Six months ago after developing a rash and a fever which doctors initially thought was Dengue Fever, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes, I was rushed into hospital and after a week of being tested for over a hundred different viruses, I was diagnosed with a very rare auto immune illness (affecting just five in a million people) where my body is attacking it’s own muscles.

Since then I’ve either been lying in a hospital bed, barely able to raise my head from the pillow, or at home too weak from muscle loss and doped out on drugs to be able to let you know why I haven’t written a newsletter since early December.

Thanks to some powerful new medication, I’ve finally got the energy to write about it.

Read more here: short version or the long, rambling version

Six months ago after developing a rash and a fever which doctors initially thought was Dengue Fever, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes, I was rushed into hospital and after a week of being tested for over a hundred different viruses, I was diagnosed with a very rare auto immune illness (affecting just five in a million people) where my body is attacking it’s own muscles.

Since then I’ve either been lying in a hospital bed, barely able to raise my head from the pillow, or at home too weak from muscle loss and doped out on drugs to be able to let you know why I haven’t written a newsletter since early December.

Thanks to some powerful new medication which I have to take just once a week (though I take plenty of other drugs the rest of the week) I’ve finally got the energy to write about it.

(The new drug is used to treat childhood leukemia, to delay HIV turning into AIDS, and to cause pregnant women to abort… so you can imagine how strong it is. It almost knocks me out for two days a week).

my rashed and savaged hands hooked up to medical equipment

For many months now I’ve not answered emails, tweeted, logged into Facebook, updated my web sites, written a newsletter or indeed done any work at all.

I’ve not been able to.

Part of me wants to keep quiet about this. There’s a little voice in my head saying “do what many other Internet marketers would with their lists, or on their blogs, and just make an offer and rake in some cash and don’t explain my long absence.”

Or perhaps pretend that I’ve been secretly working on some top secret project that’s pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, and I’m about to reveal all next week when all you have to do is buy whatever I’m selling at an inflated price and you’ll be driving around in the sports car of your choice by next month. But that’s just not the way I operate and I can’t do it.

None of this makes writing about my illness any easier. It’s something I’m finding hard to talk, or write, about. And my head is rather muddled from the drugs, which doesn’t help. So if some of this doesn’t make sense, or is disjointed, forgive me.

The truth is that it’s been going on a lot longer than six months.

I’ve been asleep for most of the past year.

Really, really asleep. For like 16 or 17 hours a day, or just lying in bed too exhausted to move and this Internet marketing stuff has all seemed just so unimportant.

The symptoms started over a year ago, a few days after I flew back home to Australia from Rob Puddy’s UK seminar, when I fainted at a rock concert. As far as I know, I’d never fainted in my life until that night, but I put it down to a combination of jetlag and standing too close to my old internet marketing mate Matt Garrett in the bar at Puddy’s seminar (that’s a joke Matt )

September I fainted again while out shopping, and seeing I still felt like I had jetlag and was tired all the time I went to see a doctor for the first time in about 5 years – but an examination and a whole range of blood tests found nothing wrong.

Before long I was sleeping most of the day, and the rest of the time just too exhausted to do anything. This time the doctor (a different one) diagnosed depression, even though I insisted I’d got nothing to be depressed about, and prescribed pills which made me even sleepier and made my thinking even cloudier.

Things continued to get worse. Just before Christmas I fell over in a bar in Melbourne and badly hurt my neck (and no, I hadn’t been drinking… my legs just turned to jelly).

Back home after the Christmas holidays doctors visits became a regular thing, but examinations and tests couldn’t find anything wrong with me, and I started to believe that perhaps I was depressed after all and that my thinking/thoughts were affecting my physical health too.

Then January, or February, or whenever it was, the rash and a high fever appeared and my life hasn’t been the same since.

After being tested for just about every virus known, including all the horrible deadly ones (and in my imagination I’d somehow developed all of them but they weren’t showing up in the blood tests) it was a relief to be visited by a team of doctors and told that they’d moved on from viruses and the blood tests, and a blood culture from blood taken from me when my temperature was over 40, had finally revealed that I’d developed something called Polymyositis. They all seemed quite excited by this because of its rarity and non of them had ever seen a patient with it before.

Polymyositis? It didn’t sound too bad. Quite a poetic sing-song word.

So at first I was relieved. Not a deadly virus after all (the family vet died horribly last year after a bat transmitted a virus to a horse and he got splashed with blood from the dying horse). But the relief only lasted until I got one of the doctors to do some research and print it out for me.

Muscle wasting? My body eating it’s own muscles? My heart’s a muscle. My lungs are powered by muscles. Would I suddenly stop being able to breath? Would my heart give out first? Would I become incontinent? Would I be able to eat? To talk?

Non of these questions were properly answered, but the medical team did take me off the anti depressants straightaway, which was something to be thankful for.

