I’m a huge fan of online press releases for several reasons:

1. SEO value - when you embed anchor text links in your press releases and publish them on authority sites, you gain valuable backlinks — which helps your site rank higher in the search engines.

2. Visibility - When you publish a well-optimized press release in the right place, you can gain almost instant page one visibility for even very competitive terms. If you have something to announce, don’t wait for people to find you, put yourself in front of them. News results typically stay on the front page for 1-2 days, but they stay online indefinitely (depending on where you publish them - some sites want to charge you to keep them online indefinitely, others take them down after a while, at Online PR News, they stay online indefinitely).

3. Authority - Submitting well-written press releases can help you establish yourself as an authority in your niche.

You don’t need to be a Fortune 500 Company to write a press release. Your news doesn’t need to grace the pages of the Wall Street Journal to be considered ’successful.’ Give yourself the credit you deserve. If your news could be useful, interesting, or beneficial to those in your niche, then you have a damn good reason to put together a press release.

Here Are Some Examples of the Power of Online Press Releases:

Top SEOs put out a press release titled: “The Best Social Media Optimization Agencies for March 2010 Ranked by topseos.com.” Later that day, I Googled “Social Media Optimization Agencies” (notice that there are 1,370,000 search results for that keyword) and their press release is ranking in spots 1, 3, and 4 as a result of the distribution on Online PR News.

The next example highlights a press release about Google Caffeine was distributed by Scott Moir. Scott is the founder of Irbtrax and also owns PR Site List, a list of free press release distribution site.

The image below (snapped a few weeks ago) shows a search for another competitive search term, “seo internet marketing tips.” Even though there are 143 articles related to that topic, Scott’s press release title is being displayed. Also notice that this screen cap was taken 4 days after the press release was published.

Online Press Releases and Twitter

In the past, press releases were only distributed by big expensive PR firms that had connects with journalists. And the only way your news was going to get out was if a journalist decided it was print worthy. But the social media age has turned that balance of power upside-down.

Now people decide what is newsworthy. People are the media influencers. Scott Moir has been very active with integrating Twitter with his press releases - and the results are awesome.

As recorded by Uberview, this press release about the Google Caffeine update has 52 conversations (retweets).

As documented by bit.ly, his Secret List of Free Article Marketing Submission Sites press release has received 577 clicks and 93 tweets just after publication.

How to Write a Press Release

It’s tough to deny that online press releases have online power, but there are a few key ingredients to success.

1. You’ve got to have a news angle: Many press release submission sites will not publish your press release if it doesn’t have a news angle. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering news, but it does have to be timely and relevant. There are probably lots of things happening within your company each month that are newsworthy and relevant.

Here are some good examples of topics:

• A new product or service
• A new client or employee
• Announcing an award or accolade
• Announcing a special event, contest, or sale
• Announcing a new website, blog, or website enhancement

2. Appropriate tone and style: A press release should be written in 3rd person - meaning you need to avoid using “you,” “I,” “we,” etc. Otherwise, it tends to sound too promotional and subjective and that will likely mean it won’t get published. If it does, people reading may not take it as seriously as they should. You can use first person if you’re quoting someone in a press release. Some people try to get around that by making 90% of their press release a quote, but that defeats the purpose. A good rule of thumb is to have 1 quote per every 200 words in the press release - and that quote should be 1-2 sentences long.

3. Filling in all the pieces: There are several standard pieces and parts of a press release that you need to have in place:

• Title: Should be around 100 characters in length. The title should reflect the news angle! This is one of the main problems we see at Online PR News. Anyone should be able to get a feeling for what the press release is about just by reading the title.
• Summary: Should be about 250-300 characters in length - a few sentences that summarize the press release
• Body: This is the main part of your press release where you talk about the news announced in the title
• Quote: This is where you get to be a little bit subjective and toot your own horn a bit. While the majority of the press release needs to be objective, you can give an opinion here
• About the company: Wrap up the press release with a short “about the company” paragraph that gives and overview of your company.
• Contact info: Many press release sites will not publish your press release if you don’t have adequate contact info. This includes name, phone number, email, website, and sometimes physical address.

How to Submit An Online Press Release

Now we’ve covered how to get your press release published on a press release distribution site. But that alone won’t get you the type of results you’ve seen above. To gain great visibility with your press release and to have it work for you in the search engines, it needs to be optimized.

