On Saturday I made a 130 mile round-trip to attend the monthly “BritPack” mastermind meeting in Wakefield.

I won’t mention who was there but there were 7 of us in attendance this time around including a couple of very successful marketers. The group was set-up by Robert Puddy, the UK internet marketer behind the new membership site product called “Launch Formula Marketing”.

Whilst I was there I got chatting to one of the people who I met during the Focus 4 the Future weekend seminar in Birmingham back in September. We’ve both been busy making use of the techniques and tips that the speakers divulged to us over the three days (1st, 2nd and 3rd September).

It was during this chat that I remembered – I haven’t written a report about the weekend yet. So, over the next few days I will be covering the event including my notes (which were very extensive!)

This was my first seminar. I went down to Birmingham straight from work on the Thursday, getting to the Aston Business School at around 8pm. I dumped my bags and made my way down to the bar to mingle a little. It turns out that getting there one night early was a great idea – I got chatting with some of the speakers and some of my fellow attendees and picked up a load of extremely useful info before the seminar had even begun.

Come Friday morning I was up early for breakfast and then we all registered and went into the room for the first session which was on list-building and given by Robert Puddy, the seminar organiser.

Robert gave a 90 minute talk on the importance of creating a large subscriber list with the aim of turning these leads into customers. List building is a must for any business and he covered the various methods of creating a list including using traffic exchanges, safe lists, free for all (FFA) websites, offering free eBooks, articles and more.

His parting shot was excellent when he asked – what is the number one thing you want people to do when you send them to a website?

The answer: whatever it is, make sure that the whole page is geared to that one action… which I have been trying to do 🙂

Check out more about the BritPack at:

https://www.BritPackUK.com/members/index.php

I always like to take a long train journey simply because it gives me chance to read a load of magazines.

When I went to Robert Puddy’s “Focus 4 the Future” seminar in Birmingham last September, I picked up a copy of the Small Business Opportunities magazine for the train journey.

On the front of the November 2006 edition was the following:

– YES! Make $4000 a day in no-work biz
– Top 50 shoestring start-ups
– 25 New biz ‘dynamos’ you can start for as little as $50
– Grow A Fortune: Make a whopping $107 million from office plants
– Auto-matic riches! Clever car-share biz drives home $10 million

In reality, the magazine contained around 140 pages with 35 pages featuring stories and articles and the remaining 105 focusing entirely on adverts!

The magazine is a US publication and so it is very hypey in nature. There are some gems though.

For example: “If I could show you a way to put $58,000 in your pocket by investing just $395, would you watch an 11 minute video that explains how?” – from a mortgage reduction company.

There are lots of adverts for vending opportunities, MLM schemes, pyramid schemes such as the now defunct Prosperity Automated System, envelope stuffing scams, mailing lists, real estate companies and more.

People say that we in the UK lag behind the US so, technically, I should be able to see what will be big over here soon.

Unfortunately, I can’t see any big opportunities which aren’t already in the UK, just lots of people with cheesy smiles advertising over-rated schemes.

One advertisement which did catch the eye was one from Mr T.J. Rohleder who was offering a free book called “How to Make $900 a Day Without Doing Any Work!”

T.J. Rohleder was one of the people whose products were included when Stuart Goldsmith did some retirement seminars in 2005.

The classified pages threw up some seriously naff adverts, many featuring people pushing the usual pyramid schemes – PAS and the 1-Step System.

Perhaps the worst examples of shifty adverts are those which make a big deal of being “christian”. In one example, the promoter makes the headline read “A Christian Home-Based MLM” and continues with:

“Become part of a company that will help you reach Financial Freedom, the opportunity to spread God’s Word and the opportunity to help other do the same.”

Maybe it’s just me but trying to sell a multi-level marketing scheme based solely on your religious beliefs is rather strange and also smacks of desperation.

Although an interesting read, I won’t be buying Small Business Opportunities magazine again but you might be able to find it in WHSmiths for £3.50 if you are interested.

Over the past couple of years I have had several sales letters from Michael promoting his beginners course called “Making Money From Financial Speculation”.

I took the plunge recently and have been reading the manual and watching the DVD included.

The course name sounds similar to Vince Stanzione’s “Making Money From Financial Spread Trading” and is very similar.

However, rather than simply covering spread betting and fixed-odds trading, Michael also goes into the basics of trading with CFDs and trading the cash market.

The package is very well presented apart from a few typos here and there.

Also, there is a solid refund guarantee, something which is lacking in Vince’s home study course.

Unfortunately, most of what Michael has included in the course was useless to me as I have been studying trading for a couple of years.

Apart from the section on CFDs, the remainder of the course is pretty standard stuff on moving averages and trends.

Still, if you are new to trading, I have seen a lot worse.

And the price is not extortionate at just £53.95.

You can read more at:

https://www.BizOppsUK.com/michael_hein.php

Back in 2003 I was working in a deeply boring and poorly paid job. On a weekend I would get the Observer as I particularly liked the “Cash” section of the paper.

