Anyone who’s making money on the web right now will tell you the toughest bit is getting started.

- Where do you begin?
- Which guru do you follow?
- How much do you spend?
- How do you avoid the cowboys and vultures from spanking you and charging you big dollar for the pleasure?

These obstacles and frustrations were removed for good back in 2005 when Ed Dale created The Challenge (Formally known as The 30 Day Challenge).

Although the first step of making money on the web is a really exciting time it’s also a time when we feel most vulnerable so Ed being Ed decided to create an information masterpiece, combining easy to learn teaching techniques with cutting edge Web Marketing strategies mixed into a pot to form one of the biggest Online Web Marketing Communities in the world.

It’s gone from strength to strength and to make it a complete no brainer for wannabe marketers or veterans (looking for a smart refresher) –  the whole experience is completely free.

The challenge has been so much of a success it’s the first ever internet marketing company to list on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Ed’s partner in crime is the super geek, sex pistols fanatic Dan Raine who likes to teach high level technical stuff which means there’s also plenty in there for the intermediate to advanced users as well.

Ed Dale & Dan Raine

Ed’s a big picture guy who spots trends 2 years before they happen whilst Dan’s one of those annoying people who’s able to code in his sleep, writes beautiful fluid and seductive sales copy whilst sat at the bar drinking with mates, test strategies to the nth degree and probably hacks Superpower Secret Service Agencies when he’s bored. I can’t confirm the last bit but you know the type!

This year the whole Challenge team met just outside Melbourne in February (following the successful Coming Home Conference) to discuss the 2010 Challenge. After presenting at the conference I was lucky enough to be invited to this meeting and see one of the most passionate teams on the internet.
It became clear that Ed would rather not run the challenge unless people succeed and it was decided that 30 days was just not long enough due to market shifts & Google’s algo updates so the team decided to change the whole structure after 5 years of it’s then current form.

And on the 7th day Ed created The Challenge…

This change is very clever and has started off very smooth:

Although a longer process (I’m not complaining), hence the name and brand change it’s split into 7 simple modules, with each module lasting 7 days and a 7 day break between each module.

We’ve just finished week one, end of the first module where Guru Bob and the Market Samurai team introduced the concept of a ‘market’, a ‘niche’ and a ‘micro niche’, how to assess traffic and competition and how to assess the commercial viability using the awesome Market Samurai tool (which again is free through the challenge period).

This week is a 7 day break allowing members to either go over the content again, just let everything sink in until the next module, or get on the forum to compare experiences and strategies.
The 7 day break concept also allows people who start the challenge late to catch up – my sister in law for instance is starting the challenge this week and people starting later in the year can go as fast or as slow as they like as always.

I was lucky enough to stumble upon the Challenge via my ex business partner in it’s early days and I took to it like a duck to water, I mean how can you not? It’s simple, straightforward and elegant.

It was my starting point in internet marketing and has taught me the basics and the fundamentals and has also allowed me to use my skills as a domainer and lead generator to make massive profits online. It has offered me a community to fall back on when times are tough and helped me push through some massive comfort zones.

I can’t recommend it enough so you’ve not started this years challenge get signed up here and join in the fun. Watch out for me in module 2 next week!

One of the most (in)famous domains on the planet: Sex.com is up for grabs again.
Anyone fancy chipping in to buy it? :-)

Sex.com was one of the springboards to lift the domaining industry out of obscurity, due to the crazy journey it’s been on and the amount of money involved in that journey…

…first registered along with other A-list domains like Jobs.com, Housing.com & Autos.com by Gary Kremen in the early nineties, SEX.com was then ‘allegedly acquired by fraudulent means’ by Stephen Michael Cohen about a year after Kremen had registered it.

Cohen had just been released from Jail for other fraudulent activities and swiped the lucrative domain name by forging a letter from Kremen’s company stating Kremen had been fired and the firm no longer needed the domain and was giving it to Cohen. Nice guy!

