Blog Income Life

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

If you value your blog income business – and you should – then you simply must backup everything that you have on your computer.  It will save you worry and needless hair tearing as well as gnashing of teeth.

A little over a week ago my dear old laptop that I called Big Money died.  Poof!  Gone!  Panic engulfed me as reboot after reboot failed.  Bluescreen, Fat 32 rebuild successful but the mouse would not cooperate and I could not log in!  My whole internet marketing life dwelled in that computer!  Life looked dismal.   Blog Income was dead.  I was dead.

After the initial shock I went shopping and got me a brand new snazzy looking Toshiba job.  The first thing that I liked was that the prices for PC laptops have really come down and boy, do they pack a lot more toys and whistles than dear old Big Money had!  But of course there were additional items to purchase, such as configuring the new darling – which I quickly christened Money Magnet – transferring everything from Big Money, a new office software package, Outlook which is I can’t live without, and of course the extended warranty plus those pesky taxes that the government seems to insist on.  Add it all up and the computer has just doubled!  Ouch!

Never mind – this one is called Money Magnet, ergo it will attract money, not like Big Money which didn’t quite get the gist of is moniker that it was supposed to MAKE, not cost, big money!

Granted at almost 5 years of loyal service Big Money had run its course but OMG!  Everything of any value rested in that sleek silver rectangular thing called a computer.  We had a relationship.  It had traveled the world with me.   All my courses including the videos, all the PDF’s that I downloaded, all my original work that has been published online as well as off, all my usernames and passwords!  They were all there!

I vowed that never, NEVER, again would I be so careless.  From here on in, I would backup everything and if you haven’t been backing up all your valuables then its time you do.

Job One:  Terrabyte external hard drives can now be had for under $100.  Another option is to backup everything in a cloud … new term for me too.  Basically what it means that all your content can be stored somewhere out there in uber space, with the clouds sort of like self storage boxes in the sky.  There are free ones but as you need more and more storage room, you have to either upgrade to a paid version or open yet another one elsewhere – now we have clutter.

I was recently introduced to DropBox.  You get some free space and can increase that with referrals, or just bite the bullet and buy what you need – it can always be increased.  What I like about this system is that it is so user friendly for us non-tech types.  Just drag and drop.  I had a huge file that I wanted to share with my friend.  The attachment was way too big to send by email.  I was faced with either breaking it into several pieces or creating an online document that would be hyperlink downloadable. The notion of each option took me down into a tizzy downward spiral and I kept putting it off.

Dropbox to the rescue.

First I created a share file in my dropbox with my friend’s name.  Then I dragged the whole schmiel into that file and voila!  Just like that my friend had full access to the goods!  Check Dropbox out (yes, that is an affiliate link

Job Two:
Create a document for all your products that need a username and password.  Yes, store them on your computer for ease of access but also up in that cloud or Dropbox.  Go low tech if you need to and write them down in a notebook along with other important data and put it somewhere safe. I actually did have a lot of my usernames and passwords in my little black book.

Job Three:
Keep your computer free of clutter.  It’s not just your closet that needs a good cleaning. Go over what you have on your computer.  Do you really need everything that you have there?  What about things that you downloaded years ago but have not even cracked open yet?  If you are still married to the thought that you will someday read those files move them over to your new storage in the sky.  My dear old Big Money got so bogged down with downloads that eventually I could not even defrag it as there was less than 15% free space (actually less than 5% which is a cardinal sin).  I started to toss things out but the space was slow in being freed up.   While at it go to all of your email accounts, or  your Outlook;  if you haven’t read it and the dateline is a month or older, be ruthless, be strong:  DELETE!  Ditto your “sent” and “junk” files

Des out at Affiliate Progress has some good suggestions on how to use Filezilla and FTP to back up all your sites as well.  Hop on over there.  She writes good stuff – makes tech seem like a cake walk.

Come to think of it – spring is a mere two weeks away.  That closet is getting rather full.  I am sure that there are clothes there that will never see the light of day again, at least not on me.  They belong to a different era – one that was slimmer!   Yeah.  Bundle them up and take them over to the local goodwill store!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not.

In a recent conversation an interesting thought was lobbed to the small group of us.   We all professed to enjoy reading.  Everyone had their favorites.  Then someone said that yes, he liked to read – a lot but had recently moved away from spending as much time on reading as he had before.  Why?  Because someone else had said something to the effect that if you spend a lot of time reading, you are reading someone else’s thoughts, their ideas, that your own thoughts and ideas are fashioned by that of others and that you do not, therefore, think for yourself.

Now there’s an original thought – at least it is the first time I heard it, so to me it was original.  At first blush it seems to make sense.  But on closer examination, does it?

Just how original is anything?  It is said that there is nothing new or original under the sun, just interpretations, applications and adaptations and what we do with or how we put to use that which is not new at all.

I love reading.  Always have.  Fairytales and fables were a favourite staple of mine in the early years of schooling.  I think I learned to speak English much faster because I learned from something that I enjoyed.  The stories were rich in imagery, the language simple.  It seemed to me at the time that anything was possible and even though I was keenly aware that these were just stories, it was easy to take on the role of the hero or heroine of the story.  In short, they lit a fire in my belly.

