Friday July 6th, 2007: Issue #820
It is the London Internet Marketer’s Lunch today and I’m looking forward to a busy afternoon and evening of idea swapping and pizza munching. All being well there should be about 20 of us there today - almost all of whom are Kickstart readers, so you can imagine that we’ll have a lot of fun.
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I got my first ever parking ticket yesterday - a fact that has pissed me off mightily! A £50 ($100) fine for parking less than one minute outside a local store.
The greed of my local council (and, to be honest most councils across the UK) is very sad. They are steadily driving local stores out of business by restricting their ability to attract customers. The dozen or so stores closest to me have just four legal parking places between them.
Doubling or trebling the number of parking bays would have no significant effect on traffic flow in this instance, and yet the council is happy because they have created a situation where they are guaranteed to make a steady income from the fines - at the expense of the stores, who are losing out to the supermarkets (who all have parking lots).
There are six empty stores in the area I got my ticket - all closed down because of lack of custom. Several of the others are hanging on by a thread.
The store owners lose their livelihoods; the area loses local, personal shopping; people who are unable to get to the out of town supermarkets lose out - but not to worry: the council is happy about all this because for the moment they get a nice income from the parking ticket penalties.
Am I bitter?
Just a bit.
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I’ve been doing some more thinking about Rob Benwell’s new ‘Blogging to the Bank 2′ ebook - and I’ve read it through for a second time.
I’ve also, for the first time, taken a look at some of the comments other people have made about the book.
What surprised me the most about some of the criticisms that the book has received is how vitriolic some of them are. Some of these people appear to have taken it very personally that the book didn’t suit them! How odd! That happens.
All books are written from one person’s perspective. Rob is a straightforward kind of guy who has written a clear-cut, easy-to-understand book about how he personally makes a very good income from blogs.
He hasn’t filled it with dodgy tricks or black hat techniques that may or may not (probably the latter) work in a week’s time. He has simply spelled out the process that you need to go through to make, sustain and monetize your own blog empire in order to be one of the select band of bloggers who really make money from their efforts.
And yet he is vilified in some quarters by a few people who appear to think that every new book that comes out on Internet marketing must offer at least ten never-seen-before secret strategies that will guarantee to make them into millionaires with no effort on their parts and all before their breakfast cereal has stopped snap, crackle and popping!
Personally, I’d much rather have Rob’s calm how-to approach (from a guy who already-does) than the shrill hype-to style that has become so prevalent in new IM products - often from people who are at best shady and and worst wannabees.
As I said in my review of ‘Blogging to the Bank 2′ on Wednesday, if you are already an experienced blogger you probably don’t need this book. In fact, let’s be honest, if you are already making decent money at any kind of Internet marketing you probably don’t NEED 99% of the new books and products that come out.
But if you haven’t blogged yet, or have not yet started making money at it, then Rob Benwell has written a very useful step-by-step, plain English book that will put you on the right track. For that reason, it is highly recommended.
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I just looked out of my office window and there are six huge magpies strutting around on my lawn looking for worms.
According to the old nursery rhyme, once a wish, twice a kiss, three’s a letter, four is something better, five times silver, six times gold.
That’s a good omen for the day!
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An Inspirational Thought
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This was intended to be the quote for today, but I think it is so powerful that I’ve promoted it to inspirational thought of the day!
Victor Kiam said,
“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacles and opportunities and are able to turn both to their advantage.”
Isn’t that the truth! Anyone who wonders what they can write a book about, or create a program about, or sell a special report about only has to visit any forum where people ask questions about the problems they are facing.
There are an endless number of problems that people face on an infinite number of subjects. Your opportunity is to find the solutions and offer them for sale.
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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J. Paul Getty said,
“The truly successful businessman is essentially a dissenter, a rebel who is seldom if ever satisfied with the status quo.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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Are you putting anything off because it is too hard?
Try this simple technique - but don’t be put off because it IS so simple.
Take a blank sheet of paper and write down the difficult task at the top.
Now imagine that you have got to sell that hard job to someone else. What would you say to convince them to take it on?
Use every scrap of imagination you possess and find three ‘benefits’ that another person will gain by doing the job. Get creative here!
Write them down as bullet points and then draw a line under them.
Now, under the line, write down the first action that is needed to begin the job. What is the VERY first thing that you have to do?
THAT action is your primary task for today.
When it is done, read your whole sheet over again and write down the NEXT action required.
Keep on repeating the process until the job is done or you are so far into it that your own momentum will keep you going.
But don’t forget to read the ENTIRE sheet each time you come back to it.
Re-reading it is the key because each time you go through it you will reinforce to yourself the positive benefits that the job will bring. Plus, your motivation will be enhanced every time you see all the parts of the job that have already been achieved.
Simple, but not stupid.
Give it a try and get something really hard done today.
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Fascinating Facts
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We have a reader contributed fascinating fact today. Thanks to Silky Chathukutty for sending me this alpha-numerical eye opener:
The letters ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ & ‘d’ do not appear anywhere in the spellings of 1 to 99
(’d’ comes for the first time in Hundred).
The letters ‘a’, ‘b’ & ‘c’ do not appear anywhere in the spellings of 1 to 999
(’a’ comes for the first time in Thousand).
[Martin’s note: this isn’t strictly true in UK English, where we say, for example, ‘one-hundred-and-one’ for 101. However, I understand that US English doesn’t use the ‘and’.]
The letters ‘b’ & ‘c’ do not appear anywhere in the spellings of 1 to 999,999,999
(’b’ comes for the first time in Billion)
And
The letter ‘c’ does not appear anywhere in English numbers no matter how high you count.