We just recently started a Travel blog and we’re in process of cleannin up the ‘Full Course’ brand and merge this site with our travel site…within the year this should be a beautiful merger.

If you have any questions please let us know, otherwise check out www.FullCourseTravel.com to see where we’ve been and what we’re doing.

Thank you and have an Awesome Day,
~Chais Meyer

Talk about the Ultimate in sales advertising…Amazon Product Ads!

Q: First off, what exactly is ‘Amazon Product Ads’?
A: It is an Advertising system that puts your product advertisements in front of other related Amazon.com products, to catch that buyer’s attention (bringing them to your site and/or product) while they’re in the buying mood! Awesome Idea!

Q: How is this different than Google’s ad networks (Adsense or Clickbank)?
A: Google’s advertisements pop up on selected websites with ‘potentially’ related content…even though google’s ads are getting better, they’re not always the right ad for the right viewer. The main difference is, Google ads show up when someone could possibly be in a ‘buying mood’, Amazon’s Product Ads on the other hand are putting your little product or service in front of the buyers eyeballs as they’re ready to buy! This should be seen as a HUGE difference in the two Advertisement systems for any business (or person) looking to sell their own products. Which would you rather have if you’re trying to sell a product? Would you rather pay for an ad to be clicked on while ‘random’ people are looking at it, or…Pay for an ad to be clicked on while ‘buyers’ our looking at it!

Here’s Amazon’s explanation of how their system works:

Amazon Product Ads includes easy-to-use tools to upload and manage your product catalog. This makes it simple to put your ads in front of some of the most active customers on the web.
Amazon provides the tools you need to create and maintain your Product Ads. When you create your account we will pre-set your cost-per-click bids to the minimum amount in each category. You just need to upload your detailed product catalog, set your daily budget and you’re ready to go. Your Product Ads will then be displayed across a variety of placements on Amazon.com including search and browse results and product pages. These ads link directly to the product on your web site where you make the sale.

Upload Your Product Catalog and Set Your Budget
A Product Ad is created for each product that you upload to the Amazon.com catalog. Once you have registered, you can upload your items directly through Amazon’s online account management interface – Seller Central. Your ads will then appear on Amazon.com.

Customers See Your Product Ads on Amazon.com
Your Ads will be viewed by active Amazon.com customers 24/7 via Amazon product pages, as well as being displayed in relevant Amazon.com product search and browse results and contextually targeted placements.
Customers Click to Product Pages on Your Website

When Amazon.com customers click on your ad they are taken directly to your Web site where you control the brand and buying experience for your products. This allows you to deliver a unique buying experience, giving you the opportunity to acquire new customers and grow revenue for your business.

You Are Charged a Cost-Per-Click
Using Seller Central, you can easily view your invoices and track your advertising budget. There are no fees for impressions – you are only charged when Amazon.com customers choose to click on your ad and are directed to your web site. You control not only the maximum price you are willing to pay for each click, but also your daily and monthly budget. Most importantly, you can measure your return on investment and optimize your budget accordingly. Invoices are published as you accumulate clicks and payment is collected via credit card.

Customers Purchase Products From Your Website
You control the buying experience because Amazon.com customers are clicking through to your Web site. Customers benefit from the seamless discovery of your products on Amazon.com and your e-commerce expertise. Your Amazon Product Ads will deliver you engaged customers giving you the opportunity to acquire repeat orders and increased sales for your business.

As you can see, this is a HUGE benefit to every small business out there that wants to sell their products! Only time will tell if this is the next best ‘product sales’ advertising platform…

Please Go To The Amazon Product Ad Homepage, sign up for a FREE account & let us know what you think…we’re doing it already!

