Happy New Year!

This year and every year, I wish for you all that I would wish for myself, including:

• Radiant health
• Peace with family, friends and all whom you encounter;
• Faith in yourself and your abilities;
• Growth in all areas of your life;
• Happiness in all you do.

Whether you are an NPT subscriber, Super Affiliate Handbook reader or an Affiliate Blogger PRO member; I’d also like to thank you for all of your support.

It’s your enthusiasm for learning that make these projects fun for me and the reason I do what I do.

Keep sending those questions, comments and suggestions in 2012; and together we’ll build big, prosperous online businesses.

Happy New Year All!

Cheers,

P.S. A BIG thanks also goes to my merchant and payment processing partners whose efforts have given so many of us the opportunity to fire our bosses and work from home.

Home this Christmas is vastly different from the one I shared with you just a couple of years ago.

There’s no softly falling snow, brightly-lit 13 foot tree surrounded by a mound of presents, or plans for dinner with close friends and neighbours at a prettily set table.

Instead, there’s just one string of crazy green-and-red shotgun shell lights hung over the couch in the RV, some festive headgear and some holiday cards that I have yet to send.

Christmas dinner will likely consist of frozen turkey bits, brussel sprouts and packaged mashed potatoes from the local grocery store. With luck, we will share our bonfire and some holiday cheer in the evening with our fellow vagabonds at this California desert State Park.

Wherever, whatever, whomever — it’s all perfectly lovely! The real gift is that we can connect with the special people in our lives (like you!) far away through Facebook, email, blog posts and Skype.

So, that’s my wish for you this holiday season — that you appreciate the now — what you have, wherever you are (home or away) and whomever you are with.

Peace, love and prosperity now and always,

Cheers,

P.S. I’m off to re-build tonight’s bonfire setup. Jasper wrecked it in his pursuit of the used paper plates from lunch. LOL.

Hey, it’s my birthday on the 11th and in addition to my usual big annual donation to the SPCA, I thought it would be fun to do a little more gift giving.

First off – I’m taking on new Facebook friends and Facebook page Likes in exchange for dollars.

For every ten new friends on my Facebook profile or likes on my Facebook Page, I’ll give a dollar to the most popular charity chosen by commenters on this post… up to $1000.

And yes, you may double-dip by doing both.

And just so you can keep count of how much we rack up, we’re starting with 2,984 friends and 1,215 Likes.

So Start Clicking!!!

Secondly, knowing that Christmas is a tough and expensive season for many of you (I’m in the States at the moment and seeing way too much Wall Street induced low- to middle-class hardship) that I’ve decided to keep Affiliate Blogger PRO (Rosalind Gardner’s Academy) pricing at the current ridiculously cheap levels until early to mid-January.

Give yourself that gift and see if the Christmas 2012 season doesn’t look a LOT brighter and more merry for you!

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

P.S. Don’t forget to list your favorite charity!!

BTW, my personal favorites are SPCA, Red Cross and Amnesty International.

This weekend I sent out the following message to most of my readers via my Aweber account (because NONE of my sites was online):

I got some VERY sad news this morning.

My friend and hosting service provider for many years, Steve Hetrick, passed away suddenly last week.

By result, most of my sites are offline, including:

** Rosalind Gardner’s Academy
** NetProfitsToday
** RosalindGardner
** SuperAffiliateHandbook
** PrivateLabelCentral

I have been told that the outage should be relatively short in duration (a few days? a week?).

I appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter and assure you that I will continue to do whatever I can to resolve the situation asap.

In the meantime, if you have questions, please address them via my Facebook Page at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rosalind-Gardner-Online-Entrepreneur/153044274713504

BTW, to post to that Wall, you will have to click ‘Like’ on the Welcome Page.

Sorry about that, but that’s a quicker and simpler solution than my having to process a number of friend requests on my Facebook profile — especially considering I’m currently in a State Park in Arizona at the moment with limited connectivity. :-/

Last, but certainly not least, PLEASE extend your thoughts and prayers to Steve’s family who have just experienced a huge loss. Steve was SUCH a good, caring man. I shall miss him terribly.

Thank you!
Rosalind

I went through the emotional gamut this weekend. From grief over the loss of my friend and business associate to feeling confused about what I needed to do and almost everything in between.

I honestly didn’t know whether I could or would get my sites back online, or if so, how long it would take to get them back. My mind tumbled with thoughts about how I would handle the former situation – how the heck to start over completely?

Egads.

Talk about being a bit brain-fried.

Not that I was worried, per se.

I ALWAYS tell folks that worry is a completely wasted emotion. You’re much better off to spend time preparing the Plans A, B and C’s, rather than sit and worry. I definitely like to practice that one, ’cause worrying creates stress without benefit.

Fortunately, the sites are coming back slowly but surely with the help of Coast Inc., the folks who managed Steve’s servers.

But I also have to Thank YOU…

I have no doubt that the condolences, kind consideration and good wishes that you all sent via my Facebook profile and page beefed up my karma.

Comments like the following from Jacqueline Hutchins’ made me teary and happy at the same time..

I’m sorry to hear you lost a good friend.

I hope also that you are able to get your websites up as soon as possible. Don’t worry too much Ros, you have devoted followers/readers like this one. Even if people don’t know why they can’t reac…h the sites, they will return.

So, thank you SO much!

And trust me, I’ll be blogging about this situation more in the coming days with the I lessons learned that desperately need to be passed on before you find yourself in the same situation.

