1st up, the most essential tool for any serious “twitteree“, or “twitterette“, imho, is a desktop app to make the whole experience easier.

I started off with Thwirl and liked it’s simplicity, but then came across TweetDeck

The first time I looked at TweetDeck I have to admit, I didn’t like it, mostly because of the black color, but now I wouldn’t go back to Thwirl.

TweetDeck just presents tweets, @’s and DM’s in such a clear way it’s easy to keep track of what’s going on, which can be very important when you end up in a 4, 5, or 6 (or more) different conversations at the same time, with a mix of @’s and DM’s coming at you left right and center!

With TweetDeck you know exactly where everything is…

2nd is a “must have” twitter tool that is about keeping yourself informed - TweetBeep.com

It’s a twitter version of Google Alerts and the first thing you should do is register your name and twitter nickname for alerts.

Although I’d recommed you also set up “beeps” for your company name, blog or website name and product name, so you can get sent email notifications whenever any of them appear in a tweet…

It makes it a real simple way to keep up with when you’re getting talked about or mentioned!

It’s also kind of fun to set up a “beep” for your own town name, it can be very interesting.

I’m actually going to a local pub tonight to see a Live Jazz act that I wouldn’t have known about without Twitter and TweetBeep, I spotted a tweet from “funkeegirl” this morning and hey presto, new plans for the evening!

3rd is TweetLater which give you a whole bunch of automation options.

The most important are the ability to “Auto UnFollow” any one who unfollows you, as well as auto follow any new followers.

but you also get the option to set up an automated “DM” (Direct Message) to send out to new followers when they sign up to say “Hi!”

there is even an option to upgrade your account from the free version which will allow you to do even more automation and follow up “DM’s”, making it the equivalent of an “AutoResponder” for Twitter!

If you’re a marketer, think about that for a few moments, I’m sure once it sinks in you’ll wonder why I didn’t put this at the top of the list…

4th is Twitter Karma which offers a simple way for you to bulk unfollow people that you’ve followed who haven’t followed you back, allowing you to free up space to do more new follows if you’re reacing the 100% limit.

If you’re not aware of it, once you get to 2,000 people that you are following, you can only do 10% of your total followers as new follows, so if you had 3000 followers, you could be following up to 3300 people, but no more.

Note: Twitter Karma seems to get used a lot and can be a tad unrelaible at times because of that, so here’s an alternative way of finding who you’re following that aren’t following you back - http://www.friendorfollow.com

5th is Twollo, which allows you to automatically follow people based on keyword used in tweets, so if you’re specifically interested in “ant farming” you can set it up to automatically follow any one who tweets about “ant farming”.

Combine Twollo with TweetLater and you have enough automationg to make expanding your twitter followers highly automated, just be careful not to let it run wild, Twitter do have a policy against “Agressive Following”!

It looks like Twollow allows you to do the same thing, but only on a limited number of keywords for free, then you have to pay…

so there you have my top 5 Twitter Tools & Sites, so far, there are more to come, but these are ones that you should be using right now, especially as none of them cost anything!

and just to round things of here’s a few Twitter Directories to submit your profile to: -

• Twellow
• WeFollow
• iFollowBack

and there’s a couple of “honorable” mentions: -

TwitterAnalyzer - which gives a whole bunch of interesting stats for your twitter account, go have a play, you’ll find it interesting!

TwitterCounter - if you’ve got a blog, get the twitter counter to show off your followers count as “social proof”! You can of course see an example of it in action at the top of the sidebar on the right of this blog post…

here’s a fun app from Alex Poole that simply allows to see the percentage of your followers that also foolow someone else - http://www.alexpoole.name/php_stuff/twitter-rt-checker.php

oh, and some great posts about twitter from some top marketers and bloggers that I believe you’ll find interesting: -

http://www.ericstips.com/tips/the-state-of-twitter
http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/money-making-ideas/using-twitter-search-to-find-buyers-in-the-act
http://www.johnchow.com/how-to-increase-your-chances-of-a-twitter-follow-back

This Post: Top 5 Twitter Tools

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I managed to make it down to London a couple of weeks ago for Martin Avis’ London Lunch for the first time in well over a year, and it was great to see so many people there!

