So I’ve arrived in Bristol for The Internet Marketing seminar – you can see a pic of me here in my hotel room courtesy of my built in webcam (the netbook not me)

Wonder why all British hotel decorating staff think it’s 1973?

Very friendly people in this part of the world,  although with the Bristol accent they all sound like pirates to me.

 The taxi driver from the airport told me about how he used to get half a dozen fares a day taking business people to and from meetings at some of the bank headquarters down here, but since the economic downturn he barely gets one a week.

Although when we’re in an industry where talking to people on the other side of the world is commonplace, be it by skype, email, webinar or podcast you have to wonder why they’re spending money flying people up and down the UK.  Maybe that’s why they’rel broke.

We’re pretty cutting edge compared to most offline businesses, but then we’ve known that for years.

And the other think I love about meetings like this is how they totally and utterly LEVEL people.

I flew down here in a (scarily) small plane and every single person except me was dressed in a business suit. Some of them – mostly male I’m ashamed to say – thought an awful lot of themselves judging by the way they spoke to the flight attendant.

But in the hotel there are people wearing jeans (me), suits, sandals, t-shirts and every other combination of clothes you can think of.

I’ll bet that some of the suits would wet themselves if they realised the little bloke from some small place in America or the woman with the dreadlocks from some little town in the UK pulled in over a million dollars last year.

I walked through the hotel to try to get my bearings earlier on and I’m pretty sure now that I can recognise an internet marketer at 100 paces.

They’re the ones who don’t make assumptions about sex, clothing, age or any sort of physical appearance, because ANYONE here can be an IM success story. They just casually check each other out, seeing if any faces look familiar.

I think it’s going to be a fun seminar!

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I’m cramming my undies and shirts into a bag the size of a shoe box so I can call it ‘hand luggage’ and not have to check any baggage in the main hold so the airline can lose it on my flight down to Bristol tomorrow for the much awaited PuddyFest.

It’s much awaited because seminars are great for beer, networking, motivation and education (in that order).

I’m meeting a few mates down there and I’m looking forward to the whole thing. I always come back feeling motivated about the whole industry and with a list of new potential JV and adswap partners.

Bristol is only 200 miles from my home but as with the last seminar I attended (London last October) I’m going to be flying down.

It’s a 30 minute flight so there’s hardly enough time to have a cup of coffee before landing, and I should have checked before I booked because I now know that the airport is 18 miles from the Seminar venue so the taxi ride to the hotel will take longer than the bloody flight but there you go.

I’d rather do this than drive down or go on the train though because I quite enjoy sitting round in airports, on planes and in taxis and having time to think. I’m taking my new netbook, my iphone and a pad and pen because I expect to abandon the speakers from time to time and do some work in my room.

In fact I know a few people who have put together products while at seminars. There’s something in the atmosphere that drives creativity and for anyone who’s not attended one before, I fully recommend going for that reason alone.

Of course I’m sure the speakers will be great too.

The actual content of the workshop is (I think) list bulding. I have to be honest and say that I’d still be attending if the subject of the seminar was penile peircing because the true value of workshops like this lies in the contacts made and the motivation derived. It really is a fabulous insight on how the IM scene works.

Some of the conversations I had in London at the last seminar were mind blowing just from the angle of seeing how other marketers work, and I learned an awful lot.

If you get the chance then get yourself to a seminar near you at some point this year.

If you need any more convincing think about this – a decent percentage of the attendees at Puddyfest (and Bob Puddy is known for the quality of the speakers he presents) are established marketers.

So while these guys are still going for the educational aspect of the meeting, they (like me) see the enormous value in meeting old friends and making new ones in the IM arena. It’s the same old thing – look at what the established marketers DO as well as what they teach, and you’ll realise they attend these ‘do’s’ because of the value to their businesses.

I’ll keep you updated with what goes on.

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Well of course it hasn’t but I AM writing this in bed using my dinky little Samsung NC10 netbook.

I got it because unlike most airports, my local one Leeds/Bradford won’t allow passengers to fly with an overnight bad AND a laptop case so I needed a netbook to fit into my hand luggage when I go down to Bob Puddy’s Bristol seminar in a couple of weeks.