Within an hour though they were pumping me with a powerful cocktail of other drugs designed to dampen my immune system, and I jumped from a couple of anti depressant pills a day to over twenty other pills.

Then just over a week later they found they’d got it wrong. I didn’t have Polymyositis after all. The results of a really painful muscle biopsy in my thigh revealed it was the even rarer Dermatomyositis.

(if you want you can read more about Dermatomyositis here, or on the US Gov Medline Plus site, or at the Mayo Clinic which is probably the best place to be treated for it.

So I’ve got something that just five in a million people get, most of them women. And it seems it’s increasing in frequency among black American women. So not quite sure what that says about my genetic makeup

Talking of genetics, the diagnosis actually gave my daughter Kate a moments laughter. She was born with Phenylketonuria, a genetic disorder affecting 1 in 16,000

“Well at last I’m not the freak of the family anymore,” she joked.

But then really worried about me, she started crying.

Fortunately Dermatomyositis is not as nasty as something like motor neurone disease, where most sufferers die within a few years, but there is no cure for Dermamyositis and my lifespan is likely to be significantly shortened (insurance company studies suggest they should charge premiums for someone 12.8 years older because of the risk factor).

And here’s the big worry – a significant proportion of people who get Dermatomyositis are found to have an internal cancer – though full body CT scans and other tests showed I’m in the clear which is a relief.

However lots of stuff I’ve read says I’ve got a highly increased chance of getting it in the next couple of years – which is not a nice thought.

The other bad news is that I’ve got to stay out of the sun. Very hard to do when I live in sub-tropical Queensland, one of the sunniest places on earth.

Oh, one more thing before I stop this free flow rambling writing. I’m banned from traveling overseas for the foreseeable future (usually I spend at least a couple of months in Europe every year, photographing and writing content for my travel sites and attending Internet marketing conferences and workshops).

“What about travel?” I asked the medical team?

“Go where you want, if you’re well enough and not in a wheelchair” said the one in charge “just make sure you’re back here three times a week.”

I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.

Phil

Six months ago after developing a rash and a fever which doctors initially thought was Dengue Fever, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes, I was rushed into hospital and after a week of being tested for over a hundred different viruses, I was diagnosed with a very rare auto immune illness (affecting just five in a million people) where my body is attacking it’s own muscles.

Since then I’ve been in and out of hospital. Initially for a month, then frequent return trips when I’ve developed infections including two bouts of pneumonia. Or lying in bed at home too weak from muscle loss and doped out on drugs to be able to let you know why I haven’t written a newsletter since early December.

Now, thanks to some powerful new medication which I have to take just once a week (though I take plenty of other drugs the rest of the week) I’ve finally got the energy to write about it.

(The new drug is used to treat childhood leukemia, to delay HIV turning into AIDS, and to cause pregnant women to abort… so you can imagine how strong it is. It almost knocks me out for two days a week).

my rashed and savaged hands hooked up to medical equipment

So this is why I’ve not answered emails, tweeted, logged into Facebook, updated my web sites, written a newsletter or indeed done any work at all.

I’ve not been able to.

A blood culture from blood taken from me when my temperature was over 40, finally revealed that it wasn’t a virus after all and I’d developed something called Polymyositis.

Then just over a week later they found they’d got it wrong. I didn’t have Polymyositis after all. The results of a really painful muscle biopsy in my thigh revealed it was the even rarer Dermatomyositis.

(if you want you can read more about Dermatomyositis here, or on the US Gov Medline Plus site, or at the Mayo Clinic (which is probably the best place to be treated for it but seeing I live in Australia and can’t travel it’s not an option for me)

Phil

Read the long version here.

Something amused me yesterday. A teacher was telling me about a 7 year old boy in his class who got angry with Google.

The teacher was sitting with the boy helping him research something for the project the boy was working on, and they
were using Google to search but having trouble finding the exact information they needed.

So the boy said “type in we are getting angry”

“No we can’t do that,” said the teacher. “Google doesn’t work that way. We’ll just have to change the search words a little and we’ll find what we need.”

This made the boy shout. “now you have to type in we are getting VERY angry.”

Telling me the story, the teacher hypothesized that it showed how the world was changing and the kids who had grown up with computers related to them almost as they would to another person. And that they were so used to using Google that they believed it had emotions and would respond to anger or laughing.

As for me I just think it was a badly behaved little boy

Read this in a column in The Independent, a UK newspaper a couple of days ago:

———-

“Most things in life aren’t about talent, they’re about skill. Everybody starts out bad at stuff and most people stay
that way, but you don’t have to. The only thing that stops you getting better at something is not trying”

———-

I know that above quote is the kind of thing you read time and time again, but it’s true isn’t it.

