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I’m in Toronto living in the suburbs at the moment, trying to find a sublet somewhere downtown.

That means I have to catch a long subway ride to get into the city and whenever I have a commute I like to use my time productively.

Thankfully, Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett were kind enough to send me a copy of their new print book, titled Problogger - Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income - which I have been happily devouring on my train rides.

Initial Thoughts

The Problogger Book is like a condensed version of the Problogger.net website. The style and language is the same and let’s face it, the Problogger website is so darn huge since Darren is so productive and produces crazy amounts of content, it’s nice to have the essentials put into a book in a logical sequence.

I enjoyed the personal anecdotes and background story from Darren and Chris, but unfortunately there wasn’t much of that, which makes total sense of course - the book is about problogging, not the life story of the authors.

If you are new to blogging, enjoy the paper back book as a study format, you won’t find a better book out there on this subject from two guys who know problogging very well.

You can grab a sample chapter and find links to purchase the book from http://probloggerbook.com/

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Download the MP3 [ 41 Minutes - 9 MB]

It’s time for podcast episode #40. It’s hard to believe I started podcasting more than two years ago now!

This episode features myself and Darren Rowse and our topic of discussion is blog design. Darren talked about his recent Problogger redesign and how he worked with his designer, Ben Bleikamp. Then we talked about the different professional blog designers currently available (listed below) and how you should work with a designer to minimize the risk of problems.

We went on to discuss how bloggers who have limited financial budgets can go about sourcing a unique blog look, including modifying free themes and why you would want to have a custom design for your blog. We also talked about what a new design can do for you in terms of blog traffic, demonstrating your professionalism and infusing yourself with new energy if you are feeling blogger burn out.

Here’s a list of the resources mentioned in the podcast.

Blog Designers

• The Blog Studio
• Chris Pearson [ pearsonified ]
• Ben Bleikamp
• Nate Whitehill [ Unique Blog Designs ]
• Michael Pollock [ Solostream ]
• Phil Hartle

Freelance Sites

• DesignOutpost.com
• Elance.com
• Guru.com
• Scriptlance.com
• Rentacoder.com

Darren’s Logo Designer

• Mike Rohde [ Makalumedia.com ]

Free WordPress Themes

• http://themes.wordpress.net/

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Darren Rowse and I did a special one hour podcast discussing advanced blogging strategies to generate more traffic and make more money from blogging.

The podcast has just gone live at Problogger.net and you can get it now from here -

Free Blogging Tips Podcast with Darren and Yaro

Here is the timeline of what we discussed in the podcast, which goes for just over an hour:

• Yaro on the convergence between the Internet marketing and blogging world
• How to build buzz and traffic by releasing a viral PDF report
• Tips on how to build relationships with other bloggers
• Darren talks about techniques to capture more repeat readers using your blog archives
• Customizing pages based on where your traffic comes from
• Why adding an email list newsletter to your blog is critical
• Tips to monetize your blog or newsletter using direct sponsorship
• Testing how your ads convert on your site to increase your income from sponsors
• Using split testing software (openads) to improve the performance of ads on your blog
• Testing different elements of your blog using crazy egg
• Buying sites with the profit you make from blogging

Surprise Offer

At the end of the recording Darren and I talk about a special offer I’m making just for his readers who are interested in joining Blog Mastermind. It’s a limited time offer, ending this Friday and the link for the special offer page is only available in the podcast and at Darren’s blog.

I explain why I made the offer in the podcast too, so if you are curious you will have to listen to the conversation right to the end.

You can get the podcast direct from Problogger.net in this link -

Free Blogging Tips Podcast with Darren and Yaro

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In the first part of this series on professional blogging as a business model I explained the content = traffic = money equation as the root formula for nearly all currently successful professional bloggers and those who are working to replicate their success.

If you have not done so already, please read the opening article here -

Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?

