Several UK marketers were featured yesterday on a BBC Radio 4 show called “The Internet Millionaires’ Club“.

Mark Lyford, Chris Cobb and Dean Holland were three that I recognised.

The description was:

“Jolyon Jenkins enters the world of mirrors that is internet marketing. Here, ordinary people dream of becoming millionaires without having to do any work. It is really possible?”

You can listen to it via BBC iPlayer at the following link:

BBC iPlayer - The Internet Millionaires’ Club

Some thoughts:

* Dean Holland probably regrets admitting that he didn’t buy his new ‘$44,000′ BMW outright and that he had to use hire purchase. An admission like that does weaken the boast somewhat.

* The presenter states that he thinks some marketers should be hauled in front of the courts for fraud. 100% agreed.

* He sums up internet marketing pretty well - Mentor A mentors B, B becomes mentor and mentors C who then becomes a mentor and so on.

Obviously he wasn’t going to be able to delve very far in just 30 minutes of air time but some good points were covered.

It would be great if this started a series of shows featuring more of the so-called experts as the presenter was asking some good, probing questions.

However, considering this was broadcast at 11am on a Friday it looks like the BBC isn’t going to make exposing dodgy internet marketers one of its priorities.

Willie Crawford’s Internet Marketing Inner Circle site was a membership site which contained downloadable interviews with experts as well as other material that promised to help those who were trying to sell products online.

It also contained a small forum which was popular with a handful of members who would post semi-regularly.

A few weeks ago the whole site - theinternetmarketinginnercircle.com - just disappeared. It no longer resolves to a website and trying it from my home PCs I just get a Virgin Media error page saying that the website “may not exist”.

As a lifetime member, I never received any warning that this site was going to be taken down.

Then again, this doesn’t surprise me whatsoever as Willie Crawford is not the most talkative of people.

He has constantly ignored my requests for a payment of the affiliate commissions I have earned. More here:

Willie Crawford and the Internet Marketing Inner Circle

The URL is due to expire on the 13th October 2011 (tomorrow) so I imagine we’ll know then if this is just a glitch or if Willie just decided to close up shop and not tell the members…

Paul Lynch - Honest Work From Home Success Forum

Just a few days ago Paul Lynch ran a reasonably successful and populated forum called “HonestWorkFromHomeSuccess.com“.

In the past the forum had various “experts” as guest members such as Tim Lowe, Holly Mann, Kevin Potts, Mark Lyford and Nick James.

Almost all these names deserted the forum months ago, Lyford it seemed within minutes of arriving as “co-owner”.

Earlier this week the forum disappeared with no word.

When you try to access the website now it shows a plain, out-of-the-box template site that’s trying to sell PLR products.

The URL it is showing (7PLR.com) is owned by someone in “AE” which I assume is Arab Emirates?

Judging by the amount of time Lynch actually spent on the forum, this could simply be a mistake that he hasn’t spotted yet and the forum may well be back online shortly.

Time will tell.

However, with Willie Crawford’s site, it looks like it’s curtains. That means no lifetime membership for those who paid and no affiliate commissions for those who promoted Willie’s site.

More fool me for doing both!

** UPDATE 25th October 2011 **

Paul Lynch’s forum is now back online. It turns out that a hacker got into his GoDaddy account and several of his domains were stolen. The forum is back up and running so he obviously got the domain back somehow.

Willie Crawford’s site remains down. It looks like it might be safe to assume that the Internet Marketing Inner Circle website isn’t coming back.

So many blogs, so little time.

Unfortunately a lot of blog posts are boring and uninformative.

Not all, of course. You just need to do some searching to find the worthwhile ones.

Here are 5 interesting reads for your next coffee break (links open in a new window):

(1) Marcus Passey - Internet Marketing – I Am Failing Fast – So How Will I succeed?

This very refreshing blog post from Marcus Passey, a UK marketer, shows that there are marketers who aren’t afraid to tell the truth when it’s warranted.

Marcus was one of those rare marketers that made money within the first few months of trying.

However, he soon got disenchanted with what he was going (essentially using ad swaps) and made this blog post to tell his readers why.

Good stuff.

(2) Erica Douglass - The Failure Manifesto

At the age of 26 Erica sold her business for $1.1 million which made a lot of people take notice of her.