It was also great to catch up with a whole bunch of people (fellow internet marketers) who I’ve not seen in months, although I didn’t manage to chat with everyone I wanted to (sorry Rob!), and I forgot to take any photos, too busy nattering away, sorry!

So there’s 2 points to this post, first is an invite to what will be a great internet marketing workshop weekend that I’m going to, and the 2nd is more of a proposal based on having some kind of informal getogether in Cheltenham every couple of months…

Bristol Internet Marketing Workshop

This workshop is being held by Robert Puddy in Bristol (here in the UK) on May 8th - 10th!

I’ve been to a few of Robert’s events here in the UK and at every one I’ve a. learnt v. useful stuff, b. met some GREAT new friends & JV partners, and c. had a lot of fun!

so do whatever you can to try and make this, I know you will love it!

go take a look here: -

Bristol Internet Marketing Workshop

you can probably spot me in a couple of the pics!

Incentive => if you use the my link (above) to grab a place let me know and I’ll buy you a beer at the bar!

Oh, and Bob’s also done a quick video about the weekend: -

here’s the link again - Bristol LFMpire Workshop

Cheltenham & Gloucester Blogging & Internet Marketing Meet

over the last 5-6 months I’ve had email conversations with a few people about possibility of doing some sort of informal getogether for beers and a chat once every couple of months, so I thought it’s time to throw it out there and see if it sticks…

I’m quite happy to work out a suitable venue here in Cheltenham, but here’s what we need to discuss/decide on: -

1. should the meet be during the week (mon/tue/wed/thu) or on a weekend (fri/sat/sun)?

2. should it be a lunch or in the evening?

3. when should the first one be? e.g. end of April or end of May?

so if you’re interested, leave some feedback and let’s get this rolling a bit…

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1. PMA - “Positive Mental Attitude”

If you have a negative attitude to being successful then you’re going to end up sabotaging your own efforts.

Likewise if you listen to others with a “that will never work” attitude, then they will have a negative influence on your efforts, so don’t do it.

Instead start seeking out and mixing with people who have the same positive attitude and are interested in the same things as you, see No. 5 below.

I posted a great example of how a self defeating negative outlook can be recently here: -

Nothing Works Part 2

Warning - it’s a LONG read!

2. Investing in your own education

If you wanted to be a Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer or any other high paid offline “professional” you would have to spend a small fortune getting the education you need.

Why should you expect to get the REAL knowledge you need online to be for free?

Yes, you can learn a lot for free, but it will take more time and effort, paying for the education from someone who has already become successful will save you a LOT of time, effort and heartache!

3. Taking Action

There’s no point in spending money on the knowledge you need if you don’t actually make use of it…

There are many, many people who spend all their time (and money) jumping from one thing to the next, without actually putting what they’ve learnt in to action.

Don’t be one of these people!

Make a plan and start working on it now.

4. Persistence (or “bloody minded stubbornness” as my mother calls it)

Things will not always go right, you will stumble and fall along the way, we all do, even with the best education, mistakes still happen, it’s part of being human, the point is we can learn from our mistakes, pick ourselves up and forge on…

If you expect to be an overnight success online then perhaps you’re in the wrong business, maybe you should go try out for one of those Pop Idol or X-Factor shows instead…. lol

I know many people who are now earning a very good living online, many are now good friends of mine, and I don’t ever remember hearing a single one of them say it was easy or happened overnight…

Any business that is worthwhile is going to take some time and effort to build up, marketing online is no different.

The fantastic thing about an online business is that providing you are willing to put in the effort, there will come a time when you end up in a situation where you can spend less and less time “working” and still increase the money your business makes, you just have to be persistent to get to that stage, so keep your goal in mind and push on!

5. Getting out and meeting people (aka “networking”)

I mentioned in No. 4 above that I know have many good friends who are successful online marketers, most of those people I met by getting out from my home office and going to “internet marketing” events.

This is something that I can’t recommend strongly enough!

The people you meet can not only become great friends, they can also become great joint venture partners and help you to make your business a success!

At one of the very first events I went to I met a great bloke who became a joint venture partner of mine, and the very first promotion he did for my product a few days later more than paid for all the costs of me going to that event, even the bar bill!

