If you want to achieve some incredible results… Both in business and in health, you have to change two things:

1: Your environment.

2: Your habits.

When things start to get “comfortable” for you, that’s a huge sign that it’s time to set new goals, select new challenges, and take things to the next level.

You’re either moving forward or moving backward on a daily basis… You NEVER stay in the same place. Moving forward requires a daily conscious decision. Moving backwards does not, which is exactly why so many people seem to be moving in that direction.

Personally, I’ve found over the years that one of the best ways to create a breakthrough in business is to focus on your personal fitness, which is why I’m taking this approach once again.

You gain more energy and more confidence that will allow you to attract more people to your life, and trounce the competition. You think more clearly, and you get rid of all the emotional BS and stress that can affect your mood which will allow you to provide your customers with your best work.

Naturally higher levels of testosterone, (for both men and women), fuels your competitive side and drives you to push yourself through roadblocks.

The bottom line is that it’s easy to slip into “comfort” and “routine” in life, yet those are the hangouts of choice for employees. 

Real entrepreneurs thrive on sacrifice and pushing their limits. For us, “comfort” is a four letter word.

Change your environment; you’ll change your habits. Change your habits, and you’ll change your life.

What habits, do you need to change, to reach your goals, and the life you dream of for you and your family ?

It seems tragic that the education system has been taken over by politics and parties looking to boost their numbers at the expense of the wider workforce and economy, and students futures. a generation ago, having a degree was something of an achievement and having a degree from a reputable university was like entering an elite club with opportunity at your door step, and whilst this seems like a swing from one extreme to the other, surely there needs to be some level of exclusivity between those that have a degree from those that dont, if everyone has a degree, then how do you measure who is better, how does an employers determine a good canditate from a poor one?

Imagine the doomss day scenario- soon you’ll have a levels at pass/fail, so you either pass or you fail, how to uni’s determine who to accept, already unis are having to forkout for entrance exams, ok, so at uni, you now have advanced students along side those who barely passed…you’ll need an extra year or so of uni jsut to get everyone up to level, and that level will need to be low so that everyone gets into the following year..for league tables, so when they graduate suddenly its a case of majority of students getting a 1st, so then employers can determine the value of a 1st as everyone has one, so the value of a degree goes down.

Government AND schools and the education establixhment really need to have a good long look, it seems unfair for those of us who grew up under the old system that now I have students who can barely multiply with degrees look for unreasonably high pay for relatively junior jobs that they aren’t even any good at.

I respect that no child should be left behind, and that every student should have the OPPORTUNITY to go to uni, but fact of that matter is its an OPPORTUNITY to go do GCSE, and if you pass its a OPPORTUNITY to go do A levels and thus go on to uni, I can’t emphasis its an opportunity, NOT a right, an opportunity, so some people will get left behind, and if they do, there should be something (vocational qualifications), to provide them with alternative options, the students themselves need to grow some balls and take responsibility for their education and this should be supported by their parents, after all. Its wrong that just so that on spreadsheets and graphs everything look hunkydory  the government is allowing for this kind of mediocrity about 20years ago the UK was The place to go to get a great education that would set you apart from the masses and the ‘everyone elses’ and help to make you stand out as the best possible candidate for a job..now however, everyone is the same- at least on paper…and companies know this…so you’re devaluing education by dumbing down grades and by so doing, reducing the employable workforce for the kind of jobs that would be good for the country, as a result, year-on-year the number of people with degrees and no job to go to increases (partly due to companies being reluctant to employ poorly skilled and equiped graduates with inflated egos), and year on year new immigrants who will work twice as hard for less money and have a ‘better’ education will take up jobs that these graduate ‘could’ have taken up if they were better prepared by the education system. But of course by the time we see the repercussions of these changes the governing party will be long gone, after all, they only have an agenda to get more votes, not to better the society and economy.

so whats the solution?  start Testing students instead of handing out grades, its NOT ok to get an ‘E’ grade, A-C is all that is worth anything and an A grade should reflect the top 2-3% of the student population, NOT 20%, start getting students into work earlier so they get experience and realize how though the job market is, start training students instead of stroking their egos into believing that now they have a degree they are special, because you know what? A degree doesn’t make you special because everyone on now has one, and even then, its only the first step on a long ladder.

rant over.

What is obscene is the fact that BT are using phorm, who are known to have connections with spyware and other shady online practices,  and despite public outcry and warnings they are still trucking ahead with trails.

The essence of all this is two fold..one user privacy, i want my internet browsing privacy to be kept private, not used for third party marketing, which is what BT/Phorm will achieve. Secondly, if my details and browsing habits are used for marketing, i should have the right to opt in, rather than need to opt out, more importantly as a BT user should be notified that my details are being tracked kept and used to market to me, ultimately this BT/Phorm issue has meant that my privacy rights have been violated, this clearly would be a violation of law and human rights.

I was good to see a nice and more importantly balanced spread of affiliates, networks, merchants and agencies at the event, so wandering around and speaking to new faces was a real pleasure, it was also interesting to note some of the smaller/newer networks including Altogether Ads, Linkshare and affilinet were out and about too.  Strange that I didn’t see Buy.at at the event (maybe I was too intoxicated).

