On doing a little detective work behind the scenes I found that for some unknown reason the database decided to empty itself which took the blog down for just over a day.

Luckily I keep a series of backups so I just asked my host to restore from one of my backups and we are now up and running.

My Dad always says that data doesn’t exist unless you have at least 3 copies of it and he drummed that into me from an early age.

If you take one thing from reading this blog, take this:

Back up your websites, MySQL databases and anything else you hold dear to at least three different, geographically separate places.

For example:

1 backup to your spare PC at home, 1 backup to an external disk drive you keep in your (locked) drawer at work/in the office and one backup hidden on some of your hosting space i.e. your Hostgator reseller account.

So even if your site is hacked and then your house burns down, you still have two different copies of your precious data.

Please, go and backup everything now.

Then draw up a backup schedule and get into the routine of backing data up.

I had a great weekend, despite a couple of low points - what kind of hotel closes their bar at 1am?

I’ve just added a full review of the seminar - warts and all - to the main website and you can read it here:

Review of Focus Marketing Seminars UK Event, Heathrow, October 2008

I can’t say it enough - these seminars are superb for meeting other people who are in the same position as you.

There was no indication whether Pat and Sean will be back in the UK anytime soon but you can keep up to date with the latest UK IM seminars at the following website:

Internet Marketing Seminars in the UK

Were you at the seminar in Heathrow? What did you think?

I’d love to hear from other attendees, feel free to leave your comments below…

I really enjoy getting away for a few days to a hotel and mixing with other marketers.

Although me and countless other marketers take seminar attendance in our stride, we were new to it once and can fully understand why some people find it daunting and are put off.

A lot of it may be down to misconceptions i.e. “it’s just a big pitchfest with no real information or benefits to ME” or just the fact that it’s scary to turn up to an event not knowing anyone else who will be there.

Read on to discover what kind of people you’ll meet and what to expect at your first internet marketing seminar (and please note, this is based on my experiences of attending small gatherings of 50-100 attendees NOT huge 500+ conferences).

Smaller gatherings of the type organised by Robert Puddy and Steve Foley are perfect as you have a good chance of speaking to everyone who attends - including the speakers.

Here’s a selection of the people I have been lucky enough to have met at a seminar, maybe you recognise one or two of them yourself?

1. The Weirdo

This is the fella you will speak to once and then avoid for the rest of the weekend.

He’s the guy (or gal) who wants you in his MLM and will stop at nothing to convince you that MLMing is the way to go.

Advice: Say “oh, yes, MLM is wonderful! In fact, I’m already in that program, isn’t it great?” Immediately he will lose interest and you’re out of danger.

Do not, under any circumstances, say “MLM is a load of tosh” or you risk being lectured to for 2 hours on the benefits of building a downline. You have been warned.

2. The Drunk

The drunk forgets he is at a business meeting, has a few too many on the Saturday night and then threatens the barman and a random hotel guest when they look at him funny. He’s very remorseful on the Sunday during the first presentation but the damage is done. By all means have a few drinks, but don’t get steaming drunk and do something you may regret.

3. The Over-enthusiastic JV Man

Show the slightest bit of interest in promoting this fella’s product and he’s your friend for life. He’s also the one who continually emails you after the event putting pressure on your to promote to your list. And he’s not just doing it to you, everybody else who expressed an interest in JVing with him is getting hounded too. Advice: If you are looking to JV with others, select one or two potential partners towards the end of the event and NOT on the first night after you’ve got a little tipsy!

4. The Smokers

The smokers have all the fun. Stood outside the fire doors for long periods they chat, forge friendships and get all of the latest news and gossip. Even if you don’t smoke, be like a smoker. Fresh air is good for you so go outside occasionally and stand with them - you’ll be surprised by the sheer amount of information you pick up.

5. The Clueless Newbie

Full of questions and not afraid to ask, this is the one attendee that even the speakers avoid. If you’re a kind, generous and patient soul you can befriend them and field their questions all weekend. Otherwise, pretend to be just as clueless and they’ll wander off.

6. Your New Mastermind Group

I meet with 8 other marketers once a month and have been doing so for the last two years - our mastermind group surged ahead after we got together following a seminar. I know of two other mastermind groups in the UK that were formed out of seminar attendees and no doubt there will be more. If you want help, advice and motivation on a regular basis then the relationships you forge at weekend events can benefit you for years to come.

7. The Arrogant Speaker

This is the one speaker who jets in at 10.30am, speaks at 11am then leaves the building at 1pm. All of the other speakers stick around and mix with the attendees but not this one. Once his pitch has finished and he has banked some money, he is off.

