(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

“You have to eat your own dogfood” goes the saying in software.

Have you ever heard that before? The meaning is simple: use the software you build. It’s sort of like “practice what you preach,” and as usual, both are easier said than done.

What it means around Website In A Weekend is that we’re way overdue for some serious blog maintenance. This includes WordPress and plugin updating, a fair bit of blog post engineering, some site rearranging, theme upgrading and tweaking, etc. Nothing difficult, everything time consuming. And every bit of it stuff I advocate you do as well. So, dogfood.

And I’ll jump right on it… after I get back from Burning Man.

I’ll be gone about a week. I had planned to turn the blog over to someone for maintenance and upkeep while away, but I decided to reduce everyone’s stress and just take a break.

I’ll be back the week of September 6.

On Thursday, September 9, 2010, I’m hosting 2 free, hour long Skype sessions on blog post engineering. The first is at 1:00 pm Pacific time, the second is at 6:00 pm Pacific time.

Agenda:

1. Q&A: If you own Blog Post Engineering, feel free to ask about anything you find unclear. If you don’t own Blog Post Engineering, this is a great chance to find whether it’s right for you (and it may not be).
2. Human interest: Does your blog have a narrative arc? If so, can you explain or describe the story line? If not, why not? We’ll be putting Website In A Weekend under the microscope as well as your blog. Dogfood, right?

I’m limiting the attendance to 4 people for each session. Please leave a comment for the session you’re interested in attending.

Alrighty, then, off to burn a man.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Eating Dogfood (& off to Burning Man)

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

How to Spot an Effective Design

-by Jason Amunwa

One of the hardest things to do as a client is objectively evaluate work submitted to you. After all, you’ve hired other people to do it for you because they’re the experts, right? Nowhere is this more true, in my humble opinion, than in the field of design. It’s easy to mistake design as the simple act of “making it pretty”, but a lot more goes into it than you’d think. Often, clients will make the mistake of allowing their personal preferences on colors, fonts, etc. to obscure what would otherwise be a logical and well-designed piece of communication.

Below, you’ll find a few tips on how to judge whether or not a design is objectively ‘good’ for your purposes – after all, you want to get the best design for your money, right?

Put yourself in your customers’/audience’s shoes

The very first thing you should do when looking at a design is forget about yourself. Unless you are the only person in the world who is intended to view this particular design, you need to empathize with the actual end-users: your customers. Only by viewing the work from your customers’ perspective will you be able to suggest changes that will make it better for them – which in turn will make the design more effective for you. Design is art with a purpose, so keep the ultimate goal of the work firmly in mind as you review it, and chances are it’ll be more effective.

What’s the black hole?

By this, I mean which single element within the design exerts the strongest pull on your eye? Is it the logo? The headline? The image? Once you’ve established this, consider whether this helps or harms the objective of the work as a whole. Do you want people to know who is communicating with them via this message, or is that a given? Do they need to take action (usually, yes, they do)? If so, what?

This doesn’t necessarily have to apply to one single item – there should be a clear hierarchy in the elements, with the most important attracting your eye more than the less important.

Ride the river

In keeping with the tip to empathize with your customer, try to watch yourself as you interact with this design, whether it’s reading a poster, looking through a website design, etc. Is there a natural progression in the information, or does it feel fragmented and disjointed? Is your eye able to easily scan the piece and retrieve the necessary information, or do you strain to concentrate?

A good design will have considered the needs of the audience, and structured the layout and information to enable the viewer to relax and be carried through the necessary information smoothly – almost like riding a river downstream. In an inner-tube. While the sun shines on your face. Ahhh…

A bad design makes you feel like you’re swimming upstream against a raging river, like salmon during mating season. Oh, and there are bears trying to catch you. Like this.

Trust your gut

I espouse this approach in my article Getting the Best out of Your Freelancers, but I’ll say it again: reviewing a piece of work can oftentimes be difficult, involving hours spent pondering over pro’s and cons, second-guessing and mind-changing. Solid decisions are frequently made in the blink of an eye, though – much like how your customers will when they see a piece of work for the first time. Therefore, when presented with a piece of work, take note of your gut reaction to it. Don’t block out other considerations, but don’t necessarily reject them outright, simply because they occurred to you in the first couple of seconds, either.

Is there a pattern?