Don’t be afraid of getting out there in to the “real world” and meeting people, it will help push your online business forward by leaps and bounds!

[UPDATED May'09] Side Note: there’s a great chance to get together with a whole bunch of top class Ineternet Marketers in Musiccity, Tennessee in the US on June 19th -21st!

go take a look here: -

Tennessee Internet Marketing Weekend

Note ++>> there’s a “2 for 1″ on the tickets at the moment, so you can split the costs with a partner, if you’re quick!

6. Getting the answers I need, when I need them

The other very positive benefit of attending seminars and workshops for my business has been to build a network of other “experts” who can help me when I get stuck on something.

We all get stuck on something now and then, so having this kind of network of people to help me when I need it has been worth an absolute fortune to me and my online business, but as a “newbie” internet marketer it can take you a while to build up this kind of network, so those seminars and workshops are even more important!

However, there is now another answer…

Another marketer (who I also met at a seminar I was attending) realised that this is one of the biggest problems most internet marketers face, especially when just starting off, so he’s spent the last year building a site that allows any member to get the answers they need, when they need them, from experts who actually know the right answers!

The site has only just launched and there are already 500+ people getting the answers to the questions that were holding them back, from over 100 proven online marketing experts, you can join them today…

go watch this video to see how: -

EasilyAnswered

To the success of your online business!

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http://mattgarrett.com/facebook

so here’s a quickie on how to find the link, and although Andrew   didn’t need this bit, I’ll also show what html code to use to create the link.

when you log in there should be a link with your name on the right at the top of the page, the link will look something like -

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=776035400&ref=name

then just remove the “&ref=name” bit from the end so it’s like this - 

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=776035400

you can then use this url in a standard html page for the redirect, here’s the html code to use, just replace the url with your own profile url: -

url redirect html

then save the file as index.html and upload it to a NEW folder called “facebook” and you will end up with a link that looks like this and is easier for people to remember: -

http://mattgarrett.com/facebook

hope this helps!

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Simon’s a pretty smart marketer with a fairly impressive array of products, which you can check out on his Hodgkinson Publishing site, as well as his own book

Simon was checking his Gmail account while we were sat at the bar and mentioned another marketer (who’s name I can’t remember) who had his gmail account broken in to after accessing it on an unsecured network at a hotel, and subsequantly had many of his websites, servers and other business assets attacked!

The problem is that gmail is accessed via http instead of https (secure encrypted) as a default, so if you use Gmail I recommend you take a moment and go in to your “Settings” (from the top right hands side of the page when you’re logged in) and then scroll down the page to the bottom to find the option to change to logon via https as a default.

gmail https login option

It only takes a minute or so to do and could save you a lot of agro down the line sometime…

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It seems the automated BlogMyTweet.com plugin that I have added to my main blogs (like this one) does help to even bring in some traffic to the blogs as well, so it appears that I’m not just twittering away to myself, phew!

lol…

I’ve recently added a twitter “Follow Me on Twitter” graphical button to my blogs to see if they help to pick up even more new “followers” and it does seem to be helping.

Here’s three of the best sites I’ve found with free Twitter “follow me” buttons you can use: -

Free Twitter Buttons

Free Twitter Graphics

Free Twitter Follow Me Buttons

I’ve also added the TwitterCounter.com chicklet to display the number of followers I currently have, which seems to add a nice touch of social proof, encouraging people to go ahead an follow me.

you can check out “TwitterCounter” here: -

http://twittercounter.com/?username=mattgarrett

and then enter your own twitter username to see your stats and get your own counter button code.

or download the  the plugin here: -

http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/twittercounter.zip

Although the days that I seem to have the most new followers sign up is the days that I make several tweets, especially those where I end up having a conversation with other people…

I’ve also tried to avoid the temptation to post “irrelevant” tweets, like: -

“I’m making a cup of organic free trade vanilla falvoured green tea and listening to the new Metallica album this morning”

as I know those kind of tweets tend to put me off following other people, unless they mix in a LOT of real content, although I have to admit one or two may have slipped in…

here’s a great post with 20 tips for getting the most from twitter: -

20 Tips For Using Twitter

and you can also see your own Twitter “Rank” by entering your username here: -

Twitter Grader

My “Rank” is currently 98.1, which puts me 0.03 below the “UK Twitter Elite”, which is topped by fellow bloggers Chris Garrett  (no relation) and Caroline Middlebrook

Quick Tip: using this to get your own Grade will mean that your twitter profile shows up on the front page of the site for a short while, which may help you to pick up a few more new followers, although they may not be well “targeted”.