4. Keyword optimization: The most important place to use your keyword is in the title and the summary of the press release. You’ll also want to include at least keywords in the body of the press, but don’t worry about counting and calculating - just get them in there naturally.

5. Anchor text links: If you’re using a press release distribution site that allows you to include anchor text links, this is ideal for SEO. You should already have three of your most critical keywords in the body of the press release. Then you’ll want to turn these keywords into anchor text links by linking to your targeted webpages in those keywords.

And even if you do all of these things, your press release could fall upon deaf ears if you don’t submit it to the right places.

7. Not all press release submission sites are created equally: You’ll want to submit your press release to a place that has certain characteristics:

• Visibility: Look for sites that are indexed by Google News.
• SEO Friendliness: Press Release sites that are coded for SEO friendliness will help your press release rank higher. For example, the title of your press release is in the title and the URL, your summary becomes the Meta description, etc.
• Offers anchor text links: Links are the currency of the web. If you’re going to submit a press release, you might as well get some anchor text links!
  Press release stays online indefinitely: Some places will only keep your press releases online if you continue paying a monthly fee. Once you stop paying, your links are gone. Others will just take them down after x amount of time.
• Extended distribution: Some sites will push your PR our to their content networks for much less than you would have paid if you would have submitted to all of these places alone. For example, Online PR News’s $49 package includes extended distribution worth $225. Strategic partnerships and volume discounts that the PR submission site can leverage help YOU get more for your money.

Tara and I put together an ebook that offers even more detailed info about how to write a press release titled “The 7 Deadly Mistakes People Make When Writing Press Releases” that is free to download.

Shout Outs!

I want to give a couple of shout outs to two awesome people who are really working hard to educate people and give them the tools they need to create successful businesses. I also want to graciously thank them both for allowing me to be a part of their projects.

Dave Navarro: Dave is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. Not only is he an @$$ kicker, but he is passionate about teaching others to be the best that they can be.

His More Buyers Mastermind program is packed with so much information from industry experts that I had to absorb all of it in small doses in order to fit it all into my head.

Kai Rostcheck: Kai definitely fits his title as the idea guy and his energy is contagious. He’s on a mission to help people go from zero knowledge of online marketing, to having enough information to be dangerous.

He’s always got his target market in mind. When we were doing the podcast and screencast for Free Marketing Made Easy, he did such a superb job of keeping me on track and asking questions that are important to his audience so that they can take the information and hit the ground running with it to market their businesses.

Dave and Kai - Thank you both for inviting me to be a part of your projects!

Topics: Marketing | 7 Comments »

I’ve always avoided explaining why I break one “rule” of blogging that many people parrot by posting irregularly and infrequently, but here’s why: When I started this blog, I made a commitment to myself not to add to the noise pollution on the web by writing about anything that I didn’t have first hand experience with. I don’t want to bore you with regurgitated posts or writing about things that I speculate to be true. That, and I don’t want to be on Caroline Middlebrook’s list of 11 pointless blog posts that waste my time (one of my favorite blog posts of all time!)

Cutting the Crap and Getting Down to the Point: The Monkey Bar Theory

What the Hell is the Monkey Bar Theory? The Monkey Bar theory is something I’ve noticed after living a dual life of fear and risk-taking. In order to make big changes in life, you’ve got to let go of one monkey bar to harness the strength, fear, and resolve to jump to the next.

When I was first desperately trying to find a way to escape the cubicle, I wanted to make sure that I had one hand firmly positioned on the next “monkey bar” before letting go of the last. In that situation, the last monkey bar was my current job, and the one I was grasping for was entrepreneurial freedom. For 3 years, I hung stagnant between those two bars, with nothing but sleep deprivation, a few business plans, and a couple full stacks of glossy business cards to show for it.

Why didn’t it work? Because building a successful business is based on making some scary decisions. It requires action that will sometimes make your insides feel like rotten Jello and making decisions that will scare the crap out of you. In the past, when I had a hand on that other monkey bar, I would ‘conveniently’ get too busy at my ‘real’ job find some other excuse why I couldn’t make the final reach to that next bar. But when you don’t have anything else to hold on to, you will likely summon every ounce of gusto within your being to ensure you get a hold on that bar to avoid crashing down.

What it took for me to finally make the leap was for my ex-husband to have a 15-year premature midlife crisis, decide that we needed to leave the downtown San Diego 5-9 grind (intentionally transposed), and move to the cheapest place possible, which happened to be in the middle of nowhere in the California desert. If it weren’t for the fact that I was living a life dependent on two incomes and pretty much felt I “had” to go, I doubt that I would have ever had the cajones to make such a leap.