The columnist was writing about a juggling taxi driver in San Francisco, but they could just as easily have used the
same words about an internet marketer (and who knows, you may be an internet marketer in San Francisco I’m sure
that some of you are)

It’s commonsense that you’re not going to become a success at something without practice, without working on improving your skill level.

Your first web site probably isn’t going to be great, the first article you write might be rubbish. You’re not going to create a compelling Camtasia video the first time you use the program. The first landing page you put up probably won’t work well until you’ve tweaked it many times to boost the conversion rate, the first Adwords ad you write won’t be as simple to write, or as good, as one that you write down the track.

In other words you’ve got to put the work in, you’ve got to do the hard yards, nothing comes easy and to succeed you’ve got to put time and effort into educating yourself in what works, and into constant self improvement.

Lesson over

I know this is not original thinking. It’s been said, in one form
or another, many times before, but here’s a really simple
success tip: Start with the end in mind and work backwards.

Know exactly what you want your new project or site to look like.

Know exactly what you want to achieve from it.

Draw a picture of it, maybe just in your mind. Not the steps of getting there, just the end product.

Only then, when you can picture what you want the end result to be, should you sit and work out how to get there.

It’s the same when you’re entering a niche for the first time. You’ve done research, found out that it’s not too competitive, seen that people are buying stuff in that niche. But where do you fit in? What are you after in that niche? You’ve got to ask yourself what you want from it. Where do you want to take it.

Then, only then, ask yourself how you’re going to get there.

What I’m saying I guess (because this is just quickly pouring out of my typing fingers and I’m not stopping to think) is don’t just do a bit of research and then throw up some quick sites and start getting a bit of traffic to them and then wait to see what happens.

Visualize it all instead.

Picture the end result.

If you do that you’ll KNOW in advance what’s going to happen when you get those sites up and start getting traffic. You’ll know because you’re working to a plan. You know what steps you have to take to get people coming to those sites, to get them participating in those sites, to get those people buying from you.

Something else you should do is look a year, two years, down the track.

What do you see yourself achieving in that niche?

Can you compete in that niche?

Are you sure you even want to be in that niche?

Can you sustain interest in it long enough? Or will it bore you so much that you start to neglect it?

What are you aiming for?

A whole network of mini sites that pull in affiliate commissions every day?

A content site so good that it takes number one spot in Google and rakes in advertising dollars?

A product of such high quality and appeal that all the top players in that niche want to be your affiliate?

What I’m saying is don’t just throw yourself blindly into something because keyword research tools suggest the demand it there.

What I’m saying is look ahead. Plan ahead. Know what you want and then work out how you’re going to get there.

Think backwards.

For the past few weeks I thought that I was dying, or at least about to lose an eye.

About 4 years ago, taking photographs in the slums of Bangkok, I got a small cut in my left eye, and now and again (especially when I’m on a long haul flight) I’ll get a red, sore eye which looks worse than it feels, and all I can do is put drops in it to keep it lubricated. It’s not a major problem.

Anyway, 3 weeks ago I went for an eye test to get new glasses, and after a minute or two the optometrist (very unprofessionally) started muttering to himself “I don’t like what I’m seeing, I don’t like what I’m seeing, I don’t want to do this.”

When I butted in to ask what he was talking to himself about he said he didn’t want to be the one to tell me this but I’d got a tumour growing in my eye..

And then he started saying that it could be cancerous, it might not be, I’d have to have a biopsy…bla bla bla.

Anyhow it took nearly 3 weeks to get an appointment with an eye specialist, even though the optometrist phoned up while I was there and said it was urgent.

So I’ve been sat here for nearly 3 weeks – having been told not to spend too much time on my computer and to rest my eyes – letting my imagination freak me out.

The good news is that after an hour or two of examination and multiple tests he told me that the optometrist had got it COMPLETELY wrong and I haven’t got a tumour at all.

So thank goodness for that

What I’ve do have is some old scar tissue on my eye, and a sort of thin spot on my eyeball, probably from an old head injury.

I’ve had plenty of those, back in my crazy photographer days

Anyhow my eye problem can’t be treated, but probably won’t ever affect my vision and it’s not anything to worry about.

Just got to live with it

More soon, including more ‘how-to’ on product creation.

And watch out for a new book from me very soon. It’s almost ready.

All I’ve managed to get done since I got back from my trip to England, is set up and hosted a WordPress blog for Lindy, a neighbour and good friend, who has a horrible degenerative disease called Spinocerebellar Ataxia. The blog is at http://spinocerebellarataxia.org/

And I’m a bit stuck with something on it, so I may as well ask for help.

See the “Most Popular Posts” top middle of the site? A plugin was supposed to come with the theme, but didn’t, and I can’t find it. The source code shows

<div id=”mostpop-Post”>
<h2>Most Popular Posts </h2>
<ul>
<li><a href=”#”></a></li>

Anyone know which plugin this is?

