Book Review of Rework, a New Bestselling Business Book

Rework is the new business book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the executive team of 37signals. I’m a big fan of their blog and Backpack, one of their products, so when I found out they were releasing a business book, I had to check it out. The release date was yesterday so I went to my local Barnes & Noble, found the book, and read the whole thing there in two hours. Yes, the book is short compared to other business... 

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Why eBay Partner Network Makes 22 Times More Money Than AdSense On My Blog

Updated on March 5, 2009: I noticed a huge discrepancy with my Google Analytics pageviews versus the impressions being reported by eBay Partner Network. I did some digging and found that eBay counts link impressions not page impressions. For example, one of my posts has 22 links to eBay. This means a pageview is actually 22 impressions to eBay. Needless to say that changed my calculations. I reworked the numbers and found that instead of 200% in the original post, eBay makes me 22 times more money... 
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Your Product Doesn’t Have to Contain 100% Unique Content

Many bloggers seem to find the task of creating a product daunting. I know I did. I knew creating a product could greatly increase my income, but coming up with content to fill up an ebook, video, membership program, or any other product seemed like an overwhelming project. However, after listening to this interview with Pay Flynn and thinking back at products I had bought, I realize that creating a product doesn’t have to be this huge audacious goal. See you don’t need your product to... 
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The Best Way to Differentiate Your Blog

One of the blogging tips that I hear a lot is be different. Be unique. Stand out from the crowd. This is a great advice for typical businesses and it’s also helpful for probloggers especially with all the competitors on the internet. But how can you apply it practically to your blog? I’ve been thinking about this advice for the last couple of years and from my experience, I think I’ve realized the best way to differentiate your blog. The answer is pretty simple so it might surprise... 
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A-List Blogs Are Not Good Examples to Follow

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski When I first learned about problogging, I definitely looked up to the A-List blogs. You know, the TechCrunches, the Gizmodos, the TMZs, the Daily Koses, the Mashables. These were the blogs that had made it. They were the most high profile blogs. They had the most traffic. And more traffic meant more money, right? Therefore, I thought of them as good examples to follow. I patterned my first couple of blogs after them. But after a couple failed blogs, over the last couple... 
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How to Find Guest Post Opportunities For Your Blog

Guest posting is a great way to increase traffic, network with other bloggers, and build links. But how do you know which blogs are good guest post opportunities? In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of guest posting for various blogs so I thought I’d share what I learned from my experience. Check Blogs For Previous Guest Posts The strategy that worked the best was checking blogs to see if they published guest posts previously. If a blog had published them in the past, then... 
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3 Reasons Bloggers Should Read Books

Reading a book seems very low tech in this current digital age. But don’t underestimate the words on a physical page. While many bloggers do their reading online, you can gain an advantage by shutting off the computer and reading a book offline. Here are three reasons to head over to your local bookstore. 1. To Improve Credibility Books are still perceived as trusted sources of authority. If you become well read that you quote books often, your credibility will increase. I felt that Brian Clark... 
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2010 Reminder: Test the Monetization of Your Blog

Monetization can get lost in all the blogging activities we have to juggle. Let’s face it, there’s a lot that goes into blogging. Content, marketing, and building relationships take up a lot of our time and it can be easy to forget about monetization. But if you want to make money with your blog, you can’t ignore, well, the making money part I believe that content and traffic comes first, but after you generate a healthy content and traffic base, there comes a time when you must... 
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How to Stop Being Boring (and Why You Probably Are)

I’m boring and you’re probably boring too. I just listened to this interview with Seth Godin. He gives really good advice about how to successfully run a business. You should definitely listen to the whole thing if you want to make more money with your blog. One of the things Seth said that struck me is found at the 38:30 mark. He said, “If people aren’t talking about you, they’re not talking about you for a reason. And the reason isn’t that they dislike you. They’re... 
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4 Reasons Why I’m Loving iStockphoto.com

In last 30 days, I’ve been using the images from the stock photography site iStockphoto and it’s been a great experience. It all started with a client who need content for a new site. I created a bunch of text pages for them, but then they said they wanted images on each of the pages. I usually get my pictures from Flickr and Stock.XCHNG but I couldn’t find relevant images for many of the pages. The client is in the business-to-business marketing niche, which doesn’t lend... 
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