Visiting my mate’s house I would often see Jimmy there with his Jaguar sat outside and get excited at seeing “the man that’s on the telly”.

A sponsored walk was in the planning and I, with my mate and 100′s of others took part. One Sunday morning we were picked up and taken to Stoke Mandeville where the sponsored walk started and finished. I’ve no idea what I raised, probably only a few pound but I was pleased as punch at taking part.

That was my only fund raiser but Sir Jimmy went on and on for years to come and in 1983 he proudly opened the new National Spinal Injuries Centre together with Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Little did I know that our paths would cross again and that I would reap the benefit of his fund raising activities.

In 1994 I had an accident that left me with a spinal injury. I was in ITU for a couple of weeks, not that I remember much about it, and then moved to the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville.

I remember coming round and only being able to see the ceiling and a nurse telling me that I was on the high dependency ward of the N.S.I.C. I was told that I had to lay flat while my injury was assessed, with my only movement being when the tilt bed moved from side to side every 3 hours.

As I started coming round more and more I was given a mirror that stood behind my bed and allowed me to see what was going on around me, which wasn’t much; Dr’s, nurses and visitors coming and going.

I was asked if I wanted to watch some TV, which of course I did but my first thought was “How can I watch TV laid here like this” but said yes I would.

A miniature TV was swung around from the side of my bed with a 6 inch screen, headphones and Jimmy Saville’s signature on it. What a guy, he had donated TV’s so that every patient could see one and those on the high dependency unit had a mini TV beside each bed.

During the time on that ward I had a neighbour, that was in a much worse state than I was, who was only able to move his eyes and jaw. His breathing was controlled by a ventilator and he could only talk when he had a valve changed in his trachea.

I remember many an evening when Jimmy would come onto the ward and spend time with my neighbour offering words of encouragement and telling him to keep fighting.

As my general health improved, but sadly not my condition, I was moved to a rehabilitation ward where a few weeks later I was given a wheelchair and started to get up and about.

Moving around the unit I would often bump into Jimmy, who always had time for everyone and would crack a joke here and there raising our spirits.

My children at the time were aged 4 and nearly 2 and Jimmy always stopped to have a little mess around with them and he gave them the nicknames Marmaduke and Matilda. My son is nearly 22 now and still remembers it very well.

I got to know the sister of my ward really well as it turned out that she was related to an old school friend of mine, small world. Anyway the sister found herself doing more and more admin and less and less nursing so ended up giving her notice in. As soon as Jimmy discovered this he came onto the ward to try and talk her out of it.

As I said I would often see Jimmy moving around the unit, you’d expect him to be surrounded in minders, Dr’s and nurses but he never was. He always walked alone with all his bling on, and I have to say I’ve never seen bling like it… chunky just doesn’t cover it.

It’s well known that Jimmy raised the funds to build the spinal unit, but as well as building the unit with its 6 wards he made sure there was a communal dinning area with its own kitchen and staff, where those patients that are able can get off of the wards and eat at a table with their friends and visitors.

He had a bungalow built next to the unit that is fully equipped for the disabled so that the patients could have a weekend there with their families and carers prior to discharge.

He also had a full time maintenance team on the unit that worked directly for Jimmy and carried out all of the repairs on the unit.

These are just a few of my memories of the 9 months I spent on the spinal unit. Bearing in mind it’s nearly 28 years since the unit was opened I can guarantee that there are hundreds of thousands of people with similar memories all over the world.

Yesterday we were all joined together by our grief and sadness at the news that Sir Jimmy Saville had passed away.

Today would’ve been his 85th birthday

Sir Jimmy Saville

31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011

I’ve been pulling my hair our lately and have just gone through the worst ten days of my internet marketing career so thought I’d let you all know what’s been going on.

My issue started a few weeks ago during the video blog challenge when a few online friends got in touch to let me know that my blog was displaying a 500 error message.

For those who don’t know what a 500 error message is; it basically meant that I had hit the limit of my resources on my server and the server then automatically switched my blog off and displayed the 500 error message.

Obviously this isn’t good and needed looking in to straight away. So following the advice of D9 support I started de-activating my plugins and left just a few that I viewed as essential. This didn’t cure the issue but it did ease it a little.

