(Image courtesy of slashfilm.com)

It's being called the "Death Grip" in the blogosphere, and rumor has it that Apple may be taking more notice beyond its CEO saying that one is simply holding the device wrong.  A possible iOS update may resolve the problem come early next week, according to AppleInsider.

While some of the trouble may indeed lie in the way one holds their phone, apparently reception problems greatly increased in iPhone 3GS' after one upgraded to iOS 4, which could possibly mean that the problem may actually lie within the software itself.  Of course complicating things is not being able to go back to earlier versions of the iOS in order to make comparisons. 

Because of this, some were confirming on Apple's tech support forums that an iOS 4.0.1 software update is in the works to try and address the issue, and could be released sometime next week.  It could even be released possibly as early as Monday.  However, the comments were taken down shortly after.

The fix would address an issue within iOS 4 that is related to radio frequency calibration of the baseband.  The issue is believed to be occurring when there is a switch between frequencies, leading to calibration issues.

Follow this article's author, Matthew Tilmann on Twitter.

 

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Most people when they start a website, they have no plan for it.

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Here’s MY website plan.

It consists of 13 “ToDo” lists that I have my GUYS implement for me. Some of this stuff won’t be relevant to your business, but my guess is that most of it is relevant.
These lists were designed to be used to build and market an online business that I don’t want to be involved in. This is supposed to get the site ranked well in SEO and bring traffic in from lots of different sources so that the site makes money.

Also, this list has some things that are specific to building “review” websites with wordpress. You might want to use some other plugins for wordpress than the ones I list here. Please think about it. Maybe some of the plugins listed here aren’t relevant to you, or maybe they’ve gone out of date by the time you get this. Nothing on this list is CRITICAL. Nothing on this list will make or break the process.

You DO NOT have to do everything I list here to be successful. These are just the things WE do.
Also, there are probably some things on this list that we don’t do anymore. Things change all the time. If something on this list doesn’t work for you, SKIP IT AND MOVE ON!

Most of the stuff on this plan was created with the idea of having someone else do the work.

Website Building and Marketing Plan

Table Of Contents

1. Pre-Site Setup
2. Site Setup
3. Configure Wordpress
4. Initial Site Work
5. Initial SEO
6. Initial Adwords Campaign
7. Long Term Linking Strategies
8. Testing
9. Adwords Campaign
10. Building Trust
11. Sales Copy Notes/Ideas
12. Long Term SEO
13. Landing Page Notes

1. Pre-Site Setup

   Things to do before you build the site. When I wrote this it was based off the plan of building a website where we write reviews on all the products in the niche we pick. If your business plan is different, modify this list accordingly.

   • Decide on a market (one way to find what’s hot is to record late night TV and watch the commercials/infomercials. Those are hot products/markets) Here’s how I do niche research
   • Familiarize yourself with the market
   • Do initial keyword research (familiarize yourself with the keywords)
   • Buy a domain name (I recommend using godaddy) Here’s how I pick a domain name
   • Buy hosting (I recommend HostMonster)
   • Build a good keyword list

2. Site Setup

   Things to do to get your site setup properly

   • Set up domain on hosting
   • Install Wordpress (You can usually do this through “fantastico” in your hosting control panel, or you can download it from wordpress.org and install it yourself)
   • Upload robots.txt file (in the zip file at the end of this post)
   • Configure Wordpress (Todo list #3)>
   • Do a 301 redirect from non www to www (.htaccess example is in the Files tab)
   • Set up mailing list (I recommend aweber)
   • Set up GoTryThis
   • If not using Wordpress, figure out a way to do tag and ping, and blog and ping (an easy way is to add tags to your pages, and to use pingoat.com each time you add a new page). If you’re not using wordpress, I think you’re foolish right now.

3. Configure Wordpress

   All these things can be done inside the admin area of wordpress. This assumes you use Semiologic as your theme. We DON’T need to have every single one of these plugins. Some of the URL’s might not work. Try to find that plugin by searching google for it. If something doesn’t work, just move on and set up other plugins. No single plugin is absolutely necessary.
   Depending on the theme you use, you won’t be able to do everything here. The really important part is that you get rid of ALL widgets. We don’t want any sidebars. All they do is distract people from our main marketing message.
   

