Every Little Helps

Companies Beware – Twitter Can Ruin You

On Saturday 7th January 2012, Minhee Cho tweeted this picture http://twitpic.com/84epmb to @papajohns after noticed on her receipt that she had been referred to as “Lady Chinky Eyes”.

Within a matter of hours the tweet had been retweeted thousands of times all over the globe and was spreading virally so fast, that by Saturday evening, Papa Johns issued this statement on their Facebook group wall “We were extremely concerned to learn of the receipt issue in New York. This act goes against our company values, and we’ve confirmed with the franchisee that this matter was addressed immediately and that the employee is being terminated. We are truly sorry for this customer’s experience.”

Mr Miyagi will be turning in his grave at this story

The Papa John facebook page has over 2 Million worldwide fans, and a quick search on Google News will show how much global news coverage that this story has achieved from all the major TV stations, Newspapers and Websites.

All this hugely negative national coverage, all started by a single Tweet about a huge company with a single employee who decided to write three words “Lady Chinky Eyes” – makes you realise how powerful Twitter can be !

If you want to follow me on Twitter then you can find me here @TheFrankPaul

iPhone 5 responsible for Daily Mail Knox Trial Story

The iPhone 5 has officially been revealed today and we have an exclusive picture of how it will look

The new iPhone 5 is powered by a combination of Comic Sans and the Android operating system. Steve Jobs has also stepped out of retirement to reveal the iPhone 5 and said at press launch “We are so excited about the launch of the new Comic Sans and Android powered phone. It has a brand new function which enables to see news stories before they actually happen. A number of you may have seen the story the Daily Mail ran on the Knox trial yesterday, and I can confirm that this was due to the power of the super computer we have built into the iPhone 5″

Jobs also added “You may find this hard to believe but I am actually saying this from tomorrow and what you are seeing is an illusion right before your very eyes”

Trading runs in the family. How my 6 year old daughter made a 1200% ROI

Moshi Monsters, Moshlings, Lady Goo Goo – if you are a parent with young children I am sure you know what I am talking about. Moshi Monsters has taken over the UK as one of the biggest must have toys at present after the huge success of the online game Moshi Monsters

My youngest daughter recently started collecting the Moshi Monsters ‘Series 1′ Moshlings which are little plastic figures all with different names. There are a couple of moshlings which are classed as ‘ultra rare’ and they are very hard to find.

A week ago we had taken a family visit to a local toy shop for her to spend her birthday money, when she decided to pay a pack of Moshlings. When she got in the car she opened the pack, and was very excited to see that she was lucky enough to have an ‘ultra rare’ moshling called “Big Bad Bill” inside.

As she understands the meaning of the word ‘rare’, she quickly suggested it could be worth money (she’s my daughter alright) and she might be able to sell it for alot more than she paid for it (A pack of 2 moshlings cost £1.99 so they are worth around a quid each). We looked on eBay and saw they were selling in the region of £7 – she was ecstatic and asked me to list it straight away.

All week she has been super excited, and asking myself and my wife to check eBay every 5 minutes. The listing ended about an hour ago and she was over the moon that the end price was £10.51 + £1.50 postage and packaging = £12.01 a fantastic 1200% return on investment (ROI)

The best part for me, was her realising she now has £12 to spend on 6 more packs of moshlings so 12 more moshlings to add to her collection AND the possibility of finding another rare moshling to start her trading off all over again.

Whatever happens, I am pleased the buzz from trading runs in the family, and who knows we might have someone to take over my reigns in years to come

Domain Trading – Turning £100 into £10,000+ a true story

Domain Trading is one of the most lucrative forms of online income, and has very small maintenance costs attached to it. At present a .uk domain name costs in the region of £6-8 (depending on your chosen registrar) to keep registered for 2 years once you own the domain name.

I have been passively involved in domain trading for a number of years, but have become more actively involved in the last 2-3 years.

I am always being asked about domain trading, what it entails, the appeal of it etc , so I thought I would post a ‘real world’ example of a particular pair of names I bought and sold recently and the domain trading story that surrounds them.

On August 17^th 2010 I purchased the domain names rouletteonline.co.uk and blackjackonline.co.uk for £50 each from Acorn Domains. I could see both names had instant appeal from numerous angles (which is a trait you inherit from being involved in the domain trading industry over time) so I knew they were good investments. One of my initial ‘tick boxes’ I always ask myself when buying a name is – ‘Do I think I can sell that for double in 12 months or less’ – if the answer is yes, then it usually sways me to buy a particular name I am interested in.

With this particular pair of names, I knew I wasn’t going to develop them, so I just added them to my Sedo account so people could easily get in contact about the domain names, and then I could forgot about them.

