Isn’t life interesting? I’m embarking on a new learning curve – yet again! Forex trading. Why? Why not? After all Forex trading is another way to earn money on the internet!

Ultimately I’m on a mission – to create enough income to live my life the way I want to. This has kind of evolved over the last 7 or 8 years, but has really become a focus in the last 18 months due to the curve balls that life throws at us sometimes. I’ll explain…..

After being back in NZ for 4 years, spent renovating the very run down 100 year old home that we bought, we decided to return to Australia. We sold the house, made a heap of profit on it and came back to Australia having made the decision to buy a business that we could both be involved in and we did precisely that. Found a small business in a small town in NSW, moved down there and invested all of our money into it – including all the money from the sale of our house.

To cut a long story short, we didn’t ask enough questions, were far too trusting and our dream of becoming successful business owners very quickly became a nightmare. From the very first week of taking over I knew we were in big trouble. The business that we were told was turning over an average of $12,000 a month was lucky if it was turning over $3000!

All of our remaining funds were quickly eaten up and then an overdraft from the bank. We fought hard, stayed strong, never let on that there were any problems and business picked up a bit over the coming months, but not enough. The global economic crisis happened and the area our business was in happens to have the highest number of over 65′s for it’s population in Australia – so lots of self funded retirees all being stung by losses in their super. We made the decision (which was incredibly hard) and closed the doors a couple of weeks before xmas 2008 and moved back to Queensland early in 2009.

So here we are – me a couple of years south of 50 and Ray a couple of years north of 50 – starting again.

That’s why I’m on a mission. For a start, I’ve owned my own home since I was 18 years old and I’m certainly not renting for the rest of my life! We’ve got some big goals, to not only have our own home within the next couple of years, but to also create enough income from enough sources to be able to live our lives as we know we can, and help others to know that they too can do the same.

So here I am. Learning to make money online and now learning Forex Trading. I’ve set up a new blog to record my Forex journey here – Learning to be a Forex Trader. It will be an honest account of my journey, for my own records and for anyone who wants to follow along. (You’ll find the RSS feed on the side bar of this site with the latest posts).

Wish me luck!

Have you heard of Bob Proctor? If you’ve seen the movie The Secret then you’ve seen him speak, or maybe you’re already a big fan. Bob teaches about the Law of Attraction and and how to use it in your life and has been doing so for many years – a teacher of the teachers you might say.

I’m a big fan of Bob Proctor’s and have some of his material that I have read and have listened to many times over the past few years including the book and cd set - You Were Born Rich : Learning System (DVD/CD)

You Were Born Rich is one of the first personal development programs that I was introduced to and it has made a big change in my way of thinking about my life and my results. Bob explains how our mind works and that our thoughts create the results that we see in our lives, whether they’re actually the results that we want or not!

He tells his story of how he began using the Law of Attraction without actually realising what he was doing when he was a young man, after reading the book Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill and increased his income from $6000 per year to $100,000 in 12 months and then beyond that to millions of dollars a year after that. Bob spent several years trying to work out what he had done and once he realised the reasons for his success, he started to teach others and the rest is history so they say.

If you want to improve your life and your results, I would definitely recommend this book. It’s one of my favorites and gets read over and over again in this household by more than just myself. It’s available from Amazon here for less than $20 and is money well spent!

This is something that I must admit, confused me for quite some time – the question “What are keywords” and how do they work?

I just didn’t quite have a handle on it. I new basically what they were, but how to actually use them? That was a bit of a mystery. My confusion was caused in part because I wasn’t sure if a keyword had to be just one word or if it could be more, and what the difference was if any between keywords and keyword phrases. Sounds blonde I know – but I am! And I’m also sure that there’s a lot of other people out there with the same problem.

There’s a bit to get your head around with keywords and how to use them (I think anyway) so I’ll do my best to explain the basics. Here we go!

Keywords are specific words or phrases that are used in a web page or article to optimise it for the search engines. How’s that? Need more info? Ok.

First. Keywords can be one word or a group of words (like a sentence or phrase). They are specific words or groups of words that people search for in the search engines. For example if I was searching for someone who repairs shoes in Brisbane, I might to go Google or Yahoo or Bing (or various other search engines) and type in perhaps ‘shoe repairs brisbane‘. Chances are that I’m not the only person who would do that search, am I right? There are probably other people in Brisbane searching for someone who repairs shoes. But Jo next door, might also be searching for someone to fix her shoes and on opening her trusty search engine, type in ‘fix shoes brisbane’. Same question – but different keyword. Get it?

