IFTTT uses what they call “channels” to interface with various services. Each of these channels hooks into a given service, so they have channels for Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn and so on.

As I write this post there are 59 channels that you can choose from, and they add more on a fairly regular basis. Different channels give you different capabilities, depending on what any given website allows third party services to do.

You can combine these channels into “recipes” that are triggered when certain things happen (hence the name – IF THIS happens THEN do THAT).

Setting It Up

To get started, just go to IFTTT.com and click the “Join IFTTT” button. Once your account is created, you can activate whatever channels you want to use.

The activation process varies from one service to another, but it will usually take you to the channel’s website where you need to allow access to your account for IFTTT.

Now, a word of warning…

Most – if not all – of the channels have the ability to grant this access built into their system, so IFTTT never actually sees your login information. You login on the channel’s website, grant access from there and then they send IFTTT the confirmation.

However, there are inherent security risks whenever you grant third-party access to your accounts on other sites. You’ll need to decide whether or not you’re comfortable doing this. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it – it’s no different than logging into services using your Facebook or Twitter account as far as I’m concerned.

Some Useful Recipes

There are hundreds of potential combinations that you can use to create recipes. You could even layer them by having one recipe get triggered by the result of another.

I’m just going to share a few that I’m using to give you an idea of the sorts of things you can do.

1. Blog Update Notification

One of the channels will trigger an action whenever an RSS feed gets updated. There are a bunch of things it can do when there’s a new item in a feed but the one I like to use is to have IFTTT send me a text message on my cell phone.

This is great for blog commenting. You can have IFTTT send you a text as soon as a new post goes live on a popular blog in your niche, and then you can hop over there and be one of the first to leave a comment.

You could have it send you an email instead of a text message, I just find that a text is faster because I will see it as soon as it comes in. I might not check my email for a few hours, and miss the chance to be an early commenter.

2. Send Starred Articles In Google Reader To Buffer

I wrote about Buffer in a previous post but it essentially lets you schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. You can queue up a bunch all at once and they get drip-fed over whatever schedule you want.

I follow a lot of niche-related feeds in Google Reader, so whenever I find an article that I think other people would be interested in, I can just star it and IFTTT takes care of posting it to my Twitter and Facebook feeds.

3. Push New YouTube Videos To Tumblr, Facebook, WordPress, etc.

IFTTT can monitor your YouTube channel and automatically post new videos to other sites for you. If you normally post links to your videos in all these places anyway, this can save you some time (and it ensures you don’t forget this step!)

4. Backup Instagram or Facebook Pictures

This one isn’t directly related to internet marketing, but it’s helpful nonetheless.

IFTTT can watch your Instagram feed for new pictures and your Facebook feed for any new pictures that you’re tagged in. When it sees one, it will copy the image to your Dropbox account, so you have your own copy.

IFTTT has a lot of sample recipes that you can use as is or modify to suit your needs. But there is lots more that you can do than just the examples they provide.

With a little creative thinking, you can find all sorts of ways to save yourself some time by automating things you do over and over again.

There are several reasons for that, not the least of which is that I’ve been a bit self-conscious about doing “face-to-camera” videos but that’s going to change this year.

I’ve been watching James Schramko go full-speed ahead with video marketing over the last year. His Own The Racecourse system outlines exactly what he’s doing, but you can get a pretty good idea simply by checking out his main website, SuperFastBusiness.com.

Even when I’ve been looking in from the outside, I can see how well it has been working for him.

So I’m stepping outside my comfort zone and getting into video. I’ll be posting some of them here on my blog, others will go through Facebook and some will wind up in other places.

If you want to see what I’m doing – and learn from my experience as I make mistakes and figure new things out – you can follow me in any (or all!) of these places:

• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
• Like my Facebook Page
• Subscribe to my RSS feed

I’ve done a couple of videos over the last few days, and even the experience from making the first one taught me a lot.

I’m working on another post about some of the tools I’m using – software, equipment and other such things – so if you’re interested in that sort of thing, stay tuned…

A Recommendation

James Schramko’s Own The Racecourse training gets my highest recommendation. A large part of my marketing over the coming year is going to be modeled on his strategies.

It’s only available inside his Fast Web Formula membership, which includes several of his training products as well as a coaching forum.

If you want to learn more about these video marketing strategies, as well as get access to a bunch of other high-quality training, you can get all the details here:

Click here to learn more about Fast Web Formula

James doesn’t have an affiliate program, so I don’t get any kind of commission if you join. I just think it’s one of the best communities for serious marketers right now.

As I write this, the membership costs $67 per month but James has said he’s going to be raising the price soon. It’s a great value even if the price has already increased when you read this, but if it’s still at $67, I recommend jumping on it.

