Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates

Other related

informations you need to make money online  http://adf.ly/C1vef 

make money online from home blog click here to read how you can do it too http://adf.ly/C3NDc 

Feeder Matrix - Instant  Payments - Money Making Machine.  http://adf.ly/C0vAU


Gates called up a computer company called MITS and told them that they had developed a BASIC interpreter for their microcomputer, the Altair 8800.In 1975, Gates and his childhood programming buddy, Paul Allen, were looking for a way to turn their shared computer hobby into a career.
MITS was interested in seeing a demonstration of the software. This presented a problem, since the software Bill had promised didn’t actually exist.
Gates and Allen developed it in a hurry, presented it to MITS, and made the sale. They officially founded Microsoft one month later, in April 1975.

“An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.”
– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

By always pushing yourself to deliver a little bit more than you’ve proven yourself capable of, you’ll go further, faster in your business ventures.
That said, I don’t recommend that you follow Bill’s lead and actually lie to your potential clients.

As Microsoft grew, it began hiring more and more programmers.
Gates had taken on the role of CEO and his job didn’t call for any programming. But that didn’t stop him from reviewing – and often rewriting – every single line of code that the company released.
Bill’s keen eye for detail ensured that Microsoft always shipped quality software. It also made sure that he never lost track of his team and that he was always intimately familiar with Microsoft’s products.
As your business grows, you’ll likely have to hire a team of employees. It may be tempting to just let them work and trust that they’re doing a good job. But your company has a reputation to protect, so take a page from Gates’ book and keep a close watch on your team’s output.
Computer screens once displayed just text.
In the early 80’s, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would travel around the country delivering seminars about how graphic interfaces were the operating systems of the future – but nobody believed them.
Computer companies told the Microsoft boys that graphic interfaces would be too slow and that it would be difficult to write the software for them. They were less than enthusiastic when Microsoft announced in 1983 that it was developing Windows.

Attitudes changed quickly in 1984, when Apple launched the Macintosh. It became the first commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface (GUI).
All of a sudden, it was obvious to everyone that the wave of the future involved windows, icons, menus, and a pointing device. Within a few years, the market was flooded with graphical OS software. Notable examples include Deskmate, Workbench, and – of course – Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft was able to release Windows 1.0 in 1985, just a year after the Mac’s success, because they had actually started developing the software two years earlier.
If you’ve got a revolutionary idea, don’t worry if other people don’t get it. Start developing it now so that you’ll be prepared when the time is right.

There is nothing that was overnight.
– Bill Gates

Windows 1.0 actually wasn’t much of a success.
Microsoft released Windows 2.0 two years later, in 1987, but it didn’t fare much better. It found moderate success thanks to software – in particular, Excel, Word, and Aldus Pagemaker.
It wasn’t until 1990, when Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, that they found significant success with a graphical operating system. It was a big moneymaker for the company and it sold over 10 million units in just two years.
Microsoft had found the model that would transform them into a computer software giant.
Just as Gates has seen the advent of the graphical interface years in advance, he predicted the preeminence of the Internet long before the average Joe had a dial-up connection.
By May 1995, Gates was so convinced that he Internet was Microsoft’s future, that he felt compelled to write a very, very long memo to his company. It concluded:

“The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules. It is an incredible opportunity as well as incredible challenge. I am looking forward to your input on how we can improve our strategy to continue our track record of incredible success.”

Gates took the time to write this memo because he recognized how important it was for his whole team to be on board with Microsoft’s mission. The result: Windows 95 came bundled with Internet Explorer.
People don’t buy a product because it’s got a great logo or a low price. They buy because they’ve got a problem and they’re convinced that the product will solve it.
The most difficult part about marketing, then, isn’t coming up with the right tagline. It’s providing a great solution to an actual problem. If you can do that and then demonstrate it, then marketing your solution is simple.

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions, they will be moved to act.
– Bill Gates

It seems obvious that we should reflect on our successes and learn from them. If we can recognize the factors that contributed to that initial success, we should be able to repeat them and repeat our success.
But Gates has argued that success can actually cloud our vision, causing us to become over-confident and unprepared for the new challenges that the future holds.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
– Bill Gates

We shouldn’t ignore the patterns of our initial success. But neither should cling blindly to particular actions or strategies simply because they’ve worked in the past.
Over the years, Bill Gates has made a ton of his customers unhappy.
Anyone who has stared at the “blue screen of death” understands why.
But as much as people love to complain about Windows, they continue to use it. Windows has been the world’s primary operating system since 1990 and it boasts a stout 82.5% market share as of August 2011.
The reason is simple: Microsoft continues to respond to customer feedback and improve their products. The attitude starts with Bill Gates, himself:

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
– Bill Gates

Bill Gates career has been marked by his incredible vision. Microsoft beat out the competition largely because they were always looking one step ahead, to the next revolutionary idea.
The lesson here: if you want to get ahead in business, think ahead.
Gates was still thinking ahead when he retired from Microsoft in 2008. He told PC Mag that he thought the Tablet PCs, Internet TV, and natural user interface would be thriving in the near future. History is proving him right.
So, if Gates knew what was coming next, why didn’t he stick around to make it happen? Surely, he could have added a few billion more to his bank accounts.
The answer is that, at some point while thinking about the future, Gates started giving more importance to health care, poverty, and education than he did to the next hi-tech gizmo. He’s making a bigger impact on the future through The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation than he would have made by continuing to run Microsoft.

