Author Archive
The day the Olympic torch came to town
Posted by: | CommentsHello again I just wanted to share this quick post with you. Yesterday the Olympic torch came to our town. Its part of its tour of the country that started off with Princess Anne and David Beckham lighting the torch in Greece and brining it to the U.K.
It is on a journey of 8,000 miles over 70 days visiting over 1,000 communities and carried by 8,000 runners before ending up in London to light the Olympic flame on July 22nd.
There was a big celebration laid on with various stars appearing on the stage they had set up at a local park the Queen opened 2 weeks ago. The crowd was over 35,000 strong so it was difficult to see and it rained through out the show.
My 13 year old daughter was part of the celebrations taking part in several dance routines ending up with over 500 school children performing one large dance in the main arena with all the flags of the countries who will take part in the games, quite spectacular.
The torch was carried by various sporting celebrities such as boxer Amir Khan and people who have done good deeds and works for charities.
I was really proud that my daughter was chosen to take part and it was a great afternoon apart from the weather, oh and me dropping my expensive camera and cracking the screen.
Some of the Olympics events are taking part in our region so we will probably get to see some of them as alas we missed out on tickets for the main stadium at Wembley in London.
Below is a short video tracing the journey of the flame from Greece to the UK and then my home town, and finally leaving the park to go onto its next visit in nearby Wigan after an afternoon to remember. Take care and I will speak to you again soon.
Click here to watch the short video
Please be patient while the video loads.
How To Choose The Right Domain Name
Posted by: | CommentsHello and welcome back, Today as promised I want to talk to you about choosing a domain name the right way.
Before we get started I want to explain to anyone who doesn’t know what a domain name is and why it’s important to choose the right one.
A domain name is for example google.com, or youtube.com. The main reason it’s important to choose the right one is to help get you ranked with google, hopefully on the first page so you can get free traffic to your site or offer.
Let’s say for example you are selling a product on keeping chickens. You need to think about what people will be typing into to the search engines to find the information they want.
You can use free tools to find this out and this is my favourite one, google adwords . You can sign up for a free account which I recommend, as you get up to 800 search results if you sign up, as opposed to 100 if you don’t.
As you can see below these are the keyword phrases people are typing into the search engines to find information about keeping chickens.
The first one shows us there are 18,100 global monthly searches for the phrase keeping chickens, which shows us there is a need for information in this niche and better still if you look in the competition column there is low competition for the keyword phrase.
Now armed with this information you want a domain name that ideally, matches the keyword phrase exactly, as google will position you near the top of their search engine because they like to show sites giving exactly the information that was typed in for the search.
Ideally if it were available, which I very much doubt you want the domain www.keepingchickens.com to help you rank highly in the search engines. Of course you can use either .net or .org if you can’t get .com but ideally you want .com.
You can of course try any other of the keyword phrases for the google adwords list above. Just make sure there are at least 3,000 global searches a month because it’s no use picking a domain name that nobody is searching for.
You would then go to a hosting site such as Dreamhost.com or Hostgator.com and check to see if the domain name is available and if it is register it for one year for roughly $10.
Well there you have it, how to find and register an exact match domain name.
I have created a short video covering what we have just discussed as I know sometimes it’s easier to watch something than read it.
To watch the video just click on the blue link below.
The Power Of A Simple Idea
Posted by: | CommentsNever underestimate the power of the internet. In this light hearted post I just thought I would show you another example of someone who thought outside the box and changed his life.
It only takes you to create the simplest idea and with the global reach of the internet you can go viral and end up being seen by tens of millions of people.
There are many people who have changed their lives just by uploading a cute video to Youtube and it going viral and make them celebrities allowing them to appear on TV and sell tee shirts and other merchandise such as “Charlie bit my finger”.
Just an ordinary family video uploaded to youtube so it could be seen by a relative ended up going viral and getting nearly half a billion, yes half a billion views to date and it`s just an ordinary family video, see it by clicking HERE
All it takes is some thinking out of the box and you could change your life too, just like Kyle MacDonald did. You may have heard about him on the news, he managed to swap a red paper clip all the way up to a house. Read all about his fascinating story and what the internet did for him by clicking the blue link below.