I don’t know about you but I always figured that once you made a million, you were on easy street but in this blog post Erica explains why she’s spent a lot of time crying.

The million hasn’t set her up for life, anything but. In fact she notes; “sold my company for $1.1 million, and I don’t even have enough money for a house down payment.”

Another refreshing blog post that shows that even the “big winners” from the internet don’t have it easy.

(3) Jeff Wellman - Product Positioning & Differentiation Strategy! Why New Products Fail!

With more that a little help from his son, Jeff Wellman drew in six figures from his first product in 2007 - “Lay Off Your Boss“.

Sadly the money he made didn’t last long and soon he had to do another product launch. This blog post describes how the second launch wasn’t quite as successful.

Most marketers wouldn’t be as honest as Jeff is being in this post. Whilst you’re at his site read some of his other posts as he has written a lot recently about his marketing exploits over the past 4 years.

It’s all good, honest stuff and shows that even with a big leg-up you can still struggle.

(4) Bret Thomson - How To Deal With Blood-Sucking Leeches Disguised As Wanna-Be Clients

This is funny.

I read this blog post and immediately got a mental picture of the kind of person who would approach a copywriter in this way. I’ve seen them lots of times at seminars - the man with the big idea.

Oblivious to their stupidity, they think they are doing the copywriter a favour by letting them work for free.

Thankfully Bret gives this idiot his marching orders.

(5) Mark Lyford - Chris Cobb Scam

This isn’t a blog post really, more of a “name and shame” website.

The short story is that Mark paid Chris Cobb $25,000 for a service but doesn’t think he got that service so now he is asking for a refund.

Chris refuses to give a refund so Mark created a website on which he details all of their email exchanges.

An eye-opener.

Auctions for 1 and 2 letter dot co dot uk domains names started on Thursday 1st September 2011 after a surprisingly low amount of advertising.

Nominet are finally releasing some extremely short, and most likely very valuable, domains like g.co.uk, bb.co.uk and t.co.uk.

Previously the shortest UK domain length available was 3 letters, and these were all registered shortly after the beginning of the new millennium.

It’s too late to take part in these auctions now, applications had to be in several weeks ago. Also, you can’t watch the auctions, that’s a privilege available only to the participants.

The process was as follows:

(1) Find a registrar that would process your application

This was quite difficult. Several of the big registrars weren’t taking part at all. Of those that were, some were charging ridiculous amounts of money. One quote worked out at almost £200 per domain.

After ringing around the best fee was found to be £10 + VAT per domain.

(2) Submit application and await email from Nominet.

(3) Pay Nominet £10 per domain

(4) Await further instructions.

Nominet provided a very interesting “WHOIS” search engine that listed the applicants for each domain.

When the words “Facebook Ireland Limited” appeared as an auction participant for fb.co.uk it was obvious that only a monstrous amount of money would win that. Likewise with “Google Inc” and g.co.uk. T-Mobile, Huawei and 28 others were listed as bidders for t.co.uk.

The auctions started at 10am on Thursday for the domains ag.co.uk through to iz.co.uk.

Proxy bids weren’t used so it wasn’t like eBay. If you bid £10,000 when the auction was at, say, £500, the current highest bid would jump straight to £10,000. Obviously, care was needed.

After a bid the time left was extended to 1 hour. Once it got to 5pm the auction would halt and then continue the next day. Many auctions carried over to the Friday.

Below are some results from Thursday and Friday. These will be updated as the auctions finish.

Finish Prices for UK Short Domain Landrush Auctions:

