The gang over at Carsonified has released the following video this week by Kevin Rose talking about taking a web app from 1 to 1 million users.

While the video talks more about web applications and not specifically about blogging – some of the principles that Kevin talks about I think are applicable to blogging.

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose from Carsonified on Vimeo.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Go from 1 to 1,000,000 Users (or Readers)

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It’s time for a little discussion – lets talk blogging tools.

Over in the ProBlogger.com forum there’s been a lot of talk about different tools, applications, platforms and plugins that helps to improve blogs. I’m loving the different opinions and experiences and thought it’d be a good question to open up to the wider community – what are your favourite 10 blogging tools?

I suspect most of us will probably include our blogging platform (Blogspot, WordPress, TypePad etc) in the list somewhere but other than that anything goes. Perhaps it’s a comments tool, perhaps a desktop editor, perhaps a plugin or widget – anything goes!

But limit it to 10!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What are Your Favorite 10 Blogging Tools?

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A guest post on backing up your wordpress blog by Jason Tarasi

Do you want to see your blog on the side of a milk carton? No? Then keep reading because…

It is very likely this will be the most important article you read all year. Of course you can choose to skip this article, but you will regret it, especially since I am such a groovy kind of guy. Ok, I hate bellbottoms and green furniture, so maybe I’m not so groovy. However, I am going to show you an easy way to protect your most valuable marketing asset – your WordPress blog.

If you understand the difference between how to backup both your MYSQL database and your standard Word Press files, congratulations! You don’t really win anything, except peace of mind, which I consider invaluable. However, there are literally thousands of WordPress users who are in the dark about the proper way to backup their blogs (yes, I’m probably talking about you).

Unfortunately, even experienced online marketers are making this same mistake. My partner, who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars every year online, was also totally clueless. When I asked him to backup one of our membership site blogs, he sent me a zip file that just included the main WordPress files. When I asked where the database file was, he got a look on his face like he just French kissed Jabba the Hut. Since I couldn’t stand the look on his face for a minute longer, I had to explain why it was so important to have the database file.

Now this is where you should start to pay attention *cough*

Your Word Press blog is powered by a MYSQL database. This database stores all of your content and the settings for your blog. Without this database, your blog would essentially be a black hole lacking any content. Now what most people don’t know is that this database resides on another part of the hosting server. Since the file is in a different location, it needs to be backed up separately from your standard Word Press files.

So here is what all of this means; if your host has a server crash, you will not be able to restore your blog without the MYSQL database. Basically, you will be up a creek without a paddle, a boat, any food, no mapÖ you get the idea, right?

At this point you are probably telling yourself that your hosting company will backup this file for you, right? Not exactly. Many hosting companies are not responsible for backing up your files. I found this out the hard way several years ago, and it could easily happen to you next. So don’t be foolish enough to rely on your Website host to do this for you.

Now here is the good news – you can backup your MYSQL database in three easy steps by following this simple plan:

Step One:

Go and download the “Word Press Database Backup” plugin here.

Step Two:

Install the plugin on your blog.

Step Three:

Set the plugin to your desired specifications. It really is quite straightforward to setup, but you can always refer to the plugin documentation for help.

I personally set the plugin to make either a daily or a weekly backup for each of my blogs. If I post to a blog frequently, I make a daily backup. If I post infrequently, that blog is backed up on a weekly basis. I then have the backup file sent to my email. However you wish for the file to be saved is entirely up to you though. Simply use the method you are most comfortable with.

From start to finish, the entire process takes about 10 minutes per blog. That is of course if you grab a snack to slow you down. So there is absolutely no excuse not to set this up today. I would think ten minutes of your time is well worth the peace of mind you will feel when it’s done.

Now you could be lazy and find out the hard way how much fun it is to have your entire blog wiped out, with no hope of ever seeing it again.

Is ten minutes of your time worth going through that?

Discover the little known money making ideas used by the experts in my hot new ebook ‘Secret Lives of Internet Marketers’. You will discover the successful blueprint seven famous marketers used to become financially independent and how you can easily apply it to your own online business! To download my FREE REPORT instantly, follow this link below

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How To Backup Your WordPress Blog In Three Easy Steps

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Small Business Blogging 101

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

If you are looking for a quick overview of blogging for small business, thinking about starting a blog, or already have a blog and need some tips for getting more from it, you might enjoy the following presentation I did as part of a series of webinars with email marketing service provider Vertical Response.

In this session I cover:
• Getting started
• Design resources
• Best practices
• Plugins and addons
• Promoting and amplifying

Hope it gives you some new ideas. (FYI you can click on the little TV like icon to view in full screen.)

Lots of disclosure here too: Vertical Response is a partner of the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network and the young lady conducting the interview is none other than my daughter Jenna Jantsch!