Whilst all this was going on I created a video to show my good friend Ian Ieba how to create a signature that contains an opt-in form to place beneath our blog posts. Once I had created the video I explained to Ian about the issues I was having with hitting my resource limits and advised him to keep an eye on his limits.

All was fine until about ten days ago when Ian informed me was he hitting his limits, so I checked mine and I was also hitting my maximum constantly. So we both had a major issue to try and sort out before we lost our blogs.

We both got onto the D9 support desk and reported the issue and were both told that we needed to de-activate our plugins and introduce them slowly to see which one was causing it.

We took drastic measures and de-activated all but 2 plugins and still we were hitting our limits. Discussing the problem over Skype we thought it may be a widget so we removed our widgets but still hit our maximum usage. Ian had changed themes and saw a slight improvement so I also changed themes but didn’t see any difference. On top of that when I changed themes I noticed a link at the bottom of the new theme that I thought shouldn’t be there.

Now I had two major issues to solve, arrrrgggg It was going from bad to worse. I went to the theme creators website and got in touch asking about the link at the bottom, no reply. Tried again the next day, still no reply.

Ian and I were bouncing ideas back and forth over Facebook messaging, email and Skype as well as asking D9 support for advice and assistance for a week solid. At one point Ian lost his blog altogether and couldn’t access his admin panel either, so fixing this was now our priority.

D9 said that maybe we were now at the point of upgrading our servers to our own, I found this hard to believe as my traffic didn’t warrant that and Ian only has one site with D9 and that had gone down.

So I turned to our Learn With Sally Facebook group and asked for advice there. Jacinta Dean is also with D9 so she kindly checked her resource usage and saw that she was also hitting her limits and pointed out that the issue couldn’t be with Ian or myself but had to be with D9. Jacinta also looked at the link for me and said that she thought I had been hacked….. arrrrggggg I wanted to scream. My issues were now doubled but Jacinta also offered some good advice on blog security and recommended some plugins, which I installed.

We got in touch with D9 again and said that there were a few of us all using D9 that were having the same resource issue. We then got a reply saying that Cloudlinux, who manage the resource limits, had a bug in their system that was reporting false issues. So Ian and I didn’t have a resource issue at all and had just wasted a whole week trying to solve a non-existent problem. Although it wasn’t a total waste as we had learnt loads through the experience.

Phew….. now I only had to deal with the link at the bottom of my new theme, I still hadn’t heard back from the theme support people so I asked D9 whether it could be a hack.

Fairplay to Dan of D9, he instantly changed all my passwords, scanned all of my sites and recommended I carry out a deep scan of my PC for viruses, Trojans, spyware, malware and a deep clean of all files. He even supplied links to a variety of websites that offered software that would do this for me.

D9 found 7 Trojans hiding in some exe ebooks I had on one of my eBook websites so I deleted them all and removed the items from the sale.

He also removed the “alien” link through removing some coding in my footer.php. So I went back to edit my new theme only to find I couldn’t make any changes. I then deleted the theme and started again, with Ian on the end of a Skype call we tried all sorts. I switched over to the default WordPress theme and Ian, checking my blog, told me that my whole blog was just my last post. I was to scared to look myself for fear of what I might find. I had no choice but to re-install the theme to get my blog working again. Ian and I worked on the issue long into the night, talking over Skype and comparing our codes. Taking screen shots, copying codes and emailing them back and forth whilst trying to solve the problem.

With much puffing, panting, moaning and groaning, as Ian’s wife Evette pointed out lifting my spirits, “Thanks Evette you really did pick me up, even if I was extremely embarrassed at the time” We finally got my blog working again but the “alien” link was back. Indicating that if it was a hack it came from the theme and I still hadn’t heard back from them as it was now midnight and we’d been working on it most of the day we decided to call it a day. We’d both been pulling our hair out for long enough…..

Before hitting the pillow I asked D9 to install a back up from as far back as they could, which they did. The following morning I checked my blog to see that the theme was the same as I had left it and the link was still there. No problem, I had learnt what the coding was in the footer.php so I removed it myself and started editing my new theme only to find that some of the plugins wouldn’t work.

Again Ian and I were on Skype trying to solve it and compared our plugin scripts, which were the same. So still thinking I had been hacked Ian suggested that I re-install WordPress as if for the first time and then upload a back up from a clean period.

