Happy Hogmanay as we say in Scotland. Lang may your lum reek. Translation: Long may your chimney smoke, so wishing you plenty of fuel to keep your fire burning bright and you nice and warm in the cold and dark days of winter.

There is an old tradition in Scotland, called “first footing”. After midnight of the old year on 31st December, to bring you good luck, the first visitor to your house should be a young, dark-haired, handsome man.  And to ensure you stay warm, he brings a lump of coal. Also salt, black bun (a rich fruit cake) and a “hawf bottle” of whiskey. These represent warmth, wealth, food and good cheer.

Once entered into the home, a toast is offered to the house and all within it, using the important whiskey of which everyone should have a few wee drams on Hogmanay. The traditional taost is: “A guid New Year to ane an a’ and many may ye see”. This is a good New Year of one and all and many more may you see.

And that is my wish for you too in 2013.

This is the response of a wealthy financial adviser to one of his clients, a 47 year old man who wrote complaining that at 47, he had come to realise he was not wealthy, he didn’t want to wait till he was 70 to become rich. I thought you might like it as much as I did so here it is below.

“You are middle aged. Your net worth is meager. Your income is barely sufficient to meet expenses… And those expenses are going up. The Great Recession is looming. Economists are predicting things will get worse. What can you do?

Should you give up your dream of retiring comfortably one day? Should you accept a future of increasingly meager existence? Should you grow bitter and curse the powers that be for putting you in this situation?

Or should you take responsibility for your situation and make changes?

That last question was rhetorical, of course. But sometimes, I wonder if people really do understand their options. There are things that happen in life that we can’t control. But we can control the way we respond to them.

I understand that when you are halfway through your life and are barely making ends meet, it seems like the only chance to become financially successful is to win the lottery (either an actual lottery or the stock market equivalent of one). So it may be frustrating to hear some rich guy from Palm Beach telling you that you can’t quickly turn $25,000 into $1 million by investing in stocks.

But I believe – no, I am certain – that anyone who has modest intelligence and a positive attitude can become financially independent in seven years or less if he or she is willing to work enormously hard.

You do not have to give up on your dream of being wealthy. You always have the ability to change your financial life. It will take a bit of time and patience. And it will require that you change some of the thoughts and feelings you have about wealth and your relationship to wealth.

The first thing you must do is accept the fact that you are solely and completely responsible for your current financial situation. Before you react defensively, read that sentence again… I didn’t say you are the cause of your situation. I said you are responsible for it.
By taking responsibility for your current condition, you also assume responsibility for your future. Nobody can change your fortune but you. And nobody else will. The sooner you accept that reality, the sooner you will shed the anger and blame and begin to feel financially powerful.

I’m not giving you a pep talk. I’m telling you the truth. I’ve done it myself, and I’ve coached dozens of people to do it, too. It is a simple adjustment of your thinking, but it is extremely powerful. It works instantaneously. Without it, you cannot move forward, even by a single inch.

The next thing you must do is set realistic expectations. I’ve had people tell me that they don’t want to make 10% or 15% per year on their money. They think returns like that are “ho-hum.” They want some incredible stock tip or some secret get-rich-quick technique. But when I hear people say that, I think, “This person will never become wealthy.”

Realize that 10%-15% is a high rate of return. Warren Buffett – the most successful investor of all time and the third-richest person on the planet – has averaged 19% on his investments over his entire career.

And realize that the journey to millions of dollars is earned $100 at a time. You must be willing to accept this fact to move your financial life forward. Your financial life is like a train that has stalled. And right now, you want to be driving it at 100 miles an hour. But it can’t go from zero to 100 miles an hour in no time flat. Inertia is against you. Be happy with 10 miles an hour now… and then 20… and then 30. This is how wealth accumulates: gradually at first, but eventually at lightning speed.

The third thing you must do is thoroughly understand the difference between spending, saving, and investing. With every paycheck you get, cover your necessary expenses first (bills, mortgage, etc.). Then put some money toward saving. And then put some money toward investing. Then and only then – after you have “paid yourself” – should you add to your “spending” account.

The fourth thing you must do is recognize that your net investable income (the amount of cash you have after spending and saving) is the single most important factor in determining how quickly you will become wealthy.

Commit to adding to your income with a second income. Make an honest count of the number of hours each month you devote to television and other non-productive activities. Devote them to wealth-building instead. Cast aside the comfortable shoes of victimization. Put on the working boots of a financial hero.

It’s not fun to realize, in the midst of your life, that you haven’t acquired the wealth you want. But the good news is your past doesn’t have to be a prologue… unless you allow it to. You can change your fortunes today by doing the four things I’ve just told you to do.