One of my teachers in grade three was Miss Natalia.  She was one of the few lay teachers the school had and we children just simply adored her.  She was at once beautiful, smart, and because she did not wear a nun’s habit, relatable.  Her job was to teach us how to write proper sentences and perhaps we may have even gone to writing paragraphs at the time – but certainly no essays as yet.  At the end of the year she gave each of us a book, a different one for each child.  How she decided on the book I don’t know, just that she must have given much thought to each choice.  Mine was Lorna Doone, by Richard Doddridge Blackmore, first published in 1869.  According to Wikipedia, it has never been out of print.

Every summer we escaped the sultry heat of Yokohama and spent the months with my grandparents in the mountainous resort of Karuizawa. That year I took my book with me and over the course of two months read and re-read this classic tale of romance, intrigue, collusion, treachery, war and finally victory by the right, the good. Of course the hero and heroine lived happily ever after!  I was hooked.

From then on the local library became a weekly destination for me.  I went there every Saturday after completing my chores to return books and borrow new ones.  I got to know the librarian very well and she always had some suggestions.  She introduced me to magazines and other genres of writing such as mystery, adventure and science fiction.  As the years tumbled one after the other, if the library was not busy, we would even spend some time talking about a special article, or an author. That along with what I learned at school fashioned my thinking, which, according to the observation of my colleague’s friend above was not mine at all, that perhaps just plain brainwashing.

Hmmm.  Is none of us brainwashed?

But what if instead of brainwashed we used another word?  Schooled?  Well informed?  Knowledgeable?  Expert?

Ah, the beauty of semantics.

It seems that at different times in my life, a different read presented itself.  When my children were toddlers there I was immersed in fairytales again reading tales of Snow White and Puss in Boots and such at bedtime to my children.  Simultaneously my children and I were introduced to Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak whose iconic book Where the Wild Things Are particularly endeared itself to my son.

Raising a family and eventually working outside the home left little time for personal reading, at least for books.  I found that I could snatch an hour here and there and that was plenty for reading articles in magazines.  My favourites became The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair – god, once again I fell in love, this time with Vanity Fair.  At first I dismissed it as yet another T&A publication on  the magazine stands – certainly the covers do nothing to dispell the casual observer from this initial dismissal and it does indeed share shelf space with other magazines of that genre.

These days I have time to read books again.  They are not always literary tomes – in fact, hardly ever are.  No, these days I am more likely to have my nose immersed in the pages of How I Made My First Million On The Internet by Ewen Chia, or F.U. Money by my friend Dan Lok.  I also like to read anything by Malcolm Gladwell. I have all his books.

Malcolm Gladwell was first thrust into the limelight with his best seller The Tipping Point.  I don’t necessarily reach for best sellers, they are often nothing more than the end result of a well conceived and orchestrated marketing campaign – but might we, internet marketers take a page from that observation?  Nevertheless, pick it up I did. Immediately I was mesmerized by this author.

There was something completely different about Malcolm Gladwell.  His writing style wasn’t exactly riveting.  Paragraphs run on for in some instances a whole page and often I found I had to reread something to get the gist of it.  No. It certainly wasn’t his writing style that captured my attention, it was well, that he was different.  He did not think like most.  Like an engineer or a scientist, he looks at things and sees what others do not, but unlike engineers and scientists he writes in a layman’s language, so even though his paragraphs may be cumbersome at times, they are completely understandable.  Malcolm digs deep, questions everything, presents his point of view without necessarily being judgemental.

So what has this got to do with independent thinking or the lack of it when all you do is read what others write?  I am currently reading Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw.  It is a collection of his original essays that were published in The New Yorker Magazine where he has been a staff writer since 1996.  Each chapter is such an essay.  I read one here and there, in between my other readings.  I like them because they are thought provoking and as such need time for proper digestion.

This morning, before sitting down at the computer to write this post I read the chapter “Something Borrowed.  Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life?”  Ironically it is about originality and just how original is original.  He talks about copyrights and stolen intellectual property.  It is far too complex to discuss here, but essentially, we come back to the saying that nothing is new or original under the sun so indeed, if we read just what others write, do we think for ourselves or do we just parrot that which has been ingrained in our sponge like brain?

I think that it’s both.  Reading what others write opens up horizons.  Moreover, the more we read the more likely we are to run into opposing opinions which then hopefully, engage our brain into thinking for ourselves.  At the very basic, while I enjoy reading the articles in Vanity Fair, I do not always agree with the slant taken on the topic by the journalist.  I acknowledge that a journalist is not devoid of subjective content and has earned his or her stripes to be so, having graduated from being a reporter to that elevated distinction of being a journalist.  So to bastardize Nitzsche’s “I think therefore I am”, I’ll say that “I disagree therefore I am independent”

Of course our values and philosophies have been fashioned by much in life, that what we read being just one of them.  But if we were to subscribe to everything we read, we would be mere robots making no distinction between the different washings that our brains undergo

… or how else would you explain  the Malcolm Gladwells of the world?

Why would anyone ever want to deal with ten when one can handle all?  Central based management eliminates layers, promotes efficiency and peace of mind.