Network Solutions the registrar accepted the letter and transferred the domain to Cohen who then went on to make a cool $100 million from the domain over the next 5 years. The domain was apparently receiving 25 million visits a day in it’s heyday!

Kremen eventually got the domain back and the courts ordered Cohen to pay Kremen $65 Million for loss of earnings and compensation. The courts were unable to put a figure on other ‘perks’ associated with the business! ;-) Cohen did what most good upstanding citizens would do and fled to Tijuana in Mexico without paying a penny!
He was then arrested in Mexico for immigration violations and has since been released and is still appealing the case.

Sex.com has since been sold to Escom LLC in 2006 for $14 million but earlier this year it was ordered to be sold at a foreclosure auction which never happened due to technical reasons and is now up for public sale on Sedo.com who are the exclusive brokers for the domain.

I wonder where the journey of Sex.com will go next, how will the saga continue?

If you’re interested in purchasing the domain, you better raid your piggy bank coz I hear Sedo are expecting around 8 figures for the domain – you can put in your offers here.

Maybe if we get enough people to chip in we could put in a cheeky offer of $5m and see what happens ;-)

Most people wonder what the future of Internet Marketing will hold for them & whilst in San Diego recently the strangest thing happened which took me on a journey I’ll never forget and gave me a glimpse of the IM Future…

…I presented at Ed Dale’s Awesome Coming Home Conference at the Hard Rock Hotel and then stayed on an extra week to go to Frank Kern and Trey Smith’s List Control. This was held at the same venue which was also pretty god damn awesome! I even got to hook up with’The Wolf of Wall Street’ - Jordan Belfort and his other half Anne who I’ve spoken to on the phone but never actually met.

Between the gigs there were loads of crazy parties but the craziest was on my last night at the Hard Rock Hotel…
…Following Frank’s after party I was on my way back to my room when I met an old professor in the elevator who had a time machine & invited me on a journey to the future of Internet Marketing.

Strange proposition, I know… but I was feeling frisky so gave it a whirl!

It worked! Seriously… I was able to travel to the future and am now back to report my findings with hard photographic proof of what it looks like.

Guys I warn you – THIS IS NOT PRETTY!

To be precise I was able to travel 22 years ahead to the year 2032. Don’t ask me why he chose this year but he did!
Apparently we only had one day, which I’m sure was a scarcity tactic, to get me in the confined space of the machine, but it worked a treat and I was in before he could say “Flux Capacitor”!

We blasted into the future and landed in the middle of an Internet Marketing Conference:

Year: 2032

Venue: Hard Rock Hotel – San Diego

Event: Challenge Control! (See what I did there!…)

I managed to gleen as much information as I could and gathered loads of ‘facts’ of what happened between 2010 and 2032. It’s pretty shocking I must warn you!

Here’s my report written from 2032:

Ed Dale:
Ed is still the undisputed head of the Melbourne IM Mafia and 30DC Inc is now the biggest Global IM Company. It received a hostile takeover by Steve Jobs in 2020 and there were rumours that Ed’s love for Apple made him an easy walkover. Ed settled for huge amounts of stock in Apple with a place on the board and eventually moved to Apple HQ where he now actually lives with his family. Yep he lives in the Apple HQ compound where he is said to be as happy as a pig in ….!

…He’s got uninterrupted access to all of their product line and hasn’t actually left Apple HQ in 5 years now and just sends one of his ‘iDroids’ to present so I was unable to get a picture of him.

