To refer to my phone as a phone is kind of silly. I actually talk on the device probably less then 5% of the time. I rarely take phone calls and even more rarely make them. I use a service called phonetag to transcribe all voice mails to email and send them to me which I then reply in email.

With my Sprint phones over the years I have used my “smart phones” mostly for texting and emailing. I never really browsed the internet with them. The lack of css/js support mixed with phone CPU speed and network speed just made it worthless.

I have been receiving so many emails about switching to the iPhone since my post about me leaving sprint that I decided to do a little mini review discussing my concerns and what I have found. Please keep in mind its only been 2 weeks (almost) and I will write a 90 day review or so and probably have some things to bitch about then.

The Cost

While this was not a big concern to me it was with the commentators in my leaving Sprint post. Lots of people were saying that our company would be paying a lot more for the iPhone plans then with what we had with Sprint. Surprisingly we will be saving about $3,000 per year with At&t over Sprint. We are on a shared business plan with rollover minutes and the cost savings is pretty substantial. I am fairly certain they do not have a similar thing on Sprint because we were always asking our reps if we should move to a better plan and they always said we had the best one so either they were lying to us or they can’t compete price wise.

Network Coverage

Network Coverage was far and away my biggest concern in switching from Spring to At&t. I don’t talk much but when I do talk its important and the rumors of dropped calls really frightened me. When I purchased the iPhone the salesman at the At&t store said that here in Lincoln Nebraska we actually have some of the best iPhone data speeds in the world being they JUST rolled out new hardware not to long ago. I still was not fully convinced so I started talking to other customers as they were walking in to trade in their iPhones for new ones. The testimonials from the customers was enough to make me take the leap and get one.

At my house is supposed to be a “Dead Zone” which I wasn’t thrilled about but I have to say the phone works great there. I get 2-3 bars at worst and have never missed a call yet. The same is true for my office which is only a block away from my house. I am still leery though and have no delusions that the coverage will be perfect. Even some of my friends who are the biggest Mactards have told me to expect some dropped calls.

Like I said though so far so good. I have gone around rural Nebraska and the AT&T coverage is as good as Sprints…. if not better to my surprise.

Battery

The battery life was my 2nd biggest concern about switching to the iPhone. I would say the battery life for regular use is as good as the Blackberry. When I first got the iPhone I could not stop playing some of the tower defense games and they wore it down pretty fast… but what do you expect. I picked up a battery extender/charger to travel with me.

Keyboard

Another concern was the keyboard. Ever since my first “smart phone” I have always really enjoyed having a full keyboard on my phone. I was really worried about what the touch screen would be like. But just like what everyone told me it would take less then a week to be good with the touch screen keyboard. I wish every application let you type in landscape mode. I am considerably faster in landscape mode versus normal but maybe that will improve. I am happy with the keyboard and I LOVE the auto correct.

Applications

Unreal.. just totally completely unreal. Lets not even get into 3rd party apps. I will just cover the Apple ones for now:

1) Mail – The mail app rocks and has awesome integration with Gmail hosted email.

Just like the blackberry it does support PUSH if you use their delivery service (.me) BUT also just like the blackberry if you do use the PUSH service it creates some complications with IMAP. We are using GMAIL for our domain and the integration works awesome with the mail application.

2) Photos – I cant tell you how many times I see people and they ask to see pictures of my kids. And I never have them… or if I did have them on the blackberry (on the couple MB of storage it had) they were very very very bad quality. I have over 10,000 pictures on my iPhone at full quality dating back over 8 years. This takes up less then 1% of the space on my iPhone and its really nice to have when I want to show someone something.

3) Safari – Probably the most impressive default application. Apple really outdid themselves with this web browsing application on the iPhone.

Usability

This device replaced many things for me. And I don’t mean some bullshit “in theory it can do it” I am actively replacing these items.

• iPod – The 3GS also has a built in Nike+ receiver which is awesome for workouts.
• Portable movie player – With the large 32gb storage capacity I can store tons of dvd-rips for viewing while traveling.
• My Laptop – Sure it has not TOTALLY replaced my there are very few things that I can’t do with my iPhone.
• Dictaphone – With the Voxie iPhone application I can record myself and send it to myself, to my secretary, or to be transcribed by their professional transcription services. THIS ROCKS. I can now just talk into my iphone and get emailed text for blog posts or whatever else I want.
• Camera – Yea I hear you… “but $hoe every phone has a camera”, but seriously how many times have you actually had a photo printed and framed with your .5mp camera phone. I dunno what the mp was on the blackberry but it was shit. I went to our nanny’s wedding last weekend and I took photos with the 3gs while my wife used our cannon 8mp point and shoot. I would say my photos turned out every bit as good as my wifes if not better. Here is one photo I took with my iPhone of the happy couple with my kids:

6 – Flip Video Camera – With the iPhone I can record nice video and directly upload to youtube. The quality is good enough for youtube so why do I need a flip anymore? Checkout this video from last weekend getting my toenails painted with my daughter (I gotta learn to get my finger out of the way):

Sure I am not going to be up for any best picture nominations anytime soon but seriously its plenty good enough for the stuff I am playing with.

