This feels weird. Logging into my wordpress blog and writing a  post for the first time in over four months…four months!! It’s about half past midnight here in the UK and I’m sat here typing away, wondering where the time has gone. Four months may have been and gone but I’m still here.

I was doing a bit of blog-hopping earlier and one Masterclass student was concerned that they were eight weeks behind…..I’m about twenty weeks! Therefore, I think it’s time I got my backside in gear and back to work. Even though I haven’t posted for a while or started my ebook, I have still been reading the PDFs and watching the videos every week. Of course, reading and watching are no good without doing, and I intend to work as hard as I can to make this course successful. I owe it to myself.

I’m going to sign off now and do a bit more blog-hopping. Some of the other Masterclass blogs are amazing – great content, graphics, ideas etc. Each one tells a story of a desire to be successful online.

Till next time,

Chris.

Tonight I finally ordered some graphics for my blog courtesy of GFX-1 . This was the last task to complete week 3 of John Thornhill’s Masterclass program. Tomorrow I will receive week 8 by email, so I’m about 4 weeks behind. I’m not worried by this, as weeks 4 and 5 are concerned with working on this blog and hopefully making it look a bit more professional and week 7 is mostly listening to an audio transcript of a webinar, which I attended – my first one too. Very interesting. In week 6 I need to sign up with Aweber – an autoresponder service, to start my list building campaign. I’ll soon catch up in a couple of days when my graphics arrive.

Till next time,

Chris.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, on 2nd March I went to New York City for six nights. What an experience! If you’ve never been to NYC, I highly recommend paying it a visit. It was my third visit there and my second visit going alone.

The weather before I went was shocking. Snow drifts, blizzards, storms etc and I was worried that my holiday was going to be a bit of a wash out. When I landed at Newark airport in New Jersey and saw the snow on the ground and a HUGE pile of snow at the end of the runway, I resigned myself to a pretty wet six days ahead of me.

I got a taxi from the airport to the Bed and Breakfast where I was staying. The B&B was in Jersey City, NJ. The taxi driver didn’t have a clue where the street was. Eventually, one hour and $50 later, I arrived there.

My first full day there was a wet one. There was a bit of drizzle and it was freezing cold. I still managed to have a browse around Manhattan and took some photos.

As the days went on, the weather got better. The weekend was wonderful. The sun shone and everybody seemed to be happy and full of life in the hustle and bustle of the city streets.

During my short stay I met some great people, mostly in the bars and pubs. My favourite one was The Mad Hatter Saloon on 26th and 3rd Ave. What a pub! It is a meeting place for Manchester City fans, and me, coming from near Manchester and being a bit of a City fan, had to go there.

I had some photos taken in the bar by the lovely Diana, who also welcomed me when I arrived in the pub. Smashing girl, gorgeous green eyes too.

Me in the Mad Hatter Saloon

After six nights, many beers and a lifetime of memories it was time to come back home. Back to reality. Back to work!!!

Can’t wait for my next trip.

Till next time,

Chris.

It’s been over three weeks since I posted to my blog. What a rollercoaster those three weeks have been too. February wasn’t a good month for me at all. My Grandmother who was 100 years old sadly died on the 20th – just hours after my previous post on this blog. I’m going to miss her….even though she was 100, she still had the mind and wit of somebody half her age and a great sense of humour too. So, with sorting out funeral arrangements and tying up other loose ends which are inevitable when somebody dies, I haven’t really been in a “blog writing” mood.

On top of that, on 2nd March, I flew to New York – my favourite city in the world- for six nights. What a fantastic time I had…but that’s another blog post in itself.

Hopefully now things have settled down, I can devote a bit more time to my blog and get back on track. The reason I started this blog is because I signed up for John Thornhills Internet Marketing Masterclass. John wants us to keep a blog for a couple of reasons. The first is to create an online presence, and the second reason is it gets the student writing original content. Let’s face it, when was the last time you wrote a 200 word essay/post? Probably not since school…I know I hadn’t really.

As well as this blog, I have a couple of others too. I’ve neglected those as well. I haven’t posted on either of them for over a year. Maybe this course will give me the kick I need to update those too. One of them is a Guitar Lessons Blog ,which basically links to my youtube page and the other one is my Betfair Trading Blog, which showed screenshots of when I traded on the football on Betfair.

You can check them out if you like

Till next time,

Chris Owen.

When did you last back up your computer files? Seriously, when did you? Think about it. If you switched your computer off tonight and in the morning..Shock …Horror..it didn’t boot up or you had a catastrophic hard disc failure – and it does happen- what would you do?

