The Government has confirmed this week, that Business Link is to be scrapped! While personally this will have no effect on me, as I tried using the services of business link when I was first getting into business, and I didn’t find them to be  a great deal of use – what I want to know is, the money the Government was wasting on this (which they’ve agreed was the case) how are they going to find a better way to use this money to support small businesses?

Of course, I’m sure the answer is that they’re not, they’re seeing this as a money saving exercise, but I think they’re making a mistake.

Mark Prisk basically stated that they realised that business links were just signposting, telling businesses where to go for advice rather than actually giving advice – and for that reason it was a waste of money, so they’re going.

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I think the majority of small business people will agree with this, apart from certain parts of the country (in particular, in Scotland) where the local business links appear to have had more money to play with & had more support to offer.

Doug Richard, former Dragon’s Den panelist, has some quite strong opinions about this : Doug Richard to Business Link: I shall not mourn your passing

What I think – is that the government instead of trying to see this as a way to save money, should instead find better ways to use this money to support small businesses. Yes, we have ridiculous amounts of public debt & cuts are required, but it appears to me that some of the decisions they’re making are going to have a negative effect in the long-run.

The Government appear to be looking at businesses as the source to help right the economy, using businesses to collect more VAT (and yes, it’s the consumer that pays the price ultimately for the extra VAT – but who pays the price to change all the systems once again to reflect the new Vat amount?) but businesses are struggling, small retailers & businesses of all kinds are dropping like flies, if support isn’t given to small businesses – then I think we can expect much worse times to come.

So what I’m saying – just on the very very unlikely event that Mark Prisk reads this – is that the government should consider finding better ways to use the money they’re saving on closing business link, to support small businesses.

I’ll give a few examples…

My wife had a shop in the village, on the main shopping street. It was in a good position, but it was a very small shop – it was perfect for her though, as she sold personalised gifts, so people would come in with a picture, and they’d come back the next day & take away canvas prints, photo mugs, tea towels, photo cushions & so on made with this image. So she only needed a small amount of shop space.

She worked 6 days a week, the shop was open all day  & sometimes she opened late for later collections, and the shop was getting a lot of word of mouth advertising, people were coming in every day & telling her how great it was that there was something other than hair dressers, florists, cafe’s & charity shops in the Village…

She did a lot to promote the business, and footfall was actually really quite good – but what really killed the business, was business rates….

Even with the small business rates reduction, the amount that the government wanted (and this isn’t local government, they just collect it – it goes straight to central government) was about equal to the rent she was paying on the shop!

This surprise came because when working out how much the business rates would be,  there are different costs per square metre for shop floorspace, and for office / manufacture – and the amounts differ by quite a lot. As the shop was only using a very small amount of shop floor space, and the rest of the building was being used as office space & to do the printing & pressing of the products – it was thought that the rates would be worked out as 2 entities, shop space & office / manufacturing space. But – because the separation between the two area’s of the premises wasn’t a solid wall (it may as well have been, it would have taken a lot of effort to shift it, and the separation only left room for a door space) she had to pay the same amount as if the whole premises was shop floor space.

This means that she was paying the same amount as the hair salon which now occupies the premises (woohoo, another hair salon!), yet her business only had a very small shop front & had nowhere near the earning potential that a 10 seat hair salon has.

My wife wrote to the local council, no response. I could name names here as to which useless local councillor she wrote to, who completely ignored her, but I wont….

I tried to help my wife to get support from local business organisations, and I may as well have been talking to myself, well actually I was – no one gave a toss, we didn’t receive a single reply.

So – she had no alternative but to shut up shop, she just couldn’t make enough money to cover the rent & rates & pay the bills, let alone make any profit. We figured that since she had a busy Christmas, if she pushed through it & made a loss every month but Christmas, after about 5 years of this she may eventually break even & start making a small profit – but it wasn’t worth it for all the hard work she was putting in.

The local newspapers have been full of stories of local business dropping like flies for quite some time, and often some local councillor gets in on the act by talking about the initiatives they’re putting in place to try to support local businesses, but I know from first hand experience, and from discussing with many other small business people, that the truth of the matter is that there is very little support for small businesses either from local or central government.

