Protect Your Assets

I have just spent a splendid couple of days with the wonderful horses at World of Whispers (hhtp://worldofwhispers.com).  We have managed to secure short term accomodation for them on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.  We are now seeking a project base to move into in the spring.

On my return home I discovered that while I was away my PayPal account has been hacked and someone has withdrawn £600.

Obviously I am devastated – even though I know I will get this money back eventually.

This post is really to tell you all to protect your assets – change your password and security questions on all your accounts from time to time as this helps to prevent this type of fraud.  We should all make it as difficult as possible for these thieves and fraudsters to operate.

Feel free to visit my blog http://mandyallen.com – and do leave a comment so we know you have been!

Enjoy the journey.

In this world of the Internet it is so easy to isolate ourselves, often communicating only with our beloved machine. 

If we’re lucky we will form relationships with other people on the Internet, and those friendships can bring great rewards, both socially and in our Internet businesses.

It is really important to form relationships if you want your Internet Marketing business to flourish.  Working partners can help to bring different dimensions to your business. 

We all have strengths, and we should try to link up with a working partner who brings something new to our business, someone who complements our existing skills and can share part of the load.  If you can cover most or all of the skills needed for your Internet business you will spend less money on outsourcing tasks.  This will in turn mean bigger profits for you.

If you are thinking of partnering up with someone in your business make a list of tasks that need to be covered and see how many you can do between you.  This will give you a better idea of how much outsourcing you might need to do right from the start.

Feel free to visit my blog, http://mandyallen.com, and leave me a comment.

Enjoy the journey.

Blogging can be an enjoyable pastime that enables you to document events in your life and make your recordings available for others to read whenever they choose.  A blog can also be used to present your views and opinions, and as a portal for promoting your business.

There is another side to a blog, and that is as a place to make yourself some money.  This can be achieved in several different ways, but the most common is through affiliate links and ads placed on your blog. 

Affiliate links allow you to promote a product that belongs to someone else, and if a visitor to your blog buys the product you receive a percentage of the sale (typically 50%).  Some people choose affiliate products they have used and enjoyed themselves, and some choose products that compliment their blog topic.

Adverts that are placed on your blog by others make money in a different way.  Adsense, the most common form of blog advertising, charges the advertiser every time the advert is clicked, and you receive a small fee for each impression.  The other type of advert you can host on your blog is a banner advert.  This enables a particular advertiser to put a banner somewhere on your blog that is solely dedicated to them.  This usually would incur a monthly fee payable to you. 

To register for banner ads simply visit www.moneyforbanners.com.  Your site needs to have at least 3 pages to register with this company.

To follow my blog please visit http://mandyallen.com and leave a comment to let me know you have been!

My journey into Internet Marketing started some years ago, but I have spent a lot of that time without any structure or plan to stick to.  Signing up to a regular course was the best move I ever made to kick start my Internet career properly. 

There are many courses available that will take you by the hand and lead you through the maze of Internet Marketing.  Many of these courses are free, and one that is becoming very well regarded is The Thirty Day Challenge.  

Essentially this course will give you a task every day for 30 days.  The course is laid out in video and pdf format.  All of the daily tasks are small and achievable and you can actually work through them at your own pace.

If you are serious about Internet Marketing you must have a plan.  Make taking a course a key part of that plan, as it will give you such a good grounding for your work to succeed.

Of the paid courses available I would always recommend John Thornhill’s Masterclass.  Although it is a higher outlay initially it is worth the investment.  It’s where I met Susan May, and a lot of other really nice people.  We have become such a strongly knit group of Marketers but may well have floundered without Masterclass.  John also runs a monthly membership course called Mentorship Monthly and that is also worth looking at if you can’t invest in the Masterclass.

You can read my blog at www.mandyallen.com.  I hope to see a comment from you there!

I just wanted to say how much this post meant to me as my Mother was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  Thank you so much Mandy, for sharing it with us all.  And now, I give you Mandy Allen………

Do you do things for others?

I decided to have a break from the usual posts about ebay and Internet Marketing today. 

