This year's NPT is starting on a ‘high' note… about 36,000 feet high above Canada, somewhere between Toronto to Vancouver. 🙂

In last week's NPT, I shared my business resolutions for 2006. This week I'll take a step back with a restrospective on the best of Internet and Affiliate marketing tools, tutorials, seminars and more in 2005… all of which are still applicable in 2006!

1. Instructional Book – I couldn't have started last year off any better than by reading Dan Kennedy's “No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs“, included as a bonus with Yanik Silver's “Ultimate Copywriting Course“. Being the time of year we like to make positive changes in our lives and business, January is the perfect time to read books about organization and time management. Short, to-the-point and a great read, Dan's is the best time management book I've read to date. Thought it was so good, I gave Joel a copy too! As a refresher and for inspiration, I will re-read it again this month.

2. Inspirational Book – Once I'd learned how to make time for the important stuff, I next read my friend John Harricharan's inspirational book, “Power Pause“. He offers a 3-point approach which helps you weed through the ‘noise' of our typically busy lives to find calm, peace and ultimately success. If you think it's time to get out of your own way, John's words of wisdom will help you overcome.

3. Site-Building Multi-Media Tutorial – Although it was released in 2004, no subseqent web site buidling tutorial surpassess Jim Edwards “Mini-Site Creator” in depth or scope. If you plan to build a business on the Internet, learning how to create your own pages is the best thing you can do for yourself, and Jim's the guy who'll make that learning process as pain-free as possible.

4. Page & Site Building Software – I talked about the value of Webmerge for the first time in early February of last year, and the software has become an item in my toolkit very nearly as important my HTML editor and graphics programs. I love being able to take an Excel spreadsheet, my site template and have Webmerge process the spreadsheet into a 26-page site glossary with a mouse click.

5. Marketing Tool – Making your own articles available for use on other webmasters sites is a smart yet simple way to get traffic to your sites through the link in your author's resource box. Article marketing is also a fabulous way to gain credibility in your niche and build your brand. Getting those articles published on other sites with minimal time and effort was made considerably easier this year with the release of Jason Potash's “Article Announcer”.

6. Web Host – I was delighted immediately upon signing up with Steve Hetrick's Datawebpro hosting service, and my delight and satisfaction continue to grow. Working with Cpanel (compared to Plesk) is so easy, and the features included, especially Fantastico which lets you auto-install bulletin boards, blogs, a variety of content management systems and other services on your server is like the name… Fantastico!

7. Unique Advertising Approach – Although I really wasn't impressed when the The Rich Jerk dropped the price of his book from $97 to $47 after I'd bought it and talked about it in the NPT, I did appreciate his very unique “I'm Rich, You're Not” advertising campaign on Google Adwords. I see that many other marketers have adopted similar methods… though not nearly so effective nor entertaining if I do say so myself.

8. Internet Marketing Seminar – No doubt about it, Yanik's Underground Seminar in Washington, D.C. last May was not to be missed. That's why I (and a number of other speakers from the first Underground) will be going as attendees to the Underground II this coming March. All fresh speakers, all fresh content… I know it'll be incredible once again. To top it off, Yanik is a total class act, treating both attendees and speakers like royalty.

9. Affiliate Marketing Industry Seminar – Shawn Collin's and Missy Ward's “Affiliate Summit” is the affiliate marketing industry's premier seminar with a very diverse array of learning opportunities for both affiliates and merchants, with a large number of affiliate networks participating.

Speaking of the Affiliate Summit, I'll be on another airplane in 4 days winging my way to Vegas to speak at the event. I hope to see you there!