Back in September I attended Robert Puddy’s Focus 4 the Future seminar in Birmingham. I keep on mentioning it because it was an excellent weekend and I learnt a whole host of extremely valuable tips and tricks on internet marketing. More importantly perhaps, I also met a lot of people who are in the same boat as me – doing all this part-time.

Networking works though, it really does. Just one JV from this seminar earnt me back four times the ticket cost. Perhaps this is a story for another time…

Today I wanted to talk about internet business mentoring, specifically an offer I have just received in my email inbox. Basically this email offered me a 9 month 1-on-1 internet mentoring program for £2k.

The problem is that the person who is offering to mentor me for this money is someone who I have never heard of – nor can I find any information about him on the internet or by asking around.

He’s an internet marketing nobody…

If I Google his name, he does not appear on the first page. The only sites I can find of his are the ones he sends me links to via email. In fact, the only information I can find about him is that he seems to have been online for just less than a year and once went to a seminar featuring Frank Garon.

This, it seems, makes him an “internet guru” who is qualified to mentor me to internet success! It’s ridiculous.

Compare this with the mentoring program which Mike Filsaime offered to the attendees of the seminar in Birmingham:

Mike’s offer was a 12 month, double-your-money mentoring program called “I5“.

You got his entire Butterfly Marketing package, all of his personal products, membership to all his sites, 2 tickets to his seminar, 10 tickets for his seminar which you could resell for $797 and keep 100% of the profits…

… you also got coaching from a proven successful internet marketing expert.

The offer I received today had precisely zero proof that it would help me in the slightest. The person who offered me mentoring can’t even offer any proof that he is a success, but he wants £2k to “mentor” me.

For an extra £1k I can get a whole load of material which has been proven to work over and over again as well as 1-on-1 mentoring from a successful (and well-known) group of marketers.

There’s really no competition, is there?

I suppose the moral of the story is to make sure that the person you pay for “mentoring” actually does have the right to call himself a success. If he or she can’t, don’t pay them a penny.

Other info:

Robert Puddy’s Focus 4 the Future UK and US Seminars

Mike Filsaime and the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript

Over the last couple of years, Sally Nicoll has documented her spread betting experiences via a blog on Finspreads’ main site.

Sally has always had an interest in gambling which, according to her, is a family trait. As a writer “between jobs” she used £5,000 to start her trading career, depositing it into her Finspreads account.

Every-so-often she would write up her latest spread betting triumphs or disasters on the site and built up quite a following amongst spread betters across the UK.

After a couple of years and 20 posts it seems that Sally was contacted by a publishing house to write a book. Just last month this book was released.

It was called:

“Bets and the City – Sally Nicoll’s spread betting diary”

I’ve just read it in less than a day and found it an excellent, funny and familiar story. Sally made all the mistakes a novice trader always makes and manages to turn her £5,000 into less than £2,000!

If you are even slightly interested in spread betting then I highly recommend Sally’s book:

Recently I picked up a copy of a manual called AutoProfits which is offered through Nick Laight’s Canonbury Publishing company.

AutoProfits is written by Mark Hempshell, a used car trader who sells cars through eBay for profit.

The manual promises to reveal “How to Pocket £14,000 – £130,0000 a year selling just 1 used car per week on eBay”

I really liked the manual, this is a system which can be very profitable and Mark has laid it out in an easy-to-understand format. In the new year, a friend and I will be starting a little side business following the ideas put forward in this system (more to follow).

Yesterday a subscriber of the Free Business Opportunities Email Newsletter sent me an email to let me know that he had bought the manual and was also impressed:

Hi Ben

You mention Cannonbury Publishing now and again in your blog.

I have bought one or two things from them – mostly Avril Harper manuals.

One that I did get recently was “Autoprofits! – How to Pocket £14,000 – £130,000 a year selling just 1 used car per week on ebay.”

I don’t know if you have come across this at all, but I was impressed.

The manual is spiral bound A4 format with 71 pages of close type.