This month my friend, Ros Surtees, is 50.  In 2007 Ros decided that she wanted to celebrate turning 50 with a huge event, and the Ailsa Craig Challenge was born.  Over the last two years Ros has been preparing for this challenging 10 mile swim across a choppy body of sea water.  Sessions in the pool, sessions in the sea, swimming across lochs and other bodies of open water, paddling a kayak to build muscle, and regular runs have made up the bulk of her training for the great swim.  And all of this has been diligently maintained for a whole two years. 

There has been a committee of people working behind the scenes for this event.  Over the last two years a great number of fund raising events have been organised by this committee and so the total raised for Alzheimer’s Scotland and The Scottish Dementia Working Group by the Ailsa Craig Challenge team is no doubt going to be vast.

On Saturday Ros will set out from the island of Ailsa Craig and swim across the channel to Girvan, Scotland.  A welcoming committee on her arrival will include a group of African Drummers (Ros is the Chairperson of this group) and plenty of friends, family and other supporters to cheer her in.  On Saturday evening there will be a grand celebratory event in her home town of Kirkcolm, and I dare say we will be advised of the running total of funds raised from the Challenge.

What a way to celebrate your 50^th birthday!

If you would like to make a donation, no matter how small, please visit http://www.ailsacraigswimchallenge.moonfruit.com.  If you would like to read Ros’s blog that documents her training since she began in 2007 then please visit http://www.rossurtees.blogspot.com/. 

Enjoy the journey.

http://mandyallen.com

Beware of the scams!

When my eBay account was hacked they quickly picked up on it (even though I hadn’t a clue it had happened) and I can only imagine that the hackers were selling something illegal or immoral and it triggered eBay’s security system somehow.

One of the things that can happen when accounts are hacked is you can be scammed.  If you buy from an account that does not belong to the person named you will not get your goods.  The only hope is that you realise, or eBay realises, and you get a refund. 

This in itself is not always that simple.  Firstly there is a fairly lengthy process to go through to get your money back.  Secondly you don’t get a full refund. 

There is also a situation that you should always avoid.  When you order items from overseas do not get duped by people insisting that the item is taking longer to arrive because of the distance.  I once bought some antiques lights from the USA.  I was told they had been sent surface mail and it would take up to 8 weeks.  The didn’t arrive but a reply to my email enquiry assured me that they were sent and I should give it a little longer.  Of course the upshot of this is that they never arrived and I was long since outside of the ‘complaints’ period.  I won’t be taken in by that again.  My advice is raise the dispute with eBay anyway.  If the parcel arrives you can resolve the dispute.  If you don’t raise it and you lose the chance because you waited you have no recourse.

If you would like to read my blog visit me at http://mandyallen.com.

Enjoy the journey.

After having my account hacked I didn’t think I could possibly make any more huge mistakes.  How wrong I was!  Do call me naïve by all means, but this one is a mistake I know people still make.

I soon started exploring the possibilities of using eBay to acquire items for my antiques businesses.  I decided that a grand piano would look superb as people walked in the door.  I started scouring the listings for one and soon found a lovely boudoir grand piano with a walnut case, located in Pershore, Worcestershire.  It had recently been fully restored, including re-stringing, so was a sound buy.

I was still very new to eBay and had no real idea about ‘reserve’ prices.  I put in a bid on the piano.  No-one else had bid yet.  After a while I decided I needed to bid again as the listing said I hadn’t reached the reserve.  I kept bidding.  No-one else was bidding, but I kept going, by this time curious about the reserve price.  I bid right up to the reserve of £1,000 and it said I had secured the item.  Gosh, £1,000.  Way more than I wanted to pay, but that’s okay, someone else would out bid me, surely. 

There were no further bids and I realised that I had stupidly bought a very expensive piano!  On top of this I started to phone for quotes for transportation to Norfolk.  If you have ever tried to get a grand piano moved you will know just how much it costs! 

Luckily for me (again!) the Gods were looking after me.  I finally found a carrier who specialised in piano moving and had a regular trip from Norfolk to Worcester, but brought back an empty lorry.  They moved the piano for just £180, at least one-third the cost of anyone else.  In addition to this I had a piano specialist look the item over and he said it was a smashing piece and he thought it was worth around £2,000.  So I made a really good profit 8 months later when I sold it.