Today I want to continue our series of posts looking at principles of building a successful blog by looking at the topic of Trust.

A Quick Definition of The Type Of ‘Successful’ Blog I’m Writing About

It might be worth stating that the type of blog that I’m talking about in this series is a blog that isn’t purely about profit or traffic – but a blog that has influence in its niche.

It is certainly possible to build a profitable and/or well trafficked blog without Trust – in fact I know a few bloggers who blog purely for Search Engine Traffic who don’t really care about influence, brand or loyal readers but who just want traffic that they can convert to cash.

These bloggers are certainly ’successful’ on some levels (I guess ’success’ really comes down to your goals) – but that’s not the style of blogging that I do and is not what this series is on about.

What I’m on about is helping bloggers to not only be profitable and have traffic but to build blogs that have profile, influence, authority, credibility, respect and a brand that opens up opportunities beyond quick profit.

By no means is my approach the only way to make money blogging – but it’s where I’m at and as a result is what I write about.

Why Building Trust is Important

OK – so now we’re on the same page lets talk about Trust.

I’m not sure we need to spend too much time talking about ‘why’ building trust is important as it’s pretty much common sense – but in short – if you’re looking to build influence, to build a brand that is respected and you want a site that is authoritative – you’re going to have a lot better chance if people actually trust you.

Yes with some clever copywriting and good positioning in search engines you can probably convince people to buy certain products – but in order to build lasting influence – trust is going to need to play a part.

On the flip side – many businesses today have seen the way that a lack of trust or even worse, broken trust can hurt a business, destroy reputations and ruin years of hard work.

So building and maintaining trust is paramount for bloggers wanting to build influence – so how does one do it?

One of the best resources on the topic of building influence through trust online is Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. However as it’ll take a day or two for Amazon to ship you a copy (and I recommend you get one) I thought I’d jot down a few principles of building trust online that I’ve gathered over the years both from my own experience of trusting others and building trust with others.

A Quick Exercise Before You Read Any More

Before you read my thoughts on how to build trust – here’s a very quick exercise to do.

On a piece of paper or in a text document – jot down a blogger or blog that you trust. Under the name – list 2-3 reasons why you trust them.

OK – read on.

4 Principles of Building Trust Online

1. It usually takes time to build

I’m a pretty sceptical guy – I don’t really want to be but after years of being bombarded with marketing messages and experiencing disappointment at expectations not being met by people making big promises my guard is up. I suspect I’m not alone.
While I’m sure there are people who are more trusting than others – I’m pretty certain that most people in my generation (and the generations that come before and after mine) are a fairly suspicious lot. We are capable of trust – but it usually takes time to get there.

2. It is Earned

I do have the capability to trust you – but more often than not it’ll only come once I see that you’re worthy of that trust. An example of this principle hit my inbox this morning – it was from a reader who had just bought my 31 days to build a better blog workbook.

Her email included this:

“I’ve never bought an ebook before, partly because I don’t trust people with my credit card information and partly because I’ve always suspected most ebooks are just fluff…. But after reading your blog for 12 months and being on the receiving end of useful information every day over that time I decided you were probably a credible source of information”.

The sense that I got from her email was that she only made the purchase based upon her previous experience of what I do – something that was earned by providing her with help day by day over a year.

The take home lesson for bloggers is to give value, be useful and prove that you have something worthwhile and authoritative to say on your topic.

Look for ways to genuinely and generously improve the lives of your readers – do this over the long haul and your deposit in the trust bank with readers grows over time.

3. The recommendations of others are important

I still remember (but can’t find a link to) a post by Seth Godin a year or so back where he talks about how he sells a lot more books through a blog post when he’s talking about someone else’s book than his own.

It was the perfect illustration of how the words and recommendations of other people promotion you carry a lot more weight than you promoting yourself.

We’re social beings – we make decisions together – we buy things that others recommend – we trust those that others trust….

This means you have a couple of tasks to do:

1. Build relationships with others. Some bloggers take the attitude that other bloggers are potential competition and as a result they stay clear of them. However a recommendation from someone else in your industry could be gold – build relationships.
2. Find Ways to use this social proof. If someone does recommend you it doesn’t hurt to highlight it to others. You don’t need to do it in an ego driven or big headed way – but do find subtle and relevant ways to share it with those in your network.

4. Be Yourself

One of the fastest ways to destroy trust is to be caught trying to be something that you’re not.

• Make a promise that you can’t fulfil
• Present yourself as someone that you’re unable to be
• Make a claim that’s not true

All of these things set up expectations in the eyes of others that can’t be met which will lead to disappointment, anger, disillusionment and as a result – broken trust.