When HRH The Queen Came To Town
Posted by: | CommentsIt was an exciting day today for my family as the HRH the queen came to open a new $50 million state of the art leisure centre just around the corner from where we live. My youngest daughters class at school had been chosen to dance for the queen before she opened the centre.
Unfortunately it was raining as thousands of us gathered awaiting her arrival which meant us all standing there for an hour and a half as the queen was delayed at her previous visit to a local zoo.
Luckily just before her arrival the rain stopped and the sun came out to dry us off. Then we heard cheering from behind us as the queens motorcade came up the road slowly flanked by police motor cycles with security bringing up the rear.
At this point the queens own security already on the ground swung into action, police marksmen appeared on the roof tops and the shadowy men in suits with the earpieces infiltrated the crowd.
The queens Bentley pulled up directly in front of us with the queen and the duke of Edinburgh waving to the crowd. They then got out and walked to the building with everyone cheering and waving flags to meet the local mayor and all the other dignitaries that had been patiently waiting.
They then went inside the new building for a look around for a few minutes before coming out to watch the various schools dancing for them. Then it was back towards the car to meet some lucky school children that had been chosen to meet her and to present her with some flowers.
They then both had a quick walk about past the crowds collecting some more flowers from well wishers, then it was back to the car for a tour round the rest of the site and off they went complete with police and escorts. An enjoyable morning for the whole family and all within walking distance from home.
I have put together some of the best bits of video I could get on the day and some from a friend, if you are interested, it only lasts a couple of minutes , just click on the blue link below to watch.
The queen had visited our town several times before over the years but due to working I had always missed out which made me think how wonderfully lucky I am that I can take time off from my business any time I want, to allow me to do the more important things in life.
Take some action to change your life today using the materials I am giving you and you could be in this position sooner than you think.
To your continued success
Mike
What do you want from your life?
Posted by: | CommentsToday I thought I would get you thinking about what it is you want from life. What part of your life would you like to improve, think about it for a moment.
What part of your life isn’t going the way you had hoped and what are you prepared to do about it. You see it’s no use going through life moaning about things if you are not prepared to take action yourself to change things.
Nothing is set in stone, with a little effort you can change anything in your life, you just need to ready for the challenge ahead.
Take a piece of paper now and write down the biggest thing in your life you want to change right now, be it more money, better job, house, car, to become self employed, work from home, you decide. Once you have decided you then need to plan how to get there.
Let’s say for instance you want extra income and in these trying times who doesn’t, you need to think about how you are going to get it. Can you get a better job or promotion or work longer hours.
Is your partner working, if so can they work more hours or get a job if they are not working already. Failing that can you reduce your monthly out goings even slightly to give you more spare cash.
You see there are more ways than you think of getting more money. Have you ever thought of selling your unwanted items on ebay or even buying from a wholesaler to resell on ebay for a profit.
Before you dismiss the idea, think about why you can’t do this. There are millions of people making a full and part time living on ebay. It doesn’t involve giving up your day job, at least until you are making enough to quit, if that is your aim.
You can start with just a few dollars worth of stock and perhaps make just a little money for a special treat and once you see it can be done build on that.
Alternatively, just sell your unwanted items and use the money to start your own internet marketing business, I will be helping you with that in the next few weeks and months.
You need very little money to get started, and again you don’t have to quit your day job until you are ready. Put it this way, only you can change your life, I will say that again, only you can change your life.
I can help you, but I can’t do it for you. If you take no action, how can anything in your life ever change, unless of course you win the lottery, and good luck with that one.
To help you out if you think you are ready to make that change then this may be for you. I am including a free step by step guide to making your first sale online with internet marketing.
Why not download it and see what you think. If however you think you would like to start to sell on ebay to get you at least started doing something, then look around your house, loft and garage, and you will be amazed at some of the things you have lying around that you no longer need.
Then gather them up, photograph them and put them on ebay, you have nothing to lose and it may be the start of a whole new life.
Which ever of the two paths you choose you are at least making forward progress towards your ultimate goals. Keep watching out for my emails over the coming weeks as we begin the life changing journey together.
To your continued success
Mike
Download your How to make your first sale online blueprint here.
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Are You Living Your Life To The Full?
Posted by: | CommentsAs you know Apple’s founder Steve Jobs has passed away last year. Steve was an amazing man, he built up several well known successful busineses and was worth billions and will be sadly missed.