But it was that move… literally throwing myself into a situation where I had NO backup plan, NO family to bail me out and NO ‘decent’ jobs within 150 miles, that caused me to get my business off the ground.

Do I recommend being this extreme? For those that know they have what it takes to survive at any cost but can’t seem to harness that power — yes. Is it risky? Hell yes. Is it guaranteed? Hell no. Does it suck? For a while — yes. Is it worth it? Hell yes.

The Monkey Bar Theory and Love

For years, I was in a miserable marriage and wanted out. But I was afraid. Yep. Before I was the Self Made Chick, I had created a lifestyle that depended on two incomes, allowed said other income earner to ‘almost’ convince me that I was pretty much worthless and incapable of making on my own, and only dreamed of being able to support myself and two kids. In the back of my mind, I ‘hoped’ I would meet someone else — another monkey bar — to grab onto so that I could let go of that one. But I didn’t have the courage so I waited in limbo for years.

But when I started to have some success in business and some confidence in my ability to support myself, I finally let go of that monkey bar and did all those things that once seemed ’scary’ with no problem. And eventually, once I learned to love myself, and with space in my life I had the room to meet someone else.

How many people are in a loveless, unhealthy, unhappy relationship but too afraid to let go?

A Closet Full of Compromises…

There’s a reason why ‘the closet’ is such a strong metaphor for our lives. Within most of our closets is a biography of our compromises and insecurities. It’s a clear picture of how we cling to things that are no longer of use to us and that choke out room for new things to come into our lives.

I’d venture to guess that you, like me and many other people have closet guilt resulting a closet packed with clothes and things you don’t really need and that just don’t ‘feel’ right when you wear them. Perhaps even things that are dragging you down emotionally.

Do You Dare Take This Challenge?

A ’safe’ way to test out the monkey bar theory is to get rid of all but 3-5 pieces of clothing that truly represent you now and where you want to go in life. If you were to get rid of all of your clothing, I can almost guarantee that you would find the resources to fill your closet again. By making a conscious decision to only fill your closet with things you WANT, you would eventually create a new wardrobe of only things that you wanted.

Would wearing the same 3-5 things be embarrassing for a while? Probably. Would you feel tempted to fill your closet with just anything? Probably. Would you have to give up other things to find the resources to buy new clothes? Maybe. Or maybe you’d figure out some other way to create those resources. Would you feel great once your wardrobe was filled with clothes that defined you? Certainly.

On a simplistic level, the above scenario is similar to what it takes to build a business from scratch. It’s scary to make the choice to DO IT. It takes resolve to stand steadfast in your decision NOT to fill your time with things that won’t lead you to your ultimate goal.

It Get’s Easier, But Is Never EASY

Risk taking is a learned skill that gets easier with practice. But it’s never EASY. I’ve learned to become much more comfortable with taking calculated risks, but there is always an element of fear. I think that if we wait around and hope for courage or for something not to feel scary anymore, we are selling ourselves short! In fact, whenever I feel a bit of fear about losing, it feels exhilarating, because I know the result could be a big change.

Even so, I’m struggling right now with letting go of some things in my business and in my life. Are you? If so, why? When you talk it through, are your fears rational — or just as irrational as holding onto that old shirt in your closet that just makes you feel yucky when you put it on? Have you ever ‘let go’ and come out better for it?

Topics: Risk Taking | 38 Comments »

Last February, Dave Navarro and I put each other to a challenge… he put my ebook on how to start a freelance business to the test in a Freelance Smackdown to see if he could make an extra $1,000-$2000 per month in his spare time. Within a month, he had made that goal. Then I challenged his 30 Hours a Day Program to see if I could use it to make an extra $20,000 in passive income that year.

The very awesome Melinda Brennan of WAHM Biz Builder recently asked… so how’d it go? I’m happy to announce, that this challenge has had an incredible positive financial impact in my life. But not exactly in the way I’d imagined…

In order to devote time to my new goal, I would have to free up some time. I have never been so aware of and so in awe of the power and consequences of time spent until I began working for myself.

Two Paths Diverged In A Yellow Wood…

There was a critical choice that had to be made in order to free up that time… a choice so pivotal that it would change the course of my future. It’s a choice that every freelancer faces, whether or not they realize it to be a choice. One choice would be a fast path, the other a long haul.