   • Plugins – Activate Akismet
   • Plugins – Activate Contact Form http://chip.cuccio.us/projects/contact-form-ii/
   • Plugins – Activate Exex-PHP http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/
   • Plugins – Activate Feed Control http://www.silpstream.com/blog/
   • Plugins – Activate Full Text Feed http://cavemonkey50.com/code/full-feed/
   • Plugins – Activate Google Analytics http://www.semiologic.com/software/marketing/google-analytics/
   • Plugins – Activate Google Sitemaps http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final
   • Plugins – Activate Permalink Redirect http://fucoder.com/code/permalink-redirect/
   • Plugins – Activate Singular http://jamietalbot.com/wp-hacks/
   • Plugins – Activate Wordpress Database Backup
   • Plugins – Activate Wordpress Hashcash
   • Plugins – Activate dd sitemap plugin – http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/ create a page called “Sitemap” and put into it and then link to that page in your footer nav
   • Plugins – Activate Any other plugin you think you’ll need/want
   • Plugins – Deactivate all the rest of the plugins (you don’t want extra crap going on)
   • Presentation – Install Semiologic (the pro theme is better…but I believe the free theme will work) – Make sure you get Semiologic Version 5! this page: http://www.semiologic.com/resources/wp-basics/how-to-upgrade-sem-pro/ is a good resource for installing/upgrading
   • Presentation – Turn off ALL widgets
   • Presentation – Change Font to Verdana, Small
   • Presentation – Footer – Uncheck “Kudos to WordPress, Semiologic and the skin author”
   • Presentation – Pick a layout you like. I do Wide with “Main, Ext Sidebar” (this is assuming you’re using Semiologic)
   • Presentation – Menus – Only Home in the header
   • Presentation – Menus – No Sidebar Menus
   • Presentation – Menus – Add these footer menu’s:
     Contact – /contact
     RSS – /feed
     Sitemap – /sitemap.xml
     Privacy – /privacy-policy
   • Presentation – SEO – Add title, keywords, description
   • Options – General – Let Anyone Comment
   • Options – Writing – Set up your ping list (mine is available in the Files tab)
   • Options – Discussion – Check: Attempt to notify, Allow Link notifications, Allow people to post, Comment Author must fill out name and email
   • Options – Permalinks – Custom Structure /%postname%.php This is where the .htaccess file in the Files tab comes in handy. If wordpress has problems, just upload that file to your base website directory
   • Options – Feed Control – Include Posts, Pages, and sort by modified date
   • Options – Google Analytics – Paste in your google analytics code (this is a good time to sign up for google analytics if you haven’t already). Update: I have now stopped using google analytics because it really doesn’t show me the data I want to see. I now use statcounter.com.
   • Categories – create one category for your default posts (always put stuff into this category)
   • Plugins – install Custom Query String plugin
     http://www.transycan.net/blogtest/download-themes/
   • Options – CQS – Add an “is_category” and set it to -1 (this will show links to all posts in all categories on the category pages)

4. Initial Site Work

   Things to do to your site in the very beginning after it is configured

   The business owner needs to decide what the “sales page” is.

   • Write your first post about your topic
   • Write your second post about your topic
   • Write a privacy policy as a page and name it “Privacy Policy” (there is a privacy policy in the files tab that you can pretty much copy)
   • Write a sales page as a “page” in wordpress.
     “Sales page” could be:
     - an actual sales page if yo-u’re selling your own product
     - review page (where you review affiliate products in your industry)
     - squeeze page (where you capture name/email and send them on to an affiliate offer)
     - lead generation form
     - whatever your goal is with the site
   • Link to your sales page in the header section of Presentation -> Nav Menus
   • Write a contact page and name it “Contact” – in the body of the page put [CONTACT-FORM] and that’s it. That will create a contact page using the “contact form” plugin you already activated

5. Initial SEO

   Things you should do for immediate SEO for your site.

   • Make sure your keywords are in the title, meta keywords, meta description, and h1. If you can, add an h2 and h3.
   • Submit an article to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and articlecity.com. Link to your site in your resource box.