Not only that – I find that people are pretty good these days at picking people who are presenting themselves as something that they’re not. You might not even have to get caught out to have people suspicious (and untrusting) of you.

• As a result it’s best to be yourself.
• Let people know what you do and don’t know.
• Be transparent about your motives.
• Share your stories of failure as well as your successes.
• Admit your mistakes.

All of these things make you more human, relatable and help to build trust.

What Would You Add?

I’ve only scratched the surface on Trust with this post – there’s so much more to say and I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say on the topic.

• What bloggers do you trust (who did you write down in the exercise above)? Why do you trust them?
• How do you build trust with your readers?
• What stories and experiences do you have to help illustrate these principles of building trust?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Trust – Principles of Successful Blogging #2

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A Guest post by Jade Craven.

Have you heard of Johnny B Truant? He started writing at ‘The Economy Isn’t Happening’ but recently, he revealed he’s made $10′000 in 3 months. In his Ittybiz column, he told how he made nearly $3′000 in one month. He’s also written a couple of guest posts here on ProBlogger here and here.

What really attracted me to him was that he didn’t earn this money by taking advantage of people or using questionable tactics. He did it by finding out what people wanted and providing them with a solution that benefited them both.

In this post, I’ll talk about how Johnny did it. I’ll provide strategies and case studies so you can apply these tips to your on blog. I’ll even talk about the tactics he used to promote his killer new ecourse, for those who are looking at selling information products from their blog.

Finally, I’ll give you an exclusive discount for that e-course Zero to Business – just skip to the bottom if you want 10% off.

4 Ways To Earn Money By Helping People

Give Free Stuff strategically

Image by Anil Jadhav

How Johnny did this:

• He released a free instructional ebook about setting up a blog.
• He did free website setups in return for testimonials

How You Can Do this

• Barter your services with other skilled bloggers
• Release an introductory report
• Do free work in return for references or exposure
• Do case studies highlighting your skills.

Case studies.

• Leo Babauta, Skellie and Chris Garret got a lot of exposure because of their guest posting.
• Neil Creek takes headshots of attendees at twitter meetups for use on their social media sites. He has received a lot of praise over this, both from the local twitter community and international photographers. He has gone on to get many more clients and enquiries.
• Darren used to do case studies on his blog as an advertisement for his consulting. He no longer offers this service.

Provide calls to action regularly

Image by kozumel

How Johnny did this:

• He would frequently have P.S at the end of his post – including a few humorous ones
• He would simply state “Call to Action”

How you can provide calls to action:

• In the conclusion of the post, tell the reader what you want them to do
• Give them an incentive to click through

Case Studies:

• Ali Hales guest post on Problogger. She talked about the topic of staff blogging before encouraging people to check out her ecourse. As an extra incentive, she gave the readers a discount code.
• Dave Navarros post on Freelance Folder, where he encouraged the readers to give an example in the comments.

Find your people.

Image by Elvire.R.

How Johnny did this:

• He got a guest posting slot of Ittybiz, offering himself as a case study
• He is on the faculty of Project Mojave
• He has guest posted on the places where his target readership hangs out

How to do this:

• Find blogs that attract the kind of people you want to target. See if you can guest post on that blog.
• Seek  work and joint venture opportunities
• Look for regular writing opportunities

Case studies.

I don’t need to offer any case studies. Look around at your favourite blogs. Do you see the same people being featured? Are the same people interacting? They are the loyal fans.

Are you a loyal fan of anyone? You’ll usually find you tend to hang out in that persons group. You may buy from more than one person. These are the people you want to connect with.

Selling something? Focus on selling solutions.

Image by Doug88888

How Johnny did this

• He offered wordpress installs at a discounted price. To compensate, he asked that people buy through his affiliate link
• He sold group coaching to those that couldn’t afford the price of individual coaching..
• When realizing that people were still needing information, he created a course that was cheaper than getting Johnny to help them through the process.

How you can do this:

• See if you can offer a service at a discounted rate in exchange for purchasing something through their affiliate link
• Find creative ways of making your products more affordable without underpricing yourself.
• Listen to your audiences needs and create products to help them.

Case Studies:

• Sarah Prout does this in her Twitter Success Blueprint. She realized that businesses needed an affordable way to learn about twitter, so she created an ebook with information catered to professionals, as well as other twitter users.
• Men with Pens do this with their blog critiques. They offer a discount for ones offered on the blog.

I know many people hate being sold too. Rather than promote his course Zero to Business, I’ll talk about what you can learn from it.

What you can learn from the course

There are three main things I loved about the promotion strategy:

• He created humorous videos with viral potential.
• He purposely  avoided hype in his sales page
• He provided real and useful bonuses

Lets discuss how you can learn from each strategy.

