Earlier today I decided to take a little stroll down memory lane… I started this blog in July of 2009 and I decided that it would kind of be cool to go back through and read my old posts. Sometimes I really take for granted how far I’ve come. Reading through my old posts literally brought tears to my eyes. Just remembering back to some of my early struggles and putting myself back in to places where I got so excited about things that I’d now probably consider fairly insignificant. Back then it was those small triumphs that kept me driving forward. It was those little wins here and there that kept the belief in my mind that I could be successful in business on my own.

I read one of my early posts where I described how excited I was to have 61 subscribers on a mailing list. Today I have over 20,000 subscribers and it probably grows between 50-100 subscribers every single day. I read a post about the day that I finally knew I was going to make it… I had made $300 over a three week period… In another post I talk about how The WordPress Classroom was such a huge success because I officially had 20 members. A couple of days ago the WordPress Classroom passed 1,200 members.

I hope you enjoy my blog and I hope that reading my posts has helped you in some way or another. What I never realized in the past is how much of a huge impact my blog posts would make on me in the future. Reading back through my blog and imagining the scale at which my business has grown over the past year and half has really hit me like a hammer. I’ve come a long way! I will never take for granted how I started. If I haven’t been keeping this blog over the past 18 months, I don’t even know if I would have really taken this step back to really reflect on my progress.

As a funny little side note, I found this image of what The WordPress Classroom looked like when I first opened it up. I’m actually curious to find out if there’s anyone reading my blog who was actually a member back when this is what the WordPress Classroom looked like… It’s definitely come a long way!

Those were my awesome Photoshop skills back before I learned that I should hire people to do that stuff for me. I always read that I needed to outsource but was always afraid to incur the expense. I know a lot of people are afraid of spending money to get their online business going before they’re actually making money but take my word for it… Learn to leverage other people’s skills and you will reach your goals so much faster than if you attempt to do it all yourself.

So what I want to do in this portion of my blog is look at the goals I set for 2010 and hold myself accountable. I’ll admit right now that I didn’t meet every single one of them but I did come damn close… So here it goes.

2010 Goals Recap and score card

Business Goals:

• Launch my new product (6 figures in sales) February Launch – I launched the Autopilot Cash Formula in April of 2010. I was a little behind schedule and the launch fell slightly short of hitting the six figure mark (but not by much).
• Build my list to over 20,000 subscribers – I originally set a goal of passing 10,000 subscribers but a few people told me that I wasn’t shooting high enough. I set my sights on 20,000 instead and managed to pass that number in October.
• Create at least one blog post per week - Failed miserably. I got so caught up in the other aspects of my business that I completely neglected my blog. Towards the end of the year I managed to start to pick up the pace again.
• Promote more product launches – I definitely promoted some great product launches. My philosophies changed a bit over the course of the year. It’s no longer a goal to promote a ton of product launches. It’s now my goal to get the products that I find will be the most beneficial to my followers in front of them. This mindset shift naturally means less promoting other people’s products.
• Rank #1 in at least one launch lead contest - I didn’t hit #1 on any leaderboards. I came in 7th when Josh launched Easy Video Player, 7th when Mike Filsaime launched AffiliateDotCom and 7th when Adeel Chowdry launched Hyper Facebook Traffic. (The later two I promoted with Josh Bartlett) I seem to be stuck at 7… But again, my mindset shifted away from promotions and I didn’t promote as many launches as I actually could have.
• Round up an army of affiliates to promote current and future products – I definitely did this. When I launched Autopilot Cash Formula in April, I had over 500 affiliates on board. I currently have around 300 affiliates actively promoting The WordPress Classroom.
• Launch a monthly membership site to build a recurring income - I switched the model of the WordPress Classroom from a one time fee to a monthly membership. This has been a huge success and everyone seems to agree that I still over-deliver for the price! I also partnered with Josh Bartlett to launch the Elite Marketing Foundation. This is another monthly membership site that is growing rapidly.
• Set up a coaching program with a partner – The Elite Marketing Foundation with Josh is the beginning phase of the coaching. We are working together to help as many people through mastermind calls and webinars as possible.
• Attend at least 4 internet marketing related seminars – Done and Done. I attended Affiliate Appreciation in Vegas in January, List Control in San Diego in May, the Info-Summit in Baltimore in November and AffiliateDotCom Live in Vegas in November. I made a ton of new contacts and have built some strong relationships. I also joined the local San Diego chapter of the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle which meets once per month.