You can also add a twitter application to your facebook profile to have your tweets update on to your facebook page, grab the app here: -

Twitter Facebook Application

While I’m on the topic of web 2 stuff, I also made a video showing how you can add your blog to the Facebook BlogNetwork application that you should consider checking out on BlogTactics.com

I’ve added four of my main “IM” based blogs to it already, and I even added Yaro Starak’s Entrepreneurs-Journey.com blog to the network, as he hadn’t done so yet.

If you’re wondering whether it’s worth adding your blog, well I spotted that Darren Rowse has well over 500 people following his ProBlogger.com blog on this facebook app, so I’d say it is, especially as it only takes a couple of minutes to add your blog, so go watch the video on how to do so: -

BlogNetwork Facebook Application

and you can follow my blog on the BlogNetworks Facebook application from here: -

Matt Garrett on Facebook

Perhaps you should do the same for your favorite bloggers, it’s a great way of making a connection and getting chatting with someone…

and don’t forget you can add links to any of your own sites to your facebook profile using the TagK application -
facebook backlinks application

and please start following me on Twitter @MattGarrett, I need to get my “Grade” higher!
thanks!

Get more Twitter Followers

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that’s the most common comment I recieve from people who unsubscibe and it’s not surprising.

one of my subscribers mentioned recently that he’d had more than a dozen emails about Mike Filsaime’s Traffic Fusion on the launch day, which actually put him off.

I had to admit that I’d had around 3 times that many, but then I’m on just about every marketers list, including all my JV partners and adswaps partners, it helps to be able to spot the best stuff out there and find new JV/adswap partners, but it can get a bit much, even as a full time marketer who doesn’t have a full time job on top.

For anyone still juggling a “job” and their new internet marketing business it can be a killer…

In fact, receiving too many emails is also the best reason for unsubscribing from peoples lists, as With so many offers for the best new thing” flying around it’s very easy to get distracted and lose focus.

In order to be successful online you will do better by just finding one or two things that your comfortable with and focus on them until they start to bring in some cash (e.g. blogging and article marketing).

so what’s the solution?

well, I recommend keeping a separate folder in your email program for all the emails you get from marketers and when you read one that you like mark it as a good one, and vice versa.

If you’re on several marketers lists then you’ll find it easy to spot those who are just using the deafult “promo email” provided for the product…

Then every 4-6 weeks you can have a look through the folder and unsubscribe from all the marketers/lists that haven’t sent at least 1 or 2 good emails in that period…

this should help you to keep your emails down to just those that are usefull and worth spending a few minutes reading.

As per Tim Ferris’s “The 4 Hour Work Week” (a must read book), you should also limit your “email time” each day/week and not have your email software open so that you get distracted everytime a new email drops in to your inbox. I find doing so has made a big difference to how much work I get done in a day, although I admit I’m not perfect at following this discipline, let’s call it a” work in progress”…

~##~

just a quick reminder I’ll be at the Focus Marketing Seminar in London on Oct 17th to 19th if you fancy a beer and a chat.

if you sign up through my affiliate link I may even buy you the beer - have a beer with MattG

you can read more about it on David Congreave’s TheLucidBlog.com Blog - Focus Marketing Seminar

Matt Garrett

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It’s a fairly standard marketing approach for professional online marketers (big and small) to make such an offer and can be very effective.

However, it can also cause confusion and irritation if people are not expecting it or haven’t come across it before, I recently recieved a support ticket accusing me of being a “con merchant” because of it…

I use AdSwaps as part of my list building process and it works very well, adding over 2,000 new subscribers to my newsletter in the last 24 days for example.

After signing up for my free offer the visitor will be sent to a OTO page, as well as being sent an email with a optin confirmation link in it (for “double optin” to comply with the “Can Spam Act” rules).