Another example is the DTI backed small business loan scheme.

A few years ago, I successfully applied for a DTI backed loan, which means that I didn’t have to put up anything to secure the loan – this was a great help, BUT I ultimately found out that it was a bit of a Trojan horse!

So happy about the fact that I’d been offered the funds, I didn’t study the small print enough, so I was a bit surprised when I found that I had two sets of payments each month, one to pay the capital & interest back to the bank , and a separate one to pay interest to the government. I can understand the need to do this to cover the losses the government would ultimately face from such an offering, but at the same time, the maximum term offered meant that the re-payments were pretty crippling to cash flow, so in hind-sight I would have actually been better spending more time & effort trying to get a standard loan.

So, here are some ways I think the government should consider re-investing the money they save from scrapping business link:

Re-thinking the way business rates & rateable values work.

First of all – what are business rates for? I had a conversation with a member of the business rates customer service team a while ago, and his reply to my question “What do we get in return for business rates?”  was…. “Absolutely nothing! It’s just a way central government uses local government to raise funds, local government sees none of the money, we just pass it straight to central government!”

We know that when we pay council tax on our homes, we’re paying for waste collection, police & so on – many small business people assume the same is true with business rates, but it’s not!

My first choice if I was running the country, would be to scrap business rates all together for small businesses. Sure, collect rates from larger businesses who can afford it, and especially the banks, Oil / fuel companies – and basically any of the organisations who are partly responsible for the current state of the economy – but leave small businesses alone, and although this may be costly in the short term, in the long-term this would pay dividends, with more small businesses flourishing – and if the economy is to be corrected, we need small – medium businesses to be succeeding. Especially given that so many government employed people are about to lose their jobs, that we need more jobs available.

If scrapping business rates for small businesses isn’t possible, then it should be made more fair, by working as a percentage of gross profit rather than a flat cost regardless of the business type or profitability. This way, while businesses are in the fledgling stage, or are struggling, they have a bit of support in terms of not having to try to scrape the money together to pay the business rates.

Invest in fledgling businesses

As well as helping out new small businesses or businesses which are struggling to make a profit, when it comes to business rates – how about actually giving some financial support to small businesses, in the form of grants or low interest loans?

How much money did business link cost over the years? What if instead of spending this money just to tell business people where they can go for advice (and, Google does that free!), this money had been invested into small businesses instead to help to encourage growth?

For instance, small business grants could be offered to small business people who show that they have a business plan with merit, to encourage growth, in return for the business making a commitment to re-invest a minimum percentage of it’s turn over back into the growth of the business.

Personally, I think if this was done, we would see a big increase in the growth of small businesses – which would have a very positive effect on the growth of the economy.

Change in VAT

For a start, I’d recommend that they stop messing with the rate of VAT, as it creates so much work & cost every time they do this, which puts a financial strain on businesses.

Secondly, if I was having anything to do with running the country (which I’m glad I’m not!!) I would look at changing the VAT system.

I’m not going to pretend that I have the experience & intelligence to suggest how the VAT system should be changed, but I think the government would benefit from getting some of the countries best business accountants & business people in a room together to discuss a better way to work the VAT system which puts less strain on small businesses.

For instance, the current annual turn over rate at which businesses are required to be VAT registered is very small when applied to certain higher turn over – smaller profit margin businesses, and for these kinds of businesses, the hassle & cost involved in having to collect VAT, is a strain that small businesses could do without!

Advice & Support for small businesses

When a small business person approaches the local council for help, there should be a system by which this is passed to someone who can actually offer help – rather than the letter just being binned or ignored!

Again, how a system like this is put in place would require some thinking by people who have a lot more experience & business brains than I have! But here’s a bit of an idea..

I’m assuming that business link was put together by thinking along these lines, but obviously that didn’t work.

How about a local government scheme in which local successful business people are selected to answer such shouts for help with real help & advice from people who’ve been there themselves?

