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The transition from a working person to that of “I haven’t got to get up early anymore,” seems ok for the first week, but slowly you realise that your life has no routine. So with no reserve of funds to let you do what you would love to do, you are at a crossroads.
The worst thing anybody can do is sit back and complain about their plight. A sure way to deteriate and consequently you will have a very short retirement! Now you could bore everybody with reasons why you can’t do what you want to do, and how life has been hard on you. This is a sure way to loose friends and respect for what you have got.

It is imperative that you stay active. Having only just retired we assume that you could have still worked a lot longer. So first thing is stay fit. How much does that cost? Nothing. Walking and swimming are to very good exercises that will keep you in good order. Take a bus somewhere. Well done the UK, free bus passes, and free access to swimming.  Wow, retirement is looking up! But best of all there are jobs, part time and full time for the seniors. Now that sounds a bit retrograde having just retired, but sometimes getting back in a routine with something you like doing will provide a little income and a lot of satisfaction.

Have a look at some of the jobs on offer , like adverts wanting retired active couples for house sitting. Part time gardeners, holiday park wardens, and lot more jobs that might not pay much except cover your expenses. Check out all the volunteer groups who are always looking for people to help them. But DO SOMETHING !
Remember even if you were unable to plan a financially worry free retirement, just make the most of your later years. You are still a valuable person. You can be appreciated in many ways and areas. Don’t give up. Life goes on, enjoy every bit of it. You can do it. How are you at using a computor? If you are reading this then I guess you can at least switch one on!  Now there is the whole world at your fingertips. For the less able, make friends across the world. Visit all the countries that you would like to know more about. Do the same as me, get a blog  going! You could start an online business, get rid of a few things on ebay! So in conclusion, it’s not all doom and gloom for those that have had to go into retirement with little funds, there is a way. The message is “Dont ever Retire,”  Good luck. 

With this information I pestered them for all the information I could about the Markets and about Spain itself. I had only one problem - I had never been to Spain!,   Well with-out the long story, my wife and I decided to go on this adventure. What would we sell? I had a Donut Machine which we were currently using, and thought, why not! So our plans were made to leave the country, I had a Transit Van, a large Caravan, and enough stock to last for six months. That consisted of about half a ton of donut mix. Gas and cooking oil for the machine and all the rest of the stall and related items for that plus all the things we would need for our personal well being. Wow! were we loaded, and we had a thousand miles to go!

 It was that after our summer markets had finished, our friends agreed to “Show us the way to Spain,” The day arrived for us all to set off, heavily loaded , even the Transit seemed eager to go. We boarded the ferry at Portsmouth and it was to take us to Santander via the notorious Bay of Biscay . Luckily the passage was smooth, and two days later saw us embarking onto Spanish soil.  And the Sun was shining !  We followed our friends with their car and caravan to Benidorm, and it was nice to have company on this our very first venture into Spain. 

 We arrived in Benidorm three days later, after a long journey only stopping at Motorway Stations and for fill ups, We were both anxious to get to the destination, but still a little wary of this new adventure. We arrived at a campsite called La Torreta, and got settled in. It was only just a ten minute walk to the centre of Benidorm, just as they had told us, and the beach with the Mediterranean lapping at the sand.

But first priority was to book in for my first market. Now if you want to get on a market in Spain, and you’ve never been there before and you don’t know any Spanish language. That’s a pretty daunting task. Remember I had never been to Spain before!.

My phrase book gave me two words, and I knew por favor, (please). Well most people do! I spotted the words Plaza and Domingo, and decided this was all I had to remember. Hm.. not much you can do with that in a conversation! But it might work. So it was a trip to the Town Hall, and find the market office.

Ok here goes, “Plaza, Domingo, por favor”

Well I must have hit the right words as an official looked at me for a second and much to my relief, a pad was produced and The Man rattled off some Spanish at me and thrust a paper with a pitch number and the cost towards me. I paid hurriedly and left.

The market was just outside Benidorm, and I had a pitch in La Nucia where the town hall was.

Oh and my Spanish words? Plaza, Domingo, por favor.( Pitch, Sunday, Please.)

I am glad to say that the people at the market on Sunday were a real mixture, seemingly most had come to Spain from England to avoid the winter there. And they all liked donuts! The Traders were Spanish, English, Dutch and German, and we got on well with them all.

 We joined other markets and it was not long before we started using Spanish words and understanding maybe more than we knew. Three markets a week was enough to keep us in Spain from October till May. What a wonderful time we had. working just three days a week and the rest of the time enjoying the Sun and finding our way round Spain. Eventually of course, we had to return to do our regular and summer markets. But this journey, thanks to our friends, was a real adventure and holiday in one.

This was in 1995 and for the next six years we went to Spain for the Winter. with the lovely weather, Christmases in the hot sun and a new host of camping friends and traders welcoming us back.

We still go to see friends in Spain, but have long since given up the Market life. We look back and say, it was some of the best times of our life. My point to this story (if there is a point) is that sometimes you just have to get up and go, even if you don’t know what’s on the other side.

That’s why as a pensioner now, I am attempting to do a bit of blogging. I may not get it right, but I ‘m going to have fun trying.

(Comments?)

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn”t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you”ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn”t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I”ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won”t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.