Hi folks, today I want to accomplish a couple of things with this post.

The first is to introduce you to my best creation ever. His name is Arran and he was born on 2nd September at 1.11pm

For those interested he weighed 7lb 11oz.

Here he is thinking hard about something…

I think you’ll agree that he has inherited his father’s hairline. Hopefully his will grow though

So far fatherhood has involved sleepless nights and lots of cleaning up, but the bits in between, like the picture above, when he seems to be taking in the whole room and having wee thoughts, are just fantastic.

I look forward to the days ahead when his wee personality starts to develop and we can start to have some real fun together.

Next: the competition I wrote about.

So the idea for this began as an ebook I was developing. It was a PLR ebook which I was going to add to and produce a video from.

The subject was WordPress themes and plugins and the ones given were very useful. I also intend to build a blog containing the most useful plugins already installed and sell it as a package.

So, here’s my challenge:

Nominate your favourite WordPress plugin, theme, or tip and tell us all about it. You can…

• Describe it in a comment below
• Make a video of you explaining it and give us a link to your video.
• You can recommend a paid plugin if you wish and add your affiliate link. (but please don’t abuse this one. You must actually use it and not just add a load of links.)
• Write a tutorial blog post and give us the link.
• Anything else you fancy.

The Prize:

I am giving away TWO licences for MailWasher Pro as prizes for this competition. I made a video describing this valuable SPAM avoidance tool which you can read Here

So, how do I choose the winners? Tough one, since it’s hard to decide on the best recommendation. So I will do as Kathy Dobson did on here blog and simply pick 2 winners at random from those who post.

So that’s the challenge. I look forward to reading your entries and picking a couple of winners. The competition will finish at 12pm UK time on the 25th September, so that gives us just over a week. As I said, the best entries will be added to my product and everyone whose idea is used will of course be credited and will get a free copy.

So, all the best and go to it!

Until next time,

Hi folks, in today’s update I have a few things to cover, so please bear with me.

Recently my mind has been COMPLETELY blown by the amount I have had to do.

I’ve had preparations for my baby’s arrival, which should be any day now; work on my WSO which I will re-release today or tomorrow, depending on how my connection behaves; trying to think of a video for Barry Wells’ challenge, which is where the apology comes in. I am waaaaay too late for the challenge. I just had a total mind fog and I couldn’t think of anything to do a video about.

Then it hit me as I was deleting yet more virus laden spam from my email. I could do a review of my new favourite tool, as Barry himself suggested to me.

I am using a program called ‘MailWasher Pro’ which is a great weapon in the war against spam and viruses. I got 48 identical virus emails today but I was able to check and delete them before they got to my computer. Take a look:

(Click the image for a better view)

Anyway, Even with my antivirus software installed, I still get viruses in emails which sit on my hard drive until Norton does a background check. I don’t want them on my PC at all.

MailWasher allows me to:

• Check emails in plain text
• Preview suspicious mails securely
• Delete unwanted emails without them ever touching my computer
• Reply to emails without opening the main Windows Mail program
• Blacklist people or add them as friends as required.

And since MailWasher works from your server, you are deleting emails at the source; no attachments are downloaded.

Here is my video then. Sorry it’s late Barry!

I have decided, following on from my earlier post about Kathy Dobson, to run a competition soon, the 2 top prizes being a year’s licence to MailWasher. I just need to think of a good competition. Any ideas?

On another great note, I won another competition over at Welly Mulia‘s site. He was looking for people to say why they deserved a free copy of his new Premium List Magnet and what they’d use it for. There were about 150 entries and I wanted to stick out, so here’s what I wrote.

“Hi Welly, it seems that you have again taken the best of everything and put it in one place, like you did with Profits Theme.

I know I deserve this because one winter’s night, many many years ago, I was awoken by a strange, glowing figure in chains. “I am the ghost of Internet future” he said. “One day”, he continued, “a man will contact you. He will tell you that he has developed a wonderful tool which will lead to the explosion of your business. Your list will increase many fold and you will then teach others to do likewise.”

“What’s a list?” I asked.