Now, if I was creating a web page to advertise my shoe repair business in Brisbane, I would want to know how to let those people who are searching for me, find me – right? This is where keywords are used. Before making my web page, I need to do some research and find out how many people are searching for shoe repairs in Brisbane and what they’re entering into the search engine to find someone to fix their shoes, because I want to optimise my site so that as many people as possible will find my site and my business.

If you’re a bit confused at this point and wondering where I’m going with this, bear with me and I’ll try to make it clear.

What keywords are people searching for?

I need to ask the question what keywords are people searching for? The reason that I need to know what people are searching for and how many people are searching using a particular keyword is because when the search engines look at my site to see what it is about, they will pick up words and phrases that are used often within my site and match them up with other words and phrases to ascertain what my site is about and that is what they will record for my site as being it’s subject.

If for example,my site has an article on a page and it’s talking about shoe repairs. The phrase Shoe Repairs Brisbane might appear in the article three or four times. If in my article the phrase fix shoes brisbane also appears a few times then the search engines should (all going well) decide that my web site is about the correct subject and record that information about my web site so that when someone types shoe repairs brisbane into the search engine, my web page will come up in the results. If someone else types in fix shoes brisbane, my web site should show again in the search engine results, albeit in a different spot. (Note: these are not accurate, researched keywords – only examples pulled out of thin air for the purpose of easy explanation!)

If however, my web page contained the keyword shoe repairs brisbane a couple of times, and lets say I decide to add some information about the other businesses around me – maybe the bakery and the beauty salon – and I don’t know how to use my keywords effectively, then chances are the search engines may decide my site is predominantly about cakes or beauty therapy and those people looking for a shoe repairer in Brisbane are never going to find my web site!

Well, I hope that’s helped to clear up that question of What are keywords? More info to come on how to find the keywords that people are searching on, for your web site subject.

Note: I just had a look to see how many people are searching online for shoe repairs in Brisbane – I wouldn’t bother with a web site on the subject if I were you!

For most of us money is something that there’s never enough of, is hard to get and even harder to keep. I know that I grew up the eldest of five children in a family that, particularly while I was a young child, was struggling to make ends meet. I remember being only one of two children in my year in primary school that couldn’t go on the school camp because we couldn’t afford it. I remember not being able to have the clothes and other things I longed for because ‘Money didn’t grow on trees!’. Boy, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that growing up, I’d have been rich! I grew up in a family that originated from quite poor areas in Scotland and where folks for the most part probably didn’t really expect any more from life. My parents and I migrated to New Zealand for a better life I guess, but the goals were not high – own a home and car, have food on the table and keep the wolves from the door was about it as it still is with most people if the truth be told.

When we grow up in poor, or middle class families we are usually taught, even if it is not a conscious teaching, that that is where we belong and to expect any better is to be a dreamer, so don’t even bother. I know that I have grown up believing that ‘rich people’ were somehow better, different and luckier than us.

Luck – now that is a subject all on it’s own – whether it is something that ‘happens to us’ or whether it is something we create. (I used to believe the former, now I know different but that’s another discussion!). I know that many of us believe that those who are wealthy, have either come into possession of their wealth due to luck or due to ‘ripping others off’ in some way.

Because we grow up being led to believe that we can not have wealth, that we do not deserve money, that it is too difficult to achieve the riches that we all dream of having, that we would lose our friends if we were to become wealthy and other such lies, we make excuses for not pursuing it or even daring to believe that we could really be wealthy.

‘Money doesn’t make you happy!’

‘Money can’t buy love!’

‘I wouldn’t want to be rich, I’d just like to have enough that I could…….(whatever)’

Sound familiar? We say these things because we don’t believe we can have it, and so make ourselves feel better with these and other excuses. By being proud to be a ‘battler’ and fitting in with the masses.

The trouble with this is that without money, we can NEVER be all that we are supposed to be or all that we could be in this life. Without money we can’t help others the way that most of us would love to be able to help.

If we look at ourselves and those underlying dreams and aspirations (often tucked away in the recesses of our minds where we don’t have to really look at them), we all have things or had things (as a child or young person) that we would love to do or be. Money, or lack of, is the number one thing that stops most people from achieving those things they would love to do, be or have.

If we look at the things we would love to be able to do for our children, our families, our friends, what usually prevents these things from being possible is lack of money.

