June 2nd, 2008 — Interesting!
While working on your online business you will probably consider using email marketing to leverage products or services. I had a chance to write a post on SEOmoz.org about a few crucial areas you should take into consideration while managing newsletter campaign: 7 Things to Know About Email Marketing. Enjoy your reading!
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May 11th, 2008 — Entrepreneurship, Podcasts
I am currently reading “The Power of Focus” and in the section called “Your Habits Will Determine Your Future” there is an interesting part about developing a habit of listening to motivational and educational audiotapes while driving, walking or exercising.
If you listen to an audiotape for thirty minutes each day, five days a week, in the years you’ll have been exposed to over thirteen hundred hours of new and useful information. This ia a habit that almost all of the successful people we know have developed - they listen to audiotapes.
So, to help you to get into the right state of mind I recommend you three podcasts I have recently listened to (one of them is actually a video podcast):
In the interview with Mr. Steven Pressfield, Matthew Scott asks many great questions regarding being an entrepreneur and you will have an occasion to learn what is the difference between a professional and an amateur business person. I learned a lot from this podcast and I am sure you will be glad to find out why it is all right to be miserable sometimes. Really down-to-earth audio.
Great podcast prepared by Pamela Slim where she talks to Gary Schoeniger, founder of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative. The following piece of advice from Gary is a selling point to me:
“Find a problem. Figure out how to solve the problem. Find more people with the same problem and you have a business.”
Simple but not so obvious for everybody. Download the podcast and if you are not familiar with Pamela’s blog, have a look on: http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com
Leveraging educational techniques to pull in high quality leads: http://www.marketingwhitepapers.net/. Make sure you watch the video and sign up for more.
And that is it! I hope you enjoyed and please share your thoughts about them in comments.
May 2nd, 2008 — TED
When I saw the first video presentation from TED I quickly realised why there are so many people eager to pay $6,000 per year to attend this conference. For many years it was only available to the small group of people who could afford it. It changed in April 2007 when TED conference became open to everyone with high quality videos published on its website presenting many inspiring, funny, jaw-dropping talks of the “world’s brightest minds”.
It presents “Ideas worth spreading” by the best speakers in the world talking about variety of topics from Technology, Education, Design to Arts and Global Issues. I believe that TED changes the world. I really do. There is so much inspiration, passion and enthusiasm in the air about all presented topics and life in general. I have just created a category called TED and will share with you the most interesting presentations. I am sure you will enjoy watching them and that they will push you more towards living the life you love.
Instead of introducing this presenter I will just quote one of his lines:
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Enjoy this entertaining talk (source)!
It is worth mentioning that in February 2009 TED will have its 25th anniversary as it began its journey in 1984.
April 29th, 2008 — Interesting!, Self-employment
It is not a secret, actually. I don’t believe in secrets although it is a common practice to overuse this word nowadays. I believe in hard work and the right STRATEGY. And this is what David Hainemeier Hansson is talking about in his latest presentation at Startup School 08. David is a creator of the web-application framework Ruby on Rails and a partner in 37signals, one of the most agile web agencies in the world.
Watch The Secret of Making Money Online by David Heinemeier Hansson (length: 31:52) on Omnisio
I can’t agree more with David as I am bit tired of all these venture capital talks, “build the new Facebook” discussions and giving away everything for free in the Internet. I believe that quality content and applications should have a price tag. It is not only good for their creators but also for users as we tend to respect more things that we need to pay for. If you have something for free, you can throw it to the bin and forget about it. If you just have paid $30 for an e-book or $300 for an online course, then you will put effort in reading/learning.
In my last post I wrote about Teaching Sells and I am glad its launch was successful and that premium content is getting more popular. We really need more value in the Net as it is just overcrowded with domain parking ads, AdSense spam sites, spam links and a lot of non-value things.
Coming back to David’s presentation, I really like his approach and I share his point. But what I really enjoyed from his video is what he said about developing your own business online - you don’t have to hurry, you don’t need to hire 20 developers and have a new website launched in one month aiming to be another YouTube. There is a lot of space for niche Internet products and you don’t need to be a genius to have your business online that will at least give you the freedom of working on your own.
The secret from David - stop another Internet bubble madness and build some decent business online.
October 17th, 2007 — Interesting!, Self-employment
I have found two great studies about being innovative in creating value in the first place instead of concentrating on making money (online).
1. The Art of Innovation - 55 minutes of Guy Kawasaki’s presentation - an Apple ex-employee and current venture capitalist talking about creating meaning, finding the right mantra and a great chance he missed - a lot of interesting examples, humour and many valuable advices. Where are your products and services? In the top right corner of the above chart? Make a coffee, sit comfortably and watch the video.
