Wrote Four Articles Today

I can hardly believe it myself but today I wrote from start to finish a series of four articles. I'm leaving them until tomorrow and then I'll polish them and see about submitting them for publication. I think I'll also offer these articles as a short course to accompany my weekly newsletter.

Received an email today from a lady who had been scammed by James Patterson (aka Jimbo). She asked that I don't publish her email and obviously I will respect that and not mention her name or any details. Suffice to say that she lost a lot more that I did. What scum Jimbo turned out to be. I don't know how people like him can sleep nights but what goes around comes around.

The lady who emailed me is looking to work on the Internet to make some extra money but she is understandably nervous about trusting anyone. Who could blame her? I'll help her as much as I can. I still love the Internet despite the likes of Jimbo who I believe are in a minority. Most people I have come across online have been decent.


If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Creative Copywriting?

Finished an article today and published it. I've got a few more almost ready to go and lots more ideas. This is the one I submitted for publication today:


Creative Copywriting?

There is a difference between creative writing and copywriting. It took me a while to come to terms with this but it's true, there is a difference. When I first started my home based business on the Internet I read a lot of advice about publishing articles and doing copywriting to advertise your website. There was always a distinction drawn between copywriting and creative writing. I did not understand this: surely copywriting is creative? Eventually the logic dawned on me: all copywriting is creative writing but not all creative writers can write decent ad copy. If you have never studied that particular branch of philosophy, it's like all roses are flowers but not all flowers are roses.

When I came to understand this difference, it explained for me the reason why I can write at length on any subject (stopping is the hard part) but tell me I need to write an advertisement and I go all bashful and tongue-tied. Give me a subject or, indeed, no subject at all -- just a blank page is sufficient to set me going and I'll hammer away at the keyboard until... Until when? Actually, I never really stop, just pause from time to time. Advertising copy is a different matter. I can sit for ages resisting the lure of the blank page if I know that what I need to do is copywriting to use for advertising.

This inability to write ad copy caused me problems because I wanted to advertise my home based business and various individual affiliate programmes. Plenty of pre-written ads come with most decent affiliate programmes and it is an easy matter to copy and paste these but I wanted to use fresh material instead of advertisements that everyone had seen a hundred times before. I blame my inability to write advertising copy on my upbringing: modesty and understatement were encouraged and boastfulness was the eleventh deadly sin. It seemed to me that writing advertisements for myself was akin to bragging.

Eventually, I overcame my distaste for self-proclamation and tried my hand at some copywriting. When I compared my efforts with the pre-written ads, it was obvious that something was absent. My advertisements were dull and flat, uninspired and uninspiring. Then I discovered the secret: copywriting is a craft not an art. It is has rules which need to be learnt and practised. A course of online copywriting lessons was not hard to come by. In fact, I ended up reading several such courses on the good old Information Highway.

Rules are fine, I have a good memory. Examples are not hard to come by and it was easy to make a collection of snippets from the copywriting courses. I learnt about the importance of writing an attention grabbing headline. I can manage that, there are plenty of examples to borrow. I got to grips with selecting buzz words such as amazing, customised, effortless, excellent and, the best one of all -- free. So far so good. Use sentence fragments -- not so keen on that idea but, when you think about it, that's how conversation goes in real life, so I'll do it. Sell the sizzle not the steak --yeah, I get it. Offer benefits, not features --yeah, yeah, I can do that.

Things started to look better and better as I became familiar with the rules and I began to daydream about becoming a copywriter (like in the film "The Guys" with that nice Anthony La Paglia). My daydream ended abruptly when I found there was one rule of English grammar I could not bring myself to break. The very thought made me shudder and give up any idea of a copywriting career. I can cope with all the fragments, buzzes and sizzles. But I could never begin a sentence with "and".

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Get Paid To Autosurf - My Review

I am very happy that I discovered the get paid to autosurf programmes. I have already been paid by Studio Traffic, 4 Daily and 5 Daily. Now that I have tested these programmes, I am prepared to promote them and I have added a get paid to surf review to my website. I am still evaluating a few other programmes but won't add them just yet until I know they are reliable.

Aussie Earners are having a very bad time since they moved to a new server. They have been absolutely plagued with problems and the latest is that surfing is a complete nightmare in the early hours of the morning. If you surf during the afternoon and evening (server time) it is fine. It is a shame they have these problems because they have had a good reputation for some time and I hope these problems don't cripple them. I don't think this will happen because they have a loyal member base. I'm looking forward to going back to surfing in the mornings when it is all fixed.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

Networkers' Calendar - May Edition Published

Even the best laid plans are liable to fall apart if they have anything to do with computers. My plan to publish my monthly newsletter in an orderly manner and send the notification out on Friday (supposed to be the best day for emailing) were utterly thwarted by my pc. I still don't know what was wrong, it just decided to be extremely slow but all the virus checks etc showed no dangerous infestations. I would have felt more secure if I had found a nasty bug and had it eradicated, I keep waiting for it to fall over again. I'm typing this with fingers crossed.