No, I don’t mean checking for paisley (unless you’re into that kind of thing). What I mean is: humans are hard-wired for pattern recognition, and we spot them quickly and efficiently (sometimes even when they’re not really there – ever been cloud-watching?). Effective design creates a consistent and logical pattern – a language, if you will – which allows the user to become familiar with it over time, and therefore interact with it more efficiently. Example: everywhere on the web, you see certain words underlined and in blue – we all know they’re clickable links. Design, plus time and experience has taught us to have this expectation wherever we see them – a common visual language that needs no explanation.

Click here, then, to see this system completely break down.

Nothing happened, right? This is what happens when an inconsistent design is used – it’s not a link, just some blue, underlined text. Make sure the design isn’t setting up false expectations from your audience, which leads to confusion, frustration, and ultimately, missed opportunities.

Jason Amunwa is a marketing Macgyver, with experience creating innovative campaign strategies, designing creative executions across multiple channels, and most of the stuff that happens in-between, for brands big and small. He writes for marketing blog The Zest, loves talking tech and marketing strategy, and is suspicious of helicopters.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

How to Spot an Effective Design

(Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes)

Blogging is a pastime of passion and perserverance. Here’s Bob Hayles take on the matter:

July 26, I wish…

…tomorrow, and BPE, would hurry and arrive.

July 27…ITS HERE…YIPPEE!!!

July 28…damn, there is a LOT of sh1t here to pick up on…I’ll deal with tags, keywords, catagories, and SEO descriptions on the first run through posts…

July 29…SH1T!?!??!? I’ve written this much?

July 30…f*ckin’ Doolin…someone should tell him ignorance is bliss…

Aug 1 (2 am)…I’m flyin’ to CA and kill that SOB…sleep? What the hell is sleep?

Aug 1 (1pm)…all…ALL…posts tagged, keyworded, described, excerpted, catagorized, linked, etc…HEY DOOLIN!!! Yer alright, man! un-SEO is gonna be GREAT! Thanks!

My goodness! Such emotion… and engineering ALL your blog posts in 3 days. If that’s not perserverance, I don’t know what is.

Now, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Mr Hayles, so I spent a couple of weeks this August writing a brand new chapter for Blog Post Engineering: Repurposing.

Let’s talk about repurposing for a bit.

Repurposing blog posts

You already know about building outposts with tools such as Amplify and Posterous.

With outposts, you want to try and use your blog post, or snippets from your blog post more or less as is.

Repurposing goes one step further: your blog post is the raw material for new content.

Once you have been blogging for a year or two, you will see that there isn’t a lot of truly original or novel content out there. But neither originality nor novelty are your goals here, your goal is uniqueness. Thus, repurpose existing material into new, unique content.

Why repurpose?

Two great reasons for repurposing include:

1. Finding new audiences for your message. You may be a blogger first and foremost, but you may find that some of what you write has an audience on Docstoc.com. Many other such sites exist.
2. Reaching people who prefer different forms of content delivery. Perhaps you learn from reading and writing (i.e., blogging). Other people learn listening or watching. Remember that person in college who just went to class and never did the homework… and aced the exams? She learns by listening. Talk to her with podcasts.

What to repurpose

You can repurpose any blog post you want. With popular posts, repurposing may make them even more popular.

But you can get even more satisfaction repurposing good articles that never took off on your blog. For example, compare the traction between an article on blog success on Website In A Weekend (1 comment) versus the same article repurposed as a guest post about blog success on Free Blog Help (47 comments).

In this case, the article was only lightly rewritten.

(By the way, if Google decides to “penalize” me and return the article on Free Blog Help, I really don’t care. I’m backlinked, and Gabe is a good guy. It’s a win/win for both of us.)

Here’s some guidelines for more extensive changes:

• Change the article title, page (SEO) title, post slug, and so on.
• Change the sectioning in the article. If your article has no sections, add sections. If it has sections, and you can improve them, do so.
• Massively improve the article. If you can extend it’s length, do so, then split it again. Now you have two totally legitimate articles.

I’m sure you can add to this list (and please feel free to do so in the comments).

Repurposing as blog post engineering

This latest version of Blog Post Engineering (0.7.3 Metholz) contains an entire chapter on repurposing. Much of the material will be familiar… but not all of it. For example:

• Each document sharing website has a distinctly different audience, and you need to know the audience before you pitch your wares.
• Some sites encourage monetization, others, not so much. You’ll find out more in this newest edition of BPE.
• Repurposing may require rewriting and reformatting your material for different media. Are you writing your blog posts with reformatting in mind? More information in BPE.
• There’s two really fast ways to incorporate audio, things you could do right now. You get example of each way using articles from Website In A Weekend.
• Three methods for doing video are explained; two of them you should be doing right now… with free software.