10 Tips for Creating Awesome Interviews for Your Blog

Interviewing successful people in your niche is a great way to boost traffic to your blog.
The problem is that most bloggers don’t have a clue how to properly interview someone. More often than not, the blogger fails to squeeze out any semblance of quality information so the interview is filled with fluff and the interviewee has no incentive to share the interview or even associate with you.
If you want to start creating awesome interviews for your blog, you need to follow these tips.
I’m guessing that more than 90% of the internet’s interviews are conducted through email. There are three problems with that.
Sometimes the interviewee is bad at writing.The interviewee tends to whip through the interview as quickly as possible only contributing surface-level answers.You don’t have a chance to ask tailored follow-up questions that get them to delve deeper into the subject.
If you want a high-quality interview, you need to conduct it live or through Skype. =
An interview is only as good as the questions that you ask. If you ask boring questions, you’re going to get boring answers. And nobody has time for boring content.
Here are some popular boring questions:
Did you start with a business plan?How long did it take for you to reach profitability?What’s your best advice for making money online?
Here’s how you can reframe those boring questions into smart ones that’ll make it more fun for them to answer:
Walk me through the step-by-step process that you went through to get to where you are today. What was the first thing you did? Next?How long were you running the business before you started paying yourself? How did you live through those first few months/years?If a kid walked up to asking for your advice and you only had a few minutes to give ‘em your best tip, what would it be?
Do you see the difference? Smart questions draw them into a frame of mind where they able to give you their best possible advice.
Once you get the interviewee on the other line, start with a few minutes of talking about where they’re from, their family, or even the weather (as cliché as it might be).
This makes them feel more comfortable talking with you and they’ll open up and tell you more of their secrets.
Your goal with any interview is to get the interviewee to provide the most valuable, specific advice tailored to your audience.
If they’ve never read your blog (which they probably haven’t), then it’s your responsibility to tell them everything about your audience, from the age, personality type, interests, etc.
Right before you start the interview, give them a roadmap of where you intend to take the interview. Tell them the questions or topics so they can structure their responses based on the information you want them to give in the order you want them to give it.
Also tell them how long you the interview will take and how you are going to record and distribute the content.
One of the most impolite things you can do in an interview is start it off by asking them to introduce themselves.
Prior to conducting the interview, spend at least an hour learning about your interviewee. Read their about page. Look through their latest blog posts. Try to figure out what they’ve been doing lately through Twitter or Facebook.
Then write a 2-3 sentence introduction that walks the reader/lister/viewer through who the interviewee is, why they’re important, and why the audience should pay attention.
Plus, if you ask the interviewee to introduce themself, they’re going to do so humbly and the audience won’t get a sense of how important that person is.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you want them to speak as much as possible while you speak as little as possible.
One way to do this is to parrot. Pick out one or two words from something they said and ask that phrase as a question.
For instance, if they say, “I attribute all of my success to optimizing our sales funnel.”
They you say, “Sales funnel?”
Then they’ll say, “Yeah, our sales funnel is…”
Anytime you want them to elaborate on a thought, use that technique.
The only time you should spend a little time talking is in between questions. Wrap up the question by summarizing their response. Then transition into the next question by relating it to their previous response. If you put some thought into crafting and organizing your questions, this will be easy.
This is the magic question to ask at the end of every interview. Asking them if there is anything else they would like to add has two benefits:
It’s almost impossible to cover everything with your questions. This gives them an open door to talk about anything that they believe is important.It subconsciously tells them that the interview is about to wrap up which encourages them to summarize everything they’ve said up to that point in perhaps the most important two minutes of the interview.
It’s uncanny. The response to this question is almost always, “No, I think you covered everything, Nick. But I would like to say this…”
At the end of the interview, thank them for taking the time, remind the audience of their name, and direct people to their websites.
Similar to the intro, don’t ask them to pitch their sites. Do it for them.
You’ve heard the sales phrase, “Always be closing,” right? Well, I think you should also always be getting feedback.
Immediately after you wrap up the interview ask them if there’s anything you could’ve done better. They’ll appreciate you asking and you’ll find out how to improve.
It’s a lot more work to conduct the interview live, produce their audio/video, and transcribe then edit the content, but it makes a world of difference in the quality of the interview. Let’s make the internet a better place.

Other related

informations you need to make money online  http://adf.ly/C1vef 

make money online from home blog click here to read how you can do it too http://adf.ly/C3NDc 

 

Feeder Matrix - Instant  Payments - Money Making Machine.  http://adf.ly/C0vAU

How to Land A-List Interviewees for Your Blog

Part of the reason I’ve been writing about interviewing and publishing the last couple weeks is because we have a big project underway here at IncomeDiary.
The focus of the project is landing the best advice from the top A-lister interviewees. So far we’ve landed Neil Patel, Ryan Lee, and Pat Flynn, to tease you with a few.
By going through this process I’ve nailed down a system for landing these big-time interviewees.
About two years ago the local paper wanted to do an urgent story on me. Over the course of an hour, the reporter emailed me, Twitter messaged me, LinkedIn messaged me, somehow found my phone number and gave me a call.
The first step in landing an A-list interview is finding their contact info. You should be able to find an email or email form for just about anyone with a few Google searches.
If you can’t dig up their email, try Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. In fact, busy people prefer Twitter because your message is limited to 140 characters.
Once you have their email, you need to craft your introductory email. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind:
Keep it short. If they open your email and it’s more than a few sentences, it’ll get set aside or buried.Give them the bare essential benefits. In one sentence tell them about the project and why they should participate.Tell them exactly what you want from them. If you want a one-hour and fifteen-minute interview conducted through Skype, tell them that.Ask one specific yes or no question. The goal of the first email is to get them to say, “Yes, I’ll do the interview.”
Here’s a basic script you can use for this email:

Hi Pat,
My name is Nick Tart and I’m working with Michael Dunlop to put together… We’d like to schedule a one-hour interview with you to talk about blogging.
Are you interested?
If so, we’ll schedule a time to chat.
Nick

Let’s say they agree to the interview. Reply by telling them your availability starting at least 3-4 days out.
When you give them a bulleted list of days and times, make sure you adjust the time to their time zone. Here are a few examples:
Monday 26th from 8am PST – noon, 2pm – 6pmTuesday 27th from 3pm PST – 7pmThursday 29th from 10am PST – 5pm
Also remind them exactly how long the interview will take.
Sometimes they reply with, “my schedule is jam-packed through March,” or “I’m too hyper-focused on a project to set aside an hour,” or even, “I appreciate you thinking of me but I don’t believe I’m the right person for the interview.”
Now you need to decide how badly you want the interview. If you’re convinced that they’re the one, it’s time to send them a few more benefits:
Start by recognizing their objection. Say, “I understand that you’re busy/focused/humble and just know that you’re the one person in the world I want to interview for this.”Sell them with a list of specific benefits. Tell them, “I have ## subscribers who will read your interview,” or “Some of the other people we’ve interviewed are (A-lister), (A-lister), and (A-lister),” or “We’re going to professionally produce your interview so it’ll be something you can use on your blog as well.”Again recognize their objection. Sandwich the benefits with empathy and wrap up the interview by telling them how much you’d appreciate it.
Let’s say they decline once again. This means you’re a little closer to a yes.
Your last shot at landing the A-lister is to build your credibility. The best way to do this is to ask another A-lister to shoot over an email introduction. If you don’t know any other people they’d recognize, then you need to spend more time building relationships with other bloggers.
Successful people appreciate perseverance because they’ve been in your shoes. They probably even attribute part of their success to never taking “no” for an answer.
The day before you conduct the interview, send them a reminder email.
Subject: Interview Reminder: Tomorrow at 10am PST on Skype
Message:
List of interview questions or topics.Your Skype ID if not already connected.Tell them you’ll give them more details about the interview at the beginning of the call.
After you conduct the interview, ask them for a high resolution photo or any other details you need. Then make sure you send them a copy of the final interview for them to look over before publishing it.
That gives them a chance to make changes and they’ll get to see that you did a good job producing the interview.
I know it helps that I can drop Michael’s name in the emails for these interviews, but I used this same system to land Michael and many others as interviewees two years ago when I was just getting started.
Just because you don’t hear from the A-lister right away doesn’t mean they’re not interested. They’re just busy. It’s your job to earn their attention.