Exactly how this would work & what the incentive would be to business people who have the skills & experience to help, I don’t know, but again – I think something like this would be worth talking about.

For example, when my wife wrote to the council to protest at the way the business rates being requested was choking any chance of the business being able to turn a profit, what if the person who received this, instead of ignoring it (which they did! The letter wasn’t even acknowledged!) passed this to one of the experienced business people appointed, who could then reply by letter or phone, to offer some real help & advice – if this happened, who knows, perhaps my wife’s small business & many other small businesses who’ve shut their doors recently, would have been able to turn things around.

Club penguin money maker??

If you’re looking for a real money maker, then see : “The Lost Secret to Fast Wealth – How to Make Ten Thousand in 7 Simple Steps“ or my recent post legitimate ways to make extra money.

Anyway – if for some weird reason you’re loioking for club penuin money rather than real money – then carry on

I was doing a quick Google keywords scan around the make money search terms – and found “Club Penguin Money Maker” had around 50,000 searches per month!!??

What the…..

This is a Disney online virtual world game, or “MMORPG” (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) – so this is people spending their time & efforts trying to make play money online…

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OK – this play money can – it seems – be redeemed for club penguin merchandise – but still, during a time of economic downturn, it really surprises me that this number of people are searching for how to make pretend money – surely it would make far more sense to search for ways to make REAL money online?

Anyone reading this who is actually looking to make penguin money – can you reply to this post, let us know what is the motivation for this? Is it escapism, is it just a bit of recreational fun – or is it some completely addictive game which is sucking you out of your real life & immersing you into a pretend universe?

If the latter is the case I’m not making fun of anyone – many of us have been there. In my late teens & early 20′s I got addicted to online shoot em up’s, like half life counter strike & delta force, I spent hours & hours wasting my life with that. Then not long after that I tried a role player game called Avalon (which I don’t think is around anymore) at first I couldn’t understand how anyone could get into it, so I played it just out of interest, and a few months later I realised I was completely hooked, playing until 4 AM sometimes, and part of this game involved trying to make money by panning for gold & so on.

If you’re reading this & it’s just a bit of fun for you, then no worries – but if you think you realy are addicted to an online role player game, to the point where it’s taking over your life – you should consider getting some help just in the same way you would if you were addicted to anything else.

If you’ve been in the internet marketing or direct marketing game for long enough, you’ll be very familiar with the name Ted Ciuba. He’s been around for quite some time, in fact he was probably one of the first big names in web marketing.

You’ll know him for his book Mail & grow rich,  the new think and grow rich , Auto Pilot Riches , and any number of his other successful projects.

Teds story is what is often classed as “Rags To Riches”, however anyone ever classed as such, often will laugh at this, as only they & their close & family & friends will be aware of the years of effort & keeping on keeping on that is back of what many people see as an overnight success story.

Personally I have been studying the secret of success for probably 12 years, since I first picked up a copy of think & grow rich by Napoleon Hill – and then the cassette series – and various other books & programmes since then including the science of getting rich by Wallace D Wattles, many other books & audio programs including Brian Tracy, Dr Wayne Dyer, Mark Joyner, Anthony Robbins – and more authors than I possibly have time to list…..

I’m still studying, and anyone who’s only just starting off on this path to achievement of their definite major purpose, just be warned that it’s not all roses ahead – from personal experience & the experience of most other people I know who’ve achieved anything noteworthy, there are many tough learning experiences that usually need to be experienced first. I’m only just out of the thick of very steep learning curves, and if you have read Napoleon hill’s life work, you’ll remember what he said about being ready – I thought I was ready when I first picked up the book, but I realise now that I wasn’t – I had a lot of things to go through to make me ready.

Anyway – one of the things I’ve been very aware of recently is the importance of putting everything into everything we do, and doing everything regardless of how seemingly unimportant or trivial to the best of our ability – and “going the extra mile”.