Personal Goals

• Finish remodel of master bathroom - Finished this project January of 2010.
• Remodel guest bathroom - Finished this project January of 2010.
• Cut back on the sweets and the junk food - I basically created a whole new diet for myself that limits carbs and almost completely cuts out sugary foods. I’m still sticking with it. (Although I’ll admit I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times during periods of travel)
• Exercise at least 4 times per week - I managed to maintain a 5 day per week exercise schedule for a good part of the year. Once again, constant travel really interfered. (I was away from my home for a grand total of 10 weeks in 2010)
• Purchase a netbook - Bought a netbook, outgrew it, bought a MacBook and can’t live without it.
• Purchase a Jacuzzi – Still working on this one. Decided to spend money on travel and this was something I’ve sacrificed.
• Make enough income that wife is comfortable leaving her job - We’re still working on this one as well. Although my income has probably gotten to a point where she can safely quit, it’s still a scary leap. We just haven’t felt comfortable enough to take that next step.

Goals for 2011

Business Goals

• Triple my current monthly income
• Build my list past 100,000 subscribers (Shooting for the stars)
• Launch a new membership site (More broad than just WordPress)
• Develop and launch a piece of software that makes life easier
• Introduce direct mail marketing in to my business
• Create one new piece of content every day / 5 days per week (This will be hard!)
• Speak live at at least one live event
• Attend a minimum of 4 more marketing events
• Write a book on my journey so far

Personal Goals

• Stick with my low-carb / low-sugar diet
• 6 pack abs by June (Never had them in my life. This is the year)
• Leave the country at least twice
• Attend the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand in November
• Begin taking Improv Comedy classes in March
• Become a regular ToastMasters attendee (Starting tonight)
• Alana finally quits her job
• Buy a new house (Minimum 4 bedrooms)

As you can see, I’m setting my goals quite high. I’ve learned that when it comes to goal setting I need to set my goals for a notch past what I conceive myself capable of. I’d rather set a goal of a 100,000 mailing list and fail because I only hit 98,000 than set a goal of 30,000 and hit it and stop trying. I don’t think any of my goals are completely out of reach if I do everything that I know that I need to do. If I stick with the plan that I’m laying out for myself, every single item on my list should be a definitive success this time next year.

What are your 2011 goals? Is there any advice you’d give me in achieving my goals? I want to hear from you! Your feedback is what keeps me going.

Thanks so much and I can’t wait to hear what everyone else is striving to accomplish this year.

After a lot of thinking and a lot of research, I decided that I was basically going to reinvent my blog. I basically decided I’m going to start over and take a completely different approach altogether.

The beginning of this is the complete redesign that you are currently looking at. I think it’s neat and clean and not too cluttered. I’d love to hear your opinions on it but I really like it.

I’m taking a brand new approach to how I market my blog as well. I’m going to put much more time and emphasis in to social marketing and making sure my blog is present everywhere. I’ve also brought a social element in to my blog with the Flickr photos in the sidebar as well as the new social media buttons across the top. On top of that, I started using a cool new tool that ensures my blog posts are syndicated across all of the popular social networks automatically. (I’ll talk about this tool in one of my next blog posts)

In regards to the questions that I asked a few weeks ago… I’ve made a few decisions on those. Some people didn’t like the idea of me discussing non-blogging / non-marketing topics, however, the overwhelming majority wanted to hear it all. Most people also believed that anywhere between three posts per week to one post per day was acceptable. However, anything beyond one post per day was too much and anything less than one post per week was too little.

To be pretty blunt… my decision is that I’m pretty much going to post what I want, when I want. If I’m in the mood to talk about health and fitness on my blog, I’m going to do it. The people who aren’t interested in hearing about it can simply skip that post and decide not to read it and jump back over when a post is more relevant to them. As far as frequency, I will probably rarely exceed one per day but I’m going to make an effort to do somewhere around five per week.

