My friend Paul of Kitchen Sink Marketing blog talks about how he is teaching 6th graders online marketing. It is so fun. When he told me about it I could hear how much he loves it in his blog. These kids are totally into it! They want to make money online. They have assignments to find unique domain names. Over 200 people have hit this blog post – probably from the kids and their families.

Too bad my son is too young to go to this class. We research poisonous snakes online and he loves Cartoon Network games. I haven’t yet gotten him to blog but he did send me his first email. I’m trying to think what he could write an ebook about – how to get your mom to give you a desert every single day??

Tomorrow I’m going to join Paul and teach the sixth graders how to blog! This should be fun, I can’t wait.

Also, tomorrow I’m attending a class by my friend John Stubbs, a personal coach. I’m creating the class blog. It’s so people don’t forget what happened and can learn from each other. I’m going to assign them to leave comments and tell everyone to tell what they got from the class. Ah, the many uses of blogs!

This was on the Never Eat Alone blog (Keith Ferrazzi), I guess it was a report of someone else having dinner withLandmark founder Werner Erhard (read that Wikipedia entry!).

Now, if there was ever an enigma or an eccentric he is it. The education has evolved over time and from what I understand not what it started out as. Anyway, if you want to attend an introduction with me in Salt Lake, I have about 4 more weeks to go.

Seriously, this was one of the more intellectually stimulating, interesting educations of my life. I have pretty much thought of it almost every day since I attended a few months ago. There’s something about reading about someone having dinner with Erhard that is surreal to me. For some reason I thought he was a figment of my imagination. I wonder if he twitters. If not, someone impersonate him quick. I’ll follow.

My friend Jim covers blogger Kathy Sierra and the death threats she got. Scoble is not going to blog for a week in protest. This is horrible and as you can see just keeps getting bigger. I can’t keep up! People have been twittering about it a lot.

David Letterman and Bill Clinton have joined Twitter. I’m trying to follow them but the site is so slow I can’t. Ok, I just added them. The problem is at least Bill Clinton’s is a spoof. You can’t tell who is real and who is the actual person and who is just pretending to be that person. That’s how I feel in Vegas: what is real here and what is facade?

Only Big Dreamers Need Apply

Even the title is a bit scary to consider. In my life I have dreamed big. I was probably the biggest dreamer you’ve ever known. I also worked pretty hard to realize my dreams. I married a dreamer, just like I wanted to. That dream didn’t turn out to be a great reality though. Dreams are pretty uninspiring when not acted upon. They can be dead ends. So honestly, it has been tempting to give up on my dreams. They however always push their way to the top even though they seem so impractical.

I dream of owning an energy efficient home that has a solar-heated hot tub in the big back yard. That yard has a stream, a bath house, and a vegetable and flower garden. There is a fireplace, a pitched room with an attic room, and a Toyota Prius in the driveway. I would entertain artists, friends, politicians, and the community in my home. There would be a lot of good food and conversation that leads to organizing to create a better world.

I dream of about 3 kids (with a great dad who is amazing) whose friends drop by after school. I want the entire lower level of my home to be a playroom with swings and games and a fridge full of bottled water and drinks. And a big screen for video games and online games. Most of all I want it to be a gathering place that is a lot of fun with lots of celebrations. It would be high and low tech mixed.

I dream of running for city council and representing my neighborhood. My big dream is that everyone in my community have safe and comfortable housing and for people to invest in their homes. I want the single parents or old folks and teenagers to feel that they have a backup when they need it. My even bigger dream is that there is no excuse for loneliness unless you choose it.

I want to be a published author of real books that never make it to the bargain basement. I want to print as many as will sell and no more or less. Then I’d like to teach people things that I write about with the intent to empower them in their lives and give life or their business more meaning. I see the internet as being a tool in doing that. I love when people find creativity and self expression and when it leads to them making money and feeling fulfilled.

I dream of taking an entire summer to tour Asia, stopping in Thailand and riding a rickshaw. I want to buzz around on a moped and hike in the mountains. In fact, I want to bring a rickshaw back with me, a pretty one like I found one day when I was surfing online.

Another dream that is funny is being an actress or a reporter for a radio station (like Dian Rehm on NPR). The acting one seems a long shot because I don’t memorize lines well.

When I’m older I dream of going back to school for a master’s degree in humanities. I want to be an artist, play the cello, and own a flower shop where I blog and write a newspaper column about all the stories I hear. As a fluke, I ended up working in a flower shop in college and just loved it. The stories! but the hours and the pay…

My biggest dream of all is what any hippy wants: world peace and love. Believe it or not, under this always busy business woman exterior is a hippie heart.

I’m not going to call on people specifically to share their dreams, but if you read this and feel any inspiration, please write your own list of dreams and link to mine.

Thanks to my new friend Wendy Piersall for her dreams. Have you noticed when someone thinks of dreams they picture clouds in the sky, not just clear blue (like the Twitter backdrop, which is rather dreamy)?