Some of the most fundamental aspects of becoming successful in any calling, be it in a job, or a business, or just in general – are so simple & often so commonly discussed, that we can ignore them, to our own peril. Recently as I’ve been re-visiting various chapters of  books I’ve ready numerous times, including the works of Napoleon Hill & Wallace D Wattles, I’ve “co-incidentally” happened to continually be re-introduced to  lessons in the importance of going the extra mile, and carrying out every action in an efficient manner.

Wallace D Wattles puts it very simply, when he describes that success in anything is about doing more things in an efficient manner & less things in an inefficient manner. He notes that many people put little effort into everything they do, especially the seemingly unimportant things – whereas successful people may actually do less things, but they do more of them efficiently.

Napoleon Hill tends to teach with stories, and in his many stories are examples of successful people being those who have put real effort into doing everything, regardless of how seemingly unimportant, with a lot of effort & great level of attention to detail. In many cases in the stories he discusses, there’s actually very little extra actual effort involved, it’s more about the thought behind it. For example he discusses the story of how someone rose to success by refusing to leave the office until the boss left – he wanted to show the boss that he was serious about putting as much time & effort in as his boss was. One day, his boss buzzed him & asked him to please bring him a pencil – he didn’t take him one – he took 2 pencils, and sharpened them both and took them in to his boss. It impressed the boss that while most employees do less than they’re asked, here was an employee with the initiative to go the extra mile, and do things to a better & more efficient standard than requested – and this one act, which took him virtually no extra physical effort, to stay behind a bit later each day, and the sharpening of just one extra pencil, was the starting point which got this man on the path which eventually lead to him achieving his goals.

Today – I’ve seen an example of this very same principle in action, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that what I have witnessed, is part of the secret to Ted Ciuba’s success.

I’ve used Ted Ciuba’s Auto Pilot Riches (not an affiliate link) for a number of years, to manage the sale of my SEO Ebook , to manage my affiliate programs & my mailing lists, and I’ve always found APR to be a fantastic service, I’ve literally never had a problem.

Recently however – I did something silly…. I accidentally snapped my Visa debit card, when taking it out of my wallet!! Oops! So they gave me a new card – but it has a new number, and  I failed to let APR know.

For some weird reason, I didn’t get the emails from APR to tell me that I needed to enter my new card number – I know now that they were sent – but for whatever reason I didn’t get them – and when I tried to go into APR recently to send out an email to my database, I got a message telling me there was a problem….

So I sent a bit of a snotty email, letting them know I wasn’t happy about this, I had figured out what I’d done wrong but I was annoyed that they’d not informed me – and, literally minutes later, I receive a direct email from Ted Ciuba, ensuring me that this will have been some kind of a misunderstanding, that he sincerely does want to keep my business – and he’s onto it, and will get back to me.

This in & of itself is unusual, most leaders of successful businesses do not get their hands dirty like this by responding to support or complaint emails – they just let their staff handle it, but the fact  I got a reply so quickly, from Ted himself, really showed me straight away that there was something different about the way Ted works.

If we all scan our previous experiences with suppliers of products and services, and in particular any times where there have been problems, many of us will report that it wasn’t the fact that there was a problem which upset us, and caused us to take our business elsewhere, but it was the way that the problem was handled – and the fact that we had to do all the chasing to get the problem sorted out, and that the company really didn’t seem to care. Sound familiar?

Well this was completely different, Ted followed the problem up himself, he then followed up with me to tell me what was happening, and to let me know that his support staff were trying to get hold of me – he sent me the details of when they’d tried to call me, and I checked my missed call records & realised that actually the minute he got on to them, they were trying to get hold of me to fix the problem, not only this but he was now chasing up with me, to explain what was happening, and to let me know that his support team were trying to reach me, and would continue to do so, and he also gave me various different contact details for the support team so that I could also get a hold of them directly.

His contact with me was impeccable, professional, courteous, friendly – and with the attitude of “The client is always right,” which is something I have very rarely encountered.

Every act he carried out in this case, was an efficient one, very much in the spirit of going the extra mile, and this reminded me of everything I had learned about acting in this way – and I can now see how Ted has achieved the things that he has.

