I was very pleasantly surprised to discover the format of John’s training – videos plus worksheet telling me exactly what to do and how to do it.

 

To make the most of the course, I decided to make sure I at least listened to ALL of the training material.

But I value my time very highly so wanted to focus on learning anything new and making sure I don’t miss details or tips to do things I think I know already about.

The training videos have been broken down into bite sized chunks – each one about 2 to 8 minutes long – which is great.

So I decided on an initial plan of action:

1. Extract MP3 audio files for my iPod from the training videos – I used the free version of AoA audio extractor
2. Listen to part of the days training in my ‘free’ time – usually when walking to my sports centre for some exercise or a swim and sauna.
3. Make notes of training and watch videos for anything I don’t understand or know how to do
4. Do it
5. Complete activitiy sheets each day

Day 1 Thursday 19 April 2012 tasks involve getting a domain plus hosting and setting up an email address.

I already had hosting accounts and an unused domain with my name – Steve Mackay – hosted with a free account – that started displaying ads so my jobs for the day were:

1. Change my domain nameservers to my justhost web hosting account – 5 minutes
2. Set up an email account admin@stevemackay.com – I’d never done this the way John recommended before – so this took about 20 minutes

Summary of time spent for the day:

• 10 minutes creating MP3 audio files
• 23 minutes listening to audio files while out walking
• 10 minutes making notes of days activities (to help me rinse and repeat later)
• 25 minutes watching video and doing the days work

John recommended using D9 for hosting. Maybe if I’d started out using them I wouldn’t have had so many problems – but my experience is that things can and do go wrong with hosting.

So I always buy my domains and hosting from separate companies. That way if any hosting problems arise, I can quickly and easily edit any domain nameserver settings to get a site up and running with a different hosting company.

Finally I added the newly created email account to my blackberry – to help me check how activity on my site progresses.