I’m writing this post because I’ve been thinking about LUCK lately and whether we can affect it (or not).

I’m definitely not an expert on the subject – but through some of my observations I’ve got a few questions & scenarios I’d like to share and I’m hoping I may get some answers and viewpoints from you.

So what exactly is luck?
According to Dictionary.com it’s “the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person’s life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities”

My first real prolonged experience of this good ‘force’ was as a Fresher at University in Liverpool.
I seemed to have loads of luck on my side and was actually known by my housemates as “The Lucky *Manc”!
When we applied for student loans, mine came first, when we compared timetables for the semester I only had to attend class on Tuesdays and Thursdays (I had Monday, Wednesday and Friday off)! And when we were assigned our rooms in our campus house I got the best one at the top of our house.
Instead of finding a job in a pub or bar like everyone else I decided to ‘try my luck’ and invested my entire student loan into a weekly nightclub event.
It was a roaring success from the word ‘go’ and came with both financial and social ‘rewards’ :-)
Basically whenever I needed something it seemed to appear and this ‘Lucky Manc’ was on a roll.
But why was this?
Was it anything to do with the positive state of mind at the time? I mean I was seriously buzzing! When I’d finished school I had made the mistake of going straight into a dead end, boring job and this University life was complete heaven in comparison! And this newfound luck seemed to follow happiness and when people called me lucky it become a self-fulfilling prophecy, which made me even happier…
Don’t get me wrong it didn’t last forever, the ’student bubble’ did burst and I’ve had my serious knocks since then which have more than brought me back down to earth with a bump!
I do however still go through some very good patches.
So what causes these lucky patches?
Why do some people appear to get all the luck?
Where do the serious knocks come from?
I couldn’t possibly attempt to answer all of this in one blog even if I did know the answers but I will take a (very) brief look at some of the angles.

First of all let’s look at those self-confessed unlucky ones:

A new tenant recently moved into a property I own and I’ve noticed she uses very negative language and continuously puts herself down whenever I see her. She even warned me (just before she moved in) how unlucky she was. Great!
She is a very clever, sophisticated woman so why has she got this attitude? Has she been conditioned from an early age & developed a bad habit or has she had one too many knocks and lost some of her confidence? Or are the Gods just pissed off with her and she is destined to live an unlucky life? Who knows?
She was true to her word though: Within 10 hours of moving into the house the previously untarnished en-suite bathroom had flooded and subsequently ruined the carpet in the main bedroom.
Since then she has had a further leak in the other bathroom that was fixed but then came raging back twice as bad the following week. She has had frozen water pipes and a broken boiler and has only been living there for 2 months.
Did she attract this with her attitude or was it just bad luck? Did I attract her because of my attitude or is it just bad luck on my part? I was the one who had to pay for the fixes remember!

Over the last year, which has been a ‘testing’ year for many, I’ve explored this subject and I’ve tried to look at it from different viewpoints.
It’s a very tricky subject though and I definitely don’t want to go too deep but lets look at a few possibilities:

Bear with me, because I’m no psychologist or neurologist or any other ‘ist’ for that matter, but lets look at it from a purely scientific and logical level:

The human brain can (apparently) consciously assimilate 7 bits of information per second in average conditions – I think I remember reading this somewhere….
…If this is the case then it’s probably fair to say that if you are having a bad day, thinking negative thoughts & feeling pretty closed, then your brain will probably be less useful right?
…So lets say the brain only takes in 5 bits of information per second for that day, which means you would be missing around 172,000 bits of information.
So on a good day when your brain is thinking positive thoughts is totally open, alert and fully focussed it would have the opposite of the negative thoughts and retain more information than normal, right? So for this example let’s say 9 bits per second (again I read it somewhere). If this were true then a positive brain would take in about 350,000 more bits of information per day, which over a good week adds up to a lot of information.
So the law of ‘cause and effect’ states that if we do something (action) then we can expect a result. If this is the case then the positive brain would spot more opportunities, allowing it to be more creative, willing to ‘do’ more and be more communicative with others, which would ‘probably’ give the owner of the brain more confidence allowing them to ‘take more risks’, face fear and expand their comfort zone & thus expand their universe.
Also if we’re taking in more information then we are probably going to be making more informed decisions and therefore whatever we are doing will be done smarter and probably with more vigour, which means the result will probably be better & much more inspired.
When we are buzzing and in our flow things seem easier and results happen quicker and it could seem to people on the outside that we are luckier.