How to Plan and Write an eBook For Sale

eBooks are a really great way to make money and build a following. Not only can you sell them on your own website, but you can get other people to promote them by offering them a commission. Not only does this make both of you money, but it sends traffic to your website, helping to build a following. eBooks can be used to make yourself a lot of money, or as incentives for readers to join your mailing list. Whatever you do with them, it’s important to know how to write them.
I’ve always stressed planning when it comes to writing content online, and writing for a book that you wish to sell is no different, in fact it requires a lot more careful consideration – you can’t just get started and hope for the best. The first thing you’ll want to do is to come up with a title, and although this may sound obvious, it actually has a big effect of how you write your book. My latest eBook is called “Site Traffic Domination – How To Get 100,000 Visitors in Your First 3 Months”, but it was originally just going to be a case study of my website. Soon after starting, I found it hard to find a focus and direction, so I came up with a much clearer title.
Once you’ve settled on a title, it then becomes a lot simpler to come up with what you want to write about. For me, I didn’t want to go into more than about five different sections as it’s a good number to work within and I could cover everything in enough details through subheadings. The headings which I chose all had ‘Section’ written in front, followed by a number and then a title. The titles were clearly laid out in the table of contents and they were ‘How I Got My Start’, ‘Where My Traffic Comes From’, ‘Content’, ‘Promoting Your Content’ and ‘Making Money’, followed by a final ‘Summary’ section, but we’ll get to that.
I’ve studied my posts in the past to find out which were the most popular (something which I recommend you do), and I found that aside from the top lists, my post popular posts were the ones that would cover the basics and break them down into small and easy to manage sections. Because I structured the eBook the way I have, it’s clearly a lot easier for people to understand and to track their progress. With all my heading laid out, I knew what I want to include under those headings, so all I had to do is write it all down on a piece of paper and get to work. I always plan on paper, and I’ve filled up many notepads in doing so, but it’s much better as you have something to look back on and you can quickly write down new ideas so that you don’t forget them.
The main differences between something that I write on this website, and something I include in an eBook comes down to the length and quality. If you’re expecting someone to pay for what you’re writing about, when usually, they get it for free, you have to make sure that your content is up to scratch or they won’t be coming back for more. When I’m writing an eBook, I forget the word targets that I usually try to set myself and just write the best that I can over all the sections and subheadings that I’ve laid out in my plan. My latest eBook is 39 pages long including the contents, but after my first draft it was only 25 pages long. This is because I went back and added more that I had thought up as I was going along and tried to improve on what I’d already written. Remember, if you want to make a living off the Internet, you need repeat customers who are satisfied with your content.
Most importantly, you should try to set yourself apart from all the other writing on the Internet by writing better than anyone else. If your content is the best that the customer can buy, the more likely they will be to buy it, and the more referrals you’ll make from other sellers. Your first eBook may not make a lot of money to begin with, but as your following and reputation grows, the sales of older books will start to pick up, similar to how old posts full of Amazon Associates links still makes you money.
Whatever you choose to write about, make sure that you choose something that couldn’t be covered in a couple thousand words in a blog post. Take a complete overview of a subject and explore as many different elements as you can. The fact of the matter is that you could possibly break all of this down into a series of blog posts, but you won’t earn nearly as much money from that. My next book is going to be on night photography, and I’ve started to explore some ideas that I’ve come up with that I don’t think have been covered in detail before, meaning that I can offer something a little bit different to my competitors.
Let’s start at the beginning. You always want to include an introduction to your subject, as well as a few personal anecdotes. I try to include at least one anecdote about something that I’ve experienced in each section of the book and your first one should be in the introduction, telling people what makes you different from the rest. My eBook is based around my website and how it’s grown over the past few months, so I thought I’d share with readers how that came to be. This first section is entitled ‘How I Got My Start’ as shares what I did differently to other people in my niche, and explains to my reader why I’m qualified to be writing the book. Some people like to include a disclaimer at the beginning of their book telling the reader that it’s illegal to share, but I personally didn’t as I don’t think it go very far in stopping anyone from doing so.
To help stay ahead, include content which you wouldn’t ordinarily include, such as assignments, as well putting more time into graphs. For my blog posts, I usually use a screen capture of a Google Analytic page if I want to show my results, but for my eBook, I took some time, exported the results and made an original annotated diagram. This looks a lot better and makes the reader see the separation from website to book, which gives them a reason to pay more. Below is a comparison between the sorts of graph that I use online and the graph that I use in my eBook – the difference is clear.
It is okay at times to include content that you’ve already shared on your blog, just so long as it’s relevant and not just being used to bulk up the book. If I do this, I tend to remove certain parts that aren’t entirely relevant as well as replace images which are no longer in keeping with my book. In my most recent book, I used ‘6 Types Of Blog Posts That Drive Traffic‘ but I took out the last two on the list as they weren’t as relevant to getting lots of traffic. Just because I’ve used it elsewhere, doesn’t mean that it’s not still really great information.
If you’ve done your planning properly then it should be no trouble to write all your content in order, covering all your key points. This also helps to keep the content organized and mapped out in a contents page. I used headings throughout my book to show importance and relevance, and then when you insert a table of content at the beginning, all of your titles come together in order. Have a look at part of my contents below, and you’ll see that because I was able to follow my plan in order and use headings to show their importance, I was able make my book much easier to follow. What’s more is that all of the headings in the contents page will link to the headings further down in the book, even after I turn it into a pdf.
It’s one thing to write an eBook, but if you want to build on your reputation and sell many future ebooks then you need to start producing results. The best way to do this is to start writing assignments within your book that the reader has to follow, which in turn, will provide them with results. I wrote assignments such as ‘Open an Amazon Associates account and start using it today’ and ‘Claim your facebook profile name by getting 25 friends to like your page’. These little calls to action have a great effect and walk the reader through exactly what they have to do if they want to start seeing results.
When you’ve completed your book, it helps to read through it again so that it’s fresh in your memory and then summarize it so that anyone who was having trouble following will understand better. There is always going to be some readers that you have to spell it out for, so it can’t hurt to share it with everyone by creating an easy to read summary. I usually start with a couple paragraphs summarizing how I feel about what I’ve written and perhaps a personal anecdote about my learning process. Then what I do, which separates me from a lot of writers, is go back through my whole book and pick out all the important lessons that were learnt and list them on one easy to read list. This really doesn’t take much time as I do it while I’m proof reading it; I just jot it down on a piece of paper and compile the list in order when I’m done.
I won’t share the list I’ve used in my latest eBook because that would just be giving it away for free, so instead, here’s a list for this blog post which you can learn from.
eBooks are a great way to make money and can also be used as incentives to get people to join your list.Come up with a clear title before you start writing as it will shape the content that you produce.Properly structured eBooks are much easier to read.The quality and length has to be noticeably better than what you write online.Only sell content that you’re happy with because if you customer isn’t happy, they’re unlikely to ever buy from you again, and the same goes with affiliates.Anecdotes make the reader connect with you on a more personal level and trust the content more.A working table of contents is a great way to help the reader navigate their way through your book.Assignments act as calls to action, to help your reader produce the results they’re looking for.Summaries at the end will leave the reader feeling satisfied, knowing that they’ve learnt something.
Finally, as you’re signing off, this is a great time to promote your own material to the readers, whether it’s links to your website and Facebook page, or links to other books that you’ve written that they might be interested in buying. If they’ve made it all the way to the end then they’re in a pretty good position to want to buy some more from you so don’t waste this opportunity.

