Owner: The Beginning URL:http://www.thebeginning.co.uk Join Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2007 14:48:52 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Personal blog on wealth, health & everything else! Site statistics:Click here
Using Your Blog Postname as a Keyword! 2007-04-06 16:16:37
Browsing through my website statistics yesterday one of the search terms that brought people to my blog was Dan McLean Blog. I tried this search in Google and to my surprise Dan McLean was the top two results for this search! Not something I planned for so how did that happen?
It seems by recently changing my username for my Wordpress blog from Dan to Dan McLean, Google has obviously picked this up as a keyword for my blog, since my name appears under every blog as posted by. I’ve now changed it to Daniel McLean as below because I own some domains with that name and may use it in future.
This may be a very good way of using your blog and post username to good advantage. It could certainly increase keyword count and relevancy for your blog. Obviously Dan McLean has limited competition in keyword terms and using your post name as Make Money Online may not put you in the top 2 results for this popular keyword but it may help?
Read more:Keyword
21 Days to Becoming an Entrepreneur 2007-04-06 14:58:12
This is a great idea to get your creative thought processes tuned into money making business ideas within 21 days. Starting from today think and create 1 money making business idea every day and write it down for the next 21 days.
Why 21 days? Because it’s thought it takes roughly 20 days to create a habit, some say 30 days. Patience is not a virtue I’m comfortable with so 21 days is shorter and a nice round 3 weeks.
Write what down? The idea, the inspiration, what you can sell, what you can offer. At this point don’t worry about too much detail get the money making business ideas down on paper. At the end of the 21 days you can filter through all you business ideas and choose 1 to take action on.
The plan is after 3 weeks is to have a minimum of 21 money making business ideas. And as an added bonus you may have picked up a new habit of spotting potential money making opportunities in everything you do!
I mentioned this to my girlfriend and she immediately h Read more:Becoming
, Entrepreneur
Lotus Elise 111s 2007-03-29 16:50:48
You may have noticed from my blog header image that I’m a fan of the LotusElise
. The saffron yellow Elise in the header looks great in the beach photo but my choice of colour would be black. The Lotus Elise 111s performance specs are:
156 BHP
129.1 Torque (lbs feet)
4650 RPM for Torque above
132 Max Speed (MPH)
5.1 Acceleration (0-60 seconds)
What’s amazing about the performance specs is the relatively low BHP and torque figure yet very quick 0-60 time of 5.1 seconds. The quick performance is due to the very low weight of the car aprox. 720kg compared to 1250kg for a Porsche Boxster.
A black Lotus Elise 111s is what I want and am saving like crazy to get it as soon as possible.
A picture of the Lotus Elise 111s in red because it’s more photogenic than the black so you can see it’s features.
In anticipation of the inevitable Lotus Elise 111s buy later this year I’ve already joined the Official Lotus Club. I’ve got a factory tour of Lotus in Nor
Make Money with Squidoo 2007-03-28 16:58:16
www.Squidoo
.com not really a new social site but newish and it’s new to me. You can sign up to Squidoo for free and create your own unique webpage which Squidoo called a Lens. Each Lens is a user’s viewpoint on the world and can be on any range of subjects. You can setup up as many Squidoo Lenses as you like. I created a Lens for The Beginning.
Squidoo: SKWID-OO, n. v., adj., addiction. 1) thousands of people creating a handbuilt catalog of the best stuff online 2) a free and fun way to make your own page and get traffic 3) a place to find what you’re looking for, fast.
Squidoo users and their lenses are ranked by others in the Squidoo community. The ranking and popularity is important as the higher you rank the more you get paid. Yes get paid! You can make money with Squidoo by getting a percentage of their profits from advertisements. The percentage that you get all depends on how much traffic you generate for them and how popular your Lenses are.
Read more:Money
Time Versus Intent 2007-03-28 14:52:07
How do you make the most of your goals and life dreams now? How do you reach them sooner rather than later? I’ve read your subconscious mind has no concept of time. You may have ambitions of being rich and wealthy or other dreams and hopes, yet you’re not taking urgent action. This may be due to a gut feeling that you’ll get their in the end, that everything will work out in the long run, which it may well do. But if the subconscious has no concept of time your body may well expire before the time line that the inner feeling of getting their eventually gives you.