There’s quite a bit more. Existing readers of BPE will attest to my addiction to over-delivering.

Get your copy now

It’s true: when you purchase Blog Post Engineering, you’re really getting a “lifetime subscription.”

Blog Post Engineering

See, blogging is evolving very rapidly, and you want to both keep up with those changes. Some of these changes are good, some not so good. If Google Buzz was part of your promotion strategy, you’re probably rethinking that about right now (because the verdict is still out… which is not good).

Likewise, you’re probably on the lookout for new services. I am too.

And I keep my eye on what existing services are doing. Are they getting better? Worse? Here’s two examples:

1. Digg is getting a rewrite, a new CEO and new services. Did you know that? Do you know how these are going to affect your promotion strategy? If Digg succeeds, I’ll be updating BPE with what you need to know. (Find me on Digg.)
2. Plurk, one of those “WTH is that?” social media applications is moving a chunk of their backend to node.js, an exciting new Javascript server side technology. I’ve been keeping my eye on Plurk because it 1. I like the interface, and 2. it has a large English speaking user base in East Asia. While you don’t need to know how node.js works, Plurk’s adoption indicates they’re still in the game. And that’s something you might want to know. (Find me on Plurk.)

What a deal! I keep track of this stuff so you don’t have to.

And yes, the price went up. And the price will increase again when the upcoming “Tools” chapter is finished.

Satisfaction guaranteed. If – for any reason – you don’t like Blog Post Engineering, 100% refund, no questions asked.

Questions? Please, ask in the comments!

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Repurpose your blog posts – BPE 0.7.3 Metholz has arrived

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

Listen to this post:

In 2010, I, along with my colleague, Denise Wakeman, ran a survey to help define what people most wanted to know about social media. We received more than 300 responses. (You can get the results of the survey here: Get the Social Media Use Survey Results)

The results were interesting, and one of the biggest complaints was related to how much time social media takes. People were feeling like they were spending a lot of time being social, but not necessarily seeing huge results. The second issue that stood out was that people were wondering how to best monetize their social media efforts.

When business owners are spending a lot of time, but not seeing any results as far as monetization, this told me that there was some kind of disconnect going on.

And that got me thinking.

What appears to be happening is that people are investing lots of time on the social networks, but not enough time using social media as a content sharing and distribution mechanism.

This means, they are using Facebook and Twitter to engage with their audience, but not using the 10 other kinds of social sites to efficiently share and syndicate their content.

What people are asking for, I think, is a system that  enables them to use social media fully and efficiently, with better results.

So in the interest of saving you some time and effort from having to create your system yourself, let me offer these five tips for increasing your social media efficiency.

1. Schedule regular time for social media.

I’m fond of saying that social media is a time suck. This means that, without boundaries on your time, chatting on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter can take up your entire day. This will have negative impact on your business.

So, instead, schedule time to attend to social media each day, and resist the urge to network all day long, especially if you don’t have a clear and definite business outcome in mind.

I tend to schedule an hour in the morning to connect with my social networks, and I have one of my assistants handle all the daily friending back, following back, processes, reducing my time commitment and letting me focus on conversations and connections.

2. Let technology do the heavy lifting.

You can be more social media efficient if you use technology to help you.

One example would be to set up content distribution and syndication processes. Another way is to use software programs to help streamline your efforts. I like and use Tweetdeck, for example, which lets me monitor Twitter, Facebook, and now, recently, LinkedIn. No matter what you need, there is probably a piece of software that can help you do it faster or better.

3. Reduce the noise.

There are just three main things you need to focus on in social media.

The first is gaining attention. The second is making connections. And the third is being consistent.

You can do this without any technology at all. It’s fine to be interested in new gadgets and new advances in technology (and I confess, I’m a girl geek at times)- but don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed and forget the basics of marketing. You must be noticed, make connections, and show up regularly.

4. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose.

The better you are at repurposing your content, the easier your social media marketing will be. Aim to get at least 10 uses out of every blog post, every interview, every video you make. Stay in touch with what your target audience needs, and provide it for them faster, and easier, and quicker than anyone else.