It’s also handy because we take a lot of holidays and short breaks and with a battery life of (they say) eight hours it’ll work from a boat without shore power too.

The picture of it next to the DVD shows the size.

I’ve imported my Roboform settings too so can access online banking, Paypal, Clickbank, Aweber, blogs, FTP, Stats and everything else I need to work.

It’s the first time that I’ve realised how powerful the concept of ‘cloud computing’ is because most of the information I need to access on a day to day basis are held on other people’s servers rather than my own computer.

Combine this with some first rate open source and free software such as Filezilla, Kompozer and Open Office and I really can work from any computer anywhere in the world.

Looks like the future predictions are coming true.

All I need now is a powerful utility to stop me looking as though I’ve just been dug up when I work at 6.30am

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My wife has a deadline to hit for a gallery she supplies. So I said I’d take charge of the kids for the day while she worked.

Now I spend a lot of time with my children because it’s great fun. A friend of mine boasts how he’s never changed a nappy (diaper) in his life despite having three kids.

I’ve changed HUNDREDS of nappies – the contents of which have been as wide and varied in colour and ponginess as you could ever imagine. I did it because I wanted to – I’m a dad after all – and because it’s part of what life is about.

We could easily get a live-in nanny or au pair, but what’s the point of being a parent if you outsource it?

It’s all part of your life – experience.

Anyway so I took the day off ,and the offspring and I spent the day pratting about in the garden. First time I’ve ever seen a white spider actually so there you go.

And I kept getting HUGE flashes of inspiration, business-wise. I keep mentioning my ‘ideas book’ in this blog but today was quite extraordinary. I’ve come up with two ideas that WILL add $30,000 – $50,000 a year to my income and that can be put together in less than a day. Of course the sales pages, traffic driving and all the other stuff will take a couple of months to put together, but the point is, the idea arrived while I wasn’t working!

I’ll let you know when they come out and how much money they bring in of course but the crazy thing was how quickly it all came together in my head, and all because I took a step back from business for a day.

The feeling reminded me of years ago when I walked out of a job. The boss was a t*t and for once my calm and sense of hunour deserted me so I walked.

And walking out of a job as most people know involves euphoria to start with, then total FEAR sets in as we wonder how we can pay the bills.

Anyway this time the anger I felt seemed to push the fear away and I just didn’t get scared. I wasn’t married at the time and didn’t have a family to support so it wasn’t as worrying as it could have been.

But the fear stayed away.

And in their place I realised that I could THINK. I wasn’t totally knackered after a 40 hour week, or completely fixated on my pay cheque. So my brain seemed to rediscover what it was for.

And I started to have weird and wonderful ideas. Some compete rubbish of course, but other that I worked on and finally put into practise and actually made money from.

Which is how I got into home publishing (before computers though – this was all by mail and photocopier), and I’ve never looked back.

And I reckon this is why people talk about ‘taking the plunge’ when they think about quitting their 9-5 and working for themselves.

It IS a plunge, but once you free up your mind to do the job it was designed for and allow it to stop worrying about crap like paycheques, office politics and your employer’s problems, it’s a pretty wonderful business tool.

Someone Twittered (to see my tweets click the icon on the top right of this page) recently about booking a hotel room to get away and ‘brainstorm’ with yourself, and I think it’s a great idea.

Maybe consider booking 2 or 3 days off work when nobody else is at home and working on YOUR ideas – cos we all have them – and thinking about where you would ideally like to take an online business.

Your results will both terrify you and liberate you, but you’ll never be the same again. Once you see the possibilities your own mind has to offer, no job will ever satisfy you again.

Go do it

Cheers 🙂

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I went (ie was dragged) shopping today with my wife.

We went to Harrogate, which is a smallish but interesting  town in North Yorkshire. It’s also quite affluent and it’s fun to stop for some lunch in one of the posher bars and watch as offline businessmen try to outdo each other with cars and money.

Poor sods all have grey hair at 35 trying to keep ahead of the rest of the rats in the race.

Someone should tell them there’s an easier way.

Anyhow, so we stopped of for a bite to eat and a glass of the red stuff, and the waiter came over to our table, and that’s when he shot himself in the foot (sales-wise)

He took our drinks order then gave us the ‘lunch special’ menu which was a deal for two for around £20 (about $30).