Other related

informations you need to make money online  http://adf.ly/C1vef 

make money online from home blog click here to read how you can do it too http://adf.ly/C3NDc 

Feeder Matrix - Instant  Payments - Money Making Machine.  http://adf.ly/C0vAU

7 Best Plugins For Monetization

These plugins all have a track record of monetizing blogs, but it’s important to not get too carried away when you’re choosing which ones to install. Take them one step at a time, and install them as you see fit, because although the could technically all be used together, it’s unlikely that you’d want to use them all at the same time – it would be a little bit much.
Ad Injection from reviewmylife makes managing your different ads even easier, as you can place them around your site, and within your content. You can use any type of ad that you want, including Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, ClickBank, TradeDoubler, etc. into the existing content of your WordPress posts and pages. You can control the number of adverts based on the post length, and it can restrict who sees adverts by post age, visitor referrer and IP address. Adverts can also be configured in the post (random, top, and bottom positions) or in any widget/sidebar area.
I personally found this this plugin to be incredibly useful as I was able to input ads where I had never had them before, and start to see an increase in my earnings. This plugin works especially well for me as I write very long posts, never under 1000 words, often exceding 2000, so it’s acceptable to include a small break, by using an advert. Ads are commonplace now, and so long as you don’t overdo it, no one is ever too offended by seeing them. You need to be careful that you don’t start to include too many ads because they will decrease the worth of each ad, and will actually result in lower earnings – it’s simply supply and demand. Experiment with your own website and you’ll soon come to a situation that maximises your ad earnings.
This is a premium WordPress shopping cart plugin, built by Tribulant that allows the WP blog admin to sell both digital and physical goods online plus any services the admin decides to offer. This if perfect for anyone who sells online teaching courses, hands on training, premium support, or any other non-product related sales that are service oriented. Using this premium wordPress plugin you can easily find ways to monetize your WP blog whether it’s through selling digital products like ebooks, online services, or any tangible goods.
You can set up your multiple products and categorize/organize them into multiple product categories. Add additional images to showcase your products so that users know what they are buying and add digital downloads to products if needed so that users can securely download paid files from your website.
With suppliers, shipping methods, payment gateways, product variations/custom fields, product inventory, affiliate products, discount coupons and many other amazing features, you can run a full featured online WordPress shop that suits your needs. The cost is just $54.99 for a single website licensee, but once you start to see a return, you’ll forget that you ever even spent that money.
I don’t know about you, but I find the whole process of manually going in and creating custom HTML links for Amazon through the Associates Central, really laborious. That’s why I was so happy to find this plugin, which stops you from even having to login to your Amazon. You simply share a normal amazon like like you would any other link, and this plugin will pull your information and add it to the link when someone clicks on it. Now you don’t have to be bothered by spending ages putting together hundreds of links through Amazon, which will encourage you to link more often – I recently made 140 of the them hard way.
Another really good selling point is that people are always asking me follow up questions about products that I’ve written about, and I can’t include HTML code in the comments, so I’m losing commission when I help people out, by providing them with a specific link. Now, I don’t have to worry about this because not only is the plugin is doing all of the hard work for me, but it’s inserting links where I couldn’t have them before.
You might be wondering why I’m suggesting another Amazon Associates plugin, when clearly there’s a plugin already out there that does the job just fine, and that’s true, to a certain extent. You see, this is more than just another Amazon plugin, because it does more than just provide you with links and commissions, it also comes with various advertising widgets, which help to improve sales. This plugin also fully supports amazon product localization to supported markets, such as Canada, Germany, France, Japan, United Kingdom (GB), and the Unites States.
The WordPress Amazon Associate plugin is designed to be your all inclusive source for enriching you website with Amazon Products and Widgets embedded with your unique Amazon Associate Tag. Widgets such as the carousel have been proven to provide better results and more commissions, as they’re more like adverts, than anything else. So long as you’re advertising the right products, to the right crowd, then there’s a good chance that your commissions are going to be much better than the space that would have been taken up by Google ads. It’s certainly worth trailing.
This plugin not only automatically changes any Amazon link on your site to use your affiliate ID, but it also changes the link to point to the user’s local Amazon store. This means that if your visitor is visiting from the UK they’ll get a link to Amazon.co.uk, and if they’re visiting from the US they’ll get a link to the same product on Amazon.com - All you have to do is provide all your affiliate IDs.
It doesn’t matter if the link is in your post, in your template or anywhere else on your page – it’ll be converted automatically. This can make a noticeable difference to your earnings, from a very small amount of effort. The last time I checked, 66% of my traffic came from America, and 10% came from the UK, so by simply installing this plugin, I can tap into the UK market and increase my earnings by approximately 15%. With the exception of checking that the plugin works after you make the odd update, you very much just install this plugin, and leave it to do its thing.
If you’ve been following this site for a while, then it will be no secret to you that I love this plugin, as it’s easy to set up, and has numerous benefits. The idea is that you input different keywords, and you assign links to them, so that whenever these keywords pop up in your text, they automatically redirect to different content that you’ve preselected. Obviously, there are a great many uses for this when you’re trying to promote your own content, throughout your own website, as you can link to different articles, and keep your readers interested.
The beauty of this plugin is that you don’t have to just link within your website, you can link to anywhere on the internet, which can be used for affiliate marketing purposes, or even just to gain recognition from a source that you’re referring to. In my niche of photography, there’s a program called Animoto, which can be used to create video slideshows, and they have an affiliate program, which provides me with money, every time someone goes to their site, through my special link. This is nothing special or unique, as you’ll find that there are plenty of programs out there that offer a similar service, and I’m sure that you’ll have no problem finding someone in your niche too. All I have to do is to assign certain keywords, such as ‘animoto’ and ‘video slideshow’, and they will automatically send people to the website, using my custom link. Now I can start earning passive income, every time I write a certain keyword.
This is a very cool plugin, which allows you to sell articles, videos, images & downloads, whether it’s a single item, or a long time subscription, and anything in between. Cleeng (pronounced cleng) is designed in a similar way to cable TV, where you have to pay to see good content. You can limit access to certain parts of your website, which holds the information that someone is looking for, until they’ve paid for the access. It’s a really simple system, and the same used by large newspaper organisations, such as The New York Times, who insist on money to see the latest articles, and it seems to work for them. With Cleeng you can sell any individual piece of content directly from your own website.
It’s certainly a bold idea, but it seems to be working so far. This plugin could be considered a bit of a risk, depending on your niche, and how readily available the information is, but it’s been proven to work. The great thing about it is that you keep 80-90% of the money and there are no hidden costs; all payment fees, user support, software maintenance is taken care of. You just need to create the right content that sells.

100 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs

This has been a very revealing list to put together, because the majority of these companies have a lot in common, and almost all of them are run by men. The men vs. women argument has been around on this site for a while, usually whenever we put up top lists of people, and the women are noticeably absent. There’s no arguing with the facts in this post though; there are a few brilliant women here, but the list is dominated by men.