Seek to create dialogues and conversations around your content.

You’ll learn what people most want to know, and you’ll always have good ideas for new content to create.

5. Tie your social media efforts to your business goals and optimize for them.

What this means is that you need to have an idea of what you want social media to DO for you.

Do you want to become the household name in XYZ industry? Do you want to get 10000 people on your email database? Do you want to be picked up by major media as an authority or expert? Like any other business arena, you have to know what you want to achieve and lay out a strategy to achieve it.

And then you need to do the work.

If you’re spending a lot of time in social media, but not feeling like you’re getting enough return, I would suggest that maybe you want to step back and reassess your goals. Don’t take part in social media waiting to see what will happen. Have an idea of what you want to create, and use the social media tools to create it. The clearer your objectives, the faster you’ll reach them, helping balance out your time and return on investment.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees

Social networking is not the only facet of social media you should be paying attention to. Use the social media sites to build your platform, drive your brand, and send visitors to your website. These kinds of results are trackable and monetizable. And just good business.

How do you stay efficient with social media? Please share your thoughts here.

If you’d like access my 21 lesson e-course on building influence in social media, get that here: Build Influence eCourse

Rachna Jain is the amazingly energetic entrepreneur driving Social Media Marketing Strategies, where you will find in-depth discussion of the latest technology and techniques in social media marketing.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

5 Tips for Social Media Efficiency

(Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes)

“Code is poetry.”

You’ve probably seen that little epigram floating around the net. If you code, you “get it.” If you don’t code, it’s not hard to understand: whatever intrinsic beauty is latent in a piece of code should be found.

As with poetry, finding that latent beauty is the hard part.

In my Ongoing Quest for World Domination of WordPress recipe formatting, I have plenty of occasion to look for latent beauty.

Lately, that beauty has been lurking in PHP form handling. Specifically, hRecipe provides a spiffy Javascript popup box allowing the WordPress recipe maven a friendly way to enter their recipes for publication on blog posts and pages. This popup box is called a “thickbox” and it’s a component of the nearly ubiquitous jQuery library which ships with every installation of WordPress.

After entering a recipe, it’s easy to send the formatted information directly to a blog post. This is how it’s been done so far, and how the hReview plugin (upon which hRecipe) is based works.

But that’s not good enough. All this recipe data should be in the WordPress database.

PHP vs. Javascript form handling

In general, handling HTML forms is well-understood technology. But the specific details vary enough from platform-to-platform that it’s worth learning new techniques. What follows is a few notes on how to implement form handling using the WordPress Ajax capability.

First the motivation: because of the way thickbox is implemented as a child window of the blog post editor, code for handling the form can be written in the thickbox handler or the class that invokes the thickbox handler.

Which leaves the database out of scope.

Even if you derived a class from the database handler itself, you may still be out of scope with respect to the instance of the current hRecipe class.

Conversely, there’s no easy and elegant way to pass the database handling code into the thickbox handler. The database code is all PHP running on the server, and the thickbox code is mostly Javascript, running in your browser. An ugly problem to be sure.

Succinctly, we want the form data processed such the database is in scope, but the processing is encapsulated within it’s own file.

Enter WordPress.

WordPress Ajax form handling

It turns out that WordPress has an Ajax broker (for lack of a better word) which will pass the form data from the Javascript code to the form handler running on the server. Here’s what that looks like:

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$(document).ready(function() {
	$("#hrecipe_form").submit(function() {
		var ajaxurl = "<?php echo admin_url('admin-ajax.php');?>";
		var data = jQuery(this).serialize();
		jQuery.post(ajaxurl, data, function(response) {
    	});
		return false;
	});
});

Simple, right?

Ok, it’s a little more complicated than specifying the action attribute in your form, but I guarantee the tradeoff for power is worth the slight added complexity. Since you’re using Javascript anyway (thickbox), it really isn’t a problem.

Taking it from the top…

• Line 1: The usual JQuery invocation.
• Line 2: The id attribute of your form. This should be self-explanatory. If you don’t know what id attributes are, you have some homework to do. In this case, we’re passing an anonymous function into .submit. The usual JQuery way.
• Line 3: It’s absolutely key to get the admin-ajax.php file included. The methods you need for hooking the WordPress Ajax interface up are in that file. If you implement this, and it doesn’t work, checking for this file should be your first step in debugging.
• Line 4: This is all of your form data. Every single element. Spiffy!
• Line 5: The Ajax call. The third argument captures whatever you return from your handler. In this case, I’m choosing not to do anything with the returned data. You could (should) put a Javascript alert box here when you first implement; it’s fun watching this code execute.