6. Initial Adwords Campaign

   Adwords is how you should get your initial traffic. Make sure you monitor this to see that it’s profitable for you. If it’s not, turn it off. There is a full training on how to set-up and run and Adwords campaign inside my outsourcing training website

   • Set up an adwords campaign
   • Use only a few keywords (just enough to get traffic and see it working)
   • Write 2 ads
   • Turn on the content network
   • Set up separate bids for content network and search network. Bid lower on content.

7. Long Term Linking Strategies

   Tons of things you can do to get links to your site. This is the most important thing to do for SEO. Start doing these things now, and do them consistently. The more links you get over a long term period of time the better your site will do. If you get too many links, too quickly, search engines won’t consider it to be natural.

   It’s important that you set up systems to do this stuff. If you don’t have systems (whether it be reminders from google calendar or be an employee doing it) they won’t get done and your site won’t progress.
   This is a SUPER long list. Don’t do all of these things at once. Do them one at a time. When you’ve completed one, move on to another. Then do the first one again, then the second again, then move on and do a third.
   These do not have to be done in exact order.

   • Sign up for UniqueArticleWizard.com
   • Use UAW to submit an article each week linking to your product. (There is NO SUBSTITUTE to using UAW) Create a reminder for either yourself or for an outsourced employee to get this done (use google calendar or rememberthemilk.com).
   • RECURRING – Submit each UAW article manually to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, articlecity.com
   • Use need-an-article.com or elance.com or guru.com to get articles written for you.
   • (Education) Always use different keywords as anchor texts when linking – If you don’t it doesn’t look natural to search engines. Use as many anchor texts as you can, but focusing on your main keywords.
   • Buy links from high PR sites. www.text-link-ads.com or backlinks.com is a good place to start. Do this about 2 months into your site. You should be able to get a pr6 or 7 for $50 or less per month.
   • Use buyblogcomments.com or hire someone to do what they do for you (bbc has become somewhat unreliable)
   • Submit to directories (do both: pay seoster.com to do it, use directory submitter software to help you). There are ton’s of directory submitter softwares. Most will give you a free trial of like 300 sites to submit to. Submit slowly (like 5-10 directories each day).
   • Submit to DMOZ.org
   • Submit to Yahoo Directory (it costs $300 and is well worth it)
   • Build a blog on blogger.com that links to your sales page/other pages on your site
   • Build a squidoo page and add content to it every few days. Make it link to your site.
   • Squidoo site notes:
     - Use lots of tags
     - Create a bio
     - Use the Guestbook module at the end of the lens
     - Use the links module. Add affiliate links to your page
     - Use the write/text modules to add content
     - Add an opt-in form to your lens for your mailing list
     - Use the youtube/flickr modules to add relevant video/pictures to your page
     - Don’t forget to promote your squidoo page just like your other sites (submit articles linking to it and submit it to directories)
   • Use Pingoat.com every time you add content to any of your sites (including your squidoo site, myspace site, and other blogs)
   • Build a blog on wordpress.com
   • Build a blog on livejournal.com
   • Build a blog on clearblogs.com
   • (Education) With all blogs write a few blog entries initially (1 every few days for 2 weeks) and link to your site. Afterwards, write at least one blog entry each month.
   • (Education) Link all your extra sites together in a circle (don’t reciprocal link them, link site A -> B -> C -> D -> A)
   • Use onlywire.com to do social bookmarking for your site.
   • Create a blinklist.com space

     http://www.blinklist.com/space/contribute.php

   • (Education) Don’t link every page on your site to every other page on your site. Only link one way. (this isn’t totally possible if using softwares…just use it as a general rule).
   • Set up a wikipedia page for your topic (or add a link to your site on an existing page). Make sure you put legitimate info or it will get taken down.
   • Build an MSN Spaces blog.
   • Answer a few questions on yahoo answers and link to your site/sales page.
     After answering a few, answer one more each day.
   • Get an account and put your link on your profile page on these sites:
     flickr.com
     youtube.com
     facebook.com
     buddytobuddy.com
     twitter.com
   • Make some posts in forums that link to your site. (add your link to your forum signature)
   • Make some comments on blogs that link to your site (make sure they’re legitimate comments)
   • Submit a WTF at technorati.com/wtf
   • Use trackback spider to get links to your OTHER sites. Don’t promote your main site with this (unless you know what you’re doing)
     (WARNING: This is very black hat. It is spamming.)
   • Add listings to Craigslist.com. You can use craygo.com software to do it. Link to your sites.
     Make sure you don’t look like you’re blatantly posting ads, the craigslist community doesn’t like it. This can bring you TONS of traffic.
   • Add your site to stumbleupon.com
   • Pay prweb.com to do press releases for you.
     Come up with something interesting about your site and pay them the full $200 to get them to do a good job with your press release. It’s worth it.
   • Give something away that links to your site (templates for your industry, site award, software, widget that does something cool)

8. Testing

   Testing is critical to getting conversions correct. You should always be testing.