Thank you very much and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

Right now Shawna and I are:

1. Planning a move to a different part of the world (specifically, we’re gong to go to the South East Asian Islands for an unknown amount of time), because we can…and need to. We need a change of pace in life, we need to get out of our comfort zone, we need to experience life…just having each other to rely on, and we need to emerse ourselves in different cultures before we decide where & what we will call home.
2. Getting Certified in ‘Teaching English As a Foreign Language’ TEFL. Let me clarify, my wife is getting certified and I’m proudly supporting her. I will get certified in the next year or so, but right now it is not a passion of mine.
3. Getting over our auto accident: Shawna just had surgery on her knee, fixing some issues that were caused by a kid crossing the center line (plus two lanes of traffic) and hitting us head on. After she gets done with rehab, we’re going to start our physical conditioning for our trip (working out so we can hike and carry our 70lb backpacks)!
4. Organizing our life for our move; this involves everything from selling our cars, selling our home, having someone take care of our pets when we’re gone, setting all of our bills up for automatic payments, getting enough auto-generated money to pay our USA bills when we’re away with automatic payments, buying all of our travel supplies, etc.

Right now David (my business partner) and I are:

1. Building a new business that teaches people how to create auto-generated income using online affiliate marketing…with WordPress
2. Cleaning up our current business ‘Control Yours’ and considering listing it for sale…why not?
3. Paying the bills…which can sometimes be the hardest part!

Right now I’m:

1. Building a travel website for our travel updates (called ‘fullcoursetravel.com’)
2. Organizing the ‘Full Course’ Brand and getting it all to mesh together nicely with ‘fullcoursebusiness’, ‘fullcoursemeal’, ‘fullcoursetravel’.

We have a lot going on and I’m excited for what it’s all going to bring to us!
Have an Awesome Day and please let us know if you have any questions.
~Chais Meyer

The Affiliate Marketing world can seem Uber complex, especially to someone that has never dabbled in it before.
I was one of those people a few months ago, I’d never messed with any sort of an Affiliate Marketing system before but it all intrigued me so much that I’ve kinda dove in head first.

Question: What is Affiliate Marketing?

Simple Answer: Being the middleman, helping people find a product or service that they have an interest in buying…and because you assist in making the purchase (linking the customer to the seller or the sellers goods from a website), you get a percentage of the sale.
More Simply Put: “You get a piece of what people are already buying, because you have an easy website for them to find the products they’re looking for!” That’s it.

It’s a very simple concept and it’s much more beautiful and effective than traditional advertising…why is this? With traditional advertising you pay a company to put your ad, brand, special, discount and/or product in front of people’s eye balls…but these advertisers can NEVER guarantee how many people will see it, or how many of them will actually act on it to buy your product or service. Affiliate Marketing is an advertising system structured more like a high commission sales job; The advertisers get no money upfront (no salary), they only make money when they make a sale for the company…100% commission. This is a beautiful system if you do a good job at promoting other peoples products or services…this is a shitty job if you suck at promoting other peoples stuff…the good thing about it, there’s a system to it!

[Side Note: Think about being a business in the USA and how awesome it would be if you only payed advertisers when they ACTUALLY sell something for you...NO MORE expensive newspaper ads, where their 'advertising strategy' is shooting a shotgun in the air and hoping to hit a bird...that's what I'm talking about! That's Affiliate Marketing!]

The main reasons that I’m falling in love with the Affiliate concept, is because:

1. It’s so easy (using the internet and the right online tools) to build a website that gets visits on a monthly basis and eventually leads to sales.
2. Hundreds of thousands of companies out there are looking to sell something and you just have to find a company that you think is honest, has a good product, and a good reward for you helping them with the sale.
3. You can start small! (Amazon Associates is a great place to start…for free)

You may be thinking “Ok Mister, if it’s soo easy show me the proof!” … Fine, I will.
Take a look the following website that I  just put together less than a month and a half ago: http://www.refurbishedkindle.net. This website’s sole purpose is to link people to the products they want to buy…in this case, ‘refurbished Kindles and their accessories’…I don’t own the Kindles, I don’t have inventory of the accessories, I just link to the actual products on Amazon.com; and if someone buys that product or anything else on Amazon.com within 24 hours of clicking on my link, I will get a percentage of the sale as a reward for sending the potential customer to Amazon.com. This is great for me and great for Amazon!