One thing that stands out from my findings is that the biggest websites have a lot of very rich people involved. This tells me two things, firstly, it takes a lot of people, and a lot of investment to succeed, and that when a site does take off, it takes a lot of people with it. The exception to this rule is number 1 in our list, and that’s Jeff Bezos. He’s made a remarkable amount of money, and remained the only person from Amazon on the list. He’s the richest person on this list, but that’s only because Google was a partnership between Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and if they had been a single person, they would blown everyone else out of the water.

The asian market have brought some really heavy hitters in the form of Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Rakuten. Rakuten in particular are experiencing a huge international growth as they try to expand into the e-commerce market around the world with the purchase of website such as play.com and the French priceminister.com.

Having researched every single person on this list, I feel like I know most of them pretty well now, and one thing I will say is that, for the most part, a good education has played a big part in their success. A lot of the people here went to very prestigious schools, or were naturally gifted from a very young age. That’s especially true for the younger people on the list, as the wealth of some of the people under the age of 30 in this list is really quite staggering.

To create a list of the definitive top 100 richest internet entrepreneurs would be almost impossible, as that sort of information just isn’t readily available, so this list is more of a selection of the richest public figures on the internet. There’s a lot to be learnt by comparing the ways, and the speed in which these entrepreneurs have made their immense wealth, so have a look look at the trivia section for more details.

Rank PhotoNameAge WorthWebsiteTriviaHuateng is the founder of Tencent, which started out as China's answer to AOL. Their services offer a wide variety of virtual products, from online games to instant messaging and social networking. This has made Ma Huateng one of Time's most powerful people in China.  

Why Most Websites Fail

A couple weeks ago, we here at Income Diary decided it would be a good idea to see what our readers websites were like, and offer them free critiquing at the same time. This has given us a really good advantage when it comes to give our readers advice, because now we’re fully aware of what their websites are like, and more importantly, where they’re going wrong.
It’s awfully tempting to want to start making money online, and one of the best ways to do this, is to start teaching others how to make money online. This sort of thing occurs across most niches, where people want to start making money, through teaching their own tutorials on the internet. I do the same with my photography website. I spend hours every week coming up with fresh and interesting content that will interest my readers, while I try to fit in working around other websites at the same time. With blogging being so easy these days, everyone wants to do it, but not everyone wants to put in the time and effort it takes. I brainstorm, and take notes throughout the day about topic ideas, and posts that I could research, so that I know that the content that I write will always be better than my competitors. I do this for a few reasons. Firstly, if something is worth doing, then it’s worth doing right. Secondly, the more you write, the more likely you are to be found by others. Finally, and most importantly, if you’re writing the best content on the internet, then pretty soon your competitors are no longer your competitors.
Fresh ideas, along with good quality, and well punctuated writing, is the key to creating quality content. If you’re just taking ideas from other people in your niche, then it’s fairly likely that the more established, better quality content, is going to be ranked higher in Google. Another problem that Income Diary has is people blatantly ripping off our content, sometimes simply copying and pasting, and other times using our articles as a direct blueprint for their own content. Imitators will never have the same results as someone who goes out of their way to create original content, so if you don’t think you have what it takes to create original content, then you might as well give up.
You can write the best content in the world, but if you only ever post it once a month on your blog, your website will struggle to do well. If you want your website to grow, you need to rely on a consistant following, that will feed your website with pageviews, and to do that, you need to post content multiple times in a week. I will update my website a minimum of 3 times a week, and for Income Diary, it’s more like 5 times a week, with subscribers receiving the information very frequently. Followers of our websites are constantly reminded of our presence, and so are sites like Google. The more content we post, the more likely we are to appear in Google, which will lead to even more traffic. The thing about writing content is that you never know which content is going to be the most popular, so if you just keep posting content, then it should eventually be picked up by someone of interest, who will share it with many more people. I have written over 110 posts on my own website and around 40 on here, and that’s all in the past 8 months. Commitment like this is what separates you from the competition.
I’m surprised at how common of a mistake this is, but I guess it’s because I started my website in the apex of social media. People who don’t understand social media, are missing out on a huge potential following, which will help to keep their website alive. It’s not enough to simply open a Facebook and Twitter account, you actually have to put in some hard work make people want to follow them. This is where we lose most people, it’s at the idea of hard work, because when there’s hard work to be done, there’s always something better to do. As I browsed through the websites submitted to us last week, I noticed that a lot of the poorer websites had very small followings, which likely consisted of friends and family.
Roughly 3% of my Facebook following is from friends of mine, and I would be surprised if I even knew 0.5% of my Twitter following, and that’s because I use my social media properly to grow my following. This includes inviting my readers to like my page, and using my Twitter account to find people in my niche, where I post content from my website, which ultimately leads them to my fan page. Up until just recently, my aim when finding new followers was to send people to my fan page, and not my website, because if I could get someone to like my fan page, then I knew that I could get them to come to my website on multiple occasions in the future. When you start to embrace the power that social media can provide for you, then you’ll start to see some serious results. Turn one visit, into many.
*Note: I only stopped sending people to my fan page through a Twitter DM, because I’m trying to promote content that I want to go viral.
It would be a shame to miss this simple, but vital step out of your website’s promotion, because it can make a real difference. If you have a fan page, but don’t really use it much, then Facebook starts to recognise this and acts accordingly. What this means is that they will see that people have stopped interacting with you, and stop sharing your content with parts of your following, even if they do like you. Think about it, how many pages do you like on Facebook, but how many do you actually hear from? It’s a two way street, if the reader isn’t clicking on your content, replying to comments and polls, then Facebook will stop showing that reader your content. Daily updates, or at least five updates a week are essential on Facebook, and they’re easy to do because you can ask questions and polls, and post photos, in between articles.
When you’re on your own website, then it’s important to reply to peoples questions when they ask you, because not only will they consider you to be more of an authority, but they’ll be more likely to come back. This is all public too so other people are going to see it, and respect you and your website more. The same goes for Twitter, I keep TweetDeck open at all times, and whenever I get a Tweet, I stop what I’m doing and answer it straight away. This does not go unnoticed.
Human interaction turns your website into a persona, and the steps to getting there are remarkably simple. People don’t want to talk to a website, or a program, they want to talk to a person. If you’ve ever updated your Facebook through a program like HootSuite, then you’ll know that it doesn’t provide you with very good results, because it leaves a tag, sharing where it came from, and people immediately know that it’s not a person behind the update, it’s a computer. This is a good indication that if you want to be taken seriously, you have to interact with your readers.
First impressions are everything, and because everyone judges you by your appearance, you need to make sure that you’re looking sharp. When I went through some of the sites that were submitted to be critiqued, I was horrified by some of them, because it seemed as if some of them hadn’t even bothered thinking about their design. Something that always bugged me was the fact that we didn’t have a logo up on ExpertPhotography, it was just some writing, in a horrible font, and bad colours. Recently, we’ve had a logo designed and put into the header, which you can see below, and it’s actually changed the way I feel about the website. It makes the website look much more sleek and welcoming to any new visitors. Even the popup that I use from PopUp Domination is in keeping with my logo and website design.
One common factor with people who had attempted to try and design their website, but failed, was the fact that they were trying to do too much at once. When it comes to website design, I personally believe that less is more, and I’ll tell you why… I come from a background of photography, and one of the most important lessons to learn when taking a photo, is that whatever isn’t adding to a photo, is taking away from it. In terms of web design, this means that if you start installing distracting elements, then you’re just taking your readers attention away from something more important. The homepage is a sacred place, keep it that way.
This is a schoolboy error that I see all too often. People think that installing ads is going to be a really easy way of earning an extra income for themselves, and while that is often true, it’s not always the case. You see, if you sell cameras, or you’re a plumber looking for work, and you install ads, then it’s very likely that you’re going to be advertising a competitor in the market. You might earn 50¢ from someone clicking on the ad, but you’re very likely going to lose a sale at the same time. This is a big no no.
On the other end of the scale to advertising competitors, you have sites who are looking to earn money mostly through adverts, and to do so, they install lots of them. There’s a couple reasons why this never works. Firstly, and most obviously, they’re distracting and annoying, and are actually convincing people to install adblock. Keep the ads to just a few, and put them in the right place, and this is a lot less likely to happen. Secondly, by including lots of ads on your webpage, you’re actually reducing their worth. It’s simple supply and demand. If you have three banners next to each other, the bid for those ads is going to be a lot less, because who wants to have an ad which is sandwiched between two competitors? It takes a few weeks, but you should be able to find a compromise that works well for you and your adverts.
I don’t want to be bias here, but I can honestly say that I wouldn’t use any other website system. It’s easy to install, customise, and market, and has provided me with exactly the results that I’ve been looking for. The way that you can install free plugins, that do exactly what you want without having to pay for a developer, is a really great feature. What’s more is that I recommend a lot of different plugins to readers, and if you’re not using WP, then these are going to be lost on you. There’s plenty here that you can’t do with Blogspot, or Heaven forbid… Tumblr. To say that the reach of WordPress is substantial would be an understatement, as it’s used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet’s “top 1 million” websites and as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. If you’re not using it, then I suggest that you start.