I then had a thought……. I’ll go to the theme creators again but this time with a cunning plan I asked them: “If I purchase the upgrade will the links at the bottom go away?” It worked as I had a reply within an hour saying “yes, when you buy the upgrade the links will be removed”. So I asked “Is the alien link meant to be there?” “yes it’s all part of the free theme and that link is to one of my websites”. Phew I hadn’t been hacked, the heavy weight just lifted off of my shoulders and I could smile again.

So I re-entered the coding in the footer.php file to allow the link to display and all of the plugins came back to life.

After ten long days for both Ian and myself we both had our blogs back up and running and I think you’ll agree that they look much better.

This last week that Ian and I have had just goes to emphasize the message in our last blog posts Journey To Success: Never Give Up Focus and Hard Work.

I would like to thank Ian Ieba and Jacinta Dean for their help and support in solving this matter.

I would also like to ask you: How safe is your blog from hackers? If you want to stay safe then I suggest you get over to Jacinta’s latest post: Is Your Blog Secure From Hackers?

Now that this issue has been resolved I can get on with my Learn With Sally coaching and catch up. Oh by the way Sally has just released the first four modules of her coaching in The Learn With Sally Replays, be sure to check it out.

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments so please let me know your thoughts below. Oh and please help me spread the word of the post by using the new buttons below, thanks

Until next time, Be seen but be safe…

What a busy Bank holiday weekend I’ve had. It’s a shame the calender on my phone doesn’t show Bank Holidays, wedding anniversaries and the day my daughter goes off on her first ever holiday without the parents

I said that I would put the Top Ten Traffic results on my blog today and after a very busy weekend I’ve finally managed it……. ye-ha

You see after receiving the entries for the video challenge I just had to put some of them to use, which meant more learning, applying, correcting, applying, correcting again arggg but I got there and am I pleased, you betcha I’m pleased, so much so you can have another ye-ha

As well as watching the videos from the challenge I’ve also had the pleasure of watching the ones from Learn With Sally. As this weeks module is about creating videos, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and create a video of The Top Ten Traffic Sources for the period of the video challenge.

So without further ado, grab yourself a coffee and pull up a chair. Then watch the new video in HD, which means you can watch it full screen and not lose any quality

Lets see who’s in the square window today

Please take a moment to visit the websites mentioned in the video, you’ll find all the links you need below, and please mention to them that they’re staring in my latest creation

No1 Twitter

No2 Facebook

No3 Ian Ieba

No4 Dawn Kay

No5 Adrienne Smith

No6 Dianna Simon

No7 Nick Lawless

No8 Julie Dunlop

No9 Stuart Turnbull

No10 Google Plus

Again I want to thank everyone for part in the challenge as well as thanking you the reader for coming over and reading my posts, then tweeting, liking +1ing and helping get the word out about my content. It is very much appreciated, “Thank You”.

Your Shout….

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments so please share your views.

Do you like the new video format?

Were you surprised by the top ten referring sites?

Oh and please use the new bookmarking plugin, over on the left of the screen, to share my post with your freinds and followers, thank you.

Until next time, Lights..Camera.. Then Take Action

Hi all, have I had busy week or what…

After announcing the video creation challenge in my last blog post I’ve been blog hopping, Tweeting and setting up an event on Facebook to help get the word out there, and what a response I’ve had.

I’m really excited about every video that entered. We’ve got lessons and tours from experts, some from 2^nd and 3^rd timers and some from video virgins that have never created videos before.

oh and watch out for the dark horse, he’s stepped out of the stable and will soon be galloping around the net.

I take my hat off to every one of you that created a video (or two or three in some cases) for this challenge and I have listed them all below in the order that they were submitted to me.

Please bookmark this post as you have some fantastic lessons and demonstrations below and I know you’ll want to watch them all throughout the week

Oh and please use the tools available on each post to help spread the word of their video creations.

So without further ado allow me to introduce…….

Barry’s Box-office Bonaza…….

Kathy Dobson: Gives 3 excellent lessons in her video that most bloggers would find extremely helpful. I know I did and these lessons will help me improve my blog. Great work Kathy!

Can I Have Some Space Please

Please note: Kathy is away on vacation this week so replies to comments will be made upon her return.

Adrienne Smith: Discover how to make your links stand out on LinkedIn with this easy tip. You’ll have your links changed in no time at all.

How To Make Your Links Stand Out On LinkedIn

igor Griffiths: Has created a video to show how to start split testing when you don’t know where to start.

