MatthewWolfe.com

Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

I have been working on so much lately. I feel like I’m still neglecting my blog a little bit, despite the fact that blogging is what got me started in this business in the first place. Anyway, here’s a little recap of what I’ve been up to and what I’ve accomplished…

By the way, thanks so much to everyone who answered my survey. I’ve realized that anyone of those topics are good to discuss on here. I’ve got literally hundreds of ideas for new posts.

Vegas Baby!
In mid-January, I took a trek with Joe Fier and Josh Bartlett up to Vegas. It was Mike Filsaime’s affiliate appreciation weekend and Alex Jeffreys was putting on a seminar. It was an amazing time and we had the opportunity to do some real face to face networking. We were hanging out with the likes of Mike Filsaime, John Reese, ShoeMoney, Joe Jablonski, Russell Brunson, Jason Moffatt, Keith Wellman, Sam Knoll and many more of the biggest names in internet marketing.

We first arrived on Thursday, January 21st and almost immediately met up with Alex Jeffreys for some drinks. We played some poker and then got in touch with David Chamberlain, David Walker, Dean Holland, and Dan Briffa for some more drinks. The next day was the networking event at club Tabu. This is where we met and hung out with some of the biggest names in the game.

Saturday night was the big party. Every internet marketer that I could think of met up at club Lavo in the Pallazzo hotel. This was a huge bash in the VIP section with an open bar of top shelf drinks. I’ll tell you right now that I slept in quite a bit the next morning…

We relaxed a bit on Sunday and then attended day one of Alex Jeffrey’s seminar. There were some good discussions but my favorite presenter had to be Jit Uppal. I really like his presentation because his business model is very similar to mine. It really validated that I was on the right path. Later that evening, we had the opportunity to meet up with all of our pals from the Marketing With Alex class. I’ll list some names but I’m almost sure to miss a few… Marcus Passey, Dean Holland, Adam Spiel, Gary Simpson, Garry Parks, Paul Wilson, David Walker, David Chamberlain, Jean Shaw, Dan Briffa, Marc Milburn, Anthony Smits, and so many more…

Unfortunately, business obligations kept us from attending the second day of Alex’s seminar but we did get the opportunity to network some more with a lot of the people mentioned above later that evening.

All in all, Vegas was an amazing experience… Maybe it was a little long for us but we had a good time, nonetheless. I made a little montage video that I think really shows the “vibe” of the whole Vegas trip. Enjoy.

What else has been going on?

That’s a huge question because I’ve been up to a lot! I promoted Josh Bartlett’s Easy Video Player and ended up as number eight on his leader board. I was holding strong at 4th place for a while but got knocked down when the big guns started promoting. I guess it’s not too bad when the people that are above you on the leaderboard are people like Mike Filsaime, Ewen Chia, and Jason Moffatt. Nonetheless, I managed to finish a competition in the top 10 and walk away with a new HD video camera (I shot the video above with it) and an iPod touch. I’m happy about that because it was one of my goals for this year.

I also did a test launch on my latest product called The Autopilot Cash Formula. It’s an eBook and about 25 videos all about my entire business model. I explain pretty much everything that I’ve been doing over the last several months. It goes in to list building, product creation, and exactly how I manage to generate so many leads to an affiliate offer. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot on my test launch but it actually went crazy. The testimonials started rolling in and people started asking how they could promote it as well. Due to this, I decided that I’m going to roll out a full scale launch of this product. It’s going to be complete with lead contest prizes and sales contest prizes. The official launch date will now be March 23rd, 2010. So put it on your calendar because it should be a good opportunity to make some money selling a product that converts like crazy. If you want to sign up as an affiliate, here’s the affiliate sign up page. It’s not quite all there yet but you can sign up as an affiliate. More tools will be added as the launch date comes closer.

An unexpected result of the success of The Autopilot Cash Formula test launch is that The Wordpress Classroom has gained momentum as well. I haven’t been promoting it but people started buying it again because they wanted to see what else I had to offer. It’s been really amazing. I have now decided that after my full launch of The Autopilot Cash Formula, I’m going to revamp and update all of the videos within the Wordpress Classroom. I’ll probably add about 10 more videos based on common questions and boost the price once again. I’ll continue to sell it at the current price for now but I think I could relaunch it at somewhere around $97… We’ll see. I’d love to hear some opinions on this.