There has been a huge buzz around the ‘law of attraction’ over the last few years & people who believe in the law of attraction believe that if we are thinking and (more importantly) feeling on a certain frequency (positive or negative) then the universe will respond with results that match this frequency which in turn feed the thoughts & feelings which create results which match the frequency and so on and so forth….

This again is just another view of the (currently) inexplicable phenomenon of ‘luck’
I certainly don’t understand how we attract ‘bad’ things or ‘bad’ people into our lives (yet) and some of the atrocities that happen are just unfathomable but I do know that more good stuff happens to me when I’m open, inspired, focussed, alert, happy and most importantly: when I take action.
So why don’t I do all the above all of the time?
WHO KNOWS?
It’s definitely work in progress though! ;-)

*Manc is short for Mancunian – a dude from Manchester

In this video I explain how to utilise DNForum to sell domain names and cover:

- how to get attention with compelling thread titles

- How to drive more traffic, more views & ultimately more eye balls

- how to find specific domain buyers

- how to utilise the forum to flip web properties on other sites like Flippa

This video explains where to find great domain names on DN Forum

DNForum is a big old forum & it takes some getting used to so this video shows you the best places to look for those hidden gems!

It is the 2nd in a 3 part series

All above links to DNForum are affiliate links if you would prefer not to go via affiliate link click here

After losing 2 hours of work (due to my mac crashing) earlier in the week – on my supposed first blog post of the decade (about new my new years resolutions!!!) I decided to cool off for a few days. Whilst going about my usual perusal of DNForum I decided that people need to know about this little gold mine of information on domain names.
This Video is my (revised) first blog post of the decade & is the first in a 3 part series about the domain name forum and gives an overview of what goodies can be found inside.

Part 2 of the series will be on how to find great domain names on DNForum.

All above links to DNForum are affiliate links if you would prefer not to go via affiliate link click here

This video explains why Dynamite Domains are easy pickings during the Christmas Holidays.

I’ve included 2 awesome Page Rank 4 domains that should be low hanging fruit over this festive period – One has a DMOZ listing and both would be great for content cluster sites.

This is my first video for the blog so please give me feedback so I can improve them over time.

There are various ways to check whether a domain has a fake page rank and the simplest one I use is Google’s info operator

Just type: info:www.domain.com into the search bar in Google and if the results show a different domain name then it is probably a fake.

This usually occurs because the domain name has been redirected to another domain with higher page rank.

See this fake PR6 below for a domain (www.voiceofthediabetic.org) – currently on 7 day auction sale with Godaddy.com :

It’s very disappointing to buy a fake and a lot of these get sold every day, both intentionally and unintentionally on the sellers behalf.

Nathan is looking to include this filter in the domain software we are developing.

I keep calling it “the software we are developing” because there is a little debate going on right now around the name of it. Watch this space!

What better day to do my first blog post than the week after the totally awesome Thirty Day Challenge Coming Home Seminar in Manchester! Hashed as #TDCHome on Twitter!

The dust is settling and our good friends from down under are back in the sunshine leaving a wet & cold Manchester behind.

It was a monumental weekend for me and although I spent a lot of it absolutely crapping myself about having to properly present for the first time on the Sunday I was able to take in some juicy nuggets throughout.

It wasn’t just a weekend of information though. It was a weekend of meeting and bonding with some fantastic people and a weekend I will remember for the rest of my life.

The event started on the Friday morning with Ed Dale warming up the audience nicely with some home truths about building & launching products. The theme – “don’t wait to produce the perfect product before getting it out of the door, just get on with it and stop p*ssing around!” – rang out loud in lot’s of ears whilst Donal, Nathan and I were caught sheepishly glancing at each other throughout. Hence me setting up this blog this week!

