Peter Sanchez dot Com

Just a quick update. Starting tonight I am going to be unavailable for a few weeks. No cell phone, email, internet, etc.

Feel free to email me if you need anything and I'll respond when I get back. Also, any support issues will also be handled when I return.

I'll explain everything once I return. See you all in a few weeks!

Yea, I sort of quit blogging the last few months. Not because I don't have anything to write about or that I think it's a waste of time. Even if it was a waste of time, the real issue is I haven't had much of just that... uh, time that is. No time.

I have a list of blog post ideas in my iPhone that I just haven't had time to write them up. I also have a list of like 4 or 5 products that I think would sell really well but just no time to put them together.

Plus, I have some other business needs that are taking up most of my time right now. One of them is CartFreak, which is a "super-human" shopping cart aimed at direct response internet marketers. Check it out if you're in the market for a cart to help automate your business. You'll see the feature list compares (even beats?) most of the major carts out there.

I've also been spending a lot of time consulting with clients on marketing their websites, improving their customer retention, etc. While I love helping small businesses out, I am starting to see that it's cutting way to much into my time and it's effecting my real business goals.

So that said, here are my plans for 2010:

Restructure My Entire Business Around CartFreak

As it stands right now, CartFreak is my main focus and I want to turn it into a huge success. My partner on this project is Joe Lavery, who is an amazing marketer. This guy lives and breaths marketing. The "crazy" ideas he comes up with never stop blowing my mind... Not because their crazy, but because they WORK!

Ok, enough stroking Joe ;) We are both working really hard to help turn CartFreak into a real competitor to the larger "old" cart companies out there. We have quite a few people paying us to use the software already, and it's only in beta release. We've also had such positive feedback from big name marketers on the cart and that has been very motivating and helping us keep our focus.

Stop Consulting With Small Businesses

As much as I love helping small businesses improve their internet marketing, it's time for me to ween myself away from doing so. The reason being is that it's way to time consuming. With clients all over southern California, I find myself traveling to meet with them several times a month and each time I lose a few days in the process.

I'm still going to help out my clients, and other small businesses, just in a different fashion. I have a product in the works that will be very useful to these type of businesses and much more affordable than paying me to personally come out and meet with them so often.

Helping the "Little Guy"

Even though I, myself, am a little guy, I still have a lot to offer people new to internet marketing and process automation. I have a small, but very loyal, following and I appreciate them very much. I want to spend more of my time giving back to them - my customers!

I've got some awesome stuff in the works for them and hope to be able to start with that really soon. Note, if you want to be kept up to date on this, click here and enter your email address.

Focus on Business Automation

As a software developer, I thrive on automation. The lifeblood of my business is getting a computer to do the things that I would normally have to do. In the last year I've sort of lost track of this and honestly, been completely neglecting it. Not because of laziness, but I come back to the lack of spare time.

So I will definitely be focusing more on automating (or outsourcing) as much of my business as possible.

Do Some Software Contracting

I love writing software using Python and Django. The "geek" in me won't let it go, so assuming I can find the time I'd love to pickup some short term contracts writing software on a cool project. This wouldn't even be for the money, but more for the "fun." As odd as it sounds, writing code is almost therapeutic for me.

Write More Open Source Software

I love open source software. A lot of people don't realize this but the vast majority of internet services run on open source (FREE) software. Everything from web servers to mail servers to name servers. The very services that are the backbone of the internet, all come from people to write software and literally give it to the world.

I recently released the Zerigo DNS Python module to the open source world. I've also been submitting patches and code changes to other projects I am interested in. I want to do more of this, when I have some spare time or am in the "zone" and just want to "code"

Try To Improve My Personal Life

This is hands down the most important part of my plans for the future...

Things in my personal life have been sort of out of whack lately and I have a lot of changes coming in the very near future. Some of them are very hard for me to deal with, but like always, I will have to suck it up and move forward. Like my ARMY drill sergeants used to say - FIDO - which stands for "Fuck It, Drive On." So that's exactly what I plan on doing.