I’m going to worry less about the length of posts and more about just delivering cool content, ideas, stories, tools, videos, and more. I used to e-mail everyone whenever I did a new blog post. However, since I’m going to up the frequency of my posting, I’m probably not going to e-mail about every single blog post. I want to put more focus on getting people to subscribe to this blog through their favorite RSS readers. This will ensure that you’re always up to date with my latest posts every day. See the yellow button at the top of the page that says “Subscribe RSS”? If you click on that, you can subscribe to my blog with a favorite RSS reader or even have my latest blog posts sent to you via e-mail. It will be a great way to make sure your always up to date with what I have to say. (Trust me. I have a lot to say.)

Some upcoming blog post ideas:

• What blog readers really want to read (It’s not “how-to” articles).
• The fastest way to encourage loads of interaction on your blog.
• Christmas gift ideas for the bloggers and marketers in your life.
• Instant credibility and visibility by using this one idea.
• My productivity secrets. (This will probably be a long one)
• My favorite tools to integrate social marketing with my blog.

My list is several pages long… These are just a few ideas to expect over the next week and a half or so…

I always love hearing your thoughts and feedback. Please a comment below because I absolutely love reading what you have to say. Also… Please sign up as an RSS subscriber to ensure that you get all of my upcoming posts delivered to you. I promise that I will make it worth your while!

Easy Video Player / Elite Marketing Foundation
Recently I formed a new business with my long time friend, Josh Bartlett. We are in the process of creating a membership called The Elite Marketing Foundation. There’s already a lot of buzz going around the industry about this because we have several big name marketers lined up to take part and help create content. This is going to be a pretty ground-breaking program. Josh and I share the same business philosophies and ethics and we are going to aim to teach the fact that you can be a hugely successful marketer and be ethical at the same time. To teach this, we are going to be implementing some brand new technology that tracks progress, awards achievements, and continually encourages action. It will be set up in a way that pretty much guarantees that any person who takes action and follows through will succeed.

Anyway, before the Elite Marketing Foundation is officially released, I teamed up with Josh to help him make his launch of Easy Video Player as huge as possible. The new version of EVP has so many new features that I’m not even going to begin to explain them all. There’s just too many to list. Easy Video Player will be officially released on October 19th and anyone who grabs it will get a first look in to the Elite Marketing Foundation. That will be our official unveiling.

Why am I telling you all this? Well first off, I want you to be as excited about the Elite Marketing Foundation and Easy Video Player as I am and second off, I would love to see you help promote Easy Video Player. I won’t go in to detail here about how much money it can make you or how cool all the new features are… If you are interested in helping out check out this page that explains everything.

Autopilot Cash Formula is Closing For Good
Most of you have already grabbed the Autopilot Cash Formula and all of the kind feedback has been amazing. However, October 8th will be the last day that this program will be available. I am shutting the doors for good and I don’t think I will ever reopen them.

I know you’re probably thinking that this is some sort of scarcity tactic but it’s really not. I have decided that I am going to simplify my business. From this point on, I will have two flagship products. I am going to continue to focus on The WordPress Classroom (The program that started it all for me) and the Elite Marketing Foundation (my new joint venture with Josh). So in order to simplify, I’m going to lower the price a little and then leave sales open for the next week or so before closing it down for good.

Now… That basically concludes the announcement portion of this post. Now to the things that I need your opinion on

Do you care about my health?
About 3 1/2 weeks ago I discovered an online health program. I’m not going to mention the name of the product right now but it was being promoted by some really big name marketers. My health has been something that I’ve let slip over the past year or so since I quit my job. I stopped working out and I ate crap food constantly. Not unexpectedly, I packed on some pounds…

I found this product and decided, “yea… I’m going to start eating healthy again and I’m going to follow this exercise regimen. I’ve stuck with this consistently for around 3 1/2 weeks now and I’ve already noticed some great results. My friends and family think I’m crazy because I’ve sacrificed a lot of delicious foods and I’ve never missed a day working out.

I recently came to the conclusion that maintaining your health is almost identical to building and maintaining a successful online business. The same philosophies apply. It is all about discipline. If you have the discipline to do exactly what you know you need to do every single day, you will reach your goals. Don’t get sidetracked and always keep your eyes on the end goal and you will see results. Discipline is the key to success in anything you do. I can say with almost 100% certainty that most people who haven’t made it online, haven’t made it because they haven’t maintained the proper discipline to do everything that they know they should be doing every single day…

Anyway, before I go off on a rant here… My question to you is, do you care or would you be interested in hearing about my successes and struggles with fitness and becoming as healthy as I can be? I know you probably think that it has little to do with blogging or marketing but I tend think differently. I think it all ties together. I may even share the exact program I’m on now and possibly (scary) before & after photos.