ag.co.uk £2,600.00
ah.co.uk £3,000.00
ai.co.uk £6,000.00
aj.co.uk £2,800.00
ak.co.uk £1,850.00
al.co.uk £4,000.00
an.co.uk £2,300.00
ao.co.uk £2,100.00
ap.co.uk £3,800.00
ar.co.uk £4,000.00
as.co.uk £4,100.00
au.co.uk £3,500.00
ax.co.uk £2,100.00
ay.co.uk £1,501.00
bb.co.uk £25,000.00
bc.co.uk £8,500.00
bd.co.uk £2,750.00
bf.co.uk £3,500.00
bg.co.uk £5,100.00
bh.co.uk £3,100.00
bi.co.uk £3,500.00
bm.co.uk £5,100.00
bo.co.uk £2,800.00
br.co.uk £4,100.00
bs.co.uk £3,200.00
bu.co.uk £1,400.00
bv.co.uk £1,900.00
bx.co.uk £2,200.00
by.co.uk £3,000.00
bz.co.uk £2,100.00
ca.co.uk £5,400.00
ce.co.uk £2,600.00
cf.co.uk £3,200.00
cg.co.uk £2,400.00
ch.co.uk £2,850.00
ci.co.uk £2,150.00
cj.co.uk £2,700.00
ck.co.uk £5,100.00
cl.co.uk £4,000.00
cn.co.uk £4,600.00
cq.co.uk £1,200.00
cr.co.uk £2,700.00
cs.co.uk £4,900.00
ct.co.uk £3,250.00
cu.co.uk £3,500.00
cv.co.uk £38,000.00
cx.co.uk £1,800.00
cy.co.uk £1,200.00
cz.co.uk £1,500.00
d.co.uk £15,100.00
da.co.uk £2,300.00
dc.co.uk £4,900.00
de.co.uk £5,500.00
df.co.uk £2,600.00
dh.co.uk £3,300.00
di.co.uk £3,100.00
dj.co.uk £8,000.00
dl.co.uk £3,200.00
dn.co.uk £7,800.00
do.co.uk £5,400.00
dp.co.uk £3,400.00
dq.co.uk £1,201.00
dr.co.uk £9,300.00
dt.co.uk £2,800.00
du.co.uk £1,250.00
dv.co.uk £2,500.00
dw.co.uk £2,600.00
dx.co.uk £3,200.00
dy.co.uk £1,201.00
dz.co.uk £1,301.00
ec.co.uk £3,160.00
ed.co.uk £7,500.00
ee.co.uk £5,000.00
eg.co.uk £3,200.00
eh.co.uk £2,650.00
ej.co.uk £2,678.00
ek.co.uk £3,000.00
el.co.uk £2,600.00
em.co.uk £3,100.00
en.co.uk £1,850.00
eo.co.uk £2,200.00
ep.co.uk £2,100.00
eq.co.uk £1,700.00
er.co.uk £2,900.00
es.co.uk £5,900.00
eu.co.uk £4,200.00
ev.co.uk £1,700.00
ex.co.uk £4,700.00
ez.co.uk £4,000.00
f.co.uk £17,000.00
fb.co.uk £19,500.00
fe.co.uk £2,350.00
fg.co.uk £1,950.00
fi.co.uk £6,001.00
fj.co.uk £2,000.00
fk.co.uk £2,600.00
fn.co.uk £1,900.00
fo.co.uk £2,200.00
fp.co.uk £3,100.00
fq.co.uk £2,050.00
fr.co.uk £5,100.00
fs.co.uk £4,000.00
fu.co.uk £3,000.00
fv.co.uk £1,400.00
fw.co.uk £2,500.00
fy.co.uk £1,900.00
fz.co.uk £1,201.00
g.co.uk £76,000.00
gc.co.uk £2,250.00
gd.co.uk £2,700.00
gf.co.uk £3,800.00
gi.co.uk £1,950.00
gk.co.uk £1,750.00
gl.co.uk £2,300.00
gm.co.uk £5,800.00
gn.co.uk £2,600.00
gt.co.uk £2,700.00
gv.co.uk £1,201.00
gw.co.uk £3,400.00
gx.co.uk £1,800.00
gy.co.uk £1,101.00
gz.co.uk £1,201.00
h.co.uk £16,000.00
hb.co.uk £2,550.00
hc.co.uk £3,000.00
he.co.uk £3,750.00
hg.co.uk £1,950.00
hi.co.uk £6,400.00
hk.co.uk £4,000.00
hm.co.uk £10,000.00
hn.co.uk £2,000.00
ho.co.uk £1,850.00
hq.co.uk £6,900.00
hr.co.uk £22,888.00
ht.co.uk £2,450.00
hu.co.uk £1,300.00
hv.co.uk £1,700.00
hx.co.uk £1,000.00
hy.co.uk £2,100.00
hz.co.uk £2,666.00
ib.co.uk £3,200.00
id.co.uk £15,000.00
if.co.uk £15,101.00
ih.co.uk £3,050.00
ii.co.uk £7,911.00
ij.co.uk £1,101.00
ik.co.uk £1,750.00
il.co.uk £2,300.00
in.co.uk £6,500.00
io.co.uk £2,700.00
ip.co.uk £9,600.00
iq.co.uk £9,000.00
ir.co.uk £2,500.00
is.co.uk £4,600.00
iu.co.uk £2,000.00
iv.co.uk £2,500.00
iw.co.uk £2,100.00
ix.co.uk £1,700.00
iy.co.uk £1,201.00
iz.co.uk £1,100.00