The guy who has written it (Mark Hempshell) is obviously “in the business” and appears to really know what he is talking about. The impressive part is not so much the ebay selling information – although that’s in depth – but his insight into the second hand car market and the tricks and know-how that he is willing to give away in the manual. Also he goes into detail about what you should be buying, and what to avoid.

Selling second hand cars is not going to be for everyone but you can’t argue with a couple of hundred, up to a couple of thousand pounds, in profit every time you sell on ebay!

He even gives you an email address to contact him for ongoing support if required. (I haven’t tried to contact him yet so I have no idea if he will respond.)

Will I try selling cars on ebay? Well, that remains to be seen but if I do then I certainly will be doing it with this manual by my side!

I think Cannonbury have really scored here, if you think you might like to be the next Arfur Daily! (Giving away my age now.)

Regards

Ian

You can read more about AutoProfits by clicking on the following link:

AutoProfits – £130k per year selling used cars on eBay

Vince Stanzione, the man behind the home study course “Making Money From Financial Spread Trading“, is known for being very good at getting his name into the newspapers.

In October 2003 he managed to get a huge two page spread in the Guardian which concentrated on his success trading Gold and UK shares.

Unfortunately he has been featured in the press recently due to regulatory problems with one of his TV channels.

The Evening Standard said that Vince’s company, TV Commerce, was considering its future after being fined £25,000 by the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services or “ICSTIS”.

The feature, published on the 24th November 2006 said:

As part of a wide-ranging clampdown on the television industry ripping off viewers who are charged premium rates to call or text programmes, telephone regulator ICSTIS formally reprimanded TV Commerce and fined it £25,000

This fine was apparently given after TV Commerce was found guilty of keeping its callers on the phone for longer than was necessary whilst being charged £1.50 per minute.

Vince Stanzione controls TV Commerce PLC and floated the company on the Alternative Investment Market on the 21st February 2005.

The initial share price was 6p and since then it has hovered between 4p and 6p.

When news of the fine was announced, the share price dropped to 0.75p and, as of yesterday, was at 1.25p.

The TV channel in question, “StarDate TV” has now been closed and the directors of TV Commerce are now deciding how to proceed, which may mean a delisting of its shares from AIM.

Interestingly, the Independent Online Edition described Vince Stanzione as a “former hairdresser“.

I didn’t know that!

Read more about Vince Stanzione and his spread betting courses at the websites below:

Vince Stanzione and First Information

Vince Stanzione’s Seven Secret Keys Seminar

Over the past couple of days I have been watching the UK Internet Entrepreneur DVDs which I ordered last week.

This 8 DVD set contains all the presentations from the weekend seminar which was held less than 2 months ago.

Therefore, it’s very much up-to-date information.

So far I have seen 4 of the DVDs.

The first DVD features the “Two Neils” – Neil Stafford and Neil Travers who go through their business on screen. They have several websites up and running and they describe how they built their business over the last 5 years or so.

Simon Coulson is featured on the second DVD in his first seminar appearance. He went through how he has built up an extremely profitable business in just 3 years. Fascinating stuff…

A copywriter by the name of Nick Wrathall is shown on the 3rd DVD and he goes through his secrets to writing good copy. Nick was one of Stuart Goldsmith’s “Inner Circle” subscribers and he has become extremely successful after he acted on the advice given by Stuart.

Peter Woodhead goes through how to use Public Domain material to create your own products on the 4th DVD and concentrates on showing the audience exactly where to go to find this material.

I’ll do a full review of these and the remainder of the DVDs in the near future but I’ll say this:

I’m impressed with these DVDs because they contain footage of UK (rather than US) internet marketers who are very successful. Also, these marketers have made money by avoiding selling to the “business opportunity” crowd on the whole i.e. they weren’t just writing “how to make money” manuals.

So far, these DVDs are highly recommended and I still have 4 DVDs to view!

Find out more at:

The UK Internet Entrepreneur Conference DVD Set