Now when we go to this place we usually chill out and order something from the standard menu and maybe share a bottle of wine and our bill comes to at least twice that.

So why hit us with the ‘downsell’ immediately?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to bring the wine THEN ask if we’re eating?

If we weren’t he could try to persuade us to stay for lunch by offering the lower price menu deal.

I watched and I reckoned at least 50% of all the diners there were taking up the special deal.

Whoever had devised this plan was literally cutting his profits by HALF by offering the deal too soon.

I told my wife I was going to approach the owner and tell him that for a measly £1,000 I would explain to him how he could pretty much double his profits at lunchtimes.

She suggested I forget about work and have some more squid.

Which I did, but time after time I see examples in the ‘real world’ that prove to me that as internet marketers we are SO FAR ahead of offline business that it’s shocking.

People who call themselves ‘marketing professionals’ but have no idea what an upsell or downsell is, and offers presented at the wrong time to the wrong people, or worse of all not presented at all…..

Anyway – if you’re an internet marketer, which you probably are reading this. Gve yourself a huge pat on the back for being one of the truly smart people in business.

Although the thought did just occur to me that maybe they offered me the meal deal immediately is because I lool like I can’t afford anything else!

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I had a 2 hour phone call with a very successful marketer the other morning.

It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot from the brainstorming session we had.

The conversion went from business ideas through tax issues, the latest IM launches, a bit of gossip and then back to business ideas.

But one of the main things I learned was why this particaulr bloke is a very successful marketer.

Sure, his attitude was spot-on, his knowledge of the business first rate and his creative ideas were right at the top of the game, but you want to know what blew me away most about the whole thing?

He was making notes.

Our chat was casual, interesting and funny, but he wasn’t leaving anything to chance. I was flattered of course that he considered my experience and opinion important enough to warrant taking these notes but then I realised that this was the secret to his success.

He knew that the whole success ‘thing’ is about learning, and although 80% of our conversation was, I’m sure, about stuff he already knew – he was ready just in case something sparked off an idea or a new angle to him.

And out of all the things that I knew he’d acheived – hundreds of thousands of dollars earned in a few days, HUGE contacts and JV partners, and respect within the industry, it was this little thing – the note-taking, that blew me away most.

Nice one!

I’m off to buy a notepad….

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This free report – which was very enlightening to write – is available via a link at the bottom of  this post.

 You’ll have to opt in to read it, but that’s only because we’re working on the lists at the moment. Too many duplicate emails going out so we’re pulling a few together. You won’t get bugged with loads of emails. No more than usual anyway 🙂

It actually came out of one of the lessons we were writing for The KickStart Course

No, the thing that pretty much blew my mind was how simple the whole business of earning serious money online is – honestly if you want to end up open mouthed and staring at a pdf on your PC then download and read this free report.

It shows how the actual systems we use are pretty simple and straightforward, and that the only thing missing – the magic ingredient – is getting up off your ass and doing it.

Grab a copy – Pulling Back The Curtain…

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I have a jetset internet marketing guru type lifestyle

Which is why I’m sitting here wearing a pregnancy band.

I’m not kidding.

I have this black elasticated band about 10” wide round my middle.

My wife wore it to keep her belly warm when she was expecting our son
and so it didn’t pop our from under her t shirt at embarassing times.

The belly not the son.

And I’ve got it on because crammed into the back of it is a heat pad that
is just about soothing my knackered back.

I bent over to pick up (of all things) a LEAF that had blown in through
the dining room door and my back went out completely.

The thing is tomorrow morning we’re having some railway sleepers
delivered so said wife can make another raised vegetable plot
and guess who’s supposed to carry the 8 foot solid oak things around the garden?

I might as well just book my hospital bed now.

But as an experienced marketer I plan to outsource the task

It’ll cost me a few pints but I reckon I can grab one of my mates
to help out.

The reason for thos post?

If you want a glamorous internet marketing jetset type lifestyle like mine
keep an eye on your inbox

I’ve got something coming – a freebie – that might do the trick….
 

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Most people have an idea of what they want – from their life, their business or their relationships.