“Shut up” said the ghost, “This is my story. You’ll find out what a list is soon enough. And when you do, all your worries will be over.”

Then, suddenly we were transported to a small room in a cottage in Scotland. A handsome 30 something man was sitting at a computer that looked like something out of a Star Trek episode. (I know now it was a lap top but back then I had no idea). “I recognise that handsome man” I said. “Is he a film star?”

“No” said the ghost, “that is you on or around the end of August 2011. It is the turning point of your life.”

I looked closer and could see the handsome, older, wiser me creating what looked like a ‘campaign’. It was over in a couple of minutes and the older, wiser me looked very pleased with himself.

“What happens now?” I asked the ghost.

“I cannot tell you” he replied “but look out for the sign, it will come when you least expect it”.

Suddenly he was gone and my room was silent once more.

I have waited for the sign for many years and now, here it is. How freaky is that?

As to what I will do with it, the options are many. Obviously I will build a huge list and provide exceptional value to everyone on it. I will tell them all about Welly Mulia and the day his email was predicted by a ghost one quiet winter’s night, so long ago.

The end….Or is it..”

So that wee story won me a free copy of PLM. I was very chuffed. Welly’s competition got a lot of comments on his blog and made people aware of his new product. So I need to think of something that will be fun for entrants and for me.

Hmmmm… Thinking cap on.

Anyway, that’ll do for now. As always, leave your comments below and I’ll talk to you again soon.

All the best,

I had some great news the other day and I couldn’t be happier.

Kathy Dobson (http://kathydobson.com) recently ran a competition where she was looking for suggestions for a tagline for her soon to be redesigned blog.

I came up with a couple of attempts I felt summed her, and what she is attempting to accomplish, up.

As you can probably tell from the title of the post, I won! I am chuffed to bits with the result.

The prize was a licensed copy of Camtasia and Snagit (which I used for the above shot), a $348 value which works out to $43.50 per word!

Ok, maybe I’m going a bit far now but I am very happy.

I hope Kathy will use my idea, it will be great to see it every time I visit her blog.

Now, a great thing to notice is what happened when Kathy started the competition. She was trying to think of a new tagline and was having trouble coming up with something. So she asked her blog readers to help.

She came up with the idea of a competition to generate ideas, which is in itself, a great idea.

It generated a great deal of buzz around her site, got her a lot of comments and no doubt get her a lot of new readers.

On top of that, she didn’t need any specialised software to run the competition. She just used a random number generator for the random prize and picked her favourite tagline for the other.

Kathy has also said that the competition will become a regular thing. If she is giving away such great prizes each time it is bound to create more traffic, comments and buzz in the community.

So why not think of a competition of your own? All you need is a good prize and an idea of what you want to achieve with the competition. You may not be able to get as good a prize as Kathy’s, or you might have a better one, but don’t let that stop you. People will enjoy the competition anyway and the winners will be incredibly happy, trust me

I’m off to think of competition ideas now. Let me know if you have any coming up.

All the best,

David

Hi folks,

In today’s post I want to give huge congratulations to Internet Marketing’s hardest working wee elf, Sally Neill.

I met Sally as many of us did, through Alex Jeffreys’ coaching program; although I didn’t actually meet her until I bumped into her at a petrol station earlier this year!

When we first ‘met’ her she was working a day job behind a desk and in the evening, juggling her time between her young daughter and aggressive blog hopping and ebook writing.

I think this should serve as great inspiration to anyone who feels they just don’t have time to make this ‘Internet marketing’ thing work.

Sally was also the subject of my first interview. She had blogged about her first interview with David Walker and I took her advice about just taking action. I was also her first interviewer and we both blogged about the experience so I’m not going to go into it any more here. She says I was nervous but I know it was just an act. Honest!

Anyway, after all Sally’s hard work building her own business, she was offered a job with her mentor Alex Jeffreys which finally allowed her to go full time online.

What followed was months of intensive marketing training and experience in video tutorial production which set her up perfectly for the next logical step: leaving the Jeffreys nest and spreading her wings in her own right.