The Humorous videos.

• He mocked a number of the key sales tactics in the internet marketing niche
• In his letter to his affiliates, he recommended that people promote the videos rather than the product

So – how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Offering a quality resource that your affiliates can promote
• Mock some of the common techniques used in product launches in your niche

Avoiding Hype

• Johnny repeated several times that this product would provide technical solutions. It not make them rich.
• He then explained the costs of learning this if you paid his normal consulting fees.

So – how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Talk about the practical reasons about how your product can help someone
• Explain to them how your solution is better value than the alternative

Cool Bonuses

• He provided individual coaching to the first five people that signed up
• He offered group coaching to those who signed up by a certain date.

So – how can you adopt this to your launch?

• Offer bonuses that are exclusive and are not freely available to other marketers
• Offer bonuses that will provide real value to the majority of your buyers

My call to action:

• If you want 10% off Johnnys e-course, Zero to Business, just use the word ‘problogger‘ as the discount code. Its that easy.
• If you want to check out Johnnys blog, go on over to his fancy new site.
• If you want rants about zombies, check out his twitter feed.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How One Blogger Made $3k a month by Helping People – And How He Can Help You

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On Monday the FTC handed down some new rules that left most of the blogosphere very confused. About the only consistent thing being reported is that if you don’t follow the rules you can be fined $11,000. And reading the actual FTC document does not help too much. I called an emergency Town Hall meeting on Tinychat and got some awesome people to show up. Shawn Collins, Mike Streko, Loren Feldman and even John Chow showed up within a moments notice to discuss this topic. We also took questions from the chat room where we had about 150 people in and out.

It was a great discussion and I loved the format. Its something we are going to pursue in the future.

Ok so lets dive into this.

Paid Endorsements on blogs

This is the one everyone is running with. Forbes.com does the best job on this because they actually have a semi interview with some agents from the FTC asking them to go into more detail.

The gist of it is if your compensated in any way need to disclose that relationship.

Did you get a free product to review? Then you need to disclose that the company sent you a free product.

Did you get paid to post something positive about X then you need to disclose that you did.

The FTC also says they are going after employees of companies. From the forbes article:

The FTC also plans to crack down on company employees posing as citizen bloggers, a practice known as “astroturf marketing” because of its fake grassroots style.

Its nice to see some company men immediately following this new rule . (by the way I work for shoemoney media)

While I am pretty sure Google will use this as a new weapon for combating paid links, the document in no way addresses paid links.

My questions:

I am curious where we stop? Lemme give you a few scenarios:

1) I do a paid $5000 paid post from Google about AdSense
2) I do a paid post from Google where I get paid $100 per new user I get to sign up for AdSense.

Those 2 posts could be written completely different. Maybe disclosing the exact amounts paid is where we are headed?

Again for instance if a certain Google employee making 100k/yr is blogging about his company on his personal blog thats one thing.

But if that same Google employee has stock worth hundreds of millions of dollars then perhaps that should be disclosed since he can single handily move the stock price up or down, do you think he is every going to blog negatively about his company

Where is this going? How in the world are they going to enforce this? I am guessing we will not see 1 case come from this.

Accuracy of statement of earnings

Now here is the part nobody is reporting on but I feel will have the most impact. If you are going to report earnings they now have to be accurate. This also goes for any sort of “results”. Obviously this is totally targeted at the fake news and blog websites. I think we will see heavy enforcement in these areas from these new rules.

From the actual document:

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

My thoughts:

In the last 48 hours I have been contacted by agents inquiring about fake blog and news sites. They are coming for these guys.

But lets be honest. $10,000.00 is nothing to one of these fake blog/news sites that are making that a day. But as it was pointed out in our town hall meeting it could be per instance and instance could be counted as per visitor.

Either way they are going to make an example out of these fake sites VERY soon and thats going to be interesting to see.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

What You Don’t Know About The New FTC Rules On Disclosure

The Truth About What Motivates Us

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Dan Pink has a new book coming out at the end of the year – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – that may help people rethink the entire notion of the carrot and stick approach to motivating and rewarding employees. Seems that autonomy is a much greater motivator than we understand.

Dan will be a guest on an upcoming episode of the Duct Tape Marketing but this past summer he presented the central theme of his book durting a TED Talk. The 18 minute clip below is worth watching over and over again. (Dan’s a great presenter and this video could be used to teach how to present.)

Every entrepreneur takes their own unique path and it’s always interesting to hear things from a different perspective . In this guest post by Jack Busch, Jack tells his story of how he became self-employed. Jack is a freelance writer and blogger specializing in debt loans, personal finance and credit cards and maintains an excellent blog over at MasterYourCard.com.