8. Mr “Know-It-All”

Get stuck talking to this attendee and you’ll spend the next half hour thinking of excuses to get away. Mr KIA talks a good game but you soon realise he is just spouting the usual “expert advice” that he read last week in the latest over-hyped Clickbank best-seller. Nothing new here.

Of course, he mentions his product several times in the conversation (you’ve never heard of him or the product) and when you finally do get away, 2 hours later, he slides you his card which features his cheesy picture and his website address in big letters. Of course, you’ll make sure you buy his product the moment you get home!

9. The Surprisingly-Nice-In-Person Marketer

I’ll hold my hand up and admit that I’ve made some assumptions in the past that proved to be very wrong.

Whilst booking to attend a seminar I thought “oh no, not that speaker, don’t like him at all”. Then, when face to face with the person they turn out to be really friendly, knowledgeable and keen to share.

My advice would be to go to an event with an open mind, don’t presume somebody will be an idiot - let them prove it when you meet them!

10. Your New Best Friend?

I’ve only been to a total of 4 events over the past two years, all in the UK but at each one I’ve met other marketers who I keep in touch with and look forward to seeing at the next event.

Be yourself, be friendly and approachable and listen to the people you meet and maybe you’ll forge some life-long friendships. At the very least you’ll have some friends to meet up with next time you attend a seminar and people who can potentially help you in your business.

A few further tips:

Dress comfortably - you won’t have to attend wearing a suit. Some people do but I’ve always found jeans and a t-shirt or shirt to be perfectly fine.

Take some spending money for drinks/food etc - you can usually add everything to your hotel tab but often it is nice to go out in the evening to the nearest restaurant.

Don’t feel you have to buy any of the speakers’ offers. I’ve never spent anything on “back of the room” items at a seminar and for that I’m probably a seminar organiser’s nightmare attendee - I take up space and don’t get my credit card out. If something really resonates with me I will probably buy it but so far I’ve never been tempted. And all of the seminars I’ve attended would probably be labelled “pitchfests”.

Don’t expect to get very much sleep. Networking can continue long into the night and at one particular event a well-known marketer was still at the bar as the attendees were coming down for breakfast.

Try to get to the hotel the night before the seminar starts so if it is due to begin on Friday at 9am, arrive on the Thursday night and go down to the bar. You’ll find a few early arrivals “networking”. This also has the added benefit of helping you arrive for registration relaxed and refreshed on the first morning.

Although attending an off-line event can be daunting, you’ll soon get into the swing of things once you have been to your first seminar.

The next one I’ll be attending is the Focus Marketing Seminar in October see Internet Marketing Seminars in the UK for more details.

Do you recognise any of the above people? Are you planning on attending a seminar soon? Feel free to leave a comment about your experiences at internet marketing events or any questions you may have.

The list so far is as follows:

Armand Morin
Les Eveneshen
Adam Ginsberg
Debra Thompson Roedl
Alan Forrest Smith
Mike Koenigs
Brett McFall
Dr. Mike Woo Ming
Brian Kosobucki

They’ve promised 14 speakers in total so please keep an eye on this blog for further announcements.

The hotel they’ve chosen is a 5 star venue close to Heathrow airport - the Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel (UB3 5AW).

I’ve now booked the seminar, train travel and hotel accomodation.

After last year’s seminar (see Britpack Live Seminar) I have decided not to dash home straight away on the Sunday and have booked to stay an extra day and then return on the Monday.

Also, as always, I will be arriving on the Thursday evening so I am fresh and ready for the presentations starting Friday at 9am.

Hope to see you there!

See more here:

http://www.focusmarketingseminars.com/ukevent/index.php

P.S. Be sure to book the hotel quickly before places fill up. Best room rate when I called was £60 ex VAT for Friday, Saturday and Sunday (an eye-opening £175 for Thursday!). If you are attending a seminar then it is important to stay at the same hotel - you do not want to be missing the late night sessions in the bar!

I’ve yet to be convinced that Stratford exists but that’s not really important.

What is important is: does the Lazy Lay System work?

From November 2007 to June 2008 I tested the system and found that, despite some very annoying drawdowns, the system did turn a profit over 233 days.

In fact, I managed to turn £200 into £206.03 after laying the favourites in 151 races - a profit of 3.02%.

Not very exciting and certainly not worth the time or effort.

However, I haven’t given up and the new season has started again from the 1st of September so I am now publishing my results as I did last year.

Please see the following webpage for the latest on my progress with this system:

The Lazy Lay System - Results for 2008-2009

Last year this blog attracted a number of comments about the system and so please do feel free to post your thoughts and experience of the Lazy Lay System below. I have now closed the comments on the previous blog post.

Domain name trading has become a bit of a hot topic recently and so we have seen complete novices jumping on the bandwagon to try and make some quick money.