Sally is launching her own coaching course called ‘Learn With Sally’
on July 23rd and I offer her my heartiest congratulations on this fantastic achievement.

She really has come so far and I’m sure she has much further to go as she is an avid learner. Luckily for us she is also an avid teacher, and a damn good one at that, so we are bound to benefit.

I would also urge any of you who can make it to attend Sally’s first solo webinar this evening (21st July) at 9pm BST UK time.
She will be giving some fantastic content free of charge and you will see, if you haven’t already, just how good a teacher she is. The link to sign up is:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/671960518. Hope to see you there.

So thanks Sally, congratulations and I wish you all the best for the future. I for one will be coming along for the ride.

David meets John

Last Thursday I was privileged to be invited to John Thornhill’s office for the day.

It involved a very early start as I had to leave at 6.30am for the drive to Sunderland but I knew it would be worth it. After all, I have driven the length of Britain to attend seminars and I enjoy driving so this would be easy.

It took just over 3 hours to get there, with my trusty Sat-Nav guiding me in the last few miles, arriving at 10am, a few minutes before john arrived as it happens.
Obviously this didn’t give him much time to get the red carpet out but I didn’t mind at all.

So after the introductions between John, Alex, Jamie and myself, we quickly got the laptop out and got down to business over a cuppa and a Tunnocks Tea Cake which I had brought as promised. (I think that’s what clinched the deal, but I’m not sure).

The first thing john noticed was my blog was looking a bit shabby. I had been using Flex theme and, while it is a very good theme, it does not reflect the fact that I am now officially self employed and working online. So that’s the first thing I fixed when I got home.

I emailed Steve from GFX-1 (Click here for details) and he had my order completed the same day. Talk about service eh? Notice I chose the line “Having fun with online business”? I thought hard about what to put here and that line basically sums up how I feel. Yes, it’s hard work at times but it is also a heck of a lot of fun too.

Next I had to get an optin box for list building. For this I used John’s graphic for his ‘Why You’ll Never Succeed Online’ report which I used with Aweber. Hopefully you saw it when you opened the page. I’m very happy with the small changes and hopefully coveys what I am trying to achieve.

Next we discussed product creation. John is always saying that product creation and list building are vital for online success so we chatted about how he re purposes PLR material to make it his own unique product. It was a real eye opener since i know a lot of people just get PLR and change the author name before releasing it again. I know I have done that. It may give you  an instant product but not a unique one. I am going to be looking at this in a completely different way now.

John then went on to look at my Warrior Special Offer which consists of an interview I did with him a few months back and some extras. It hadn’t been performing too well so we discussed how I could make it better by adding to the offer, perhaps different graphics and adding an upsell.

We then went for lunch which was a great opportunity to just chat about business in general. It was great to hear that some of John’s experiences in the early days were similar to mine. If he can get from there to where he is now, so can I.

After lunch we had another quick summary chat so I knew exactly what my action plan would be. Then it was photo time before heading back up the road.

Lovely day

As you can see, it was a lovely day and I got a ton of useful ideas to build my business.

Now here’s the thing. Do you know why I was visiting?

I hadn’t paid thousands for the consultation.

I am not a high end coaching student…. Yet.

This was as a result of me buying a $37 product for which John was offering a fantastic bonus, pert of which was an office visit.

This really amazed me because the value to me was considerably more than the value to John. Obviously it will pay off in the future because I will join his high end coaching without thinking twice when the time and money comes, but there was no hint that this was the reason. And I don’t think it was the teacakes either

I can definitely say that I have found my mentor in John. Very knowledgeable, actually accessible, willing to help and a heck of a nice guy. If you are still looking for a mentor, go to http://planetsmsblog.com and find out more about John’s programs.

A very good starting point is the One Month Mentor program (Click here for details) where John guides you through creating a blog and a new Clickbank product using PLR in just 30 days. The information is so easy to understand and the support is second to none. You are never alone if you are stuck.

Anyway, I’ve got a lot of work to do still so better get going. Leave your comments below and talk soon.

All the best,

David

How is marketing like magic?

