Last week my friend knocked over a cup of coffee into his laptop and totally ruined the machine. Which leads me to remember something similar that happened to me one time.

I often wonder why people don’t ‘protect’ their internet marketing business better? If you were running a bricks and mortar business you would have the building and contents of your business insured, right?

That’s something I learned the hard way when I first started online marketing.

So, there I was busy pounding away on the PC feeling great about building my online business when suddenly WHAMM…

The PC hard drive failed and everything STOPPED and I was looking at the blue screen of death!

The cheap hard drive installed in the PC seized to respond and crashed, only to crash my entire business along with it. Yes I could easily access my eBay accounts, websites and blogs from another computer but all the precious data, images, bookmarks, tools, software, and files were gone forever.

I did eventually get all my passwords back that I had stored on the hard drive, but I was still entering my email address in the ‘recover your password’ forms for months to come. I also did have an external hard drive that I used to backup my data once in a while but I only backed up maybe every 6 months or so. I lost 6 months of files I had stored and lots of TIME!

You can imagine the nightmare of the blue screen of death!

So I now use 2 tools that prevent such a disaster ever happening again and they are..

1. Roboform

I can’t imagine being without this tool. Every time I need to login to a website I simply hover the Roboform link installed in my web browser and Roboform shows me all the websites that I have login information stored. I click the website I want to login to and Roboform automatically logs me in. I don’t have to remember the login details and it even stores my address details to fill sign up forms. It saves me so much time and it’s security protected. Oh, and there’s  a 30 day free trial to test it out.

The second one is..

2. GoodSync

If I had used this tool BEFORE my hard drive died I would have saved so much time not having to recover important information (some of which I will never get back). It’s like the ‘It will never happen to me’ lie we all fool ourselves with until after the disastrous event. Using GoodSync, in 2 clicks I can now backup any important files and synchronize between my PC, laptop, server, external drive and phone.

These are the tools that stop me guessing if and when the next blue screen of death will appear, not to mention the amount of time saved trying to recover and remember passwords.

If you have lots of time spare and don’t have important documents on your laptop there’s no need to know about these tools. Or like my friend, if you don’t mind pouring coffee into your laptop and losing everything!

I can remember my first EVER experience with working online. A friend introduced me to eBay, and yes that’s how long ago it was, I didn’t even know about eBay. I was a ‘Work-Droid’ with my then employer and I was totally immersed in my career as a project manager in the printing industry and my world revolved around printing.

The first EVER listing I posted on eBay was oh so completely rubbish. I took a picture with the first mobile phone that had a camera function (That’s how bad the image was).

I listed at 99p and I can’t remember what I wrote in the item description but I’m sure it would have been a complete disaster.

And I can also remember some of the products I’ve purchased and new ideas I’ve been involved with that looking back – were a complete waste of time. I would get the new ebook or new ‘product’ and run with it, only to find it didn’t work out and that it only made the person I purchased it from richer!

But that was way back when I was a ‘Green Internet Marketer’ or what is known in the industry as a ‘Newbie’.

It’s a funny thing how you never stop learning as you ride the emotional roller coaster that internet marketing will inevitably force you to ride.

This is one of the reason’s I only produce products that I know work!

The days of Green newbie impulse buys are now behind me and the more you know, the more you can implement, but there comes a point where you can only implement so much. There are only so many hours in one day and even the most hardened steam train marketers will have to stop to refuel eventually – you become a ‘work-droid’ in your own business.

And that’s why I recently discovered how to actually have more than one of me. You might be thinking I’ve gone completely insane at this point but please bear with me, this is relevant.

I’ve hired virtual assistants and contractors to complete tasks for me before on Elance and Odesk but I recently discovered something with a radically different approach to outsourcing. It’s John Jonas’s Replace Myself system.

I’ve worked through it and I’m having some success at actually duplicating myself in my business.

If you find there’s not enough hours in the day to get everything done, I’d certainly recommend taking a look at ReplaceMyself it’s a bit pricey to join but even the free content is a real eye-opener.

I recently moved one of my membership sites over to Clickbank from 1Shoppingcart.

Here’s Why..

Clickbank vs 1ShoppingCart

1ShoppingCart does have all the functionality to handle digital product deliver-ability as well as physical products. The built in affiliate program software also allows you to manage as many individual affiliate programs as you like, so you have full control over your affiliates when they sign up to promote your products. This come in handy for building your own email list and army of affiliates.

Having a list of affiliates who promote your products can be very powerful. You can simply email your affiliates with news of any new products you create and you don’t have to go looking for new affiliates to promote your new products.

The downside is of course you have to build that list in the first place but once you have an army of affiliates promoting your products you really have built an asset for your business.

So Why Did I Ditch 1ShoppingCart For Clickbank?

Well I haven’t totally ditched 1shoppingcart because I still use 1shoppingcart for 90% of my products, both physical and digital. But the reason I moved one over to Clickbank is to tap into a new affiliate marketplace.  When you list products on Clickbank you rely on the huge affiliate marketplace to hopefully find affiliates to promote your products for you.

Although unless you ask for the affiliates name and email address somewhere on your site you are not guaranteed that the same affiliate will know about your new products.

Use Clickbank to Attract New Affiliates

So I moved the HealthyProfitsClub.com membership site over to Clickbank to attract new affiliates although I will still keep building my list of affiliates with 1ShoppingCrt for other products. If you have more than 1 product it might be worthwhile using different methods to attract new affiliates.

What I did to change over to Clickbank

1. I already had a Clickbank account because I do promote affiliate products as well as promoting my own products and I had already advertised products on Clickbank a few year back. So I didn’t have to sign up to Clickbank to get an ID.

2. I submitted my site details and wrote the marketplace ad.

3. I submitted the thank you page (this was more tricky this time because I am using membership site software so I had to spend about 30 minutes integrating the membership site software to work with Clickbank).

4. I replaced the 1ShoppingCart buy now links with Clickbank’s order links.

5. I requested approval from Clickbank and I received approval within 24hrs.

Was I right to change over from Clickbank from 1shoppingcart? Tell me what you think below..