Get The Blog Profits Blueprint Now!

After a day of waiting, the Blog Profits Blueprint is finally out in the open. Unfortunately Yaro had some problems with Aweber which is why I didn’t receive the link to the download until this morning, but believe me it was worth the wait!

I read the 55 page eBook from start to finish and it was jam-packed full of juicy information throughout. I suppose this was one of the reasons why I signed up to become an affiliate, because I knew Yaro and I know the type of writing skills he has and the great experience he has in the blogging field:

“What you are about to read is the result of two-and-a-half years of blogging and over seven years of hands-on Internet business experience. This advice is unique because it comes from someone who knows BUSINESS as well as blogging and who has applied business principles to make money from blogs.”

In the book itself, Yaro emphasises the importance of planning at first and then goes onto explain his Pillar Article method of releasing information, and then focuses on Marketing and Monetizing. Another great piece of advice I learnt was to focus on one part of your blog, improve it and then move onto the next. So if you’re stuck in a rut, download the FREE eBook, stop procrastinating and get to work!

In conclusion, whilst there is a lot of text to be read, this just means that you’ll have to take some time out to read the resource, because there are a lot of tips and hints to be had and utilized on your own blogs or sites. If also you felt like you learnt a lot, check out the Mastermind Mentoring Program for a chance to work one-on-one with the man himself!

Congratulations Yaro on a great product launch!

Web 3.0 - The Rise Of The Information Product

A few weeks back I posted an article about Top 5 Forms Of Website and Blog Monetization for 2008. In at number 2, I mentioned how Information Products next year would become a mainstream bread and butter source for online income. It turns out that my prediction was a bit far off. Yup, information products have bombarded their way into 2007 and it looks like entrepreneurs across the globe are gonna get a large slice of this monetary pie.

So what are information products and why have they become so popular? That’s a good question and one which webpreneurs have been capitalizing on for the past few months. An information product does exactly what it says on the tin. It gives information about a specific niche or topic. In general, these products can be packaged up in different ways, for example in a PDF file, a downloadable eBook, a podcast or a video.

The ease of selling and buying them is really one of its best features. As a content producer, all you need is a Word Processing Program (like Microsoft Word), Adobe Reader, a Paypal account and a brain. Then write to your heart’s content and upload the files. You can make the whole process more complicated with the addition of an affiliate program and membership area, but it can be so simple if you don’t want any strings attached.

For buyers, all you need is some spare change (or a loan). These information products can range from Free to $7 to $99 to $1000 and more. You’ve really got to do the research to find out what you can expect to achieve from such a course, and what it will do for you in the long-run.

So why were my predictions wrong? Simple. In the past day and half I’ve seen the release of 2 information products from 2 very well known bloggers.

The first is Yaro Starak. I’ve always been a fan of his, and Entrepreneurs-Journey was one of my first entrepreneurial blogs that I started to read at the start of my blogging career. It’s taught me so much, and I’ve subscribed to pretty much every newsletter Yaro’s published.

The launch of the BlogMastermind Mentoring Program then was no big surprise as it’s been on the cards since 2006! But in reality, it can show how a normal blogger can use skills that he’s learnt in the past few years to create a whole audience for the picking - hopefully he’s gonna get very wealthy from selling the product. Anyway, as a newbie affiliate, Yaro’s program is the first proper product affiliate program that I’ve signed up to, so I want to give him the biggest amount of exposure as possible:

Tomorrow will be the launch of his Blog Profits Blueprint, so I’ll have another little short post telling you where you can download the FREE report.

Moving onto the second mogul. John Chow has made quite a name for himself since September of 2006, as he constanty shows his many methods of monetization. Without singing too many praises, he also jumped on the Information Product Bandwagon today, by releasing his free Make Money Online PDF book.

Now again, I don’t normally recommend such things (and this has no affiliate link), but the book is actually very good. Whilst there are punctuation and grammatical mistakes, John speaks English as a second language and so can be excused. In general the whole of the eBook is written in a bloggy type of way, and I’m sure he could get a lot more traffic posting the articles on his blog.

Both of the mentioned above have really capitalized on the blogging market. With the amount of newbie bloggers joining everyday, it’s no wonder that these type of niche products are geared towards them. I also tried to write my own ebook on entrepreneurship, but time got the better of me. Now Im thinking that I could give it a shot again.

In conclusion, the web is a neverending torrent of ideas and cashcows. You’ve really gotta jump on them while they’re hot, and in my opinion, Information Products have captured 2007 and make for a colourful and lucrative 2008.

6 Solid Exam Revision Tips

All across the world, the months of May and June are notorious for being the months of exams. Whether you’re doing your Finals, your A Levels, your International Baccalaureats, your GCSEs or your normal End of Year examinations, chances are that you’re gonna have a hill or a mountain to climb in order to get to the next stage of education and your life.

“By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The above is a good quote often used by teachers to stir pupils into bouts of activity. But it’s really true. The best way to succeed is to revise, and whilst this can be long-winded and annoying, short-term pains are necessary for long-term gains, and as entrepreneurs, long-sighted vision is just as important as the present.

So, how can you go about your revision in the most effective and thorough way? Here are 7 pointers that should help you get through the stacks of paper that you’ve been writing on all year:

1) Make a plan - at the start of your week or half-term holiday, draw up a schedule and list all the subject areas you would like to look over. Then, work out how long each revision slot should be (I recommend 40 minutes) and fill up your day accordingly.