I don’t mean to suggest that marketing IS magic.

Here’s what I mean.

I have always had an interest in magic. You know, card tricks,
coins, that sort of thing.

And one of my favourite places to hang out was Tam Shepherd’s Magic
Shop in Glasgow, owned by Roy Walton who is a world renowned card
expert.
Not only is he a very interesting and well informed man, he also
demonstrates new tricks and techniques that have been released. I
loved to watch that and would usually end up buying.

The next week he would show me another trick and, even though I
hadn’t mastered the previous week’s trick, I would buy the new,
shiny one and the cycle would continue.

Sound familiar?

How many times have you bought a new marketing gimmick only to buy
a new one before mastering the first? If you’re like I used to be
that scenario will be all to familiar.

Another similarity:

I bought an old magic book by a man named Dai Vernon, a very famous
magician who invented many of the sleight of hand techniques used
today.
I learned that to really understand magic it is important to study
the basics as performed by the masters. If all you have is props
that work themselves, how are you going to manage if asked to do a
trick when you aren’t prepared?

A few sleights done well are all that are required to avoid the
embarrassment of having to think up an excuse.

Again, this works in the online world. If you rely on automated
software without understanding the basics, how are you going to
manage if your software crashes or you can’t get access?

Learn the basics first, then use other resources to compliment your
skills when you are happy. The sales letters say “no technical
skill required” and that may be true. But it is best to know the
basics as done by the masters in case you need them.

That’s why I was very excited to hear about Gary Simpson and Garry
Parkes’ new coaching course. They are both as mad as I am about the
amount of hype and false promises being peddled on the Internet and
wanted to create a course that would be ‘Anti-hype’.

It is going to be great and will be the course all others are
measured against IMHO.

It’s not available yet but Garry has released a video explaining
all about it. See it here.

=> http://davidtayloruk.com/codex

Until next time,

David

You unlock this door by doing nothing.

Beyond it is a dimension of routine and normality.

A dimension where nothing changes and everything is familiar.

A dimension where dreams are kept as dreams and nothing is difficult.

You’ve crossed over into…

The Comfort Zone…

(Do do do do, do do do do.) <= To the usual tune.

The Comfort Zone

Scary when you put it that way isn’t it? The Comfort Zone is a very dangerous place for entrepreneurs to be.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

I almost guarantee it will be the most productive one.

Just a thought.

Till next time,

David

Poor neglected blog!

Ok, first of all, I must start by kicking myself in the butt for not posting anything here since February. A lot has happened but no excuses.

I feel like I have been running around a lot looking after things during my wee wife’s pregnancy. She is doing great but is tired a lot which I can understand.

So what have I been doing with my business?

A lot actually.

I have teamed up with a fellow member of John Thornhill’s Affiliate Promo Formula Alliance to launch a product together. It is going to be called the 12 Week Masterclass and will be in the form of 12 modules delivered weekly via video and  PDF. I have been mainly working on branding the content which (if I can let you into a secret) was written for us. A big hooray for outsourcing! I also used Fiverr to get a video introduction made which is seriously cool.

Want to see it?

OK then. Just a sneak preview.

The rest of the content should be finished soon and we’ll be ready to go.

I also had the privilege of working with David Walker when  he offered 5 free coaching places over 30 days. What a great month that was. I built a blog in the Labrador training niche and also got a product up and running using plr.

The blog I built is at Labradortraininginfo.com and I just went through and deleted 96 spam comments. Forgot to activate Akismet. D’oh! I tell you though, having someone to be accountable to at the end of the week certainly helps you get stuff done. I have created a very nice blog in about a quarter of the time it would have taken me usually. Thanks David!

Next, you may not know this but I did my second interview recently. It was with the mighty John Thornhill and we chatted about how he started online and about business in general. If you would like to listen to it, be my guest.

David interviews John Thornhill

This interview was great fun to do and John is a great guy. If you haven’t seen his One Month Mentor program you should really check it out. He shows how to get everything you need to succeed set up in one month.

