We all know there are super marketers who earn an absolute fortune. I don't class myself as an internet marketer, but I sure do my best to learn from some of their skills and techniques and apply it to my business.

One I have always respected is Eben Pagan. Last year his business turned over $29 Million. If we can't learn a thing or two from him, then we might as well give up now. He's even interviewed one of my heroes, Sir Richard Branson.

He's produced a video which shows how he started the business, how he grew it, and he also takes you behind the scenes of his super cool new home office.  read more »

You may remember my review of the book How to be Rich and Happy. I bought it, liked it, reviewed it, and I have now ordered the print version as well. As you can see, I'm a fan!

Co-Author Tim Brownson has become a friend of mine online over the last few months, and he's come up with a completely crazy idea:

He wants to give away a million of the books!  read more »

Since we launched The Beyond Blogging book, Nathan and I have had the chance to work with some pretty interesting people - in the closed Beyond Blogging Project, and also with a number of private clients.

This has meant that we're building up a stack of really good quality training material for anyone who is interested in creating a genuine business, using a blog as the platform.

Rather than keep everything for the closed group and private clients, we've decided to release some of the highlights each month to a wider audience.  read more »

Time management is a big issue for bloggers - I know that from the traffic to my posts on the subject.

In many ways we face unique problems:  read more »

We'd had the same satellite television service for eight years. One kid has left home and the other is 17 and never here. My wife and I are bloggers. How much TV do you think we watch?

Correct. Probably no more than 10 hours a week - my daughter watches an hour after school while she eats, and then every now and then we'll catch a series or movie during occasional family time.  read more »

One of our students in The Beyond Blogging Project, Kelly Estes, opened an online store recently on her cookery blog www.hotcookin.net using Zazzle to sell products with her rather cool logo.

My wife took one look at the stuff on offer and ordered me the Hot Cookin' Dude apron, which I'm modelling for you in the photo.

What do you think? Am I a Hot Cookin' Dude?  read more »

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't tell to them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can't trace time

I started this blog a year and a half ago - it was to chart my success (or so I hoped) in creating a full time income as a writer, and to share those experiences and new knowledge gained with as many people as possible. In time I planned (and succeeded in) bringing to market some products I could sell based on that learning.

In those early days, focus was easy. Recently, it has become impossible.  read more »

One the biggest benefits of using a blog as a business platform is that the content is dynamic, which means it gets indexed quickly by search engines. Do you ever turn this to your advantage when it comes to current events?

Volcanic Ash

You'll have read about the problems in Europe with the volcanic ash from Iceland halting air travel earlier this month. As soon as the topic hit the news, we realised that it would be something people would be desperately searching for information about. It seemed logical to try to get our travel blog ranking well for likely terms - people would be looking for information about their upcoming vacations, or trying to find a way to get home, and locals would be wondering what to do about friends and relatives due here or stuck with them on the island.

Our strategy was simply to second guess what people would be searching on and then to try to get relevant posts ranking well. We started with the obvious airport ones like:

• Lanzarote airport arrivals
• Arrecife airport departures. Then we moved to specific ones like.
• Ash Lanzarote
• .and other similar ones

We were already ranking quite well on the airport terms, but we gave them a push anyway, and we also wrote a post about the Ash and the effect on travel to and from here. As a result we moved onto the front page of Google for all the airport terms, and got to number one (and remain there today) for the search term "Ash Lanzarote."  read more »

I've recently been offered the chance to buy a small business. It's a coffee shop / sandwich bar / free wi-fi place, and I met with the owners last week. The background to how this came about, and what I plan to do about it aren't relevant to this post, but if you're subscribed to my newsletter, I'll let you know all about it in the next one. You can join the community using the form to your right.

Image: Gregory Szarkiewicz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Of course, I wanted lots of information to enable me to make an informed decision, so we had a meeting for them to talk me through what the business is currently doing. Imagine this scenario, if you will:

"The business is doing really well - we get an average of 56 customers per day, and 4 or 5 pleasant comments in our guest book. We're focusing really hard on increasing those daily customers to 70, and we've embarked on a program designed to get more and more people to write in the guestbook."  read more »

The second best book about blogging has had a makeover and been re-launched as a second edition.

Problogger - Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income is written by my friends Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett.

The new edition features a whole new chapter on social media, a case study of Darren's four years running Digital Photography School, as well as lots of updates on recent new tools, new photos and screenshots and a general sweep through of all the things that have changed since the original launched a couple of years ago.

Darren and Chris have also put together some bonus material on a special new website for anyone who buys the book. The bonuses include interviews with other bloggers and some extra teaching.

If you already have the first book, then it's worth getting the latest version, and if you don't well you really should get yourself a copy of it now!  read more »