Due to the success I’ve been seeing, I went out and upgraded my tools. I bought myself a brand new iMac and a brand new Netbook. The iMac is amazing for editing videos. I have no idea how I ever did video without my Mac now. My Netbook is just perfect for when I’m on the road. I can still respond to e-mails and chat over Skype from anywhere in the world. I feel like I’m really in the modern age now.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on. I really do have a good sized list of blog posts that will be coming up. I’m going to start getting deeper and deeper in to list building techniques as well as blogging.

Please leave some comments. What would you like to read? Did you go to Vegas? Etc… I want to hear from you!

I don’t promote many products to my mailing list. I usually just promote free stuff that will give my subscribers value. It’s usually free eBooks, free videos tutorials, free apps, and things like that. Well Mike Filsaime is relaunching his amazing product called The 7 Figure Code. He’s actually giving it away for free.

I decided that I would try my hand at promoting a launch. This is the first time I’ve ever done it before. I had no idea how my list would respond. I figured it would be good because Mike is giving away a free video to check out immediately. I never imagined that I would end up in the top 10 for generating leads!

He posted today the leaders that are promoting the product… I managed to top a bunch of really big name players. I’m really excited about this. I had no idea that my list was capable of actually being a “player” in the launch game.

Anyway, just wanted to make a quick post because I’m excited.

So I woke up this morning and jumped over to my blog. I noticed that my theme was still installed and that I could still log in to my dashboard but that there were no posts on my front page. All I saw was a “Page Not Found” error. I logged in to my dashboard and saw that every single post and page that I have ever created had been deleted. I have no idea how this happened but everything was gone. The database that held all of the information on my blog had apparently crashed. I freaked out a little bit and then remembered that I had taken some actions to safeguard against situations like this. I spent about 5 minutes reloading my last backup and everything was back to normal again. I may have lost one or two comments that may have come in over night but, for the most part, it’s like it had never happened.

It is scary because if I hadn’t have taken a few certain actions a few weeks ago, I would have been unable to recover my blog. I figured that there are probably a lot of bloggers out there that may not know how to backup their blog or how to recover their blog from a backup. It is really scary because your blog CAN go down at any time for no apparent reason whatsoever! Read this post and maybe you can put yourself in a situation where a database crash is nothing more than a 5 minute fix.

The very first thing that you should do is download and install the WP-DB-Backup plugin for wordpress. It’s a free plugin and can usually be searched for and installed from directly inside your Wordpress Dashboard. Get that installed today. Once it’s installed set it up to backup daily and send you an e-mail with the backup. By doing this, you can jump back to any point in time and recover all the information that crashed. If you don’t update very frequently, you can also opt to backup weekly. I prefer daily because I know I can restore comments from the previous day as well.

Now… If your blog ever goes down and you have been doing a good job of backing it up, here is how you restore your blog.

1. Login in to your CPanel account and scroll down until you find phpMyAdmin

2. Find the database that your blog is installed on. The backup files that are sent to you from WP-DB-Backup will share the same name as the database you need to recover. So if you are unsure of which database to open, refer to the filename of your backup file.

3. Click on the tab that says import at the top of the new screen that just opened.

4. Click on “choose file” and find the backup file that you are going to use to restore your blog.

That should do it. Your blog should be back in all of its glory. Having a database failure can be extremely scary! Fortunately, if you take the right precautions from the beginning, it can be a very quick and painless fix. If you only have one plugin installed for your blog, make sure that it is a backup plugin. It will save you someday!

Please feel free to make comments. Have you had your blog crash? Do you have any questions about making sure you are protected against your blog crashing?

I know this has nothing to do with internet marketing or blogging but I just thought I’d share. My wife and I got a new puppy. She’s a black lab mix and she’s about 8 weeks old. We named her Ari. Here’s a video of the first day we brought her home.

A couple of weeks ago I was tagged to write 25 things about myself that most people don?t know. For whatever reason, I just found out about this the other day. So now here it is. One thing that I thought was interesting to note is that I am typing this on a Thursday morning at 10:41 am from the lake next to my house. I?m just leaning against a tree in the shade and typing. Now this is the lifestyle that I quit my job for. Anyway, here?s the list?

1. I used to play guitar in a band. We were a rock band and we played a lot of shows. The largest crowd that I ever played in front of was 5,000 people. We were called Four Chambered Story and we were a punk band that screamed a lot.

2. In the winter time, I take my Suzuki Samurai out to the Borrego Desert and 4 wheel drive around the dunes. It is great because, unlike a motorcycle, my wife and I can ride side by side in the same vehicle.