Guy is a start-up guru with lots of great publications you can find details about on his blog.
2. Brian Clark from Copyblogger has just started his new initiative: Teaching Sells.
In this quick and easy 22-page report (or optional audio recording), you’ll learn:
- Whether blogging is dead or not
- How to avoid the tyranny of Google
- Why you should forget the “Long Tail”
- How to truly leverage Web 2.0
- Why you’re not normal, and why that’s a good thing
- How the true power of the Internet is being missed
- What “teaching sells” means to you
For many months I haven’t read such a good report regarding online business. Valuable review of future trends and an attempt to find the best model for your Internet revenue stream. But it is just the beginning of something bigger. After reading the 22 pages I was ready to ask for Brian’s PayPal account to send money and buy another parts of the report… Very clever addictive copywriting.
September 5th, 2007 — Interesting!
After great popularity of del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati it was the time for niche link building platforms. Specialised social bookmarking focusing on specific topics, like Sphinn for SEO gives often better results that promoting on crowded Digg. Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal confirms this theory:
For example, in Search Engine Journal??Â?Â?s case, 100 Sphinn visitors could be much more powerful than 5,000 Digg users as Sphinn members are search engine marketers, tuned into the search world, and highly receptive to our material and sponsorship messages.
If you are interested in building your own social bookmarking platform and gather community around it, you don’t have to write it yourself. There is an open source solution right there for you, called Pligg. And if you have some webmaster skills you can build your own template. Otherwise just find some free ones on the Net. Before you go to download Pligg, have a look on one of the nicely designed pages based on Pligg.
August 27th, 2007 — Blogging, Web development
After receiving a few questions regarding the way I redesigned Copyblogger theme by adding leftbar and making it 3-column template, I decided it will be the easiest way to make it available for everyone to dowload from SharingMatters.com.
To customise the theme, just replace images/header.jpg (990×146px) with your own image. To remove text from the header, go to header.php and delete the following line:
<a href=”<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>” title=”<?php bloginfo(’name’); ?>”><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></a>
Let me know if you found any problems so I can improve it and please keep all the links in the footer (you can remove SITEMAP or add your own in the pages section and it will link to it automatically). Just recently I have fixed a few bugs that occurred in IE6.
Edited on 30/04/2008: Below is a list of basic plug-ins that I recommend installing in the first place:
If you enjoyed 3-column copyblogger template, you can say THANK YOU by buying me tasty Cafe Latte for $1.99 - just click here.
If you need professional help with your online business, you can hire me by getting in touch through a contact form on MightyWorkshop.com.
July 16th, 2007 — SEO
If you are in SEO for a while you have heard about SEO Book and SEOmoz Premium Membership where you pay for an access to quality content and resources that will help you boost your SEO skills and continue to grow in this area.
“The Marketing Pilgrim Essays” ebook that is given away for free is an example that both publishing scenarios coexist in the SEO world. In the beginning I thought it would be 20-30 pages ebook and I will read it through within an hour. It came out it is a collection of 68 Essays on Improving Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Advertising and Social Media Optimization. Marketing Pilgrim is sharing this precious knowledge with you and will be happy if you recommend this 163 pages book to others and/or subscribe to their RSS.
July 14th, 2007 — Web development
Copyblogger has recently published a post regarding text formatting with a very specific picture in the beginning. This example is to demonstrate why you should be creative in using images on your website. Just have a read the second comment to this post:
Eric: Best. picture. ever.
The article was OK too
If you have a website or a blog you quite likely visit Google Analytics or any other stats often wondering how to improve the following:
Probably you are addicted to these stats, like I am, checking them to often wondering if you are closer to your targets.
July 9th, 2007 — Improve your life, Personal development, Self-employment
The more I read in the Internet about becoming self-employed, the more I feel I will succeed. Why? Because becoming an Internet entrepreneur is like quitting cigarettes or losingweight - gather more people around you with similar goals and it will be easier to reach your targets together. I regularly feed myself with articles and ebooks of people who have developed their own business or are on the way to it. Not only makes me feel more confident about my efforts, but also there is something else - I feel that we all do this together, especially that most of this people want to share their knowledge, support you and guide you because they know how hard it is in the beginning.
A friend of mine went to the USA for summer holidays and while doing some sightseeing, she met a guy and started to have a chat with him. They were talking friendly for a while and then she said she would like to come to America to continue her studies but can’t afford that. And like in the American dream, he offered her financial support to cover all the costs. He said that somebody helped him in the same way when he was young. After graudating from university she is now studying MBA while working as a stock market analyst in one of the companies in North Carolina.
Probably you have heard a lot of stories like this and they are indeed nice to read but what is my purpose of writing about that?