2) Make notes - now there’s a few ways that you can revise and in most situations its up to you to develop your own style of revision. But personally, I find that making brief notes about all the topics and subject areas can refresh your brain and will save you having to look through massive files for repeated revision. Make sure you don’t write in full sentences and develop your own form of notation for quick-hand.

3) Be realistic - don’t set yourself amazingly difficult goals to achieve over a certain period, and don’t try and do a 15 hour day of revision, our brains simply aren’t made for such intense activity (unless you’re bionic). By setting yourself easy ultimatums, you’ll be a lot more content once you’ve managed to finish them (this applies to business as well).

4) Have a break - as mentioned, having a 15 hour day of work is not gonna really get you much done. So in between each 40 minute slot, take 10 minutes out to check your emails, site stats or earnings - everyone’s favourite! That will give you time to refresh.

5) Focus and Concentrate - Once you’ve finished breaking and slacking off, get back to work and try to focus your energy into note writing and memory flexing. There’s no use just day dreaming because that will be time wasted (and time is our most precious commodity).

6) Be confident - Once all is said and done and you’re at the start of exam week, feel confident knowing that you’ve put enough work in. If you know you haven’t done enough work on the other hand, then hope that the questions that will come up will be based on the topics you’ve studied. And if all else fails - you’ll just have to take one step back

There you have it. Whilst these definitely aren’t failproof ways of cramming in the most hours of work and most efficient forms of revision, they can definitely help you from my own experience. Feel free to add your own tips in the comments below, because they could really help us all as we enter the examinations period.

101 Essential Blogging Resources

Update: There are now 122 resources, so thanks for your suggestions and keep them coming!
Update: This article has been translated into Spanish here and here and has been translated into French here.
With the amount of tools and programs cropping up all over the web for every type of person imagineable, its about time that someone wrote a massive list of resources for bloggers. Fortunately, I’ve taken up that responsibility to share with you some of the tools I use in my daily blogging life. Please note that by no means is this a definitive list, so please let me know if you think I’ve missed any out!

Domain Registrars

If you’re starting up on the web, then you’re gonna need an address where people can reach you:

1. Namecheap - $8.88 per year with free WhoisGuard
2. GoDaddy - $8.95 per year (and lower)
3. 1&1 - $5.99 per year with free private domain registration
4. MyDomain - $8.25 per year

Hosting
Once you’ve got yourself an address, you’re gonna need a house to store all of your juicy blog posts - so grab yourself some server space:

1. Dreamhost - Great plans, great prices with loads of bandwidth and diskspace.
2. Frozen Webhost - Small company but only $5/month and very reliable.
3. Media Temple - Awesome recommendations, grid and dedicated hosting.
4. Rackspace - Managed, dedicated and scalable web hosting for businesses
5. Hostgator - Shared hosting at $6.95 per month
6. Bluehost - Affordable, Reliable, Web Hosting Solutions

Read more

Procrastination - Fighting The Enemy

Procrastination is something that all of us dread. Whether we’re a blogger, a freelance web designer, an athlete or CEO of a multinational company, the act of procrastination can severely damage your business’ progress and can eat away at your most valuable resource - time.

So what is procrastination and how can you prevent it? First, let’s start off with a Wikipedic definition:

“Procrastination is the deferment or putting-off of an action or task, usually by focusing on some other distraction (compare temporisation). It is Latin for “foremorrowing,” or making some such of tomorrow.”

Let’s put it in context, giving an example of a webmaster hoping to get more traffic to his site. At the beginning of the day, he sets himself a list of all the things he has to complete by the end of his working hours. He starts off opening up Photoshop to create himself a nice graphic banner, he then gets to work editing the template, and then comes the part where he has to write the content in order to get Search Engine recognition.

But, unfortunately for him, his mind is in a daze, and he’s getting quite bored, so he decides to check his emails “only for 5 minutes”. After answering these, he tells himself that he’ll quickly play a game of Tetris and then will get back to work. A game of Tetris turns into an episode of Lost, and before you know it, your time has come and gone and you’ve not completed your list.

This is an entrepreneur’s worst nightmare, and it can lead you to a complete lack of productivity and online or offline growth - ultimately leading to a lack of profits for the time period. Unfortunately though, getting rid of this constant offset of tasks is not just a simple task of saying “Stop procrastinating”. In reality, our human bodies find it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time and have a natural resilience to overcoming hurdles like these (and losing weight for example).

The simple way to preventing the onset of procrastination is to firstly keep yourself very busy. By busy, I don’t mean to completely stress out your life, but to make sure that you don’t have time to think about watching that TV programme or playing that game.

Secondly, break big chunks into smaller chunks. For example, with my exams, I find it difficult to concentrate and revise for a couple of solid hours. So to combat this, I make each revision “slot” 45 minutes each, and then take breaks of 10 minutes in between to catch up on emails, or reward myself with a bit of TV and relaxation - then it’s back to work for the next revision session. Doing this will refresh your mind, and is a basic bit of advice that nearly all time management professionals will teach you.

Also, plan. Now I mentioned that you may already have a plan that you’re not sticking to. If this is the case, then make your plan less specific. By doing this, you avoid missing deadlines and getting yourself annoyed and “behind schedule”, and thus will be more willing to finish off the To-Do List by the end of the day.

Finally, the only way you’re gonna get off your lazy bum and do something, is if you start right now, this very minute. Start doing something, and you’re going to feel more happy about your work. So, just do it!

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