Over this last month I’ve made $125.74…doing nothing. (check out the photo below)

Let’s clarify what it took to get to the “doing nothing” stage…

• I had to set up my Amazon Associates account (one time, then I can use it forever)
• I had to buy the domain name ‘refurbishedkindle.net‘ ($9.99/year) and then set it up with a free wordpress.org site, on a website storage space (aka. hosting account, for $72/year) = a Total of $81.99/year or less than $7/month.
• I had to choose a ‘theme’ (look and feel for the website…these can be free or purchased) and ‘activate it’ (this is the beauty of wordpress…changing the look & feel of a website takes all of 3 minutes).
• I had to tell the website what products I want to show up on this site…(only products from amazon.com initially)…and set it to auto-publish (automatically add new products from amazon, every product also automatically includes my amazon associates ID, which is what tells Amazon that I sent the person to their site and that’s what gives me a percentage of every sale).
• I do a couple of SEO related things (Search Engine Optimization) to help search engines find my website (this is pretty automated any more…with some free online tools)
• That’s It!
• I check back once every two-three weeks to make sure things are running smoothly.

I’m not saying that someone can (or should) quite their job & jump into this whole ‘Affiliate thing’, making THOUSANDS of dollars in their first couple of weeks or anything like that…I’m just saying that it’s like anything else in life, if you dedicate 5-10 hours a week to it as a side thing, you can make hundreds of dollars in extra income in about a month or two…in a really simple way. If you invest 40+ hours a week to it, you will make more money…go figure! [Main rule to remember: Don't sell something that people aren't buying! It's a giant waste of time!]

I’ve decided to spend more time with this affiliate stuff over the next few months, and who knows…maybe I’ll create a side business that gives people the exact instructions and support they need to learn about how all of this stuff works. I’d love for this affiliate stuff to become my full time job, that just sounds great!

I think the hardest part about anything new in life, is the initial learning curve!…do you think it would be a good idea if we put our entire system of  ’how to make affiliate marketing simple’ into video tutorials?

This is really exciting to me, and I hope to post about more affiliate info as I become more knowledgable…remember, I’ve just been doing this a month or two, I’m a baby in the affiliate world.
Thank you for reading this post and I hope that you have an Awesome Day!  (please let me know if you have any questions)
~Chais Meyer

I’m the type of guy that looks for automation and simplicity in every area of life that I may be able to find it, unfortunately, when you are starting your own business you can’t always have a 4 hour work week right out of the gate…

Tim Ferriss wrote ‘the 4 hour work week‘ to motivate, inspire, educate and open people’s minds to the idea(s) that if we work smarter not harder we can eventually get to the point where we only work 4 hours a week (it’s brilliant and a 100% obtainable concept). I think the key word in my above summary of Tim’s book is “eventually“. We as newbie business people (owning a business for 1 day up to 3 years) are consistently looking for instant gratification in our personal and professional lives. And if we don’t get it, we feel like we’re doing something wrong…and that’s the dangerous part to the instant gratification concept…We give up way to easily if something doesn’t ‘instantly’ happen for us.

I used to (seriously, only about a month ago) get extremely depressed about how slow things have been moving professionally and how long it has taken for my businesses to actually grow to the point of self sustainability (where I don’t have to be involved on a daily basis…aka. autopilot). I would read books like ‘the 4 hour work week’ (and countless others like it) and ended up feeling like I’d never be able to be like these authors because I’ve tried the tricks, tips and ideas they mentioned in these books (for months at a time) and somehow I’m still working 8-12 hours a day! “What is wrong with this picture!?!”, I would think to myself. I finally realized (2 weeks ago) that NOTHING happens without putting the initial work into it and no two businesses are the same (requiring the same amount of work they need to get to autopilot). If you work 4 hours a week on your business (because you’re trying to be exactly like the book), you will end up having a business that takes years to get started and you will eventually burn out, feeling like you’re a failure because “it didn’t happen how the book said”.

Please understand that there is NO right or wrong with business. Do what it takes to bring in consistent cash-flow and then start working on automation and self sustainability after the fact (let’s face it, if your business is 100% automated and there is little to no cash-flow, then you have an automated piece of shit business)…cash-flow first and then do what you can to widdle your work load down to 4 hours a week!