Darren Rowse, A Leading Professional Blogger

I first came across Darren Rowse in 2004, and his Problogger.net blog appeared to be well put together and intriguing, but at the time I was beginning my research into blogging and was far from making any money from my own blog - in fact I didn’t have any intentions of doing so. If it wasn’t for one unique thing, that Darren was an Aussie from Melbourne and I am from Australia too, I would not have spent nearly as much time studying Darren and his blog as I did.

Darren has a lot to answer to in the professional blogging world. It’s partly his fault that so many people currently do or are attempting to make money from blogging. If it wasn’t for events like this slashdot news post in July 05 about Darren earning between $10,000 and $20,000 per month from blogging, and the countless articles, blog posts and offline newspaper features on Darren’s success (he’s probably seen cheques and payments at double or triple his 2005 monthly income average since then - Darren?), not quite as many would know that this whole professional blogging thing was possible.

If it wasn’t Darren then no doubt some other professional blogger would have risen to spread awareness of the potential of blogging for income. No matter who did it, the outcome was always going to be the same - professional blogging rising in popularity as a new hit online occupation available to the average person with a computer and net access.

What Does Darren Have That You Don’t?

Read the rest of this entry >>

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Last week I headed out to a bunch of industry specific social gatherings in Toronto that all happened to fall on the same week. I attended the monthly Third Tuesday social media meetup, the Mesh/B5 blogger meetup and the second Toronto Mastermind group meeting, which was organized by the people from in and around Toronto who are all in Rich Schefren’s Internet business coaching program.

All the events were good fun and it was fantastic to meet so many bloggers, podcasters, Internet business owners and folk who work and play online in similar ways to myself.

At the Third Tuesday meetup Shel Holtz gave a spiel about podcasting and given the room was full of PR related professionals and podcasters it was a captive audience. It was interesting to hear Shel’s speech and the questions from the audience since the group were clearly focused on the PR industry and how podcasting is used as a promotional tool, which is slightly different to the Internet marketing mindset I generally see things in.

At the mesh meetup on Wednesday night I hung around Darren Rowse trying to keep the Australians in the room in one place so we didn’t get lost, which turned out to be an interesting place to stay as different people came up asking Darren - “Are you Darren Rowse?” - obviously recognising the Problogger. When I introduced myself to people they usually had trouble pronouncing my name (as usual) and most were not quite as well aware of my blogging legacy as Darren’s. There were a few who knew “Yaro” though and it always blows me away to meet people in person who know my blogs and work online.

A big hello to Leesa Barnes, Vince Chan (the (in)famous amblogger), Tony Hung (the first real life doctor blogger I have ever met, strangely enough blogging about Web 2.0 and nothing medical), Gary Grant (another blog network owner) and of course the rest of the b5 media crew in attendance, Jeremy Wright (who I had dinner with when I first arrived in Toronto) and Mark Evans.

On Friday I attended the second Toronto mastermind meeting with my fellow Rich Schefren coaching victims. This group is entirely self-motivated and came about via the forums available to Rich Schefren’s clients. There are geographic mastermind groups all over the world that came about through Rich’s coaching. We have a good group going at the moment communicating with teleconferences and the near-monthly get togethers.

The spread of businesses is quite interesting, although we are mostly focusing on the online elements of our enterprises. When we meet we generally discuss a range of topics and also take turns in a “hot seat” to get feedback and suggestions on specific problems we are facing. I find the input from other business owners helpful in reducing the clutter in my head when it comes to decision making and there are always new ideas sparked in our meetings. I think everyone involved finds the gatherings useful and I would recommend masterminding if you get a chance.

Hugh MacLeod Business Cards

During all these social events the fact that I don’t have a business card became apparent as I was given cards from other people plenty of times and asked for my card a couple of times too. I am certainly committing a networking 101 faux-paux by not coming prepared with my card so I decided I better get something to give to people.

Some of the cool people had business cards with Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid.com) artwork. I stumbled across Hugh’s blog on the weekend again while reading my feeds and happened across the link to the site where you can buy the business cards from and went and ordered some with I think a very appropriate piece of artwork to use as my business card for the time being.

You can see it here.

Now I’m one of the “cool” people too and have something to give out at my next social gathering. Beware!

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