How to Start Building the Life You Desire

Jacinta Dean: Gives us all an excellent lesson on how to use a certain website to check our Twitter followers in a number of ways. Every Twitter user needs to watch this one. I was glad I did

To Follow Or Be Followed On Twitter

Craig Sowerby: Shows us one of his methods for building his list. This is an excellent lesson and a new one for me.

One Of My Best List Building Techniques!

Please note: Craig is away on holiday this week so replies to comments will be made upon his return.

Julie Dunlop: Really stepped up to this challenge and created a video showing us how she uses a certain toolbar to help spread content on the web.

I Accepted The Challenge, Here Is The Result

Ian Ieba: “The Dark Horse” Has created an excellent first video and has combined it with a series of posts that he is putting together for using PLR material to turbo charge our product creation efforts.

PLR – Private Label Rights Part 4

John “Ed” Edwards: Ed is an eBay master and knows eBay back to front and inside out. In this video Ed gives us a quick lesson on using eBay Pulse for researching niche stores.

How to Research eBay Niche Stores Using the Pulse Tool

Robert Corrigan: Rob demonstrates how to add items to give away events, for list building, and set up our download pages. He’s also put an idea in my head…… you’ll have to pop over to see what that is……

The Video challenge

Mike Shepherd: Mike suffered a 500 error some time ago and had all sorts of issues fixing it. He’s now found a 5 click solution, which he details in his very first video creation.

The 5 Click Solution To A 500 Error Fix

Stuart Turnbull: “I sell vintage prints on eBay and my video shows an example of how I identify the hot sellers and then where I go to source these items. In this particular example I find prints that I can resell for five times the purchase price!”

My eBay Profit Secrets

Randy Smith: Gives us a tour of a brand new piece of software that will create our Affiliate pages for us. Not only saving us hours of work but ensuring that we get all of the fields filled in correctly.

Video Tour – Fill in the blanks affiliate pages!

Dee Ann Rice: Learn how to upload a video to your WordPress blog post using YouTube and a FTP program.

How to Upload A Video To Your Blog Post

Nick Lawless: In his first ever video gives us an excellent lesson on how he does his keyword research and the keywords he finds are all successful. Nick also shows us some other tricks he uses but you’ll have to visit his post for those details

Gold diggin’ on the net – Check out my first video!

Eamon Diamond: Has created 2 excellent videos giving everyone lessons on understanding Camtasia. As I have recently purchased it I found these a real help and I know that these are going to improve the quality of my videos.

Understanding Camtasia

Mandy Allen:This is a quick video that will walk you through the steps to add an opt in box with a graphic to your WordPress blog sidebar. The video shows you how to create the ‘widget’ using an html editor, then where to paste the code for it to appear on your blog.

My First Video Post

Vance Sova: Has a regular meet up with John Chow and friends where they discuss various topics. In this meet up they discuss the new Android phones, smart phones and even talk about beer.

Internet Marketing Gurus Talk Android iPhone Smart Phones, Beer

Michelle Lyall: Has been off the circuit for a while but has now bounced back and is taking part in Sally Neills new coaching program: Learn With Sally. Michelle has never created a video before and has done a terrific job on this her first ever video.

Face my Fears or Sally Neill

Rick Byrd: Rick explains why we should cloak our affiliate links and shows us 2 ways of doing it, both of which are new to me.

Affiliate Marketing Lesson – Why and How to Cloak Affiliate Links

Late Entries:

Michele Welch: Gives us an excellent lesson on using Hootsuite to schedule our tweets and organize our Twitter accounts. I for one didn’t know Hootsuite could do so much, thanks Michele.

Tour of Hootsuite

Nikki Stephens: AKA The Fabulous Fear Fighter gives us an excellent lesson on setting up our gmail accounts to handle all of our email accounts as well as being able to sort them into folders. I for one needed this lesson, thanks Nikki.

OMG The Posh Girl Speaks

David Taylor: Gives us a tour of Mail Wash, an email application that David uses to filter his emails and catch all the spam and viruses before they land on his computer. He’s also thinking of a competition where he’ll give 2 lucky winners free access to Mail Wash Pro for a year.