You are only 47, not 87. You have plenty of time to increase your income and grow your net worth. Why do you assume all is lost when – as any 87-year-old will tell you – you have a whole wonderful life ahead of you… a life that can be rich in 100 ways?”

What do you think?

One of the key things to creating your success marketing on line comes from having a list of names and then making them an offer. So that makes ways to collect names and build up your lists a key element to master. Anything that will help to do this and then do it better will help you to start your business and then build on it.

Getting traffic into to your websites, getting people to give you their contact details, being able to mail out offers out to your list of name and then swiftly delivering to them once they have signed up and purchased from you, are all vital steps. So where do you start from and how do you build on it?

John Thornhill has years of successful experience in doing just that and he shows you how in Simple Traffic Solutions.  John released Simple Traffic Solutions on November 1st 2012. He considers it his best traffic generation product to date and it has proven to be very popular.

Want to know more about it?

Wisley is the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society. It does wonderful show beds and gardens on the grand scale and small, intimate gardens on the scale of a suburban postage stamp.

Wisley also has trial beds where it grows and compares different varieties of plants, both garden flowers and vegetables. The results of these tests are graded and form an important award of merit system for recognised varieties of plants for growers and producers and give a guarantee of standard for consumers.

More recently, they also developed some wonderful orchards growing apple, pear, cherry and other fruit tree varieties.

A walk around Wisley one late summer day produced some wonderful photos and a break from the flat screen. Good to swap virtual reality for some of the real stuff. It’s always good to get some fresh air in the lungs and sunshine on your skin when you want a breather from the internet marketing world. It puts things back in perspective.

I started John Thornhill’s Partnership to Success Program a few months ago. The program is meaty and takes you through a lot of ground from setting up on line towards creating and marketing your own product, as well as other activities.

I decided I’d go back to the beginning and review what we’d covered so far. It’s always a good idea when learning something new to make sure you get plenty of hands-on experience of whatever it is you are dealing with, especially when it’s something practical. So, I am going to set up a second website along side the one I am doing with John’s program. That will give me a good opportunity to review what we covered so far, while also making use of the time to get another project moving.

The first lesson with John covers buying a domain name and setting up a blog. If you have never done this before, they are quite simple steps to take once someone has shown you what to do. That, of course, opens the door to a whole new world. For the old hand, these steps are quick and simple to do. So first, I am going to head over to D9 Hosting to see if the website name I want is available.

Now that I have some experience, I am looking forward to rounding it out with some additional activity and examples while exploring some new, interesting areas.

Had a strange phenomenon recently. My usually happy laptop started behaving strangely –lots of annoying pop-ups and misdirecting me to limited sites, some of them what you could call a bit dodgy, defintely places I didn’t want to go to. The first search result page was mostly lot of sponsored ads with maybe only the bottom entry on the page being an actual search result. What on earth was going on?

I noticed a change in my browser to Searchnu which I hadn’t set up. The other thing was a frequent error page with the words searchnu/ followed by a number. The numbers can vary. There is another form that is searchqu

It seems that searchnu is a browser hijacker often downloaded when the person agrees to  the terms and conditions of something they want to download without paying close attention to the small print. Problem is that because it was downloaded “voluntarily” by the user, it doesn’t get picked up by usual security programs as a virus or malware when you run a scan so it sits there undetected and continues to operate annoyingly. What I found out was it’s often downloaded along with iLivid or Google Chrome. It is also apparently connected with Ask Jeeves web site.

That is only the beginning of the story — some forms of searchnu are more serious, such as searchnu/421–  which can start to steal your details all the way up to identity theft.  Obviously, it needs to be dealt with quickly. The longer it remains on your computer the more damage it can create. Unfortunately it installs itself in the registry so some searchnu programs need to be tackled more strenuously than just deleting an item from your programs folder.

So, time for some homework on google.

The tools I found to handle it were: Hitman Pro from SurfRight followed by some other programs

Downloads – SurfRight
Smitfraudfix How to use SmitFraudFix – Geeks to Go Forums
Combofix A guide and tutorial on using ComboFix
Malwarebyte Antimalware Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – Download.com

After I ran the above, then I installed something to protect my browser.

Browser Protect: Browser Hijack Protection for free – BrowserProtect.org

And then an additional security program was added from Avast:

avast! | Download Free Antivirus Software or Internet Security

Combofix is a very powerful program and best used under supervision by someone who is knowledgeable about computers. Not one to mess around with.

The problem appears to be fixed now and my computer is now running smoothly. It took some time but it was worth it.

On Wednesday, we had another live training webinar with John Thorhill as members of his Partnership to Success Program.

John is just back from a sailing vacation on the Norfolk Broads – and that was the first point of his lesson by actual demonstration. While he’d been away, his business continued to operate to promote and sell products and make income. He showed us the value of automating as many aspects of your business as possible and the power it generates. He also discovered the value of the connections he’s made and the importance of co0operation and teamwork.