In the internet marketing industry that usually means writing a low-quality ebook and then selling it on using a hype-filled sales letter.

Let me get to the point - this ‘Expired Domain Empire‘ course by Ewen Chia, has some very misinformed content in it.

I’m being kind, here’s the truth - it’s so out of whack that I seriously wonder whether Ewen has done any research into the domain business whatsoever.

Let’s start with the sales letter:

“I’ve been quietly building up my domain name empire for the past few years with certain underground domain methods, ’stealing’ hundreds of highly-profitable names many will ‘kill’ for… check out a few of the domain names I own… LoseFats.com… StrikeTheLottery.com… PinkOfHealth.com…”

Personally I wouldn’t go out of my way to call LoseFats.com and PinkOfHealth.com “extremely catchy, descriptive and brandable assets that fetches huge sums of money if sold”.

I’d be more likely to consider them worthless domains, especially ‘LoseFats.com’ which is a phrase that doesn’t actually make sense.

And what does the phrase ’strike the lottery’ mean?

Still, I suppose somebody who falls for hypey sales letters may be impressed. I’m certainly not.

And so the sales letter continues, and Ewen ventures in to my area - short domain names.

“Other domain extensions like .org, .mobi, .net etc. will never have the power or profitability of a simple .COM.”

In most cases I agree, Ewen, good point.

“You can still get these domain extensions if you want to, and in 2 to 3 letters (for example I own l3l.net), it’s entirely up to you.”

l3l.net? That’s probably worth about $8. A short venture onto any domainer forum would clear that up for you in seconds. I thought we were talking about making money here?

3 character dot net domains are pretty much worthless - an appraisal would say “reg fee” meaning it’s worth the cost of registration, no more.

The sales letter isn’t impressive, what about the product?

The pdf is 21 pages of introductory-level theory - nothing even remotely advanced here.

The first two pages contain adverts for Ewen’s other products.

I found page 16 to be the most amusing - and it was this page that cemented in my mind that Ewen Chia knows very little about expired domains (and domain names in general).

Direct quote:

“The software also has the ability to search for all two, three and four letter domain name combinations… For the two letter combinations there are 676 possibilities. I’m just talking about .com’s [sic] here. All registered as of this writing by the way, but they could expire. You never know.”

No, we do know, Ewen. In fact, it’s one of the first things a domainer learns. Two letter dot coms do not “expire” in the sense you are talking about.

If someone decides to drop a two letter dot com, that’s it - it’s gone forever. You won’t be able to grab it from the registry, it is just deleted and consigned to the history books.

It’s a complete waste of time even monitoring two lettered dot coms because you will never get one, unless you pay somebody $100,000+ to take ownership of theirs.

If a 3 letter dot com drops then yes, that’s worth a lot of money and it would be a good idea to grab it. But if you think you’re gonna get it by popping down to GoDaddy on expiration day and registering it, you’re in for a shock.

There’s a whole industry set up to grab these domains because they will go for a minimum of $6,000 as soon as they go to auction. Thousands of servers are set up to hammer the registry as soon as an LLL.com drops - all hoping to grab it and sell it on.

As a single person, on one browser, chancing his luck with GoDaddy or NameCheap - you’ve absolutely no chance.

I’m embarassed that someone in the internet marketing industry would sell something of poor quality like this and try to pass themselves off as a domain name expert.

Please, do some research before releasing this stuff.

For those who are looking to get into domain trading, please don’t look at it as “easy money” no matter what you are told by hypey internet marketers.

There is an opportunity to make money, providing you are willing to invest real money and put in some hard work.

You’ll do yourself a favour if you steer clear of Expired Domain Empires, it isn’t a recommended read.

If you’re looking for a good introduction to domain name trading, try http://www.TheDomainProfitGuide.com - which is written by two UK domain traders who walk the walk. They know their stuff about domain names.

To get an idea about domain names and their worth, try browsing the NamePros forum at http://www.NamePros.com - people will give you good advice in that particular forum, and set you straight if you go in asking how to grab an expiring two letter dot com!

The sales page hasn’t been released yet but my ticket was purchased last October and I am raring to go.

[Addition 22/08/08: A new page has been uploaded where you can see video testimonials from the US event, just go here:

http://www.focusmarketingseminars.com/ukevent/index.php ]

So, put the dates in your diary - Friday the 17th October until Sunday the 19th October. Ignore the initial announcements, these are the real dates - Pat Lovell confirmed it himself.

The venue - somewhere in London (we don’t know where yet).

Pat and Sean held the US version of the event in Washington DC last weekend and attracted some big names to speak including Stephen Pierce and Armand Morin. If you were lucky enough to see the notifications, you would’ve caught the presentations as they were broadcast live on the internet.