He did however stress that although you shouldn’t be hanging around procrastinating you shouldn’t be doing a half assed job either.! Mr Perfect (AKA Nathan Ridley) breathed a sigh of relief!

Ed doesn’t pull any punches and is able to deliver in a way that humbles even the feistiest of souls.

I felt totally reassured when he confessed he wasn’t a natural copywriter because I feel exactly the same. I now realise I just have to get on with it & practice if I’m to get any better.

The ultra bright Eugene Ware blew us away with a stunning presentation on Market Samurai. Wow! I thought I was utilising it well until I saw this! I didn’t realise it had so many great features.

I saw smoke coming from his keyboard as he typed like a robot on speed. It was worth coming to the event just to see this! He was mobbed like a superstar at lunch and the crowd was still 4 deep when I got back from lunch.

I was lucky enough to corner him for information in the evening.

Saturday saw the genius Dan Raine who didn’t let us down with his formidable strategies on PPC, Google local, dominating Ezine articles, silos, super cool Wordpress plugins developed by his lab in Manchester and all of this mixed with his uniquely colourful RaineMeister language.

Dan also kept us entertained in the evenings and could always be found lining up shots at the bar!

Saturday night produced a fitful 3-hour sleep for me after a strong curry and the thought of presenting to an expectant audience first thing.

When I arrived to meet Donal and Nathan, I was later told I looked a lighter shade of grey.

Donal reassured me by saying, “don’t worry mate the whole weekend only hinges on your presentation so no pressure”

I was pleased to see Jon Dean & Dan Raine were missing in action when I arrived – I don’t know whether I could have managed their heavy p*ss taking at this delicate stage of the morning .

Nez and Dom were both there to give me some reassuring words of wisdom though.

The rest was a blur apart from the wonderful Flaming Lacer providing me with rescue remedy and giving me a big hug before I went on stage. I think this may have been the difference that took me from a jibbering wreck to fairly calm in the space of 5 minutes. Are you sure it was just rescue remedy?

My presentation started a little shaky but wasn’t noticed by the crowd (apparently) and before I knew it, I had hit halfway where the master developer Nathan Ridley hit the stage to give a non-pitch sneak preview of our new (still in early development stages) domain software. This went down very well and I was soon into the Q and A session.

Dan Raine and Jon Dean did the walk of shame at about 1.30pm and Ed came back on stage at 2pm staying with the ‘buying and selling web properties’ theme taking us on a detailed tour of Flippa. He was on a roll and had us falling around laughing with his running commentary on peoples ‘handy copywriting skills’. He also spotted some fantastic buys and I’m sure a few people in the room scooped them up as soon as they got home.

The hot seats every evening were shear class as it allowed more Q & A but more importantly allowed peoples sites and businesses to be dissected by the world’s elite and instead of scurrying off diva style afterwards all of the presenters stayed and mingled throughout.

That’s one of the things people love about Ed, Dan & crew – their down to earth attitude as they present themselves as peers NOT superiors.

Other industry gems came to learn and mingle with the crowd. The famous Mindel Brothers  from Wordtracker were there every day, Stompernet ‘s Super Affiliate David Wilkinson graced us with his 15 year old presence on the weekend (he was at school on the Friday!), the UK’s queen of Voice Over Lisa Hartwell and her Marketing guru friend Layo travelled the length of the country to be there, not to mention rock legend Phil Mason.

It was a weekend of pure education with no pitching. The presenters offered 1 on 1 advice and people didn’t leave with any unanswered questions

The Sunday evening finished with a few well deserved beers in the Marriot bar  where I was honoured to be congratulated by Gury Bob for a good presentation. This meant a lot  – I know he doesn’t hand these out willy nilly.

I was tucked up in bed feeling all warm and fuzzy inside before I knew it and now looking forward to the February Coming Home 2 session in Melbourne.

This looks like it will be even bigger than Manchester and I will be divulging info on this in the coming days/weeks.

Check out the mega line up here