Some don’t and these poor guys drift helplessly from one crisis to another, but most people, when you ask….

….‘what do you want from your online business?’

Know the answer.

However there’s another question I like to ask, that has reduced people to actual tears of realisation and clarity

and the question is…

‘If you carry on as you are today, will you achieve it?‘

Amazingly most people know the answer to this question too.

And more often than not the answer is ‘NO’

I’m guilty of this myself – right now I’m doing something that is unlikely to bring me any money in – posting to my blog.

OK I’m mentioning The KickStart Course at the end of it and posting is part of attracting people to the blog and there are links to products here etc etc

BUT posting to a blog isn’t actually something that’s directly linked to me watching my bank balance increase.

Building a new site selling resell rights or starting a mentoring program WOULD bring me direct results. Which is why I continually work on creating products.

But what about you?

What did you do THIS WEEK that will result in you making money?

A couple of blog posts?

Write and submit some articles?

Read that ebook about the a new system you bought a few weeks ago?

These are all important but they’re also quite easy things to do and even easier to convince yourself that you’ve been working hard.

The HARDER things to do though – the more FRIGHTENING things – are often the ones that bring much better results in terms of money.

Going out and contacting JV or adswap partners and then promoting each other’s products.

Creating a product – recording the interview or writing the ebook

Writing and submitting that Warrior Special Offer and putting your product out there on ‘the shelf’ for people to buy, review and possibly criticise.

I have a list of things in my diary to do today.

Guess which ones are crossed out?

The blog post (you’re reading it)

The forum posts (all these bring traffic and are worth doing but they’re also fun)

and buying a new laptop (GREAT fun but involved SPENDING money not earning it!)

and guess which of the things in my ‘to do’ list I haven’t yet finished?

Contacting a fellow marketer about an audio interview, working on a new site and starting a new product are all ‘in the pipeline’.

Not as much fun.

But the latter ones are the tasks that will generate the money – actually offering a product for sale or actually building a website to sell it from.

So look at what you’re doing and if you’re fannying about doing things that look and feel like work, STOP and go through your Paypal or Clickbank account.

Find out exactly which things brought in most of your money last year or last month or ever, depending on what stage you’re at.

It might have been promoting other people’s products or creating and selling an ebook for example.

If it was go back and do the same thing again.

Concentrate on what brought the dosh in.

and do it some more.

It’s worth it.

PS If you absolutely can’t be bothered with any of that because it’s depressing, or you never make any money, everything you do turns to sh*t or just plain old doesn’t work then here’s an easy way out for you, for just $27 a month.

Hang on – hear me out before you sneer cynically 🙂

Many people fail because they look to their PAST to create their future.
Every plan they have is tainted by past failures.

Listen – those failures have GONE – it’s a new day now so look to the future to create your dreams.

Scary right?

Well we reckon we can help.

We’re so sure of The KickStart Course that we will give your MONEY back if within 60 days you don’t feel it’s changed the way you think about your online business and has the potential to change your life.

Subscribe to http://www.kickstartcourse.com and you can THROW AWAY your past online failures – I’m not kidding – you don’t need to bring any baggage with you – you can just start afresh and we’ll teach you, step by step how to build a solid internet business.

Places are selling fast – this is no sales ploy – so if you want a fresh start online, and feel like dumping all that past frustration, information overload and well, internet marketing BAGGAGE just jump on board the KickStart Course and hold on tight.

http://www.kickstartcourse.com

See you there.

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We’re welcoming a new member of the team this week.

As you might have guessed from the installation of the helpdesk, the number of emails we’re getting has gone through the roof and we need help with answering them.

Not only that but from a technical point of view – websites, various installations and help when things go wrong, we also needed to have someone around to keep things ticking over.

And luckily we managed to get someone who has both the admin AND technical skills we needed.

Janet has been around Internet Marketing for quite a while. In fact she’s worked with some of the big guys in the business in the past!

We’ve hired her before on a freelance basis to help with things we just couldn’t do, so she’s extremely clued up about the whole business.

So if you submit a support ticket and find it’s signed ‘Janet’ this is the reason.

A change for the better we think!

Of course we’re still around too and can be contacted through the support desk too.

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