An Update, An Apology and a Dilema

Dawn Kay: Has created her first ever video and in it she shows us how to add audio files to our blogs. We all know how handy this is to know and I have to admit that I didn’t know how it was done, but I do now thanks to Dawn,

Not Bad But Needs Work

I want to thank everyone that entered the challenge. I know that time was tight for many of you and I really do take my hat off to you all. I truly appreciate every one of you and the effort you’ve put in, “Thank You”

There are some great entries and I really hope that you’ve learnt loads from them. Please be sure to help the creators and bookmark, like, tweet and stumble every one of them, pretty please with cherries on top

I know that some people are still hoping to add their videos to the challenge. This isn’t a problem as I can add them later. When I have a few to add I will do so as I don’t really want to keep editing the post for single additions.

Your shout!

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments.

So what did you think of the challenge?

Would you consider holding one yourself, or would you like me to hold another one with a larger time frame?

Don’t forget next week I’ll show you my Top Ten Traffic Sources, will you be in there?

Until next time… Popcorn!!

I’ve got an idea for a bit of a challenge and want to invite you all to take part….

The challenge is to make a video and post it on your blogs. It can be of anything you feel comfortable doing and if you’ve never created a video then this is your push to do so.

We’re all able to carry out certain tasks on our PC’s so why not record yourself doing one of them?

I’m no Spielberg but I have created a few videos and how I got started was by recording myself setting up an auto reply message on Outlook Express. It’s a simple video, which is displayed lower in the post, and it has been my most popular with over 2,900 views. It was created with free software so all it cost me was my time, so there’s no excuse!

Here’s a few ideas you could start with:

Cloaking affiliate links

Adding an image to a page or blog

Creating a payment button

Creating an Image

Creating an eBook cover

Creating a Hyperlink

Branding an eBook

How to create an ebook

An HTML lesson

Creating an auto reply message

Gmail tips

Twitter tips

Facebook tips

Adding something to your blogs

There are endless topics that you could cover but for now just pick one that you’re comfortable doing. Maybe something you do day in day out. Maybe you have a skill that some of us don’t, in which case show us it. You never know it could lead to another string in your bow.

By all means visit my YouTube Channel and get some ideas from the videos I’ve created. Maybe you think I made mistakes in them or could have explained something better, if so make the same videos and correct my mistakes. Don’t let your voice put you off, you can tell that I haven’t had any elocution lessons cor I even have to remember my T’s and H’s

The only rules are:

1. It must be suitable for everyone to watch.
2. It must be created from today onwards.

Please Note: I will check all videos and if any were created before today they will not be allowed in the challenge.

You have until Monday 22^nd August to create your video and submit your post details to me with the URL and a sentence or two about the post/video. I will then write a post on Tuesday 23^rd and I will link to every post that is taking part.

Now think about this: As I said we all have skills in different fields so this could highlight your skills to people that need them. Now imagine an additional income stream created from your skill. Never mind Fiverr this could link you to each other directly and solve any outsourcing problems. You never know we may even build our own little team of contacts.

If you’ve never done this before don’t worry. I’ve placed a video below showing you how to upload to YouTube and then how to place the videos on your blogs.

There is free software available for creating your videos:

CamStudio

Screen Cap Studio

Jing

I got started using Camstudio and it’s really easy to use as I detail in a video in a previous post: The software I use to create these videos

Ok as promised at the start of the post: I’m showing you my first ever video:

I didn’t do too bad……did I? So come on lets get filming, yeah? Any job you’re comfortable doing will be spot on, I promise you

Here’s how you upload them to YouTube and then onto your blogs, please excuse my coughs:

So are you up for the challenge?

Would your friends be up for it?

Will you help me get the word out about the challenge?

As an added bonus the following week, 30^th August, I’ll create another video showing everyone my top ten traffic sources for the period of the challenge. Meaning those that help me spread the word of the challenge have a very good chance of being mentioned, and linked to, on the 30^th as well.

Will you be in that top ten?

So what do you think, are you up for the challenge?

Until next time, shoot to thrill

I’m really excited today as I’ve just purchased Camtasia Studio and have been checking it out. I’ve previously created my videos using CamStudio Pro, which I thought was ok for the price but now that I’ve tried Camtasia I’m kinda blown away.

Having received an email from one of my readers, asking how I’d set my blog up with automated emails to thank people for commenting, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone.

So today I’ve created a video showing everyone exactly how I’ve set the emails up, which I’ve placed below.