I’m used to the imbalance of the sexes in my profession. Paul Allen’s class didn’t have any women. He emailed a group of us asking if we wanted to participate to balance things out. I talked with a company today where there was one woman on the team (who graciously introduced herself). On Twitter, there are only 3 women in my group of over 50 friends and followers. I wonder if it’s just because internet marketing is mostly men? I believe the percentage of women and men online is slightly skewed towards women.

So I’m calling on women everywhere to Twitter. I know there are women who regularly read my blog. Try Twitter and add me as a friend (warning: it is more addicting than blogging!). I’m always happy to see I’m not the only female face in a sea of men. Nothing against the men. I wonder if there are more women twittering about other topics? Are there food bloggers twittering? I want to hear from you!

I put a news ticker on the site. It’s internet marketing news from Marketing Experiment. Internet marketing news and information is pretty much the subject of my blog. I would like to implement a nicer version but it’s technically challenging. I need some geek help since I don’t know javascript. It’s been quiet on the comments lately. Anyway, what do you think?

Jeremy Palmer’s email newsletters always fascinate me. I’ve interviewed him, study his ebook, and know him but I always learn so much when I read these. They are a bit sporadic but always real and full of good information.

I was interested in what Jeremy wrote about starting a business and becoming a success. From talking to him in the past, it seems as if his path to success was fairly straightforward and relatively painless. I should’ve known better. I also see how I could’ve asked more in-depth questions and really listened to the answers.

Here are some main points about his path to success to making over a million a year as an affiliate marketer:

• He didn’t quit his day job until I he had built up his savings account AND was earning a consistent and predictable income
  as an affiliate.
• He was “a floundering entrepreneur” at one point, trying to make it as a web consultant. The business failed. There were other “failures” he learned from (mine are documented in this blog if anyone wants to read them, lol).
• He quit his job prematurely once and put too much stock in one client, so the next time he took the time to lay a stronger foundation before he quit for good.
• He worked on affiliate marketing part time at first (2-4 hours a night), after work and reinvested everything back into his business. He sacrificed a lot of free time and weekends.
• Anyone who tells you it’s easy to be an overnight success is lying to you. If you don’t have a foundation, you will probably spend more money and time learning from your mistakes than getting rich.
• Learn as much as you can but the most useful knowledge comes from your own experience. You learn most when you put what you’ve learned into action.

“It was hard managing a full-time job, family, and my new affiliate business at the same time, but I knew that if I put in the hard work
it would pay off…you might be able to earn some pocket change by putting in such a minimal effort, but if you’re serious about
quitting your day job and earning a substantial income it’s going to take work.”

I can’t believe I was broken up with by email this week. I feel like ranting here how some things are best done in person or on the phone. Like emotional or very personal subjects. It has no integrity to break up with someone in such an impersonal way.

I hate being asked out by email or on IM. It takes all the pleasure out of the experience. I don’t like discussing deep subjects over IM either. Sometimes it works but you just miss out on hearing someone else’s voice. Plus it’s too easy to multitask and catch up on email or something else while you’re typing. Still, there would be no or little communication if it weren’t for some of these tools.

Next thing you know someone is going to get broken up with via Twitter.

At the Blogger’s dinner Phil says he and his wife say goodnight via IM. I can ALMOST see that happening to me but I do have limits. For example, I won’t let myself get online first thing in the morning. I insist on completing important tasks first. I still think I’m online too often and not interacting in real life enough. It’s fine when no one is around or when I’m online with someone else. It’s bad news when the internet or Second Life takes your attention over real life. Yes, I’m preaching to myself.

Someone said to me this week: do you want to play like you’re driving a car or actually drive a car? I think I want to drive. As such I’d like to date someone who is into the outdoors. Maybe someone who has never even heard of web 2.0 or a blog. Know anyone??

You have to read TechCrunch about how big media is banding together to make their own YouTube. Google’s internal name for the effort? According to Arrington it’s The Clown Co.. As in making fun of them.

The comments are just as fun as the write-up. Again and again mainstream companies try to be web 2.0. Most fail.

I think this comment puts it aptly:

I’ve worked for a broadcast TV co for little over a year now. With a few individual exceptions, it has never stopped feeling like being on the set of “Walking With Dinosaurs”. A few things I can assure you from personal experience:

- Yes, they really are that stupid, ignorant and arrogant. Especially at the top.
- No, they really haven’t thought this through. The for instance have no friggin’ clue how or even if this can be realised technically. They have no idea about what the users experience should/could be like. They themselves are certainly not the target audience.
- No, they have no clue why YouTube is so succesful. For that matter, they still have no clue why Google is succesful and why Google is getting any advertising revenue.
- They are absolutely, utterly convinced of their success. After all, they are Television. Internet is just a passing phase on the way to New Television, which ofcourse will be More Television. Television is God.

I hope the name Clown Co will stick. It’s utterly appropriate. I will be the first to buy a t-shirt with that Clown Co logo on it, and wear it to work. And the sad fact will be: nobody will be offended, ’cause they won’t have a clue…

Samuel Harrison writes about how affiliate marketers can utilize Twitter.