Take what the authors like Tim Ferriss are telling you and try to use this info to better you and your business one step at a time. If any of the new tools or tips start making you feel like something’s missing, stop doing them and go back to what works (what ever is bringing in the money and/or cutting your expenses). This is what business books don’t tell us (OK…I realize there are some books dedicated just to this topic, but they’re not as fun as the books that just show you the end results…the reward of getting to eat the cake at the end of a meal)!

For me, I actually get stressed out reading books like the 4 hour work week if I view it as a ‘must follow’ business road map (an A-Z plan for business success…and if I don’t follow it all the way, detrimental business failure). I’ll never be able to apply 100% of the tips, tricks or ideas from any business book immediately, and not being able to successfully complete the steps in the book makes me feel like I’m a failure, even though I’m not.

My recommended tips for success (shit I’ve learned along the way; in no particular order):

• Surround yourself with uplifting, motivational individuals that are progressive in their own lives (constantly bettering themselves for no other reason than to be better tomorrow than they are today…they don’t even have to be business people).
• Work Hard for yourself (It’s all about sweat equity. Expect to have 10-14 hour days in the beginning)…no one else will work harder than you will when your business’s success or failure is on the line. I think of the book called ‘Crush It‘ (by Gary Vaynerchuck) and how right on it is with this point…a must own book for you business start ups out there!
• Don’t subscribe to a single ‘System for Business Success’ (no two businesses are 100% the same…so how can there be a one size fit all successful business model or business book that’s right for everyone?).
• Don’t take on too much at one time (spreading your butter thin will only make you tired and grumpy, focus on the ‘key’ things that are important to you and your business model and complete them to the best of your ability). Another good book about this topic is ‘Rework‘ (by two members of the 37 Signals Team – We use their software ‘Basecamp‘ for our to-do lists and project management), it points out how important it is to do a couple small things well…even if your client base is pushing you to make 100 changes in your business…don’t give in, do what’s best for you and your business.
• Make sure you’re passionate about the business(es) you’re wanting to start (what the business is doing to make money)…if you’re not passionate about it (even though it may make you a buck or thousands) how can you expect others to be passionate about it? And, are you really going to want to put in the needed 10-14 hour days for something that you’re just into for the money? NO, I don’t think so, you’ll burn out without a certain level of love for what your doing!
• Don’t give up within 3 years of starting a business…It takes a minimum of 3 years (probably closer to 5) to make a business ‘successful’ in the eyes of self sustainability. There is no such thing as an autopilot business that starts that way from day one (unless you buy a pre-existing business model from somebody else, like a franchise…and do you really think that the person who created the franchise built it in one month? It most likely took them 3-5 years to work out all the kinks). The people that quite their business after 1 year have most likely fallen prey to the instant gratification mindset (Don’t fall for it, it’s a lie!). If you want a baby today, you can’t just create one out of thin air…you have to have sex (maybe multiple times to sow your seed) and then wait about 10 months for it to bake in the mommy oven. Nothing that is worth waiting for can be obtained instantly (unless you steal it…and that’s a different blog post .

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic…do you think I’m way off or right on…and why?

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you have an amazing day!
~Chais Meyer

Hahahaha…great image right!?! (maybe for some people)

“Living in a constant state of Euphoria is missing what defines existing ‘together’ “, was something I thought while as was sitting in my dim lit office, listening to Sigur Rós through my KOSS headphones, watching the itunes visualizer, and holding my sleeping foster kitten in my arms…What can I say? Every once and a while I just need a little me time. (Side Note: I think it’s awesome that I consider ‘me time’ to include a kitten sleeping in my arms!)

Back to the ‘something’.
I think this is a really interesting statement if you apply it to the the main euphoric event of our life…our death and what comes after!  Many people call it, “resting clouds”, “cosmos”, “kingdom”, or just plain ol’ heaven. Most of the people I know refer to heaven as a place ‘where all their dreams will come true’ (like disney land, minus the child molesters…Just Kidding, they’ll be in hell), roads will be paved with chocolate (if that’s your favorite candy or whatever your little heart desires), gold will be everywhere (all the riches and possessions in ‘the world’ will be yours), everyone lives in a mansion, families are back together again and no one ever gets hurt or hurts others…I have a really hard time believing all of that.

