The browser I use most of the time is Firefox.
Over the years I’ve tried and tested lots of different “addons” – or plug-ins.
Addons are great when you use them but most slow Firefox down – so I only enable the ones I need to use.

Although I still have SEO Quake installed, I rarely spend time on SEO so keep it installed but disabled.
ReloadEvery is quite useful to help get Youtube videos jump started by getting the number of view for new videos up to a hundred or two.

A few months ago my copy of Thunderbird crashed – and I had no idea the damage this could cause.
Unfortunately I have gradually moved years on email archives into folders on my laptop – all stored by Thunderbird. What I didn’t understand was that when things go wrong it’s a real pain to restore everything.
Meanwhile I’m still accessing a few AOL email accounts directly from AOL – and that has to be one of the worst spammy websites around. Full of ads, videos and links.
But unless you use Outlook or Thunderbird, it’s the easiest way to access AOL emails.

I also discovered Microsoft have managed to prevent Outlook 2002 from working on Windows 7. Some module is no longer compatible and Microsoft have no plans to produce a fix. Probably no coincidence that this is the last version that doesn’t need Microsoft Activation each time it’s installed on a different PC.

The Adobe Flash video  addon is great when it works, but a real pain when it crashes – which is far too often. And this happens even more regularly with sites such as AOL
Things got so bad that I found myself enabling and disabling the Flash plugin many times every day.

Until I discovered FlashBlock – my favourite Firefox addon by far.

Now NO video can play in my browser unless I decide to let it!
It really has put me back in control of websites, pop-ups and pop-unders.

No longer can they start auto-playing videos – or locking up my browser for minutes at a time when Adobe Flash crashes.

If you don’t use FlashBlock – I can recommend giving it a try.
Great value at a price we all like = free.

By the way, it’s been another beautiful sunny day by the sea again today.
Even though it’s a work day there have been thousands of small sailing boats out enjoying the good weather while lasts.

Schools out, the sun is shining and hundreds of sailing boats arrived yesterday to enjoy the south coast.
So I ventured out of my front garden onto the beach to take quite a few pictures.
Those with lots of sailing boats look like dots – so I’ve chosen a picture with only a few boats to show you.

Hayling Island sailing

It was a good excuse for me to chill out with my telephone line and internet out of action – waiting for the BT engineer to arrive.
5 days after the fault developed, I’ve now got it fixed and can get back online.

Meanwhile I’ve been busy with not one, two or three – but 10 great new software products for internet marketers.
Why 10 products?
Well playing with my video camera, I discovered a recording from over a year ago featuring the good and the great Chris Farrell – not only a successful internet marketer now able to afford to live in Hollywood – but also a great guy willing to help others learn from his success.

I have a 25 minute video from Chris’s talk which I found very useful.
If enough people are interested, I could upload this to youtube?
Please just leave a comment.

I was lucky enough to meet Chris during an Open Wednesday session. A session that attracted almost 50 people – about 5 times more than normal.
Two of the characteristics Chris attributed to his success are his tenacity and understanding that ‘all skills are learnable’.
Chris went on to explain not only the importance of listbuilding but the need to prepare a plan for about 10 follow up messages to keep a list interested and involved.
Hence my latest plan to increase the number of software products I have prepared to around 10 – to give me a head start and a few months breathing space to add new products to my pipe-line.

Sorry to any readers waiting for my Header Magic, Clik-n-Snap, Transparency Magic, Hop Protector, Productivity Monitor and updated Ad-Blender software to arrive.
I use most of these every day and find them invaluable and want to make them available to lots of other people as soon as possible – but really need to do this in a controlled way fitting in with a proper business plan.

My plan is still to follow John Thornhills guidance and initially release them as Warrior Special Offers through JVZoo
But I also want to reach a critical mass of users so that I can benefit longer term from inbuilt advertising.

Apart from enjoying the sun and trying to keep fit with my daily swim in the sea, I’m still reading Mark Anastsi’s Laptop Millionaire  book – using a shotgun approach and picking out bits that appeal the most.
Today I read about Media Buying and guru’s such as Scott Rewick – able to make $100k a DAY, but using lots of capital to achieve this.
Mark explains how one student started spending $100 a pop buying media advertising initial getting no return but within a couple of weeks tweaking things to start making $60 profit from each $100 spent.

One day I still hope to learn how to turn $1 into $2 reliably enough to scale it up to these sorts of levels.
Meanwhile, back on earth, Mark did suggest using Media Buying to send traffic to my own website.
What a great idea – and how this fits in with my plan to have 10 great products I own for visitors to buy!

So that’s my latest cunning plan.
Line up 10 of my own relatively low cost products.
Launch them on warrior.
Then start paying to drive traffic to my website and offers.

So many people dream of making a living online that they are prepared to spend lots of $ learning what to do.
It is so easy to find blueprints and ‘proven’ plans and strategies that it’s difficult to know which one to pick – and whether to pay $27, $97, $997, $1997 – or even more for any training.

Anybody wanting to replace an income probably has monthly bills of $2000 or more – so even a high ticket value training course would pay for inteslf by bringing you income a month or two early.

But do any blueprints actually work?
The answer appears to be both yes and no.

Disclaimers are always justified by the explanation that it is impossible to know if any student will bother to take action.
Quite separately, statistics are published suggesting 99% of people trying to make a living online fail to do so.
I’m not sure if that means most people don’t bother to buy training – or the training doesn’t really work?

Do most people have so much money they can waste it on courses and not bother to try to follow them?
Or is it just too hard to do what courses teach?
Or has something changed in the marketplace between blueprint creation and you trying to make it work?
Or don’t the blueprints work very well, if at all.

I’m still slowly reading Mark Anastasi’s Laptop Millionaire book – where he describes how to make money online in lots of different ways.
And he provides examples of real people who have made lots of money using each individual methods.
What quickly becomes apparent is that the examples of people actually making good money have all, without exception, taken a basic blueprint method and added some special ingredient of their own to make it unique and successful.

Now Mark’s book offers training and doesn’t claim to provide a blueprint to success.
I wonder if that’s because real successful working blueprints don’t actually exist?
My personal view is that if one does exist it should be possible for at least 50% of purchasers to be able to follow it and successfully achieve the promised outcome – something I have yet to find.

Instead what seems to happen is that ‘star’ users adapt strategies for themselves and find extraordinary success.
And these stars are promoted impying if you follow the strategy, you can acieive the same results.
For example, at one of Marks’ seminars with around 400 attendees, the message went out that ‘somebody had made $200 overnight’. Great – but 0.25% really isn’t statistically relevant.
To me, far more impressive would have been if 40 people (10%) had made $10, or better still 160 people (40%) had made $2.50!

One problem with making money online is the almost infinite number of possibilities leading to information overload, a lack of focus and attraction to shiny new offers to learn something you don’t know that seems to be yet another essential ingredient for success.

That’s why finding an honest mentor is so important. – to keep youself on track and avoid distractions.
If only that were easy, we would all be internet millionaires by now!

UPDATE I listened in to John Thornhill’s IM Advantage webinar last night.
John offers mentoring to a limited number of people committed to succeeding online – and he mentioned that his success rate is … 100%!