Time is a limited resource, this is not to say you should feel the pressure of a ticking clock in the background but more just be conscious that if certain goals and dreams are to happen in your lifetime make it happen now and set things in motion. I’ve always had a feeling that I would be rich and as the years have passed I have earned more money and given enough time I would be rich Read more:Intent
Create a Flickr Photo Badge for Your Blog 2007-03-26 16:49:32
I’m amazed at how I’ve only just found out about www.flickr.com. It’s a free web resource for storing your photos online and sharing with family, friends or the world if you like! Flickr
now belongs to Yahoo so if you have a Yahoo account you can login with this and start uploading photos straight away. Like most social sites these days flickr uses tags to name and categorise your photos allowing for easy search and reference for you and who ever you decide to share your photos with.
One of the cool features of signing up and storing your photos is the ability to use a Flickr Badge
on your website or blog. The Flickr Badge is basically a small insert of html and JavaScript code that allows you to display a selection of photos from your Flickr profile. Below is a Flickr Badge I setup using the wizard on their website using a MotorShow tag I assigned to all my MotorShow 2006 photos. I’ll list the website link here for making your own custom Flickr Badge as for some reason it Read more:Photo
Ja Kel Daily Dot Com 2007-03-24 18:55:24
No sooner than I got my linkback to The Beginning from John Chows review on his blog I got a request to exchange reviews with Jason at Ja Kel Daily
Dot Com. This cheeky chappy has jumped straight on the John Chow band wagon and why not! If you’re going to model your blog on someone elses why not one of the best income generating blogs on the net. Jason has a good sense of humor about it and has a post on being a dot com mogul half breed!
So here is your review Jason… First glance at the site and you see the man himself in a Ferrari on on his header image, nice. Jason obviously realises the importance of first impressions. The site theme uses MistyLook and he’s done a good job of customising it, bet you read my post on on Style Tips
Ja Kel Daily Dot Com has ambitions to make money online with a blog so good luck to that you certainly have the right mindset. You can get a link from his blog to yours in exchange for a review which is what I’ve done he
Style Tips for Wordpress MistyLook Theme 2007-03-20 16:55:49
I’ve started using the Wordpress
theme MistyLook 3.1 from Sadish. The file style.css within the theme folder is the central control point for colours, fonts, backgrounds, links etc. I’m new to CSS styling and it took me a day to go through and identify what each section of the files does. With a few exceptions I think I’ve got the most important parts covered.
The MisyLook theme is very popular and there are a lot of blogs still using the default style which is cool but if I can show you how to edit it slightly wouldn’t that be cooler? What I have done is comment through the file on where the section is in the blog, for example.
background: #f9f9f0; /* The main background colour of the blog */
color: #333; /*Color of text in your blogs posts */
My comments are /* in here */ and have no effect on the files function. The easiest thing to get you started will be to change some colors.
You can find html colour codes here www.colorschemer.com
The file style. Read more:Style
, Theme
New Site Style 2007-03-18 22:15:04 I’ve updated the style of my site after learning about CSS. I found a great photo of a Lotus Elise on a beach from LotusEliseBlog.com. The owner Chris kindly let me use and edit a photo for my blog header.
As well as learning about CSS I’ve started to use PaintShop Pro. It’s amazing what it can do and it’s so easy to use. Check out the photos below. The top is the original photo I downloaded from Chris’s blog. The bottom photo is the edited version with the person and the cars in the background removed. The sky and sand were cloned in from other areas of the photo and the finishing touch was extending the bridge along the horizon. Although you can’t see the extended bridge on the header image I know it’s there
Read more:Style
, New Site
Debt Reduction Accelerator 2007-03-17 16:42:22
This is a simple strategy for debt management and a solution I am using to be debt free. There are two ways this debt reduction accelerator has been taught to me. I will show you the one I am currently using then briefly explain the other solution as well.