I’d love to hear your opinions on the idea.

How often should a blogger post?
This is a strange question for me to ask because well… I run the WordPress Classroom. However, this is something that I’ve really struggled with. I have lots of great ideas for blog posts but I’m afraid to post too frequently.

On one hand, I can post constantly. I probably have enough ideas to make one post per day. However, if I do that, I’m afraid people will get overwhelmed. I won’t have as big of an audience per post. On the other hand, if I only post about once per month, I get a ton of comments and a ton of feedback on every single post. Everything I do gets a ton of exposure, however, I’m not sharing as much content as I would like to. It’s been a tough internal debate.

I would love to hear your feedback on how often someone should post. How often would you want to hear from me? Once per month, once per week, a few times per week? What do you think? Let’s get a discussion going about this specific topic because I really think that this is a common struggle.

If you want to hear from me a few times per week on this blog, just let me know. I just want to make sure you’ll keep coming back and reading what I have to say and leaving awesome comments. If you can promise me that, I’ll make sure to share with you more often and provide as much value as possible.

Do you want to meet up?
Last but not least, I just wanted to mention that I’m going to be hitting a couple seminars in November. If you want to meet up and talk business, let me know. Leave comments if you are going to be at either of these events.

I’ll be at the info-summit in Baltimore between November 11th and November 14th and I will be at AffiliateDotCom Live in Las Vegas between November 19th and November 21st. If you’re interested in meeting up and talking biz, just let me know. We can definitely work something out.

Quick Little Poll
Can you do me a huge favor and answer these questions in a comment below?
1) Would you be interested in hearing more about my journey to get healthy?
2) How often would you want to hear from me on this blog?
3) Will you be at info-summit or AffiliateDotCom Live?

Thanks so much and I can’t wait to read your comments. I will do my best to respond to everyone who posts!

As of this month, my blog has now been online for one year. In fact, my first post ever was on July 1st, 2009. It wasn’t until August of 2009, however, that I really started to make some good money online. I had several blogs running all over the internet that were making me a few hundred dollars per month total but the real income didn’t start coming until August of last year.

There was actually one simple thing that I started doing that turned everything around for me. In fact, the recent changes that I’ve made to my business and my online philosophies have been because I have been looking back on how I got to where I am today. My new standards and ideals are less of a reinvention and more of me just getting back to my roots.

The thing that I really started to do in July of last year that really paid off is that I started helping people… And I don’t mean that I charged for every piece of advice that I gave. I mean that I actively went in to forums and hunted down people that were looking for help. When I found them, I wrote up long explanations and, sometimes, even recorded videos of how they can solve their problem.

My timeline looked something like this:

2006-2009 – I made lots of blogs and built them to where they were making a combined total of a couple hundred dollars per month. This was not enough to pay the bills and when I lost my job in May of ’09, this was not going to cut it.

May 2009 – I discovered The Warrior Forum. I began to jump from one “make money online” method to another. I also began actively searching out people that had questions related to WordPress and blogging. I wrote long replies and tried to do whatever I could to help them solve their problems. I figured that if there was anything that I felt like I was an authority in, it was WordPress and blogging.

July 2009 – This is where things started to get exciting! I joined Alex Jeffrey’s coaching program using a credit card because I did not have the money in the bank to pay up front. One of the first things that Alex taught right in the beginning is that everyone needs to build a blog. The coaching program was great but there wasn’t a lot of explanation on exactly how to set up a blog…

This worked out perfect for me! I joined the right program at the right time. I jumped right in to the forum on day one and started offering to help anyone who needed it. I was able to help a very large majority of his students get their blogs up and cranking. I was the most active person in that forum.

I continued to record more and more videos for people so that I wouldn’t have to explain things twice. Eventually, I registered TheWordpressClassroom.com. I now had a place to send them to watch my training videos and collect opt-ins at the same time.