15 Lessons from Richard Branson

Richard Branson isn’t your average billionaire.
He’s a worldwide celebrity, an ardent humanitarian, and the he once tried to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon.
Branson knows a lot about business (as evidenced $4.2 billion net worth), but he also has a knack for adventure and living life to the fullest. Enjoy the lessons on life and business below.

Richard was just 16 years old when he had his first business success, a magazine called Student. By 22, he had founded Virgin Records.
Branson is proof that it’s never too early to start.
But at 61, he’s also proof that being old is just a state of mind: Branson regularly kite surfs and attempts to break world records (e.g. a 2008 attempt to break the world record for sailing across the Atlantic).
The sky is the limit for your business, but that doesn’t mean that the only direction to grow is up.
Branson’s magazine led him to sell records. His record store led him to start a label, which led him to buy a recording studio and a night club.
By starting ventures in complementary industries, Branson created a network of businesses that reinforce one another. It’s much easier to promote a new musical artist when you own a night club, a magazine, and a record shop.

How does a no-name record label sign its first artist?
Virgin Records did it by offering to let multi-instrumentalism Mike Oldfield use their recording studio for free. The recording sessions led to Tubular Bells (1973), Virgin’s first release and a best-seller.
When you’re trying to get your foot in the door in a new industry, sometimes the quickest way to make money is by doing something for free.

Branson signed the Sex Pistols to his label after other major labels (EMI and A&M) had dropped them for their penchant for creating controversy and mayhem.
The Sex Pistols lived up to their reputation and broke up not long after signing with Virgin Records. But their acquisition broadened Virgin’s profile and gave them an upper hand in the booming punk rock scene.
It’s natural to steer away from controversy, but if you’re willing to seek it out, you can draw attention to your business while cashing in on opportunities that others were too timid to take.
After finding success in the record business, Branson dove into the transportation industry, founding Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984. He’s since expanded his business ventures to include mobile phones, cosmetics, movies, and even his own cola.
Diversifying across industries doesn’t just keep things interesting for Branson, it also provides safety from the unpredictable ups and downs of any given industry.
Branson’s glad he didn’t stick to the just the record business: it has been in steady decline since Napster launched in 1999.

When Branson sold the Virgin record label to EMI in 1992, for £500 million, he was brought to tears.
A lot of people would probably cry tears of joy if they just made that kind of cash (myself included), but Branson was crying because he was emotionally invested into his record label.
If you don’t want to put your heart and soul into your business, you shouldn’t start it in the first place.

“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”

Don’t be discouraged if a business venture doesn’t turn out like you hoped.
Instead, keep an eye out for the next big opportunity.

“I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.”

Nobody can accuse Branson of being cold to his employees (he makes a habit of writing them personal letters), but he also embraces his role as a dictator.
If you want to be a leader in business, you can’t worry about what other people think. Exercise your power and act decisively.

Richard Branson is dyslexic and he struggled in school before dropping out at the age of 16.
School is great at testing and rewarding certain skillsets, like the ability to memorize information and follow instructions. But those skills aren’t the only skills necessary for real life success.

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

Branson started a magazine without ever having taken a journalism class and he became one of the world’s most successful businessmen without ever having taken a business class.
Don’t wait until you’re qualified to start doing what you want with your life. Just do it. You’ll make a ton of mistakes, but that’s the fastest way to learn.

In 2004, Branson founded Virgin Galactic – a space tourism company that will soon be taking sub-orbital vacations. So far, over 430 brave people have signed up to become Virgin Galactic astronauts.
The ticket price: $200,000.
Virgin Galactic is a great example of Branson’s willingness to explore new frontiers with his business ventures. Being a pioneer is risky, but it has a distinct advantage: when you pioneer an entirely new industry, beating the competition is a piece of cake.

Virgin Galactic is one of many instances in which Branson has anticipated an emerging market.
When Branson observed gasoline prices on the rise, he saw an opportunity to enter the fuel industry. The Virgin Green Fund invests worldwide in research and development of renewable fuel.
Given the global scarcity of gasoline, coupled with mounting consumption, it’s a good bet that Branson’s bet on alternative energy will pay off in the long run.
When you see current trends and project them into the future, you give your business a huge advantage for years to come.

Never has there been a more exciting time for all of us to explore this next great frontier where the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one, where doing good really is good for business.
The above is an excerpt from Branson’s brand new book, Screw Business as Usual, about how businesses can succeed by striving to make a positive impact on the planet (and not just make boatloads of money).
Branson argues that companies that treat their employees, their communities, and the environment better tend to have better long-term financial growth and a healthier brand.
When you make a positive impact with your business, you’re not just making the world a better place. You’re also contributing to the long-term success of your company.

“If I get frustrated by something, then I like to try to put it right.”

Branson’s businesses may make the world a better place, but that hasn’t stopped him from entering into the realm of non-profit humanitarian efforts.
He’s taken on AIDS (Virgin Healthcare Foundation), nuclear weapons (Global Zero), and even war itself (The Elders).
After a chat with Al Gore over breakfast about climate change, Branson decided that global warming was a legitimate crisis. He subsequently pledged an enormous $3 billion to help solve it.
Obviously, giving back doesn’t help Richard’s bottom line. But my guess is that it brings him satisfaction beyond words.

“Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.”

Richard Branson lives a life that’s easy to envy. His wealth allows him to travel the world, meet influential people, and do it all in style.
But while yachts and jewelry are nice, they won’t give you real satisfaction. That’s something that can only grow out of an appreciation for the simple things, like your health, your loved ones, and a nice long bath.
Don’t wait until you’re “successful” to enjoy yourself. Start now and enjoy the way up.

How I Gained 500 Facebook Fans Overnight

I was going to wait until the new year to write this post, but as I start to see a few more people attempt it, I can see that the effects may in fact wear off very quickly. What I’m talking about is a new idea in viral marketing on Facebook, in which a fan is encouraged to share something, to be in with a chance of winning a prize. I ran a little bit of an experiment myself, and I was very pleased with my results.
I should warn you first, that I’ve since found out that this is again Facebook rules and regulations for these promotions, and had I been a much bigger page, and been reported, there’s a good chance that I would have been banned, or at least been the subject of a strongly worded email. The specific guideline is on line 3 of their promotions guidelines and is as follows: “You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.” That is basically a lot like what I did; I didn’t get caught, and I will be deleting the image now that the competition is up, but it’s certainly a risk. I personally think it’s a bit of a gray area because the reason I give for liking a page is so that they will see their name when they win, and this is a very new type of promotion, so there’s every chance that you’ll get away with it too, but it could be perceived as spammy so be very careful about your decision.
I got the idea from this campaign from the clothing brand Fly53, which was a giveaway of £7,500 worth of clothing, where all they had to do was click share to be in with a chance of winning. This is a fantastic campaign, but I immediately saw some problems (and how they could improve them), which I’ll get to further down the page. One thing that does stand out to me is that they manage to follow Facebook’s guidelines, not follow the guidelines, and mislead all of the fans in just one small paragraph.They follow the guidelines of Facebook by making the readers enter the competition via an app, but as you see, they tell the readers to share the post to be in with a chance of winning. The give the impression that all you have to do is click share, because it doesn’t say anywhere in the text that you have to enter the competition through the app that’s linked in the text. If a big name brand with over 40,000 fans can get away with this, then I should imagine that most people would. I still recommend exercising caution though because the risk may not be worth the reward, and I would hate for any of you to lose your accounts. I imagine there will be a crackdown on this sort of promotion pretty soon.
I wanted to test the water myself, just to see how well it would work, but without spending any of my own money. Without going into too much detail, there’s a lens that I recommend as the first upgrade any budding photography should buy, it’s a lens that I’ve written about in length before, and it’s had a pretty good response. The lens also isn’t that expensive, so getting a hold of one wouldn’t be too hard either. I decided that this would be perfect for my readers to win, but it’s not a decision I brushed over, and you shouldn’t either.

If you think about what you want to achieve by holding this giveaway, it’s ultimately so that you can find new fans for your page, whom you can share your website with in the future, so the prize has to be something that will appeal to them. Not only does the prize have to appeal to people in your niche, but it has to ONLY appeal to people in your niche. Sure, you could giveaway a $200 giftcard for Amazon, but everyone wants one of those, so you’ll likely get it shared by a lot of people who aren’t into whatever your niche is selling. By choosing a lens, I knew that everyone who liked and shared my post, would at least have a digital SLR camera, and would therefore be interested in my content. The unfortunate thing about this rule is that not every niche can do one of these giveaways so easily, in fact we’re struggling to come up with one for Income Diary. We had considered the top 20 business books, but again, that has a much wider appeal than just our niche.
The second thing that I took note of was the worth of the giveaway, Fly53 were giving away £7,500 worth of clothes, but I wanted to only give away between $110-220, so it was a slight risk because I wasn’t sure it was going to work as well. Of course, I knew it was never going to work quite as well, they have around 40,000 fans, and I had just 1700 at the time, and they were also giving away something a lot better than me, but I was still surprised with just how well it has worked.
Ok, so now you’ve chosen a prize to give away, how do you pay for it? Well, there’s three options for that. Firstly, you could just pay for it out of you pocket, and consider it a worthwhile investment in your website. Secondly, you ask for a freebie from whoever makes what you’re giving away, which I’m planning on doing soon with someone who’s already sent me a free camera strap. And finally, you could use your Amazon Associates commissions. Every couple months I promote a new post, where I recommend different products that people should buy, and then use Amazon Associate links to earn commissions. I posted this on my website a couple weeks ago, which links to 70 different products, and since then I’ve earned $179.19 in commission, from that post, and various others. These posts provide me with content to keep my readers updated, and money that I can spend on giveaways.
When you know what it is you’re giving away, then it’s important to share it on Facebook as soon as possible. I actually left a little tease on the Facebook page earlier in the day, saying how I was thinking about arranging a giveaway, and I asked what everyone would like for Christmas. Then I started designing a little image that would contain all the important information, and grab the reader’s attention at the same time. It’s important to put all of the necessary information into the image because you’ll get a better result. Below is the image that Fly53 used, and although their campaign went well, it really doesn’t tell you anything about what they’re doing from the image itself, nor can you differentiate it from the other competitions that they were running, using exactly the same image.I went for a very different design, making mine on Photoshop in a couple of hours. I’m not very good at photoshop, and you don’t have to make it on there, you could easily make a PDF in word and use that instead. When you’re designing your own, it’s important to only include necessary information, detailing very clearly what the reader has to do. For me it was very simple:
1. ‘Like’ Expert Photography on Facebook
2. Share the image on their Facebook wall
The fist requirement was a trick that most people seem to be missing, because if you can get people to like your fan page, then there’s a good chance that you can get them to come to your website multiple times in the future. The reason I gave for making people like the page was so that I could tag their name in the post if they won, and it does have that use, but in reality, I just wanted to be able to market to them again in the future. How much would you pay for 500 new fans on your page? How much would it cost you in Facebook ads to reach it? When you consider those options, this starts to become a very cheap way of generating new fans.
I included a few images at the bottom of the post, before revealing a few finer details about the terms and conditions, such as where I’d ship to, which brand I would be giving away, and when the winner would be announced, but for more detailed information, I used the description of the image on Facebook to really sell it: “To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is share this photo on Facebook, and make sure that you ‘like’ the Facebook fan page (so that we can tag the winner). You have to be in the USA, Canada, or UK to be in with a chance of winning, and you have to own either a Canon, Sony, or Nikon DSLR. It’s an essential lens for every camera bag, and even if you already own one, it makes for an excellent present, I’m sure you’ll agree. Happy Holidays!”
With the image posted, it became a waiting game to see how people would react to it, and I didn’t have to wait long at all. I started receiving likes pretty regularly, but I really wanted to promote it, so I decided to ask others to help out. I emailed Jim who has written on this website before and is in the same niche as me (you can see his post here), because he has 15,000 fans on Facebook, and seeing as it’s something every photographer should have, I asked if he minded sharing it with his fans. I did this just 33 minutes after I published the photo, and just 42 minutes later, he had shared it on his Facebook to thousands of people. This is when things really started to pick up.
I don’t have a huge following on Facebook yet, but it’s growing steadily now as the site is also growing. I do however know a few people in my niche though, usually because I’ve included them in one of my top lists, or I’ve been mentioned in one of their lists too, so I can use these relationships to my advantage. You shouldn’t be worried about sharing other people’s content through your own website or Facebook; they are NOT your competition – the success of your website is up to you, not down to how good someone else’s website is.
With this boost from Jim, I was able to reach a lot more people, and the sharing soon grew to hundreds of people. After just an hour and a half, I have 92 new shares and 87 new likes on Facebook, and just 35 minutes after that, the numbers had gone up even further to 185 and 182. I posted the image late in the evening, and when I woke up the next morning, I had 500 new fans on Facebook, which is now up to well over 700. It took a little over 24 hours to reach 500 shares, which meant that people were liking the page and not sharing the image, probably because they were confused by how Facebook works, but I had a feeling that was going to happen because I’ve seen it happen before.
There’s no doubting that the viral nature of this sort of marketing has clearly worked, and when you consider that the average Facebook user has 130 friends (although I suspect it’s more), and I’ve had 592 shares as of writing this (it’s still going up), then my post has been shared to 76,960 people, for what may only be $110.
Not only are people sharing my image, liking my page, and visiting my website, but they’re also talking about my website. The ‘talking about this’ statistic underneath the fan page likes, will dramatically increase from this, and that will cause Facebook to include more of my content in people’s news feed, as I will be considered to be worthy.
When you’ve got your big new following, you’ll find that there are more people interacting with the content that you put up. I put up my first article since the campaign started, and where I would usually get up to about 6 likes, and a couple comments, I received 15 likes, and 8 comments. This increases reader interaction, and helps my website to grow.
There are a few things that I would have done differently to how I’ve done it, for example, I’ve said that I’ll announce the winner on Christmas day, which is when I planned on ending it, but it’s started to lose steam, and I think that 24-48 hours would have sufficed. Next time I do one, I will probably be giving away a camera strap, and for that, I’ll only doing it for 24 hours. That giveaway is going to be part of a promotion for both my website, the strap, and the commission that I can earn through Amazon, so not only will it not cost me any money, but I’ll be able to actually earn money too. I also would have widened the area that I would have sent the lens too as well, because I have a fan base in Australia who couldn’t enter the competition, so that’s something I will consider next time.
If I were to run the competition again, I would definitely run it through the app, and follow the Facebook guidelines, because it’s taken me a long time to get to the point that I’m at today, and I would hate to lose it all. It’s been a very interesting experiment and I’m glad that I’ve done it, but those rules are in place for a reason, and I’m sure Facebook wouldn’t feel bad at all about quickly deleting your page from their servers. Since the promotion started just 6 days ago, I’ve had over 750 new likes, 592 shares and around 200 comments, all for the cost of a cheap lens. I chose my winner and, although I’m yet to hear back (don’t worry, I will definitely chase them up), everything has ended up a little bit better than expected.