The single letter domains ended up being expensive, as one would expect.

d.co.uk £15,100.00
f.co.uk £17,000.00
g.co.uk £76,000.00

Others were also expensive:

bb.co.uk £25,000.00 (Blackberry?)
cv.co.uk £38,000.00 (CV - obvious attraction)
fb.co.uk £19,500.00 (Facebook?)
hr.co.uk £22,888.00 (Human Resources?)
id.co.uk £15,000.00 (ID)
if.co.uk £15,101.00 (Intelligent Finance?)

None of the two letter domains went for below one thousand pounds, the lowest was hx.co.uk at one thousand pounds which when VAT was added would mean £1,200.

Domains containing the so-called “non-premium” letters like q, x, y and z were notably lower than others.

J to R auctions come next week and then S-Z and single number auctions the week after.

The proceeds go to charity and these auctions may net over £1 million. Some domainers have commented that the prices are lower than they expected, perhaps due to the lack of prior knowledge of these auctions taking place.

Looking at the DNJournal.com lists of sales for 2009, 2010 and 2011 so far, the lowest price a two-lettered dot com domain sold for was $80,000. If these are an indication of how valuable 2 letter domains can be in a good extension, the £1,200 paid for hx.co.uk could end up being a very astute investment.

These updates were previously provided on the main website under the Vince Stanzione review page but I’ve decided to move them onto the blog as it is easier to post them here.

A load of trades expired on the 14th June 2011 and caused a large move in the balance of the account.

Here are the important numbers:

Trades opened: 42
Winning trades: 28
Losing trades: 13
Break-even trades: 1

This leaves my spread betting account up 24.1% from the balance at the close of play on the 15th March 2011 (the time of the last update).

28 trades rolled-over - can you guess why? These will all expire on the 20th September 2011.

As this account approaches its first anniversary, the overall return on closed positions is a very healthy 27.08%.

Speaking to a business associate over the weekend it occurred to me that not everybody has a vast understanding of spreadbetting and that, compared to some, I’ve got plenty of experience! My account with Finspreads was opened way back in 2004 and has had many ups and downs.

In fact, I discovered some old trading statement emails from back in April 2004. These showed just how undisciplined my trading was in the early days.

For example, I lost almost 50% of my bank in just 10 positions over a week (!) and then made 20% from 9 positions over the next two weeks when I was on holiday and away from a computer.

The style of trading I adopt now - where I often don’t check my positions for days, and only open new trades once a week - is far less stressful and appears to be performing quite well at present.

With the low amount of funds I have I am limited in the markets I can trade. All of my trades over the last year have been on UK shares that are under £7 whereas back in the days where I was losing a lot of money I would trade Gold, GBP/USD, US shares and stock indices.

My main aim for the first 12 months of this new, cautious approach to spreadbetting was to simply not lose money and providing that I don’t suddenly make a huge mistake or get caught on the wrong side of all of my trades, I could end up doing better than I imagined.

With stop losses in place on all my trades, I know that I am covered to an extent against a sudden crash (or boom) in the markets. Providing we don’t see massive gapping occurring in UK FTSE 350 shares I should survive.

What was missing in my trades back in 2004 was a solid money management plan. Everything I traded was at, say, £1 a point or £2 a point. It was always rounded up to the nearest pound.

Today it is different. One trade I opened this morning is for 72p a point, another for £1.05 a point. A few weeks ago I opened a trade for £5.23 per point but this has the same risk as all of the others.

Is this money management plan helping me to make successful trades? Maybe. What it definitely is doing is allowing me to relax. I know the worst case scenario for any trade I make and that makes it far less stressful.

No margin calls, no anxiously watching the screen hoping for a turnaround.

Risking only 2% per trade means I’d have to have 50 losers in a row to go bust. Although this can happen, the likelihood is low.

At the moment, it is quite enjoyable to be a “spreadbettor”.

Vince Stanzione’s spread betting course is available at:
http://www.thefintrader.com