If money wasn’t an issue – at all – ever – what your life look like? Would you be living where you are now? Working where you are now? Would you go on trips overseas? Where? For how long? If money wasn’t an issue, you could go on a permanent trip – live some of the year here, some there, follow the weather. Visit your friends and family whenever you want. Take them away on vacations. Help people you want to help or charities that matter to you. You could show others how to live like you do. If you wanted to learn to paint, or play an instrument, or do yoga, or meditate, or dance, or fly a plane, or go in to space with Richard Branson – you could and you would have the time and the resources to become as good at whatever you love to do as you would like to.

You would be spending your life as we are supposed to. I now realise that Money IS important and I’m doing all and learning all that I can to attract it into my life. I hope you do too. Make the decision that you will change the way you think and look for ways out of the mediocrity that most live their lives in. You can live an exceptional life – Make it special!

“From testimonials and personal experience we have enough evidence to conclude that it is possible to design and create and extraordinary life!”

Jim Rohn

The quote from Jim Rohn above may seem unbelievable to anyone who hasn’t looked into this subject, but after a few years of looking, learning and watching I have to declare that I do believe he’s right! I have seen and experienced enough in the past few years to know that it’s true – what we think and what we focus on will be our reality! We create ourselves, we create our lives, we create our results through our thoughts.

Our problem is that we ‘think’ on auto pilot. It’s true. We’re brain washed from the time we’re born with the opinions, thoughts and beliefs that we are exposed to via our parents, peers, teachers and whoever else we are exposed to in our childhood. The influence of these people, especially those we look up to, or those we consider to be and ‘authority’ is massive and contributes to the molding of our thoughts and beliefs.

When we are born, we are a ‘blank slate’ you might say. With no beliefs, or opinions. We just are. When you look at a baby, they are attractive and intriguing because they ‘just are’. They are not thinking about what we might think of them or who they should be. They ‘just are’, but not for long. As the months and years pass, they are influenced by parents, siblings and other family, friends, teachers, religious advisers and these days the media, until they become whatever is the result of all that influence.

Looking for a good book to read? or trying to decide what to listen to next? Here’s a few of my recommendations and they’ll help you to change your thoughts – towards success! They’re all awesome:

• You were born rich – Bob Proctor
• Think and grow rich – Napolean Hill
• Conversations with God 1,2,& 3- Neale Donald Walsh
• Mans search for meaning – Victor Frankel
• The Secret – DVD and book
• As a man thinketh – James Allen
• The science of getting rich – Wallace D Wattles
• Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kyosaki
• Inspiration – your ultimate calling – Wayne Dyer
• Psycho Cybernetics – Maxwell Maltz
• Chicken Soup for the Soul – Jack Canfield
• Goals – Brian Tracey
• Your right to be rich – Mal Emery
• Exposed – Mal Emery
• Lucky Man – Michael J Fox
• The next trillion – Paul Zane Pilzer
• The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
• The Psychology of Winning – Dennis Waitley
• Seeds of Greatness – Dennis Waitley
• The Art of Happiness – The Dalai Lama
• We want you to be rich – Donald Trump and Robert Kyosaki

Anything by Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, or other works by the above authors

My mentors that I listen to regularly (daily)

• Jim Rohn
• Dennis Waitley
• Bob Proctor
• Wayne Dyer
• Artemis Limpert
• Jerry Clark
• Pat Mesiti
• Chris Widener

How do you choose Web Hosting? First we need to look at what we’re wanting to achieve with our website.

If it’s your first site, you’ve probably got a plan in your mind of what you want to have on your web site. For most people when they start out planning their first web site it’s not a huge plan and their web site won’t initially require a huge amount of resources. That can definitely change over time, but if you choose a good hosting company you can start off with a beginners plan, and then if and when you find that you require more, you can upgrade. You’re not stuck with your first choice! Remember that -  so don’t stress over making the wrong choice.

Even most small business owners thinking about putting up a website for their business, usually won’t require any more than a basic plan – at least initially anyway.

In my view, especially for the newbie, the most important things to consider when looking for the best web hosting for you are:

• Reliability
• Cost
• Support

Lets start with reliability. Whether you’re a mum at home putting up a blog with recipes on it, or a small business owner advertising their business online, you want a reliable web hosting company. Good companies will guarantee their uptime – that means that they guarantee that the population of the world will be able to view your website at least for the amount of time that their guarantee states. For example the hosting company that I use guarantee 99.9% uptime. That means that my website will never be down for more than 0.1% of the time. You really don’t want people going to your website and not being able to access it – there’s nothing more annoying and it really can affect your online business if you’re planning to make money online!

