Blogging Along

Seems Orange as default add an extra £1.50 to your bill for paper itemised billing. Right off to their website to register and tick that box that says please remove me from paper billing saving me £1.50 per month and use e-billing.

Guess what! Their isn’t one, so don’t waste your time looking, lot of talk about e-billing and paper billing been turned on and off but no actual link to save you and Orange time and messing around.

Obviously it’s so they can make £1.50 per customer on sign up without realising and then even more every month from those who can’t be arsed to get it removed.

It wasn’t the £1.50 it was the BIG point I made at Car Phone Warehouse that my bill each month would be NO MORE than £15.50 a month period?! “That is correct £15.50 sir”

Bollocks!

Anyways only way to sort it is to DIAL 150 from your orange mobile and select 1,2,2,2 and tell them to remove it.

It’s windy, it’s wet, it’s cold and Hey hey it’s New Year’s eve!

Great day of any of the 365 of 2012 to reflect back on what happened. A few things have changed in the past few weeks with me LEAVING (not laid off for not pulling my weight as rumoured – You Prick) and setting my digital stall up again is great as I can reflect on what I had, did, and built up before. Anyways here are the 2012/2013 bullet points!

• Be in control of situations – others can try and manipulate you  
• Don’t believe everything someone says, even if they say “Swear on my kid’s lives” as sometimes they are full of s**t and it bites them back 
• Don’t be too impulsive with ideas, step back and have a word with yourself – A good sleep may help you see sense
• Grow your circle of friends, quantity isn’t always better than quality
• Don’t leave the unsaid too late, say it sooner – You’ll be glad you did
• Make a promise, or deadline then KEEP IT  – Too many broken promises leave a bad taste
• Don’t give too much away on first meeting someone
• Driving? Don’t drink – No car tomorrow?!
• Make time for your family where you are all involved – baking, walking, swimming, picnics etc
• Never judge someone on first impressions – you may have met them on an off day & fighting a battle
• Never judge someone by someone else’s options  – there is usually history and 2 stories
• Be straight with people don’t go around the houses – respect is good
• Print digital photos – those memories can crash and be lost in a second
• Long term commitments financially need more than a day’s thought – rushing out to buy a new car
• Try new foods and flavours
• Meet up for meals with groups of mates
• Always have daily, weekly “To do” lists
• Don’t disregard people if they don’t match your personality, you don’t know who they may know
• Don’t spread rumours that are not true – they will bite you in the arse
• Be kind to people – it doesn’t cost anything

So March is when number 3 child is suppose to enter the world! Again some geeky thought had to go into it with the initials and names.

Archie Bobby Corbett sounds and looks a cool name I think but we’ve had a few raised eyebrows or “really!” But that’s his name and we like!

I had to say good bye to my office space at home too to make way for baby items and ideas planned. Ill be just working either at the kitchen table or in the office in Hessle more rather than at home.

Historically, looking back when a child is on the way I have always either started up in business or changed job which is quite bizarre. But a fact ! I only realised this obviously after I left my current job to setup a new digital company.

Looking ahead to 2013, it does for once, look good!

In life and looking back at points in it you will always ask yourself “What if I had not…..” or “What if I had done that…..”

I do think I have made some mistakes that I do wish I could have changed and other things not too bothered about.

As I’ve grown older I do feel myself getting wiser and stable with decisions I make but at the same time I’m always looking for the next free meal ticket or step up a ladder in life. Maybe with not as much risk attached to it.

In just over 2 years I will be 40 and feel far from it to be honest and would like to think I have all my life to live again and live to a ripe age of 85+.

I do feel I haven’t reached my peak of success in life / business and would like to hit that some time soon ideally before I’m 40  with my current plans.

Unfortunately or fortunately depends how you look at it, I do everything with 100% focus, enthusiasm and effect. Then when someone comes on board with me they never seem to reach my bench mark. Recently I gave someone a great opportunity to work with my current ideas who had been out of work and so seemed happy to make an effort with no pay but good perks.

With them been out of work for nearly a year this was a great position for me and them, and so I was a little put back when they decided they needed to look for a part time job 16 hours a week to help pay the mortgage. It was as though i’d prompted them to look but was left as a reaction.

My thoughts to end this entry is to think BIG and aim high. Not to just get by and let others take over or take the cream while you bust a gut.

Do you have a Gran, Mum, Dad or Granddad who you are very fond of and maybe don’t spend that much time with? Do you cringe when they go to hug or kiss you?

I’m sure theirs a few out there that do!

The point of this post is to maybe get a few people to realise that the family you do have and care about won’t be around for ever and in hindsight things change.

