So many things are claiming my time just now. First there is the baby – my first grandchild, for anyone who hasn’t read any other posts in this blog. He and my daughter are living with me at present; that’s a whole new subject that deserves its own post!

I’m moving house, well rather, I have put my property on the market. This means I am having a huge de-cluttering. There is a large bin (9.0 cubic metres) outside my gate, and old furniture, magazines and years of hoarding are filling it rapidly.

One way and another, I am neglecting my blogs, and I’m struggling to keep up with the course.

The course is great. We are in week 8, at the stage of choosing a niche for which to create a product. This has always been a stumbling block for me in my efforts to make progress, but I am following John’s videos and believing that my path will become clear.

The last few weeks have been very exciting: the first thrill was getting my graphics from Planet Divinity

I am so pleased with them (the graphics). I asked for a simple design, and that’s what I got. The service was prompt, communication was clear and friendly, customer service and support have been excellent. I can’t recommend these guys highly enough to do them justice.

The next major step was John’s webinar – his first, not that you’d have ever known. It all went pretty smoothly. What a team we have aligned with John – Dave from Planet Divinity and Daniel, who is John’s technical support person. Daniel has helped me many times (even on a Sunday) and I can’t thank him enough for his prompt, courteous service and his patience.

And now we have the forum. What a great resource this is going to develop into -  members of the class are already helping each other out. It’s obvious we have a wide range of abilities amongst our members and an interesting mix of personalities.

So now, we are into sorting out our strengths, interests, talents and areas of expertise and researching possible topics for product creation. I think I almost have it sorted, but not sure. Now Daniel, in one of his posts in the forum, said something about a 36 hour day.

When he finds one, I hope he lets me have a copy!

For me, the orange RSS feed icon was one of those things.

I noticed it from time to time on websites I visited – “subscribe via RSS” would be the invitation. But why would I want to, when I had just filled in the optin form and then confirmed my email address? With all the other stuff vying for my attention, the RSS feed issue just wasn’t compelling enough to make me do something about it.

That is, until I started to focus on my time management (or rather, lack of) skills. Somehow just recently, it has filtered through to my awareness that the bold little orange icon can save me time. Ahha! Now I’m a bit more motivated.

I thought I’d go online and find out all I need to know, and then write a post for my readers – well, that sparkle of inspiration and excitement lasted as long as it took me to google “RSS feeds” and discover that there were 288,000,000 entries! I clicked on the first one, which happened to be Wikipedia, and there was just too much information for this total technophobe!

After a bit more research, I remembered that I can drive my car perfectly well, but I have only a very limited understanding of how it works. After that, I felt much better.

Here, in the tiniest nutshell, is my understanding of RSS feeds:

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” (there are other definitions, but that seems to be the most popular).

From the readers’ point of view, subscribing to RSS feeds allows you to easily have the news/blogposts/information updates that you are interested in sent to one place, where you can access them all on one page without having to visit each site individually.

You need a feed reader. There are many readers, but I have google reader, which seems to be a popular one.
To get google reader, sign in to your google account and select the reader option, or go to http://www.google.com/reader

This page will open.

Play the video. I have read many articles and watched several video clips about RSS feeds, but this little gem, while very short, seems to give as much information as I needed to get started. 

For me, now, it’s a case of using RSS feeds for a while to become familiar with what I can do with them and how they can help me. It’s quite possible I’m the last person online to start learning about that wonderful little orange icon, but if any of you want a good, written tutorial about getting started with RSS feeds, one of the best I found was on Paula Brett’s blog and I recommend you read it and save yourself the hours of research that I have done.

Here’s the link to Paula’s tutorial.

So for the rest of this week, I’m taking the opportunity to plan and write blog posts (I promise to write not too much about the baby!) and articles.

If you’ve signed up to the waiting list for the next John Thornhill marketing masterclass and you’re wondering what you’ll get if you decide to part with your money, here’s a brief outline of what we’ve achieved so far:

• We’ve chosen and purchased a domain name
• Purchased a hosting account
• We have our very own websites, in the form of Wordpress blogs, up and running
• We’ve put an optin form on our websites for people to subscribe to our blogs
• We’ve taken the first steps towards that most important IM activity, building our lists.

And under John’s guidance, we have done all this ourselves!

When you think that four weeks ago, most of us had done not much more online than purchase stuff we couldn’t work out how to use, that is enormous progress!

Stay with me over the next 32 weeks while I put John’s teaching to work.
Please remember, I am technologically, vertically and memorably challenged! Well, at least being short’s no problem where computers are concerned, but difficulties with technology and remembering sure are!

Now, what was I going to do next….?

You must know by now what happens when you sign up for a free offer? Yes, that’s right, you eventually end up on a sales page, which is only to be expected. We are all here trying to make a living, and to do that we are selling stuff. It’s just that this week in particular, I seem to have overdone my signups and I’m not going to have time to give each of them the attention it deserves.

One of them does stand out though, and I’m really glad I stumbled onto it. It’s The Secret Affiliate Code, the first product from a new marketer, Craig Beckta. The Secret Affiliate Code has come into my life at exactly the right time – its just what I need right now. I signed up for the product, and for the OTO (believe me, I have become pretty good at resisting the beguilement of salescopy, so that’s how good the sales page is). The price is very reasonable, and I reckon this will be a valuable resource both now and for a long time to come.

There’s a large pdf manual. After a quick look at it, I was so excited, I printed the whole thing out so that I can read it sitting comfortably in a chair, or in bed. There’s heaps of other material as well, that I haven’t had a chance to look at properly yet, but right now, I’m setting out to write a review of the product to submit to article sites.

