Julie Priddle's Online Journey

Hello again!

I’m certain that the majority of you already know how to add your picture to your blog comments but, for those of you that don’t know, I’ll tell you how I did it. Actually, first I’ll tell you that I spent an hour trying to do it from my Wordpress Dashboard! Now, maybe it is possible to add your picture from there……but, I couldn’t work out how to do it if you can! Jeez, I could be embarrassing myself yet again.

First of all, go to http://gravatar.com

When you are on the page above, click on Get your Gravatar today.

The next page says: Signup to get your own Gravatar.

Put in your email address. Make sure that you use the email address that you use when you comment on other people’s blogs. This is how your Gravatar is recognised and able to upload your picture to your comments that you leave. Then just click sign up.

You will then receive a confirmation email, so check your email and click on the link that Gravatar sends you to confirm your account. Then you’ll be directed to set up your account with a username and password.

Ok, still with me?  Once you’ve done this, you’ll go to another page where you ‘ manage ‘ your account. On this page, click on add image, then you need to find the picture that you want to use, click choose file and find your picture and click next. Save it.

It may take a few minutes…….but when you go back to your own blog, if you look at the comments that you’ve left, you’ll notice that your picture has now been added! How great is that?? It will update any comments that you’ve left on other blogs with your picture too.

I think it’s  important if you want to be recognised within our blogging community to have your photo added to blog comments that you leave. At the end of the day, we need to be recognised if we want  people to read and comment on our blog. So what better way is there to get a bit of recognition than to have our picture on view whenever we leave a blog comment?

It’s also much more personable. Lots of people identify with pictures too, it makes you real and approachable. Don’t you agree?

I hope you have found this post helpful….. please give it a tweet if you did!

TIP:  Remember to use the email address that you use when leaving comments on other blogs when you sign up for a Gravatar…..that’s how your Gravatar is recognised and uploaded!

Have fun!

Julie.

PS.  Did I mention that it’s completely free to get a Gravatar??? Oh boy, I love the free stuff!

Hi everyone!

Thank you for reading my blog posts. I really do appreciate it.

This week we were shown how to sign up for Google Analytics. This is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to your website. The sign up process was very straight forward……my problem was putting it on my blog! I’ve decided that for my birthday I would like access to a ‘Tech-Savvy-Hot-Shot’ every day of the week, just to make my Internet Marketing Journey a tad easier. What do you think my chances are of receiving a gift like that? Mmmm…..that’s what I thought!

Ok then, driving traffic to my blog(oh yeah, it’s never-ending). We were given a couple more blogs to visit on a daily basis and to leave comments on in the hope of getting back links to our blogs.

Also, the importance of joining Internet Marketing forums, ie: The Warrior Forum. We are supposed to visit them daily and leave comments, if not daily, at least once or twice a week.

We need to write blog posts on a regular basis, as Google loves unique content. Google must love me and my unique stresses and frustrations then! Not many people are brave enough to admit any struggles they might encounter. Maybe I shouldn’t have promised to tell the truth? Hopefully any newbies that read my blog will identify with some of the difficulties…..I hope so anyway!

Next up – sign up for Twitter (http://www.twitter.com). This was a painless task, until I tried to add my photo to my profile. Don’t ask! I sorted it out though, on my own too I hasten to add. I’ll be a seasoned pro before the year is out. LOL.

There is a competition offered by Mark this week too….. The person who gets the most traffic to their blog by 8th April (3 weeks) will win $75!  I’ll need to be on a mission this week trying to get traffic to my site. I had better get my finger out and try to get some followers on Twitter.  Lots of Twits on Twitter you know! Oops, sorry my warped sense of humour is leaking into my blog posts……but, honestly, comments like that are bound to be said (or at least thought) if you call a social networking site Twitter.

Thanks again for reading. Read my next post about ‘ How to add a picture to your blog comments’

Take care,

Julie.

Hi there,

We were told the importance of driving traffic to our blog. We have a free ebook for anyone that signs up……obviously by offering a free product we are encouraging people to leave their email address and then in respect they are on my list that I’m building.

I tried so many times to add the opt-in form and ebook to my blog, that I could quite honestly do the damn process with my eyes tightly shut! Do you think that the opt-in form and ebook ended up on my blog??