On December 7^th 2010 I was emailed by a fellow domain trader asking how much I was looking for rouletteonline.co.uk, and after some negotiating we agreed a part exchange deal for £1500 and the following 5 domain names:

volunteerjobs.co.uk
fittedwardrobe.co.uk
massagechair.co.uk
webcamgirls.co.uk
maritalaids.co.uk

Not a bad trade for a name which cost me £50 less than 4 months earlier.  I have not done anything with those 5 names since acquiring them and yet again I have received offers ranging from £50 to £1,200 on each of them except webcamgirls.co.uk which hasn’t received any offers or interest so far.

Fast forward to May 2011 – May 25^th 2011 to be precise. I receive an opening offer on Sedo for blackjackonline.co.uk of $500 – again not a bad offer considering what I paid for the name, but again I knew it was worth more than that so I countered $6,000, to which the interested party countered again with $1,500 (approx £950 at the time) along with the comment ‘This is my final offer’. I thought about it overnight and decided not to accept and to counter back $4,500 with the comment ‘This is my final offer’ – to which the seller cancelled and broke off negotiations.  Sigh.

August 2^nd 2011 – I receive an opening offer for blackjackonline.co.uk on Sedo for $2,000. Now this is the type of opening offer that gets my attention. I counter back $15,000 (hoping to meet somewhere in the $7,000 – $10,000 region) and the next day, the interested party counters $5,000. I had a good feeling that this person is very interested and quite serious about buying the name, so I then counter back $12,000. A couple of hours later I receive a counter offer of $8,000 along with the comment ‘This is my final offer’. Now I admit I did think about countering back $10,000 ‘This is my final offer’ but I then thought about risk vs. reward – why try and push another $2,000 at the risk of losing the $8,000? I think the majority of domain traders would have countered back in this situation, but when I considered the fact I paid £50 for this name and I had received an offer which was just shy of £5,000 and was 100x what I paid for the name less than 12 months prior to this, I would be a fool to push my luck, so I accepted the offer. I waited in anticipation for the Escrow payment to arrive with Sedo, as I have been waiting up to 2 weeks for payment on previous names I have sold on Sedo. It arrived within 2 hours of agreeing the sale. Amazing!

The sale was published officially on Dnjournal (the most comprehensive website for reported domain name sales from around the world) and reached number 6 of that weeks ‘Country Code Top 20 Sales’

So from August 17^th 2010 – August 3^rd 2011 I had turned £100 into £1500 + £5000 + those 5 names I listed above, which I wouldn’t sell for less than £1,000 each so that makes a grand total of £11,500 minimum from a £100 investment over a 12 month period and this is with no input or effort, just some vision and some intuition.

Again this goes to show you can make very good money from a very little start up cost, just using some initiative and waiting for the right names to come up and then reinvesting and scaling it up.

I have said it so many times before, and see so many people continue to make the same mistake all the time. There are 4 main parts to succeed in domain trading at this level.

1. Reinvesting – Always reinvest the majority of the money you make from domain trading, into more domain names. I see too many people sell a domain name for a few K and then spend it all on pointless things and then have nothing to show for it apart from a few hangovers and a nice designer watch worth nothing, and then having to start all over again.
2. Investment spreading – I never stick to one ‘type’ of domain or niche. I sometimes reinvest the some of the profits from domain trading into an earning website which requires no input but earns some level of passive income every month. This obviously contributes to the overall income from domain trading, albeit in a different capacity.
3. Scaling up – When you have more money to play with, then I would advise to buy better quality names for even bigger ROI’s.
4. Research – Make sure you invest in names which actually have commercial value and the bigger the better. Niche names are good also and can get good results, but it is far better to have a name with 100’s of potential buyers as opposed to just a handful. A quick Google search for the keywords will give you some indication of how popular the domain name could be.

As a direct result of this recent sale, I have spent approx £2,000 of the money made from this bit of domain trading on 2 smallish websites (both with generic domain names) which are currently making approx £150-200 a month between them. This should be able to be improved hugely with a little bit of tweaking, as the traffic they are getting is not being monetised well at all.

Piers Morgan Suspended by CNN

I have just seen on Twitter that Piers Morgan has been suspended by CNN in America due to his possible involvement on phone hacking by UK tabloids

Piers Morgan was involved with the News of the World since 1994 at the young age of 28

Original story here

EDIT - The original link has been removed for some reason, possibly due to it being untrue or possible legal action ?

Amy Winehouse Dead – RIP Amy

WOW I am in shock. I just heard the news that Amy Winehouse has died in a flat in central London. My thoughts are with her family at this time.

