I’ve always been a workaholic and never ever thought I would see the day when I would want to leave the NHS and nursing, but to be honest I think my heart went out of my job when my sister died so young 18 months ago, she was only 50 years old and the shock of her passing though it has faded slightly will never leave me, (she was so young darn it), The shock gave me a whole new perspective on life and what my priorities are.

So even though I’ve not been posting on the blog (naughty me) or sending out emails to my list I’ve started working behind the scenes rebuilding my internet business.

My ghost writing seems to be going from strength to strength I was really touched when I posted my WSO on the warrior forum that so many people took me up on my offer to write for them,

I have someone building my general plr site up (don’t have enough time to do it myself at the moment), plus I’m hoping to get started on my health related plr site very shortly. Life online is for me  becoming interesting again.

In my past life as a really busy successful Internet Marketer, I outsourced most of what I needed doing such as keyword research etc to others.

I was a big believer in working to your own strengths (And I still am to a certain degree), but what I’m finding nowadays is that because I’m determined to do much of my online stuff by myself, I’m struggling with some of the very basic stuff.

Keyword research is one of those boring pesky jobs that I outsourced when I was running my membership sites, I’d run a few ideas past some of my team, and they would do most of the research for me. Between us we would decide on the subjects we wanted to use for the following months. I then had a member of the team fire up the word tracker account and dig for our keywords etc. I didn’t contribute that much except for the original ideas for subjects to use.

Keyword research was very important then, but even just a couple of years later its become a lot more intensive, the keywords for your niche are even more important now to ensure your websites get some decent rankings because there is so much competition out there.

I actually bought the software nearly a year ago when it first came out, but (to my shame), I only started to use it about a month ago.

I’m not sure why I left it so long, probably because I thought there would be a huge learning curve, (and remember I have the attention span of a gnat). But to my huge surprise and delight I’ve found it pretty simple to use. I’ve been gung hoing my way through a number of niches I’ve thought would be useful to use as affiliate sites, and the way this software slices through the work is unbelievable.

Market Samurai definitely gets a thumbs up from me, it’s an excellent buy

I’m seriously considering retiring from my offline job in the NHS in 2 years time (when I’m 55), and though I’ll leave with a “reasonable” package, the fact I’m taking early retirement obviously means it won’t be as good as it would be if I was going at 60.

With this in mind I’ve decided to really concentrate on my online career and I’ve decided to start with the basics such as learning SEO, keyword research etc. I obviously have a working knowledge of stuff like this but when I had my membership sites it was always easier to outsource to other people. Sometimes I wonder if its always a good thing to outsource your work, things change so fast on the Internet that its very easy to lose track of changes etc.

Anyway I’m going to be reviewing a lot of tools etc and I’ll be posting my reviews here on Kimspirations, so watch this space!

It really irritates me when I can’t do something straight away. For instance I decided to upgrade from Front Page as a web editor the other day, and move over to Web 4 Expressions which is supposed to be Front page’s love child.

Yeah right, it has as much in common with FP as I do with the Chinese chappy who lives down our road. (Nothing about it remotely the same). I’ve bought a dummy book, but somehow I don’t think this dummy is going to get very far with it.

Why do folks have to mend something that wasn’t even broken in the first place.

If you are making a substantial amount on the Internet have you ever thought about sharing some of your sucess, it’s good karma and sponsoring someone or giving someone a leg up can make you (and them) feel pretty motivated.

And who know’s, that person might just be the person you pass on his way up as you’re on your way down

Cheers
Kim

Don’t get me wrong, every time I’ve launched a product and I’ve involved affiliates, then yes of course I provide emails for them to use, (You have to make everything as easy as possible for affiliates), but I ALWAYS ask them to use prewritten info with caution, i.e yes its fine to use them as a baseline. But for heavens sake use your noddle and put your own unique spin on them. (It’s not exactly rocket science).

There are some very well known people out there using unedited prewritten emails to blast out to their lists and I just can’t fathom out why they do it, is it lack of time, boredom or just can’t be bothered to put a bit of work into it syndrome, I dunno, I guess you can just pick your favorite answer.

Here’s a tip from someone who’s been doing this for quite a long time.

By all means use a prewritten email to send out an offer as an affiliate to your list, but don’t be an idiot, stamp your own personality onto the email and please change the subject line, because if you don’t then don’t wonder why you’ll end up losing a large portion of a list you probably spent a lot of time nurturing

Kim

Try using FreeLinkCloaker it’s an excellent way of not only cloaking your affiliate links but also of monitoring your hits.

Did I mention it’s free

Kim

Besides the offline job which sods law decreed is getting quite busy now I’m back online I’ve been working on a new membership site with my very good pal (and yes he is a good mate of mine), Martin Avis.

Yup I’ve decided to go back to doing what I know best about and that’s membership sites, setting a membership up with Martin, well that’s truly the icing on the cake. This last few weeks has been good for me as I’ve found I now have someone to answer to.