While John was away, I was still able to use his support desk, to handle an issue I had. His support desk is abley manned by one of his former students, so she knows how his program work. She is a product of his training who has also developed her own internet businesses.  Providing good support to your customers is vital if you want to continue a successful business that delivers good value.  That, in turn, develops  good word of mouth. Having someone trustworthy to turn this over to is essential. So for us on John’s program was an insight in to the mindset that goes with success and a live demonstration of how to do things the right way.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up another internet marketer whose list I used to be on. He also launched a training program. I’m not going to name names, but I had my reservations so I never took him up on it at the time. Well, looking into now, there were plenty of comments on a forum about lack of support: emails not answered, poor contact details, lack of follow up leading to requests for refunds. All on the first page of Google! Not even hard to find. Just goes to show how important your support is and how quickly it can impact on your business.  Poor word of mouth spread like like a wild fire

It speaks well for John’s approach, his programs and services that he has loyal students who continue to work with him and want to remain in contact with him. Obviously they learned information of value and weren’t disappointed with his training. I like that he doesn’t disconnect from the students of his coaching programs when their time is up. He empowers them. He doesn’t criticise his students and or refer to them negatively.

Just like tennis great, Andy Murray benefited from his coaching with Ivan Lendl, and won two Olympic medals and a Grand Slam this summer, Partnership to Success is an opportunity for mentoring from someone who is a winner in the internet marketing game. Next time John offers the Partnership to Success, take the opportunity. You won’t regret it.

One of the things I find useful about my D9 Hosting is the facility to host unlimited domains on my account. It presents an opportunity to set up a number of minisites for flipping later. It also makes it easier to work on more than one income stream and area of interest knowing that all my hosting needs are taken care of in one location at one time, with one billing and with a company that I can rely on and trust.

Let’s say you have an interest in the health field, or cooking, and weight loss. Very popular subjects but not quite the same as Internet Marketing. To put it on your main domain risks confusion and inconsistency. Some skinny, city-living, geeky internet marketer happy with pizza take away and a soft drink at every meal won’t be inspired by your favourite low calorie recipe or a rave about 10 health benefits of raw honey from the local bee farm.  Another person with a passion for photography and mega expertise about cameras can go full blast in great detail about the fine differences between special features of different ranges and give real advice and useful insight to others, while enjoying their passion– and gain affiliate income at the same time.

Being able to set up a number domains and blogs is one way of testing different income streams to find those that deliver something that people need and want and are interesting, satisfying and remunerative to work on. Tweaking them as you go, without having to make a big outlay each time you set up a new one, is definitely the way to go and opens the door to more opportunities for success.

What do you think? What other areas interest you?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Aileen

After a glorious spectacle of British life through the centuries, we are now full swing into the Olympics.

A high note of the Opening Ceremony was the introduction of the latest Bond girl when the Queen, accompanied to the Games by James Bond, parachuted in to the stadium to delighted applause. A humorous touch that caught the eye of the world as billions watched the Opening Ceremony. How she managed to keep a dead pan straight face as she made her entrance was a gold medal performance all of its own.

An inspiring message to all comes out of the Games, a message of endurance, focus, persistence, dedication, fair play and good sportmanship. Playing the game is important, not just the winning. When there is so much noise and misery pushed in our faces day after day by the press, forwarding the message of those who would not see people well and happy, it is wonderful to see so many individuals put forward their best selves, respect and admire their competitors and their achievements, and celebrate victory as they overcome the obstacles to their success.

We couldn’t compete with Beijing with its dramatic Opening Ceremony to the last Olympic Games, so we didn’t. We had our own uniquely British presentation and we certainly did ourselves proud on the world stage with a real showcase presentation about British life, our country, our outstanding contributions to the world and the eccentric British take on life. For a small country, we surely pack a big punch of influence. It makes me be proud to be British

Good to see Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web was included, without whom we would not have this opportunity as Internet Marketers to create our own businesses and unique way of life.

Nice to think of the World Wide Web as “Made in Britain!”

It seemed like a simple thing to do. Such a small change to make. The instructions were straightforward enough. I pressed “click.”. A quick flash. All done.

Suddenly my website couldn’t be accessed. I tried everything I knew. I looked everywhere I could for ways to undo it. But whatever I did, I could find no way to restore it to the way it had been just a minute before. I’ve really done it this time I thought. . Wait, what about the back up I did not long ago.

It appears there was no back up to be found.

This was turning into my worst nightmare. And now the afternoon was nearly over. This can’t go over until tomorrow, I thought. What to do now?

D9 Support came to the rescue, quickly and effectively and calmly. And shortly, all was back to normal in working operation again.

I have to say, D9 are looking after me well.