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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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I’m experimenting again with these short video blog posts (vlogs). This time I even added a few callouts to the video, which was really cool (for me anyway).

Click play below to hear what I have to say about blog design in this 4 minute video.

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Ok, so the “Ekka” will mean absolutely nothing to most people unless you are from Brisbane. Basically the Ekka is an annual show, full of rides, showbags, entertainment, games - a huge funfair for the whole family, as the saying goes.

It’s really for kids - and I haven’t been since I was a kid - but when I recently purchased home and contents insurance for my new house I was given free tickets to the Ekka (how’s that for cross channel marketing!), so I decided to go.

I’ll be there tomorrow and really I go for two reasons - to see animals (cows are so funny!) and for the cadbury showbag, which is chock-full of…chocolate.

In the meantime I offer you some links I’ve collected over the past few weeks that you might find interesting…

Recommended Links

• I write a lot about the concept of Social Proof and I was recently notified of an interesting post over at the Internet Influence Magic blog that features a case study about how social proof can help you be more attractive to women. I’m not sure if the same proof technique works the other way around though!
• Dennis over at The Beta News blog asked me to show everyone my desktop and also asked about some of the common software programs I use every day.
• It’s pretty clear that the niche of “freelancing” is hugely popular at the moment, as demonstrated by Chris, who recently disclosed his freelance writing income for July 2007 and received quite a bit of attention. I should change my blog’s name to “Freelancer’s Journey” :-).
• Here’s an interesting concept - Sean Aiken is doing a different job each week and video documenting the whole process via a blog. The pilot episode is at a Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto and he recently finished his second week job at a tattoo parlor.
• Lately I’ve started to feel that we bloggers need to know more about the legal implications of what we publish, both in the articles we release to our blogs and the comments left in response. Anne-Marie Nichols offers a nice concise article with some handy links and discussion about what we need to know about copyright protection for photos and content.
• Ben Cook, who is one of my Blog Mastermind students, is running a competition and he’s giving away what he calls - The Complete Blogging Package - and of course Blog Mastermind membership is one of the prizes.
• I’m participating in Blog Action Day - you might want to as well.
• And last but not least, just in case you didn’t know already, my friend Darren Rowse just launched the new Problogger design featuring all kinds of bells and whistles - even a talking Darren head video once a week!

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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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Welcome to the next article in my series on blogging as a sustainable business model. In part one of this series you learned about the staple monetization strategy that most probloggers use - creating content to bring in traffic and increase income.

Using the example of Darren Rowse in article two, I concluded that despite the fact that a few top bloggers earn a full time income blogging, and even more money in the case of Darren and bloggers like him, it is still not a sustainable business model when so much responsibility for output rests on one person. In the previous article before this one I listed some of the advantages that many top bloggers enjoy, which the average person does not.

If you have not read the first three parts in this series please do so before continuing with this article.

• 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

Points of Leverage

The problem with the current model for professional blogging is the lack of a strategy that actually leverages the content = traffic = money equation in a non-linear way. Most professional bloggers apply the time = money formula directly to the content = traffic = money formula, placing a big limitation on the total output possible. This as I mentioned is self employment applied to blogging. Blogging is not a bad job, but it is still a job - and you may not want a job forever if you share my belief that happiness comes from freedom.

What we need to do is create a model that doesn’t restrict content = traffic = money, but instead exponentially multiplies it, and to do this we need to finds way to leverage our resources.

Read the rest of this entry >>

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