I won’t go on about the Secet Affiliate Code here; I’ll be posting my review on this blog so you can read more about it there. In the meantime, I recommend you go take a look at it for yourself. Here’s the link Secret Affiliate Code

Oh, and there’s a secret code on the sales page. If you can crack the code, you  get $20.00 off the price if you decide to buy.

Afterwards, feel free to come back here and write a comment. I’d love to know what you think.

I’ve been dabbling online for about three years, joined John’s “Powerseller Challenge” about a year ago. It was just one of many products I spent money on but did not apply myself to. I was an Internet Marketer’s dream customer, buying every new thing to land in my inbox and focusing on none of them. They say “the money is in the list” – this is surely true if you have people like me on your list!

Over the months, John began to stand out as someone who knew what he was doing. I liked his honest, friendly approach, so when his Coaching Program became available, it was an easy decision for me to sign up. I thought the price was fair, and I was pretty sure I would get value for money. I was right.

In 16 short weeks I have gone from being technologically incompetent to having two blogs up and running (go here to have a look at the other one), a product created (you can view sales page here) and listed on clickbank, a bonus product and a 7-day minicourse related to my product, complete with its own landing page ( minicourse opt-in ). I had to start a second blog, because the niche I chose for my product had nothing to do with Internet Marketing, which was the subject of this, my first (and now somewhat neglected) blog.

The Coaching Program has certainly been intensive, but I loved the fact that I could follow along at my own pace. My technophobia slowed me up a bit at times, but it didn’t matter. All the material I needed was there, and if I struck a problem (as I did several times) John and Daniel were easily available to sort me out. At no time did I ever feel that I was left to flounder along on my own.

The main presentation of course material was by video. Each video was short and devoted to only a single, small step, which made it easy to find what I wanted when I needed to go back to refresh my memory about something. A handy checklist provided each week made it easy to be certain I’d completed all the work necessary before advancing to the next stage.

I have progressed from being someone who could barely do more online than press the “BUY NOW” button, to being someone who has researched a market and chosen a niche, chosen and purchased a domain name, can set up and manage a Wordpress blog, create material and upload it to the internet, manage an autoresponder account, list items on clickbank, create material for affiliates, create my own product, write a sales letter and create a sales page, write articles and submit them to article directories and much more besides. This all feels to me like an enormous achievement. My confidence level has soared.

I can thoroughly recommend John Thornhill’s Personal Coaching Program to anyone who is ready to learn the Internet Marketing ropes.

I have plenty of other stuff to get on with though.

My big triumph this week was getting my sales page finished and uploaded. That was so exciting! It actually looks like a real one – LOL.

How do other people ever get everything done, I wonder? I have been so focused on the sales page, not forgetting that life in the physical world must  also be maintained , that I have fallen behind with posting to my two blogs. I suppose when you actually know what you are doing, you get more done more quickly.

Week 8: we are supposed to be creating our sales letter (Did I mention I had finished my ebook?). John warned us we might find this difficult. Well I can tell you, I have really struggled. We have good course material, and goodness knows, I have read through enough sales letters during the last three years – I should be able to write one no trouble.

And I am, really. It’s just taking me longer than I imagined it would. I’m used to just writing like you would speak. I mean, you don’t think about every word or sentence you are going to say when you are talking  (well, there are times when maybe we should, I know…) to someone, and that’s how I generally write best. The words just come, and I write them down.

Now, I am having to stop and ask myself if my words will be having the effect I want them to have on the reader. I am having to think about what I am saying. Once I have to stop and think, the words don’t flow.

Perhaps there is my answer: I should just write, then go back and edit afterwards. Meanwhile, I am firmly of the opinion that once I have some income from all of this, someone else will probably be writing my sales letters!

Not me! I’m happy as a mouse in the pantry, head down at my computer. I’m in catch-up mode now. My product (an ebook) is almost complete – just needs finishing touches, and I’ve been creating my second blog. This one is on the topic that matches my book.

I’m happy because I am so much enjoying this course, I feel I am learning a lot and that I have made some progress at last.

It was a good exercise to repeat the blog building process. I went back through all the relevant class material and naturally, it was all much easier the second time around. I did make one serious mistake, though. I was careless, and I managed to delete an important file from my blog template! My blog looked very strange after that!

An email to Daniel (John’s techie support person) soon had me sorted. It took me less time to correct the problem than it had to create it in the first place!

If you are new to the internet and thinking of buying into a “how to” course, I can’t stress to you enough the importance of good support for your queries. In this regard, John and Daniel have never let me down, always replying promptly, even over a holiday weekend. 

I hope they both found an opportunity to have some “time out” from computers and coaching students.

To a rewarding internet journey

Sue 

John is very reassuring, saying it won’t matter if any of us are a bit behind, as we will easily be able to catch up. I do like it that I can work at my own pace. It would be much more difficult if I were having to keep up with live lessons. I want to produce the best product that I can, so it does not make sense to me to rush this part of the project.

Another problem I have is that this blog is about my progress on the coaching course, but my product is totally unrelated to anything to do with internet marketing, so I really need to create a whole new blog.

With that said, I had better get on with it.

Toward a rewarding internet journey,

Sue

In short, I am running out of time. I’ll bet I’m not the only one.

Therefore, this post is not only late, it is short. There’s no point in waffling on if you have nothing much to say.

So for now, I’m back to my book, and a few more hours of reading, note-taking and, with any luck, some writing as well.

Toward a rewarding internet journey,

Sue