3. When I was in middle school and high school I played basketball but I?m not a huge fan of watching basketball on TV. I tend to root the Los Angeles Lakers once they get in to the playoffs.

4. My favorite sport to watch is (American) Football and I am a huge fan on the San Diego Chargers. I am writing this at the beginning of football season and we are supposed to have one of the best teams in the league this year. I can?t wait!

5. I have a dog named Alfie and he is a mix breed terrier. We rescued him from an animal shelter and we still don?t really know what breeds he has in him.

6. I have two cats. I have a big white cat named Mickey and a little black cat named Thursday.

7. I own my own home. My wife and I bought it about one year ago when I was 25 years old and she was 24.

8. I was recently married. My wife, Alana, and I got married in May of 2009 and we went on our honeymoon in Cozumel, Mexico.

9. My two favorite shows on television are Dexter on Cinemax and Entourage on HBO. I have never missed an episode of either one of those.

10. My absolute favorite band of all time has always been Blink 182. I listened to them throughout high school and they were the first concert that I ever saw. I saw them in a little tiny venue here in San Diego when they were just a little local band that no one had heard of yet.

11. I used to ride quads and motorcycles frequently in the desert until an incident when Joe Fier and I collided. Since then, I?ve pretty much stuck to just off-roading the Samurai.

12. Growing up, my dream job was to be a jet pilot. My wall was covered with posters of jets and I had a jet bedspread. Somewhere along the line, I became fascinated with entrepreneurship and started focusing on learning business.

13. Two of my favorite movies of all time are Happy Gilmore and The Boondock Saints. I have probably seen both of those movies twenty times each. They never seem to get old.

14. I learned computer programming at the age of 10 years old. My neighbor?s mom was a computer programmer and she loved to teach us how to make simple programs in Qbasic. It always fascinated me and I continued to learn more and more programming languages as I got older. I have never taken a computer class in my life.

15. I created my first website at the age of 15. I used to create websites on Angelfire and GeoCities about my favorite video games at the time. I was even hired to develop a business website around that same time. I have always created websites using Notepad and, to this day, I wouldn?t think of using anything else. (Other than Wordpress for blogs)

16. I started experimenting with internet marketing back in 2006. A customer at my previous employer turned me on to a site called ShoeMoney.com. From that point on, I have always been in and out of experimenting with making money online.

17. My first blog ever was about personal finance and entrepreneurship. It?s still online today because it still makes money every month. It hasn?t been updated in quite a while, however. You can find it at HowIWillBeRich.com

18. The only country that I have ever been to outside of the United States is Mexico. It?s actually a 20 minute drive from my house. I want to pretty much see the whole world some day but I just haven?t gotten around to seeing very much yet.

19. I have a very extensive collection of vinyl records. I mainly collect classic rock. I even have records hanging on the wall in my office. Some of my favorites in my collection are Pink Floyd?s Dark Side of the Moon, Boston?s greatest hits, and The Beatles White Album.

20. My favorite book of all time is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I have probably read it three times now and I have bought it on audio cd to listen to it in my car as well.

21. I am a huge fan of Mexican food. I probably eat burritos at least 4 days per week. When you live in San Diego, and you are this close to the border, Mexican food is everywhere.

22. I used to be a huge video game nerd growing up (as if you couldn?t tell by my fascination with computer programming and creating websites). My two favorite games were Sid Meier?s Civilization and StarCraft. I still play both of those games to this day when I am bored.

23. As of writing this, I am two weeks away from finishing a college degree. My degree is a Bachelors of Science in Finance of all things. I have always been good with numbers and accounting so it seemed like a natural choice. I wanted to learn how to manage investments better and make financially sound decisions.

24. I own a ski boat with my dad. We like to go to the Colorado river during the summer. I am usually the driver and my wife loves to wakeboard.

25. My number one goal in life is to be known by people. I want to be someone that leaves a mark. Even if I am someone who is known online, I will be happy. I strive to be the next Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime, Rich Schefren or John Reese. I just want people to have learned something from me and to reference my name when they talk about how they got their start. It?s a lofty goal, but it?s what I strive for.

Those are the 25 things about me. Most of them I haven?t really shared with anyone. Please feel free to leave your comments and I encourage anyone to make the same post on their blogs. I love learning about other people.

BTW, 25 things is a really big number once you get started. It?s really hard to come up with that much!