Next is cost. That’s pretty simple really – you don’t want to be paying any more than you have to for web hosting. You’ve got better things you could be spending your money on right? However, don’t let cost be your only decision maker – you want the reliability and support as well!

Which brings me to support. You want good support 24/7. Not just on week days from 9 til 5. I’ve had that in the past and you know what? The Murphy’s say your problems won’t happen between 9am and 5pm! They’ll happen in the weekend and the evening and on public holidays! You need good, friendly, reliable support. Especially as a newbie. Not knowing what you’re doing means you will really need some support at times, and it’s a good feeling when it’s there, let me tell you!

Another criteria I would suggest for any web host that you are considering  is that they use CPanel. Cpanel contains software programs that just make looking after your web site a whole lot easier! It has lots of neat little applications that make things really simple – like installing WordPress  (Word Press is great for creating blogs or web sites – it makes it really easy! Even my old Mum and Dad use it) for example – it takes a couple of minutes and it’s done and then you can start working on your site. It also makes it a whole lot easier for the not so technically minded to do scary things like move your Word Press blog to another web host!

Other stuff to consider are things like email accounts – how many do you need? Are you going to use email addresses with your domain name on them or are you going to continue to use whatever you’re using now? (Your domain name is the address that you want for your web site. For example if you wanted your site to be www.mydomain.com You could have email addresses such as info@mydomain.com or theboss@mydomain.com, sales@mydomain.com etc). Some basic plans only allow for one email address, some a lot more.

Domains -while we’re on the subject!  Most basic plans will allow for one domain to be hosted. That means one website address. If you only want one then that’s fine. If you wanted to put up a couple of sites then that’s something you need to consider because with some account types you can host a number of accounts or even unlimited numbers. Remember tho, you can always upgrade if you need to later.

I personally have all my web sites hosted by HostGator.com. Their prices are good and I’m very happy with them and their service. I have no complaints so far. They were there working on Boxing Day when I was trying to move a website, and they helped me to do it successfully which was awesome. As I said above, I’ve had hosting companies in the past that have limited support hours and I wouldn’t ever go back to one.

There are plenty of companies to choose web hosting from. I’ve got a few on my site www.webhostingspy.ws if you want an easy way to compare. Remember to decide what you need and what you’re looking for and then do some research, and don’t stress – whatever you decide doesn’t have to be permanent!

Web Hosts are companies that provide web hosting services. This means that they host web sites.

Let me explain – when you build your web site, it needs to live somewhere. Somewhere that all the people around the world can access it. This is what a Web Host Service does. It provides you with somewhere to store all your files for your web site, where your web site can be connected to the internet in a way that people can access those files – just as you are now looking at the files for my web site.

Web hosting companies have banks of very powerful computers that are linked together and contain lots of hard drive space. When your web site is hosted by one of these companies, it will normally share a computer with lots of other websites also (unless you have a very large site and pay a whole lot more money for your web site hosting!). Web site hosting companies (hopefully) do a great job of storing your website, making it available to the world as well as keeping it safe and secure.

There are hundreds of web hosts around the world, with different hosting plans and different pricing structures and you can host your web site with any one of them – you don’t have to choose one in your country. My next article will be on how to choose a hosting company, so come back and check it out.

Ok – starting at the beginning – What is a Domain Name? A domain name is the address that you type in the address bar of your internet browser to get to a web site – also known as a URL. For example the domain name (or URL) of this  web site is www.makerealmoneyonline.biz and if you look up at the address bar at the top of  your web browser, you’ll see it up there (along with the name of this page added on to the end of it).

When you are planning on building a web site, you need to decide what you would like to have as a domain name and then do a search to see if it’s available. You can do a search and then register your domain name with a Domain Registrar. When choosing a domain name, you want to ensure that it’s memorable. A catchy, easily remembered domain name will help your visitors to remember it when they want to visit your site again.

Registering a domain name is a simple process, and doesn’t cost a lot of money (usually less than $10 per year). One of the cheaper domain registrars around is www.GoDaddy.com . I have started using them lately as they are cheaper than the company that I was using originally and they are very popular – probably for this reason.

There are other things that can be taken into account when deciding on a domain name for your website other than memorability, it depends on the purpose of your website. But if you’re building your first site, just to have a go or if your site is going to be more an information site than a product site then I would go for the catchy domain name! Something that you like and fits your vision.

Now you know-  What is a Domain Name.

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