I still make sure I have a grand piano in the Centre as they certainly are a great draw.  I have cornered a ‘niche’ market – but I am much more discerning in my bidding if I see one on eBay now! 

Another mistake of mine you should learn from – don’t bid up to the reserve if no-one else is bidding!

If you would like to follow my blog please visit me at http://mandyallen.com and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve been!

I created my eBay account about nine years ago.  Initially it was to buy the occasional item for personal use but I soon discovered it was useful for my antiques business in terms of acquiring items needed.

One of the first mistakes I made when I signed up to eBay and PayPal was using the same password that I used for EVERYTHING else!  It seems ludicrous now that I should have done that but I was completely unaware of Internet security procedures. 

Of course the next thing that happened is my eBay account got hacked and the hacker had access to my email account, my PayPal account and everything else that was linked to the eBay account. 

The first I knew about the hacking was a phone call from eBay asking if I knew my account had been hacked.  I had no idea although I had not been able to get into my account for a day or so.  eBay were very quick off the mark in resolving the issue.  The first question the caller asked me was ‘do you use the same password for everything?’  Of course my answer was ‘yes’ and he went on to explain why I should not do that.  I have never done it since!  I was one of the lucky ones.  All I lost were a few emails from contacts that the hacker had redirected to their own email.

Although this experience really tainted my view of the Internet as a whole I have since overcome those reservations but am now much more cautious about the whole thing.

If you are new to the Internet please do learn from this mistake – it could have been costly, as could the mistakes I will outline in the following posts!

If you would like to read my own blog please visit me at http://mandyallen.com and leave me a comment to let me know you have been!

To Your Success

Susan May has kindly asked me to be a guest writer on her blog for a short time.  I hope you enjoy the next few posts I will be making on her behalf.

Often our success, or failure, is dependent on others pointing us in the right direction.  If we are able to learn from other people’s experiences it helps us to avoid the pitfalls and failures that they have lived through. 

Sometimes it can be hard to share those failures for fear of appearing lacking, weak, silly or any other negative you might attach to a ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’.  But it is through these experiences that we ourselves learn and we can pass on that learning to others if we choose to do so.

A lot of step by step manuals share positive experiences that work.  Often they do not outline the possibility of failure or the mistakes made on the journey in any way.  One of the reasons for this could be that something that may not work for one person may work for another, and vice versa. 

We should all have the opportunity to learn from both our own experiences and those of other people.

So be brave, share the stories of your failures as well as your successes.  You may help someone else to avoid making the same mistakes you have, and that is a priceless gift to give someone else.

 Thank you for reading.  If you would like to visit my blog you can find me at http://mandyallen.com.

 Enjoy the journey.

Hey Everyone!

I am so ashamed of my lack of posting so I want to apologize right off the bat.  I was very dedicated at the beginning of our Masterclass – and still am – but life has gotten in the way lately; let me explain.  We found out in March that my mother has vascular dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s but the brain scan results are promising that it is NOT Alzheimer’s and for that I am unbelievably grateful.  Even though March was the definite diagnosis there were several months before that where we were all very worried and trying to figure things out, etc.  I only tell you these things so you will know that I have not lost interest at all with our Masterclass, I have only been distracted.  My goal now is to try to devote at least 2 hours per day on my Internet Marketing business – now that we have a treatment plan in place and specific days/times that me and my siblings are going to my parents house to help my Dad out.  He still works outside the home which could very easily be somewhat of a relief for him – but when the time comes that he needs to be home all day every day, I think I will introduce him to ways to make money from the internet from the comfort of your home.  But first, I have to learn how to do it myself! 

Thank you to everyone who has come back to my blog, even when there was nothing new whatsoever, and for taking the time to leave comments anyway – you have no idea how much I appreciate it.  I am now going to set off and aquaint myself with everyone’s blog and try to catch up and hopefully the next time you stop by my blog, you will see some awesome new content!

Happy Spring everyone!

Susan