Being in my personal state of Euphoria when this thought came to me, I was able to understand how ‘true euphoria for eternity’ is selfish to existence. Now I’m talking about the deepest level of ‘Euphria’, not the…’I really like this’, or even ‘I LOVE this’…Euphoria is pure individual bliss, being tied into something greater than yourself inside yourself, your own world of perfectness where nothing’s there to distract you from this moment; and we don’t care about anything but that moment. Euphoria is great in small spurts, but if it was an extended periods of time (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week or more) we would be in an ultimate seclusion, apart from everything & everyone else. Existence does not exist by itself, we’re not meant to only focus on ourselves (we give, and we get), we’re designed to want something or someone else to exist with us (a human, a plant, a pet). Plants can’t breath without our air waste, we can’t breath without theirs. Plants grow better when they are able to touch other plants next to them as a group or a ‘family’. Cats crave the contact of their owners, partly for their own enjoyment and also to let you know that they enjoy you. We want to affect people, grow people, touch people, and love people.

If so, how can we possibly think that the ‘chocolate road’ idea of heaven is real?
Exist together for what? To be in a floating space where interactions with people can’t be real (how can they be if everything always goes your way…’your way’ is bound to not work with, or be agreed upon by somebody else at some point during eternity.)…by the way, if everything always goes your way in heaven does everything also go everyone else’s way? Because it can’t, someone else’s perfect is not guaranteed to be your perfect all of the time.

OK, What’s my point with all of this? Don’t live your life waiting for your death, just to experience true happiness.
Live to love, affect, reflect, touch, receive, praise and discover for yourself, others & what life’s actually all about…then ‘whatever positive thing happens after life’ is just a cherry on top!

Interesting thoughts anyway…right or wrong.
Thanks for reading and have an Awesome day!
~Chais Meyer

I’m not really sure if fundamentals can ‘technically’ change or not since they are “fundamentals” & all (the foundation and most basic part of our beings)…but I’d like to think that I can change whatever about myself when ever I want, or need to.

I was very quickly getting sick of my life (I recognized a pattern about two weeks ago), doing the same things that I’ve always done and expecting to get different (BETTER) results.
The end outcome wasn’t changing, so I decided to make it change…I only have one life and I better be the best ‘Chais Meyer’ that I can be! I always have the opportunity to compare myself to the countless other 27 year olds that have already made millions of dollars, sold multiple business and met the president of some far off country…but where would that get me? Life is based off of ‘Cause and Effect’ & what I did ten years ago, one year ago, or one week ago helped create a road map to where I AM today (as good or as bad as that is). The question that comes to mind after realizing this is, “What am I going to do today (the Cause) to change my future (the Effect) for the better?”
I can no longer be the victim because I AM THE VICTOR…and I need to start cusing acting like it!

“Take Responsibility for yourself and change your cusing fundamentals!”, I yelled at myself in the hotel room.
No one is going to take you by the hand and make you be better, stronger or smarter…YOU are the only person responsible for you!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME READER!?! YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU!

For me, that means sleeping less (from 9 hours to 5 or 6 a night has been good so far), learning more (applying myself and dedicating one hour or more each day to learning something that will better my tomorrow), applying myself (TAKING ACTION, ideas are great but their just ideas if they never get implemented) and limiting the amount of time I spend on things that distract me from progression (AKA. Disc Golfing and the above !

Keep Pushing & Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

[image used from: http://studio.angoulvant.net/tag/3d-fundamentals/]

Just now commenting on the book ‘Crush It‘ may seem a little late, as it was officially released back in 2009, but Gary Vaynerchuck just appeared on my radar…and I’m glad he did!

I first saw Gary when I went to an Up-lifting / Technological / Entrepreneurial conference in Omaha, Nebraska a few months ago (called BIG Omaha). Gary was one of the speakers and spoke about business, the web and all around randomness while he was answering questions that were asked by the audience; He’s a Total Stud, a creative thinker, a free speaker (he speaks his mind & cusses a lot), he’s inspirational, and an extremely potent individual (in the nicest way possible .