July was also the month that I set up MatthewWolfe.com. I wanted another venue to teach people but I wanted it to be a place where I can expand my teachings beyond just WordPress. MatthewWolfe.com allowed me to share my goals, my progress, my personal stories, and the general internet marketing tips that I’ve been learning along the way.

Since I was constantly going out of my way to help others, they reciprocated by visiting my blog, reading my ramblings, and leaving comments and feedback. This made my blog appear to be a very popular place right from the start. My search engine rankings climbed and when random visitors popped in off the search engines, they saw all of the of action going on. They decided this was a happening blog and they kept coming back. This created a momentum that has caused my blog to just keep on growing…

August 2009 – I opened the doors to the WordPress Classroom. I had no concept of what a launch was at this point… I literally just put the buy-now button up and started announcing it in the forums, on my blog, and to the very small mailing list that I had at the time (something like 300 subscribers).

I opened the doors late at night on August 1st, 2009. When I woke up in the morning on August 2nd, I looked in my Paypal account and started jumping up and down and dancing like crazy. I had 20 people join The WordPress Classroom over night. That was the first time that I ever made more than $100 in a single day online. This wasn’t a million dollar launch and I still haven’t paid off my mortgage but this was the day that I realized that I was going to have a legitimate online business. I knew from that point, that this would turn in to something much bigger.

From that point on it’s been somewhat of a blur. I kept working on more and more ways to get people to visit the site. I was introduced to the concepts of things like adswaps and JV giveaways. I also learned that I could sell The WordPress Classroom on the Warrior Forum, where I had originally gotten my start, and get it in front of a very targeted audience. That was a huge revelation for me and it eventually led to my first $1,000 day.

In April of this year, I launched The Autopilot Cash Formula which basically taught people the business model behind The WordPress Classroom. This time I followed the full launch process and had another huge success. It was a great product and it received a great reception but I always felt like The WordPress Classroom was my baby… If it wasn’t for me trying to teach people WordPress, I wouldn’t be anywhere today…

This leads me to where I am now. I have completely decided to go back to my roots. Hopefully, this has become evident by the fact that I’ve refocused my e-mail campaigns to almost nothing but cool free content. I’ve also shifted the majority of my focus on what got me to where I am today… The WordPress Classroom.

The WordPress Classroom has come a long way! It has just passed 750 members. To make things even better, I don’t think I’ve ever had one person tell me that they were unhappy with it.

Just this last week, I opened the WordPress Classroom 2.0 which features new videos, new themes, a new layout, and, best of all, a brand new forum where myself and the members can do the one main thing that got me to where I am today… Help people.

If you are interested in The WordPress Classroom, you can learn more by clicking this link. Check out the new design and the free videos that I’ve provided. If you feel like upgrading, there’s a special bonus offer in there too.

I am so grateful to be where I am today and if you intend to make a good living online, the best advice that I can give is to help as many people as possible. I give you my 100% guarantee that it will pay off!

“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

If you like this post, do me a huge favor and click the “like” button. Please leave your comments. I love reading your feedback!

I have so many things I wanted to talk about and, to be honest, I really couldn’t think of a more clever title. So that’s what you get…

Ireland
Many people may have noticed that I wasn’t very active during the month of May. I think I only had one blog post, I only mailed out to my list a couple of times total, and I haven’t really been promoting anything. I basically took about 3 weeks off, away from my computer.

My wife and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary on May 23rd and, coincidentally, May 21st was the one year anniversary of the day that I quit my day job. Neither my wife or I had ever left North America so we hopped on a plane to visit the number one place my wife most wanted to travel, Ireland. We had a wonderful time and it was an amazing way to spend our first anniversary. Had I still been in my previous job, I would have never been able to get that time away.

I won’t go in to too much detail about my trip. Since I’m a life-long computer nerd, I created a travel blog on the flight over there. Both my wife and I made posts pretty much everyday. So if you are interested in what we did and how are trip went, you can visit our Travel Blog Here.

Frank Kern
We were home from Ireland for about three days before my good buddy, Josh Bartlett, came to town from New Zealand. He flew all the way over to attend Frank Kern’s list control seminar with myself and good ole Joe Fier.