If you’ve ever created videos you’ll know that you get those eerrr ummm moments that sound terrible when you play the videos back and those delays when the screen change seems to take forever. Well I’m still having some of those er um moments and the screen change delays are part and parcel I think. Normally if I have to many I would stop the video and start all over again getting a little more worked up with each new attempt.

Not any more!

Before trying to create this video I had a quick look around the Camtasia studio and had a look at how to edit, which was easy as there’s a video demonstration

So off I went to create the video. I opened up the recorder, set the screen size and hit record. Up came a little box saying to hit F10 when done and then a counter, 3 2 1 and I was recording.

I created the video in one take and when the screen seemed to take forever to change I smiled and thought of the editing facility. I still had a few er um moments but I’m working on those

Another feature of this software is the ability to blur part of the screen. Normally I’d have to remove email addresses etc or work the screen size around what I’m comfortable showing in public. Not any more. As you’ll see in the video I’m now able to blur those areas, however on a moving screen this was a little testing but I think I’ve cracked it. Let me know what you think.

Oh yeah the content of the video, ha ha

Setting up automated emails so as to thank people for commenting on our blogs.

I actually use two plugins for this:

WordPress Thread Comment: Places my reply in a box beneath the comment I’m replying to and sends the commenter an email containing my reply, allowing them to continue the conversation

Thank Me Later: Sends out an automated email thanking people for commenting on my blog. This is a really cool plugin as you can include all of your links and promotions.

They’re simple to install and set up as I demonstrate in the video below.

During the video I mentioned that by using WordPress Thread Comment you may find that you have 2 Gravatars displayed when replying to comments. I have previously created a video showing people how to remove the 2^nd image, so if you’re affected by this issue please watch How to add a Gravatar to your WordPress Blog

If you’re interested in creating your own videos and can’t afford Camtasia then there’s a free option available at ScreenCapStudio.com which is really good for building your confidence and getting you started.

As you know I love to read your comments so please let me know what you thought of my first video using Camtasia and whether it helped you out with setting up the automated emails.

Oh and please use the buttons below to spread the word of this post to your Friends and Followers, thanks.

Until next time, 

Hi, thanks for stopping by.

I’m so excited my head is spinning with ideas, so I thought I’d write this post and ask you for your advice.

As you know I do a fair bit of blog hopping and when I find something of real value I like to pass it on to others that I think will benefit from it. One of the blogs I visit is Dawn Kays Blog and whilst there recently I saw that Dawn was offering to Transcribe an Audio Recording into a text document free of charge for one of the people that left a decent comment on her post. Meaning that people that have interviewed others can turn their recordings into original products with very little effort on their part.

Knowing that Dawn does this for a living from her First Class Transcriptions website I thought this was an excellent opportunity and knowing some people that have carried out interviews I quickly got in touch with them and pointed them in Dawns direction and didn’t give it much more thought.

Imagine my surprise and delight the next time I visited Dawn’s Blog to discover that I was One of Two people that had won a free transcription and a copy of Sally Neill’s Skype Interview Survival Kit, which basically walks you through the process of creating your first interview and tells you of the pitfalls to avoid.

Now you can see why I’m so excited, not only do I have a fantastic guide showing me how to prepare, conduct and target an expert for an interview I also have an expert ready to transcribe it for me.

Is that a result or what??

The thing is I have never conducted any form of interview before and to be honest I’m more than a little nervous about it, maybe even a little fearful. But when we have a fear there’s only one approach to take:

Face it!

Evaluate it!

Address it!

Remove it!

As I said I need your advice so If you were given this golden opportunity:

1. Who would you target?
2. Why would you target that person?
3. What’s the One burning question you would ask them?

When the product has been created I’ll make sure that those who leave decent comments receive a free copy as my way of saying “Thank You”.

Oh, by the way If you would like a copy of Sally’s Skype Interview Survival Kit pop over to Dawn’s Blog where you can download your free copy (without having to opt-in) it really is an excellent guide. Please remember to leave a comment saying “Thanks Dawn”

Dawn has also created some excellent check lists to help us in our online campaigns. If you haven’t checked them out please do so, they’re a great help.

Could you also help me spread the word please? Hit the buttons below to tell your friends about this post and the gifts on offer, every little helps both me and your friends

Until next time, Face Your Fears

Hello all, thanks for stopping by.