At the same time, I need to create some sort of balance. I work way to much and everything else in my life has suffered a little bit because of it. Especially my relationship with my 2 daughters. When my 10 year old tells me she doesn't get enough "quality time" with me, then something is wrong and MUST change immediately. So that's exactly what I'm doing. Making changes in the right direction.

Wrap Up

This turned into a way longer post than I planned on. Guess I had a lot of writing in me to get out ;)

Even though I will never shut down this blog, and I do want to write more here, I know I won't get to write as often as I like. Just stay subscribed (either via RSS or email) and I'll update you as things progress.

If you really wanna know what I'm up to during the day, then follow me on twitter. I update throughout the day, usually every day, there.

Here's to a great 2010!

I've been searching for a stable managed DNS service provider for some time now. One of the big "must haves" was an API so I can easily manage my zones (domains) via software that I would create.

I didn't really find any service that tickled my fancy and I was about to give up. Then I stumbled upon a forum post asking for essentially the same thing I was searching for. A person replied and recommended looking into a company called Zerigo, who offers cloud hosting of various services - including DNS.

The web interface is awesome but the best feature, imho, is their full featured API. It's a normal REST interface that uses XML as the wrapper for the data being sent back and forth.

They even offer 2 API libraries for the service. Unfortunately for me, they were offered in PHP and Ruby. Neither of which I choose to write my software with.

I'm a Python guy and so I decided to create a Python module to interface with the Zerigo DNS API. I'm giving it to the world of open source and it's released under the BSD License.

You can browse, or clone, the source here at the public repository:

http://bitbucket.org/petersanchez/zerigodns/

Check out the example.py for example usage and tips.

Use the repository page to file any bug reports, etc. Feel free to email me (contact page) if you have questions or need help using the software.

If you're reading this, I want to say thanks for being a reader of mine.

Also, just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there who are celebrating it. We all have things to be thankful for in our lives - no matter how big or small. Enjoy them all!

I'm off to stuff my face with turkey, potatoes, gravy, and biscuits. Seriously it's one of my favorite meals. I'm not a big fan of stuffing or any of the other "normal" Thanksgiving extras.

Of course, being hispanic we'll also be eating some non-traditional food. Tamales, Pasole, Enchiladas, Tacos, etc. Good stuff!

Once again, Happy Thanksgiving.

Shot this quick video that goes over a trick I picked up a few months back. It shows yet another way to improve your Quality Score for your websites that you're marketing with Google AdWords. That can only mean one thing... More money!

Check it out:

Harvesting URL's is very useful when doing PPC marking on Google AdWords Content Network (placements) or Cost Per View marketing. Basically you provide the advertising networks what pages you specifically want your ad to appear on.

Obviously placing your ads on the pages (especially the first few pages) of organic search results will result in your ads being displayed to highly targeted traffic. So I put together this quick video that shows you how to do it.

Here are some pages from the video:

Get Grease Monkey Here

Get Google URL Harvester here

Watch video on Cost Per View advertising here

3 Hours of PPC Training Here

Well that didn't take very long did it? Roughly 10 weeks ago I wrote about why I was switching from my iPhone (which I had used for nearly 2 years) back to a BlackBerry.

Well, the other day I broke down and picked up a brand new iPhone 3Gs. I know, I know. I'm a fan boy I guess.

Truth is I love my Blackberry but I also loved the iPhone. With the new release of the iPhone OS (version 3.1), the addition of MMS support (finally!) from AT&T and all the apps I loved and really missed using, I decided to come back to the iPhone.

I bitched about a few things in my post about why I left the iPhone to begin with... The biggest reason was the keyboard. That problem is still there, although the new landscape support really helps - at least in the two places I need it most (email and sms)

There still is no background processing either, but with the addition of PUSH technologies it's sort of helping me forgive that short falling.