   • use a multivariate testing program on your sales page (or your review page, or your squeeze page). Try and increase your conversions.
     Google Website Optimizer – Free
     SplitTestAccelerator.com – $900
     KaizenTrack.com – $500
   • Test the headline and any other pieces of the page that are “important”. If you do nothing else, test your headline.
   • Enter wildly different variations of tests. Don’t just test different variations on the same concept.
   • Test using wp-cloaker (if you can find the plugin). It cloaks or redirects visitors that come to your site who have used certain search terms that you define. You can send those visitors to any page you want. Last I tried I couldn’t get the plugin to work, but if you can, it’s super powerful.

9. Adwords Campaign

   Obviously I can’t give an entire adwords tutorial right here. There is a full Adwords tutorial inside www.ReplaceMyself.com. These are just things I’ve written down to serve as a reminder to me (and you) to do certain things.

   • (Education)Put benefits in your ads (put them on the first description line and test the CTR)
   • (Education) There are 3 types of buyers:
     Browsers, Shoppers, and Buyers
     Cater to the Buyers. Use buying keywords like discount, buy now, purchase, get, sale, limited time.
     Browsers don’t know what they want.
     Shoppers are looking to compare stuff.
     (These are notes I took from Mr. X)
   • (Education)Keywords that don’t convert, add them as negative keywords
   • Set up winneralert to test your ads. I bolded this because so few people actually do this, yet it’s so important.
   • Set up site specific targeting (the adwords180 concept).
   • Once the campaign is profitable, duplicate the campaign in a new adwords account (Thanks Kirt Christensen). With a new adwords account you can show 2 of your own ads on every search page. Get more clicks. Get more sales.
   • Set the campaign up in Yahoo
   • Set the campaign up in MSN
   • Set the campaign up in second tier search engines:
     Looksmart
     Findwhat
     Goclick.com
     7search.com

10. Building Trust

    These pieces are more notes than things you have to do. They help you build trust with your users. Some of them might not be appropriate for your website. This is more as a set of reminders for me (or you) to add things to our site to help increase conversions.

    • Add testimonials to your sales page
    • Add live chat to your sales page
      You can use skype to do this http://www.skype.com/share/buttons/index.html
      You can use www.liveperson.com
      There are ton’s of these (search google for “live chat” or “free live chat”)
    • Interrupt your users while they’re on your site and chat with them about what they really want to find (liveperson.com will do this). This helps you get into the head of your customers. Doing this allows you to write a better sales letter.
    • Put your contact info at the top of the page and make it obvious. Tell them to read the whole page and then contact you if they still have questions.
    • Tell them the flaws/negatives in the product (this really makes you sound honest)
    • Don’t charge their card until their trial period is up (30 days, 14 days, …). Just authorize the money, but don’t charge the card.
    • Use the plugin “What Would Seth Godin Do” for wordpress. It allows you to display something to the user after they’ve seen your site X times.
      Find out why they keep coming back.
    • Set up a broadcast phone message to your customers.
      voiceshot.com
      xmvoice.com
      search google for “voice phone broadcast”
    • Send a hand written letter to your customers.
      http://handwrittenresults.com/

11. Sales Copy Notes/Ideas

    This is by no means a comprehensive list of things to do in your sales copy. It’s just a list of ideas/notes from different copywriters. It is stuff you should try and refer back to in building your site. Some of it might not apply to you.