We spent the weekend networking with some really cool IMers and listening to some great seminars. I think the highlights of seminar were getting to hear Bill Glazer speak as well as an amazing presentation by Jordan Belfort (AKA The Wolf of Wall Street). Jordan ran an investment firm the got busted for doing some shady  stuff. If you’ve ever seen the movie Boiler Room… That movie was loosely based around his business. Anyway, there’s now a huge film in production with Leo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese all about his life and his business. This guy has gotten his life together and is now crazy passionate about helping businesses. His presentation was the best of the seminar.

Spending a week with Josh, hanging out at these seminars, and networking with all these people has really given me a lot to talk about. I have so many ideas and so many things that I would love to teach, I don’t even know where to start.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to get out to an IM seminar, you absolutely have to. The networking opportunities are usually worth the cost of the seminar alone. I’ve already picked out about 3 more that I’d like to get to this year.

Here’s some pictures of some of the people that I had the opportunity to meet and talk to…

This is me with Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Here’s me with the man himself, Frank Kern. Funny picture though (I was looking at the wrong camera)

This is me with Mike Koenigs, one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. You may know Mike as the creator of Traffic Geyser or even more recently from his Main Street Marketing launch. Awesome guy!

Josh Bartlett, Jeremy Schoemaker, Joe Fier, and myself.

Me hanging out with Jason Moffatt

Joe Fier, Josh Bartlett and Myself right before a Padre game at Petco park. The Padres smashed the New York Mets 18-6.

Public Speaking
So public speaking is one of those things that I’ve never been good at. After going to a few seminars and speaking to a lot of people, I’ve decided that it’s a skill that I should learn. So despite the fact that this blog was started as an Internet Marketing and Blogging site, I may veer off here and there and talk about my journey to become a better public speaker.

This little announcement obviously wasn’t worth it’s own post so I thought I’d throw it in here.

I just did my first live webinar last month, however, I didn’t do most of the speaking and I was staring at a computer screen as opposed to staring at a crowed of people. It was a step closer but my goal is to eventually feel comfortable and at home in front of a large seminar crowed. I’ll get there. I have some ideas of how I’m going to go about doing this. So bare with me if I veer of course on the blog a little here and there.

What to expect….
I mentioned earlier that I have so many ideas of things to talk about now. I did a couple of surveys to customers of my WordPress Classroom and customers of my Autopilot Cash Formula. I asked them about their biggest sticking points and maybe areas where they felt my products may have been a little flat. I received some amazing feedback! I have a really good feel for what type of things everyone is looking for.

What I’m going to do now is I’m going to go back through both programs and create a ton of new videos for each system. I’m going to make sure any gaps are filled and that my programs are some of the best resources you can find on the internet for their respective topics. If you’re already a member, I’m not going to charge any more for any of the additional content. It’s just my way of saying thank you for being a customer.

With that being said, I’m also planning on addressing a ton of the stuff that people are looking for here on my blog. I’ve got loads of tips and techniques that I’m going to give away on this site that will just blow you away. I literally can’t wait to share them.

Here are some the topics I’ll be talking about over the next couple of weeks.

• Why subscribers aren’t as important as most people will have you believe.
• Everything that’s wrong with Internet Marketers these days. (This may be a controversial viewpoint)
• Secret traffic sources that few people talk about.
• What I would do if I started my business over. (The direction I will eventually head in)
• How I keep myself moving forward (My productivity secrets)

And so many more… I don’t want to list all of my post ideas yet and I have intentionally left those ideas vague. I can promise you though, that the stuff that I’m about to talk about is stuff you probably won’t find any other marketers talking about. So stick around, you will love this stuff.

Please leave some comments and feedback. I love hearing your thoughts…

Basically, if you haven’t heard, the Autopilot Cash Formula is the exact business model that I’ve used to build my business in to five figures per month. I’ve done it in such a short amount of time too… Honestly… Go back to the early posts on my blog and read what I was writing about. Read the early goals that I had set for myself. I was striving to reach 2,000 subscribers and $100 per day. Here I am, nine months later, and I’ve crushed every goal that I’ve set for myself and I’m launching a product that teaches people how to do it.

I am extremely overwhelmed and overjoyed with all of the support that I’ve received over the months. I have the most amazing readers/partners/friends!