And that’s it for the Javascript part.

Now you need to ensure your form has the correct id attribute, and a field for triggering the action handler.

Form data for Ajax

Simple: <form method="post" id="hrecipe_form" action="" >.

You probably don’t need the method attribute, that’s taken care of using Javascript.

Next, add a hidden input field named “action,” like this:
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="thickbox_form" />

Simple, right?

Let’s get the handler installed.

Handling the request with PHP

The cool part is that the PHP side of WordPress won’t know the difference. As far as it’s concerned, it’s $_GET and $_POST as usual. Here’s how to do it.
add_action("wp_ajax_thickbox_form", array ($recipe, 'thickbox_form_handler'));

The key to this action is understanding the wp_ajax tag, which registers the handler given as the second argument to add_action. Nothing new here; even if wp_ajax is new to you, you have seen the pattern before.

Note also that I’m using a class-based design for hRecipe, thus I have to pass add_action the hRecipe class instance ($recipe) where the handler is located. Otherwise, thickbox_form_handler will be out of scope.

The handler code:

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function thickbox_form_handler() {
   include ('view/recipe_form.php');
}

The form data is all nicely tucked away into recipe_form.php, which connects to the WordPress database and handles all the messy chores of extracting the values of the form fields.

We’ve solved the problem: recipe_form.php is now in scope, but all it’s ugliness is “under the hood.”

Implementing Ajax in WordPress

If you have arrived here from other pages showing you how to do the same thing, you have probably read that all of this needs to be in the same file. Or perhaps some other limitation must be respected. With all due respect to the authors of other articles, such limitations are artifacts of the main requirement:

Everything must be in scope.

If you have every call and function in scope, it’s as simple as shown here. If this code doesn’t work for you, checking scope should be your first step in debugging. Here’s a checklist:

1. Ensure your form id matches the Javascript id you’re invoking .submit for.
2. Check to see that you have an input field named “action” with an appropriate value.
3. Make sure your add_action is using the same value appended to the wp_ajax tag as you set for your input field with name="action".
4. Ensure the admin-ajax.php is in your path. This is critical, none of this works without the handlers in that file.

Questions welcome, I’ll do my best to answer.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Thickbox Ajax Form Handling in WordPress

(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

What tasks would you add to this list?

Michelle Mangen is owner of Your Virtual Assistant in Neenah, WI, providing virtual assistance to small business owners who realize their time is better spent on high value, high ROI tasks. Visit Michelle at Your Virtual Assistant.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Automatic Social Media Exposure – Blog Better with a Virtual Assistant: Tip #4

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

I was a creative writer for ten years before I became a Technical Writer. When that happened, when I started learning all the tips and tricks Technical Writers use to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. I was astonished by how much I didn’t know while I was writing my first (and even second) novel.

I immediately began reviewing my creative writing process, looking for ways to improve it. I found plenty. I had ten-year-old habits that I needed to break, but it was worth it for the rewards.

Consistent Style

One of the main differences between creative writing and technical writing is the significance of style — specifically of visual design. As a Tech Writer I have to manage tables and figures and schematic diagrams. I have to handle Caution and Warning notes that could save people from serious injury (or even death).

As a novelist, all I’ve really got to worry about is chapter headings. Everything else is the publisher’s problem (if I can ever get a publisher to make my books his problem, anyway).

As I became a better Tech Writer and started studying some of its fundamental principles, though, I started applying techniques I didn’t necessarily need. I paid attention to the difference between content and presentation. I started limiting my use of custom formatting within the document, and always assigning that formatting to a particular style so I could reuse it in the same way.

I learned to use the standard Heading styles for my chapter headings, too — instead of just hitting Ctrl-E to center and Ctrl-B to bold. That made it easy for me to make Tables of Contents at the front of my documents, and compare chapter sizes, rearrange my plot more effectively during revisions, and manage the book’s overall experience.

All of that should sound familiar to you. That’s exactly what you should be doing with your blog, using <h3> and <h4> for your headings and subheadings within your document, <em> and <strong> to decorate your words, and letting your site’s CSS and theme handle your styles in a way that creates a consistent visual style across everything you write.

