As a few of you may know, TUK suffered ten days of downtime that it didn’t need to, which obviously pissed me off - however, do not think I sat around on my butt all day (that is actually what I did, but let’s cover that up ). I did do a few things during the time that it was down, although I took a break from internet marketing and all in general, there were some things I’m quite pleased about.

Networking - just because the blog was down, doesn’t mean that all networking stopped, even though a large part of it was halted. I networked with a few people that I never had before, some of them found on Twitter. I also found out a little more about various Blog Premiere members - they’re helping me grow one of the most personal blogging forums on the Internet so it had to be done. For all those I haven’t yet spoken too, my contact details are on the surprisingly named “Contact” page.

Marketing - I do have other websites apart from this one, although most of them are dead . In my spare time, I marketed Blog Premiere the standard ways - letting people know about it who might have not, and also replaced the URL that I used to comment with on blogs with a direct link to the forum - I have seen a few signups directly due to that.

Offline Promoting - I finally had tshirts for Blog Premiere made up - I wanted to get some for TUK but they would have cost too much, however the simple yet elegant logo that makes up the Blog Premiere shirt did not cost a truckload. I will start selling them soon, at around $7.00 for Indian residents (you can order now and they will be delivered in less than a month) or less than $15.00 internationally. They look fairly decent and I will be ordering more depending on how they do.

Reading - yes, I’ll admit that I lazed around and spent a couple days just reading and commenting on other blogs; due to me commenting however, I do not fail at life and was actually spending my time building links. I also took a look at a couple Ustream sessions held by John Cow (Mootube) and Blogger Unleashed (BU.tv) as well as a couple bits of audio/video from Ben Patton. I do not think podcasting is the future, as it is nearly died in this niche at least (how many big bloggers do you know that are podcasters) whereas video blogging is slowly growing in leaps and bounds - however, even with that I don’t really like standard video blogging (doing it myself, at least) and would prefer something like Ustream as it is more personal and interactive.

Hooked myself up - I finally got a microphone (after ages) as well as hooked myself up with Skype - feel free to add JPereiraOwns if any of you have it. With Skype I can further build relationships with various people in the industry (see networking above) as well as goof around. With the microphone I recorded my first and last podcast - I mentioned why I will not be doing any more in the podcast itself. I believe the podcast had over fifty downloads, however the main comment people had was that I did not sound enthusiastic and I’d have to say I agree with them.

Worked on projects, and brainstormed blog ideas - one of the most important posts I wanted to write up was of course yesterday’s rant about how pissed off I was at the downtime, however I also thought up a few different ideas for blog posts, and last but not least worked on a couple websites, including a niche one and an offline project. For all of you that did not listen to my call to action to target the offline niche, it is only you that are losing out - one of my posts in the next few days will be How I made $2,000 with two hours of work and the thing is, any of you could have done it. Stop slacking and start doing; in fact, as soon as you finish reading this post head on over to the discussion at Blog Premiere and ask for help as there are a few other people trying to get involved.

Cleared my contact list - I have a few people in my instant messenger contact list that are annoying bastards to be honest - if you don’t see me online over the next few days, you’re one of them. I deleted a few, blocked a few and will be doing the same to a few more over the next few days - it’s getting to crunch time and sadly I do not have the energy nor time to deal with some of the annoying pricks I had on there.

I am thinking about offering a weekly guest posting slot here on TUK to slightly smaller blogs - by no means is TUK that big however every little bit of exposure helps. If you’d be interested in filling up a guest slot, let me know; I will probably post about this more in depth soon.

Speaking of problems, Hostican have just auto taken out $199.95 from my Paypal account for a subscription that I thought was cancelled a week and a half ago. Bah.

What did you do this last week?

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