Should I continue on as a solo freelancer? Or should I turn my freelancing gig into a company?

The Solo Freelancer Path

As a solo freelancer, my work was fairly stress-free. I was fluent at what I did. I worked with a handful of steady clients and project management was fairly straight-forward. Really, my solo freelancing career had turned into a stable work at home job.

My life was predictable and safe. I lived in my favorite place in the world – a place that I finally felt at home after years of moving around the country. It would have been so easy to just maintain that predictability and safety by cutting back a little on freelancing and devote that time to building my passive income stream.

The Living Company Path

Having taken this path, I can say that making the shift from solo freelancer to full-fledged business owner is not the simpler route. The path is riddled with fears, obstacles, tests, puzzles, and quicksand. Instead of being financially responsible for just yourself, you are now financially responsible for the people that work for you.

There may be times when there are just not enough funds in the coffer to pay yourself after you’ve paid everyone else and your overhead. There is training that must take place, organizational systems to set up, and more paperwork to manage. There are systems to develop to ensure that quality and deadlines are met. And all of these things demand a great deal of time.

That is why you may have noticed my blog posts becoming more infrequent during certain months. Although I consider myself a person that can juggle a LOT of tasks and, throughout my life have taken on more than what most people would consider sane, I was still hammered for time. Many times, my life felt like a game of Tetris with all of the blocks falling so fast and capacity running out. But I’m glad I chose this path.

There are upsides of course. One is the possibility of creating something larger than yourself – a legacy that can live on without you – fulfilling one of the most primal human desires. Another is the ability to serve more people with work that you are passionate about. A third is the possibility that one day, the company can grow to a point where it operates almost on it’s own, but generates revenue for years to come.

A lot of people have had amazing results keeping their business solo or almost solo while building massive income streams with info products. I mean, look at Naomi raking in the bucks with her products (and with damn good reason – the chick is a rock star). Look at Ray Edwards and other master copywriters who charge tens of thousands of dollars for copy and make money giving classes and seminars.

Sadistic or Smart?

So why go the business building route when so many others are making bank by staying solo? Perhaps I’m self-sadistic. Perhaps it’s some sort of sick sense of low self-esteem or a refusal to let go. Perhaps it’s the lust of wanting to have my cake and eat it too. Whatever it is, it’s the road I took and I’m glad I did.

I like to tell myself that it’s because I love what I do, I love serving customers who are passionate about growing their online businesses but may not have tens of thousands of dollars to spend. I like to tell myself that it’s because I want to be able to scale to serve more of my clients in the same capacity.

After busting a$$ for a very long time, free time to work on the ‘big picture’ is within view. Just this month, we hired a personal assistant and are hiring a full-time project manager. This gives me the opportunity to create even more systems to help the business scale and to pursue other ventures, produce some products that have been on my mind for quite a while, begin offering consulting – and all while serving more of the customers that I love.

So Did I Make the $20,000?

I can say that yes, I have made $20,000 in ‘passive’ income last year. But it wasn’t as passive as it would have been if I were to have created a product or automated service.

Instead, I created a system within my existing business that worked to produce income from projects with minimal hands on involvement from me. I worked my a$$ off creating systems that can continue that trend year after year.

Either way, I thank Dave for asking me the tough questions to get my butt into gear. Dave and I worked together on the phone during coaching sessions (which at this point he’s not offering so the next best thing are his audio programs and ebooks).

How To Grow Your Business From Solo Operation to Business Operation

The details of growing a business from solo to a fully operational team could certainly fill a book. Instead writing an obscenely long blog post, I’d love to open up the comments section to stories and questions about growing your home-based business without going into debt by using creative, strategic methods.

Growing and Marketing Your Business in A Tight Economy

If you’re really serious about growing your business, I highly recommend Melinda Brennan’s upcoming free business marketing teleseminar, Marketing Biz Brainstorm, taking place live on March 3rd at 2:00pm EST. I’ve been invited to be a panelist on this call with Melinda of WAHM Biz Builder and Kelly McCausey of WAHM Talk Radio.

One of the goals of this teleseminar is to answer of your personal questions on small business marketing. When I say your questions – I mean it! The call is very much directed by the questions YOU submit when you register for free. So think of some good questions and ask them here – because this is a great opportunity to get your questions answered for free!