As soon as I heard about his book ‘Crush It’, I had to buy the audio version and see if Gary was ‘just another business guy’ or something more…I’ve since discovered that he’s definitely more!

I’ve listened to a lot of business related audiobooks and Gary’s is the most real audiobook I’ve EVER heard!
What makes an audiobook more REAL than the next?

• First, Gary goes off the script a lot in this book! This is right in line with his unedited episodes on his Video Podcast (for Wine Library TV). ‘Going off the script’ is exactly how it sounds…he stops reading the words that he wrote in his book and starts explaining in more detail, gives real world examples and he even comes up with new thoughts as he’s recording the audiobook and shares them with his listeners. This, in my opinion, is how ALL audiobooks should be…If the author wants to mention something else to his listeners, just do it…share any/all of your thoughts if they may help us get a more complete experience from your book, even if it wasn’t in your initial published draft! Thanks Gary for helping me find what I was missing in 95% of all audiobooks!
• Second, Gary speaks to his readers/listeners in a no bull shit way, “You’re not going to get rich over night, it may take months or years until your hard work pays off”. Thank you for not feeding us with another round of crap, the kind that eventually leads people to a feeling of disappointment because of their limited results after 2 months of ‘hard work’!
• Third, Gary puts a massive priority on what it takes to make yourself & your business(es) a success & that is Sweat (you know, the liquid that comes out of our pores when we do something that is intense)! When we realize the importance of our own hard work and how it’s the only thing that gives us a leg up over the next guy, we will change our priorities and stop expecting someone to just hand us success because we put 20 hours a week in on a particular project or business.

If you want to either create or re-create your own personal or business brand, this book  is a must have (the audiobook version is my recommendation)!

Thanks again Gary for sharing your thoughts, examples, and experiences with us to hopefully better ourselves.
Please listen to this book and tell me what you think of it and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

:: I’m going to be updating my progress as I start to re-create my own personal brand over these next few months…Stay Tuned & CLICK HERE if you’d like to subscribe through email…I’ll send you a new email every time I write or record a new blog post!

This image is great because the guy in this picture looks as proud to have $17 as we are.

This was truth about 5 days ago…I looked in my online personal checking account and saw a dollar sign “$” with the following numbers “17.00″. Unfortunately, this was not a mistake by Wells Fargo, they did NOT accidentally move the decimal point over two places from the end of the number, we actually had $17 in our checking account.

This is not a pity cry or a call out for help, I am proud to have $17 in my checking account!
Why? Because this is ‘the real dirty’ of not living a typical 9-5 lifestyle, of working for ourselves and putting all of our extra cash and resources into our businesses that will someday repay us for scraping by in order to feed our businesses.

Could we do it another way? Could we work a full time job and also make our businesses grow?
Yes & Yes.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to living life the way you want to. For us, it’s all about constant progression…if we are moving towards a growth direction and we’re seeing constant change for the better (personally and professionally) we are willing to have a harder short term (and a better long term). On the other hand if we’re sitting back, blowing our money and wasting our time, we deserve to be in a tight spot without the reward of our business growing for the future. The fact of the matter is that we’re running, pushing, and sometimes fighting to get what we want…we plan to have a huge financial turn around during these next 6 months…and that news will be even more exciting to share!

Business is not always easy & it’s sometimes dirty, but as long as you have a higher purpose, bless others (individuals and businesses), and work with more passion than the next guy/gal…things will eventually go your way.

Have an Awesome day & don’t forget to thank your God for what you have!
~Chais & Shawna Meyer

I was doing some random work for Computer Hardware about a two years back and I helped them make some movie posters for their ‘Home Theater’ side of their business.

I took a few original movie posters and slowly converted them into vectors.
If you know how to use vector files (.eps and .ai files) please click the “Download” Sticky note below to use this artwork for your own use. The text can be modified as I’ve included the fonts in this zip file…

I hope you enjoy some freebies (this falls under the creative commons license).
Have an awesome day!
Chais Meyer