When I first discovered MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, I was thrilled. For years, my wife and I have been discussing ways to gain financial independence so we could spend less time at our jobs, which we didn’t necessarily hate, but simply demanded too much of our time and energy. The best plan that we came up with was to buy a Powerball ticket every Wednesday and Saturday and cross our fingers. With somewhat disappointing returns, we’ve ramped up our efforts and have taken to crossing our toes, too. Still no luck.

Fast forward a couple of months, and now I’ve somewhat stumbled into gainful self-employment. Now, we’re working on transforming my wife into a professional shut-in, too.

I enjoy this resource that Steve has created because it gives a clear, concrete method for achieving what many of us who are planning on having children desperately want: to be able to stay at home with the kids without sacrificing income. Interestingly, as was pointed out earlier on the blog, one reader commented that he found the small business startup guide entirely too daunting, which compelled him to give up. This struck me for several reasons. Admittedly, I, too, found the guide a bit intimidating. But that’s because my journey to working at home was starkly different – and perhaps a bit easier.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I fully intend to apply a more methodical approach while attempting to liberate my spouse from the 9 to 5, simply because I think her situation merits it more. But I’d like to offer my story as a bit of contrast to the diligent checklist approach. It’s something I’ll call, an organic transition to self-employment.

I call it organic because I didn’t implement any conscious system or follow any certain steps to get to where I am today (I’m a full time freelance writer). It feels more like I willed myself into self-employment rather than getting there by brute force. For me, saying goodbye to the commute and the suffocating 9 to 5 work schedule has always been somewhat of a dream that I kept in the back of my mind. It was this – and the following five essentials – that I believe eventually made me my own boss.

Friends (and Spouses) with Benefits

When you’re undergoing a risky venture such as self-employment, you’re going to need some support – fiscally, emotionally and logistically. I’m lucky enough to get all of that from my spouse. Thanks to my full time job having pretty crumby benefits in the first place, I had already switched over to her medical insurance. Also, with her steady salary, we could keep paying the bills if I got off to a slow start.

For most of us, these two factors are probably the most comforting safeguards. But don’t downplay the value of emotional support. It’s good to have a co-pilot when you’re flying solo. And without a water cooler and the collective ire of your coworkers to help you process ideas, work out problems and vent your frustrations, you’ll definitely need an open ear and an open mind to keep you sane.

If you aren’t married or have some other kind of domestic support, it’s highly advisable to find a mentor or a group of friends with similar entrepreneurial aspirations.

A Little Bit of Experience

The hardest thing to do when striving to be self-employed is to figure out what exactly you’ll do to make money. The experts always give the exact same answer to this question: “Do what you love.” That advice is all well and good – but ultimately, it’s the same thing your high school counselor told you when giving you career advice. I followed that advice and did what I loved all throughout college (slept late, played video games, drank beer and ate pizza) and, unsurprisingly, landed myself a career that didn’t quite meet my expectations.

Instead, I would give this advice: don’t start from scratch. The easiest way to become gainfully self-employed is to take something that makes you a little bit of money and ramp it up so it makes you a lot of money. This may not be what you consider to be your “true calling” – meaning, you’re not going to take your job and shove it and then go become a painter or a dancer or a chef, because, unless you already have a bit of success in those fields, you’ll have to go back to school, get experience and get noticed again all from square one. Essentially, you’re not transitioning to a new career, you’re just starting over.

The danger of starting anew is that you’ll either find the task entirely too intimidating and give up before you start or you’ll simply end up having to make the same types of compromises that wound you up in the cubicle in the first place. By choosing something that already makes you money, all you have to do is figure out how to make the venture bigger and better.

In my case, I was lucky enough to land a gig in college writing web content. At the time, it was the perfect job. Before getting this gig, I was washing dishes in the cafeteria. After tipping over one too many towers of freshly washed glasses and making a paltry $7.50 an hour, I decided that there had to be some better way to spend my time in which my poor coordination wouldn’t pose a danger to my pride or any innocent bystanders. Through some thrice-removed personal connections, I ended up landing a position as a contractor for an SEO firm, where I wrote just a few articles per week, which wasn’t a lot of money, but it kept the pizzas and textbooks coming.

I did that all throughout college, which made it, in essence, my very first real job. And, not-so-coincidentally, it’s the same job I do today. After working for a couple years in the office and finding it unfulfilling, I decided that I wanted more control over my time and income. Copywriting on the web seemed like the obvious answer. I just needed to figure out a way to go from making a few hundred bucks a week to matching my current salary.