I did get the following picture of his iDroid though:

Ed Dale’s iDroid

Frank Kern:
Frank now owns the whole of La Jolla in San Diego and was named Mayor of San Diego in 2020. That’s when the crazy parties stopped and he settled down. This lifestyle change, mixed with a few Californian ‘nips and tucks’ is the reason he has aged so well and is still the ‘Golden Balls Bombshell’ of Internet Marketing.
Here’s a picture of him in 2032:

Frank Kern

I’m sure you’ll agree – Frank’s looking pretty good seeing as he’s lived in the fast lane with the rich and famous over the last couple of decades. He’s showing some lines on his forehead and has a few spare tyres round his midriff but apart from that he’s still a head turner!
The event featured the following presentations:
- Hologram Boss by Andy Jenkins: Awesome presentation but we didn’t get to see him coz he sent his hologram instead! It was so cool watching a hologram of Andy strutting round the stage. He’s apparently still rockin the town and has aged fairly gracefully since finding God in 2018 but like I say we didn’t get to see him in the flesh and the hologram moved so quickly we couldn’t get a good pic I’m afraid.

Andy Jenkins Hologram

- HV2 Control – Frank Kern and Trey Smith: Amazing show where they wowed the audience on how to control other peoples second versions of themselves (Human Version 2) on mass! HV2 is the new advanced  version of the iDroid which is still in alpha so these guys are way ahead of their time. Trey didn’t show up and just sent his HV2. He doesn’t appear in public much anymore due to his break up with Paris Hilton in 2028, which was a messy affair and left poor Trey harassed by the paparazzi, bless him! More about Paris in a bit…

- Droid Force – John Reese: John sent one of his droids to present and a few more as part of the stage show. It contained awesome info and was very liberating to know that you can run your business using energy free droids. He sent a live holographic message whilst island hopping in Greece before his trip to Mars. Nice!

John Reese Hologram

- Thought Streaming – John Carlton: John didn’t attend coz he wanted to demonstrate his new technique called ‘Thought Streaming’, which is basically John Streaming his thoughts into our minds whilst on the other side of the world. It was a 5 minute totally silent presentation with a 5 second pitch, but boy was it persuasive! Everyone in the room rushed the stage to buy a copy of his next product, even Stan Dahl his business partner needlessly bought one. Freaky!

- Neuro Samurai – Eugene Ware: Eugene allowed his iDroid to present which gave a stunning performance of advanced Neuro Marketing techniques predicting and measuring peoples ‘thought energy’ waves. He now heads up Global Samurai Inc part of the Fortune 500.

He showed up at the event and has aged fairly well since he gave up pepsi max in 2015:

Eugene Ware

- Dan Raine – Underground Domination: Dan didn’t make an appearance. He’s lived in an underground bunker for the last 7 years and has run his global empire from there, hence the title of his presentation. Dan is apparently one of the biggest backers of Americas largest underground city: ‘Underworld’. He has bought himself a 500,000 Sq Mtr cave (with entertainment plot) on Sunless Boulevard.
The presentation was as stunning as ever and Dan shared some of his techniques and strategies on how to hack into & control other peoples droids and holograms. Sweet!

- Antique Domain Investment Strategies – Kenny Goodman: Very interesting presentation on how antique domain names are now being collected by major museums and exhibitions and go for Billions. T’was nice to see that Future Kenny owns some of the worlds top domains but I had to keep totally out of view from the older me to avoid any kind of Time Paradox – which on all accounts could have had devastating consequences for the universe and beyond! James Schramko has the biggest collection of antique domains, with 10 million in total – Frickin Hoarder!

The professor got a sneak photo of me and as you can see I haven’t aged very well.

Kenny Goodman

This is mainly due to going back into the nightclub business. Leslie Rohde, Dan Thies and future me now own the biggest Virtual Nightclub (VN) chain in the world, Jason Moffatt owns the second biggest and as ever was in high spirits at the event. JMo still has no fixed abode and has been travelling now for 22 years!

Leslie couldn’t make the gig coz he doesn’t ever leave the VN space – he says he only feels safe & happy there! He sent his hologram though which did a stunning presentation on how he mastered the female algorithm, which he’s called it FSO – Female Search Optimisation.

Leslie’s physical body now lives in a cabana by the pool on the 4th floor of the Hard Rock Hotel. Apparently he sometimes opens the door for room service but we just didn’t have time to try that out!