Just take a moment to think about all the files you have solely on your computer. Photos, videos, downloaded files, music, iTunes files, etc. Some of them will be irreplaceable. You can always download that album/music track/software again, but what about those wedding photos?, Or those pictures of your newborn baby? What about that picture of a relative who, sadly, is no longer with us? What then?

Tonight I had a scare. Nothing life threatening but nevertheless, a scare for me. I have a laptop computer which has Vista installed on it. With Vista, you don’t get a recovery disc with it, you have to make your own. I’ve had my laptop for nearly 2 years. You’re supposed to make recovery discs as soon as possible so that, in the unfortunate event of any serious problem, you can restore your computer back to it’s factory settings.

I hadn’t done this….until tonight.

I turned on my laptop as usual. I waited for the login screen…and waited…and waited….and…………………………nothing happened!

After about 10 minutes, I manually switched it off. I waited about 30 seconds and switched back on again. I was then informed that my laptop hadn’t started up properly last time and the startup repair program started. I don’t know about you but the word “repair” got me worried. What was wrong with my laptop? Would it boot up correctly next time?

After about 7 or 8 minutes, it restarted and thankfully, rebooted as normal. PHEW!!!

Needless to say, I made my set of recovery discs pretty soon after. I needed 3 blank DVDs and it took about an hour and a half to complete. Time well spent if you ask me.

I still need to back up my photos, videos etc, but this was a major kick up the “you-know-what” for me!

Blank media – CDs, DVDs, USB flash drives/ memory sticks are so cheap today it’s unbelievable. You can buy a spindle of 50 DVDs for around £7.00 here in the UK. A wise investment.

So, if you’re sat reading this and you haven’t backed up your computer for a while…do it ….now. Tomorrow might be too late. It only takes a few minutes. If you’re running Vista and you haven’t made your recovery discs, make them now.  Go to “Start – All Programs – Recovery Manager – Recovery Disc Creation”.

I went to the dentist today for my 6 monthly check up. After the dentist examined, scaled and polished my teeth it was time for the most painful part of my visit….PAYING! Ten minutes and 16 quid later I was ready to go.

My dental appointment got me thinking. I wondered if there were any products online related to teeth, dentistry, gum disease etc. I had a quick look on Clickbank and, you’ve guessed it..there were.

Want whiter teeth? there’s an ebook for that here.

Suffer from teeth grinding (bruxism)? You may find the solution here.

Cure toothache? Even that’s covered here.

and that’s only from the first page. As you can probably see, the possibilities are endless. I haven’t even searched for other related subjects such as “bad breath” etc.

The Internet Marketing course I’m on will result in me having my own product in the Clickbank Marketplace in 36 weeks. It’s a very intensive course. One of my main worries was “What am I going to write an ebook about?” I now realise that there are potential ebook subjects in the most mundane, everyday occurences…like going to the dentist.

It wasn’t just a case of my mouth being open wide, but my mind too.

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog. First of all, let me introduce myself. My name, if you haven’t already guessed is Chris Owen. I’m 40 years old and live in the North West of England, about 8 miles north of Manchester.

I work in a warehouse, driving a fork lift truck. I’ve been with the company for nearly 10 years but would like to make a living by selling information products online. To help me achieve this goal, I have joined John Thornhill’s Masterclass Program. This is a 36 week program which will hopefully turn me from internet surfer to internet marketer.

John Thornhill is one of the most respected internet marketers around. You can check out his blog here.

When I am not working, I like to relax by playing the guitar. I started playing when I was only 7 years old and have enjoyed playing ever since. People say I’m quite good…especially my family .  I like to play all kinds of music, rock, blues, jazz, country, classical, anything really as long as it sounds good to me. You can judge for yourself how well I play by going to my YouTube channel, where there are a few videos of me playing – mostly instructional videos. I also started a guitar lessons blog which was linked to my YouTube channel but I haven’t posted on it for over a year.

I like to travel too. My favourite holiday destination is definately New York. I’ve been there twice and I’m going back again in March 2010. You can also see some of my New York videos on my YouTube channel.

Another one of my hobbies is trading on Betfair. This is basically backing and laying the same horse / football team etc to hopefully guarantee a profit no matter what the outcome of the race / game. It sounds more complicated than it actually is. I started (yet another!) blog on this subject but, like my guitar lessons blog, haven’t posted for nearly a year. You can check it out here.

Well then, that’s a bit about me. I’m sure you’ll get to know a little more about me as I post to this blog. Please feel free to comment on my posts, especially if you are a fellow student of John Thornhills. We can hopefully help each other to succeed online.