And BTW, if you have a non spammy health site, Lindy would love a link from you

Way back on the 14th July I wrote a blog post saying, and I quote, "I’m going to start passing on more of more knowledge, and more frequently. So I hope you don’t get sick of too many newsletters from me"

Ha   Well what a joke that turned out to be.

I meant it at the time, but then life got in the way and I ended up travelling for over 3 months. My daughter, Kate, got married in Australia in early September, so I always knew I’d be having a week off for that. But then, unexpectedly, my parents decided to fly out from England to the wedding six weeks early, so that I could show them parts of Australia they’d never experienced.

So I packed a suitcase, grabbed my wallet, and drove 8 hours to Brisbane airport to pick them up…then off we went. Five weeks of the best the east coast of Australia has to offer, then a long drive into Queensland’s dust bowl interior to show them what it used to be like before the coastal areas turned into a cross between Florida and California.

The wedding, which I’d not been looking forward to because all I could think about was the cost, and having to make a speech and dancing (which I hate) turned out to be great. Then we all went away for a few weeks to the lovely Qld beach resort of Noosa.

After that my parents flew back to England, followed a few days later by Kate and her new husband Ed, and I settled down to start work again.

But suddenly things took a turn for the worse.

Just days after they’d all gone we got a phone call from England saying that a very sick relative wasn’t expected to survive until the weekend, so I quickly bought plane tickets and within 4 hours we were heading overseas. And stayed away a month. A fairly horrible month.

Anyway, now I’m back.

With nothing much else to do, because I’ve spent most of my time sitting in a house with grieving relatives, I’ve thought about business and work and money quite a bit while I’ve been away. And really I want to carry on pretty much as I live now. Loving life, enjoying life and the freedom I have.

I’ve said this before many times: for me this internet business is all about living a more laid-back lifestyle, earning just enough to keep staying in the worlds top hotels and flying up front at the pointy end of planes, goofing off for a while on tropical islands lying in the shade of palm trees and swimming in seas so full of brightly coloured fish that they wisp against your body as they swim around you.

But that might not be what you want. Many people come online wanting to make millions, and then more millions (and some like the guy featured in the first issue of Yanik Silver’s new printed newsletter do, making $3 mill a year from one ebook on Clickbank) so if your only aim in life is to make millions, live in a big house and drive flashy sports cars then you need to work and work and work till your eyeballs pop from staring at a screen too long.

You’ve got to decide what you want out of all this Internet stuff. Because what you want decides the way you’re going to get there, the steps and actions you need to take.

Me, I’m going to keep on just the way I do now. And that means NOT sending out email sales pitches every few days. Not trying to get money out of you at every possible opportunity.

But I have been rethinking my whole, almost private, and perhaps selfish (because I don’t really share it with you) approach to earning money online, and I’m going to make some changes. But not ones that affect my lifestyle too much

You’ll see soon

Last weekend I made a flying visit to Brisbane to see an art exhibition: “Picasso & His Collection” only to discover that, with only a few exceptions, it was ( in my humble opinion) a disappointing collection of second rate artworks.

But what I found more disappointing was the behavior of the crowds who had turned up to see it. After queuing to get in, I found myself repelled by the orderly queue inside the gallery, where everyone just shuffled along patiently waiting their turn to view the next piece of art.

Some people were pontificating over the flimsiest of sketches, analyzing each slash of the charcoal to educate, or more likely bore, their companions. And the people behind them in the queue, waiting their turn in front of the sketch, stood in placid acceptance.

Not me. I lasted about 2 minutes before breaking ranks and walking into the middle of the first exhibition room. I just ‘couldn’t’ join in with the masses. To me it seemed almost the opposite of art, or perhaps the queue itself was a surreal piece of artwork escaped from the brush of Dali, or flown in from the Tate Modern in London to stun the Australians into submission.

Perhaps the queue itself was a surreal piece of artwork escaped from the brush of Dali, or flown in from the Tate Modern in London

Two rooms on I found that the queue had dwindled, as people had lost patience or come to the conclusion that they were acting like sheep, or lemmings.

Meanwhile, I simply stood in the center of the rooms I wandered into, and scanned for something which grabbed my attention (perhaps a bold use of color, or the way that the eyes in some portraits seem to latch on to you) and I went over and looked at it.

This meant that I’d finished looking an hour before my companions, so I sat down on a central bench to write this.

And my main thought was that Picasso would probably have been amused, even laughed out loud, at the docility and lack of life on display in the queue.

This can – sort of – be related back to Internet Marketing. Well I’m going to try anyway

Here’s my attempt. And my true thoughts:

Don’t join the placid queue (the masses) and shuffle along.

Sell to the people in the queue instead

That’s where the money lies in the Internet Marketing niche.