If you’re in business for yourself, you’re in a state of constant flux… where are you now? What challenges or fears do you face in terms of growth? Do you have any tips to help others scale? I’d love to hear from you!

Topics: Business Development, Freelancer Tips | 28 Comments »

(BTW - it’s free!) Since launching our press release submission site, Tara and I have learned something truly important - many people are making some major mistakes when it come to writing and submitting press releases! To help others learn to write more effective press releases, we put together this free downloadable guide to writing press releases.

The book highlights the 7 deadly mistakes we see in a surprising majority of the press releases submitted. With just a few little tweaks, most of the press releases we receive could be transformed from so-so, to great! It doesn’t just cover the writing of search engine optimized press releases, but how to submit them so that they look great online.

This e-book is a quick and easy read, filled with lots of graphics and no B.S. tips for writing and submitting better press releases.

Why Is It Free?

A few reasons:

#1: Because, I’m more concerned about giving you the tools you need to write better press releases than I am about making money off of this. Times are tough for a lot of people right now and submitting press releases online is a great, low cost way to get the word out about your news and to build quality backlinks to your site that ultimately help it rank higher in the search engines.

#2: Online PR News is a new site, and we want more people to know about it! Our goal over the next few years is to make this the best and most affordable damn press release submission site online - a site that truly connects people with news to share with those looking for new things to talk about. If you find the ebook useful and you’d like to share it with others, feel free to direct others to Online PR News where anyone can take their free copy.

To download your free copy of the press release writing e-book, just head over to Online PR News and you’ll see the download link right on the homepage.

Wishing You Success,
Christine ~

Topics: Marketing | 25 Comments »

I’ve been kind of obsessed with 50 Cent’s new reality show ‘The Money and the Power.’ If you haven’t been following, it’s like a g-style version of The Apprentice where the contestants live in a crappy warehouse while they are tested and judged by Mr. Fitty and his G-Unit crew. Every week the challenges revolve around one of 50’s words of street wisdom – such as “Choose Your Crew Wisely,” “Respect the Hustle,” and one of my favorite new sayings “Turn Sh** To Sugar.”

Just last week, I mixed a little sh** with Fitty’s wisdom and a healthy scoop of a Mindshift technique learned from the always awesome Steve Chandler to overcome an obstacle. And the results were delicious. In fact, I’m looking forward to stepping in more sh** just to use these techniques.

The Situation

You may know that Tara and I just launched Online PR News – and were so very excited about it. If you’ve ever launched anything, you know that it requires a lot of time, money, and emotional investment to create the best product or service available. You want every single person to love it and have the best possible experience…

Then this happened:

Sure enough, the site was throwing an error whenever anyone tried to add the SEO upgrade to their press release.

Three options for responding quickly ran through my mind:

Response Option #1 – The fear-based response: Don’t reply to the person, just fix the problem and chalk it up to a loss.

Response Option #2 – The lack of responsibility response: Send a ‘computer generated’ sounding response like “we’re sorry to hear about your issue and will attend to the problem right away, signed, the company.

Response Option #3 – The ownership response: Reply as a real person, admit the mistake, genuinely thanking them for alerting us to the problem (as you know, most people will get an error and just move on) and offer a free upgrade in exchange for their troubles, signed, Christine O’Kelly.

A Mindshift in Action

Then I remembered the wise words of Steve Chandler from his Mindshift course… He said (and I’m paraphrasing) that we need to shift our thinking – literally change the words we hear in our mind when we face a problem. Instead of thinking “I have a problem that I have to deal with,” think “I’ve been presented with an opportunity to make my businesses better.”

As a result, I chose response option #3. The customer was not only happy to receive the free upgrade, but even promoted us on a social networking site that she belonged to. She has since become a repeat customer and posted an “I Love Online PR News” to her network on Twitter. Thanks!!

Why Learning To Turn Sh** Into Sugar Is So Incredibly Powerful

The majority of the reason any of us don’t live up to our potential the way we know we should is based on FEAR. If you put yourself out there, you absolutely will be faced with rejection, roadblocks, and problems – there’s just no doubt about that.

But if you learn to shift your mind and consider problems to be opportunities for growth, you will then willingly go boldly into situations that may lead to rejection, roadblocks, and problems, because they will only make you better.

What have you been afraid to do? Why? Get out there and do it, learn to turn crappy situations that everyone else is avoiding into sweet opportunities for yourself!

