Greetings Blog Family,

Another week closes as another begins. Excellent! We got a new slate and opportunity to prove to ourselves and the Blogosphere that we are serious about attain our goals and dreams. Each day gives us an opportunity to lay out desires, courage and ambition on the line to attain our ultimate goals. Let’s get into it.

Last Week

Last week took me by storm. I had some fairly ambition goals in mind to complete, but didn’t respect the fact that there would be tons of close out work in my appraisal business to complete before I go out of town. I am leaving to visit my parents in Michigan for the holidays. I will be gone from Monday to Friday, which I will be returning with just my wife. My children will be spending the break with their Grandparents. They will be in heaven and my wife and I get to enjoy spending time alone with one another.

I can tell you we love our children very much, but look forward to this time as it is our only alone time during the year. We don’t have any babysitters in Chicago, or maybe we don’t want to have any sitters because we love to be in their lives daily. Nevertheless, the wife and I will be having a great time this week doing all the things that are not allowed when the boys are around. LOL.

So last week, I had some pretty ambitious goals that didn’t get done. Let’s just be honest. I didn’t plan very well last week. I was suppose to comment on 15 sites per day for 5 days, but only managed to get this done twice for my niche site. I did do some solid commenting for FT.com, but not my organic site. Also, I was to write 7 articles for that niche site as well. I wrote 2, but one is ranking on the second page of Google already for it’s main keyword, so that isn’t all that bad.

I did order my directory back links for $13.99 and am happy with them. Also, I was able to create the mini-site for Blogosphere Bigshots, but just have to create and add the video presentation I am planning to it. You can view it here, BlogosphereBigshots.com. It is almost ready to go!

This Week

Blog Family, I am just going to take it slow this week as I am going home and will be visiting family and friends during this time. Nevertheless, we have goals to attain and things to accomplish, so I cannot abandon my dream all together.

1) Upgrade Layout on FT.com - That is right. I will be doing some upgrading here on FT.com. I have some ideas that I have been wanting to implement for some time, so I will be doing that. It involves adding some things to the header and reorganizing a little bit.

If you notice, there has been some changes already where I have taken a lot of stuff out of the side bar and moved it to the footer of the site. The footer still needs some work as it looks like I just threw the stuff in there, which I did. So, I will be adjusting that as well in due time.

2) Write 10 niche articles - Although this is a break, I have to have 30 articles to this niche site by January 1, 2009. Therefore, I have to suck it up and make it happen. I have 17 articles now and this will put me very close to finishing it out.

Recently, I started a Chicago Tribune subscription to my house and have been finding some outstanding articles about my niche site in there. So this is going to serve as a great reference to many of the articles that I am going to write. It is amazing that this came into my life at this time, but just as amazing as if you go with your gut feeling how it will lead you to places you need to be. That was great and I am happy that I did it.

3) Post Site Flip – My Father has recently become interested in my site flipping, so I figured that while I am visiting I will build and post a site flip in front of him. He should get a kick out of that and hopefully, I will make some more Christmas money. We will see how that goes, but I am building on a flip niche that I think I discovered a few flips back. We will see.

4) Blog Commenting – I don’t want to put a number on this one because it is going to be tough to get the computer outside of the other goals that I am trying to complete, but have to start back commenting regularly to keep in touch with my Blog Family. Part of our relationship is me coming to your sites and checking you out and adding my input where I can as well. I have been neglecting this aspect of our relationship and want to ensure that I get back to there. I am coming to a blog near you soon.

5) Enjoy Vacation – Alright Blog Family, this is the point of my retreat. To relax a little bit, hang out with the friends I grew up with, and visit my family. I love all of these people and cannot wait to see as many of them as I can. They always get mad at me because they know that I will only be in town for a few days.

I hope you have a great holiday, new years, and everything in between. It is a great time of year where people seem to be at their best. Soak it up, enjoy it, contribute to the jubilation, and have some fun!

First in the Mind, then in Reality!

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Greetings Blog Family,

The time has finally come where we get to the conclusion of our first Internet Marketing Experiment #1: Creating an eBook with Help. You can see the first installment of this experiment here, IME#1.

If you recall, the purpose of this experiment was to create an ebook with little to no effort to give away on my blog to subscribers and build my subscription base and email list. The source for this technique was the eCode by Joe Vitale and Jon Ho Mok, from Chapter 30, page 141 #1, 30 Ways to Create an eBook with little to no writing.

So about a month and a half ago, I set out on this experiment. You can view the details here. 

The Results

The crux of the matter is YES, this technique works as I have successfully orchestrated an ebook from this method. Blogosphere Big Shots is the ebook and I urge you to downloads and test it out yourself to see what the quality of the book is now.

I invited 14 Bloggers to submit an article for the ebook, made topic suggestions, created a due date, collected the material, organized it, and produced the ebook. It really was that simple.

Suggestions

If you are going to try this technique yourself, here are few of my suggestions to you.

1) Work with Quality Bloggers – This will cut down on the frustrations because they will hit the deadlines and produce quality content that you desire. This business is all about quality content and good people will deliver that for you. Besides, you will appreciate their professionalism.

2) Define Topics and Length – I made a list of topics and ask each blogger to write on one or two topics. Also, I asked for 500 to 750 words from each blogger per article. This was to give them a guide, but I did let them know that if they needed more words to go for it. Some came in longer, but it was all good.

3) Set Due Date 1 Week Before You Need It – This is an editing trick I learned from running a magazine. Tell the contributors one due date, but have another week in your schedule for extra time. If everything comes in on time great, but usually things won’t and it will not throw your schedule off. Something always comes up when dealing with larger groups of successful people. your roll as coordinator is to work around these issues, so be prepared.

4) Edit as the Articles Come In – This saves time and efficiency. Reduces down time in the project. I didn’t do this personally, but have learned from that mistake. Besides since you are telling the contributors to send in the articles a week early, while you are waiting for all of them to come in you could be editing and not losing any real time on the project.

5) Give Links in the eBook to the Contributing Bloggers – This is the least you could do for them. In my eBook, I wrote a few sentences about the bloggers on their behalf in my own words along with a link back to their respective sites. All of them seemed to really appreciate the personal touch. Give it a try.

Go Get’em!

Well blog Family, there you have it. Our first Internet Marketing Experiment was a success. Hopefully, you learned something during this experiment. At the very least, I hope you realized blogging is a full contact sport and if you get out there and meet, mingle, and communicate with other bloggers, then anything is possible.

If you have any questions, please drop them below. i will be glad to share what I have learned from you and help you make this happen for your blog. I would like to know who out there is considering using this technique in  your business and if you do, please keep me posted and maybe even give me a shout out during your effort. It would be appreciated.

First in the Mind, then in Reality!

IM Experiment #1: Conclusion – Creating an Ebook With Help from Freddie Taylor on Vimeo

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