    • Your headline is a Problem + a Solution.
      If you state people’s problem, they know you understand them. If you give them a solution, they’ll listen to you.
    • Guarantee -
      Give double money back if they do something extra.
      Make an outlandish guarantee.
      Remove the risk with the guarantee. This builds trust.
    • Add a drop first letter (where the first letter of your sales page is bigger than the rest)
    • Make it time/quantity limited. Create scarcity.
    • Offer a coupon to entice them to buy.
    • Offer a free trial/sample and then automatically charge their card at the end of the trial.
    • Scientific Advertising – Offer Service, don’t ask for a sale.
      “Try this for a week, then do what you want” (meaning either return it or pay for it)
    • Scientific Advertising – The longer the copy, the better the response rate. But only if you’re telling people relevant information. You should test, test, test sales copy.
    • Scientific Advertising – Copy other people’s ads, ads that have been used over and over again.

12. Long Term SEO

    Things you can/should do long term to increase your natural search engine rankings.

    • Use a service to turn your blog posts into speach. Add the mp3’s to your rss feed. This makes them podcasts. Podcasts increase search engine rankings.
    • Create a video and add it to your site. You can use animoto or eyejot or veodia to easily create videos.
    • Submit your video to video sites (youtube, google video, … search google for video sites).
    • Add your video to your rss feed.

13. Landing Page Notes

    These are notes for specific types of landing pages you’re doing. This overlaps somewhat with the Sales Copy list. These are just notes/ideas that I’ve had or that I’ve taken from other people. They don’t apply to all cases.

    • Review Site – Ugly does it. If it’s ugly, it’s a little more trustworthy. Not too ugly.
    • Review Site – Make one product the clear winner. Don’t leave a doubt in the persons mind.
    • Review Site – Test different products as the best product.
    • Squeeze page – In addition to the name/email, have them give you something else (a checkbox, a choice from multiple check boxes, an open ended box, …). It makes them feel a sense of commitment because they’ve already given more info.
    • Squeeze page – There is software to help you make it:
      squeezepagemaker.com
      squeezepagegenerator.com
    • Squeeze page – Test all the different elements of your squeeze page

You can download the files here.

With all of the talk about the new iPhone 4 over the last few weeks, I’d like to review one of the most beneficial tools I’ve used on my travels: the iPod Touch with the new iOS4 (Iphone Operating System 4).  The iPod Touch has always been like the Jan Brady of the Apple lineup.  It never seems to get as much attention as it’s siblings Macbook Pro and Iphone. Too bad really.

If you’ve been around for awhile you may remember me finally, after years of resisting, giving up my faux pod for a brand new iPod Touch.  Essentially it’s turned out to be one of the best purchases of my life.  Luckily I bought it when I did, because had I waited two more weeks until after My Last Day, I probably wouldn’t have dropped the $300.

Throughout the last six months of trains, planes and automobiles there is not a single item in my bag that is more multi-faceted or convenient.  I take this thing with me everywhere, and it’s become the ultimate travel tool.  Here’s why:

A Free Phone*

Why spend over $100/month on an iPhone 4 with a data plan, when you could turn your iPod Touch into a phone for next to nothing.  If you grab the free Skype app (or a number of others that do similar things), and couple that with a Skype-in or Google Voice number, you can basically turn your iPod Touch into an iPhone.  With the new capabilities of iOS4, you can stay connected to wifi while the gadget is asleep, and be running multiple programs at the same time.  Essentially that means you can leave Skype on all the time, and still have the ability to take incoming calls.  Either way, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to pop this out and use it to make calls while on the road. You’d be surprised at just how many places have wifi.

*All of this for the $2.95/month it costs to make unlimited calls in the US.  The BIG caveat to all of this is that you have to have wifi.  But when 80% of the time you are at a hot spot, it really isnt that big of a deal.  Besides, the times you aren’t, you probably shouldn’t be focusing on your phone anyways (I’m looking at you 4Square and Twitter addicts).

Kindle in Your Pocket

There’s been some criticism over the functionality of the new iBooks app for iOS4, but I’ve found it to work wonderfully.  Essentially I’ve been looking for a good app that allows me to read pdf ebooks on my iPod, and I had yet to find anything that I really liked, until now.  Upon opening up this app, I was able to drop no less than a dozen pdf ebooks on here, that all showed up neatly in my bookshelf ready to read.  It even gives them a cool cover.  Sure reading long novels on a screen that small isn’t ideal, but for bus and plane rides, I’ve found it to be exactly what I’ve been looking for.