It seems ages since I last wrote a blog post but as my regular readers know the majority of my time is being spent with my mother, who has recently being diagnosed with vascular dementia. As she is both deaf and partially sighted she needs a family member with her most of the time to help keep her calm and try to explain things to her, as well as helping the staff and doctors with their communications.

Although I haven’t been posting to my blog, or blog hopping, as much as I would have liked I have been working behind the scenes on other aspects of my business and getting the ball rolling on the plans I have for this year, (better late than never): I’ve been updating my eBay store, adding new products and creating Thank You pages with back end sales on offer, most of which are now my products

If you’re an eBay seller you’re probably thinking “Thank You Pages for a physical product? I thought the download days had gone!” and you’d be right. eBay no longer allow the sale of downloadable goods, but this is where we have to think outside the box. I’ll write a detailed post on how I do this in the near future as it could help you bring in an extra source of income.

I’ve also purchased Master Resale Rights to a collection of squeeze pages, as they fit in with this years plans, and have uploaded them to their very own domain: Squeeze Page Templates

I’ve also added a new page to my blog inviting other bloggers to guest post, which I think would be helpful to both myself, due to my lack of time, and the blogger as it can increase their traffic as well as highlight their knowledge and writing skills. If you’re interested in submitting a guest post please follow the link above. There aren’t any set rules as such but I do have a few guidelines in place and if you stick to them then your post could be published very soon

Although I haven’t been blog hopping as much as I would have liked, I have done some and I have found two posts and a video (thanks Randy) that I simply have to pass on to you as I found them really helpful and I know that if they help me they’ll help others like me. The posts are in relation to Article Marketing, well more article writing than marketing, but extremely helpful for your Article Marketing campaigns.
One is by Eamon Diamond entitled Duplicate Content and the other is a guest post by Fran Aslam on Zahid Yakoob’s blog entitled Article writing – Effective Strategies to Overcome Writers Block If you’re struggling to write articles in any way then I highly recommend that you check the posts out.

The video I have to mention is aimed at bloggers that use Twitter and/or Facebook. It was created by Sally Neill and is only 8 minutes long, so grab a coffee, or a Guinness Bill and pop over to Sally’s Video Entitled Increase Blog Traffic Add Your Blog Comments Feed To Facebook + Twitter and if you enjoy the posts and video be sure to leave a comment on them, please.

As we know, a very large part of Internet Marketing is generating traffic to our sites and the three links above can help you improve your traffic so please do yourself a favour and take time out to visit them, the rewards are endless and all yours

I will start my blog hopping again very soon and will start by returning visits to those people that have left comments for me. I appreciate all the comments being left and will make my way through them in the near future. If you would like to be amongst the first blogs I visit then please leave your comment below.

Maybe you have found some excellent posts that you would like to tell others about, if so please leave a comment and do so, just miss off the http://www. and you’ll avoid the spam folder, but I’ll keep an eye on that just in case

Oh…… if you use twitter please hit the Tweet button

Until next time, keep smiling

A quick catch up:

My mum is now out of hospital and has returned to the care home but her memory has been badly affected by this latest bleed to her brain. Her memory now alternates between 1950′s Dublin and 1970′s England, where she thinks she has small children at home that need caring for. Her only aim is to get “home” to look after the children, bless her. Even when we explain that we have grown up with children of our own she doesn’t calm down and has become very temperamental, so much so that one of the family needs to be with her most of the time. Needless to say work comes after my mum so I’m falling behind, but hay ho such is life

Decembers Traffic:

As I said above I’m falling behind with my work load and should have posted details of Decembers Traffic before today, but it’s better late than never

It’s very important that you know where your traffic is coming from as it allows you to focus on what drove the traffic your way and you can see what is and what isn’t working for you.

The quickest and easiest way I have found to assess your traffic results is Google Analytics where you can set up an account for your sites. Once you have the account set up I would recommend that you also install the Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress, which you can do from your WP admin panel, but I advise you to use the link above so as to watch a demonstration video showing you the in’s and out’s of Google Analytics and the Plugin settings, to give you the best results.