You may not consider your mortgage as a debt, why not? Who says that you have to be like your neighbour and pay it off over 25 to 30 years. Do you know when you will be debt free if you carry on paying your minimum payments, do you know how much money that’s costing you in interest?
Be smart switch the situation on the banks and lenders. Clear your debts and use your income to earn you money!
The Solution
Below is an example of a debt that I will use to demonstrate how debt reduction can work for you.
Columns 1 and 2 list the debt description and debt amount with the highest at the top.
Column 3 is your Minimum Monthly Payment for that debt.
Column 4 is the remaining months you currently have to clear this debt. Read more:Accelerator
Daily Goal Reminder 2007-04-09 23:13:56
This is a cool idea for reminding you of your daily goals. I’ll be doing this myself over the next week to see if it works.
I have a wallet with a section for a photo. At the moment I have my Lotus Club Member card to remind to buy a Lotus Elise
My Lotus card is on standby and I’m going to print off my daily tasks that are important to me and place them in the photo section of my wallet. The plan is this will serve as a reminder every day.
My daily list is:
Update or Post Blog - 1hr
Italian Audio - 30mins
Guitar Practice - 30mins
Career Certifications
6 Pack Ab Exercises - 2x 10mins
Trading Research or Check - 30 mins
1 New Business Idea
The above is now printed off and in the photo section of my wallet, i’ll see how it goes! Read more:Daily
, Reminder
Win a Microsoft Zune 2007-04-09 23:13:30 Will swap Zune
for Links! John Chow on another give away to promote his blog… I’m in!
John Chow Dot Com a blog that helps you make money on the internet, is giving away a Microsoft
Zune. To enter, all you have to do is write about it. This is my entry. Now give me my Zune! Read more:Microsoft Zune
Why You’re Not Achieving Your Goals 2007-04-11 16:08:01
Reading through Trizoko today I found this great article on what some people call chunking, setting your self mini goals en route to achieving bigger ambitious goals. I am so guilty of shooting for the stars then either beating myself up or changing goals when it doesn’t start to happen.
How many times have I heard people say they want to become a millionaire by next year? One year later when it’s not realised money is now not the most important thing in their life! Maybe £100,000 by next year and a millionaire in 5 years and they’d still be on track for the goal just on a different time scale.
Your goals are too-ambitious-too-soon, and should be broken down into more bite-sized chunks — such that you’re positively answering:
“I achieve this by tomorrow!”
You can read the full article on Trizoko Read more:Goals
Raising A Business Child Prodigy 2007-04-11 13:06:32
My 10 year old daughter Naomi is showing signs of a future entrepreneur, of course I may be biased! I spent Easter with the family and my nephew has a Nintendo Wii which everyone played on, they are so much fun. The Boxing on the sports pack game is quite a workout when you get into it.
Well as soon as Naomi spotted the Nintendo Wii the word spread quickly that she was saving for one and already had £3. What was cool was that she never asked me to buy her one, she was keen to save for it herself.
Now Naomi has a services list that she is promoting to the family. This includes:
Car washing - waxing is extra
Dusting - charged per floor
Dog walking
Shoe shining
The latest is a custom book on crystals which she discussed with me last night. Naomi wanted to charge for an initial interview then prepare a brief book to the participants for another small fee. We agreed that it would be best to interview for free to get details to customise for the crystal book then offer t Read more:Raising
, Business
, Prodigy
Insight Meditation CD Review – The Journey 2007-04-13 14:31:31
I’ve now been using the Insight
CD for meditation for over three weeks and I am very happy with the results. Carrying on from my original post Insight CD I’ll let you know how much success I’ve had using it.
The Insight CD has 3 tracks on it for meditation and so far I’ve only listened to track 1 which is called The Journey
. It’s recommended but that you listen only to track 1 for the first ten days to get accustomed to it then if you like progress on to the second two tracks which take you into a deeper meditative state.