Lets be honest, most of us see problems – especially problems with customers / clients – as a pain in the rear, and if we can delegate someone else to deal with this crap, most of us will take that option & not get our hands dirty with it. Most of us see issues like this as a waste of our time, and the majority of us do not quickly jump into providing as high level help & support as possible in the spirit of going the extra mile & making the customer / client feel that they are not in the wrong, and that we very much appreciate their business….

Most of us don’t act in “The Certain Way” as Wallace D Wattles puts it, which is the reason that many of us struggle to “fill our present place” – which makes it very difficult for us to rise to bigger & better things.

Ted, clearly does. It’s quite obvious from my dealings with Ted Ciuba, that he is living & breathing proof that this philosophy is correct – and that success isn’t about lucky breaks, or stumbling upon a gold mine, but instead it’s about conducting ourselves in the way that people like Napoleon Hill & Wallace D  Wattles were so adamant were the secrets to success.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe strongly in the power of the law of attraction, and I don’t think for a minute that our physical action is the only important factor to achievement – but I also believe that although we attract things into being by thinking in a certain way, the bringing of these things into reality is only achieved when our actions meet our thoughts, and we actually start to ACT in a certain way which matches our thinking.

So – the point of all this? Take a lesson from Ted Ciuba, put everything into everything you do. Go the extra mile. Treat everyone in business twice as well as they expect to be treated, give people in use value twice as much as they give you in cash value, focus on doing everything you do in an efficient manner. It’s not about how many things we do, but it’s about how many things we do well.

If you do this – you can’t fail to be successful in the long-run.

I’m learning from this by reviewing the way I do everything,  the way I treat my clients, and how much value I deliver to every person I do business with, and I am now committed to doing everything as efficiently as humanly possible.

Thanks  for the lesson Ted!

So you’re a warrior forum member & you’re looking for the Tiffany Dow review of Bring The Fresh?

You’ll have heard that Tiffany, someone well known on the warrior forum, and someone who likes to write & is obviously good at it – had got her claws in to Kelly Felix & Mike Long’s new product “Bring The Fresh”.

I’ll be frank – I think Tiffany is completely wrong. I know what it is, many on the warrior forum hated what “The Rich Jerk” was about, it was obnoxious, and what was even more annoying for many is that Kelly successfully concealed his identity for such a long time, and made so much money out of something that many “holier than thou” marketers really got a bee in their bonnet about. Personally, while other marketers were seething & calling TRJ all names under the sun, I was curious, I bought it – and I found the content refreshing! While other products at the time were getting longer & longer, and were often full of fluff and regurgitated info, not to mention bonus after bonus after bonus, all adding to “info overload” that was rampant at the time – The Rich Jerk was different, it was nuggets of valuable info and at the time I’d been involved in web marketing for a good few years, I didn’t consider myself a noob. One of the things I learned made a BIG difference to my affiliate earnings, I literally applied it straight away & it made a MASSIVE difference, I can’t remember the exact increase in income but it was something like nine times or ten times.

I don’t recommend The Rich Jerk now, by the way – it had it’s day, but I DO recommend that you watch whatever Kelly Felix is doing! Why – because, this is someone who is really doing the stuff that he’s sharing – regardless of whether or not he’s loved by certain members of the warrior forum (who I predict will change their tune when they actually take the time to properly review Bring The Fresh, instead of just making assumptions and releasing frustrations which were really intended for “The Rich Jerk” – who was completely imaginary, I can tell you for a fact Kelly is nothing like that, I met him at the time that TRJ was in full swing, and you couldn’t have got much further from the persona of the Rich Jerk, than Kelly).

Update: As predicted, Tiffany has now changed her tune, after possibly realizing that actually Kelly Felix isn’t the Rich Jerk at all, and that this was just very clever brand creation. In fact, she seems to have completely changed her tune, and is now promoting bring the fresh! I wish I’d have put money on this!! Don’t get me wrong, I can understand why some people on the Warrior Forum had it in for Kelly, but it’s based on the wrong thing, some of the Warrior bunch just didn’t get what TRJ was all about – although many are starting to now, thanks to Bring The Fresh.