I suppose I liked reading about making money by traditional means i.e. savings and shares.

However, one weekend the Cash supplement featured a spread betting millionaire who they described as a “hi-tech messiah who wants to spread his betting secret”.

There, on pages 2 and 3, was a large feature about spread betting the financial markets. It centred on the achievements of Vince Stanzione who had “… made £2m from internet gambling on market price movements”.

Now, I left university in June 2000 so I completely missed the tech boom. This is probably a good thing. Back in those days I was so skint that I had to pray that my Switch card would let me buy £5 worth of booze on a Friday night!

Around the time of the dot com bubble I had read about a group of amateur investors making outstanding returns through spread betting on share prices.

This feature was great, it really got me excited about trading. Of course, looking back now I realise that it was pretty much an advertisement for Vince Stanzione’s trading days but it worked on me!

On Googling Vince’s name I quickly found his website and read with delight the great secrets I could learn about from Vince i.e. “make £400 a day, tax-free”.

After a little consideration, I faxed off an order form for £297 and eagerly awaited my home study course. A few days later I had the course and read through it all, watched the video and got very excited about my new little cash-cow.

I was really pleased with the course, I thought it was great.

So, I registered for an account with Finspreads and loaded up some money – I think it was £1,000 at first.

Then I got started with Finspreads’ 8 week training course. Trading with pennies I didn’t really make or lose any money but soon I decided that I wanted to trade Gold.

To cut a long story short I traded for around 6 months and lost around £2,000. I did everything wrong, everything that Vince said NOT to do, I did.

I overtraded, I day-traded, I always wanted to trade Gold. I made a complete mess of it.

The only time it was going well for me was when I went on holiday and had an open long position on the German DAX 30. Every day I was checking the paper in Gran Canaria and finding that the DAX had crept up slightly. It was great!

By around June 2004 I had had enough and closed all my positions and emptied my account. One particular time I got a margin call at work and was terrified because I couldn’t get access to a PC! That was the worst point and when I finally realised that I was under-capitalised which caused me to make silly mistakes.

Since then I have done absolutely nothing with Finspreads but my account remains open.

What I had decided is that I wouldn’t trade again until:

(a) I had cleared all of my debt and
(b) I had built up some money which I could afford to lose.

So, in the last 2 years or so I have been reading trading books, watching seminar videos and DVDs and learning as much as I can about financial trading.

I’ve seen loads of Vince’s seminars – the 2000 and 2002 events from Milton Keynes, the “Seven Keys Seminar” from 2004, the Ed Downs and Martin Pring one day session from 2004, the huge two-day “Masters” workshop. I’ll admit, I got hooked on the learning process.

So, I’ve decided to start trading again but this time in a very boring, business-like and professional way.

The idea is that I will update you on my progress via this blog, or maybe via a new one. That way you can add comments etc and see how much money I (hopefully) make.

I made a site about trading whilst I was learning the ropes. You can see it here:

https://www.FinancialSpreadTrading.co.uk

Also, I found out that Vince Stanzione is holding a one-day event later this month so I decided to write a little about his Seven Keys seminar from 2004. Read it here:

https://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.htm

And, of course, there is information about Vince’s “Making Money From Financial Spread Trading” course on the site:

https://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.php

Stay tuned for more information about Ben’s spread trading exploits!

Thanks,

Ben

Although I have been actively buying Business Opportunities for about 2 years now I had never managed to get on Streetwise Publication’s mailing list.

Reading a review of John Harrison’s book “The Money Making Magic of a Funfair Goldfish” I decided to contact the company and buy the book.

I knew that by buying a product from Streetwise, I would get onto the mailing list.

The book was very good, full of interesting stories mixed with money making tips and ideas. A full review will be available shortly.

After buying this in January, loads of offer for various Business Opportunities have come through the door. And, of course, all of the sales letters have gone into my swipe file. The sales letters are excellent, John Harrison knows how to write good copy.

I must admit that I haven’t purchased much from Streetwise – just 2 books and the following newsletters:

(a) The eBay Kommando newsletter, edited by Oliver Goehler and
(b) The Passive Income newsletter, edited by Iain Maitland

So far I have had several issues of each. The Passive Income Newsletter (PIN) is very good and the editor, Iain Maitland, does a great job in my opinion.

He recently contacted me to say:

“Hi Ben,

I just stumbled across the review you’ve done of PIN – thanks for kind words. It is a bona-fide product and we do put a lot into it.

We have opened up a little from passivre income as the feedback from readers suggests they want to know lots about all sorts of things and I have tried to meet that in the newsletter and weekly emails.

Cheers

Iain”

You can see the review of PIN at:

https://www.BizOppsUK.com/iain_maitland.php

I’ve put up a little information about Streetwise Publications on the site:

https://www.BizOppsUK.com/streetwise_publications.php