For you, your starter gig could be anything. Think of all the things that anyone has ever given you money for – these things are the valuable skills or products that you have to offer the world. You could learn how to market a craft through an online store (if so, you’ve really, really come to the right place), become a personal trainer, start a dog grooming and boarding business, sell things on eBay, build websites, design t-shirts, trick out cars, file income taxes, mow lawns. Chances are, you aren’t a one trick pony capable only of manning a cubicle. Find out what you already have to offer and slowly start building it into your main stream of income.

Scalability

This, I would say, was the single most important aspect that contributed to my eventual full time self-employment. The biggest roadblock to building a side business to replace your day job is that you are only one person. In the beginning, when your side venture is just a fledgling and requires very little time and attention, it’s pretty simple to wake up an hour or two early each morning, answer some business related emails during lunch and maybe log on once more before going to bed. (After all, it’s extremely bad form to work another job while punched in at your 9 to 5.)

But as your business starts gaining traction, it becomes increasingly more important that you spend a considerable amount of time speaking with prospective clients on the phone or face-to-face during business hours or rush a test project through with flying colors. All the while, you want to continue giving your existing clients the same level of service you did when they were your one and only.

So, you have a couple options: Start slacking on your 9 to 5; burn the candle at both ends until you’re burnt out, friendless and permanently consigned to the doghouse by your spouse; let your thriving side venture languish; or get some expendable help.

For me, I had two extremely valuable agents of scalability: an income stream that allowed me to do as little or as much work as I wanted without getting fired and, more importantly, subcontractors.

Demand Studios

Regarding the variable income stream, I’m not too embarrassed to admit that this was Demand Studios. Much maligned by certain segments of the freelancing community, Demand Studios is the quintessential content mill, churning out hundreds of thousands of passable quality articles a day and paying out a flat rate to writers. Say what you will, but the system is brilliant, both from a publisher’s and a freelancer’s standpoint. Writers can basically shop for topics and toss them into their queue and have one week to pound them out. For a freelancer, the topics are hit and miss – you could get paid $15 to write “About Boiled Eggs” in 15 minutes (a dollar a minute!) but you could also spend two hours sifting through the U.S. Trademarks and Patent Office database trying to figure out who the hell invented the first Ziploc bag (pro tip: most of the info on this topic that’s already available on the web is bunk).

Demand Studios isn’t exactly resume material – but its value as a backup plan is obvious. Once I landed an account at Demand, I had a reliable (though sometimes mind numbing) source of income I could fall back on if times were tough, but, more importantly, I could completely ignore it when I didn’t need it. It’s like the freelancer equivalent of a booty call.

Subcontractors

The issue of subcontractors is a bit controversial – especially in my line of business. On the one hand, if I “buy” the rights to some text from another writer, I am legally free to put my name on it and sell it to another client as my own. (Kind of like when Edison bought the rights to tell everyone he invented the Vitascope.) But on the other hand, when I sell myself to a client on my own skills and my own samples, they have a right to expect that they’ll get copy that has been produced by me. If you decide to go the subcontractor route, it’s good form to be upfront about outsourcing your work, or, at the very least, make sure that the subcontractor is on par with your style and quality.

Anyway, while I was working a fulltime job and seeking out new clients, I hired about five subcontractors to handle my overflow and take on some of the more repetitive work. I didn’t profit from this, but it did solve one important problem: with a full time job, I didn’t have time to handle the fruits of my marketing efforts. Subcontractors helped immensely with this. After all, the biggest demand on your time as you are building a client base is making initial contact, banging out the details of the contract, delivering a sample and working out any tweaks or adjustments to meet the client’s needs. Once all that is done, it’s just rinse and repeat – something that a hired gun can easily achieve by referencing your example.

When I did finally take the leap and say goodbye to my salaried job, I simply scaled down from five subcontractors to just one or two. And because the subcontractors were mostly college students and retirees looking to make a few bucks here and there, rather than support a family on the money, there really wasn’t any love lost when I cut them loose (or, more accurately, stopped sending them assignments).
Your methods may be different. But in order to make a smooth and easy transition from working full time for The Man to working towards self sufficiency, it’s best to have a way to keep business on the backburner until you’re ready to get cooking.

The Marketing Machine

Before I started my business, I read this horrendously outdated book entitled “How to Start a Copywriting Business.” While the material regarding the Internet was less than insightful (Thankfully, the book has since been updated, but in my edition, the author was balking at the hundreds of dollars it cost to get a domain name), the author mentioned the prudence of building a “lead generation” machine. He basically described it as a process that yields a predictable amount of leads each time – even if that percentage is very low. For example, if you sent out 500 direct mailings with only a 1% success rate of getting a bite, then you would still be getting five leads each time you did this. So, in theory, if you “pulled the lever” once a week, you’d easily have 260 leads by the end of the year – not bad.