Consistent Content

That consistency in your site design appeals to readers, and it can be an extraordinarily effective tool in your writing, too.

Practice saying things in the same way, so your readers can easily recognize when you’re discussing something you’ve talked about before. You already use your tags to capture the phrases that are most important in your posts, so get in the habit of referring back to your tag list whenever you’re ready to discuss the same topic again. Use the same words, and your readers will thank you for it.

On a larger scale, I’ve found it incredibly valuable to use a consistent structure across all of my blog posts. Every one starts with a short, entertaining story, transitions into a topic sentence that introduces my main message, and then supports that message with two or three short sections.

That might not be the right structure for your blog — for your writing style, or for your audience — but it’s worth spending some time trying to find the structure that is right for your blog.

Consistent Rewards

Now, unless you’re a Tech Writer with ten years of good writing habits, all of that consistency takes a little effort. It’s not difficult, by any means, but it’s something else you need to worry about when you’re writing.

There’s big rewards, though. Consistent style and structure not only makes your site easier to read, it makes it easier to write, too. When you know what needs to go into every blog post (and where it needs to go), writing a new one is just a matter of filling in the blanks. It’s amazingly efficient.

If you want to make your writing better and easier — and who wouldn’t? — start by looking to improve your consistency. It’s a little bit of work now that will pay dividends for years.

So take a moment right now to consider what you’ve been doing. Look over some of your recent blog posts, and try to find the structure and organization behind each of them. Figure out what works and what doesn’t, and then design an appealing, effective structure you can use for all your future blog posts.

If possible, keep it short and general like my description above. That way you can tell us all about it in the comments.

Aaron Pogue is the creator of Unstressed Syllables, a general writing advice site featuring interesting, useful articles on topics ranging from business to storytelling. His decades of experience in creative and technical writing makes good writing easy for you.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Be Consistent to Write Better

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

You’re a publisher. Did you know that? Likely, you’re also a product developer, a marketer, a promoter (is there a difference?), a writer, an editor, a technical genius (compared to your mother-in-law at least), and a social media maven. You can sling some HTML and CSS, and on a good day, maybe even a little PHP.

You probably wear a large number of other hats, as necessary.

Such is blogging.

Now, scaling up to the Big Time requires outsourcing as much work of this work as you possibly can.

But you’re probably not in the Big Time, yet.

(Note to Big Timers lurking around here keeping an eye on the competition upcoming talent: I know you’re out there. I have evidence! No, I’m not digging around in server logs for IP addresses (snore), but all the same, I know you’re out there. And for you little timers (includes me), don’t assume you do or do not know who’s lurking.)

On your way to Fortune and Glory, you’re going to learn far more – about far more – than you ever expected. Which is probably a good thing. The not expecting part, that is. Who knew this was so much work?

Consider Darren Rowse. He’s been at blogging for years. Daily, for years. In all other fields, this is normal: it requires a lot of experience to be successful. Darren recommends bloggers personally acquire as much of the experience as they can, by building specific skill sets.

Take product launches for example, where Darren tells you the story behind product launches:

You know sometimes we hear about these six and seven figure launches and think there’s no way we could ever do that, but the reality is that you can but, but you need to look it at as a journey, and there’s a whole heap of things that you can do every day to take you a little bit closer to some of these bigger launches that you might want to do one day.

One of the (many) things in the “heap of things that you can do every day” is building your skill set.

It turns out…

…all launches are hard work.

Even a crappy launch that doesn’t go anywhere requires a metric boatload of work.

Take your email list for example.

You already know you need a mailing list. But you might need another for your affiliates. And yet a third for customers! How fast can you set up an effective mailing list? An hour? A day? A week? What does “effective” mean, anyway? In short, getting a mailing list done right requires at least the following:

1. Logging in and setting up the initial list.
2. Creating the necessary list support web pages (3 for Aweber).
3. Writing the first autoresponder sequence (3-5 emails).
4. Building and emplacing the signup forms.
5. Testing. Testing testing testing. Then more testing.

How fast can you do all that work? Do you feel comfortable outsourcing it all? How much would you be willing to pay? How would you know if it’s done right?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a huge fan of outsourcing. I’ve outsourced 6 figures worth of work in the past (and hope to in the future). But as Darren notes, until you can outsource, don’t be afraid of putting in the work to learn the skills for yourself.

Your turn

What skillsets are you building, right now?

Why did you choose these particular skills to build?