All of the other reasons I was burnt on the iPhone have been fixed. MMS, Copy & Paste, [what seems to be] better hardware, etc. have brought me back.

Here is a list of some of the apps that I quickly installed (and love!)

Awesome Note, Touch Term, Ping!, Twitterific, Sportacular, Sirius/XM, Brain Tuner, Currency, Flixster, Remote and Urban Spoon.

Got any other app recommendations for me?

So I spent the weekend camping in Williams, AZ. My kids have been visiting their grandparents in New Mexico and we thought it would be fun to meet my in laws half way in Williams and spend a few days camping. Sure beats flying out to NM, picking up my daughters and then flying back home.

As if getting my kids back wasn't bad enough (kidding... or am I?) they decided to bring a puppy with them, which we named Titan. My brothers boxer had puppies with a chocolate lab and the result was 7 pretty cool looking pups.

Now the Grand Canyon was only a 40 minute drive from our camp site and my wife had never seen it before so we were off to check it out.

We got there and parked to check out some views, seen in the photos below (they aren't the greatest, I took them with my BlackBerry)

After a nice picnic lunch we wanted to take a hike into the canyon a little, and this is where the canyon decided to spit in the face of my new puppy.

Staring us right in the face was a sign that said ... "No Dogs" with one of those logos that had the circle with the line through the face of a dog. You know what I'm talking about right?

Needless to say young Titan was devastated! This was his reaction:

Poor little guy.

Wow, I've been missing in action haven't I (at least on this f'n blog.) Sorry about that. I promise to try and write more posts but knowing me I'll get tied up with a ton of other things and put this on the back burner... like I always do.

Anyways, on to the actual article...

A few months ago I finally got frustrated enough with my iPhone that I decided to do something I had been wanting to do for 6 months or so... I switched back to a BlackBerry.

Of course, a few days after I made the switch the new iPhone 3GS was announced and I immediately regretted my decision.

So here I am, nearly 2 months later, the 3GS is already out (and selling like hot cakes) and guess what? I'm totally happy with my Blackberry. It does everything I want out of a smart phone and does it very well.

Here were my main gripes with the iPhone (and remember, I had one since they were first released in 2006):

• How about the short life span for one?


• My biggest complaint was the keyboard. It really was a huge pain in the ass for me to use that keyboard. I can't say enough how much I hated that keyword. Landscape mode was better but still not as good as my Blackberry Bolds keyboard. Yea, I truly hated that keyboard. (how many times can I use the word keyboard?)


• Lack of MMS capabilities. God that drove me crazy. Especially since half the time you go to see your MMS message via AT&T's god awful "viewmymessage.com" site it didn't work. Seriously, NO MMS?


• Ok, this is crazy. No copy & paste? Are you fucking kidding me? I "learned" to deal with it from the very beginning and I couldn't believe it still wasn't an option on the most advanced phone ever created. (Yes, I actually use copy & paste probably 10x a week on my Blackberry!)


• No background processing. I would like to leave my messenger open in the background while I make a phone call or search my email. Not possible with the iPhone.

Those are just some of the reasons. Not it's not all bad. I actually do miss the iPhone, but not enough to switch back.

What I miss is the super easy navigation. Flick of the finger and a tap and I'm where I want to be. Oh, and the web browser. Hand's down, best mobile browser EVER! Blows the blackberry browser out of the water!

Even though some of my complaints are fixed on the new iPhone OS (ie, copy & paste was FINALLY added) there still is the keyboard issue, MMS still isn't supported though now it looks like it's an AT&T thing and still no background processing.

I didn't mind the iPhone's email client so much (though I wish it had PUSH support, which is coming soon?) but the Blackberry email application and SMS/MMS abilities are so smooth and efficient. Handling email on my Blackberry is so easy and it even catches a lot of spam that Gmail misses, which is cool.

All in all, I'm glad I came back to Blackberry. Oh, and Blackberry messenger is an awesome app! Too bad any of the AIM client's aren't as slick.