Oh no! That would have been too easy, it’s honestly less than a 5 minute process but, continuing on with the week’s frustrating set-backs……. it didn’t work! Grrrr. After a few wasted hours of doing the same thing over and over again with the exact same outcome (ie: no opt-in form or ebook graphic on my blog), I had to admit defeat, as I was slowly but surely losing the will to live. I had to email Mark so that he could sort it out.  Apparently, after all that stressful drama, the problem was to do with my theme!!?? He had to do something with the coding in the sidebar, and then voila! The ebook graphic and opt-in form were miraculously there on my blog.

Right then, another tactic for getting traffic to my blog……we were given a huge list of Alex Jeffrey’s students and told to visit every one of them and leave a comment on their blogs and request a comment from them on our blog. While I can understand the concept of this exercise, for me personally, it’s not something I’m entirely comfortable with, as with a list that size to get through I don’t see how my comments on their blogs can be anything but generic in the end….so I just left comments on the blogs that I found to be interesting and of use to me, period. My aim certainly isn’t to upset anyone and I just feel that had I gone through the whole list leaving comments, maybe a few people might have been rather peeved! Sometimes, you simply have to do what you feel is right in your heart.

Read my next post about……….yep you guessed it! Driving more traffic to my blog!

Kind regards and happiness to all!

Julie.

Hi everyone,

I’ve had my first taste of SEVERE frustration and I have to admit it left a bitter taste in my mouth. A tad melodramatic? Maybe. But you know how when something drives you mad and there’s not a single thing you can do to change it? Well, I had a few days of that scenario and I was at the point of explosion!

During our weekly webinar on Thursday I was struggling to pay attention, not because it wasn’t interesting, I was simply exhausted. I wasn’t concerned as I figured I would watch the video of the webinar the following day and press on. But, of course that didn’t happen. I tried all weekend to view the webinar and couldn’t get it to work! I was at the point of phoning someone with technical abilities to rectify whatever was wrong with my computer. As it transpired, the problem wasn’t with my computer. Frustrated doesn’t come close to how I felt…..it was laugh or cry in the end. I cried.

By Monday evening, it was all sorted so, I pulled myself together (I was a quivering wreck of a woman) and got on with the tasks in hand. The last thing I wanted was to get behind with the course.

You’re probably wondering why I’m bothering to tell you about all this but, hey, I promised to give you an honest account of my online journey, which will obviously have to include the incredible lows that greet me along the way. Nobody said it was going to be easy, and I’m sure discovering that really is a true observation!

I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from starting their online journey to financial freedom, quite the opposite in fact. I just want to you to be aware that it’s not all plain sailing, and there will be times when you’re thinking ……¨ What the hell am I doing this for? ¨

Never lose sight of what you want to achieve, keep moving forward and try not to dwell on the things that inevitably do go wrong. Rome wasn’t built in a day…..but it WAS built!

Keep your chin up and be happy!

Regards,

Julie.

Are you a bystander? Or are you truly LIVING the life of your dreams? This may seem to be an odd post but, I really would like to know the answer. Last night, I couldn’t sleep because my husband has the flu and he was sniffing, snorting, moaning and groaning so loudly that I’m sure if our neighbours weren’t Spanish, they would have hot-footed it to our door to complain about the noise! So, anyway, I crept out of bed and trudged downstairs to the lounge for some much needed peace and quiet.

Oh dear, unable to sleep, crap on TV, sooo much time to analyse my life! The realisation suddenly hit me…… I’m a bystander in my life. I’m existing, not truly living my life. How ungrateful am I? I’m happily married, have 3 wonderful kids and yet I feel like a bystander. Perhaps I should feel guilty for wanting more, after all there are millions of people less fortunate than me. But, I have to be honest and admit that yes, I do want more!

I’m not a believer in ‘ Money brings happiness ‘, absolutely not. But, I do believe that money eases the daily stresses of life. I want choices – plain and simple. The fact is, being financially independent will aid my choices. I may be critisized for admitting it but, I want the freedom that money can bring. I want to be able to pay for a golf membership for my husband without worrying about the cost, hell – he deserves it! I want to be able to visit my family in the UK anytime I feel like it. I want to send my youngest son to a summer football(soccer) camp. I want to have the money to pay for a course of  driving lessons next year for my daughter. If that makes me materialistic then so be it, that’s how I feel and that’s what I want!

I refuse to be a bystander in my life anymore. I now know what I want (and been brave enough to admit it!) and I’m going to make damn sure I get it. By this time next year, I want to be LIVING my life.

How about you? Where do you want to be in a year from now?

Remember, a journey of a thousand steps begins with one. I’ve taken my first step………have you?

I would love to hear your comments on this post. Be honest people, I know I’ve been blatantly truthful!

