I went for the first major medical check up I think I’ve ever had not so long ago. I seem to remember writing about it in another post too, which shows how much it rattled me.

I went because I’m over 40, and it seemed the right thing to do.

I sat in the chair and the female doctor pointed to a glass jar with a wide neck on the shelf and said ‘I’d like you to fill that with urine please’

I replied ‘What? From here?’

(REALLY sorry – old joke)

A few days later the tests came back and I’m more or less OK – cholesterol a tad higher than it should be and blood pressure similar but losing a few pounds should sort that out. So I’m OK.

So I’ve adapted my lifestyle some and have started to eat a little better…

YOU BORED YET???

Good – I was trying to make a point about boring posts, blogs and other writing…..

Have you ever really thought about how much store we place in other people’s opinions and views?

Probably far too much and what’s even worse is that sometimes we even give them MORE credibility than our own.

I post on the Warrior forum.

I don’t do it for fun – the place is full of nutters and people who take themselves far too seriously, but I still post there because it drives traffic to my blog and other sites.

I also post WSO’S (Warrior Special Offers) there too because I end up with more money in the bank afterwards.

If you’re going to use forum posting as a way of driving traffic to the link in your sig (signature at the bottom of each post you make) then you can’t go at it like an idiot. If you get sussed out as posting just to drive traffic they’ll kick you out.

So this means you should really read the posts and only contribute to relevant ones where you’ve something valuable to say. It’s a bit more fun that way and people soon start to realise you’ve got a brain in your head and (yep) visit your sites to check you out.

And it was while reading through the various posts to decide which ones I wanted to contribute to that I realised there are a HUGE amount of idiots in the Internet Marketing world.

Nowe I’m not talking about the newbies – the people who need help – they’re inexperienced not stupid. No – I’m talking about the halfwits that call themselves marketers yet seem to have no other function in life than to verbally beat down anyone who disagrees with their opinion.

A mate of mine divides the world into ‘human beings’ and ‘non human beings’ (I think this originally came from American Indian ‘speak’ although could be wrong)

His take on it was that he’d only spend his (valuable and limited) time on earth speaking to ‘human beings’.

The rest could bugger off.

Of course he didn’t mean ‘non human beings’ were animals or anything, just people who were so far up their own backsides they couldn’t see much daylight.

The defining character of a human being was being able to see other people’s point of view, be unbigoted and able to empathise with their fellow man.

The other lot talked without listening, ridiculed anyone with a different opinion, viewpoint or taste.

And intelligence has nothing to do with it either. One of the senior lecturers in my department at University, Dr P*** was a seriously intelligent chap. he was also an intellectual and emotional bully, a sarcastic mocker and a sexist womaniser (two out of three isn’t bad 🙂 )

And some of the posts on the warrior forum reminded me of that.

Go read ’em – you’ll find some newbies coming into IM with a very basic knowledge but full of passion and ideas only to be told in mocking tones ‘well THAT won’t work for a start’

So they never get off the ground. Simply because some bitter and twisted ‘guru’ or failed marketer has a flawed opinion, these fresh new minds that are still unfettered by all the crap flying around IM will probably never EVER launch the wonderful idea the were madly excited about just a few moments before.

And that’s not just sad, it’s damn near criminal in my book.

Who are these people to steal away the dreams and ideas of newbies eh?

Think about the ideas you had for your IM business before some ‘experienced’ moron told you it wasn’t possible.

Do you still feel an excited ‘buzz’ even though you’re scared to try them because of what ‘real’ marketers might say?

Don’t give more weight to other people’s opinions no matter how much money they make or how long they’ve been in the biz.

Because if you do, you’ll end up being a clone of them, and if they’re bitter and unhappy you’ll end up the same way. Even worse if they’re spouting a load of crap about being a millionaire when in reality they can’t afford their rent, then you could end up the same way as THAT too.

So try your craziest, daftest ideas out. At best they’ll work, at worst you’ll learn something on the way.

You ever noticed how most ‘IM type’ websites look the same. Most of ours do – banner, red, bold headline etc?

I noticed this when I first got into IM and told myself that mine would be different.

And now?

Nup – all our sites are (while not as bad as most) certainly ‘in the style’ of IM type websites.

And why is that?

Not sure really – if we’re honest it’s because when people first saw them they said ‘ohhhh your site doesn’t look very professional’ (meaning IM stlye) so we changed them.