He’s been a great inspiration and I just re-watched his Stanford Commencement Address a few times. If you’ve never seen it before, watch it below.
This video has had over 14.5 million views and I can thoroughly recommend it to get you motivated because you never know when your time will be up.
While it is indeed a great loss to the world, and so young, I know for a fact that Steve Jobs has led an amazing life and thus I’m sure he will have little regrets…
On the other hand, it’s time for all of us to reflect if we’re truly LIVING our life and making a difference each day…
Here’s my favorite quote from his speech:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
– Steve Jobs
Hence, I encourage you to strive for your dreams and push forward regardless of how bleak the situation might seem. And don’t just be overly obsessed about making money,Focus on picking up skills that are lifelong and evergreen. Because knowledge can never be taken away from you and it will aid you regardless of what you’re doing…
Use the information on this site and make a commitment to yourself to get started today, you never know what`s round the corner. Unless you at least try, how do you know what`s possible. You are in control of your life, nobody else.
Take a moment to think about your life and start changing it for the better today, before it`s too late.
To your continued success
Mike
Are you ready to take action today?
Posted by: | CommentsI make no excuse for getting on to you again about this. Unless you take action now to change your life you will always be a wage slave.
As a wage slave, unless you can get more hours or a better job your earnings are pretty much static. You need to break out of your comfort zone and try something new.
The cost of setting up your own internet marketing business is very small, less than $50, so what’s stopping you? Is it the fear of failure, because if you do fail so what, just learn from the experience and move on.
If you never try you will never know, and go through life living from pay check to pay check like most other people. With internet marketing you are not restricted by what you can earn in say 40 hours per week.
You can just create a product or use an affiliate one and get sales over and over again, your only limitation is how many people buy from you, but this happens 24 hours a day. There is no need to stop at just one product, once you get up and running you just set up more and more offers.
Here are some sad regrets that were taken from real patients that were terminally ill about things they wish they had done while they could..
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.
Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.”
Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
“This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.
Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.”
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners.
All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
“Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years.
There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.”
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives.
Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”
What’s your greatest regret so far and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?
What are you waiting for, do it now before it’s too late.
Sorry if this upsets you but you need to take stock of your life now because life is too short and you never know when your time is up. Take care until next time and take action.
To your continued success
Mike
What Is The Copyscape Test?
Posted by: | CommentsYou may or may not have heard about articles having to pass the copyscape test but let me quickly explain what it`s all about. When you are buying PLR articles to use on either your own site, or more so on article directories you don`t want to just use them as they come.
This is because the articles will have been used by other marketers thousands of times before you and the article directories will only accept unique content.
Whilst you could use them as they are on your own site it will not help you rank well with the search engines as this is considered duplicate content.
What you should do is to either rewrite them yourself or outsource to sites such as Freelancer.com or Elance.com. What is Copyscape, well it’s considered the industries benchmark when it comes to checking for your contents uniqueness.
What the copyscape site does is check your article or text for it’s unique content on sites all over the internet in seconds. You just go to www.copyscape.com and sign up for an account and pay in $5 or $10.
This allows you for 5 cents a time to simply copy and paste your text into the box and push a button and within seconds it will scan the internet and tell you if your content is unique.
This is a must if you are paying others to rewrite for you to make sure they have done a good job before you pay them. It is also necessary to check your own articles if you have rewritten or spun them to ensure you have altered them sufficiently to make them unique.
I have created a short video for you demonstrating the live use of the Copyscape site. Check it out using the blue link below.
Please be patient while the video loads.
To Your Continued success
Mike
The Awesome Power Of The Internet
Posted by: | CommentsApologises for this short post but I just wanted to show you how some people have made a fortune on the internet just by thinking outside the box.
Sometimes the simplest ideas can make you millions, so believe me the internet is the right place to make your fortune online if you are committed and willing to spend a few hours a week building your online business.
You can do this, it takes no special training or qualifications it really is without a doubt the easiest and cheapest way to start a business. Follow me and together we will make it happen.
Never underestimate the power of the internet. It only takes you to create the simplest idea and with the global reach of the internet you can go viral and end up being seen by tens of millions of people.
One such person is Alex Tew an English student you may have heard about him on the news, he wanted to pay his way through university by selling 1,000,000 pixels of ad space on the internet for $1 a pixel. Read all about his fascinating story and what the internet did for him and could do for you.