The May edition of Networkers' Calendar is now online Networkers' Calendar is now online. Some of my readers have recently emailed me some good articles and I am now including two in each issue. I have already lined one up for next month. I am a bit worried that it might me too technical but I understood it so I'll publish it as it is a top quality article.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

May Edition Of Networkers Calendar Almost Ready

I have this month's edition of Networkers Calendar ready to go. I'll wait for a couple of days before I have another look at it and maybe tweak a few things but I think it's ready. Everyone says Friday is a good day to send emails so maybe I should put it online tomorrow and email my subscribers.

M showed me a neat programme for posting pictures to a blog. I'll have to get round to doing it for this one. For no better reason than that I like pictures but that's good enough for me.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

No BS Zone looks more like total **it

I received an email today asking what I think of No BS Zone now.

It was gratifying to note that at least one person reads my Blog (one person apart from me that is!).

I did promote No BS Zone for a while. This was against my better judgement after the Banners Go MLM fiasco but NBSZ was recommended by someone I trust and admire. I felt that it would be fair to give the owners of NBSZ another chance; it is not right to condemn somebody for a past crime. Unfortunately, things rapidly went pear shaped.

I stopped promoting NBSZ weeks ago when the first doubts about the programme were voiced. I emailed my mailing list and warned everyone and I published the warning in my monthly newsletter in March. Looks like the only place I missed was here!

This is what I published in March:

This month in London
My view of the Internet from here.
There have been some complaints about No BS Zone which included unauthorised credit card transactions and lack of response from the management. This coincided with me reading a review which said that the programme was basically a fake and was just invented to promote stuff on behalf of friends of the owner. Just about the opposite of what it claimed to be, in fact.

I had my doubts about No BS Zone from the start because of what happened with the owner's last venture (Banners Go MLM) but I signed up as NBS was recommended to me by someone whose judgement I trusted. I am glad I held back from upgrading. Needless to say, I won't be upgrading right now (if ever) and I have stopped promoting NBS and removed their link from my website. I have a bad feeling about the programme, especially the lack of response from the owner so I emailed all my contacts and warned them to be on the lookout especially in regard to the credit card part.

The worst part about something like this is that it reflects badly upon the rest of us who are trying to run a business on an ethical basis.

Second chance ok but I don't give anyone a third chance.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

I Built A Website With CSS and Added To My Autosurfs

I built a new website! I feel quite proud of my achievement as I've never dabbled with CSS until now. I can see what a neat arrangement it is. I had some problems because the control panel on the new website is quite a bit different from the only one I've used before. I messed about for ages but managed in the end to get all the bits I needed in the right directory where the index could find the syle sheet and the graphics.

My collaborator, M, as he is known gave me the website template as a gift and I paid for the registration and web hosting. He found an amazing source of cheap templates (I didn't realise until now just how much these things cost) so I don't feel bad about accepting this gift.

I'm doing my best to get some serious writing done. That is to say a serious amount of writing not writing about terribly serious subjects.

I also enlarged my collection of autosurf sites so that I don't have too many of my eggs precariously balanced in one container. I signed up with the best ones I could find and made a comparison chart to advertise them. This probably won't do me any good as I get the impression not many people actually look at autosurf ads but I thought I might as well try this. I think I have signed up with the best of them. Surf Monkee is supposed to be good but my security arrangements won't let me participate there. I gave up with Surf Junky as it has such a bad name. Everywhere has posts about it being a scam, so I won't try to build up enough to cash out, I'll just write off that time spent.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com

A new mystery website begins to unfold

My American pen-pal, collaborator, (and I would even say friend) sent me a beautiful website template. I loved the picture, it was a perfect match for an idea I have but never mentioned. To have someone choose something so perfectly fitting without being given so much as a hint (well, not a deliberate hint) or any discussion was a bit unnerving: I felt as if my mind had been read. I'd like to display that picture on this blog but as the project is still secret I can't. I just have to content myself with looking at it now and again.

It comes with a CSS style sheet set up which I've never used before. I need to do some reading up about it. I'm going to start a new blog for our project and build a website as well. I have a spare website ready, just need to register a name and I know what that will be now.

If you want to work from home on the internet but don't know where to start, visit my main website at Hunting Venus.com