So what now for me? I am very excited about the next few months. I will be launching 12 Week Masterclass very soon and then I will be dealing with support requests if any arise. I have also bought John Thornhill’s 90  Day Powerseller Challenge and I have bought the necessary equipment to get that started so I would be interested to moniter it over 90 days and see what happens.

I will be visiting John soon as well after bagging one of his bonuses for ‘Killer Content’. That will undoubtedly be a fantastic day and I will blog about it when I return.

I am obviously on high alert for baby Taylor’s arrival in the next couple of months. Where did the time go?

Talk soon.

All the best,

David

You get a fierce determination to get the head down and get busy.

Who is the new dad?

Me of course!

It is probably the best news I have ever had. We found out on Boxing Day and our baby is due at the end of August. Margo and I couldn’t be happier. Well, Margo could be happier I suppose since she has to deal with morning sickness and cramps and stuff. But I have to deal with the complaining so I suffer too. (if Margo reads this, I’m dead!)

Anyway this has caused me to re evaluate my business and the way I have been treating it.

My business is a wonderful thing. It has the potential to provide for me and my growing family for many years to come.

But the keyword is ‘Potential’.

A car has the potential to take me any place in the world that has roads. That is huge. But for that potential to be realised, it must be driven by someone. I can sit in the house and hope someone will drive it for me but that will result in nothing. However, the potential stays just as high as it ever was.

My business (and yours) has the potential to make it’s owner (driver) a millionaire several times over. That potential is there right now. All it needs is a good driver behind the wheel.

(by the way, the driving analogy is probably because I am a qualified driving instructor and do a hell of a lot of driving. It’s fun!)

So my plan for this year involves ‘driving’ my business in the direction I want to go.

First: I need a destination.

As with all great journeys, I will break my business journey into shorter ones. So where is my first destination? Basically what I am saying is ‘what is my first goal and when do I want to achieve it?’

The most important things for me is to build my list and start to be paid for my services. My target for the end of the year will be 5,000 subscribers. This means I need to add around 100 per week or around 14 per day. Is this possible? Well I added 20 subscribers in 12 hours in a giveaway I joined (Self Improvement Giveaway 5 – still accepting contributers) so it is very possible. I had considered going for 10,000 subscribers but if a goal seems too unrealistic, it can lose its power.

My income goal is to replace my wife’s income so she can stay home. As this is private, I hope you won’t mind if I don’t discuss this any further, but rest assured that this goal has also been broken down into weekly targets.

Second: I need a map.

And thankfully I have one. I have been studying under Alex Jeffreys and he is one good cartographer. I will be rewatching the training videos and implementing the plan carefully. It is always better to follow someone who has made the journey before.

Third: I will save fuel by driving in a straight line.

Driving off course to see where a new road goes can distract you from your journey. Similarly, getting distracted by new products that are pretty much constantly produced can hold you back. So before you get caught up in the latest launch, ask yourself a few questions. For example:

• Does the product tie in with my plan?
• Does it promise lots of profit with very little work? (if it does there is a very good chance you are wasting your money. The magic button does not exist).
• Will I actually use it? i.e. does the product simplify or automate a process I am currently spending a lot of time on? Or am I just getting it because it sounds like something I might use somewhere down the line when I’m successful?
• Will it pay for itself quickly? Will it save me enough in either time or money to justify the expense? If not, leave it.
• Does it actually do what the sales letter says? I have saved a lot of headaches by going to the Warrior forum, typing in the product name and reading actual reviews of the product, instead of reviews aimed at selling the product which tend to be slightly biased.

Fourth: I won’t get anywhere if I don’t get in the car.

As I mentioned in a previous post, planning can get you fired up. It feels good to plan something and look forward to the results. However it is often too easy to stop after the planning stage. Without action, nothing will happen. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? But if action is taken, momentum is built and you see results, maybe small at first but they get bigger over time and each goal reached adds more fuel to continue the journey.

So let’s all get in the car and share the journey. Leave me a comment and let me know where you’re off to. I might be able to meet you there for a celebratory beer. My treat!

Wishing you all the very best for 2011. I hope it’s your best year yet.

David