Here’s a picture of me, Leslie & Dan Raine in Leslie’s favourite spot on the 4th floor back in 2010 before he had released FSO to the world:

Kenny, Leslie, Dan

Marty Rozmanith – Droid Direct – Marty wowed the audience with his new tool – Droid Direct which allows you to upload your Droids onto the national network in minutes rather than hours. It also allows you to upload other Droids voices and actions. Nice! Marty has aged ok but is showing quite a few lines on his forehead.

Marty Rozmanith

We missed Paul Colligan, Bill Glazer and Brendon Burchard present unfortunately. Paul’s iDroid was heard heckling at the back of the room though!

There’s a few other IM legends who have partied a little too hard since 2010 and passed their ‘sell by date’, the following pictures prove it.

Check Michelle MacPhearson just before a hot seat session:

Michelle MacPhearson

Michelle was one of the hottest chicks in Internet Marketing back in the glory days of 2010, but the years of partying with her younger Bro – Dan have proved to take their toll.

Dan married Paris Hilton in 2030 and they’ve both surprisingly settled down now and become ‘Born again Christians’!
Lynn Terry and Caro McCourtie who were also on the 2010 hot list prove that the fast lane lifestyle just doesn’t pay off. Check their pics here:

Lynn Terry

Caro McCourtie
Donal Doherty is now the sole owner of Guinness. You can see all those late nights in Dublin all over his face:

Donal Doherty

Remember Pete ‘Man Hunk’ Williams? OMG I hope you guys are ready for this…

Pete Williams
… As you can see his excessive lifestyle has totally back fired on him and when I asked him whether it was worth it, he gave me a very slow and slurred: “OH YEH BABY!” – He seemed happy enough and had no regrets.

Nez (Andrew Nesbitt) has calmed down on the Southern Comfort and has started drinking Manchester tap water. This combo has aged him fairly gracefully – see below

Nez

How could I complete a report without giving the organiser of the event a mention. Robert Somerville flew round like a blue arse fly on speed – to create an amazing event. Well his iDroid did! Here’s a pic:

GuruBob’s iDroid

GuruBob didn’t actually show up in person – he now spends his days chillin and plottin on a paradise Island near Thailand. Good on him!

Signing off now….End of 2032 Report……
So what are your thoughts on the future of Internet Marketing?
Leave your comments below and I will ask the mad professor to deliver them to the future!

Remember to Retweet, ‘Facebook Like’ and Digg – I think the world needs to know what’s round the corner…

Taking the first step towards freedom and being your own boss is both daunting and scary – everyone who quits their job goes through it.

It is usually worth it though – working on your own terms can be one of the most rewarding, exciting and satisfying feelings in the world.

And it also gives you full control of how much money you take home at he end of the month, not to mention more time having fun with your friends and family!

The first step is the most important one and in this audio interview James Schramko explains how and why he made the huge life changing decision to give up a $300k salary (with 2 executive company cars, fuel card, travel abroad etc) and fire his boss!

Click here to listen to the full interview:

Although his cushy job gave him a nice lifestyle James explains how it didn’t give him the security he needed to sleep well at night. He had $1million of mortgage/loan debt, was constantly fretting about whether his job was safe (or not) and being controlled by employers was making him unhappy and miserable. Sound familiar?

He explains how having all your eggs in one basket – which is ultimately under someone else’s control (i.e. relying on your job) is a very risky business.

James wanted to plan his exit to precision and make sure he had a second income before he made his move so when his first information product launched and was netting him $1000 a day he knew the time had come.

Click here to listen how he did it:

He is now totally debt free, earns 7 figures annually, lives in a beautiful beach front home in Australia, spends lots of time with his family, has totally outsourced his life and works when he wants.

He walks the walk and is living the dream.