But now we’re starting to think……

We recently did an experiment and changed one site so it had no banner, and no background – it was just a plain white page.

Sales increased by 25% from day 1.

(If you want to see results and methods just like this that I use in my business CLICK HERE when you’ve finished reading this post)

It always sold well, but now we changed the layout AWAY from IM-type design and it’s gone crazy. Is it because newbies are tired of the same old website design or because fancy graphics often make people think ‘he’s trying to SELL me something!’?

I don’t know – do you?

Exactly – and neither do any of the bloody ‘experts’ in the Warrior forum althoug I’ll bet you fifty quid that if you posted the question more than a dozen would have an opinion!

So where do we go from here?

I think we’ll change another website and see what happens.

Yep – I think so.

We’ll let you know. And in the meantime, why not run with your own ideas and plans, no matter how crazy they are? Because if you don’t you’ll just end up as a second class passenger on the ‘IM Opinions and Beliefs’ train. Your ideas are unique, why would you want to swap them for anyone else’s?

Cheers

Tony

PS Your comments are always welcome on this blog.

Get my blog posts delivered by Email

Don’t forget you can full access (for FREE) to all the back issues of my newsletter instantly by subscribing using the opt-in box at the top right of this blog.

 It’s free, and Martin Avis mentioned it as being one of the IM newsletters he reckoned are ‘really good newsletters…. that do consistently provide solid, useful content.’ In Kickstart issue 920.

Cheers Martin

Get my blog posts delivered by Email

I prattle on about the work/life balance a Hell of a lot because it’s really important to me.

I could earn more money than I do, but I spent yesterday (which was a normal monday) teaching my kids how to gently take snails off the plants they were eating and put them into the compost bin instead. (If ‘friends of the gastropods’ are reading this just be thankful I didn’t have some garlic butter to hand).

We ate ice cream, had a few tantrums and kicked a ball about. It was wonderful.

This morning I popped into the dentist to make a check-up appointment and the receptionist seemed clearly surprised when I replied ‘anytime’ to the question ‘when are you free next week?’

Being a full time internet marketer allows me to do both the above – my work life balance is wonderful and I’m thankful for it.

But very recently I heard something that brought home to me the REAL freedom that not working for a boss brings.

Some friends told me about friends of theirs who’d been on a protest march about something very important to them, and although the event had passed peacefully the police arrived and threatened the protestors with arrest if they didn’t disperse immediately.

Now from what I’m told these guys aren’t scared by much – they’ve had run in’s with pretty violent factions who don’t share their views and have put themselves in dangerous situations to get their views across but they left the scene immediately when the words ‘arrest’ and ‘criminal record’ were mentioned.

Why?

Because they could lose their jobs if their employers found out.

 I once watched in amazement as a schoolteacher jumped out of a car, ran across a busy motorway and then climbed over several gardens to escape what he thought was a ‘police bust’ when a car we were in got stopped by the police, and he knew there was a half smoked joint in the ashtray.

Turns out the police stopped us about wobbly exhaust pipe, were very nice about the matter, even told us where we could get it fixed cheaply and didn’t seem to care a fig about the contents of the car ashtray.

You’re seeing what I’m getting at?

People are brave, principled, wonderful people who will stand in front of tanks, take on fascists and put their names to petitions that could in effect threaten their safety, but threaten them with losing their jobs and they crumble like naughty schoolchildren.

And I fully understand why – usually it’s not about themselves, rather being able to care for and support their families and as a husband and dad I fully agree with them. But there’s no sense of freedom like that of being your own person in a world full of employees. It’s like realising you’re the biggest chap on the nudist beach!

You instantly go from passive to active. You don’t ASK for a pay rise when you work for yourself, you GENERATE extra income. You don’t REQUEST time off to go on holiday, you DECIDE to take a break.

I know how uncomfortable this may be for some people to read – bloody hell it’s hard enough to write without sounding like a smug arsehole, but it’s FACT. Your marketing business – your online business – can give you so much more than just time and money (although that’s a good start), it can also give you BACK a piece of yourself that you’ve already handed over to your boss without realising it.

 Think about this – booking time off, asking for a pay rise, asking for half a day off work to go and watch your kids run in the schools sports day or because you know you’ll be hungover after three days at Glastonbury festival, or wanting to be in France for the Cherry festival or to spend the day in bed with your wife (or someone else’s) or whatever the Hell you just feel like doing when you wake up in the morning.