Well, call me a nutcase but I don’t buy into it.   For online as well as offline I like to decentralize and that’s true for my  personal as well as blog income business services.  It may mean a little more work but that’s the way I prefer it.  Centralizing in my view is surrendering unnecessary control and no, I am not a control freak (at least I don’t think so).  It’s the way my daddy brought me up and for good reason too!

This is a conversation I have had on and off for many years.  For the last few it seemed to have retired into a dormant state .  A few weeks ago it stirred, awoke and surfaced again and it just won’t go away.  I thought you might like to weigh in with your point of view on this – besides I’d love to know what your opinion on this subject is for while not exactly earth shattering it does impact every one of us in some way or another.

Central or regional management?  That has been an age old battle in the corporate world and depending on the trend, objectives of the company or the personal preference of the top man at any given time, companies have taken one route over the other suffering confusion, issues  of resentment, loyalty and trust in the transition.  It seems that when a company’s fortunes are  contracting the troops are reigned in, when fortunes  are on the rise employee empowerment becomes the modus operandi.

Centralized management may be an operative model for corporations and governments too, but I question its validity when it comes to You Inc., especially to those of us who are on the internet to earn an online income.  The issues are small, but then as you grow so will the issues.

There is a school of thought that subscribes to centralizing as much of your internet marketing as possible.  Some of the biggest names support the concept.  Bundle up as many services and buy them through one provider whenever you can.    The obvious pro for such a system is that you have everything ready in one spot, don’t have to go looking for things – they are all there under one roof, so ease of access and efficiency rule.

But I prefer to purchase my services independently rather than bundled and directly from the vendor if possible.  My father was a business man.  Historically my family have had to fly by the seat of their pants – long story but it began in 1917 in Russia when the Russian Tzar lost his country and his life, whilst my grandparents on both sides merely lost their country.   So this might be taking it to the extremes but my father often told me that how not having all the family eggs in one basket enabled them to first make a life in China then Japan eventually Australia … and then here I am, in Canada!

What I learned at my father’s knees was that one should not give up control over that which is yours.  So I come by this bullheadedness quite honestly.  At the most basic level of my blog income business I buy the following services separately:

-         DOMAINS: I use a broker, Go Daddy, even though I may be paying a bit more than if I used another broker because amongst other things, I find their services and support to be outstanding.  No Go Daddy is not the actual registrar of domains and to be honest, I,m not sure but I don’t think that you can buy domain names directly from the registrar.

-          HOSTING: I could, but don’t, have Go Daddy host my sites, instead I use Hostgator.  Hosting is their specialty and once again I have found that their support has been exceptional.  On the reverse side, I could but do not buy my domain names through Hostgator.

-          BLOG PLATFORM:  I choose to use Wordpress Direct.  This is a second layer, if you will, on Wordpress.  This appears to be contradictory to my mantra of buying direct from the service provider.  I have good reason.  For someone like myself who is not the best at tech type stuff (and not wanting to be a master of all) I like this platform because they offer full support.  They do the initial heavy lifting but I still have direct access to the back end admin area of Wordpress.  Once again I could but do not use Go Daddy as my site platform.

What if I had decided to use Go Daddy as my one stop shop for the above three services and something went wrong.   I don’t just mean that Go Daddy would go down.  An extremely successful internet marketer I know had come to some sort of an impasse with his domain broker.  The breakup was not pleasant.  Imagine the additional work he would have had to go to move his many, many sites from the domain broker’s basket   Fortunately, he subscribes to the same principles that I do.  All he needed to do was move all his domains to another broker.  The adjustments were minimal.

I have spoken with people who bought their domains through their hosting service.  The hosting service disappeared.  They had no idea how to recover their domains. Moreover it was not clear if it was the host company or themselves who were registered as the owners of the domains.  Eventually after much hair tearing they were able to find the domains and come to a happy conclusion .   In my instance, should Hostgator run into difficulties I know  that my domain names are not affected.

This is just an example.   It is obviously over simplified.  I use it to illustrate my point.

As you begin to earn more and more from your online business you will want to outsource some of the daily tasks.  What are your thoughts on this?  Would you prefer to centralize, appoint a company to handle the many aspects of your business and just deal with one person?  Or … would you rather select individuals who specialize in certain tasks and have them report to you?    Which model do you think is better suited for you?  Why?

What a month!  Where do I begin?

How about starting with the end?  The Olympics.

The Olympics Closing Ceremony was on the last day of the month – yesterday.  We in Vancouver had the distinct honor of hosting the world to the 2010 Winter Olympics.  What an exhilarating experience that was!  I have to admit that many a time I absented myself from my computer and spent the hours glued to the TV, watching as the best of the best squared off each other for that most desired of metals – gold!

There is so much I could write about these 17 days.  As always I am amazed at the strikingly small difference between the finalist and the last – fractions of seconds.  That would beg the question that perhaps this is just a crapshoot, that on any given day the last place athlete could just as easily be a first  place finish.  But then you need to look deeper – and when you look at the performance of each athlete at world class events leading up to the 0lympics, the results have typically been consistant across the board.  Top three almost always place top three.   It makes me think that the athletes have the same potential, their talent is outstanding – so what is it that makes the ultimate difference?  That would make for a good topic for a Sunday Morn Musings … and perhaps it is something that we internet marketers could take a page from.