If you’re a VA or a similar specialist in fields related to blogging, please share your experience. I believe well-educated customers are the best customers (on average), and this a great opportunity to help people understand your service and the benefits your service provides.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Building Your Blogging Skill Set (outsourcing isn’t everything)

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Stultifying.

As a desk jockey at a series of big corporations I became increasingly numbed by the chaotic indifference of the budget sentinels to creativity.

Big businesses, small minds, shackles of policy and chain gang mentality – all in pursuit of the shiny coin. Ironic, then, that any enterprise staffed by more than 20 ever rendered shareholder satisfaction.

But there was a reason why some businesses became titans, some withered and others touched the stars – and it had nothing, and everything, to do with the boss.

The creative catalyst stirring hearts and heads was hidden out of sight to many. It was the board of directors, a hydra-headed entity comprising experts from the world of enterprise.

While most companies of scale had these regular gatherings, what set the winners apart was the guy in charge and his humility in throwing status aside to listen and act on what his board had to say. Together, this band of innovators rocked the world of business with fresh ideas.

Remarkably these meetings are still derided in the most part as a waste of time, a hand forced by constitution while the obvious advantage of free-thinking is banished before it begins.

More incredible still, you can have your own dynamite board of directors. Right now. And it doesn’t need to cost you a cent/penny, but for your time well spent.

It was Benjamin Franklin who first coined the concept of a Mastermind Group. Centuries ago he figured that gathering a bunch of people from different backgrounds with a common goal – mutual success – would rock the party. The ‘junta’ was born, which later became through Napoleon Hill what we know today as the Mastermind Group.

So you blog, and you want to grow engagement and foster deeper relationships your community. You talk to other bloggers regularly.

Time to start your Mastermind Group…

1. Choose six people from different blog backgrounds. Go for a real mixture; with diversity comes the most amazing range of thoughts. Think of the event as your very own focus group, no vol-au-vents required.
2. Formalise a monthly meet-up. Don’t do what I did, and use DimDim – because only three people can speak at a time. Hotswapping people in is like being a telepathic DJ. Go the Skype conference route if yours is a globespanning get-together.
3. Set some house rules – timing is critical. Some may deviate unnecessarily, change subject or start storytelling to excess. Use Egg Timer or a klaxon.
4. Find a common theme to get the ball rolling. It could be scheduling posts, or the most effective way to get visitors to sign up to your newsletters. Ask everyone to share a success they’ve enjoyed in the past month, or a useful website or RSS feed they’ve discovered.
5. Round the virtual table, with each member in turn talking about a challenge with their blog. Use your collective experience and insight as a group to tackle these challenges – and be amazed how much knowledge you have, and learn.
6. Finish the session with another round-the-table where each member recounts the most important lesson they learned, and how they plan to implement it in their business or blog.
7. Follow up with some notes so everyone has a record of what they’ve discovered, and their focus for the month ahead.
8. Create a Google Wave (ask me if you need an invite) for continued conversation to maintain the magical momentum from the meeting. Collaborate on a Group calendar to organise the next meeting.
9. Share the moderation duties. Once everyone has had a turn you’ll each have learned how the game works – and be compassionate in adhering to time limits.

You’ll quickly find out, despite the best efforts of The Office, that there really is an ‘I’ in team. In fact, there are three:

1. Insight. The experience of your fellow Masterminders to help you understand more about building relationships with your community, or proven ways to blog better. Insight is virtually infinite, but there’s no better forum for gaining the advantage than likeminded people all focused on mutual success. Fancy drowning in a flood of incredible insights and ideas? You need a Mastermind Group.

2. Ideas. Got some fragmented pieces of genius you need to patch together? A Mastermind Group is the glue you need to crystallise your efforts. What’s more you’ll have wisdom on-tap and a ready font of constructive feedback to help you gauge whether the idea will make you the darling or devil of your community.

3. Inspiration. The greatest source of creativity is outside our comfort zones. Outside our conventional realm. Mastermind Groups introduce us to new ways of thinking, and often philosophies and strategies that we’d never entertained. Enthusiasm and passion go a long way to driving a ballistic blog, but it’s this third I that really sets your relationship building finesse from the rest of the pack.

What are you waiting for?

