Hi Everyone

As I said at the end of last year I am going back to the early stages of John Thornhill’s Masterclass Course. I was surfing You Tube and and came across this lady who talks a lot of sense and offers some great advice. It’s less than 6 minutes long and well worth watching.

Talk to you again soon

Chris

Are you a stay at home mum or maybe recently been made redundant or just looking to make a bit of extra income?
A home based eBay business could be just what you are looking for. An eBay business can help relieve the stress of balancing time between family and work. It is quite possible for anyone to make a reasonable second income from eBay or even a healthy income, while giving you the freedom to raise your kids and not miss those so important and never to be repeated moments that happen at every stage of your child’s development.
It is easy to get started, and managing your time is not a problem, if you know how to do it properly.
What happens in your typical day? When do the kids go down for a nap every day? Are they in school? When is their “alone” time where they occupy themselves with their toys, giving you some time to yourself? It doesn’t take loads of time to start an eBay business. Just utilise your spare time on your eBay and you will be surprised how much enjoyment you can get from it. I think you will find that eBay can also be very therapeutic and exciting.
The first step is to plan your day to make time for your eBay business. When you put the kids down for a nap or have dropped them off at school in the morning, schedule an hour or so for listing your new items on eBay. When lunch time rolls around, set the kids up at the kitchen table to eat, and use this time to pack up the items you’ve sold to prepare them for delivery. After your bedtime routine, set aside an hour or two to round up your new items that need to be photographed, take the pictures, and upload them to your computer so that they’re ready to be listed the next morning.
Set aside some time in the morning and in the afternoon for checking your e-mail, so that you can check and respond to buyer questions. This should only take a few minutes, and can be squeezed in anytime you have a couple of minutes to spare. Utilise the internet for new item ideas for selling, to type up some quick descriptions for later, or to find new auction templates and graphics for use in your listings.
You may find that it’s actually harder to stay away from your work then it is to find time for it, as well. Set firm rules with yourself that at a certain time of day, your work is done, and walk away. For instance, after dinner, make a deal with yourself that after checking your items for bids for the night, you won’t do anymore eBay-related business until the next scheduled work time you have the next day.
By far the best way to manage your time for your eBay home business is to set a schedule and stick to it. You will find that with eBay, you don’t need to do much work, and it can be fit in anywhere you have a few minutes to spare. Once you get into a routine you can start enjoying your time with your family, while your business does all the work for you!

24 March 2010

I was thinking about blogging again whilst driving the bus today. In fact I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about the Masterclass course and where it might eventually lead me.

One of the main influences on my life since starting the course is reading “The Go Giver” I am currently reading the sequel “Go Givers Sell More”; another fantastic read for anyone who hasn’t read it. I say a sequel but in fact instead of being a follow on story it is more about how to put the 5 principles into practice. I will endeavour to do a more detailed review in a subsequent blog.

Back to my day driving and I started thing about how much technology has moved on as I mentioned in my “Thoughts for Today” blog. So much so that apart from my wonderful family who obviously are the most important people in my life, the one gadget that I need most is my mobile phone.

I still call it my phone but it is so much more. My Samsung Jet touch screen phone wakes me up in the morning. Whilst having a cup of tea and breakfast (if I have time before work), I use my phone to see what my friends on Facebook have been up to, before checking my Gmail account and catching up on the latest news and sport on the BBC website. If I have any important calls to make or things to do the calendar will remind me. I have loads of photos of my 3 year old son Finlay and impromptu videos recording him growing up. I can listen to my favourite radio shows; especially Chris Evans and Steve Wright on Radio 2 or listen to my favourite tracks on the music player.

So apart from all of the above and the calculator, currency and measurement converter, notepad and voice recorder I can still make phone calls and send text messages.

That reminds me. I must back all that data up onto my PC and then to my external drive.

Keep on blogging!

20 March 2010
18:23

A bit of a frustrating day with the Masterclass course today. As I said in my last blog I eventually got accepted for Google Adsense. Great I thought; today I will go back a few weeks and sort out the Adsense Code and see how the blog looks. As per usual all of John Thornhill’s videos were easy to follow and explained each step of the process and everything seemed to be hunky dory. I was delighted to open my blog and see that there were already several Google Ads appearing on the blog . It was then that I realised that something was not quite right.

I still am not sure exactly what happened but somehow I managed to lose all my blog graphics. So there I was back to week 4 and reinstalling all the graphics again. Looking on the positive side it was some very good revision. The other thing it made me realise was just how much ground we have already covered on the course.

I have started reading some of the other blogs and am very inspired by what I have seen. I will be posting comments very soon. It’s great to be getting comments from fellow students too

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Chris

17 March 2010

I was driving my bus through rural south Lincolnshire today enjoying the early Spring sunshine. After what seems like a very long and cold winter it is delightful so see the daffodils just waiting to burst into bloom and carpet the verges in that beautiful yellow hue.

One of the other great things about bus driving in through the villages is that the majority of the time traffic is light so one gets the chance to think about all sorts of things. The main thing that is really on my mind at the moment is John Thornhill’s Masterclass which has now reached week 7. Can’t believe the time is flying by so fast but the course is so good and very compelling. We have covered a lot of topics already and things are looking up because I have now been accepted for Google Adsense at the 2nd attempt.