The first few times listening to The Journey I probably projected my expectations onto what it would do as I found it difficult to clear my mind but as a bonus I stayed awake (I tend to relax so much I fall asleep). Now when putting on my headphones I know I’ll consistently be in a relaxed state and usually am within 2-5 minutes.
The effect of the first 25 minutes track can vary though depending on my mood. I have found myself listening to 10 Read more:Meditation
Who Hacked John Chow Dot Com? 2007-04-12 13:34:16 The popular evil money making blog John Chow Dot Com appears to be down! It looks like Legendary Turkish hacker ISKORPITX is responsible. The site is redirecting to www.siyamiozkan-mavideniz.org.
iskorpitx is estimated to have made about 180,000 attacks in his career, including one that has been labelled the “biggest in history”. In this attack he reportedly hacked 21,459 websites in one shot…
John Chow Dot Com currently ranks in the Technorati Top 100 and is a high earner in the blog world so this hack will get noticed. Any downtime is going to cost $$$. I’m a regular reader of John Chow so hacked or not I hope it’s back soon.
Maybe a bad ReviewMe or one evil money making scheme too far, who knows? I’m sure he’ll give us a breakdown when he’s back. Read more:Hacked
Financial Success And The Importance Of Making A Start 2007-04-18 11:28:21
I was listening to Harv Ekers Secrets of a Millionaire Mind Audio Book on my iPod on the way home from work and it got me thinking (this self-help stuff does work!).
Harv (we’re on first name terms) was talking about how he’s always wanted to be wealthy from an early age, and in his twenties had started and failed at many businesses. Like Harv I have always been interested in wealth, money and being rich from an early age but unlike Harv I haven’t had many failed business attempts. To be honest I haven’t had many business attempts full stop.
In the past I have been conditioned for success, but what I know now is that success doesn’t come with out failures. Failure is not something I do well. Listening to the audio book I was thinking I need make a start on some business attempts. Recently I wrote 21 days to being an entrepreneur which has spawned some good ideas that I’m going to follow up on.
If you’re serious about wealth you have to start with what you Read more:Financial
, Success
, Start
, Financial Success
Updated Site Theme 2007-04-24 15:17:01 I have again updated my site theme. I’m a very visual person so the look of the site is important to me. My style ambitions are restricted by my CSS and PHP skills but I’m learning fast. This current theme is by the same author as the mistylook theme Sadish so kudos to him.
With the ever growing number of great plugins for Wordpress I wanted to extend to three columns. I plan on adding a current readers and top or recent comments widget. It also gives me some more room for affiliate links without compromising the sites post history and navigation.
I still have a few nights of CSS tweaking left but wanted the main theme up and running today before I changed my mind again! Read more:Theme
Peaceful Warrior Movie Review (2006) 2007-04-24 13:19:40
Last night I watched the PeacefulWarrior
movie an adaptation of the Dan Millman book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. The book is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It explores spirituality, contains many life lessons and words of wisdom as well as being an enthralling read which brings you tears and inspiration.
Peaceful Warrior has a big movie feel, added to by the presence of Nick Nolte playing Socrates. There is some clever cinematography when emphasising the moment and the power of now. Unfortunately for me Peaceful Warrior struggled to explain and portray a lot of the messages and wisdom that made the book so special.
Peaceful Warrior was by far still very good and my girlfriend who hadn’t read the book thought it was amazing. This is the first time I’ve watched a movie adaptation of a book, and like I’ve heard so many people say before, they haven’t done it justice.
If you haven’t read the book you’re in for a treat. It had me fighting back Read more:Movie Review
10 Top Tips for Better Negotiating 2007-04-23 15:12:29
Contrary to most modern day negotiations it’s not about winning it’s about coming to an understanding and fair agreement.
Here are some top tips for consideration when you’re next in a negotiating situation, whether it be buying or selling a car, house, or your next salary review.
1. Never accept the first offer. Never make the first offer. Let the other party lay down their expectations first.
2. Expect first offers and counters offers to be the upper and lower limit of the negotiations. You can counter this or expect to be countered with the other extreme and work inwards from there. Although meeting halfway is not always the plan.