And don’t even look at my Google+ profile.

But even with that half-baked approach to social media, it has generated some decent traffic for me. And some of that traffic has converted to either opt-ins or sales.

So I know it works, and I know I should be putting more effort into it.

My biggest problem is the amount of time it tends to take up.

Not only finding interesting stuff to post, but also going down too many rabbit holes once I’m there. There are just so many things waiting to get my attention.

Regardless of this potential for distraction, I’m putting much more focus on social media this year.

The trick is finding ways to do it without wasting too much of my time.

I’ve been using two tools for the past couple of weeks that are working out quite well:

1. Buffer
2. Zite

Buffer lets you schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as App.net if you’re using that service.

It has browser plugins to send pages directly to your Buffer account, an iPhone app to manage your queue, the ability to post via email and it’s integrated into a lot of other apps like Instapaper and Reeder.

Zite is a “magazine” app for the iPhone (as well as iPad, Android and Windows Phone) that pulls news stories from all kinds of sources, on a bunch of different topics.

You can choose the topics to follow and it learns what you like as you use it more. So the news you get will be more and more targeted over time.

I use Zite to find interesting stories and then email them to my Buffer account. You can choose what service(s) to post to in the email you send and you can set up a schedule for the posts to go out in your Buffer account.

The stories I send to Buffer get drip-fed to Facebook and Twitter throughout the day, on the schedule that I’ve configured.

I spend maybe 10-15 minutes reading the Zite news in the morning and schedule several posts for the day. Once that’s done, there’s no need to keep visiting Facebook to post things – which means a lot less temptation to get sidetracked.

I still post some things manually as they come to mind, but this has freed up a lot of time and attention for other important things.

These are just a couple of the tools I’m using to better manage my social media. I’m working on a new guide for managing your time on social media, so I’ll post more once it’s ready.

When I was driving an hour or more every day, I usually listened to podcasts and audiobooks, rather than music. I always figured I might as well get some benefit from the time I was sitting behind the wheel.

These days, I don’t listen to nearly as much. I just can’t seem to get into listening when I’m sitting in my office.

So I’ve had to narrow my choices down quite a bit, but there are several podcasts that I still listen to regularly.

In fact, I sometimes just go for a drive so I can listen to them, or take the long way home if I’m out for something else.

Freedom Ocean

Freedom Ocean is an internet marketing podcast from James Schramko and Tim Reid. The premise of the show is that Tim has all the questions and James has all the answers.

It’s up to 51 episodes, and practically every one of them could be a training product in itself.

It’s worth listening to all the archive shows, there’s a ton of great information in there. A couple of the earlier ones are a bit dated, with things like Panda and Penguin having happened since they were released, but there’s still plenty of good advice.

Check it out here: Freedom Ocean Podcast

The Lifestyle Business Podcast

This is another internet marketing oriented show, with a focus on creating a business that can be run from virtually anywhere.

This one is one of the more recent subscriptions I’ve picked up, and it came as a recommendation from James on one of the Freedom Ocean episodes.

There are 136 episodes at the moment, and I’ve only listenened to maybe 10 of the most recent, but what I’ve heard has been excellent.

I’ll be digging into the archives on this one over the coming weeks.

Check it out here: The Lifestyle Business Podcast

Home Work

Home Work is another show that I’ve just discovered fairly recently.

Its focus is on anybody working from home, not just internet marketers, but I’ve picked up a ton of great ideas from it.

It’s probably most useful if you’re working from home full-time but there’s lots of stuff that would still be helpful even if you only get an hour or two a day to work on your business.

Check it out here: Home Work

Back To Work

Back To Work is a show with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin that can be a little hard to pigeonhole. The official description from its website is this:

Back to Work is an award winning talk show with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discussing productivity, communication, work, barriers, constraints, tools, and more.

It generally focuses on productivity and a lot of things that relate to so-called “knowledge workers”, many of which apply to our types of businesses as well.

This one can be a bit of an acquired taste. There tends to be some completely off-topic banter at the start and some craziness during the show, but there is always some great information in there.

And if their style of craziness (well, Merlin’s mostly) appeals to you, it can be pretty entertaining too.

If it doesn’t grab you right away, give it a couple of episodes before you make your decision.

Check it out here: Back to Work

Mac Power Users

The Mac Power Users podcast is probably only going to interest Mac users but if you use a Mac, I recommend you check this one out.

Generally, each episode covers a fairly specific topic related to doing various things with your Mac. You may not want to listen to every one, but you’ll probably find plenty of episodes to interest you in the archives.