And speaking of which, there was no Sunday Morn Musings this week!  Nor was there a The Week that Was.  For that matter there were precious few posts in February (just 15) and only 2 in the last week!

You know how they say that the road to hell is paved with intentions – and they do.  My intentions were to post on Saturday and Sunday.  Early Saturday morning my trusty albeit museum vintage laptop expired!   Yup!  It just died!  Now I have to admit that this was not as sudden as I would like to believe, for several weeks now Dear Laptop had been giving me clues that it was not long for this world, and after four and half years of loyal service with no breakdowns or glitches of any sort it wasn’t just being capricious, its just that I was  hoping that it could last another month or two – or miraculously six!

Have you ever spent a whole two days without internet?  Addiction is one thing – but the falling behind in everything is another and most frustrating.  The good thing is that I now have an awesome machine that is sooooo much faster, has lots more bells and whistles and my goodness!  Have the prices of PC’s come down!  I had a MAC as my next machine but with a difference of $2000 for the time being I thought that sum would be better put to use for marketing and earning shekels … another time cher MAC!

I have to say that I am grateful that Dear Old Laptop performed well during the two-day workshop I attended on Thursday and Friday.  Matt Astifan from my Monday Night Internet Marketing Mastermind which I mentioned in my Power of Mastermind series put on an excellent workshop on social media (more about that in the future) otherwise I would have been up the proverbial creek!

One thing about brand new computers – it takes time to get used to the new programs, the idiosyncrocies if you will.  On my old computer I had Gadwin for my printscreens.  I downloaded it here so that I could include the screen shots of my February results.  For some reason it isn’t working in the way it did – it captures everything including tool bars at the top and the sidebars.  I am sure there is a way to capture only that which is relevant, but it will probably take time.  So I’ll just give you the results below along with my comments.

#1.  Traffic:  Visits:  475 – up from 360 for January which is a healthy 36.89% .  My goal is to increase traffic by  10% – 20% each month.

#2.  Search engines delivered 5.68% of the traffic.  You may recall in my January report that SE had fallen to below 1%!   So the move up to almost 6% is encouraging.

#3.  Alexa moved up from 404,842 to 307,910.  I know that there are those who put little stock into Alexa rankings, but it is still a measure that is taken into account when the value of your website/blog is assessed – you can charge more for ads, you can sell your site/blog for more, and besides, I accepted Sam’s  Alexa Challenge at Financial Samurai to reach a ranking of under 200K by July.  Remember, with Alexa, the lower the number the better.

Lessons learned:

#1.  Publish.  Publish,  Publish.
For blogs still trying to establish themselves, daily posts make a big difference in traffic.  I have noticed that on the days that I have new content the visitors increase.  Most successful bloggers do not scale back their publishing from daily until they are well established with the search engines and have amassed a good loyal following.  Some stay with the dailies, think Darren Rowse of Problogger

#2.  Carry Inventory
Have a stash of articles ready to publish for those times when other activities (Olympics) divert your attention from your business. Carlos  Velez of Conscious Me wrote an excellent two part article over at Website In a Weekend –  Benefits of Prewriting and he’s also thrown out a Prewriting Challenge.

What’s Up for March?
My focus continues on traffic – that will be a recurring theme not only for this quarter but for the year as a whole.
- Staying within the 20% growth per month, that would be 570 – so I’ll stretch that to 600+ in traffic
- Gee, wouldn’t it be great to reach the under 200K Alexa by end of March?  Lets see how close I can get to that.
- Finally, definitely, increase frequency of posts, in February the trend was 1 for each two days – well if I can make that 1 per 1.5 days it would make a huge difference.
- Put into practice some of what I learned on social media at Matt’s workshop.

That’s it folks!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

Short and Sweet.  After only a few months, Blog Income is on the block.

Regular readers here know that Monday night is my Internet MasterMind Group meeting – yes, skipped the ice dancing!  Never mind, making up for that today with a day down at the Olympics.  My friend Cheryll and I are going down early and see if we can get into the Canadian Royal Mint pavilion – that had a 7 hour lineup (no seriously)over the weekend and I hear that Russia House (as the hosts of the next winter Olympics) is pretty good too.

But I do digress.  To the point.  I had this site critiqued last night.    It’s something we do – one site a week.  The short of the long of it is that it is going to undergo a complete overhaul.  Even to me it was beginning to look cluttered and there were changes I wanted to make.  Visiting other blogs helps to polish and develop a discerning eye, but I had changed the theme only a few months ago and thought I could live with this one for a few more – oh say till June.

I got a lot of helpful comments from the group but the main thing appears to be the theme.  This time it won’t be an overnight change.  As with so many other colleagues who have recently undergone a similar metamorphosis, I will take a bit longer and will come up with something that will stand me in good stead for a year or perhaps even two.

I’m going to have some awesome people helping me – I hope you will join them.  I am looking for comments, observations and suggestions.  What do you like about this blog?  What should be scrapped altogether.  What needs to be added?  Any suggestions for themes?  Throw it all at me.  The more the better.   Together we’ll make a good soup.