These are things you can’t ‘just do’ when you work for somebody else. Or if you do, then not for long before they sack you.

Yes this is another nag guys – get your online business up and running as quickly as you can ……….because the days they ticketh away at a frighteningly rapid rate, and while you’d be naturally delighted to marry a Spanish supermodel on your 92nd birthday, you might from time to time wonder why you couldn’t have met her in your twenties while you could still do 100 pushups.

Right – stop reading this blog and go and make the first move!!!!

Get my blog posts delivered by Email

Whenever we get more than a certain ‘magic’ number of emails asking how to do a particular thing we know it’s time to put a ‘how to’ togther to guide you through it step by step.

If you don’t know how article marketing / bum marketing / article submission / submitting reviews as an affiliate etc works then grab this excellent freebie at

http://www.24hourarticleguru.com

Compliments of the house 🙂

 If you have any comments or questions just post them on the blog.

Get my blog posts delivered by Email

When my son was a baby he didn’t sleep well, as many babies do (or should I say don’t) so my wife and I spent many a long evening rocking back and forwards against the agony of a full bladder because going upstairs to the bathroom would mean another sleepless night.

We have a very old house and the exposed floorboards in the bathroom sound like a Vincent Price film if you even breathe on them. Standing on them to get to the toilet would surely cause the little chap to wake up and keep us awake until 4 in the morning.

One evening I’d settled him down to sleep and was looking forward to a glass of wine, some supper and a bit of quality time with my wife. It was a lovely summer evening and all was well with the world.

We settled down on our huge comfy sofa and turned on the baby monitor.

He was sleeping peacefully – drawing long contented baby breaths and making those little murmurs that only babies can when they’re dreaming of baby things. I felt my muscles in my ass unclench as the cares of the day lifted from me.

Then all Hell broke loose as one of the birds nesting in the wall directly outside my son’s bedroom began to chirp and cheep like a canary in a mine full of coal gas. I never knew anything with feathers could make that much noise.

Of course it woke him up – he started crying – I jumped to my feet and knocked my wine into my supper and …well it was all very stressful.

Once my wife had settled him down again – about 2o minutes later, she found me in the garden pacing up and down and staring at the bird’s nest. I wanted my revenge!

It was at that point I realised I needed a little perspective. Tiredness and frustration had got the  better of me.

It’s not that things go wrong – they go wrong every day in to some degree – it’s that they go wrong at the wrong time.

Take Ebay making the decision to ban downloadable products. I think it has been coming for a while, but I’m also positive that some poor sod somewhere had just started making a full time living online selling downloadable products when they dropped that particular bombshell on him.

He must have thought that either the world was out to get him or he’d run over a Gypsy on the way to McDonalds the day before.

Nope.

Bad timing – nothing else.

But I’ve not yet heard of a SINGLE internet marketer whose business has been finished off in this way. People adapt and make the best of situations, change strategies, products and ideas an somehow manage to keep their business going.

But when a dark scenario is playing out in your head it never works like that – how many things have you NOT tried to acheive because something might go wrong? Your wonderfully creative mind plays and replays the horrible things that surely will befall you if you even try to get your business going, quit your job or launch a new product.

Perhaps you won’t be able to pay your mortgage and the house will be repossessed?

Your spouse will lose faith in you and leave you, taking the kids, and the only time you’ll see them is every two weeks for half a day on Sunday??!!

It just doesn’t happen except in the deepest pits of your mind (and the tabloid press).

What does happen is that lack of perpspective, fear and doubt stop you being the person you could be – stop you even attempting to change your life for the better and leave you with the horrible empty feeling of ‘what if….’ that most people feel.

The worst possible outcome of any decision is far LESS likely to happen than the negative consequences of not even trying. And let’s face it – if things DO go wrong, you can probably put them right again in a few years.

On the other hand if you DON’T attempt to quit your job or build your business you’re going to be in the same miserable situation for the rest of your life.

Fear of the unknown is a terrible thing – often much much worse than the ‘devil you know’ who is slowly breaking your back and your spirit with a day after day, year after year situation that you just don’t want to be in.

So do a Don Quixote and tilt at some windmills – take on the fear – in little ways to start with – get some perspective on what MIGHT happen but probably WON’T.

….before you find yourself about to commit a horrible crime against a House Martin.

Get my blog posts delivered by Email