Whatever your hopes and dreams, make sure you stay happy. Laughing is what gets me through the tough times!

Kind regards,

Julie.

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping by.

OK then, pressing on.  To begin with on our 3rd webinar with Mark there was a quick summary of what we’ve covered so far:

List of 100 things we want to do or buy before we die.

Register our domain name.

Set up a hosting account.

Set up a wordpress blog.

Write ‘ About me ‘ page on our blog.

Write our 1st blog post.

I was mentally ticking off my progress as the summary was being read out……..pleased to say that I’ve achieved everything on the list! Feel quite proud of myself as it’s all completely new to me and yet, somehow, I completed all the tasks. Progress is definitely being made and I’m still really fired up!

Then a recap of plugins and widgets. Quite useful to me I have to admit. We were shown how to add new themes to our blog, me being me, has taken this to the extreme limit during the course of this week and my blog theme has been changed more times than I care to admit! I now call the procedure a mini-facelift, and will continue to tweak it until I’m happy with the result. My family think that I have OCD when it comes to my blog theme, and if I’m honest, I can’t really argue with the title so, call it what you will……I’m officially obsessed with my blog theme! There, I said it loud and without a hint of shame.

The topic of list building was next on the agenda, which outlined the sequence of building our list  from start to finish. I’ll report more details about this in a future blog post as I don’t want you to become confused!

Signing up with Aweber was discussed next. For those of you that aren’t familiar with exactly what Aweber is, it’s an autoresponder service provider. It’s basically an email marketing service which takes out the hard and repetitive work of interacting with your list. Our homework was to create our Aweber account.

Our free bonus this week is a free product created by Mark and a squeeze page thrown in too! It just gets better and better if you ask me. Who doesn’t like free gifts every week??

It was great recapping previous lessons…..even greater knowing that I’m up to date with everything. I hope to continue with the course in the same orderly fashion. LOL.

Thanks for reading. Please leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions. It will be a pleasure to try to help you.

Kind regards as always,

Julie.

Hi there,

I’ve spent the best part of the day uploading blog themes to my dashboard and installing them individually to my blog, just to see if I like the look of them. Why are there so many to choose from?

I’ve come to the conclusion that as a member of the female species (admittedly, a debatable fact at times!), we don’t deal well with too many choices. We are better off having a choice of maybe three, and making a sixty second decision as to which one is ¨ the elitist ¨ and simply installing the damn thing! I’m not even sure as to why I feel it’s such an important decision, really, come on, the content of the blog has to grab the readers attention as opposed to the blog theme surely? But, the blog theme is the first thing that everyone sees……. can you appreciate my dilemma? LOL.

Everyone seems to have such different opinions on how a blog theme should look, it’s no wonder that I’m unable to make a decision and stick with it. In my mind, my theme is sleek, sophisticated, corporate looking but also inviting and easy to navigate around. I’ve shown more than 20 themes to my kids, and in the end they said ¨just pick one already!¨ No hope of any constructive help from their direction that’s for sure, I’ve used up all the time that they begrudgingly allowed me. I tried the same tactic with my husband, and he became bored even quicker than the kids. In the end he just kept saying ¨no, don’t like it¨. Charming!

So, back to square one it is then….changing my theme 15 times a day until I’m happy with the result!

Stay happy!

Julie.

Wow! Things are moving along now and my initial excitement still hasn’t faltered.

Our 2nd webinar with Mark covered the need to have our own domain name and how to get one. He recommended using namecheap, so that’s who I chose and the process was straightforward (thankfully).

Then Mark went through the process of setting up hosting for our domain and recommended Hostgator. There were a couple of surprises at the end of the webinar during Q&A, and one of them was that he was offering a year of free hosting to any pupil that was interested! Hell yes! Every penny counts when you aren’t earning yet. That sure was a lovely surprise…..thank you Mark.

Then Mark went through the process of setting up a blog with cPanel. I had to laugh after he’d gone through the whole process and then declared  ¨That’s it! So simple, so simple ¨ as by this point I was wondering if anything would be simple ever again! He then said that as an extra bonus, he would install our blog free of charge if we wanted. Cue Julie jumping for joy and thanking her lucky stars. Ooh, yes please Mark.