Look back through my blog and look at the last screenshot I took from my mailing list… Here’s the latest screenshot:

I’ve gone quite a long way! Thanks so much for the continued support. I will always do my best to try to overdeliver. I don’t believe in hype and I don’t believe in the B.S. exaggerated claims. You will never ever find me doing that!

You guys are amazing. I hope this anxious, nervous, excited feeling in my stomach goes away soon so I can enjoy this launch day!

Here’s the link if you want to learn more…

The Autopilot Cash Formula

Feel free to leave your feedback and comments. Checking my blog’s comments is the favorite part of my day!

Thanks again. You are all amazing!

Matt Wolfe

I wanted to give an update about my launch.

As most of you already know, I’m doing my first major launch with my Autopilot Cash Formula. I did launch The WordPress Classroom last year. But that was on a very small scale compared to this.

What I’ve learned so far… Trying to do a major launch is not easy at all. It requires many sleepless nights, lots of conversations with lots of people I don’t know, and flat out working my butt off to make sure things are going to flow smoothly come launch day.

As I get deeper and deeper in to this, I realize that there are a lot of little aspects that I never even thought about coming in to this. There’s so many little tiny details that can so easily be overlooked that could be the difference between a successful launch and a flop. I’m still hoping that I’m not missing any of these points. I don’t know if I can even know until launch day is here.

If you saw my whiteboard right now, I have a massive list of things that I still need to get done between now and this Thursday (The start of prelaunch for my product). Once I clear that list, a new list goes up of all the things that must be completed before launch date on the 15th.

It’s definitely very hectic. I’m running on very little sleep these days because I’m testing and tweaking every little aspect of this launch. I’m responding to every e-mail from every potential affiliate to make sure this launch will be just as successful for them as I hope it’s going to be for me. I’m pulling my hair out staring at html and php code, trying to fix minor bugs and issues.

To be 100% honest… I would not have it any other way!

It’s funny because internet marketers (at least the circle that I run in) are some of the only people I know that will work 80 hours per week to get their business set up so that they can “quit their day job”. Sure, I know methods where I can spend 20 minutes per day and make enough money to not have to work another job. But I love this stuff so much and I am so driven and passionate about growing my business that I obsess over this and spend 75% percent of the time that I’m awake at my computer trying to build upon what I’ve already created.

Yes, The Autopilot Cash Formula will teach you how I’ve made thousands per month with 20 minutes per day. I’m not exaggerating there. But I believe that the people that are truly going to make it far in this business, and that will really rise above the rest, are the people that are happy with the money they can make in 20 minutes per day but are not satisfied stopping there.

I honestly do have days where I spend 20 minutes working and then head out to go snowboarding. I have had days where I’ve gone to the beach with a laptop, finished my work quickly, and spent the rest of the day playing. I want everyone to be able to enjoy that lifestyle.

True internet marketers… The ones that really succeed, however, are the ones that spend 10 hours per day working on their business. Not because they have to, but because they want to.  I absolutely love what I do and sometimes wish there were more hours in the day that I could spend working on building my business.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent there… (It IS almost 2 in the morning here)

My launch looks to be destined for success. I’m not one to count my chickens before they hatch (I think that’s the term) but I am definitely optimistic.

I’m approaching 500 affiliates on board to help me promote this, including a lot of BIG names. I’ve got some of the “gurus” on board to really back me on this.

I hired one of the best copywriters in the business to make sure my sales copy gets people as excited about the product as I am.

I have some of the best prelaunch content I could possibly come up with. Products that I have sold in the past, I’m just giving away to get people excited about the product. I’m basically giving people the first few steps in the process for free just to get them excited about what’s in store.

I’ve been interviewed by several people so that my name is out there and my credibility is growing. (I still have room for a couple more interviews if anyone is interested)

Now I’m in a mode where I’m just doing whatever I can to help affiliates out. I’m taking suggestions for tools, banners, e-mails, etc. so that affiliates have the absolute most potential to succeed. I’ve even given out a bunch of free articles that people can use to submit to article directories to help promote their affiliate link.

I think I’m pretty much leaving no stone unturned with this one.

Anyways, if you have any questions about launching a product, my launch, or tools to help promote as an affiliate, please leave a comment below. I am really loving all of the support that I’ve been getting and I think everyone who is involved with this has the potential to be really successful!