My Nana, who would help anyone and give her last £1 to people if she thought they needed it was admitted to Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham on the 26th July 2012 with breathing problems and was diagnosed with Leukemia. She died at the age of 83 on the 7th August 2012 at Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham – a month before her Birthday and months before her 60th wedding aniversary and so was married for 59 years.

As well as the Leukemia, she had a chest infection, water on her lungs and just wanted peace and a cool breeze to feel safe.

I made sure my wife, son 11 and daughter 4 went and visited as I knew it was only a matter of time (short time) until she left us forever! She was suffering and the Leukemia was taking her immune system away hour by hour.

This brings me to YOU –  helping you and all the other people that don’t maybe go and visit their Gran or Mum that often or won’t sit and watch Tv holding their Grans hand. Because once they’ve gone, you start to wish and hoped you’d have spent more time with them, held their hand more or even at all, gone to the shops for them, took them along with the family to the beach and so many other things.

I was partly lucky as I did sit holding her hand, I did visit often and I did hug her.

If i Hadn’t, I would be in such a state knowing I could have and didn’t I would have not had memories I have today.

If you would like to change the height of your message box area using the WordPress plug in “Contact form 7” it’s simple. The line in bold below has 2 numbers at the end of the code inside a closed square bracket 31/3. 31 is the width and the 3 is the height.

Change these amounts to reflect what width and height you’d like your message section of form to be. This also works for other fields if required.

On the same plug-in adding a “*” after text in the name section makes it a required field and can be added to any field to implement.

<p>Your Name (required)<br />
[text* your-name] </p>

<p>Your Email (required)<br />
[email* your-email] </p>

<p>Subject<br />
[text* your-subject] </p>

<p>Your Message<br />

[textarea your-message 40x10]

</p>

<p>[submit “Send”]</p>

A domain is only worth the amount someone is willing to pay for it or what revenue the domain is making each month multiplied by X amount of months.

What prices do domains go for and how do you appraisal a domain?

The best way to judge how much a domain is worth is to visit domainprices.co.uk and see what domains have sold for and where the sale took place.

Domains on the secondary market can vary depending on if the sale is to a reseller (someone who deals with domains) or an end-user (someone who will use the domain directly).

If you deal with domains you may see the domain personalinjurysolicitors.tv as a good investment and would only be willing to pay £1000 for it.

If you are an enduser or a Solicitor that figure (because you really want it) maybe 5 fold and be £5000.

Domains are hard to price unless they have a website on them generating revenue, which then can then be calculated from it’s monthly income.

The owner of a domain is always going to think it’s worth more than the buyer is willing to pay.

Ask yourself this – Will it make any money undeveloped and are you going to develop it? Is it likely that another buyer will come along and offer the same amount or if not more?

If you answer no to both, sell the domain for the best price possible today!

If you suddenly finding the Mrs or girlfriend demanding more erotic or out of character bedroom activity it maybe down to a book she’s reading.

E L James has wrote a trilogy series of books Starting “Fifty Shades of….”

• Fifty Shades of Grey
• Fifty Shades Darker
• Fifty Shades Freed

So I’ve heard (not read these books yet) it is even making some women blush whilst reading them. Ann Summers and other adult stores will see an increase in sales or visits due to this book release. Many men will also be treated with some sexy staged sexual advances by their partner or singles reenacting the books scenes!

Also with a movie on the cards who should be the ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Movie Castings? Who should play Christian Grey And Anastasia Steele?

• Ellen Page
• Robert Pattinson
• Blake Lively
• Henry Cavill
• Emmy Rossum
• Chris Hemsworth
• Shailene Woodley
• Hayden Christensen
• Alexis Bledel
• Matt Bomer
• Nina Dobrev
• Ian Somerhalder

If you have domains and haven’t set it up with a mini site or a full on site, get one up NOW!

Having a domain and it not been indexed by search engine is a number 1 fail in my eyes as it takes a year or 2 to really break into the search engine results with relevant posts.

Even if it’s a 1 page website Google and alike will index it if you post a link on a busy website and the rep of the site will only increase with age.

A lot of people buy domains to do something with them but never do, which is a bit of a shame.

First rule for me, register or buy a domain – get a WordPress install running on it within a few days. You never know it may have some history from a previous owner.

Would it be an ideal situation if you could work away in a warm climate laid on a sun lounger next to the pool without a care in the world?

Well hell yeah !! of course it would be.

It’s all down to game plans in business and what type of business you are in. Affiliation is a bit of a roller coaster for many if you have all your eggs in one basket (sector or website) but can bring wealth and fortune for many if done right. I am talking 10s if not 100s of thousands a month too with some people.