Only once they have clicked on the link in that confirmation email they will then get sent the download link for the free offer/report, as the “free report” is being offered on the basis that they sign up for my newsletter.

But, if someone is not familiar with this practice they can end up looking at a OTO page where there are no free download links and they’re being asked to pay for something…

This can obviously cause a feeling of having been “conned” by a free offer that they’re not going to get, even though it’s already on the way to them via email.

for most of my AdSwaps I make sure that people are sent to a “email confirmation instructions” page first so that they know what to expect, they are then sent to the OTO page when they click on the confirmation link in the email.

but I’ve recently set up my OTO on the PayDotCOm affiliate program so that I can offer my adswap partners a commission, however this means I have to leave out the confirmation page and this has resulted in me receiving a LOT more support tickets and emails about this.

When I say “a LOT”, it’s still only around 5-10 people out of close to 10,000 emailed (which is around 0.1%), so it’s not a huge number, but it is higher than I am used to seeing or wish to see.

To be fair the problem seems to have been made far worse over the last week or so as the autoresponder service I use (aweber) has had some real problems getting the confirmation emails sent out, with delays of over 12 hours last week, and the same again yesterday.

I have over 100 optins that are showing as unconfirmed from yesterday and from the support tickets I’ve received it seems to be simply because they still haven’t received the confirmation email, nit a good situation.

In fact, these problems, combined with AWeber’s recent SIGNIFICANT price rise have promoted me to look at alternatives to aweber, but I’ll save that for another post, once I’ve had chance to test out the best.

So what’s the solution?

1. Make a post like this and send it to my list to help people understand how an OTO works and that they are not being “conned”.

2. use a different affiliate pogram for my adswap OTO affiliate program that will allow me to put the “confirmation” page back in so people know the download link will be received via follow up email

3. mention the OTO process to people in the adswap emails that I send out so that it’s not unexpected

guess i’ve got some work to do to get all that done…

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Affiliate Payload Review

There haven’t been as many bonuses on offer form other marketers as I’d expected, but I did spot four worth listing, so I thought I’d list them here as usual, along with my own of course.

 ~##~

I’m going to list mine first, but there are 3 other bonuses below, from Ben Shaffer, Ellery Coleman and Chris McNeeney respectively, just in case one of those is of more interest to you.

My Bonus Offer -

1. Two keyword targeted articles written for you for your first two cpa offers (value $14)

2. 400 keywords researched and analyzed for you, including search volumes, competition (kei) and ppc bid values (value $54).

Note: I’ve owned and run the TopKeywordlists.com private membership site for the last 3 years, so I know a thing or two about keyword research.

3. my personal list of extra places to submit your articles for extra traffic to your CPA offers (value $17)

Total bonus value = $85
 
which is more than it costs for the report, nuff said!

here’s my link again: -

http://www.mat4.com/files/apl.html

and just send a copy of your receipt me askmattg “at” gmail.com or via askmattg.com to claim the bonus, you can tellme the two keywords you want the articles and research done for whenever you’re ready, i.e. once you’ve found a good CPA offer to run with.

~##~

Ben Shaffer’s bonus offer: -

Ben’s offer is only available to the first 50 buyers and in his words: -

Adsense is not just about building sites anymore, but about how to drive effective and targetted traffic. ie. how to get people to your site, but more importantly the right people who will come to your site and click on your ads.

Recently, one of my [Ben] friends online developed a system to automate this which is so powerful and potentially so lethal that I [Ben] knew that this is something that I [Ben] had to have. And perhaps more importantly (for you) knew that I had to give you an opportunity to see it also.

So if you buy through his link and you’re one of the first 50 he’ll give you access to it.

Ben’s link: -

http://www.clarifywithben.com/recommends/affpay

to claim your bonus from Ben paste your Clickbank receipt at

replytoben.com

~##~

Ellery Coleman’s Bonus Offer: -

a copy of Craigslist Blackhat System

and

a copy of Killer Video Conversions

Ellery’s link: -

http://z30.com/payload-ae

then send a copy of your receipt to: -

support “at” articleexplosion.com

~##~

Chris McNeeney’s Bonus offer: -

Chris has prepared an extensive “Landing Page Formula” report tailored precisely to be used with Affiliate Payload. 