James is currently heavily involved in domain name acquisitions (he bought 300 in the last week alone!) and is building a huge online empire using his Domaining /Internet Marketing knowledge combined with his massive outsourcing power and during this interview he talks about his short term and long term strategies.

If you’re looking to quit your job or build an online empire then press play sit back and be prepared to be inspired!

Enjoy!

Click Here for More Information on James Schramko

Right Click (Save Link As..) here to download the full interview:

If you’ve ever struggled to be inspired to take the next step – whether that’s starting your online business or growing it, then find a quiet space and listen to this interview with Lynn Terry. She will show you how!

I watched Lynn on the hot seats at Ed Dale’s coming home conference in Melbourne and quite simply – she know’s her stuff!

Lynn has been involved in web businesses since the nineties and set up her fist business when she was just 23 and has since created an online empire to die for!

It wasn’t always easy though – Lynn’s had her fair share of hardship. She hit desperate times when she found herself on her own with 2 kids, living in a remote cabin with an eigth of a tank of gas in her car and $7 to her name!

She bounced back!

Click here to listen to the full interview and learn how.

Among many of the things we discussed Lynn explains how we must change our mindset because most of us are conditioned from an early age that we must go out there and get a job working for someone else (like everyone else!), but with the internet today it is so easy set up a business and make money online almost instantly, which makes these times very exciting indeed!

But you have to follow the right steps!

Click here to listen to the full interview and learn how Lynn has done it.

As always follow me on twitter or become a fan on facebook and I will keep you up to date on more interviews with Web Marketing’s Heavy Weights

Choosing the right domain name for your site can be a clincher or deal breaker when it comes to flipping your site so in the second in this series I interview one of the kings of website flipping Justin Brooke.

Justin has bought and sold hundreds of websites and teaches his methods around the world and during this interview we discuss domain selection, website flipping, .info’s (well his repulsion to them) & branding amongst other subjects

If you’re interested in Flipping web real estate then Justin has been there and done it many times and imparts his secrets during this interview

Click below to listen to the full interview:

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As always follow me on twitter or become a fan on facebook and I will keep you up to date on more interviews with Web Marketing’s Heavy Weights

If you are booking a dream vacation in the near future then it’s important you check my schedule before you travel and make sure I am no-where near your destination on the date you are set to go!

Seriously! I’ve talked about luck before in an earlier post and I consider myself pretty lucky and blessed but when it comes to dream trips my luck truly sucks.

I’ve been trying to plan a dream tropical vacation for quite some time now and each time I plan and book – an ‘act of God’ seems to scupper my plans.

I booked the Maldives in January 2005 where I planned to propose to Kate and our resort was squashed by the Tsunami on December 26^th (although the silver lining to this particular episode was that I went to Whistler snowboarding instead and proposed there :)

But I still wanted this dream holiday with white beaches and turquoise sea and when one of my best friends decided to get married later that year in Mexico I arranged a 2 week paradise break in a plush resort around his wedding.

We planned to arrive in early November and at the backend of October Hurricane Wilma made landfall and destroyed most of our resort.

Needless to say my friend postponed the wedding and changed venues: – Blackburn, Lancashire!

Fast forward to April 15^th 2010 (4 days before Kate and I decide to try our dream break again – this time in Sri Lanka) and most Northen European airports ground to a halt due to a Volcano Eruption in Iceland, spewing ash into the atmosphere.

It’s not looking good for Monday but fingers crossed we may just get there (please join me in a group wind dance over the next few days :)

These ‘acts of God’ seem to happen before I travel so I should be grateful for this and let’s face it if I don’t go it’s just an inconvenience – the truly unfortunate people are those directly affected by these events.

Everyone wants the killer website that makes a fast fortune and that’s why it’s critical to get as much advice from people who have been there, done it and bought the t-shirt so you can both learn from their mistakes and also benefit from their ingenious techniques and insider industry secrets.

So I have lined up a series of interviews with some of Internet Marketing’s Heavy Weight Elite.