If you haven’t signed up as an affiliate yet, do so here.

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 April 15th, 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 set some goals for myself back in July of this year and I crushed every single one of them. I don’t want this post to come off as me bragging but I really am proud of what I have managed to accomplish.

I’m not sure how many people have read my original story. I will give a quick summary.

My family owned are own business that made window coverings. We ran the business for about 12 years. The economy hit the business hard and, instead of filing for bankruptcy, we opted to sell the company. The new owner kept most of my family on board but he was an insanely mean and abusive boss. From the day he took over, I knew that I needed to find a way out.

I was engaged to be married in May, I had just recently purchased my own home in November of 2008, and I absolutely hated my job. It seemed like the worst time in the world to leave.

In May of 2009, about 3 days before my wedding day, I decided that I was never going back. I would quit my job, go on my honeymoon, and come back to a fresh start. That’s exactly what I did.

It was scary for a little while. I applied for jobs all over town with no replies back and I was denied unemployment because I quit my job. I hunted all over the internet for answers to how I could make money online. I had been blogging for years and was making some income off of that but it was not nearly enough to cover all of my expenses. I had to figure something out.

I came across a coaching program in July of ’09 put on by Alex Jeffreys. I thought that this was the answer to what I was looking for. I put the $1,000 coaching course on a credit card and prayed that this guy could teach me how to make an income online.

The class was hugely beneficial but maybe not for the reasons you might assume. I did learn a lot from his coaching but most of it I already knew. He just helped reinforce what my goals and what my focus should be. The absolute biggest thing that I got out of this coaching was connections. A forum opened up and I made contact with some brilliant minds. These people helped me strategize what my focuses should be and how I should build my business. They made all the difference in the world. Josh Bartlett, David Chamberlain, David Walker, and Joe Fier (My inner circle), you guys are amazing and I appreciate everything you have done for me this year!

In August of ’09, I launched the WordPress Classroom. I didn’t expect a whole lot from it. I basically created it because I had so many people ask me questions about WordPress. Instead of explaining it over and over again, I just recorded videos and shot the videos over to people. Before I knew it, I had over 50 videos recorded. Josh (Bartlett) told me that I should try to sell the videos.

I put the offer up on the Warrior Forum as a WSO and I e-mailed my small list (about 150 at the time) with the details of the product launch.

I couldn’t believe it… It sold nearly 100 copies in the first week that I opened it up. It still continues to sell about 4 copies per day like clockwork.

While selling this product, I managed to build a mailing from close to 0 subscribers to close to 5,000 subscribers.

The last couple of months have been spent putting time in to creating a new product. It’s a combination of an ebook and a ton of videos. I really want to over-deliver on this and make a huge launch out of it. It should be a great way to kick off the new year.

Here’s a quick recap of 2009

So, as you can see, it’s been a pretty eventful year. I married my wife, broke free from my oppressive job, and built a small business that has managed to top the income of my previous job.

All that’s left to do now is to set some new goals to smash in 2010…

Goals for 2010

Here’s a list of the goals that I’m setting for myself by the end of the 2010. I’m going to analyze these goals closer and set deadlines, as well as rank them in order of importance. I’ll fill you in on all that in a later post.

Business Goals:

• Launch my new product (6 figures in sales) February Launch
• Build my list to over 20,000 subscribers
• Create at least one blog post per week (I’ve been slacking)
• Promote more product launches
• Rank #1 in at least one launch lead contest
• Round up an army of affiliates to promote current and future products
• Launch a monthly membership site to build a recurring income
• Set up a coaching program with a partner
• Attend at least 4 internet marketing related seminars

Personal Goals

• Finish remodel of master bathroom (It’s currently gutted)
• Remodel guest bathroom
• Cut back on the sweets and the junk food
• Exercise at least 4 times per week
• Purchase a netbook
• Purchase a Jacuzzi
• Make enough income that wife is comfortable leaving her job

As you can see, my goals haven’t changed dramatically from before. I still want to create a six figure and then a seven figure business. I still want my wife to quit her job. 2010 is the year I make it all happen.

What are your goals for 2010? Please comment. I’d love to hear from you. Maybe I can help you make them possible. We’ll never know unless you make yourself heard!

Here’s to an amazing 2010!

Matt Wolfe