My iBooks Library (the green one is the best)

Stay in Shape

This feature has been around for awhile, but it’s had such a positive impact on my life, that I feel compelled to share it.  The Nike + iPod app is freaking awesome. Sure you have to buy the $19 adapter, and have a pair of Nike iPod compatible shoes, but if you do that, believe me, it’s well worth it.

I go through periods of time on the road, where I tend to be, how shall we say this, lazy.  I get sucked into my laptop and don’t make an effort to exercise.  THIS gets me motivated to exercise.  Maybe it is the goal tracking, the constant need to want to beat my old personal bests, or the sexy female voice that comes on to tell me I only have a mile left, but this is one of the best exercise tools around.

All new iPods come with the app pre-installed, its just up to you to pick up the rest.  I literally use this 4-5 nights a week these days, and if I didn’t have it, I think my body would hate me.

Get My Mail Everywhere

With me taking off for Bali in a few days, one of my biggest concerns is making sure that I’ll be able to stay in touch with what is going on with work.  Well, now iOS4 makes it even easier for me to keep track of all of my personal and professional email accounts.  I can view all messages in one inbox, saving me time, and ensuring that I always know what’s going on.  Apple also finally updated their mail so that messages are grouped by threads.  No more inboxes forcing you to scroll through 20 back and forth emails when all you want is something else.  Also, all I need is a connection for a few minutes.   I can then download all of my messages, respond when I have time, and next time I’m connected, everything gets sent out.

The Basics

Those are some of the newer things that I’ve found that makes the iPod Touch so great, but what about all of the fundamentals that make this the best tool ever.  I can store 32gbs of music, which I don’t care who you are, this is enough.  I also usually have my laptop, so if I need to add something new, it’s only a quick usb connection away.  You can also now create real playlists directly on your iPod.  This beats the hell out of On-the-Go playlists by the way.  I’ve got access to just about any game I want for those times where the lines at immigration seem as though they’re never going to end.  I use my alarm clock every single day.  I can track my finances with Mint.  I can write blog posts with Wordpress. Get quick reference for photography info when I’m out on a shoot.  I’ve written about many of these things before in the Location 180 Guide to iPhone Apps, but the fact remains, this is the best gadget you can buy to aid in your globe trotting.

How do you use your iPod or iPhone?  Do you use Everyday Looper to record music on the go? How about use the World Cup app to get live audio from all of the games? The options are pretty endless.

Sidenote: Did anyone else know you could take a screenshot on your iPod/Phone by pressing the Home and the On/Off buttons simultaneously?  Go figure.

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There is a PANDEMIC sweeping the human race… that is causing humans to stay STUCK in a limited view of themselves, and sabotaging the absolute “Greatness” of the human spirit to shine forth in ALL ways.

We must END this pandemic.  We must correct it at it’s SOURCE.  And we must claim our “Innate Heritage” as beings of INFINITE possibility, that is our birthright in this universe.

Click the play button below now & WATCH to discover more…

Leave me your comment below to let me know what you think, and please click the social media icons to share this very very important message with your friends.

Yours In True Possibility,
Jonathan Budd

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One of the coolest thing about running this blog is the amazing people I meet, who are not just from my industry, but also in other industries doing really interesting things.

Outside of Internet marketing, two of my passions are tennis and dance music. This blog has already gifted me some great connections in the tennis world, but for the first time recently, I met someone from the dance world – DJ Sean Gallgher.

Sean emailed to introduce himself and explain what he is up to and I immediately took an interest in his story. Sean is a well traveled DJ from Vancouver in Canada, who has enjoyed an amazing career in the electronic music industry. What makes him particularly interesting, and why I invited Sean to do an interview, is that he currently makes his living by selling information products in the “How to DJ” market, which I think is just way cool.

Sean is currently living out a year in Mexico with his girlfriend, spending the time surfing and working his online business, earning a healthy $8,000 to $15,000 a month.

However the journey to get to where Sean is today was a rocky one. Although Sean has been successful as a DJ for a long time, his entrepreneurial career has been up and down, going as far as $100,000+ in debt with a failed online electronic music store, to taking a job selling cars (which he hated), to starting all over again with a new online business teaching how to DJ – and all of this before his 25th birthday!