I look forward to hearing from you – you awesome lot YOU!

Valentina

Nathan, dear boy, I love you  – honest I do.

I buy your products and visit your blog often but a recent post of yours  got my hackles up.  In your post of Feb 09 “Where 99% of Bloggers Go Wrong” you pulled no punches and pretty much told those of us who are blogging about blogging to pack it up.  The topic has been done to death and extremely well by uber bloggers who cut their chops on this subject and have entrenched themselves as experts for life.  They hold top positions and rankings with all the major search engines for just about every keyword associated with earning an online income and its not likely that any new blogger can add value or anything new to that which has already been written about in every which way except Sunday.

The “A” Listers have got it in spades and who are we to think that our humble efforts would ever see the light of day or  receive the blessings of Google and rub shoulder with the likes of Darren Rowse , Yaro Starak or John Chow – just to name a few.

Whew!  Nathan, you might be right.

That’s a lot of humble pie to eat.

But not so fast my boy.  At the risk of offending someone I admire – yes, you Nathan  here are my two cents worth, a retort if you will:

I am a “Z”Lister – no, you know what, make that a “Y” Lister (recently promoted myself).  I am a shameless hussy climbing the ladder to success and I notice that there are other aspiring bloggers blogging on blogging who are riders on the up escalator ahead of me.  I notice that they have good rankings of PR3 & PR4, and even PR5 with Alexa’s below the 100K mark.  That escalator is pretty crowded but my faves are:

Glen Alsopp of Viper Chill

Dave Doolin of Website in a Weekend

Gabe Young of Free Blog Help

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income

Caroline Middlebrook of Caroline Middlebrook

There are plenty more and they all provide some valuable info.  Granted some of the above are not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to internet marketing, and they brandish some sharp cyber smarts, but for all intents and purposes their blogs on blogging are.

I have learned a lot from these potential usurpers to the number one spot which is not to say that I have not learned from the current reigning kings.  But here are the reasons I like to visit the “new” blogs:

1. Inspiring.
   I can relate to these dudes.  Yes, they are ahead of me but not so far that I need to genuflect at the altar of their blog.  If they can be where they are in less than 2 years, and in Gabe’s case less than half a year, glory be.
2. Timely Information.
   Yes.  I can visit the uber bloggers blogs and go through their archives for content that is relevant to where I currently am in my blogging career.  But quite honestly, that content is somewhat wilted by now.   I realize and recognize that the basic info hasn’t changed, but I like the fresh approach that the new lot is bringing to the make money online market.  They are not so far ahead that I have to dig into back issues to understand what they are talking about.
3. Fresh Perspective
   Did I mention fresh approach?  No matter how grand the symphony a young conductor can infuse it with a new richness, a new energy, show a side that the audience may not have heard in quite that way before.  I also think of the new covers being recorded by no-name artists of the Beattles classics – and you know what?  Great as the originals are, the covers are smokin’
4. Community
   No offence here but what are the chances that a fledgling like myself would ever be noticed by oh say the likes of Darren Rowse (hey I like the guy and have opted in for the membership).  Those lower down the food chain still have the luxury of being able to mingle with us babes in swaddling clothes and actually helping us – they reciprocate with visits to our sites and leave valuable comments, they private message us with helpful suggestions, they give of their time in a way that the A Listers cannot if for no other reason than that logistics just get in the way.
5. Potential Alliances
   Just like the A Listers, this new lot is active and aggressive – they have products in the pipeline, we mere PR oners do too.  Can we ride on their coattails?  You betcha!  Can we form strong strategic alliances?  Ditto.  Can we eventually look to joint venture partnerships?  You bet your sweet bippy we can!

I don’t know why the current upwardly mobile bloggers blogging about blogging  got into that saturated niche.  My guess is that they felt it isn’t so saturated after all, that they had something of value to say.  Maybe they’re just an ornery lot who look at the face of impossibility, stare it down and grapple it to the ground.  I dunno know but I thank them.

I do know why I got this market.  Actually I was visiting Caroline Middlebrook one day and noticed that she was just blogging about her experience in blogging, talking about her success and failures and things to fix and so on.  I thought that was rather brave of her – moreover I liked her online voice, felt the sincerity and thought, hey, I can do that too.  Yup!  I quickly appropriated the idea and wrote and told her so.

By blogging about blogging, or at least my trials and tribulations and ultimate small granules of success I have learned things I probably never would have otherwise.  You see, I had been trying to get into the internet marketing arena for some time (well at least two years prior) and took course upon course.  In retrospect some of those courses were damn good, but honestly, I wasn’t fully up to them.  Almost without exception the early chapters were easy (they seemed to get easier with each course) but within a short period of time the eyes would glaze over and the brain would go on strike.

I thought about that and about Caroline and came to the conclusion that blogging would be the best way to put into practice that which I know – and I felt I knew plenty after all the credit card statements supported that feeling.  So I began my blog about blogging.

By applying things I knew I found holes.  Moreover, now that I was writing something, I had to do some checking to make sure that what I was saying was indeed so.  My atrophied internet marketing muscles began to gather strength.  I have laid a foundation, one that I can now build on.  I have launched other “niche” blogs which blush, yes, do bring in some shekels, but it is this blog that I look to as my flagship.  It is this blog that makes the others possible.