For me, my marketing machine was the Internet – job boards, Craigslist, old contacts, etc. I made it a habit to apply for every single gig I saw during my lunch break. It was tedious to write so many cover letters, but it paid off in the end. About 71% of the leads proved to be scams or unresponsive, but the remaining portion that ended up being lucrative relationships more than compensated the effort. I even forced myself to look for jobs even when I didn’t need the work – even now, months and months later, I’ll get an email response to a query saying, “Hey, can you still do some work?”

Just like long hauls on the highway, it’s better to top off the tank when you’ve got the chance than to find yourself frantically searching for a gas station when you’re running on fumes.

Good Timing

I was ready to walk away from my job over a year before I actually did. In fact, I was just about to do so, and then all hell break loose on the U.S. economy. The company I worked for was directly tied to the finance industry and it got hit hard – the floor dropped out like the Tower of Terror and business plummeted immediately. Layoffs were inevitable and I was lucky to survive. As empty desks began dotting our office, I began considering resigning in order to spare some of my coworkers – but for some reason, I didn’t, which proved to be a lucky whim. Thankfully, the paucity of business was short-lived, and the orders started filtering in at the same rate as before the fallout, but now with a fraction of the staff.

After the dust settled, I re-evaluated my situation and decided I still wanted to walk way. But by then, the stakes were different. Rather than eagerly letting me go as part of sweeping downsizing, I was walking away when the company needed experienced workers the most. Because of this, we worked out a deal: I would cease being an employee but would occasionally be available to do work on a contract basis.

It was a win-win situation: I had freed myself from the obligation to be in the office from 9 to 5 (and oftentimes, beyond) and they weren’t forced to scramble to hire and train someone new to replace me just yet. Plus, I had essentially just landed my biggest client to date. And there I was: I took my subcontracted work off the backburner, I kept working for my old company and I continued hunting down new clients. I was self-employed.

Your day job may be different, but chances are, if you are a valued employee, you will be able to work something out. Because I had all the other irons in the fire, I had the confidence to approach my supervisor with an alternative to outright resignation. There were a couple different options on the table, which would’ve helped me grow my business while easing back on my responsibilities to my old employer, such as working part time, working four day work weeks or working remotely full time that may work better for you. I would encourage you to stay on good terms with your employer, even though you plan on jumping ship, as it will make negotiations much more cordial and productive, and most importantly, most beneficial for all parties.

I hope my personal take on becoming self-employed was helpful. I won’t say that I didn’t have to work a bit to get here, but looking back, I can’t really identify a time where I was diligently applying any sort of plan or breaking my neck to make it all happen. True, my road to self-employment is heavily paved with luck, but still, I think what carried me here was the will to make it work, more than a conscious plan. I love what Steve’s blog has to offer and I think it should be required reading for anyone looking to strike out alone. But hopefully, my story will show you that self-employment isn’t as hard as it seems.

Since I announced ProBlogger.com mid last week the ProBlogger Community Forum has grown to well over 1300 paid members (note the member numbers are reported as higher but also include people who have yet to confirm their membership with a payment).

Because it’s a private, walled community it can be a little difficult for those not on the inside to assess whether it’s something for them – so I thought today I’d highlight some of what’s going on inside:

1. Community Challenges

Something that we’re going to run this week is a ProBlogger Community Challenge. In the challenge I nominate a type of post for our members to go away and write up and then everyone shares their links to those posts over the coming days. Then members are encouraged to surf through the list, comment, give feedback and then share those links that they resonated most with their own network.

The idea is that we all do something together, there’s opportunity to learn from how others approach the task and of course there’s opportunity for extra traffic both from other members and from where they share the links that they like.

Update: I’ve just launched the first community challenge – it’s now live.

2. Blog Critiques

We’ve set up a specific area of the forum where any member can share a link to their blog and ask others to give feedback on it.

Members putting their heads together on this means that people asking for critiques are getting a variety of responses on their blogs from a community with diverse experiences, skills and ideas. There’s also the opportunity to learn by watching critiques of other blogs.

3. Opportunities for Collaboration

The collaboration area of the community is one of the most active. This is one of the key reasons I wanted to start the forum – putting bloggers together to work together for mutual benefit can lead to wonderful outcomes.

We’re still only seeing the beginnings of where these collaborations will lead but to this point we’re already seeing some creative ideas. Bloggers are hooking up with other bloggers in their niches to work together, we’re seeing bloggers working together on social media campaigns in groups, bloggers are helping one another with content creation and more.

The effectiveness of this area will only grow as more bloggers join which will open up possibilities to work together with other bloggers in similar niches and locations.

4. Secondary Connections

One of the cool things that I’ve already seen start to happen is people making connections with other bloggers outside of the community. For example in a thread where I invited members to share their Twitter ID’s we’ve had hundreds of people share them and people reporting seeing marked increases in their follower numbers.