I´m sure you’re wondering why Mark emailed me to ask ¨What the hell are you trying to do?¨. Long story short, I was itching to get going on my about me page and my first blog post (remember Mark kindly offered to install it), well, there was a technical difficulty with the video of our webinar that clever Mark was sorting out, so I emailed him and said that I would sort my own blog out as he was busy, and on occasion I can be a touch impatient (only on occasion you understand, not impatient as a rule!). Such bravado on my part…..I completely screwed up whatever it was that I was trying to do(even I don’t KNOW what I was trying to do), and emailed Mark rambling incoherently which prompted him to ask the question above, and I was reprimanded (rightly so) which led to me apologising and Mark obviously fixing my cock-up. The moral of this story is……If you’re a newbie, it’s imperative that you get yourself a coach! Preferably one like Mark, who has a sense of humour and so willing to help. If I had stuck to what I was being told to do, it wouldn’t have happened. But, I’m back on track again, and plan to STAY on track. Watch this space……….

Be happy!

Julie.

Hi everyone!

Well, we’ve had our first webinar with Mark Terrell and it’s all systems go! I was really pumped-up and raring to go, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Mark hit the nail on the head when he said that the number one problem with newbies is information overload……do you feel like that? I know I’ve felt that way for the last 8 months, and I also know that it’s nothing to feel ashamed of. Even the most coveted gurus have felt it too. So don’t despair if you’re suffering with it too!

The most important initial step is to take action and make a start. Mark stressed the importance of starting with the basics and growing from there. I suppose it’s plainly obvious that this is the correct route to take in building a solid, sustainable business from the ground up (another dig at myself for wasting my precious time for 8 months!Lol). This will not be a ¨Get rich quick¨ scheme, nor will it be a quick fix. I now fully understand that there needs to be fundamental foundations in order to grow your online business.

MINDSET

Here are a few points that Mark discussed regarding mindset:

Think about what you want and how to achieve it.

Take action!

The need to be organised and focused (never a truer word spoken!)

Do a task list and do all the important tasks first.

Write a diary and look back and see what’s worked and what hasn’t worked.

The need to create a blog – good way to document how you are making money online.

Our homework for the week was to write a list of 100 things that we want, or want to do before we die and email a copy to Mark. How thought provoking do you think that was? Lol.

So, all in all, a great webinar. Read my next post to discover why Mark emailed me to ask ¨ what the hell are you trying to do?¨

Keep learning…..but have fun doing it!

Julie.

I believe so yes. But It certainly isn’t as easy as the vast majority of Internet Marketing ¨Gurus¨ would have us believe! I have spent the last 8 months buying different Internet Marketing products, with some of them claiming that I’ll be earning thousands of dollars within 30 days! Yeah right. Needless to say, that certainly didn’t happen. Although, to be fair I didn’t exactly take any action with the products that I purchased. After downloading them and reading what was expected of me……I deemed it too difficult, and simply moved on to the next shiny, sexy looking product!

I make no secret of the fact that I have zero technical skills – no kidding, I can send emails and surf the net but, there ends my ¨expertise¨. Usually when you buy Internet Marketing products, there is the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of using a computer, when in fact there are a LOT of people out there that aren’t only ¨newbies¨ when it comes to Internet Marketing, they are ¨newbies¨ when it comes to basic computer skills too!

Change of mindset

I suddenly realised that I needed to change my way of thinking. Instead of thinking to myself  ¨ I can’t do this ¨, I now think to myself  ¨ HOW can I do this? ¨ .  There are always obstacles in the way but, you need to find a way around them. To be perfectly honest, just changing my mindset has allowed me to think more clearly.

Do you know the easiest, quickest way to start earning money online?

The answer is: Get a coach or mentor! Logically it makes so much sense to find someone who is already making money online, and let them guide/help you with achieving your goals. Duh! I can’t believe I wasted so much time chasing a rainbow, where there isn’t a pot of gold at the end of it!

On that note, let me introduce you to Mark Terrell, my newbie coach for at least the next 12 weeks. Below is a summary of what our elite group of 10 on the course hope to achieve by the end of the 12 weeks…..

1. Obtain web hosting and a domain name.

2. Obtain autoresponder service,  like aweber or GetResponse.

3. Create our first blog……to let the world know about us!

4. Create a squeeze page.

5. Drive traffic to the squeeze page to build a list.

6. Develop a relationship with the subscribers on our list.

7. Create products that exactly meet the needs of our subscribers.

8. Create a sales funnel.

9. Develop a relationship with our customers.

10. Fully automate the whole process from start to finish.

11. Maximise profits with higher end ticket products.

12. Taking it to the next level by getting and using affiliates.

This coaching class will walk us through the entire process, step by step.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride with me! I promise to give a true account of my journey, through my blog.

Kind regards,

Julie Priddle.