What I mean by this, is that most of the hit web marketing products are released by people who make their money from product launches & their massive lists – most of the products from the Guru’s are not them sharing what they’re doing, it’s stuff that is being designed to sell to you, there’s a big difference. Kelly is different, the stuff he comes out with is the stuff he uses. Yes, he’s used black hat tactics in the past – and he’s completely honest about that in bring the fresh, but Kelly shares what he does, and what he does isn’t just in the web marketing arena – that is, he’s not telling you to make money by selling web marketing related stuff, he consistently makes money in various other accessible niches, and he shows you how to do the same.

Watch the video below for more info.

Struggling for Christmas gift idea’s – have you ever thought of photo cushion covers?

Photo cushions are a fantastic Christmas gift idea, affordable, usable & meaningful due to the image that you use to personalise the cushion with.

Photoimageart in Poynton, Stockport Cheshire – are still able to produce printed photo cushions up until Friday 17th for pre-christmas delivery, or up to Tuesday 21st if you can collect from the print studio in Poynton, Stockport.

Merry Christmas!

Did you know – you can turn your photographs, images & artwork into superb quality canvas prints – and have them hanging on your wall, within a couple of days?

Many people struggle at Christmas with what to get as gifts for friends & family, especially for older people, parents & grandparents.

Canvas prints are the perfect gift, as they turn personal memories into wall art.

This isn’t about SEO, but I’ve just discovered a REALLY handy trick for lost passwords.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who does this – I forget login passwords, as I save then in my browser – but then they’re hidden, so if I need the pass for another machine, or to give to someone else, I have a problem.

I’ve just discovered that there is a code you can use to unhide the hidden characters.

When you’re on the login page, and you can see the automatically generated password with the characters replaced by stars – paste this code into the address bar:

javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = “”; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j<F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; for (i=0; i<f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == “password”) s += f[i].value + “\n”; } } if (s) alert(“Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n” + s); else alert(“There are no passwords in forms on this page.”);})();

And, hey presto – hidden passwords revealed!

This is a recent pic of  internationally renown mystic Uri Geller

Uri Geller with Vernon Kay, at the recent filming of celebrity family fortunes.

How old is Uri Geller?

Go on, have a guess……

Look at Uri with the pic of Vernon Kay above, how old would you say he looks? Late 40′s, early 50′s?

He’s 62! (at the time of writing)

And no, it’s not photo airbrushing – Uri looks the same face to face.

I’m in my early 30′s now, whatever his secret to looking young is – I want to know it, so I can look as well as he does when I’m in my 60′s!

So I asked him what is the Uri Geller secret to looking young?

Uri answered:

“Thanks Kev!

The secret is simple, built from many elements:

1. Be a vegetarian
2. don’t smoke
3. keep away from smokers / smoky environments
4. drink one small glass of red wine a day
5. take multiple vitamins
6. do  aerobics exercise  at least 3 times a week
7. take at least one tablespoon of virgin olive oil a day
8. keep out of strong sun but get 10 minutes of sun shine for vitamin D
9. take 1000 milligrams of Fish oil every day
10. try to smile a lot
11. be kind to others
12. look cool
13. be clean
14. try to live in a rural area for less pollution.

You can’t stop the ageing process but you can slow it down!

Love Uri”

So, there you go – the Uri Geller secret to looking young!

Read the rest of this entry

Well ok, maybe slightly

So just to confirm, I am in fact SEO consultant Kevin Lewis, and NOT west life member Brian Mcfadden, I’m a much better SEO consulatant than Brian, probably a better singer too but please don’t ask me to prove that! .

One of my clients, photoimage art in Manchester, who produce  high quality photo canvas prints thought it would be funny to take my head & put it on Brian Mcfaddens body, in this pic with Kerry Katona.

I wanted to show you this just as an example of the clever things that can be done to photos.

Clever isn’t it?

This isn’t all they can do, they can even perform what they call”Virtual Cosmetic Surgery” taking away signs of aging, gettig rid of spots or blemishes, they can even complete images that have been cut off by poor photography.

See their canvas prints help & tips page for more info.