Shouts out to all the people I met and I for one an eagerly awaiting the next one! certainly this kind of cooperation between networks is fantastic and does wonders  for the industry as a whole. Great job Kevin Edwards (affiliate window)!

heres the video 

I find it totally in accurate that some one assumes that all the marketing material they receive is SPAM, yesm granted, SOME might be SPAM, particularly those from Gumtree, but the lady her self states she has opted-in, or in laymans terms chosen to receive email notifications, therefore its not SPAM.

Once she opts out, then it becomes SPAM as its now unsolicited, but she needs to identify each individual marketing company and opt out from that list.

the key points here in relation email marketing that are pointed out here are both clients and consumers should read the small print and understand can-spam laws before signing up to receive emails from companies and third parties, there also need to be more education (not BBC scare mongering) to help legitimize and control email marketing on the internet.

Regardless, BBC with is public awareness in influence needs to get some decent journalists and researchers who aren’t into scare mongireing and miss information, but will present a legitimate and balanced report worthy of consumers and the general public…shame on you BBC

check it out - Marketing  25 June2008 from Haymarket publications.

The increased interactivity of the new creative will probably increase user loyalty for affiliates and improve conversions…if people realize they can click on the ad, regardless, hats off to littlewoods and buy.at for this new creative.

 Hi Ken,

I’ll call you to explain this further today.

I have to admit for the head of publisher services to contact via email, perhaps i was a bit too rash in my criticism, it appears that Tradedoubler are, infact, very aware of the affiliates in the space. SO much appreciated on my part to Lee for his thoughtful explination, this being said, I also hope that this marks a new era for Tradedoubler and its publisher/affiliate relationships, which have suffered over the last few months, perhaps this is a sign of Tradedoubler reverting to its former glory where affiliates were see as the partners that they are. I look forwards to more events (hopefully better preempted) from Tradedoubler that will give affiliates and merchants a chance to gel and exchange ideas and opinions.

So, I am delighted to invite you to attend the Affiliate Get-together BBQ from 5pm on Wednesday 2nd July atXXXXXX

The bar bill and food will be paid for by the contributing networks, so all we require is your company. It’s a great way to meet the people you have talked to on the phone or exchanged emails with. So, don’t be shy…

See you at the bar!

I felt really chuffed at last Tradedoubler were going back to its root and reengaging with affiliates, great stuff, so I sent an email back to confirm my attendances, ironically, the next day i got this:

I am pleased to  say that there has been an overwhelming response to this event. It’s great to know that so many of you are keen to meet up.

As I mentioned on my first email, space in the bar is limited, and I am afraid we will have to disappoint many of you by not confirming your invite. As sad as this may be, it is an indication of how popular an event like this is… So I really hope we can do more of them in the future!!!

So, for now, please don’t book planes, trains or hotels until we notify you that your attendance and invite are confirmed. We hope to do that in the next week or so once we have been through the lists with other networks.

If your going to put on event, thats going to be exclusive to your top 10 affiliates, don’t invite us all, its makes you Look bad Tradedoubler, rather don’t invite people and then un-invite them, its simply rude. So once again, Tradedoublers attempt to re-engage with affiliates falls flat on its face. It would have been better to make this first come first serve or just sent to your top affiliates rather than uninvite people.

In the search engine space the deal with Microsoft would always have been a preferred option, at least from where I am standing, anything that reduces the virtual strangle hold Google has on search will be good for both competition and free market. This being said, if you were to look at the bigger picture, both Google and Yahoo are companies that are fundamentally different and with different propositions to MSN, for one there seems to be a united distaste for MSN by developers and Linux lovers- which form much of the computing community, it could thus be construed that if Yahoo were to form an alliance with MSN, they would be selling out, and contributing to increasing the already significant control MSN and Microsoft have over our computing experience not just online. Now I’m looking at this from a consumer perspective, but really Yahoo is in a position of power regardless of who they choose to partner with it was always going to benefit yahoo, by choosing Google, it seems that really they’ve done the right thing for the computing industry over all, by reducing the control MSN have, this being said, for the SEO PPC and affiliate industry this could cause ripples, for one it increases our reliance on Google which, lets face it was always a bit of  worry before the Yahoo Google relationship, and this really has done anything to make me sleep better at night, lets just how that all three are sufficiently moderated by Governments and legal bodies.

So what does the future hold?Probably increased integration of Googles PPC tools onto the Yahoo platform, and an increase in the integration of tools such as yahoo messenger, yahoo answers and other community and customer loyalty tools. Naturally the search algorithms that are so significant for all online marketers will  probably fall more inline with the Google algorithms than the yahoo, the scary thing about this is Google, now dictate who gets listed in their searches. Its all a bit bitter sweet, and in all honesty only time will tell if this will have any impact on the way companies are advertised and represented online. One thing is for clear, Google has become even more of a giant, with more control, and any innovations we once saw as a result of the manage a trios of MSN Google and Yahoo now cease to exist, after all, Google now sets the standard and has such a large market share, that there is simply no way that even MSN can present a viable competition to Google’s position as market dominator in the online arena.