Three Books And A Beanbag That Doesn’t Smell Funny
In the interview I did with Robb Sutton he talked about the $10,000+ worth of freebies he’s received thanks to blogging.
While I haven’t been that active pursuing free product thanks to the exposure this blog grants me, I do get things in the mail from time to time. In the spirit of saying thanks for the freebies, here are short reviews of three books I received that you may find interesting and a not quite as expected gift of a beanbag that I’ve been putting to good use.
The Sumolounge Omni Chair
When Andrew Milligan emailed me and told me that his company Sumolounge were entering Australia and whether I would, as a high profile Australian blogger, like to try out one of his beanbags, I was initially torn about what to do.
I wanted the beanbag. My house, still being quite new, is sparse for furniture and having recently won a 40in Sony Bravia LCD TV in an affiliate competition I needed (err, desired) something to sit on to watch it. I was also very curious to know what made the sumolounge beanbags different from your everyday run-of-the-mill beanbag, which I had grown up with and known as grungy and smelly bags, often spewing forth little white foam balls.
The problem, as I saw it, was how to justify taking a free beanbag given I would have to find a way to tie it into the topic of my blog so I could repay the favor of the freebie with some exposure for Andrew and his company.
How To Master The Inner Game Of Business And Life
I remember a year or so ago I was trawling a popular Internet marketing forum. This particular forum has some successful marketers, but mostly the members are opportunity seeking newbies, including lots of young guys who are looking to make money online quick and care little for hard work.
I did an “ego” search in this particular forum for my name (market feedback I swear!), and came across a thread from some people discussing my Blog Profits Blueprint free report. Someone had asked how to make money blogging and my report was referenced by another member.
Some of the feedback was positive, but there was also a few replies that were along the lines of…
“It’s full of too much fluff”
“Just show me how to make money”
etc…
My report talked too much about things you control with your mind, like being consistent and persistent, finding passion and then narrowing down to a focus, and not enough about specific techniques that just make money flow like mana from heaven.
Put in other terms, these particular people wanted to know the “how” without really knowing the “why”. Unfortunately, you can make a little money by implementing certain techniques, but if you don’t know why you are doing something and how it fits into the big picture, and most importantly, how you as the owner of your business impact your results, then any success you have will be short lived.
I wasn’t really upset about these comments, rather I felt bad for people who wanted a quick fix and weren’t seeing what they were doing online as building a long term sustainable asset. They preferred to flutter from technique to technique hoping to strike it rich one day, just like miners digging for gold.
Impatient people rarely have time for “mindset” lessons, thus they will stop reading an article like this after the first few paragraphs. Discussing things like the inner game seems useless to them. In their opinion all you need to do is figure out what works and do it, there’s no need to worry about much more than that. That might work if we were all robots, but we’re not, so you do need to pay attention to your fallible human characteristics, like your thoughts and your feelings.
The Inner Game of Business
What the people in the forums were neglecting is the importance of your “inner game”. The concept of the inner game is widely used in fields like personal development, in the seduction community and is talked about in business circles as well, yet I find people often have trouble grasping exactly what the inner game is, since it’s such an intangible aspect of life.
Some people, particularly men of course, don’t like to talk about things like feelings and thoughts, when they consider what really matters are actions and outcomes. That’s true, but behind every action and the resulting outcome is a thought and a feeling. Doesn’t it make sense to track back all the way to the origin of something to make sure we have all aspects of the process congruent? Of course it does if we want success, and that’s exactly what the inner game is about.
Are You Tired Of Failure?
Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?
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?
The Long Tail
It’s about time I give my take on The Long Tail. I find myself referring to it on a regular basis as I write articles about blogging and business in general and if you have been following the recent fuss about the evolution of Internet marketing (or known as it’s “death”) or read a handful of popular blogs about business or economics, you have no doubt heard the phrase “The Long Tail” before. It’s certainly having a significant impact on the economics of doing business online and is a buzz term uttered by many of the coolest people in the online business world. In case you haven’t heard the term before here is my introduction for you in good old simple Yaro speak and my attempt to be one of the cool people too.
I can’t remember which blog I read first that introduced me to The Long Tail, but certainly the first place I read anything about it in-depth was from the person credited with creating the term, Chris Anderson, in his now seminal Wired magazine article – The Long Tail. This is certainly the first place I recommend you go to if you want the five-page medium sized story about The Long Tail and if you want the really long story he has a new book out, strangely enough called, The Long Tail, which I will provide a mini review of later in this article as I have just finished reading it.
What Is The Long Tail?
How To Launch A Forum With An Instant Audience
Here’s a strategy for launching a buzzing forum from day one – create an uber-popular blog first, then launch a forum and bring your existing blog audience over to it.
Steve Pavlina has done just that launching his brand new Personal Development for Smart People Forums. He’s already reported explosive traffic growth at the forums and as I type this there are over 270 people on the forum with registrations numbers over 1000 and I expect the growth won’t be stopping any time soon.
Steve’s blog happens to be one of the most popular blogs in the blogosphere (we are talking millions of page views a month) so it’s not necessarily an easy thing to replicate, but certainly a joy to watch what one individual can create online.
If you want to learn more about Steve I interviewed him back in April -