From this blog I learn.  It is my practicum.  Along the way I hope that my experiences are relevant to bloggers newer than I, that my content is helpful to them.  Because of my newbie status I still speak in a language that is devoid of blogspeak although I have caught myself drifting that way occasionally.  I am still at that place of my blog career that fledglings can look at me and say “I have a chance.”  And that is all I want.  It is a right of passage – maybe we will never sit side by side with the Darrens and Yaros and John’s, but we’ll have learned a hell of a lot by trying.

Nathan, forever your admirer …………..

Valentina

Vancouver swathed in night light show. Photo courtesy of Chrissy Graham.

Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not.

I am watching these Olympics with greater interest than I ever have in the past – I mean, hey!  We’re the hosts. As I watch the different events I have come to the conclusion that the world athletes, just like the rich, are definitely different from you and me but maybe not quite in the obvious ways.

Of the events that I have watched some of the most iconic moments to me are the images of the athletes when they’ve nailed it.  Watching Alexandre Bilodeau slicing through the moguls to Canada’s first gold on home turf was special but what I really got a kick out of is the way mogulists’ (is there such a word?  No? ok. There is one now) knees are well so bobbly, like those bobble dolls that people put on their car dashboards.  So mogulists are different from you and me because they got knees that are different from yours and mine and when not shushing down mountains they hold secret day jobs riding in cars perched on dashboards and pretending they are dolls.

Is that a bird?  Is it Superman? NO!  It’s Shaun White!

I have also developed a new level of respect for the sport of snowboarding.  Yay for Maelle Ricker as she clearly led the pack to her gold, but the one that had my eyeballs glued to the screen was Shaun White.  I had no idea that a human could defy gravity to that extent.  Shaun’s snowboarding specialty is in the halfpipe.  If you haven’t seen halfpipe snowboarding take a look at this video  Shaun White Vs The World – Olympic Halfpipe Countdown

Being at the top of his game, Shaun pulled  in a cool $8M in sponsorships  last year.  Red Bull, one of his sponsors, built a private Halfpipe run for him up on the mountains in Colorado – the only way to get there is by helicopter.  That makes Shaun both rich and a world athlete!  Up on two counts.   Halfpipe Olympians are different from you and me because they have nerves of steel and are the secret love children of Superman!

I just don’t get the whole bobsleigh, luge and skeleton sport thing.  It is a sport that is played – one usually “plays” sports, but I use the word loosely with the greatest of literary license I am sure – on a spiraling  refrigerated track with curves that would make a grand prix driver blanche with fear,  from mountain top to bottom.

At least the bobsleigh riders are sitting in a sled with sides and the driver can manipulate the runners but in luge and skeleton there is precious little between the body and the track except a thin slice of fiberglass with fixed handles – luge the athlete goes feet first, skeleton is head first.

Bravery?  With all due respect to the athletes how about nuts?  Speeds get up to 160 KPH – that’s a hundred miles an hour!  On nothing but a slice of fiberglass!  And they steer with their feet or shoulders!  These guys and gals are just different.  Period!  It’s not about nerves of steel, its more like a brain disconnect with body and reality.  Yup! Truly,  they aliens from another world so of course they are different from you and me!

Of course I enjoy watching all the typical winter sports especially the downhill racing and the figure and speed skating.  But I have to tell you, the three I just wrote about held me in an absolute trance.

To Your Own Difference!

Valentina

Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not.

Valentine’s Day! Gung Hay Fat Choy! Smell of Gold!  Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana playing in the background. … more like odds and sodds today.

Happy Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day!  Images of lace and hearts and chocolates and flowers and lovers and  poor ol’ Charlie Brown with nary a card … and then last night between surfings on the telly, veiled muslim women in black burning cardboard hearts and cards as a hateful infiltration of western culture upon theirs.  Whatever.

It is my birthday this week.  Yes I am a February child.  An Aquarius if on the cusp, but an Aquarius nonetheless.  No.  I was not born on St. Valentine’s day.  I was christened on St. Valentine’s Day … whoa!  If my birthday is still to come how could I have been christened today?  I was not.  Stay with me.

My background is Russian.  I am Eastern Orthodox.  When the rest of the Christian world moved from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, Russia’s Eastern Orthodox did not –  that is why the Russians celebrate Christmas on January 07.  It is the custom in the Russian Eastern Orthodox to christen children on the feast of the saint for whom they want to name their child so St. Valentine is my patron saint.  My friend Cheryll gave me an early birthday present:  Red Mitts!

Gung  Hay Fat Choy
That’s Happy New Year in Chinese.  Yes, today is also the Chinese New Year.  Enter the year of the Tiger.  I looked up the Chinese Zodiac to read up more on the characteristics of this sign.   The Tiger is said to be lucky, vivid, lively and engaging. Another attribute of the Tiger is his incredible bravery, evidenced in his willingness to engage in battle or his undying courage. Western counterpart zodiac sign: Aquarius (not to be confused with your own Chinese Zodiac sign based on your birth year)! Hey!  I like that.