My Top Ten Traffic Sources for December were:

1. Vance Sova.com Vance’s niche is List Building and he gives lots of tips to get you started and improving your Email Marketing Campaigns. He also offers an excellent eBook on the subject that is available free of charge when you submit your email address. Pop over to his blog to collect your FREE copy.
2. John McNally54.com John could soon be crowned the “Blog Hopping King” and offers advice, news, views, tips and tricks on a variety of subjects that most people find extremely helpful. He has a passion for Blogging, Art, Old Comic Books, Real Ale, Astrology and is a marathon runner, how he fits it all in I’ve no idea. John has also started designing individual websites for people and in his price of £99.00 has included the first years hosting, which I think is a fantastic deal.
3. John Thornhills Masterclass.com Which is a complete course on Internet Marketing and has enabled many people, including myself, to get online and start their own business. The traffic that has come from the Masterclass has been from the MC Forum, where students, past and present, help each other out with pretty much every aspect of online marketing and product development. It’s a fantastic forum with great help and support to get you over any hurdles you may face on your journey.
4. Terry Conti.com Terry is a fellow Masterclass student and works full time in the restaurant trade. He has a fantastic outlook with his online efforts and believes in Learning before Earning. Terry applies his time to learning about each modules subject before moving onto the next one, without cutting corners. He has a great blog, where his posts give you a complete picture of the subject at hand with his most recent being about FREE TRAFFIC and is well worth your time.
5. Creating My Business Online.com by Jacinta Dean. Jacinta works around her child and was also a fellow Masterclass student whose product niche is Spray Tanning with her blog offering help and advice on a number of subjects based around Creating A Business Online, with break downs of each weeks Masterclass modules. Jacinta was the brains behind the 100 Blog Comment Challenge and makes regular posts aimed at helping people make informed choices based her knowledge and her own experiences.
6. Twitter.com I know that some of my readers don’t rate Twitter and to be honest I’ve had doubts myself at times. But with Twitter showing up time after time in my traffic stats it is obviously working for me. All I do is tweet my own work (be it videos, articles or blog posts) and I tweet blog posts that I read and enjoy as well as Retweeting other peoples tweets. I have previously used twitterfeed as well, but as I said in my last blog post, that is now under review.
7. The Internet Intern.com by Bryan McHeyzer. Bryan has recently transferred his blog to another hosting company and given it a make over, unfortunately in the process Bryan lost most of his previous work Bryan’s blog is dedicated to Internet Marketing For The Newbies and covers everything a newbie needs to know to enable them to make informed decisions. As I said Bryan lost most of his work and has had to start again. His new look blog is coming back with a bang and well worth your time to visit.
8. PlanetSMS Members.com This is another membership site of John Thornhill’s that supplies you with an eBook Website, PLR material, Brandable eBooks, eBay Guides and much much more. There is also a forum included in the membership where it’s members help each other with any problems they may have. The traffic from PlanetSMS would have come from the forum where I try and help people by answering their questions.
9. Don Maisey.com Don is also a Masterclass student and has got his head down doing his course work, keeping his blog updated and attending to his other business interests. Don is a fairly new student of the MC and I have to admit that I haven’t really got to know him personally yet, however I have seen him helping people on the MC forum and from that I can see that Don knows his stuff and is a very helpful guy.
10. Lavender Uses.com by Patricia Millman AKA The Lavender Lady. Patricia writes about all things lavender and their uses, including the history of Lavender, crafts, gardening tips, health, lavender products and species. She is often found commenting on the Comment Luv blog where she recently won the CommentLuv Ambassador Contest on Basic Blog Tips. Patricia is also a keen Twitter user and has given me some fantastic tips for getting the most from our Tweets.

Be sure to visit my top ten traffic referrals and if you leave a comment please mention that I sent you, every little helps

And Finally:

My Blog is 2 years old today and as a Birthday Gift to you, my readers, I am giving away a New Brandable eBook:

“Effective Search Engine Use and PPC” which will allow you to enter:

• Your Name,
• Your URL (or that of your eBay Store)
• Your ClickBank ID

I have included 2 ClickBank Products that will allow you to add your ClickBank ID to them

In the package you will find:

• A Sales Page
• A Squeeze Page
• Graphics: Book Covers, CD/DVD Labels plus CD and DVD Case Covers
• The Brandable PDF
• Branding Instructions
• The Branding Software

Download Effective Search Engine Use and PPC and enjoy

As always I appreciate your comments and reply to them all, however my replies may be delayed as I’m spending time with my mum.

Until next time, look out for your loved ones