Two days ago I wrote a post in which I slammed a well-known Internet Marketer, Ewen Chia, for descending to the autoblogging route.

In that post, I made a very harsh (negative) judgement about the worth of the products he sells online.

I have since apologized directly and publicly to Ewen, but just in case you didn’t see it… once again, I am very sorry to have posted that comment.

Contrary to some commenters’ assumptions, there was no ‘history’ between us. Nor did I reject bad comments and accept only the good. They’re all there — except the trackbacks.

Nor was I trying to create controversy. Those of you who know me well, know (and stated) that my rant was completely out of character and some of you took me to serious task (for which I thank you). Quite frankly, I’m not a fan of the spotlight, either good or bad.

I could give you any number of reasons for my bad behaviour (I was off my meds, forgot to wear my tin foil hat, or was subconsciously looking for a hasty departure out of the nasty Internet Marketing niche).

None of the above applies however as there is simply no excuse.

I have removed the objectionable comment about his products.

Sincerely,

With Christmas and New Year’s nigh, it is time again to reflect on what has been a most incredible and rewarding journey.

It’s almost hard to believe that I am about to start my 14th year as an online entrepreneur, affiliate marketer and coach.

But that achievement would have been impossible without you — my readers, students, clients and customers.

So, to all those who have followed me throughout the years, asking questions that inspired me to persue greater knowledge to share, I say a great big THANK YOU!

With heartfelt gratitude, I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

Cheers,
Ros

Will wonders never cease? I’m 50.

I’m actually so blown away by that fact that “Will wonders never cease?” is what’s going on my birthday cake.

Anyway, as much as you should be able to do whatever you want on your birthday (for me, that would be blogging and working on the AffiliateBloggerPro project — I’m having SO much fun with that!!), I promised Ed that I would actually take the whole weekend off, i.e. away from the computer.

And considering that the party is tomorrow night and I have guests coming to stay from out-of-town, that’s probably a good idea.

So, I’ll go finish decorating the tree now. Just hope that in my new advanced state of decline that I don’t pull a spazz and fall off that ladder.

Chat soon,
Ros

P.S. While I love to fly upside-down in aerobatic airplanes, ladders scare the @(#*$ out of me.

Update… just to prove it really happened….

I got the phone call this morning that you DON’T ever want to get – “Hi, this is so-and-so from such-and-such hospital in Toronto and your mother fell down the steps this morning and broke her hip. She is here awaiting surgery.”

My mom is 95 and lives on her own, so this is the call I’ve long feared.

I’m just ever SO grateful that she didn’t have to wait too long for someone to come to her aid. Fortunately, she fell close enough to the door to be able to bellow at passersby in the morning and a neighbour heard her. I’m also grateful that now she sees the validity of wearing one of those Lifeline Medical Alarm necklaces that lets you summon help any time of the day or night – even if you can’t speak.

Anyway, suffice to say that I won’t be heading to Denver tomorrow morning to speak at the Affiliate Convention.

My apologies to the many of you with whom I planned to meet. We’ll make it another time… Affiliate Summit in January, perhaps?

In the meantime, enjoy your experience at the Convention and learn LOTS – I’ll miss you!

Cheers,
Ros

OMG, I’m connected to the Internet! Hurray!!!!

Imagine being an Internet marketer at an affiliate marketing conference and not having an Internet connection from your hotel room for 5 days.

Are you feeling my pain?

Yup, despite paying $12.95 twice and $9.95 once, the Lodgenet service at the Rio was pathetic.

Despite spending more than an hour on the phone with Lodgenet and having the ticket escalated to Level 3, the connection speed was never more than 2Kbps. I even changed rooms hoping to access the wireless that some folks reporting picking up, but I had no such luck.

Fortunately, Twitter is a light load, so I logged on a couple of times to tweet, but the connection was never sufficient to log into the Administration panel of my blog.

UGH.

Anyway, now at McCarran International Airport with 5-bar FREE wireless and dancing for joy at having just uploaded my Affiliate Summit West ’09 conference pictures.

Woohoo!

Affiliate Summit highlights to follow…

Well, I just finished prepping the house and there’s still 24 hours left before my friends start arriving for our Christmas dinner festivities. Somewhere in between polishing the stemware and washing the kitchen floor, I realized that I already have almost everything I wanted for Christmas.

Snow (and lots of it).

The safe return of my good friend from north of 60 (that’s the 60th parallel where it’s minus 42 degrees celsius at the moment).

Plans with loved ones (in other words, the people who know you best but like you anyway).

The arrival of my Amazon order of 12 old Meryl Streep movies that I either didn’t have or hadn’t seen.

Fully functional servers (thank you, Steve!).

A definite plan to work directly with you in 2009 (one-on-one coaching, phone number & all) to help you get your Internet business off the ground… details of which whill be released just as soon as I’ve got a functional desktop* again (* Christmas wish #7 yet to be realized), most likely shortly after I get back from Affiliate Summit (if it’s the motherboard as Ori suspects).

Six out of 7 realized wishes is pretty remarkable. Only slightly less if you count the usual ‘peace on earth’.

And this one I fervently hope comes true… a wish for you and yours to enjoy all the very best of the season – a happy and safe holiday, good times with family and friends, prosperity in the New Year and the ability to share generously with those less fortunate.

So, what are/were you Christmas wishes? Care to share? Please leave a comment below.