Everyone was aware of Amy’s drug problem, but is is not confirmed yet if her death was drugs related. A fantastic music artist of my generation and I am a great fan of her music. A sad loss at such a young age.

EDIT : Sky News has just broken the story that she Amy Winehouse was found dead in her flat in North London

EDIT 2 : Sky News are reporting that Police are treating Amy’s death as “UNEXPLAINED”

Helen Milligan Apprentice 2011 Runner Up mugged in Central London

Nothing like a shock headline to get you some attention. Of course I am referring to the Apprentice Final 2011 which was screened on BBC1 last night with a record figure of 10.7m viewers according to Lord Sugar himself on Twitter today

The winner was Tom Pellereau (the inventor), who pipped Helen Milligan to the post at the final hurdle. Whilst I really liked Tom as a person and the way he came across on the program, I strongly feel that Helen was unintentionally mugged of the investment. Ok her business idea wasn’t exactly a great one, but her professionalism, organisational skills, people management, hugely impressive sales and overall winner of 10/11 tasks throughout the whole series deserved something more than runner up status.

I am looking forward to seeing what Helen does next, as one thing is for certain she is a great businesswoman with fantastic overall qualities and whatever she decides to do, I am pretty sure will be a success.

You can find Helen on Twitter. This is her one and only official Twitter, so please be aware of fakers.

It’s time to start blogging again

Over the past couple of months I have had a few people asking why I don’t blog anymore, and my answer was always one of two things

“I am too busy at the moment”

“I have nothing to write about”

Whilst they are both true to a certain extent, I also know that if I really put my mind to it, I could blog more often and share my ideas and thoughts with others. I am intending to blog more frequently than before, so you can get some of my new tips, hints and ideas that I used to dish out previously elsewhere for free.

I have been busy working on lots of successful projects over the last few months with one project in particular which I am really excited about. I am working on this project along with a new business partner, and someone who is well known and famous in their own field of work, so it will be very interesting to see how this project will unfold with the combination of skills we both bring to the table. What makes it even more exciting is the fact we are also collaborating with a fabulously talented PR who has also had great success, so we should make quite a dynamite team when combined.

I will reveal more about on this when it is closer to launch date, but for now I am keeping it Pure and Simple

Osama bin laden conspiracy theories

I awoke to the news this morning to hear that Osama Bin Laden had been killed yesterday in Pakistan. I am sure there are many people around the world who are celebrating this morning as this news is close to their hearts.

We have all heard about the conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks in America, and I can’t wait to hear some of the ones surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories

1. Chuck Norris was unofficially on holiday in Pakistan and whilst there he tweeted that he had some business to take care of whilst he was away – Coincidence ? further to this, there is no evidence of Chuck Norris ever using Twitter or any ‘real’ record of this tweet ever occuring.

2. ‘Whispering’ Ted Lowe and Sir Henry Cooper also both died yesterday – maybe it was a mass suicide pact ?

3. Rumour suggests that Kiefer Sutherland has just returned from Pakistan from rehab – he could have chosen anywhere in the world, why Pakistan ?

4. William and Kate have postponed their honeymoon away due to Global unrest. Was this just a cover story as Osama was having a secret affair with Kate, and William found out on the night of the wedding and ordered his death ?

5. Former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas was recently slapped with a super injunction, restraining her from naming the family man she had been having an affair with. Could this person have been Osama Bin Laden, and she ordered him to be killed with as she has been treated so badly in this scandal ?

6. A couple of weeks back, there was a big stink that iPhone users could be tracked by reading an encrypted file on their phones. Was Osama an Apple iPhone user and this tracking revelation led the US government to his whereabouts, therefore Steve Jobs is yet again the real hero.

7. Further to the iPhone theory, the long awaited white iPhone was released last Friday with a very strange message being displayed on the Apple website. The message said “Finally”. Could this have been Apple’s way of communicating with the US government, to inform them that they had found where Osama was hiding and alerted them to his whereabouts via the iPhone tracking which Apple strongly deny ?

8. Mariah Carey gave birth to twins on Saturday. Osama was rumoured to have a soft spot for Mariah due to her curvy figure. Could the news of her giving birth, driven Osama to suicide and the US government found him and then claimed they killed him ?

9. Pat Sharp has recently joined Twitter, and apparently tweeted that he was envious of Osama’s hair style, as it reminded him of his mullet days on fun house. Then Pat changed his Twitter account name and Osama ends up dead ?

Any one of these conspiracy theories could be true, just like the ones surrounding the 9/11 attacks – the question is, which one do YOU believe ?