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a feast of delicious dim sum with my friend Lee at one of the many Chinese restaurants in Richmond.  He was off in a week to Malaysia for a month or so to visit with his family.  Eventually our conversation turned to Valentines.  He told me that the Chinese have an equivalent and it falls on Chinese New Year’s day which this year coincides with St. Valentine’s.

Chinese history goes back over 6000 years.  Centuries and centuries ago, men and women did not mingle.  As in so many other cultures men went off to hunt and fight wars to provide for their families and keep them safe.  Women stayed at home. There was little opportunity for young men and women to meet except for New Year’s day.  It was decreed back then that men and women should be out together to welcome the new year.  Lee told me that that was the one day when boy meets girl stories were born.  That tradition is still carried on today … if from a somewhat different perspective.

Olympics
Day three of the Olympics. The podium has honored athletes from eleven countries so far with their wins.  Plenty more to come.  Earlier in the week I had the pleasure of seeing Chris Farstad speak at my monthly real estate MasterMind Group.  Chris is a former bobsleigh Olympian.  He competed in Albertville and Lillehammer Olympics.  It was interesting to hear him speak about how the athletes are feeling right now.  He knows. He was there.  But then he told us something that shocked me – he took us back to when he was competing.  Athletes when interviewed always put on a positive face for the cameras and the press, but back in the athlete’s village, when alone speaking with each other in hushed tones they whispered the unspoken and that was  that they did not believe in their heart of hearts that they were good enough to win.

Not believing is the kiss of death.

Coaches bring out the best in an athlete but they have not been where the athlete wants to go, they do not know what it is like to rub shoulders with your competitors, to face the moment of truth whilst staring down a slope, stepping on the ice or skiing cross country with rifle in hand to aim and fire.  Neither have sports psychologists.  In the eyes of an athlete talk and training are cheap in the moment of heat.

Not any more.  In addition to coaches and sports psychologists, athletes now have a mentor, a former Olympian who has felt the adrenalin rush before the run, smelled the octane fuel of victory, had feelings of doubt and dealt with them.  They have been exactly where today’s athlete is and where he wants to go and are able to talk them through the walk.  He thinks that this will have made a difference to Canada’s athlete’s this year.  Yeah!  They’re a gutsy lot and I love them all.

Carmina Burana?  Every Sunday as I write my musings, I have the CBC FM on.  The music is most often spiritual.  It is right for a Sunday morning.  Today it is Carmina Burana, which is strong in sound and heroic and victorious.  It has been a favorite of mine for a very long time – today, I think it is most appropriate;  for the athletes: yes,   for you and me: absolutely!

Sun is bright.  Over and out.  Have a great day!

Valentina

Uber fashion statement of the season:  red mitts!  Yup! The lowly mitt is the hot, “must have” accessory of the season  and has been seen hobnobbing with the best on the Great Wall of China, in front of the Eiffel Tower, in Moscow’s Red Square and on the hands of Kerrisdale cafe patrons, Barbara and Jane!

Whoduv thunk?

Red mitts with the Olympic logo on one side and Canada’s  Maple Leaf on the other  are the official 2010 Vancouver Olympic Mitts, the hottest, or should that be the coolest, fashion item this winter.  The marketing was pure genius.  Stores just can’t keep them in stock!  Friends and relatives from afar ask but for one thing:  “Please send us your red mitts!”

Onward!

The usual Thursday at The Point today was pre-empted by the Olympic Torch run.  Regular readers here know that Thursday afternoon is my friend Cheryll’s and mine Mastermind of Two at the Café Capanna in Point Roberts.

Tonight is the eve of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics opening.  The Olympic Torch has been making its way from Athens for many months now.  It passed through my neighborhood yesterday.  I missed it.  Today it was scheduled to pass through Cheryll’s neighborhood – damn it!  I certainly wasn’t going to miss it again!

We didn’t cancel our MasterMind of Two – we simply moved it to a café in Kerrisdale where we worked on our internet marketing as we do every Thursday.

Then a series of “What are the Chances” followed.

As we are about to wrap up for the afternoon so as to stake out our spot for cheering on the Torch Bearer at 4.43 p.m precisely at the crossroads of West Boulevard and 45th Ave,  a couple of women walk into the café.  They order their lattes and sit across from us.  Aha!  I spy the red mitts!

Could I take a picture?

Yes…

Cheryll looks at the women and thinks that she may have met one of them.  Turns out that they were neighbors years and years ago!

Next.  We are standing on the sidewalk milling with the crowd waiting for the Torch to come through. Another friend of Cheryll’s whom she hasn’t seen for a long time arrives.   Chit chat, chit chat.  Pat is her name.  She and her husband have moved away to one of the islands and maintain a small condo in the city.

The Torch is run in relays.  In the photo to the right the arriving torch bearer lights the torch of the next runner.  It was such a small thing.  Took only a moment, but that moment was electrifying.

We continue to chat with Pat.  This is her second viewing of the Torch today.  She had gotten up early in the morning and made her way to a burb clear cross town and then some to watch her son run the torch at 6.00 a.m.  We learn that he is a former Olympian.