7 Things I Learned from Publishing a Book

Last year Nick Scheidies and I published a book through a small publisher titled, What it Takes to Make More Money than Your Parents.
As a writer, I’m naturally curious about the publishing industry. Since we published that first book, I’ve talked with three other publishers and dozens of authors. I’ve learned a lot about publishing a book, including a few dirty little secrets.
When publishers look for new authors, the number one thing they’re looking for is somebody with an audience.
Publishers don’t dump a lot of money into marketing a book unless it’s already selling. Whether or not the book sells is dependent upon the author’s ability to sell it.
If you want to get published but don’t have an audience, the best thing you can do is start blogging. It’ll build your audience and validate whether or not you’re a good writer.
I used to struggle with the fact that most big-time authors don’t write their own books.  It seems sleazy, but it’s not. Here’s why:
People with big audiences don’t have a lot of time. One way to save time is to outsource the creation of your book. It’s not like Steve Jobs assembled iPhones, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was his product.Big-time authors aren’t necessarily good writers. They have influential ideas and can communicate those ideas as speakers, but they struggle to put those ideas in writing.
Oftentimes, a ghost writer can write and communicate those ideas better than the author, which results in a higher-quality book.
Just like with any product, you need to know how to sell it before you create it. Thomas Edison:

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

Yet, most authors write about what they think is interesting and hope that other people find it interesting.
Before you write a single word, figure out:
Who you’re going to sell it to.Who the end user is (sometimes the buyer and reader are different).What price point you’re going to set it at.How you’re going to distribute it.What you’re going to do to promote it.
The answers to these questions will help you write a book that people want to read. If it’s not marketable, it won’t sell. And if it doesn’t sell, what’s the point?
You ever notice how many people claim to be best-selling authors? Like, pretty much everyone who’s written a book, right? Doesn’t that seem fishy?
You only need to sell about 300 books to become an Amazon Best-Seller. If all of those sales come on the same day, you’ll be bumped to the top of your sub-sub-sub-sub-category. In turn, your book is a best-seller for a few hours.
Since people figured this out, they pre-sell their book on their site months before it’s launched. Then on launch day, they manually submit those orders to Amazon so it appears as though lots of people are buying it.
Not all Amazon Best Sellers do this, but many of them do. When someone claims to be a best selling author, ask them how long they were at the top of the list.
A few weeks ago I pitched a book idea to Mark Victor Hansen, who has sold over 500 million books, and he replied with, “Publishing is dead.”
For the first time in history, publishers need authors more than authors need publishers. That doesn’t mean publishers accept any dead-beat book off the street. It just means that if you’re a good writer, you have a better chance selling it yourself.
Instead of taking 10% royalties from the traditional publishing route, self-publish your book through a service like CreateSpace and pay someone to put your book on Kindle and iBooks.
According to Jenkins Group, a premier publishing firm, 70% of books don’t make a profit. When people joke about the cover designer making more than the author, it’s often the case.
There are lots of upfront costs with creating a book. Some of ours where:
Promotional copies. We printed and shipped 30, 100-page promotional copies to get blurbs.First running of print books. We bought 250 copies for our initial running.Shipping and materials. We fulfilled the first couple hundred orders ourselves. We didn’t get paid, however, until months later because the money had to run through the publisher.Traveling expenses. We were invited to Chicago to give a break-out session at the CEO National Conference and we paid our way.
All told, we spent over $8 grand on our book. And, yes, we did make it into that 30%.
If a book sells 10,000 copies, it’s considered successful. The average royalty through a traditional publisher is 10%. So even if you sell 10,000 copies of $10 book, you’re only walking away with $10 grand.
If it’s not profitable, why do so many people write books?
Because being an author opens the door for other opportunities like speaking, training programs, and consulting. Plus, it makes your parents proud.
If you’re an aspiring author, I want to encourage you to move forward with writing your book despite some of these stats. Working on that book with Nick was one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve ever been a part of.
Start with a blog. Then write a book for your audience. Sell the book on your blog. If it’s good, you’ll find other ways to sell it.