3. Be aware of both perspectives. Example: You may value your garden in relation to your house at say $4,000 but to a property developer it could be worth $40,000. Now if you get approached to sell it which one do you think they’ll try to get you to focus on? That’s right $4,000 you need to be aware of that and point
21 Days to Entrepreneur Follow Up 2007-04-26 10:26:45
In my original post 21 Days to Becoming an Entrepreneur
I wrote that thinking about a new business idea every day for 21 days could start you on a path to being an entrepreneur. Now 21 days later has it been beneficial and am I an entrepreneur?
The first 7-10 days I had a lot of business ideas and wrote down more than one idea a day. After the first week though I found it difficult to forget about the ideas I’d already come up with. As a result generating new business ideas for becoming an entrepreneur started to fade and my attention focused on filtering what I’d already come up with.
Although failing to complete the 21 day entrepreneur challenge as lay out, I’ve been successful in choosing one idea I’m taking forward. What is cool is that I was so eager to make a start I’ve already done some research and bought a domain name. Yes it’s a website idea. The beauty of a business idea on the internet is the relatively low start up costs.
So the challenge was
Wordpress DoFollow Plugin 2007-04-25 23:08:15 I have now installed the Wordpress
DoFollow plugin from kimmo.suominen.com. This gives link backs to commentators on my blog. It can be a bit risky in terms of spam but I do have a spam filter that has caught everything so far, so I’ll see how it goes. There is also a handy option to delay the nofollow removal for a number of days so I’m using this as well. If something slips the spam filter I’ll get the chance to delete the offending comment before any linkbacks are given.
Thanks to SmartWealthyRich for a heads up on this plugin and a great way to give back to your readers and bloggers. Read more:Plugin
Lotus Factory Tour 2007-05-04 14:50:57
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the LotusFactory
in Hethel UK. This is where all the Lotus cars for the world are built, the Elise, Exige and Europa. All lotus cars are hand built there is no robot automation and at the time of the tour only one production line was running.
The Lotus models take 10 days to hand build from start to finish with 14-15 being completed each day. The tour takes you through the complete build process and its amazing how little there is to this minimalist back to basics sports car.
The smallest details are adhered to in the task of weight saving. The primer they use for the one piece clam body shell is either white or grey depending on the lightness of the final colour. So an orange lotus would have a white primer so as to cut down on the amount of paint used!
The chassis for the lotus cars is again another one piece design similar to the body. It has no rivets or welding just a chemical bond to keep the light weight aluminium alloy
Income Potential Of Large Reader Subscription 2007-05-03 10:45:02
Last year I attended Tony Robbins’ Wealth Mastery seminar in London. One of the guest speakers was an Options Trader called AJ Monte, you can find him at www.themarketguys.com. During the 4 day seminar when AJ wasn’t on stage he would be in the foyer holding informal chats.
AJ talked about how anyone can make a million $ in a year, the only thing stopping you is the belief that you can do it. Yes this sort of hyper talk is expected at a Tony Robbins seminar but AJ freely gave examples to his listeners on how to do it.
One example he talked about was the podcast from the www.themarkeguys.com. 400,000 podcast subscribers listen every month. If the podcast subscription service was charged a download fee of $1 per month and 25% of current subscribers took the offer that would be $100,000 per month. $1.2 million a year.
I’m not sure how accurate the subscription numbers are, so if anyone knows of podcast subscription rankings let me know. Nevertheless it’s a g Read more:Income
, Potential
, Reader
, Subscription
How important is valid XHTML? 2007-05-06 15:52:59
I’ve noticed a few blogs and sites have a Valid XHTML
badge or similar on their site. Out of curiosity I ran a valid
ation test here on my site to see how it held up. 14 errors initially most of them easy to correct so I made a few changes and it’s now down to 1-6 depending on the page you check.
My question is how important is having valid code?. It seems the makers of web browsers have accounted for most common code mistakes and auto correct or compensate. Checking through some of the high volume blogs like ProBlogger, StevePavlina and JohnChow etc. they have 100+ errors on a validation check so they obviously are not concerned. Maybe if the site loads in a few of the common browsers why spend hours debugging when you can be writing content and generating links?
