I love the ancient Greeks and Romans. They give us great modern words with meaning. If you love Photography, then you have an insight into the art captured in the word itself – Drawing with Light. Brilliant. A Camera (Obscura)- a vault or chamber, darkened and with a pinhole which gives a reverse image on the opposite wall. Talk about the miracles of modern miniaturisation. What about the first Camera being the size of a room and shrinking that down to the size of something portable, never mind hand-held or miniature, like the one in your laptop or cellphone.

I have been a photography enthusiast from the days I had a Box Brownie at eleven (1961). I can remember processing rolls of film into negatives and developing my own prints in the Auckland Grammar photography club darkroom as a third-former. Strictly black and white. Rescuing old negatives from boxes in the family garage and bringing those images to life, and later, when I went to Massey University (1969) with Dad’s old Minolta 35 mm to have and to hold. In those days it was always black and white photos because colour film and developing was too expensive on a student budget. I had to learn how to use the light, because I didn’t have a flash or colour. I had to learn how the different settings for shutter speed and aperture affected my results depending on the available light, movement of the subject, how close or far away the subject and the depth of field involved in my composition. And all without batteries !  Now there was an advantage ) So I became that annoying guy who snaps his mates all the time, although years later they were grateful !

After university and finally earning decent, steady money I could take advantage of technology advances with cameras, even so at first I stuck with the old Minolta, but got a little box film 35mm camera with a flash so I could be an incognito impromptu photojourno. I didn’t graduate to a honking 35mm SLR (single lens reflex) with a honking telephoto until dashing through duty-free at Sydney airport  in 1975, I bought a Yashica, and nearly missed the plane!  The big lens didn’t focus that well, but fortunately  it was stolen in a burglary a few years later (by a real burglar !). With the insurance I was able to upgrade to a tophole Minolta 7000 and later when that fell in the Avon River with me ( accidentally !) I upgraded to the new Minolta 700si (1995) still got it – well, not the same one, as you guessed it, burgled in about 2000 and bought a low km second hand 700si ( I think my insurance company got sick of replacing me). I still have this great camera, but succumbed to the convenience and economy of digital cameras in about 2004. Have had a Nikon Coolpix 200 compact (lens trouble), Canon Powershot A550 compact(problems with battery compartment lid) , and one year ago a FujiFinepix S8000fd SLR (mode selection knob just broke off last week). The compact cameras have been great for the kids and as easy family snap machines, saved heaps on prints (look at them on computer) and they are great value for money until they break. To get quality SLR digital I think you have to spend good money, have plenty of spare batteries (preferably rechargeable) and 1gb plus memory cards to hold lots of rich shots.

I hope you’re still here after my trip down memory lane. Cameras are like cars, and pop songs, they evoke nostalgia bigtime. This is my longest post so far. I want to post a few photos but can’t find the widget in Wordpress. Upcoming photo posts will be more about tips and tricks, technical and artistic, and on to the challenges of protecting your pictorial heritage. So please feel free to opt-in for updates to my blog.

ciao JJ

PS I’d love to hear your photo stories.

I am now in Week 6 of John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Masterclass of 36 weeks duration . I hope I get a diploma to hang on the wall :o)  By the end of the Masterclass, each student will have created their own Internet product and will be marketing it. Will I be an expert Internet Marketer by then? Well, I expect I’ll know a lot more than I know now. I’ve already got this blog up and running, and that’s more result than I have achieved in 3 years chasing my tail on the internet. Well I am an expert on that at least )

My own product? Trepidation! A fancy word for Fear ! The Fear Factor ! Feel the Fear and do it anyway.  To take a leaf out of John’s latest blogpost you or I should not be afraid to put a high value on the stuff we know. In the same way that we are confident when we give advice to our children, or clients in our business, or younger colleagues, we should be aware that potential customers for our knowledge are searching on the Internet for information 24/7. 

Each of us is full of pent-up Intellectual Capital. Our experience and knowledge from thousands of hours of living. To quote Henry Ford  “One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.” And guess what, if there is anything more you need to know, you’re on the internet, and you can find another expert to help you.

So go on, Call Yourself An Expert, and then call yourself An Expert

My mother played the piano, my father whistled when he was happy. When I was a lad I learnt to play the trumpet for a while – badly. I think I chose it as the lesser of two evils, the other option being the piano.  In those days you did as you were told. I must have fancied myself as a budding ‘Satchmo’ but years later I learned how Louis Armstrong got that nickname, and I was glad I wasn’t a successful trumpeter, because I might have ended with a rubber face too. Anyway after a winter of biking to music lessons in the dark, and going to a band practice where I never got much better because I didn’t do much ‘practice’ I was allowed to hang up my horn. Strike 1

My next musical phase was many years later, after graduating from University in 1973. Like most under-graduates I had managed to afford to buy a stereo turntable to play my LPs on, and had favourite artists to sing badly and drunkenly to. Some of my favourite tracks were the Guitar Anthems like ‘Stairway To heaven’ by Led Zeppelin , or ‘While my guitar gently weeps’ by George Harrison. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were the buzz. At one stage, between failed love affairs, I bought a classical guitar so I could learn to play and console myself, and perhaps attract the next lucky woman ) . This time I bought a book, practiced, got my fingertips hardened a bit, learned to strum and play a few chords, even worked on a picking style but it didn’t do anything for the fairer sex, so I dropped off again.  Strike 2  My little cousin David, now 6ft plus, used to muck about with the guitar and he went on to become an accomplished guitarist and singer, so I’ll take some credit for providing the spark ) I sold the guitar.

