Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

I’m heading on a family road trip this week up to visit cousins at their respective universities north of Toronto with my mother and aunt.

I’ll be staying at Kingston to see one cousin at Queens university and then heading to Montreal to see another who studies at McGill.

During the travel time I hope to get some writing in (I’m not driving) and possibly some blogging from hotels too.

In the meantime here are some links you might care to review (speedlinking is all the range these days…).

Recommended Links

• Two blogs I’m really enjoying lately are from fellow “dot com moguls”, as John Chow calls us - guys making a living online. John Chow’s blog is quite a smorgasbord of topics. In between photographs of what John ate at his last night out at a restaurant in Vancouver you can catch all kinds of great tidbits and advice from a guy living the online entrepreneur dream.

  If you like my blog I expect you will definitely like John’s - he’s very prolific at the moment, he must be going through the blogging addict phase writing a ton of content each day to keep us entertained and educated. He also happens to turn good coin from his blog topping the $2700 a month mark in December 06 and regularly writes about how he does it.

• The other blog is from Tyler Cruz, who is no where near as prolific as John, but I feel a lot of similarities with this guy since he has just bought his first condo and makes money from forums. Read through his archives and you will get a very personal insight into how Tyler makes money online (he was recently part of a six figure deal on a domain name sale!).
• Wil Schroter and the team at GoBig Network released a report on small business funding. You can download the report in PDF format here - Small Business Funding Review
• Apparently I have a “Big and Beautiful” RSS button. You can see how other prominent blogger’s RSS buttons were rated in Nothing Ventured’s post What your RSS button says about you.
• I was meaning to tell you guys about this one many months ago when it changed price - one of the best and original books on selling online - Make Your Site SELL! 2002 - is now free.

  It was a $29.95 ebook produced by Ken Evoy and his team at SiteBuidIt but they have decided to make it free, presumably to use it as a solid lead generation product for their e-commerce hosting service.

  It’s a fantastic book that covers many of the core principles behind making money from websites, including Ken’s Content - Traffic - PREsell - Monetize formula, one of the foundations of Internet commerce. If you have never read this book now is a great chance to pick up a copy for free. My affiliate link points to the book, but rest assured it is free, I only get a commission if you decide to one day sign up to their ecommerce hosting service.

Enjoy everyone, and if are in Montreal leave me a comment and you never know I might just have a chance to come visit you, although my schedule is a bit tight and I plan to spend most of the time indoors because winter scares me ;-).

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For any bloggers planning a trip to Australia in March, head to my hometown Brisbane and attend the Australian Blogging Conference, where you just might bump into me!

I’ll be fresh back from Toronto by then and definitely plan to attend. I’m not sure how big it will be - I certainly don’t expect huge numbers given the low key promotional effort so far - but hey, any chance to meet bloggers in Brisbane is great.

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I just received a sponsored review request from a company new to me called AdVolcano. I had a quick browse of their site and initially thought it was another standard middleman style ad services company (clearing house) linking advertisers with publishers - and it is - but they are doing one thing that I like, which I think is worth pointing out, and as bloggers looking to make money online it never hurts to be aware of all of our options. Here is my sponsored review.

First up let’s see how AdVolcano describe their service:

AdVolcano’s model allows publishers to create innovative ad placements without the restraints of a traditional network. This flexibility opens up new, otherwise un-monetized, ad inventory. In the end, publishers are supplementing their income, rather than replacing one revenue stream for another.

AdVolcano lets you define certain areas of your blog for advertisers and charge a monthly fee, rather than a cost per click or cost per action or cost per impression method.

AdVolcano calls it Cost Per Term, which is the method I have used to monetize my sites from day one online, although without the use of a middleman. As far back as 1999 I was selling banner inventory on my first site for a monthly fee, which I found an easier method to use than a cost per impression method, since you simply pay for time.

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The forums are getting busy.

Lots of people new to blogging and doing business online are posting questions, which I’m confident many of you more experienced readers could help answer. It would certainly help the community if we had the opinion and experience of other people popping in now and then and responding with their wisdom.

If you enjoy helping others, know a thing or two about blogging or Internet business, please stop by and join the forums AND respond to some posts. Of course you are welcome to ask questions too - I’m not asking just for the experts to come visit, but for a nice mix of experience and newer members.

I’m also on the hunt for at least two more forum leaders - moderators - to join the leadership team with Blaine Moore and myself. To become a mod you must be a regular presence at the forums and have reasonable sense since you will decide what is spam and moderate any disputes. You get special powers at the forums as a reward, and contact with me too if you think that sort of thing is rewarding
Take a look -> Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Forums

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It’s taken four articles to get here, but at last the final chapter in the series on sustainable business models that use blogs. If this is the first time you have read this series please read the articles in sequence. Here are links to the previous articles -

• Part 1: Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?
• Part 2: Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?
• Part 3: The Advantages Top Bloggers Have That You Don’t
• Part 4: The Key Resource For A Sustainable Blogging Business

If you have stuck with me and read all the articles in this series you are probably eagerly awaiting my recommendation for professional blogging business models that ARE sustainable. I have compiled my suggestions below and I offer one main method for using blogs as the focus of a business, but the picture I paint is not an ideal business model in my opinion.

It is still very early days in the blogging world and there are not many people currently using a blog or several blogs as the main focus of their business model. Thousands of people use blogs to augment an existing business, but not many focus on blogs as the business and of course there are many successful professional bloggers, but that’s not a business as I have explained over the course of this series.

In order to become a professional blog business owner you must establish a small business model that uses blogs, but does not require you to always blog. In order for this to work for you, as I hinted in previous articles, you need to learn how to create something that is not dependent on your own input for success and adjust your preconceptions of how to build wealth.

The Blog Network

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