Hmm.  Just the other day I met a former Olympian. Chris Farstad, a bobsledder.  He was our guest speaker at the monthly Real Estate MasterMind group that I belong to.  He gave an outstanding  inspirational speech.  I thorough enjoyed it and to boot I learned more about bobsledding in the twenty minutes than I knew in a lifetime!

I am curious.  I ask Pat what sport did her son compete in?

Bobsledding.

Vancouver is not exactly a hotbed of bobsledders.  What are the chances?  What is his name?

You guessed it.  Chris Farnstad!

What are the chances?

Don’t you just love it when chance and life meet?  I think that much of what we do in life is like that – but it isn’t chance at all, at least I don’t think so.

Wishing you many “chances” of success in all that you do!

Valentina

Welcome to Sunday Morn Musings.  This is my weekly free fall – writing about whatever it is that occupies the mind on a Sunday Morn.  The idea of a “no topic” posting is the stepchild to a blog I used to write:  Four O’Clock Thursdays which is still up there if you want to check it out – more likely, I will republish some of those posts here over time.  On Sunday Morn Musings the topic may be about blogging but just as likely it may not be.

As I was doing my blog rounds this morning, I came across a comment on Website In A Weekend The topic of the day’s post was on being “done” with something … you know, like a plumber goes and does his job and at the end its done.  No more planning, continuity, fine tuning etc.  The comment that got my attention was this one:

That’s why I like doing dishes. when they’re done they’re done…clean, dry, and warm.

Carlos is a wicked blogger. He’s brand new to the game – or at least his blog Conscious One is and he knows a thing or two about life… but Carlos, darling, sweetheart, have you never heard of that old and now hackneyed saying “a woman’s work is never done?”  … back in the oooolllldddd days, men would not be caught dead anywhere near a sink let alone doing the dishes!  I know, times have changed.

That comment brought up an image of residual.  You know how we all want to have a residual income where you get paid over and over and over for doing something once.  Authors and movie stars come to mind as the obvious candidates – they get money dropping down to their bottom line every time a book sells or a movie is viewed, at least while the royalty legal is in effect.  A residual or passive income is what blogging for money is about.

But residual dishwashing?

Yeah, yeah, yeah!   I know you don’t get paid over and over and over for doing the dishes once, in fact unless you are the dishwasher at a restaurant you don’t get even a measly dinero for your effort no matter how often the dirty deed is done.   No, what I am thinking here is that doing dishes is like residual work – you get them done and put away nicely into the cupboard and like magic, there they are again, all dirty and smudged with sauces or residues of a meal, and they need to get washed again!

I have noticed in our household – all two of us, so I know who the culprit is and it is not I – that not only do the dishes need daily attention, but they even have this nasty habit of just collecting in the sink!  Huh?  I mean, how hard is it to put them in the dishwasher?  OK … ongoing domestic issue which I won’t get into here.  Ohhh, and while on the subject, once they do get into the dishwasher and get all suddsed up, scrubbed clean and dried who is it that eventually empties them and puts them into their nice little spaces in the cupboards?  Hmmm?  Hmmm?  It is not he I guarantee.  Oh, slightly off topic here, not meaning for this to become a rant (just don’t get my hackles up) or air my laundry in the blogosphere.

In fact this kind of residual work is the least rewarding – at least it is to me.  The results are fleeting at best.  Hardly the sort of motivational material that the feel good gurus go mining for.

Same thing with cleaning.  Vacuum.  Damp mop the floors.  Clean the bathroom!  Oh the list is endless.  Now I know, that there are actually women out there who claim to love to clean house.  There may even be such men, but I have never met one while I have heard with my very own ears, these most strangest and foreign of words “… I love cleaning my house….” drop from the lips of a woman.  More than once!  Yes.  Honest.  I have heard these very words even from friends.

There is something wrong with this statement.  Upon hearing that one of my own circle loves to clean, of course I immediately step up to the plate and offer her more happiness – my own house for her to clean.  You would think that anyone who LOVES to clean would jump at the opportunity to do more of what she loves so I really don’t understand the why of the painfully withered look that I am subjected to with nary a word of explanation for the contorted muscles on her face.

Now take doing the laundry … puhleeze, someone?  The laundry basket is a perpetual source of clothing, surely it can’t be just ours, I mean there is only the two of us and since my wardrobe takes me from morn to noon to night there isn’t a whole lot of changing going on (such are the blessings of a stay at home blogger) – obviously it is HE!  AGAIN!

And they say that women are clotheshorses!  Weeelll…. ok, in my previous corporate life I had a vereeee nice closet filled with clothes destined for certain “jobs” but that may be a post for another day. But with a Blog Income Life business, drop dead gorgeous suits, silky blouses and shirts, soft hand tooled leather shoes don’t draw traffic to your site (not to mention that the paycheck hasn’t reached the point of supporting  …  oh but the Armani suits!  Hmmm….. be still my beating heart, do not apply for that executive position that a certain well connected friend mentioned.  Remember the commute, the corporate politics, the quotas, the backstabbing, the deadlines, yes, take a deep breath, feet firmly planted on the ground,  aaahhh, I am over it.

Armani?  Did I hear Armani?

Shush!

Oh. Off topic again!

Carlos my darling, you are delusional.  Dishes never get “done”

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina