Frank Levy’s Blog

I received an email from John Thornhill on 19^th August to let me know that the (brilliant) eBook website had been updated with a load more Themes, some new eBooks and some other features. “No problemo,” I said to myself, “I’ll have this sorted in a few minutes.” After all it’s essentially the same process I had to use when I uploaded stuff to this domain when I was setting up this blog at the start.

I logged in to the PlanetSMS members area, downloaded the upgrade zip file, Unzipped it and opened my free copy of Filezilla. Just to be on the safe side I checked the “How to Set Up Your Website” video. Now here’s the thing, the video shows John’s Filezilla uploading the new site to a new domain which of course has no files in it.

Well the safeside wasn’t good enough! I did exactly the same thing and nothing happened, then I did something else which I can’t recall properly…anyway the net result was about an eighth of my site was left in the default theme (not the one I use), the Admin page was a 404 error message and all I could do was to log in to the client area and open a support ticket and yell for help!

Paula Brett answers saying “It looks as though you haven’t uploaded everything as there are bits missing! Make sure that every page is uploaded and overwrites to the old site.” I’m thinking, “Yaha, that’s what I was trying to do!”  D9 Hosting offer a script update service at $12.95 but I want to be able to do this stuff for myself.

So I think, “Well ok, I’ve messed it up. So I’ll go back to the PlanetSMS members area download the entire new version of the website and then upload it to my domain. All the new files will overwrite the old ones and then I’ll have to go in to Admin and redo all my settings etc. A pain, but at least I’ll have done it myself.”

Now to download the site takes about 20mins I guess. Uploading it to the domain takes quite a bit longer, around an hour probably. When it’s done I end up with exactly the same result! There can be only one explanation I must be uploading to the wrong place. To cut a long story shortish, I add all this to the support ticket and Dan Thompson comes back with: Hi Frank, I’ve now fixed your site, you had uploaded all the files, but not to the public_html directory of your web space.

Unfortunately it looks like you have overwritten your original admin folder that contained your site details (name, adsense number etc.) (that’ll be the bit that I did that I couldn’t recall properly!) and our daily backup was taken after you made the change so it looks like you’ll have to enter those settings again.

I double check that updates are done in the same way? Yes, when you do the update you should upload files to the public_html folder, overwriting the old files. (But not the /admin/settings folder!) If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to get in touch with us. Kind Regards, Dan Thompson. Bless him (and Paula) they are soooo patient. Thank Goodness!

Anyway now I know exactly what to do when I need to update to V1.4 when it comes out so I have learned by the mistake. 1) Learn how to backup your site! This can be done via the cPanel so I’ll be checking that out. D9 do a daily backup but you read what Dan said earlier about that. 2) Upload files to the public_html folder, overwriting the old files. (But not the /admin/settings folder!)

As you know, normally if you replace a folder with a new one of the same name the old one and all its contents are lost but not in this case. If you upload to the public_html folder it’ll all take care of itself. There is an Admin folder in the update file but it doesn’t contain a settings folder so the original settings folder will remain intact. Automatically appearing inside the new one! Is that right? Really….?

I even checked again via the reopened support ticket (I can just imagine it - oh no! It’s that clown Frank Levy again) and here are Paula Brett’s soothing words. “If the new admin folder doesn’t contain a settings folder then this means that the old settings folder will remain intact and functioning.” There you go! You heard it straight from…erm…Paula’s desk!

08/08/08 is an interesting date for my family. It’s my daughter Sarah’s 21st birthday. Being born in August meant that she was one of the youngest in her year group throughout her school years. She invited her three closest girl friends who have all already celebrated their 21st birthdays and their boy friends (fiancée in one case) to a meal at local restaurant in Heswall on the Wirral where we live

A friend of mine hired a stretch limo to take them across to Liverpool afterward and drop them off wherever they wanted to go – clubbing/drinking etc. I decided as a bit of fun, to do “the picture on a cake thing” which is usually done for little kids. I found a lovely picture of her when she was 1yr old cropped it and emailed it to eatyourphoto.co.uk who sent me the picture printed on a very thin icing sheet by return post.

I was offered the bottom layer of a wedding cake by a local wedding cake specialist for £50 (the cake had been cancelled as the bride had to go into hospital at short notice). I then discovered that ASDA supermarkets offer “picture on a cake” as an all in one service. You go in with a photographic print which they scan and print on rice-paper and stick onto the cake of your choice in the store. It just shows the importance of researching a project thoroughly before you begin.

£50 may be a bargain for the bottom layer of a 3 tier wedding cake but a large dry-iced ASDA sponge cake (about £15) was more like what I required. Then I had to buy a tube of pink decorating icing so I could write her name on it and of course a bunch of fancy candles and some plastic numbers for the 21.

It took ages to get the icing sheet picture off the backing paper by heating up a baking sheet to 180 degrees centigrade in the oven, placing paper on it and then the picture on top of the paper as per the enclosed instructions. This gently drives off the moisture (which is what makes it stick) and then it can be removed from the backing sheet. I had to heat it this way twice to get it off (it was a very humid day). Then I slightly wet the top of the cake’s icing and put the icing sheet picture down on it. Quite nerve-wracking because the icing sticks to the cake immediately so you have to get it on straight first time.

According to Sarah it all went very well, she and everyone else loved the cake concept but they’d all had dessert and no one wanted to cut into the lovely picture so to cut an even longer story short I’ve now got the cake back at home and as yet - no one has even taken a bite out of it!

I asked her friends to take a picture of it so when I get hold of one I’ll add it to this post!

As you would expect all the excitement, celebrations and playing around with cakes has ended up playing havoc with my coursework this week. I’m now well behind and will have to spend next week playing catchup.

I have been receiving several emails a week that I opted-in to from a website that keeps track of UK fuel prices for a few months now (petrolprices.com). The idea is that they send me a list of the 5 cheapest petrol stations in a five mile radius of where I live. This service has turned out to be very useful especially in the last month when prices were constantly going up although their info tended to be 24 hours behind the forecourts.

In normal circumstances this is not a problem but in the fast moving scenario we had recently it did cause me to be disappointed a few times when I arrived at a service station only to find that their price had gone up again and they were no longer the cheapest that week.

Fueled by my interest in such matters (no pun intended), a few weeks ago I came across a website selling plans that enable ordinary car owners to convert their cars to run on a mixture of water and petrol (gasoline) to save over 40% on fuel costs. This do-it-yourself (100% reversible) conversion guide claims to offer step by step instructions on how to convert your car for under $150 (approx. £75). The result will be a water-burning hybrid car that runs on water supplemental to the gasoline. It also works on diesel powered vehicles but has not yet been tested on hybrids.

The conversion guide shows how to use electricity from your car’s battery to separate water into a gas called HHO (2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen). HHO is also known as Brown’s Gas or Hydroxy which burns smoothly and provides significant energy – while the end product is just H2O!

Their claim is: “Water can be used to fuel a car when used as a supplement to gasoline. In fact, very little water is needed! only one quart (about 1 litre) of water provides over 1800 gallons of HHO gas which can literally last for months and significantly increase your vehicle’s fuel efficiency (at least 40%), improve emissions quality, and save you money.”  

Selling for only $49 (approx. £25) the 90plus page fully illustrated conversion-kit manual/guide is claimed to be: “Easy enough for a novice to follow and the technology is being used by thousands of satisfied customers. All of the raw materials cost less than $60 (approx. £30) and are easy to find at your local hardware and auto-parts stores.”

Apparently thousands of cars have been safely converted without any issues or incidents (mainly in the US I expect). I would love to hear from anyone who has done this or a similar conversion, especially here in the UK or who knows someone who has. I’m dying to hear what their results are. Is this for real?

If you know anything about Wordpress blogs then you’ll be able to see that this blog is no longer the standard default Wordpress theme. Part of this week’s work was to ad a new theme so that it looks more attractive but of course as you can see there are adsense ads being displayed. If you have looked at www.chelmstone.com my website you’ll have noticed adsense ads there too. Obviously for this to happen I must have an adsense publisher code.

Last week however, others on this course may not have had an adsense publisher code. Well they have now. The theme(s) that we have used contain all the necessary coding needed to display adsense ads that after about a day or so will be relevant to the content of the blog. A very important lesson to learn for anyone who has a site with adsense ads is that one should never ever be tempted to click on one’s own ads and never ask other people  to click on them either.

Be assured that Google have technology in place that will track every single click. Google will catch you and the adsense account will be banned. I did say in a previous blog that I would not reveal what I learn on this course out of respect for John and other students past, present and future. The things I’m mentioning here though are self evident. Obviously if you are reading this you can see the adsense ads I’ve  already mentioned.

The other thing that stands out is the Signup Box at the top of the main page. There is quite literally more to this than meets the eye and if you wish to know more you would need to be on the course. If you think about it though, you’ll realize that a signup box implies that there is, or will be a list of subscribers which in turn implies an autoresponder. Ok that’s all the clues for today!     

Hi, at the risk that you may have seen these already, here are some links to YouTube videos that I find amusing: Afro Ninja2 ; Star Wars Kid ; Charlie Bit Me ; Sneezing Panda ; Harry Discusses Gravity

Ok, having re-read yesterday’s blog and looking at the coursework for this week I can honestly say that I’m totally out of the indecisive misery I was describing there and (I know it sounds like a cliché) but I’m genuinely getting really excited! John Thornhill’s Coaching Program is everything I had hoped and expected it would be and as we go into the third week I’m realizing that it’s highly likely to be a huge amount more.

That’s because whilst I knew enough to recognize that I needed help - the old adage that goes, “The more you learn the more you begin to realize how much there is that you don’t know” comes into play!

Now, as far as this blog is concerned I think I’ve reached the point where I have to make a decision. I’ve decided that I can only talk in general terms about the course. I’m not in a position where I can reveal any detail about what I’m learning on the course because that would be totally unfair to John and others who have paid (or will pay in the future) to go on the course. 

From now on I will have to content myself with updates that give a flavour of the progress I’m making without giving away details of the valuable techniques that I’m learning. It won’t be easy because sometimes even the reason why we’re learning some particular technique will have to be withheld and once that happens there’s probably little point even mentioning it! I hope you can see what I mean. Having said all that, I’ll try and give a constructive impression of how things are going.

It probably won’t be every day but more likely every second day. On a different tack now, I’m going to start another blog category called “Humour” and include links to You Tube videos that I like and other stuff that I come across and that  people send me occasionally. That’s it for today I’m off to do some more coursework….

A few weeks ago I had my domain and website set up - except for the auto-responder section. (An example of auto-responder email is the ‘receipt of payment confirmation’ email sent to you automatically after you make an online Credit/Debit Card purchase). A decent auto-responder service such as Aweber (the one John strongly recommends) involves a paid subscription.

Also, I’ve been an eBay member for years but only as a buyer. Being an eBay Powerseller, almost everything John does is based around selling products on eBay. You could say his eBay store is the driving force behind his business. I was trying to emulate John’s example but my point is, I’d put off setting up an eBay store to the end as this also involves a paid subscription. I needed to do things in the right order to save unnecessary expense but I didn’t know what the correct order was. Maybe I should be setting up my eBay store first!

Even if logical thought is your forte, because you don’t know it all when you’re trying to do it yourself, it’s so easy to end up working on non-essential time-consuming stuff and not do all of the basic short term essentials. I had reached a point where I was beginning to worry about how long it would take me to figure out setting up these tools and how much expense I would clock up/waste in the process….when “Hey Presto!” an email from my “mentor” John Thornhill arrived in my mailbox. (I think it’s fair to call him my mentor because I’m already a member/subscriber to his Mentorship Monthly Website).