While having more followers is nice – the real benefit of this is that these connections have the potential to build the depth of interaction between bloggers, strengthening networks and opening opportunities for fruitful interactions.

Another example of this is groups of bloggers already planning to meet in person at different blogging events. For example there’s a group going to get together at Blog World Expo and a few people asking if there are bloggers in their local areas who might like to have a meet up.

Member Tutorials

Yesterday I added a new area to ProBlogger.com – one for ‘Tutorials’.

There are two main reasons I wanted this area – firstly I’ve already seen a couple of really excellent posts by members exploring different topics. I want to highlight this type of content as I think there’s a lot we can learn from it. Secondly I’d like to give community members the opportunity to have some of their ideas featured here on ProBlogger.net occasionally as guest posts. I won’t use all tutorials submitted here on ProBlogger – but from time to time will use the best and most interesting submissions with the permission and credit to the author.

6. Our Members

1300+ members in less than a week isn’t a bad result if you’re thinking purely about numbers, but what I’m thankful for and excited about is the quality of those who’ve joined.

Members come from all parts of the world, all levels and with an amazing variety of experiences. Already there have been numerous threads where bloggers have shared different opinions on topics in a way that doesn’t tear anyone down but instead where the diversity of opinion and experiences help facilitate learning.

What our 6 of our Members Say about ProBlogger.com

On that note – let me share 6 testimonials from these very same members to finish off this post:

“After recently rebranding my blog and website, I’ve felt as if my blogging attempts have been floundering, and with no support and no one to lean on, I’ve had difficulty finding the inspiration and focus to write. Since joining the ProBlogger Community just a few days ago, I now feel like I’m part of a family who has already supported, encouraged, and helped me to get my focus and determination back! Thanks for creating this community, Darren – I’m truly excited to see it evolve in the coming months!” – Ursula Comeau from UCWebCreations.com

“Without doubt, the new home of bloggers. In less than a week it has established a community spirit that most forums can only dream of.” - Kevin Muldoon from Blogging Tips

“The thing that I’ve really gained from the forums is motivation! Most forums tend to suck up my time, I think I’m barely on ProBlogger.com for more than ten minute before I have to go and write a post, go searching for inspiration or look into a new form of monetisation. Within the first week it’s impressive to see that there’s already a strong sense of community among the members and it’s great to see everyone so willing to help other bloggers reach their goal.” – fern from Craft Blog

“After signing up for Problogger.Community I submitted Summer Tomato to the critique section. I’d never had anyone but friends and family give me their thoughts on my design, and I’ve always been curious what “real” bloggers might think. Within a couple hours of signing up I had wonderful positive and constructive advice on my blog from experienced bloggers, and even a few new readers! As far as I’m concerned this subscription has paid for itself already.” - darya from Summer Tomato

“If you want to grow your blog, you need to work with other like minded bloggers…plain and simple. Problogger.com has been an incredible avenue for blogging collaboration and it is just getting started. It is really a no-brain’er.” – Robb Sutton

“Not being much of a forum user I was a little hesitant at first to sign up at problogger.com, especially since it was going to cost a whopping $1.95 (gasp!), but I’m glad I did. Already I’ve connected with some great people and just having a more personal interaction with Darren makes the cost worth it.” - David Turnbull from Adventures of a Barefoot Geek

“I’m not the best networker in the world but problogger.com has made a massive difference. Without even asking for it, members have gone out of their way to help promote my blog further and being a member has given me so much extra motivation for blogging that my traffic has doubled in the week that I’ve been there! It’s paid for itself many times over already.” – Lee from Smash and Pees

Join us Today

If ProBlogger.com sounds like a community that you’d benefit from we’d love you to join us today. The cost is $1.95 a month (you can unsubscribe at any time) – we plan to increase this price but if you sign up at $1.95 you’ll be locked in at that price and never pay more to get access to the forum.

The process for joining is simple:

1. just head to the registration page – this registers you as a forum member (but doesn’t give you access to threads until you’ve done the next step and paid.
2. once you’ve registered and logged in head to the payment page where you select the $1.95 option and will be then taken to PayPal.

Once you’re paid – you’re in! If you have any problems along the way let us know via the contact form on the forum.

PS: I’ve set up a ProBlogger.com Twitter Account to keep people up to date on problogger.com specific news.

PS2: One thing that has naturally started happening is that groups of bloggers have been joining up together. A few bloggers told me that they felt a little overwhelmed by joining and participating in this community as they felt a little out of their league – so they convinced a friend or two to join with them.

A couple have even bought memberships for friends so that they’re entering in with someone familiar that they can buddy up with from the start.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

6 Reasons to Join the ProBlogger.com Community

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