbers – it’s doubled, then that doubled, now we have a nice number!

My first Traffic Exchange recommendations are:
Traffic Splash
Royal Surf
Dragon Surf
I Love Hits
Start XChange and
Advertising KnowHow

I use all these regular and see great results. They’re all free to join, but you can upgrade to increase the rate you generate credits and the number of sites you advertise. I’m going to write more on Traffic Exchanges in the near future, but those 6 are great to get you started. 5 of them offer what is called “SuperSurfing” – if you surf all 5 exchanges at once (using a tabbed internet browser) you get extra credits for each site you view.

I an upgraded member in all of the above exchanges – over a year 1/2 in some of them.

Traffic Exchanges are a very cheap(free) alternative to expensive advertising yet the targeted users on there make them perfect when your product needs the Internet Marketer marketplace. Find out the things they need, and offer them – use sales to pay for exchange monthly upgrades so you get more credits to spend getting your site seen.

Eeek it’s 2.15 am, I haven’t actually had an early night after all – bugger!

To Your Success,

Rob Bell

Tomorrow I’ll be telling you all about the 2 Business Link courses I’m going on – exciting stuff eh?!?!

I ‘upgraded’ the blog yesterday to the latest version of WordPress, as it reminded me to in the admin panel…. then everything went horribly wrong!

The short version being it’s taken me about 17 hours to get the blog back up and working – and a week’s worth of blog has been lost when I had to restore from backup – ouch!

Fortunately, everything seems to be working again now, so ‘normal’ service will soon be resumed.

If you’ve tried to visit in the last 24 hours, sorry! It’ll be nice when I can pay a techy to do all this – I’m only ‘semi-techy’ when it comes to php!!!

Right, I need to get away from the computer for the first time since this morning – relax time!

A very relieved Rob

Thank heavens for The Ability to Ask Questions – after previously struggling to commit to sustained action for some time, I couldn’t really begin to get a clear Internet Marketing plan together, outline my strategies, or find the ‘eye of the tiger’ within, so to speak. My goals weren’t clear, so my route towards them was similarly unclear.

A week of training, effort like I can’t recall, a new determination, some great applications, and the simple application of some marketing science and I’m now gathering the information that will help me to understand the real needs of my market, so I’ll then really be able to help them better – to all our advantage.

I decided to make my first product in the Internet Marketing space because:

a. I’m an Internet Geek (that happens when your mobility is impaired, although the healthy me was also a real Net Nerd, so that’s just a bs excuse on my part!)

b. I was a Marketing Manager in my ‘old life’ before my accident, so I’ve years of experience to fall back on – and piles of books to enhance my knowledge and skills.

c. I’m very techy for a non-tech – even qualified to Cisco Cert Network Admin 1/2 level, so I can understand and use technologies yet still explain them to someone who maybe isn’t technically minded. I’ve even got a 70 year old friend I taught to write and publish his own website (patience, lots of patience my boy!), which now has some 4500 pages to it.

d. I find it a fascinating subject, something I am happy to obsess about – I think this is key, for without obsession comes no masterpiece.

How much easier life gets when you get access to the tools that can really help i.e. The ASK Database- only 21 days to make it pay for itself though, as I’ve spent $1 on the 3 week trial, so it’s head down all the way to make revenue to pay for the monthly subscription at the end of Oct. I can’t afford to take on additional expenses at present – 4 years injured can cause quite a strain on the old finances, so anything I use has to have a really fast ROI. I already had a few hosting plans and domains – but they finally have real purpose, and I’ve bought some others, including AskRobBell.com!

This whole contest is certainly giving me real motivation, something I’ve lacked altogether since my father’s passing away in June of this year, although my Get-Up-And-Go got-up-and-went right after my 2nd broken back incident (see earlier blog!).

I feel like I’ve finally turned a corner, and the light at the end of the tunnel is only round the corner.This contest has been a bit of a revelation for me – although I don’t have hundreds of referrals, it’s given me a whole new lease of life – don’t know if it’s all for the better though – I’ve not even been to bed on 3 occasions in the past week – preferring to stay on the PC throughout the night and next day too!!!

Dentist in the morning at 8.55am though, and I didn’t sleep last night, so I’m definitely scheduled for an early(ish) night – it’s already gone 10pm! Having a ‘power haircut’ tomorrow too, as further evidence of the transformation from Cripple to Guru taking place in front of my keyboard!

Have got a storyline and some clips ready for the video contest, but I suffer from an annoying ‘mind-blanking’ whenever I’m looking at a video camera – getting over that will be an achievement in itself!

Rob