He who fails to plan, plans to fail
Posted by: | CommentsEver since I left school many, many years ago I have been looking for ways to make extra money and have my own business. Long before the internet came along I had bought courses to make extra money from the business opportunities sections of the newspapers and a weekly magazine called Exchange and Mart, maybe you have heard of it I think its still around.
I always had a dream of owning my own shop but at the tender age of 20 there was no way I could afford one. So when I saw an advert in Exchange and Mart for a wholesale warehouse in Manchester, which is about 20 miles from where I lived, that sold items you could sell on a market stall.
I got really excited and thought great, I will set up a market stall on a Sunday so it doesn’t interfere with my day job, make loads of money and save up and buy a shop, simple right.
All I had to do was buy some cheap stock, add a big mark up, sell it and buy more, easy money. So I drove to the warehouse with no real idea of what I was going to sell I just thought I would see what they had when I got there, great plan, not.
When I got there I was like a child in a sweet shop, they had thousands of items for sale. So I quickly decided to just buy things that where cheap so I could make loads of money. After about two hours in there and spending far more than I intended because things were cheaper if you bought in bulk.
The more I bought the more I would make, I thought, after all everyone knows you have to speculate to accumulate, right.
I spent over £200 which back them was a fair amount of cash with no research on what would sell at all.
When I got home I was all excited and started writing prices out for each of the products I had bought and adding 100% profit and there I was ready to launch my new empire.
Then I realized I had to find a Sunday market to sell my products at. So I spent the next two weeks trying to find one near enough to where I lived, no internet in those days. Then luckily I found a flyer by chance, advertising a Sunday market about 30 miles away that opened every Sunday throughout the spring and summer.
Sunday came and I was up at 5.30am and off I went. I got a little lost on the way there, no sat navs in those days, and arrived just after 7.00am. I pulled up at the gate where two men in yellow coats where standing and I told them I wanted a stall.
Well the men looked at each other and started laughing and one said you had to be there before 6 o’clock to stand any chance of getting one as they go very quickly.
I was devastated and drove off. I parked around the corner to think and decided to wait until it opened and have a look around and see how much money I was going to make the next week when I came back.
When it opened I went back and walked around and found to my horror there were plenty of stalls selling the same kind of things I had bought but at nothing like the prices I was hoping to charge, again I was devastated.
I drove home realizing what a fool I had been, why had I not visited the market first to see what was selling and at what prices instead of just jumping straight in. I had let myself get carried away without doing the research first.
The profit margin on my stock compared to what other stalls were selling them for was quite small, nothing like the 100% I was looking for and hardly worth my while.
So over the next few Sundays I grudgingly got up at the crack of dawn and rented a stall until I had sold most of my stock and really only covered my costs with a very tiny profit not worth all those early Sunday mornings and that was the end of my short career as a market trader.
If I had approached things differently I could perhaps have made a success of it. But dejected I moved on to the next shiny object, and that my friend is why 99% of people trying to make money online fail miserably.
Like me they don’t do the research first to find a hungry market for the products and quit at the first hurdle and buy into the next big thing.
If I had taken the time to visit the market first and see what was selling and for how much, and maybe found something with less competition that I could source for a price that would make me a reasonable profit, then they might have stood a chance.
But by then I had had enough and moved on to the next get rich quick scheme. The moral of my story is this, you find a hungry market first and then find a product you can sell to that market at a good profit, and you don’t give up until you succeed.
That is what makes internet marketing so special, you can create or rebrand an in demand product quickly and easily if you know how, and sell it time and time again with no ongoing costs if it’s a digital product.
No buying stock, no delivery costs, you simply work once and get paid over and over, the perfect business model. So if you are planning to get into this business, and I highly recommend you do. You must focus on just one project and don’t keep jumping from one thing to the next and plan out your strategy.
Don’t be a fool like I was and just jump in with both feet until you have a plan. As the great Winston Churchill once said “he who fails to plan plans to fail” don’t let this happen to you.
If you are interested in avoiding all the start up errors there is a comprehensive step by step plan to take you from where you are now to where you want to be with your own online business.
Just click on the blue link below where I will reveal just such an exciting low cost plan that ticks all the right boxes. Check it out below with no obligation, until next time.
Click here for the step by step blueprint
To your continued success.
Mike