They all have one thing in common which is very important to me:

- They are grounded, down to earth people who see value adding as their number 1 proiority

I’m going to start the series with an audio interview with the awesome Crowd Mountain Queen Michelle MacPhearson who went from Admin Assistant to Web Marketing Supreme in the space of 5 years.

Click below to listen to the full interview:

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I interviewed Michelle last month and I have been so busy with the domain face launch that I just haven’t had the time to post it until now.

Michelle tells it how it is and has revolutionalised the leveraging of social media properties for SEO amongst many other things.

She is one of those rare people who’s number 1 priority is to give great value and is known as one of the nicest people in internet marketing. Seriously, just listen to the interview and you will understand why!

She has made some mistakes along the way, bought close to a thousand domain names and started her internet marketing career promoting forklift trucks!

You can get more information on Michelle at Michelle Macphearson and Crowd Mountain (if you want to download her Free SEO software that tells you where you should be spending your time getting backlinks – in addition to your own booster sites), it does require an optin.

Neither of the above links are affiliate links. In other words, I don’t get paid. I just think Michelle is someone you should pay attention to and grab all she has to offer when you can.

As always follow me on twitter and I will keep you up to date on more interviews with Web Marketing’s Heavy Weights

Click below to listen to the full interview:

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After speaking at Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge Coming Home Conference in Melbourne last month and prior to the launch of Domain Face I’ve had an influx of people asking me whether buying aged domain names for SEO value is seen by Google as white hat or grey hat, so I’m going to use this post to explore the subject.

I’ll use the term ‘aged’ throughout, which means the domain name is pre-owned and isn’t brand new/unregistered.

I buy aged domain names through various different avenues:

- Contacting owners direct
- Auctions – sold by owner
- Auctions – Pre-release sold by registrar before they delete
- Forums
- Brokers

So why do I buy aged domains?

Because I’m frustrated at the increasingly difficult task of sourcing brand new domains with the keywords or branding I’m looking for and also because I may need other SEO factors to beat my competition within a particular niche.

If I can find an older domain name, with a higher Google page rank, more quality back links and pages indexed than my competitors then I’m starting on a very good foot and it saves me slogging my guts out doing all the initial ground work needed to compete with them.

I will probably pay a small premium for this but it far beats the time, effort and money to do it from scratch! And it’s much cheaper than buying a full-blown website!

If I were to do an analogy I would compare domain names to plots of land:

- Unregistered/brand new domain names are bare, baron plots of land with NO Infrastructure

- Aged domain names with good SEO value are like a fertile plots of land with a Good Infrastructure ready to roll: foundations laid, water mains, electricity, gas, access roads, telephone/broadband lines etc

If you were building a property fast and had the choice of building on a plot of land with or without infrastructure, which would you choose?

So because I have found an easier way of doing things does it make it tainted in any way?

Not to me!

Why would renovating an old domain name (or website for that matter) be grey hat? Why would giving them a new lease of life rather than letting them wither away and die be wrong?

If it was seen as unethical then every website sale going forward would be included, which would mean Google would need to penalise a domain/website every time a domain was transferred or contact details were changed.

Can you imagine being the proud new owner of Business.com (reportedly sold for circa $340m) only to find as soon as the transaction was made and domain transferred to you, Google delists it?

Google has all the necessary measures in place to see whether a website should rank for a particular keyword or phrase so as long as you follow the usual ethical techniques once you buy the domain then the Google Gods should be ok with it.

Rule of thumb – Check the previous content of an aged domain on Archive.org and replace it with content that is equal or BETTER than was on previously in order to offer a good visitor experience. Do this as soon as possible.

As long as your intentions are good then when you purchase an aged domain name, you are buying it complete with the good will from the previous owner which along with many other possible values includes SEO value and if you keep the website in the spirit of it’s previously owner then Google ‘should’ be ok with it.

Always remember to carry out the usual due diligence when buying aged domains.

Happy domaining….

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