I managed to catch a lot of the seminar ‘live’ and it looked great but at the same time I couldn’t help but realise that the presentations are just a small part of the event.

Staying at home and watching a seminar online just doesn’t compare with leaving the laptop at home, jumping on a plane or train and gathering with loads of other marketers in a nice hotel.

I’ve no doubt that the attendees and speakers were in the bar every night, chatting away, drinking and networking. It was the same at the Coventry seminar last October and the Birmingham seminar the year before. And it’ll be exactly the same in London in October.

So, you’ve got 57 days’ notice now and the sales letter should be ready in the next few days from what I’ve been told. I highly recommend you get yourself a ticket for the Focus Marketing Seminars UK Event.

More news to come soon…

Focus Marketing Seminars UK Event

Several bloggers are reporting the event as beginning on Wednesday the 15th of October and running for 3 days, finishing on Friday the 17th of October.

However, as an attendee at last year’s Focus UK event, I am certain that the actual dates are the 17th, 18th and 19th of October.

The 2008 event will be held in London and will be hosted by Sean Roach and Pat Lovell.

For more details, please see Internet Marketing Seminars in the UK which will be updated regularly with more news about this 3 day seminar.

It was the end of what seemed like a very long saga.

Back in June I first registered for the dot me “Landrush” at DomainMonster. This was basically a pre-launch where you could order the domain you wanted before full registration was opened.

If you ordered a domain and no-one else ordered it, the domain was yours when the dot me was finally released.

If more than one person ordered it, you were all entered into a closed auction - whoever bid the most won the domain.

So, you can go see what is currently being auctioned here: http://auctions.domain.me

However, even if you really want to join in and bid for a domain listed there, you can’t. The only participants are those people who pre-ordered the domains between 6th June and 26th June 2008.

On the 16th July I got confirmation that the domain was going to auction and that the 3 day auction was starting on the 5th August.

I figured that the auction was ending at 4pm on the 8th August so I would bid my max bid (a 4 figure sum) at 3.50pm that day - leaving any opposition with the least possible time to respond to my bid.

So that’s what I did - I bid at 3.50pm yesterday and then the auction refreshed and showed me as the high bidder.

Problem was, the auction was extended by 24 hours because of my last-minute bid.

I didn’t know that was going to happen, and it scuppered my plans just a little! I had wanted to bid at the very last minute to avoid anyone beating me or pushing up the price too much but the auctions were set to punish auction snipers by extending the time remaining.

As it happened, one of my competitors did try to outbid me yesterday and pushed the price up by another $80 or so but today at 4:54:11pm I got an email:

“Congratulation! You won your auction!”

Final price was just 36% of my max bid so whoever was bidding against me certainly did not value the prize as much as I did.

Back in February of this year I made several 4 figure offers for a different “ben dot” domain with a pretty poor extension but the seller did not acknowledge my offers.

How glad I am that he didn’t as it forced me to act on the dot me landrush - and now I’ve got a great domain to use!

Not sure what I’ll use it for at the moment, apart from a pretty easy-to-remember email address. A blog perhaps?

I’m brand new to traffic exchanges so I’m learning as I go along but as I get 750 credits a month as part of my membership I thought I may as well have a look at them and see what they involve.

So far, so good.

From what I’ve found you have two types of TEs - manual surfs and autosurfs.

Manual surfs require you to load a webpage for a specific amount of time (10 seconds or so) before a button appears that you click to load the next.

For each page you view, you earn a number of credits.

You can then use these credits to get views for your own site from other traffic exchange members.

The more credits you have, the more views you get of your own site. You don’t have to surf yourself, you can just buy credits but if you are new to the game or short of capital, surfing allows you to build up a store of credits to use for advertising.

Autosurf traffic exchanges are apparently (I say apparently because I haven’t tried any) different in that you can just leave the surfing app running and the websites are loaded on screen automatically.

As you can probably tell, autosurfs are prone to abuse as there is no need to be sat watching the screen in order to earn credits. Or so I understand.

I guess people don’t need to watch the screen so it’s unlikely that they will do. Which means it’s probably not as effective as advertising on manual surfs.

Anyway, I’ve heard plenty about TEs in the past, mainly from Robert Puddy who organises the seminars I like to attend whenever possible.

He suggests using TEs to build a prospect list - so I guess that’s what I’ll be doing with all these credits I have sat in my account.

I’ve heard people describe this type of advertising in some pretty unflattering terms but I have some spare time at the moment so I figured I’d give it a go and see what kind of results I get.

If you are struggling to get any traffic it may be worth trying to see if a traffic exchange works for you - see SWAT Traffic for more info.

Stay tuned for results and do share your experiences with traffic exchanges by using the comments form below.