Fast forward to 1988. I got married without the help of any guitar. Sometime after the honeymoon, I bought another guitar (with a hard case) and this time I took some lessons from a real live teacher. But trundling over at night to a little room in a community hall, after a late night clinic, and sharing the tutor’s time with some young kids who were better at it, soon palled. And it wasn’t really in the budget to pay for private lessons, after nappies and car seats.  The hard case came in handy because I could put stuff on top. strike 3 I didn’t sell the guitar though.

Will I ever learn to play the guitar and express myself as an artist?  see verse 2.

If you haven’t heard of fractional reserve banking; if you thought that the Federal Reserve Bank is owned by the American people; if you thought that somewhere there is a money tree; if you wonder how the world got into this mess; if you wonder what is the real game plan with the bailouts; if you wonder why there always seems to be money for the wars, and if you have any doubt who is really paying for it all, then grab a coffee, sit back for 10 minutes and watch this video made in 2006.

They say the first thing an addict has to do is to admit that he/she has a problem. This is my confession, and it’s probably easier to confess ‘anonymously’ online - I have a problem with addiction to information, hence the ‘junkie’ label. I have a friend from university days who has always referred to my ‘rubbish bin brain’ , due to my ability to reference a wide range of material, which made for great conversations but didn’t necessarily put money in my pocket, and didn’t necessarily relate to my Veterinary degree and career. I am interested in lots of stuff, I am ‘passionate’ about a few things. The internet is called the Information Superhighway for a very good reason and I have been getting lost in a spaghetti junction of Internet Marketing sales pages. It seems that my drug of choice is anything to do with ‘financial independence’. My hot button gets well and truly pushed when I read about the income that successful internet marketers ‘pull down’, especially when it’s some young gun without a lot of life under their belt. I get so green I see red, and I redouble my search for the internet gold.

If you’re any age and have a family and a mortgage, have put in consistent daily work for many years, then you know how the promise of  making consistent money off the internet is so attractive, especially when it can be so flexible and passive. With the publishing of this blog I hope I am on a stepping stone of the path to Rehab, where internet marketing success will give back money and time, and hopefully help others to find a path.

Leave your comments in the rehab-story collection box at the door )

This post is heavily ‘keyworded’ with cliches, so forgive me if I ‘put my foot in it’ or get a bit ‘heavy-handed’ :o). It’s about the Internet Marketing industry and the problem for ‘newbies’ in getting from being a nett consumer to a nett producer, and all points in between. I’m not a business newbie, and neither am I an internet newbie, but I am still looking to make my first dollar online. I know a little about a lot of things, but I have been struggling to find  the path to Eldorado, the city of gold,  where the Internet Gurus live. Each time I buy another ’secret map’ and find myself up against a maze of further obstacles, I find another Guru Guide who sympathizes with my plight, and shows me another ’secret map’.

As Jim Cockrum puts it so nicely, the temptation we all face as Internet Marketing Prospectors is to go for ‘Shiny Objects’, that turn out to be Fools Gold. The Internet is like a Goldrush, and back in the day those who did best were the ones who sold stuff to the prospectors. There are two kinds of Gold-diggers ). I’m looking for someone who will not only sell me the shovel but will also show me where to dig and what to look for, a mentor.

I got into John Thornhill’s Marketing Masterclass  four weeks ago, and so far I think I’m digging in the right places – that’s how I got this blog up and running. I’ve spent thousands, to no avail, on internet products prior to this, including attending three Internet Conferences, two of them in Australia ( I am a New Zealander – as you’ll see on my Tshirt ) That also says something about my need to focus, as I have been a bit of a magpie, with those ‘Shiny Objects’. So I need a proven path to follow, a Yellow Brick Road, to stay motivated and to do the work knowing that I’m not wasting priceless precious life-time.