A quick check of some recent visitors and it looks like you guys and gals aren’t bothered either!
jmacor, smartwealthyrich, pinoyarki, dinner, kucau, okdork, fortunewatch
What’s your view on this?
Top 5 Outstanding Must Read Blogs 2007-05-09 23:59:27
After considering myself tagged after reading ‘If I could Read Just 5 Blogs
!’ over at SmartWealthyRich and then reading the ‘Top 5 – Group Writing Project’ at Problogger I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.
Here is my Top 5 Outstanding Must Read Blogs:
1. StevePavlina.com I didn’t even know what a blog was until I came across this self-help guru’s personal development site. Now I have my own blog and have sold my TV thanks to Steve. Be careful what you read over there!
2. Problogger.net If you’re serious about making an income from blogging this is a must have on your RSS subscription. I’m a new reader to the site but like his style of reader participation with this great idea for a group writing project.
3. JohnChow.com A self pro-claimed evil dot com mogul who knows how to make money online. This is another six figure blogger so worth taking note of his advice. John is renowned for his link back contests and technology prize give a w
Your Relationship With Money 2007-05-08 22:24:29
What’s your relationship with money, have you ever thought about it? How do you deal with small change, everyday purchases do you check the receipts and keep them?
How about larger sums of money, thousands, how do you deal with that? Do you get emotional, fearful, excited or greedy? I’ve recently been involved in the sale of some property for several thousand. During this deal I found out a lot about my relationship with this quantity of money.
My emotions ranged from excitement from the initial deal, to fear it may fall through, to guilt over closing on a price more suited to me. I know these emotions are crazy when looking at the logistics of the deal but I found it very enlightening to witness.
My personal conclusion on relationships with money is to stay emotionally detached. Not to deny what I’m feeling when dealing with all quantities of money but to know that it has no place in the decision making and management of it.
Are you emotionally attached to mo Read more:Relationship
, Money
A Golden Opportunity 2007-05-07 21:51:25
Do you believe in that one single GoldenOpportunity
? That one deal that you need to make it! When all the stars are aligned in your favour and you’re wearing your lucky pants! I don’t.
I believe in consistent persistence. Good or even great opportunities may turn up but I’m not afraid to miss the boat. It’s about attitude; I don’t feel I need to grab at everything, that adds to a sense of lack and scarcity.
I believe that if one opportunity passes me by there will be others, why? Because I’ll actively seek them out. Keeping your options open, have your fingers in many pies, diversify.
This attitude adds strength to positions you find your self in. For example in negotiating a job contract if I have nothing else in the pipe line, to a certain degree I have limited my options. On the other hand in negotiating a job contract if I’m also considering and searching other possibilities I’m not left in an ‘all or nothing’ situation.
Hence no one sing
New Reviews Category Added 2007-05-12 23:47:40 I’ve added a new Reviews category to my blog. I don’t like category lists as long as the blogroll so I keep mine short, however this addition seems appropriate. I have added some previous posts into the new category already and plan to do some reviews over the next few days on Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity software as well as some recent finance sites that I’ve come across. Watch this space.
Read more:Category
Social Networking BlogCatalog Buzz Experiment 2007-05-14 14:17:45 What is BlogCatalog? Well in there own words:
BlogCatalog is the premiere blog directory on the internet. Whether you’re looking to promote your own blog or find blogs on various topics, this site is for you.
I have joined various Blog Directories to get my blog out there. After all one one of the main reasons for blogging is sharing and connecting with others, so you need to get your blog and posts seen.
The top referrers to this blog from directories I'm listed on are BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog caught my attention first because of it's Recent Readers widget in which you can see who's been visiting your blog. You can see mine in the far right sidebar column. However BlogCatalog now have their own widget doing the same thing so this should increase reader particiaption in their catalog even further.Â
This post was prompted by a post on iwebis which asked it's readers to talk about BlogCatalog today May 14th. I recently took part in a social writing Read more:Social
, Experiment
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