The show goes back a few years, so some of the stuff will be outdated, but a lot of it is just as applicable now as it was when the show was released.

Check it out here: Mac Power Users

I subscribe to a bunch of other podcasts but these are the ones that I make a point of listening to every time there’s a new episode.

Most of them are available through iTunes, or various other places – check out their websites for details about subscribing.

The word “WSO” often brings up thoughts of cheap, junky products sold with a lot of hype. But the fact is there are some real gems in there, buried in the stuff that earns that reputation.

Trouble is, finding them is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

I don’t buy anywhere near as many WSO’s as I used to, but I still pick them up on a fairly regular basis.

Typically from sellers I trust or on the recommendation of someone I trust.

Of the 15-20 WSO’s I bought in 2012, three in particular stand out as the best.

Fast Path To Cash

The Fast Path To Cash is from a marketer who calls himself “X”. I’ve known of him for several years, but this is the first time I can remember him running a WSO. (The products I’ve seen from him in the past were all sold through Clickbank or other marketplaces.)

This WSO describes a process for creating a sellable product in 4 hours, right from coming up with an idea through to writing the sales letter.

The “10,000 foot view” is to create short reports that target specific topics, and ramping it up by creating several related reports. This gives you a “built-in” audience since the people who buy one report will quite likely be interested in the rest.

When this WSO launched, there was a bit of complaining in the thread – enough to make me want to test it out to prove it worked. (I’m sure my replies are still in the thread if you want to read them.)

I put a product together in around 3 hours and sold $371 worth over the course of a few days. So I can tell you this works.

Check it out here: Fast Path To Cash

Speed Read Copy

I’ve bought a lot of copywriting courses over the last few years, some costing upwards of $1,500. Judy Kettenhofen’s Speed Read Copy is easily the best bang for the buck.

In fact, it’s one of the two or three best copywriting products I’ve bought, period – regardless of the price.

Judy has condensed a lot of experience into this easy-to-digest guide.

The “speed read” in the title applies to both the style of copywriting she teaches and to the time it will take you to go through it.

But don’t let the fact that it doesn’t come with hours of audio and a bunch of videos fool you – if you do what she says, you’ll sell more. I can tell you that from experience!

Check it out here: Speed Read Copy

Video Marketing Debunked

Video is one of those things that I’ve “known” I should get into for a couple of years, if I’m honest about it, but it’s always intimidated me a bit.

Todd Gross & Mark Thompson’s Video Marketing Debunked has helped me to get over a lot of the stuff that was holding me back.

This training shows how to set up your YouTube channel most effectively, how to “piggyback” on already successful videos and a bunch of other stuff.

If you want to learn more about how to market effectively using video, particularly on YouTube, this training will show you.

Now if someone could just come up with a product that would make me less self-conscious about being on camera

Check it out here: Video Marketing Debunked

Honourable Mention: Marketing Graphics Toolkit 5

MGT5 doesn’t teach you something, it’s a collection of graphics that you can use on your websites.

But it’s a pretty great collection.

Max Rylski has been putting these packages out for several years now (hence the #5 in the title) and every one of them is packed with useful stuff.

Things like buy buttons, graphic headlines, hand-drawn arrows, website headers, sales page templates, 3D ecovers, Facebook & Twitter profile images – the list goes on.

It doesn’t matter what type of website you’re building or what niche you’re working in, chances are pretty good that you’ll be able to use some of the stuff in this package.

Check it out here: Marketing Graphics Toolkit 5

So there you have it – my top WSO recommendations from the last 12 months.

As I was writing this post, a thought hit me – all of these packages are still for sale, even though it’s been weeks or even months since they launched.

That’s a pretty good indication of their quality. A lot of WSO sellers launch for a limited time then take their product off the market, sometimes as a way to create scarcity.

None of these sellers have to do that – good products tend to continue to sell after the launch excitement dies down.

Mark Thompson has a good post on his blog today called Is The Internet Marketing Niche Stagnating?

The gist of it is that the internet marketing niche tends to do the same things over and over. Particularly in using similar styles of sales pages and similar pricing strategies.

I think this is true to a degree, but I’m not sure I would call it stagnation.

More a case of “marketing myopia.”

Here’s what myopia is according to Wikipedia:

The terms “myopia” and “myopic” (or the common terms “shortsightedness” or “shortsighted”, respectively) have been used metaphorically to refer to cognitive thinking and decision making that is narrow in scope or lacking in foresight or in concern for wider interests or for longer-term consequences.

It’s the “narrow in scope” aspect that I think fits the internet marketing niche.

A lot of marketers tend to follow in the steps of other marketers who travel in the same circles.