We’re not going to be launching until Autumn.  Summer is normally a dismal time to be starting new stuff, and besides we want to ensure we get it just right.

Sooo, watch this space for upcoming announcements and some extremely good early bird offers

Kim

Got lots to tell you, look out for Sunday’s edition where I’m going to show you how I’ve built a shopping blog using completely free plugins etc. I will of course be pointing you to where you can download them all. (Who said you can’t get anything much for free on the Internet now)

Speak soon
Kim

It’s also taken me a while to get my fitness levels back up to strength after my op back in December and to be honest I haven’t been online as much as perhaps I should have been. Thank goodness websites run themselves for much of the time.

We’ve also been having the house where my mother lived completely renovated ready for new tenants to move in. (I’m absolutely sick of chewing cement and brick dust at the moment).

We’re nearly there with the house and despite spending an absolute fortune on having it renovated it’s really starting to come together.  My mum would love the changes we’ve made to her house, and I know she’d be tickled pink at the idea that a family with 2 little girls is going to be moving in to her old beloved home. (She loved children).

It’s going to be strange seeing someone else living there, but in a weird way I’m also looking forward to seeing the place come back to life…

It’s a holiday here in the UK today. True to UK tradition the weather is absolutely terrible. We’ve had a variation on wind, rain and hail so far today (Mid afternoon as I write). Just waiting for the snow to make an appearance and we’ve probably had every variation there is…

We took our caravan out of storage in March, dusted it off and have already had a couple of very enjoyable trips. We were at the seaside the other week for several days, and we were very lucky with the weather. It was warm enough that the grand kids were able to happily play on the beach making sandcastles etc for a couple of the days.

It suddenly occurred to me whilst watching them play that despite all of the technology our children have at their fingertips, it’s still those very simple pleasures such as playing on the beach that still mean so much to them. Both Bobby and I got a lot of pleasure out of watching our 6 and 4 year old grandkids make sandcastles instead of being sat at their computers and game consoles.

Talking about computers, I’ve just changed over to a newer more updated model. I actually bought it in January, but it’s taken me this long to start using it properly. Took me six months to adapt to my last new computer so I’m doing well getting it up and running so soon…

It runs Windows 7 which I’m finding is OK, but it’s irritating that it won’t run some of my old software, scripts etc. I used Windows Mail on the old computer which was preloaded. It was near enough to outlook express which I used previously to keep me happy enough, but Windows 7 doesn’t come with it pre installed unfortunately.

I’ve downloaded it from the Microsoft site but it’s not the same as the one I’m used to and I don’t like it. If anyone can recommend a decent email client I’d be very grateful.

My copy of Office Professional wouldn’t install either, so I’ve also lost Front Page (one of my editors of choice). I’m working on Open Office at the moment (giving it a try), and also downloaded a trial version of Expressions (the new name for Front Page). It’s not the same layout as FP so I’m a tad fed up with everything at the moment. I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and invest in a newer more updated version of Microsoft Office. I really hate change; I’m
such a dinosaur…

I’m one of those people who tend to obsessively collect domain names just because they sound good. I rarely do anything with most of them and I had about 170 of the little blighters up until a few months ago when I decided to have a good clear out.

I gave about 20 of them away, and I’ve let about a dozen not so good ones go when they needed renewing So I’m left with about 90 that I’m very loath to just give up. They are ageing nicely, and some are very good names indeed.

With that in mind, I’ve been seriously thinking about building a few blog sites using these domain names then flipping (selling) them, so with that in mind I’ve been collecting all sorts of info on how to go about the art of “Flipping”

One very interesting site I’ve come across is from a chap I know very well called Tony Newton who has been working hard to create just the type of stuff I was looking for.

I’ve known Tony for a while, he builds pretty awesome blog templates, and he’s helped me out on a number of occasions with some of my blog designs so when he sent out details about his new blog flipping membership site I asked him if I could review it for my subscribers. (He was kind enough to oblige).

Unfortunately I’ve been very tardy sending out my review, (My apologies Tony), but I’m happy to set the record straight now.

Working with another Internet stalwart (Tony Shepherd), Tony has put together exactly what I was looking for in my search to build really good blog sites I could sell on to other people thus utilising those pesky domain names that I own.

Blogflipz does exactly what it says on the box, it’s an over the shoulder way of learning how to build blog sites that will sell on for a decent profit. I was quite excited when I logged in to check it out.  BLOGFLIPZ

I’m not going to say too much more about Blogflipz I’ll let you read about it for yourself, but it’s something I can highly recommend if you are interested in flipping some of your sites.

Click here for BLOGFLIPZ

BTW, don’t forget to check on the freebie page over at www.kimspirations.info I’ll be adding even more to it over the next few days.

Also in the next edition of Kimspirations I’m going to show you how you can set up a word press site complete with shopping cart etc completely free just like this one www.warrior-offers.com

I’ll also try not to be as tardy with the next edition

Till next time
Kim