So the ideal setup for working in the sun, next to the pool drinking beer. You grow a portfolio of sites in many sectors, such as private health, insurance, retail items shoes, presents, hotels, breaks and mobiles or electronics. Optimise these websites in a niche for each, so for insurance pick “Life Insurance” maybe. Build in a content management system called WordPress and besides all the standard tweaking to make the site SEO friendly post to the site every day looking at daily news feeds for article ideas.

A good tip for getting good traffic is to mention some of the main companies in the industries. Healthcare mention BUPA or AXA, Mobiles mention all the networks like Vodafone, Orange and Three.

This won’t be an over night process and will nicely age like a good wine.

A lot of affiliates who push services and products that make a small fortune use Adwords to drive traffic towards their websites in hope of an increase in sales. This is a fine art and I almost class it as gambling as it can make or break a lot of profit.

I had a website in the private Health sector that ranked and still does for really good phrases and made a nice amount each month from Adsense. I sold the domain to a friend who started using it for affiliation and instead of Adsense used a form for lead generation and made £25 per lead. This turned my effort of Adsense into a nice win fall by making 10 fold what I was from natural search results. He is also running an Adwords campaign that spiraled the amount to 100 fold again :-/ and as you can understand, a little bit sickening for me.

If he wanted and didn’t have commitments of a mortgage, a wife who’s a school teacher, and others he could and 100% would be working abroad in a warm climate, laid on a sun lounger, next to the pool without a care in the world!

If you do need any help with going down this road please do contact me.

I recently had  a USB device that works fine in many laptops but for some reason woldn’t be picked up by a Toshiba Satellite Pro.

The LED on the device lit up and made the noise when you plug in a USB device but all software programs that I needed to use it on just didn’t recognised at all.

After weeks of going into MAPLIN asking if they have heard of this and trying many other similar devices on the laptop with no luck, a mate said have you tried a double USB cable as some USB sockets don’t give out the power needed for some devices.

I ordered one connected everything up and YES! It powered up and WAS recognised.

Only problem with the Toshiba is that it only came with 2 USB sockets #fail

When I create an Adsense unit to insert into a blog post or product page, I always seem to opt for a banner style or square that seems to get placed underneath and always looks out of place.

I thought by floating Adsense units within the text so it wraps around the ad will give the better exposure and make it part of the article.

Here’s what you need to add to your post at the start of an article or page in HTML. This is what I’ve added to the top right of this blog post.

<div style=”display:block;float:right;margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px;”>

Your Adsense code or advert script from Google

</div>

Google also recommends you place at least 3 adverts on every page for maximum results and sometimes prompts you do do it when logged in.

See how many more clicks you get by making this small change to your postings and pages Adsense blocks.

Seems like the world is on the attack to get out of anyone anything and by any means. Amongst all these their are genuine claims and people who need the cash because their life has changed and need extra to manage.

Whether it’s people tripping over in a super market, white finger from vibration related jobs, Industrial deafness claims from ex BT engineers and many other claim types their is a number of people just trying their luck!

Next year solicitors won’t be able to buy claim leads from companies who have harvested them in what ever way and will need to be seen actively looking or getting clients themselves.

Having built a few for certain towns I thought it would be an idea to find a few generic domains such as the one mentioned below and lists town / city areas on them.

Not sure it will have a good uptake from people or search engines but worth a go. The domains I choose were common phrases that people have searched on my Geo sites looking at the stats from the many sites.

• FencingSuppliers.org.uk
• LapFencing.co.uk
• Fencepanels.me.uk

Looking again on Google trends these are common phrases people use to find these types of items or companies.

Ideally they will turn into a directory listings for fence suppliers all over the UK and will use them to back up our other city focused websites.

Over the years I have found that certain products or services shine more with the seasons from the revenue generated from the sites I produce. Obviuosly Christmas Present related site do well from October and increase right up until 23rd December. BBQ sites do well in summer and snow shoes would do well in winter.

Taking this onboard I thought how much of a boost having a mini site would be if in general your business sinks during the colder months for example if you are a fencing suppier in Glasgow if your sales were 20% of what they are in summer what would effect would it have if it just dropped by 50% to 50%?

Having mini sites for areas of your business that taken individually are quite niche and letting me create micro sites for them maybe a case of sink or swim during hard times. You can pay on a monthly lease basis for 12 months at a time, for example if you have a fencing business in Wakefield and you lease a site from us in summer you”ll get more sales due to the site and a buffer in place for the winter months.

This to put figures to the idea and to make it easier – you have a normal (no niche mini sites) year in summer and take in £100’000 having a mini lease site for say a fencing business in Leicester may get on average 2 calls extra a day from the site. This would maybe from 1500 visitors to your site a month but you maybe would convert out the 60 calls a month just 10 of them. Taking a job with a profit of £250 on average, that would take in at least £12’500 over the summer months.

That’s just converting 4% of all visitors to your leased niche website!