Listen to this interview and you will learn a lot about perseverance, even in the face of some challenging situations, where most people would have opted to stay in a boring job in order to recover, rather than continue to risk the entrepreneurial path. You will also learn the very practical steps Sean has taken to set up his online information publishing business, including how he creates training videos, builds his email list and finds buyers for his products.

This is yet another success story that demonstrates if you are passionate about something, can teach it and others want to know how to do it, then you can sell what you know as information online.

After you listen to the interview, make sure you visit Sean’s websites – How To DJ Fast and StartupFreedom.com.

Here is the interview link again –

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Blogger or Writer: 3 Ways to Nourish Your Writing Roots

by Guest Author

This is a guest post from Brad. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Everyone knows you can make money writing; authors of books, newspapers, and magazines are all presumably paid for their work. But people are consistently intrigued with the idea of earning money blogging. Why is this, when a blog is basically a series of self-published articles? A blogger is a writer that goes above and beyond to do their own publishing, marketing, and monetization.

The lifeblood of blogging is the writing craft. Too often we hear the “content in king” cliche and accept it as the final word. We decide that our topic is important or interesting, and therefore that we have the content part nailed. But content is not so much the information provided as the manner in which it is conveyed. We tend to forget this, and pour more effort into the logistics of the enterprise than into the literary backbone.

I have fallen for the blogger-writer distinction about as hard as anyone, starting with little writing experience. This made it blatantly clear to me that I had some work to do. Reading had given me a feel for good writing, but creating it did not come as easily. The blogosphere of course has many tips: you should write write list-posts, follow your interests, and create snazzy titles — but such tips will not correct serious deficiencies. The most compelling advice I’ve encountered points to practices that take time and dedication. I have found the following three most helpful towards the blogging platform.

Practice 1: Develop a rich vocabulary. Almost all good writers use a diverse set of words because it allows them to express finer shades of meaning, state ideas succinctly, and adjust the sound and rhythm of the writing. You do not want to concoct ridiculously ornate prose, but the right word at the right time can pack a powerful punch — whether it is to motivate, persuade, inspire, or entertain. As a bonus, you will sound more intelligent, for we naturally intuit what formal studies prove: vocabulary sizes correlate very strongly with IQ scores.

Practice 2: Practice imitating styles. Your favorite bloggers or writers probably have distinct voices formed by their sentence structures, word choices, and emotional appeal. Do they lure you in with short anecdotes, or jump to the main ideas? Do they employ metaphors and imagery, or state ideas plainly? Is the voice conversational, or formal and journalistic? Practicing writing in other voices helps you stretch your capacity and better understand your own mechanics. See if you can make your writing indistinguishable from that of whom you emulate.

Practice 3: Reduce the number of words as much as possible. Concise language is clear and vibrant. It forces you to use a decisive, active voice, rather than meandering around topics on which you have little to say. Try taking a post and cutting the words in half, without sacrificing content. Even if you think the piece is irreducible, commit yourself to this exercise. I think you will be surprised, as I often am, how much extraneous writing surrounds your core ideas.

About the Author: Brad in the author of Word a Day Wonder, a site that teaches vocabulary using fun and interesting facts.

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We talk about our experiences with the iOS 4.0 update. On the whole, everyone is happy with the new features. Still, we're curious why home screen wallpaper is missing from the iPhone 3G even after Steve's explanation.

Early deliveries of the iPhone 4 give us hope that last year's activation woes will be kept to a minimum. Fingers crossed.

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Today’s video is some what intense. But that’s ok… because creating success is somewhat intense.

If you can’t deal with the intensity of some one just telling you HOW IT IS, and sharing with you a framework that will allow you to accomplish anything you want in your lifetime… then you don’t stand a rotten chance on the “success battlefield”.

Know this… if you’re are learning from me, I will PUSH YOU harder than you might be use to. I will challenge you more than you might like. And you will ultimately CHOOSE whether you can take it… or not. Your choice will more than likely determine whether you’re actually cut out for success… or whether you still need your mommy to be successful for you. hahahaha, oohhh I crack myself up.

Watch today’s video now…

Leave me your comment below & let me know what your choice is going to be.

We’ll speak soon,
Jonathan Budd

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