This will show you the exact strategies and techniques to implement on your Payload landing pages to almost guarantee your Payload campaigns convert like crazy so you profit from the get-go.

Chris’s Link: -

http://www.dayjobkiller.com/affpay

then send an email with a copy of your Clickbank receipt to: -

affpayload “at” dayjobkiller.com

 ~##~

Chris Freville’s Bonus Offer: -

It’s his Ultimate Guide to Super-Affiliate Status in 60 Days or Less.

In 96 pages, it covers:

1. The Basics of Affiliate Marketing
2. Choosing Products that Work
3. PPC Affiliate Marketing Techniques
4. Setting Up for The Next Steps: Your Own Site 5. The Affiliate Blogger 6. Web 2.0 and Social Networking - The Affiliates Best Friends 7. Email Marketing 101 8. Furthering Your Affiliate Business 9. What is an Insider, and How Do I Become One?
10. Niche Marketing / Name Building as an Affiliate

He only just finished writing the Affiliate Insider last week, and it is all Brand New material, not even released yet.

when it is it’s likely to cost at least $147.

it will only be available for the first 50 buyers…

Chris’s Link: -

http://www.automatedlistbuilder.com/alexgoad.php

then send your Clickbank receipt to chris “at” web20stampede.com and he will send you your bonuses within 24 hours.

~##~

and here’s my Bonus offer again, just in case…

1. Two keyword targeted articles written for you for your first two cpa offers (value $14)

2. 400 keywords researched and analyzed for you, including search volumes, competition (kei) and ppc bid values (value $54).

Note: I’ve owned and run the TopKeywordlists.com private membership site for the last 3 years, so I know a thing or two about keyword research.

3. my personal list of extra places to submit your articles for extra traffic to your CPA offers (value $17)

Total bonus value = $85
 
which is more than it costs for the report, nuff said!

here’s my link again: -

http://www.mat4.com/files/apl.html

and just send a copy of your receipt me askmattg “at” gmail.com or via askmattg.com to claim the bonus, you can tellme the two keywords you want the articles and research done for whenever you’re ready, i.e. once you’ve found a good CPA offer to run with.

hope you found this useful, sorry it’s so long, but there’s a heck of a lot of stuff in the report…

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You can read the original post and the replies here: -

http://mattgarrett.com/jv-tips-100-prize/

There are a few bits especially that I’d like to highlight: -

All of Reed’s points are bang on, unsurprisingly, but meeting someone at a seminar shouldn’t be underestimated. Just one JV partner that I made at the last seminar I went to paid for the cost of the seminar for me…

Giving the person a testimonial for their product is also a great tip.

Ben mentioned that it’s a good idea to offer potential JV partners a review copy of your product, you shouldn’t really expect them to pay for it after all, and they’re not likely to promote it if they don’t get to check it out…

Ben’s point ofmaking sure you give the right information so the potential jv partner can make thedecision easily is also very important. Most people you get in touch with will get several such emails each and every day, the more clearly you can present your offer the more likley that it will be read, rather than deleted.

John’s suggestion of creating a product to promote their product can also be very effective…

Andy also mentions that you REALLY want to try and get them to include an email for your product in their autoresponder follow up series, as this can bring you long term profits.

Andy makes another exellent point that your really do need to keeo in mind from the start - “if you first consider what you can do for them before thinking about what they can do for you, you can build a much stronger JV relationship”

and there’s a couple of other ideas that occured to me: -

1. offer the potential jv partner a special discount that they can give their readers. I’ve even set up permanant discount offer pages for some of my jv partners.
2. offer to put one of their “offers” on your download page as a “unannounced bonus”
3. and obviously offer to put a promo for their product in to your autoresponder follow up series

so who’ve I picked as the winner?

well, all four posts covered important points, heck I could probably turn the answers in to a mini ebook or report, so I’m gonna be a total wimp and call it a draw and send Reed, Ben, John & Andy $30 each, which should be enough for a beer and a pizza on me as a thank you for their suggestions and time.

Thanks guys!

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