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Mark your calendars: October 15. Its going to be a day that is going to show the impact bloggers have on the world.
Collis and Cyan Ta’eed and Leo Babauta have got together to organize the Blog Action Day.A Where all bloggers: big and small - will get together and talk about one topic: environment.
Some of the heavy hitting blogs have already agreed to participate.A A You’ll be able to read my unusual views on the environment too - on 15th October.
Will I be reading your views?A A Participate in the Blog Action Day…
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 17 Aug 2007
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If you are serious about blogging, you’ve got to have your own domain name! Seriously - go check your RSS feed. And tell me: how many of your feeds that you read frequently are of blogs that don’t have its own domain name?
Many people won’t take you seriously if you don’t have your own domain name. But I aim to change that: at least for one of you. One lucky blogger will win a free domain name for his blog!
Who Can Enter the Win-A-Free-Domain Contest?
Anyone who runs a free blog on blogspot or livejournal or wordpress.com or xanga or any other similar free service.
Note: Your free blog has to be at least one month old.A You can’t simply put up a blog today for the chance of winning a free domain name.
How To Enter the Contest?
1. Tell your readers about any one post that you liked on this blog. If you can’t decide your favourite post, than simply review this blog. And link to that post and/or this blog.
2. Send a trackback to this post. Or send me an email - with “domain contest” in the subject line. (If you do send a trackback, you will also get a linkback to your blog. As all my trackbacks are crawled by the search engines.)
3. On 1st September, I’ll choose a winner with the help of random.org.
4. The winner gets a free gift card from GoDaddy.com that can be used to buy a domain name.
(Disclosure: I myself don’t use GoDaddy for my domain names.A But my domain registrar doesn’t provide gift cards.A So I’ll be using GoDaddy for this contest.)
Thats it.
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 16 Aug 2007
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I need a favor from you.
If you liked the Feed Footer plugin, please go and rate it highly in the WordPress Plugin Competition.A It’ll take all of 2 seconds.A And will help me in making the useful plugin popular.
Click here to rate the Feed Footer Plugin
(Just take your mouse over the 5 stars - and click on the 5th star.)
If you liked this post, buy me a beer. (Suggested: $3 a beer or $7.5 for a pitcher)
Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 07 Aug 2007
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What Nicolas Darvas did for stock investors, Timothy Ferriss does for entrepreneurs - especially online entrepreneurs.
In his book “How I made 2 million in the stock market” - Nicolas Darvas writes about how he went on a world tour and yet turned $25,000 in $2,000,000 within 18 months by playing the stock market. In a similar vein, Timothy Ferriss explains how he went on a 15 month vacation, worked just 4 hours a week - and yet made $40,000 per month selling a health product online.
One of my favourite quotes is by a not-so-well-known Texas oil tycoon:
“Success requires two things and two things only.
1. You must know exactly what you want. Most people never make this decision.
2. You must determine the price that you will have to pay to achieve it and then get busy paying that price.”
- H.L. Hunt (Texas Oil tycoon)
Ferriss expands on that success secret in his book. He provides us with the DEAL Formula.
Dreamlining
Eliminate
Automate
Liberate
Dreamlining: Ferriss shows us how he charts his wants and needs. And more importantly, figuring out how much all of it will cost per month. He divides the dreamlining process into 3 parts:
- What I want to Have in __ months.
- What I want to Be in __ months.
- What I want to Do in __ months.
Its a very comprehensive way of charting your goals. You can check an online example of Dreamlining here (pdf format).
Eliminate: In my opinion, this section of his book is the best section. Although you may know all the theories of productivity, Ferriss brings it all together. And provides us with some nifty tips in eliminating time wasting and unproductive tasks.
- Remember the 80:20 principle. 80% of results come from 20% of effort. So focus on the 20% to work less yet earn the same.
- 80% of complaints come from 20% of clients. Can you fire these 20% trouble clients that waste your time and fry your head?
- Limit your timeline per task. Have strict deadlines and you won’t spend your time wasting on frivolous tasks.
- Do not multi-task.