Anyway I digress. Today I was thinking about my working life and all the changes I have seen since I started work at the tender age of 17 in September 1975. That was the same month IBM launched their first portable computer. The IBM 5100 weighed in at 55 pounds and cost the best part of $20K. Having spent a couple of years at Hackney council followed by 5 years as a computer programmer at British Gas I embarked on my career in the new age of PCs. In 1983 Commodore & Apple were being challenged by the “new kid on the block”; the IBM and IBM compatible PCs were hitting the market using the Intel 8088 processor. Soon after that the first PCs appeared with a built in hard disk drive. This was cutting edge; a whole 10 megabytes of storage capacity on a disk drive. We could now actually store applications on the computer rather than have to load from a floppy disk each time. ACT introduced the Sirius which had 128Kb RAM.

The monochrome display might even be replaced by colour at some time! Wouldn’t it be great to be able to have more than 1 task running at the same time?

06 March 2010

14:58

Well here we are in week 5  of John Thornhill’s  Masterclass course.  I am finding the pace of the course about right for the time I have available to study and I have already learned a lot of very useful information.

John has a very easy going nature in the video presentations and explains everything in detail.  He also provides transcripts in Word & PDF formats.  I find it best to read the transcripts, then watch the video through once before doing the practical work. I then play and pause the video as necessary whilst carrying out the practical work.

In the first week I set up a website from scratch, found a suitable domain, registered it and set up a hosting agreement and created an email account attached to it.

The second week focussed on  sorting out the FTP (file transfer protocol) software and creating my first blog.  I downloaded FileZila which was quite a painless process  and was now well on the way to having my first live website.  After some messing about setting up  various bits and pieces it was into WordPress  to create the text for the blog and set up the various links and categories which affect where  various items appear on the web page.

It was in the third week that I encountered my first problem.  I applied for a Google Adsense account but after several days wait I was turned down because my website was described as being incomplete or under construction.  I was a bit miffed but not down hearted so just pressed on with rest of the tutorials for the week. This included uploading different blog themes from Prosense   in order to start personalising the site. Finally it was time to order some graphics for the page header and footer.

Week four was all about incorporating my new graphics into the website and hopefully making things look more professional.

Hopefully now Google will consider that  www.MidLifeNewstart.com is worthy of having a Google Adsense account associated with it.

Now it’s time to crack on with week 5.

Where did the idea of Mid Life New Start com from?

Maybe it would be better to ask what is mid-life?  I believe mid life can be determined as anything from about the age of 30 onwards.  There is certainly a very strong opinion that 50 is the new 40 as life expectancy increases so I guess this site is primarily aimed at  anyone who has reached or is approaching the mid-life stage.

Now let’s look at the New Start.  This is the area that this fledgling site will be focussing on as the content increases.  Some of my initial thoughts relate to changes in circumstances.  This could be a change of direction because of redundancy or early retirement.  The children may have grown up and gone off to university or just flown the nest.   A long term relationship might have broken down.  You have more time on your hands and are looking to find a new interest or hobby.

That’s it for now.  Will keep you posted.

The most enlightening  part of this week has been reading a little red book called the Go Giver. This is a Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea.

Although the book is principally aimed at business people I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in having a more fulfilling life.

The Go-Giver is the story of Joe,  an ambitious  salesman who is struggling to meet his quarterly target and looking for a way to leverage the sale.   A meeting with a highly influential gentleman known as the Chairman  doesn’t turn out as expected.

During the course of a week Joe gets to met some highly influential people and learn  five simple principals which  help him achieve his goals and fulfil his dreams.

I cannot recommend The Go Giver highly enough.  Once I started reading it I just wanted to carry on to find out how Joe put theory into practice.  Then I had to know the next secret to success.

A great read.

Take a look at this video too.

As a newbie to internet marketing where do you start? This is a problem I was facing for several months. Just Google “internet marketing” and you will find that there are over 56 million results for top internet marketing experts. There are more than 43 million for internet marketing courses.

This shows us a couple of important points. Firstly there are a huge number websites devoted to internet marketing and secondly that the there must be an enormous number of people interested in the subject.

Now it’s fair to say that I haven’t looked at all these sites. In fact I have looked at a tiny percentage of them. However, I have done a considerable amount of research to try and find the best opportunities for a budding internet entrepreneur.

One of the best sites I came across was MySilentTeam. This is Jim Cockrum’s site about Creative Income Strategies. Jim Cockrum is widely recognised as one of the greatest authorities on the subject of ebay and internet marketing.

Jim Cockrum is associated with many other leading experts in the field covering a vast range of different strategies. MySilentTeam is well worth a look. As a visitor to the site you can gain a wealth of information from some of the world’s leading experts on ebay and other forms of internet marketing.

Sign up for Jim Cockrum’s regular newsletter to stay informed on the latest trends. If you like what you see I seriously recommend that you become a member of MySilentTeam. This will give you access to some great bonus products including Jim Cockrum’s excellent book “The Silent Sales Machine”

I will talk more about that and a few other experts in a later blog.

Happy reading.