We all do it everyday. We all take this amazing thing we have literally at the tips of our fingers for granted:

• School homework was about Encyclopedia and Dad’s brain
• Booking holidays meant thumbing through brochures, then calling into a shop with cash
• Checking your bank balance required queuing in front of a glass window
• Writing a presentation took days of research, followed by writing slides on OHP film
• Tracking down an old friend meant half a dozen phone calls

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In this video post I ask if we’re really using the power, the sheer numbers we have available to us, thanks to the internet, to make our products affordable.

I also ask for your help – the beard. Should it stay, or should it go?

Would the dog sit down quietly? See for yourself.

If you’ve been blogging for more than a few weeks, chances are you’ve asked yourself these types of questions from time to time:

• What can I write about today?
• How can I write about that topic when I’ve already covered it?
• How can I write about this topic when everyone else has done it to death?

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If any of these are familiar, read on:

What you need to do is get your creative juices flowing. Here are some tips:  read more »

This is a question I was recently asked by a reader, so I thought I’d answer it in a post.

My measurements are based on my objectives, so for each of the following I know exactly where I want to be in the future. I only allow myself to check my statistics once a week, but that’s enough to spot a trend and take some corrective action. Here are my key headings:

• Average visits per day last seven days
• Average page views per day last seven days
• Average hits per day last seven days
• Percentage of traffic from search engines
• Bounce rate
• Page rank
• Search engine saturation
• RSS readers
• Subscribers

Obviously none of these are income related – I have a separate set of financial statistics which I’ll share with you another time. This is about the general “health” of the blog, not how much money it’s making.  read more »

These are some comments I’ve read on blogs in the last hour:

“Great post! I’m going to think about that and maybe add it to my blog as well.”

“These are great ideas. When I start my blog, I will use them.”

“It’s something I’ve been considering for ages. I’m still not sure, but will see what other people say in these comments.”

These are all examples of procrastination! And it strikes me that procrastination is a pandemic in the blogging business, as I seem to constantly read these types of comment.  read more »

Here are this weeks special posts from my fellow bloggers:

Calling all entrepreneurs – introducing pitch TV

by Richard Branson on richardbranson

Yet another wonderful idea from the Virgin man. He’s giving entrepreneurs a chance to have a quick “elevator” pitch shown to Virgin travellers via Virgin TV. Several have already succeeded, so check the site for them.

How to cut through the noise? Everyone is using social media…..

by Gary Vaynerchuk on garyvaynerchuk  read more »

As soon as your blog begins to attract traffic, as sure as night follows day, it will attract comment spam.

Why?

Because blogs are a rich target! Anyone can post comments and links to the site, blogs rank well in search and people click the links on them all the time.

What is Comment Spam?

It’s where a comment is posted for the express purpose of gaining a valuable link and directing some traffic to an unrelated site.

How is it done?

At a simple level, individuals carry out a search on a topic, find your site and post a comment and link to theirs. These can be quite hard to detect, as the comment can seem relevant, so often only by clicking on the link will you find out it’s spam. There are also spam “robots” which simply find sites and post rubbish and a link – these are easy to spot.

What’s the Scale of This?  read more »

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1/ Posting Consistently. It doesn’t matter if your schedule is to post every day, or twice a week, as long as you remain consistent. Your readers will get into a rhythm and expect your posts.

2/ Managing Time Effectively. Blogging has a remarkable way of filling every hour available to the blogger. But we are all limited in some way – many of us have other jobs for example. So the effective blogger will make sure that the time available counts in producing effective action.  read more »

It’s actually taken me 9 years to do it, but I’ve finally finished the book about our move from UK to Lanzarote. I’ve published it in PDF E-book format and it’s available via the publishers Kiqlo.

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Here we go for my favorite posts of the last week:

Customer Service Twitter Accounts

by Kim on wolf21.com

Talks about how social media can become the “Wow factor” for conventional businesses. Kim’s a writer to keep an eye on for the future.

How to Make Money On Line

by Yaro Starak on entrepreneurs-journey.com

I have to admit to finding some of Yaro’s work to wordy, but this is the first post I’ve read that really explains the whole “long tail” thing to the point where I understood it.

What an Executive Blog Editor Needs to Know  read more »