I invite you to keep an eye on my progress as I feel quietly confident that John’s reputation as an honest ‘Storekeeper’ is well founded, and that I can ’strike gold’, and help out other ‘Prospectors’ in turn.

ciao jj

PS  if you’re interested to check out John Thornhill as a goldfield guide, he has a monthly mentorship programme. Check it out here

Wake-up John, you’ve been dreaming !! This is about the part I played in making Ewen Chia’s New Book an Amazon Bestseller -  now that’s Ewen’s Dream.  Here’s how it went down – a week or so back I began to get promo emails from various affiliate marketers about Ewen’s book ( see my Title ) and a huge bonus ‘valued at’ $1894 USD, called The Internet Millionaire System. Have you noticed that lately the big launches have even juicier than usual bonus packages, and then on top of that the Affiliates also add their own bonuses – so it’s worth ’shopping around’ the various offers. This time there didn’t seem to be extra bonuses from the affiliates – maybe because they only stand to make 15% on a $12.89 Amazon book for their referral – I thought. All you had to do was order the book from Amazon, supply the receipt details, and straight through to the Big Bonus – but as always there is an OTO upsell (and we would be disappointed if there wasn’t, after all that’s marketing 101). This time it’s a clever timeclocked offer to buy resale and PLR rights to the programme. Do you really believe that only the first 100 will get the primo bite at the apple, when you know that probably thousands are looking at the offer? Well, I did, so hypnotic is the  skill of Ewen Chia’s copy. So, now I see why the affiliates could be making more commissions than I first thought. Now by this time Ewen’s clickbank account must be smoking, but then I couldn’t get to the download page. I got a very prompt and apologetic email back from Ewen. I was impressed. I have every confidence that I’ll get my Bonus, but after the excitement of participating in such a ‘Booksale’ there is a real anticlimax, and a feeling that even The Super-Affiliates can be subject to Murphy’s Law. I’m looking forward to getting the book – but I won’t take delivery until International Standard Freight gets here sometime in April. By which time Ewen, you will be well on your way to your next million. PS I think Ewen will extend his offer due to the launch fizzle. I don’t have a link for the offer but I’m sure a little google do ya.

I have been getting a few affiliate emails sending me through to the sales page for Brad Callen’s PPC Webspy. As part of Operation Kill Overload I typically save any interesting product emails into a folder for later, then forget about them, or forget which folder I put them into. PPC Webspy got that treatment last week but came to my mailbox again today and  after speedreading the sales page, and watching a concise and easywatch 7min video (complete with muzac) I decided this free nifty little piece of software would come in handy if I was into ppc and adwords marketing, which i’m not yet, but this would be a time & money saver if I was.

I like - FREE and I like - EASY. When you do a Google search, the software automatically places a “view keywords” button below every single Adwords advertiser. Click the “view keywords” button and a popup window appears that not only shows you the keywords that any Adwords advertiser is bidding on, but it also shows you a lot more key information, like how much they’re paying per click and so on. Is this legal ) 

I like that I can upgrade to a branded version with a viral feature which puts my affiliate links  at the #1 and #2 positions in Google for any keyword that is searched for. I like that it’s a win-win for free and branded users.

I don’t like anyone else can get this software so easily. So don’t click this link  ppcWebSpy 

It’s a revolutionary new motor, which runs on compressed air. Invented by an ex-F1 French motor engineer, a mechanical genius, Guy Negre.  Not being a mechanical engineer myself, I can only repeat what I have read about the motor by the inventor.  Apparently it is a very efficient motor, much more so than the Internal Combustion Engine, so that the fuel economy of this new engine is in the order of 2L per 100km (Say What?) , which makes even the newest hybrids look like gas guzzlers. Furthermore at the urban speed limits, the motor runs completely emission free. Zero pollution. (Say What?). The motor can be scaled up in size, so that it can power anything from a little urban car to a truck , and also has marine and aviation potential. Looking outside the revolutionary environmental, transport and economic impact of such a motor, there are world-changing applications to the Energy sector, because this revolutionary (Did I already say that ? never mind, can’t say it enough) machine can be configured as a point of use electric generator( Say What?) and this further creates huge economic and environmental advantages for power generation to homes and business. Packaged with the patented technology of a little New Zealand company called Indranet Technology, who have developed Broadband Mesh Networking, and we have a technology package to solve the Information, Communication, Energy and Transport challenges of the 21st Century – For more details, grab a coffee, take 10 and check it out at http://www.itmdi-energy.com .

Thankyou for looking in ) Honestly, why are you reading my blog? Great if you are – I’ve got a story and this gives me a voice. My family has heard it all, time to reach a wider audience. Are you interested in a relationship? Are you into the same stuff I am? Are you looking for ways to make money on the Internet? Looking for ways to get more enjoyment out of life? Are you into dog training, sailing, rugby and cricket, forex trading, options trading, stock trading, homeschooling, speed-reading, photography and photoshop, computers and the internet, communicating with your teenage daughters, online games for entertainment, music and movies, your first grandchild and marriage and relationships, animals and all their amazing ways, veterinarians and their interesting jobs, alzheimers and the onset of old age, baby-boomers and what they’re buying this year, tinnitus and diabetes, inguinal hernia non-surgical repair, health and fitness, vitamin supplements, learning to play the guitar, bicycles and camping, outdoor living and tents, cars and fuel economy, boats and how to tow them, houses and how to get a better one, diets and good food, cooking and fun with your spouse, sex and sensuality, harmony in the family and old friends and social networks, travel and clothing, money and how to make it, how to retire, how to be useful, passwords and how to remember them all, psychology and life enhancement, giving back to people, how to kill fleas and a host of other things, then you may just find me on Google. or try me at Facebook or Twitter . Have a great day

ciao jj