John’s email was offering me participation in his 16 week Coaching Program. Boy, how lucky can you get? Especially given the timing! For me it was a complete no brainer! I was one of the first 25 to enroll (John said later it sold out in a mere 17 minutes!). The 16 week course is now at the end of the second week and this blog is the result so far. It’s so brilliant having an expert, someone who literally wrote the book to guide me and he’s on call at his special email address to answer questions and even by phone if I really get stuck.

Continuing on from yesterday’s blog I want to briefly mention two Internet Marketers, Dan Thompson and Paula Brett who set up D9 Hosting in May 2007. Having worked extensively with newcomers to Internet Marketing they soon realized that there was a huge gap in the market for a hosting company that understood the needs of Internet marketers - particularly beginners.

Speaking for myself, when John upgraded the website I was so delighted that it was released with a special offer from D9 Hosting. I opted for the 2 year hosting deal with a 10% discount and registration of a free domain name for a year. I used that free domain name to set up this blog! I saved a lot of money with that whole deal but the really great thing is how helpful Dan & Paula are. Just knowing that these folks are there gives reassurance. If there’s a problem (even if it’s not directly related to hosting) I know they are there to help. They work closely with John and recently Paula wrote a detailed guide to editing the new eBook website.

There are many Internet Marketing gurus and mentors on the net. How many of them I wonder, are instrumental in setting up a basic infrastructure like this to really help their clients through the process of getting started? Dan & Paula really are part of a team that over-delivers and under-charges. We’ve all either had experience of or heard about the kind of company that has efficient systems in place for being paid but is less than efficient when a problem arises. How lucky are we newbies with all this falling right into our laps? Tomorrow…back to where I was a few weeks ago.

When I first discovered John Thornhill it was through an ebook called The 90 Day Powerseller Challenge that he sells on eBay although now its more of a ‘Digital Product’ on DVD.

Now, just incase you don’t know, John is an eBay powerseller trading under the username PlanetSMS and earning $1000’s a week selling information products. The first thing that impressed me about John was his openness and the fact that he mentions his eBay username and everything about it in his products whereas many eBay sellers use their username to cloak their identity.

To cut the story short I decided to purchase the PlanetSMS ebook website. At the time I learned a bit of ‘techie stuff’ about installing the site and so on as it used to be a bit more technical than it is now. John has revamped the whole package to 2008 standards including an Admin control panel and this has made it simpler to manage and make instant changes. The great thing is that once you own one of John’s products the upgrades are free!

What a bargain that’s turned out to be with the new website especially if you host it with D9 Hosting who know John’s product intimately. You can check out my ebook website at www.chelmstone.com . Check this space tomorrow for more…

In my “About” description I mentioned that I have long had aspirations to become a successful internet marketer. I’ve spent time (and money) reading websites, ebooks & blogs by marketing luminaries like Jim Cockrum, Ken Evoy, Mike Filsaime, Michael Rasmussen and others - not forgetting John Thornhill of course.

Like many people (perhaps some reading this) I’ve been enthused by the sales pages for the products that started coming in via my email box. Realising that I will need some product to sell when I get “up and running” I purchased quite an inventory of Private Label Rights material. This means I can start selling stuff fairly soon right?

 Well, I soon realized I’m not as sharp as these guys when it comes to the nitty gritty of hyperlinks, cloaking links, adsense, adwords, websites, protected downloading, salespages etc. I understand the concepts and there’s a ton of stuff (to coin a phrase!) out there in the form of ebooks, video, audio and websites etc that explain in detail much of what you need to know.

I know because I own the PLR to many of them but there is so much to learn (not to mention links within the material that constantly take you off at interesting tangents!) that I decided - much as I’d like to pat my self on the back one day in the future and say that I did it myself – the truth is I was too unfocussed and confused about where to even start. It began to dawn on me that I really needed help. Someone to guide me, someone to say do this first Frank then this, don’t worry about x, y & z we’ll get to that later when we’ve laid the foundations. Read more on this tomorrow.