If you are thinking bout getting an iPhone I would first encourage you to talk with other AT&T subscribers in your area. If the service is good to go then go for it!

There is a 30 day window you can return it and get a full refund should it not be everything you thought it was.

If money is a problem you can always sign up to win one of 2 iPhone 3GS’s being given away by Brian Norgard!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Switching To the iPhone – 2 Weeks Later

Look at the top affiliates– the ones who are actually making money versus the pretenders . What’s the difference between them? You’ll notice that they all work ultra hard, are ultra networked, and are ultra knowledgeable. The catch-22 is that if you’re a one man show, how can you possibly put in enough time to work, meet people, and learn at the same time?

Let’s look at how people fail at this:

• Ultra networkers: You know these folks– they pass out their business card to every thing that has a pulse. Many are but an inch deep, as all they know are people, not topics. They do add value because they can introduce you to folks who do have knowledge– and that can often come off as name dropping. Find them most often in sales. Having great contacts, but not having knowledge is like trying to eat a bowl of cereal with a fork.

• Ultra knowledgeable: Academics. Find them in universities, reading books, writing books and lurking on forums. They are afraid of actually getting started for not knowing enough– afraid to fail, so they don’t try. Zero execution and often no network.

• Ultra hard workers: Often entrepreneurs– fire, ready, aim. The most damaging of these 3 types. They are so ready to move in any direction with no goal– just eager to go, go, go. Lots of open projects– zero of them completed. The aftermath of the eternal fire alarm is a trail of destruction.

Do you recognize yourself in any one of these profiles? How do you avoid the traps these folks fall into? Focus on learning, networking, and execution in that order.

• If you try to network before learning, then you come off as an idiot

you should be researching the folks you meet beforehand, anyway, out of respect. Plus, you’ll have something interesting to talk about instead of saying “So what do you do, anyway?” or asking them questions they’ve heard a zillion times. If you’re going to a conference, know who you’re meeting before you leave, hit up the speakers before they speak (they’re mobbed afterwards).

• If you decide to execute before networking, you run into brick walls

your yet-to-be-discovered colleagues could have told you if only you had asked. Like Sissyphus, you’re going to rolling that ball up thehill for the rest of eternity– making every mistake in the book. But that doesn’t mean that you should do only learning in the learning phase. In truth, you should be doing all three, but have a primary focus in each step. The art of learning by doing, which is to have small active projects you’re learning on is not the same as running a large project and promoting it. This process of learning, networking, and executing also doesn’t mean that you’re not working as hard– you can still work 80 hours a week, but spend your time in the right proportion.

Not sure where to start learning? Try out Shoemoney’s free Internet Marketing Guides

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How To Avoid Obvious Failure As An Affiliate

People follow people they are interested in and want to know what they are doing (unless I am missing something).

What I don’t get is why people follow me, but then bitch about what I say… repeatedly…. and often times will say “Who gives a shit” in response to my tweets. Well I guess you do jackass or you would not follow me.

Here is a good example… Last Friday I went with my wife and daughter (it was my daughters birthday) and she REALLY wanted me to get my toenails painted.

So I put up a twitpic of it:

and this jackass incredibill who has been following me for years but is always the first one to bitch comes out with:

Now don’t get me wrong. I am all for free speech and if this failure at life wants to spout his bigoted comments at me then go ahead. He is one of many that like to make personal insults I receive every day. I am a big boy and have put myself (and my toes) in the public spotlight.

What I don’t understand is why people devote there resources to following people they do not like.

Maybe someone can explain it to me?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

What I Dont Understand About Twitter Followers

Gyutae Park of Winning the Web has just launched a new Internet marketing training program today called Winners Circle.  And at first glance, I think it is pretty awesome.

Winners Circle is a members-only site with exclusive Internet marketing case studies, interviews, and community.  Currently, there is one case study up and a new one is released each week.  There are also a few interviews with top Internet marketers (released bi-weekly), a special bonus report called “4 Steps to Finding the Perfect Niche for Your Online Business”, and a forum which gives you direct access to Gyutae and other like-minded Internet entrepreneurs.

What sets Winners Circle apart from other Internet marketing sites is that it uses specific case studies and examples of successful sites (in various niches using different business models) to show you what works and what doesn’t.  You really can’t find this type of information anywhere else.

The cost of the membership is normally $47 per month but as a special promotion, Gyutae is offering a rate of $27 per month to the first 200 members who sign up.  There is even a 30-day money back guarantee and a fast action bonus for the first 50 people to sign up where Gyutae will personally audit your sites and provide 3 custom recommendations for SEO, traffic, and monetization.

To take advantage of the limited $27/month price and bonuses, you just need to head here and sign up!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Winning The Web Announces ‘Winners Circle’

I talked to a friend who works at Feedburner and he said he was not sure the exact reason they stopped showing but that Feedburner in general was cleaning up questionable services that might not be reporting properly.

I think this was kind of funny as seeing as how they just started reporting friendfinder… anyway…

Earlier today Aweber’s CEO responded to me and John Chow’s tweets on Twitter:

I do hope its a temporary glitch. If its permanent it would be a huge blow to Aweber.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Feedburner Drops Aweber From RSS Counts?? Or Not??

If you have been following the case closely you already know this is the 2nd time Keyen and John J Farrell have had to significantly reduce or withdraw their claims/motions.

We plan to continue this winning streak in our case.

I would like to thank everyone for your support in the case. We will continue to fight the good fight.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Keyen and John J. Farrell Fail Again

It was about eight months ago that I was talking with a friend of mine who had been rapping recreationally for a few years and had built up a small group of local fans for his work. His lyrics and beats were great, but he had never had access to a medium that would allow him to attract a larger audience and build up a serious fan base for his work.

His primary promotional technique was to distribute mixtapes and MP3 files to friends and family and encourage them to share it with everyone they knew. While his content was good enough to get him some traction in the community, this strategy never allowed him to reach an audience beyond a limited geographic area.

It was only once he began to promote his work online that he was able to start to gain traction in the area. The first video we created an uploaded to YouTube, a remix to the hit song “I Love College” by Asher Roth, took off amassing over 450,000 views and leading to requests for concerts, interviews, possible recording deals, and countless messages from new found fans. This is how we did it:

There are hundreds of up and coming songs released by unsigned artists on YouTube every hour. Most of these songs never attract more than a few dozen views. In order to get past this barrier, we had to do something different. A look at the industry showed that “I Love College” was a song that was quickly gaining popularity, but hadn’t quite reached mainstream media. Realizing the opportunity, we created a remix to the song and posted it on YouTube. While there wasn’t a lot of competition that this point, we knew we had to promote the video a little to get it to appear near the top of YouTube search results for “I Love College”.

One of the easiest ways to spread a video at first is to leverage social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Seeing how most of our Facebook friends were college students, it was fairly easy to post links to the video on our friend’s profiles and have them spread around quickly through our personal network. You can also set up a page for yourself on Facebook and invite as many people to join as possible. (Invite all your friends and ask your close friends and family to invite all their friends)

Another very effective method is to find related forums and post links to your video. However, you have to be careful not to spam. Make sure your video is something the audience would be interested in and provide some background information on why people should watch it. Even though you are promoting your content, make it seem natural, not like a sales pitch.

It is important to get as many views as possible in the first 24 hours so that you can get your video on the “Most Viewed Page”. It may be difficult to get it on the main “Most Viewed Page”, but it is much easier to have your video featured on a specific category’s “Most Viewed Page”. This video was featured on the page for the subcategory Rap and Hip Hop under Music.

This allowed YouTube’s system to see that the video was related to “I Love College” and was something viewers were interested in. This allowed us to be ranked #2 in searches for “I Love College” behind the official video. The timing was perfect as it was just as the song began to get major radio play and the video amassed 100,000 views and then 200,000 views very quickly. Yet, YouTube search results are fickle and the video began to drop in ranking and eventually began to disappear and reappear from the first page. When this happened we had to take an alternate approach to keep the video growing.

While growth tapered off, we still amassed over 250,000 more views through our tags which allowed it to appear alongside more popular videos in the “related videos” sections, accepting video responses which placed a link to our video from other uploads, and continuing to comment which kept the discussion going and kept people talking about the video.

One thing we found after the process was that posting the video as a “video response” to a large related video was a good way to attract large quantities of targeted traffic.

The Results

To date the video has been viewed over 450,000 times and attracted over 575 comments. It was “favorited” 2000 times and was featured on Maxim.com. One of the things we did with the video was to put our phone number at the end of the video which has attracted hundreds of calls, mostly from new fans, but also from people interested in performing concerts, other artists interested in collaborating, and some possible production deals. Not bad for something which was simply a hobby and a video which was created with just a Macbook.

It was also the largest remix to “I Love College” on YouTube, which is especially remarkable considering remixes with well renowned rappers from Ludacris to Lil Wayne have been created.

While I know most of you may not be rappers, the situation is similar. Chances are you have quality content, but have trouble getting it out there. Video promotion is a great way to attract some publicity. As a few final recommendations, market to those you know through social networking and book marking websites in the first 24 hours to try and get on the “Most Viewed Page”. Always respond to comments and tag the videos so they are featured next to more popular related videos. As a last reminder, take a look at what is currently being talked about, or better yet will soon be talked about, in the industry and create a related video.

You can view the video below:

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How Video Promotion Launched a Rap Career: A Complete Guide