- Read less.
- Don’t let others interrupt you while you are working.
Automate: This section talks about how can you start a new side business. And automate it so that it earns more than you earn right now - without you having to spend a lot of time on it. At the end of the chapter in this section, Ferriss gives us a list of tools and resources that encapsulates almost everything you may need to get done to run your online business. This section is a bit of a let down though. Because it just gives us a couple of examples. And doesn’t talk about a lot of things that can go wrong.
The whole idea is: find a product with 8-10x profit margin. And start selling it online. Hire people to promote your website and to take care of the order processing and shipping. But there is not a lot of detail to go with it. You will have to find other sources to fill in the gaps. (This blog is a good place to start with.)
Even though this is not my favourite part of the book, this is the most talked about part of the book. Because Ferriss talks a lot about outsourcing. Finding cheap labour in developing nations (India) and outsourcing your work over there.
Liberate: This section of the book is sprinkled with idea, tools and resources that you can use to quit working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. And take several mini-vacations every year while you are young. If you are interested in mobile-living, you will love this section of the book.
It gives you some tips that you can use to quit working 9-to-5. Even if you work for someone else. The good thing is Ferriss gives you entire dialogues and phrases you can use to convince your boss and reduce the time you spend in an office!
Book Score:
Ease of Reading: 9/10
Ideation: 7/10
Practical Knowledge: 9/10
Worth The Price: 9/10
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Even though this book leaves a few gaps - and I don’t think very many people will be able to start working just 4 hours a week after reading this book alone, it is a worthy read. And it is very inspirational too: knowing that it can be done and reading about some one who has done it.
People who have already read a few self help and productivity books before may not find a lot of new ideas in this book. But the book compiles a lot of useful ideas together and is an excellent summary. I heartily recommend it.
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 30 Jul 2007
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Why haven’t I been blogging everyday this week?
1. The theme of this blog is more or less working smooth - from usability point of view.A But it doesn’t look too sharp.A I’ve been working on some modifications to make this blog look exceptional.
2. The buy-me-a-beer plugin has now been updated to support currencies.A If you want to make sure that people pay you using a currency of your choice, then please download the new version.
3. We’re working on a new affiliate program for this blog.A Once that is ready,A the first Blog Clout report (which is long overdue) will be released to the public.
4.A We’re also testing a StumbleUpon.com widget that should blow your blog traffic away!A Not yet sure if that widget will be released widely however - because its grey hat.
5.A Working on a few more reports and one special newsletter for you.A Lots happening in the Blog Clout Labs!
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 26 Jul 2007
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1. What Makes People Buy?
2. From Idea to Profit - a case study of how one marketer took his idea and created a profitable site around it.
3. Marketing Playbook - you can now read this excellent book for free online.
—
A blog post written by yours truly on another blog:
5 Networking Ideas for Work-At-Home Entrepreneurs
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 25 Jul 2007
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Some of you know that I also publish a premium newsletter at MarketingHotsheet.com
The latest issue of Marketing Hotsheet was published today. Because I don’t have much time to write or polish a blog post today, I’ll publish one of the marketing case studies from the latest issue:
Office Marketing
Dan Kennedy is one of the most famous marketing consultants. One day, an accountant came to him for advice. And Dan Kennedy shared his office environment tactic with the accountant.
Dan Kennedy first asked the accountant to define what he wanted his clients who visited his office to do. The accountant listed 3 things:
1. Learn how to get well organized financially
2. Learn how to work with the accountant to stay that way
3. Refer more clients to him
Kennedy than asked the accountant to make sure that everything in his office and waiting room led to one of those 3 things.
- The accountant replaced magazines in the waiting room with educational literature
- He replaced the soothing background music with a looping video on financial and estate planning
- And he removed the colourful paintings from the walls and replaced them with relevant posters and signs a_” one of which asked for referrals!
The accountant did nothing else except change his office environment. And the results were phenomenal. His revenue per client increased by a whooping 30%! And the accountant also doubled his client base because of referrals within a year!
Action Summary:
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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 20 Jul 2007
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