People selling their products as WSO’s tend to model themselves after other WSO sellers, for example.

This creates a situation where one offer that’s considered to be a success breeds another very similar offer and it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Meanwhile, as Mark points out in his post, very few people actually test other methods. They don’t know whether what they’re doing is actually the best way, or they could do even better by switching it up.

Look Outside Your Own Circle Of Influence

Mark’s post refers to an article about how Nathan Barry and Sacha Grief Sold $39,000 Worth of eBooks. The sales pages for the two books that article is talking about are here:

• Step by Step UI Design
• The App Design Handbook

If you look at those pages, you’ll see that they’re nothing like the typical long-form sales page you see in our business.

There’s no hype, the design is about as minimal as it gets and they just tell you what the book will teach you. They leave it up to you to decide whether or not you want to learn that stuff.

There are actually a lot of these types of ebooks out there, if you go looking.

• Paperless is all about going paperless using Apple technology
• Take Control Books has a whole catalog of ebooks on various computer-related topics (again mostly Apple)
• 31 Day To Build A Better Blog is a little closer to our typical sales page, but still nowhere near as “hypey”

These are all books I’ve bought, not because of some hyped-up claims on the sales page, but because they simply said they could show me how to do something I wanted to learn.

Does This Mean These “Stagnant” Techniques Are Less Effective?

Maybe. And maybe not.

The only way to know for sure is to test it and see for yourself.

And a the first step to doing that is to get out of whatever “filter bubble” you might be in.

A filter bubble is a situation in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history) and, as a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles.

In this case, the filter bubble isn’t due to a website algorithm, but to “tradition” within your circle of influence.

Look for ideas in other places. The two sales pages linked above are perfect examples.

Maybe you should be testing something similar for your own products, instead of assuming the standard style of sales page is the way to go.

The worst that will happen is you’ll prove to yourself that what you’re doing now is best.

And the best that will happen is you increase your sales.

But as long as you just keep doing what you (and others) have always done, you’ll never know for sure.

The Consumerist has a post that explains how you can opt out of this clause:

Opting Out Of Paypal’s Arbitration Clause

Unsurprisingly, it’s not easy to opt out. You have to go old-school and send them a letter.

If only there were some medium where we could access our Paypal account electronically and fill out a form of some kind to opt out.

Maybe one day…

This sounds like one of those memes that you see on Facebook and other sites every so often, where you post a disclaimer on your profile and it’s supposed to stop them from being able to do something.

Every one of those I’ve ever seen was completely ineffective, but I’ve seen this Paypal thing recommended by people I trust to know if it’s legit, so it appears to be.

I’ll be sending them a copy, just to be safe.

Getty Images Extortion Letter

It’s worth reading, if only to see what kind of damages these big stock image companies seek if you’re caught using one of their images without the correct licensing. There’s a very good comment from Alistair Cotton, who explains the licensing in some detail from a photographer’s perspective, so make sure you read through the comments as well.

In Ryan’s case, the infringement was completely unintentional. It sounds like he outsourced the content for one of his websites and the contractor used an image from another website.

Even with attribution back to the original site, Getty is still looking for damages from Ryan.

The bottom line is that you need to be super careful about where you get your images.

Even if you don’t realize you’re using a non-licensed image, it can happen. If you outsource your graphics or buy an image pack from anyone that you aren’t 100% sure of, you’re risking a lot.

This is one of the reasons I stay away from image packs and other stuff that includes images, like web templates, on the Warrior Forum. When you’re paying pennies per image in those WSO’s, I’m just not confident that every image has been thoroughly checked.

All it takes to cost you a lot of money is a single image that you don’t have the right to use.

I do think this model is going to get harder and harder for companies like Getty to enforce, mind you.

Just look at the movie and music industries. They’ve been fighting piracy for years, and it hasn’t slowed down. They target people here and there, when they can identify them, but for the most part they haven’t been able to slow the tide.

Once something is in digital form, it can be copied and passed around over the internet. Many people don’t realize that everything on the net is not free to use however they want. Ignorance isn’t a defence, but eventually companies like Getty won’t be able to keep up with it all.

I don’t know what the solution is for these companies, but I think they’re going to have to come up with something if they want to keep making money on their intellectual property.

So far, I’m liking it a lot more than Thesis, which was my previous “go-to” theme. I’ll probably write up a review of the Canvas theme once I have a chance to play with most of the settings, so if you’re interested in hearing more about it, stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you notice anything that looks like it’s broken over the next few days, it will get sorted out. I’m just a glutton for punishment and prefer to hack around on a live site than do it on a test site and then migrate everything over.