You may have noticed this:

It’s called the Ultimate Footer Ad and it appears on this site, at the footer every 10 pages or so. I’ve also installed it on my other two blogs, and they have been running with it for almost three weeks now.I tried it as an experiment because I’m really keen to grow my subscriber base, but I hate those “pop-up” or “hover” subscriber forms – I find them really intrusive.  read more »

I talked briefly about The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging a few days ago, and I’m very pleased to tell you that the 3 month course is now prepared and the first one starts on Monday 1st June 2009!

As promised, there is no hype around the launch, there are no affiliates selling it, there is no sales page full of highlights and promises of huge income. I hope this goes against the tradition of recent internet product launches and that it simply offers good value, solid training with lots of direct interaction with me and with other delegates.

 read more »

We’ve talked about why you should make video posts for your blog, we’ve looked at how easy it is to make a video, so now we’re going to cover editing. If you’re a Mac user, then this probably isn’t relevant to you, but if you have a PC, you’ll have a simple program called Windows Moviemaker, and that’s what we’re going to use. As you’ll notice from the screenshots, my operating system is in Spanish, but I’ll provide translations. So here we go:

Why do we need to edit?

Even if you made your video in one segment, you’ll probably need to cut the start and finish off (the parts where you started the camera and then turned it off), you’ll also need to add titles, and possibly compress the video to upload to the web. If it’s a multi-scene video, you’ll need to “join” the scenes together into one continuous video. Moviemaker will do all of these things for us.

Import your video

When you open the Moviemaker, you’ll be presented with a screen that looks like this:

In the top left hand corner you’ll see a button marked “Import video”. Click that, then go and find your video segments and import them all. You’ll see they appear in the middle window as shown in this screenshot:  read more »

When I first started Mike’s Life Posts of the Week, I really hoped and expected that very few sites would consistently feature here, and that I’d be constantly introducing you to new and exciting sites to read. And that has happened to some extent. But I have been surprised at how often the same sites appear on this page, and maybe I shouldn’t have been. It seems that some sites are just great at churning out superb, thought provoking stuff, consistently. This week there are several that fall into that category. I’m not going to worry about it. Let’s just celebrate and enjoy the skill of these writers:

The Society of Mediocrity and Your Role as a Blogger

by David Risley on davidrisley  read more »

Yesterday I talked about why you should use video on your blog and I promised a couple of follow ups. Here’s the first. I’ve used a video to show you how easy it is to make a video! I demonstrate using different cameras and even show you that you can make a video from the shower!  read more »

If you’re a Mike’s Life reader, you’re probably a pretty good writer. That may be a reason you’ve shied away from using video on your blog, after all, writing is your best medium for sharing a message or making a point, right? But you do need to get in to video, and here are eight reasons why:

 read more »

D-Day is something celebrated in UK every year. It’s 6th June - it was the date when allied forces landed in Normandy in 1944, and commenced retaking Europe from Nazi Germany. The expression has become a part of the English language, and people talk about “D-Day” in relation to projects and deadlines all the time.

D-Day will be special for me this year, because I have decided to launch my new project on that day. This is a blogging project, but it will be different in every way to the kind of blogging launch projects that we all see here on the internet. There will be no hype campaign, no lengthy sales page full of hyperbole and highlights, and no keeping everyone waiting until the last minute to learn the price! Lastly, the price has been pegged at a level that is actually affordable to the vast majority of people.

 read more »

Here is, word for word, a conversation I overheard last week in response to a local business person, asked how things were going in the recession:

“It’s a nightmare, new enquiries are down 20%, sales are down 10% and our profit is shot – we’re still making a profit, but it’s pathetic.”

Needless to say, the receiver of the news will go out and tell all his friends the same story, and soon the whole island will be repeating these words.

I had a long conversation with the person who had given the answer, and suggested he could have said:

“We’re hanging in there. New enquiries are down 20%, but sales are only down 10%, so our conversation rate is much better. And the best news? We’re still making a profit, so we’ll be ready to do lots more business when we all come out of this.”

The facts in both sentences are the same, the truth remains, but the spin is totally different.  read more »

I had an email from an old friend the other day, who told me that he’s a keen writer and that he wanted to start a blog. He asked me for the basic steps he should go through. I thought I’d share them with you here:

1/ Decide the topic you’re going to write about. Choose something you’re passionate about and enjoy. You don’t have to be an expert, but you have to be prepared to put the work in the become one.

2/ Find at least 6 blogs in the same niche. Plug their feeds into your reader and subscribe to the sites. Read and digest everything they put out.

 read more »

There are a number of ways to earn income from a blog (sorry I hate monetize as a word!). I’m not going to list the options, but one way is to create some kind of membership scheme where you charge a monthly fee and give people access to a password protected section of your website.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net  read more »