Welcome to Team You, six brains rooting for your continued success…

Dave Thackeray writes for love and beer, switching the importance of each indiscriminately. Dave adores making people smile, by documenting his writing career, or with impromptu tickling. Tell him your saucy gossip at wordandmouth.com.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

How to be a six-brained blogger

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

I would never ever recommend that someone new to Internet Marketing spend large sums for a coaching program, software package, or any other huge investment into online business.

When I first began working online I did invest a bit more money than I had earned – that’s a bit hard to avoid in the beginning when you are still figuring things out, getting your sites up, and maybe making a few pennies on pay-per-click ads.

Invest after earning

But I started with under $50, not with a $5,000 coaching membership. My start-up investment included the cost of Holly Mann’s Honest Riches, the cost of web hosting, and the cost of a domain name. That was it.

After my sites began to earn some consistent income, I began to use that income to invest in other products, services, or information, which I could use to expand and improve my sites, increase my reach, and thus increase my income.

On a simple Excel grid I kept track of everything I spent versus everything I earned. For a while, even when I was earning some money, I was sometimes “in the red” a bit, in terms of having invested more than I earned. But this was something like $100 in the red at the worst, not $5,000.

When I see or hear of people promoting coaching programs for new Internet Marketers, for $5,000, I cringe.

That does not mean that there is never a good time to invest $5,000 in your business, online or otherwise. But where Internet Marketing is concerned, the beginning is not the right place to start with big investments!

Unless you fall under an exception, which I will explain below.

Reasons to start small

Here are a few of the reasons why I would never recommend that someone invest large sums when they are new to the field:

• How do you know yet if Internet Marketing is for you? This is a unique field. Some people are made for it, but some aren’t.
  Internet marketing requires a passion, a persistence, a self-discipline, and a willingness to learn.

  But most of all, if you don’t have enough interest and drive in the field, to persist long enough to begin earning a substantial income, you might wind up quitting before you start.

  And you know what? That’s okay!

  There is nothing wrong with dipping your toes in the water and taking them out if you decide that mountain streams are not to your liking. Drive back into town and find the nearest heated swimming pool.

  My point being, that some people test the water of Internet Marketing and then find it’s not for them. Some jump right into it and keep right on going with complete enthusiasm – even if it takes them two years to make their first dollar! But if you have made a huge financial investment and then find out that it’s not for you, you might have a serious problem.

• When you are new, you are less familiar with the field and can not differentiate easily as to which products or services you really need, and which will be the most useful for you in terms of Return-on-Investment (ROI).
• Internet Marketing is a big field and there are many forms of online business. You might eventually find that your heart is in blogging. Or it might turn out you do great with running Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns, or membership sites, or mini-sites, or some other form of online business. When you are just starting out, you may not have found your place yet. You could invest too much in a product or service which turns out to be in the wrong field and thus of little use for you in the long run.
• When you are new, it is more difficult to differentiate between scams and legitimate products and services. When you become more familiar with the field you will be able to recognize these things much more easily.

These are a few reasons I can think of off hand, but you can probably think of more.

There is one exception I should mention.

If you have money to throw around and you feel like throwing it around, by all means, go ahead. Just be aware when you are throwing it around and when you aren’t.

If you are a multi-million-dollar hotel chain owner and you are considering trying your hand in Internet Marketing, $5,000 may be pocket change for you. It might make sense for you to invest $5000 when you start out, particularly when this investment saves you time. In that income bracket, your time is much more valuable as compared to your money. As long as you know that you might lose it if things don’t go as planned, and you are okay with that, then I would say, go ahead.

Before you get started

As a general rule, in Internet Marketing, I would ask yourself these questions before paying for any product, service, or information which is meant to help you earn money online:

1. Does it make sense to me that this product can help me earn money online, and do I understand how and why this is? Or am I just taking someone’s word for it? (The answer to the first question should be “yes” and the answer to the second question should be “no!”)
2. Can I invest this amount of money without putting myself at serious risk on some other front?
3. If I invest this money, and lose it if things don’t work out as I hoped, could this situation be described as “disaster,” “life crisis,” or “financial catastrophe?” The answer to this question should be “no.”

I hope this helps. If you meet a new Internet Marketer or Internet Marketer-to-be who is hemming and hawing about their first investment or purchase, please feel free to send them to this page.

Anna Williams is a blogger, webmaster, photographer, and poet. She has lived and traveled in four continents, and currently lives in a forest, in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her personal blog, view photos, or read poetry. Anna offers website development and related services.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Building from Nothing, not Building from $5,000