Random Awesome Things I Discovered Through Twitter

This cool tool called Twitter Grader from a post by Jack Bastide (@JackBastide) where he interviews Yvonne Perry of Writers in the Sky.

How Make Deals With Bigshots in Less Than 10 Minutes - by Laura Roeder (@lkr) on ProBlogger (BTW - I wholehearted recommend that everyone subscribe to Laura’s newsletter The Dash where she serves up weekly managably sized action items that you can do to improve your business - these are GREAT ideas that make you say DUH! Why didn’t I think of that!). Nice job on the guest post Laura!!

How To Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet For Any Topic:  Information overload! (The good kind)

Topics: Business Development | 27 Comments »

Three weeks ago, Tara and I launched a brand new free press release submission site – Online PR News. Today, 3 weeks later, it is ranking in the #9 spot (update, it is now in the #6 spot) in Google for one of our target keywords (competitiveness of the keyword is: 1,380,000), the #13 spot in Google for another target keyword (competitiveness = 2,180,000), the #10 spot in Yahoo for yet another target keyword (competitiveness=8,360,000), and in various other spots for a variety of other keywords.

Some SEOs that I know won’t touch a brand new site – one that I know won’t work with any client if their domain hasn’t existed for 3 years or more. Reason: it can sometimes take months for a site to even be indexed by search engines let alone rank on the first page. But who has time to wait? I’m moving at the speed of business and my clients are too. Over the years, we’ve developed strategies to get rankings quickly – and I’ll show you exactly how we did it in this post.

Factor #1: LOVE and PASSION

This probably sounds ridiculous to some, but I don’t care. I believe that love and passion for any site that you’re promoting is critical. I even bring this into our business practice. When I take on a client, I make sure that I can have the same level of love and passion for their site as we do our own – otherwise, things just don’t work out as well.

I’ve tried building sites based on money and not passion. They never got anywhere – and it all stemmed from me. Building and promoting them seemed like work. Coming up with ideas for content was like pulling teeth. I didn’t know enough about the target audience to really connect with them. I didn’t like the way I felt about the whole thing… so why would anyone else?

Many years ago, I decided to stop relying solely on all of the rehashed trends and strategies I was hearing out there. I decided to read Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s college paper titled PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web. What I learned is that no matter what loopholes internet marketers find, Google’s goal is to rank the most useful and authoritative sites at the top of the rankings. So I’ve made a commitment to producing what I believe are the most useful sites to real people.

If you don’t have love and passion for what you are doing and for the people who will be utilizing your site, it will be an uphill battle to do all that is necessary to truly produce a great site and hence, get visibility for that site.

We created Online PR News because we wanted to provide the most feature-rich, best looking, most affordable press release submission website. We created it because we use PR sites constantly and wanted to combine all of the features WE desired in a press release like anchor text, image uploading, pull quotes, and an iFrame so that we readers can navigate to the publisher’s site right from the press release. (Take a look at this sample press release to see those features in action)

Sure, there are exceptions to this ‘love and passion’ rule, but in general, if you are not passionate about the site that you are promoting, it just won’t get as far.

Are you truly and honestly passionate about what you do? Do you LOVE waking up in the morning to get to work on building that business? If not, there is time to find that thing you love and let the passion of it fuel your fire…

Factor #2: Resource Building and Diversified Publishing

For any product or service, there are a limitless number of resources that can accompany it to help others to use the product or service better or to use the product or service to enhance their lives. If your products or services – and the people who use it are something you are truly passionate about, it isn’t difficult to come up with a wealth value added resources.

They key however, is in publishing those resources. Many people publish their info on only a handful publishing resources such as their blog or website. But there are so many different places to publish content. If you choose those places wisely, many of them will offer a backlink to your site (which helps it to rank higher in the search engines) as well as visibility of that resource for the search terms.

Some of the types of content I publish are:

• Hubpages – leverage an authority site to like Hubpages correctly can help bring your presence to the forefront quickly.

• Slideshows – I publish how-to guides on slideshare to that truly help people learn how to accomplish a particular goal – such as this one called “Submit An SEO Press Release: A How To Guide“

• Article Marketing – I write articles that designed to help people build their businesses and syndicate them to a wealth of article directories

• Press Releases – publish press releases on sites that offer search engine value

• Free eBooks – promote them on eBook directories

• Blogs – both by blogging and by reaching out to other bloggers whose readers could truly benefit from the services I offer

• Social Networking Sites – We’ve scoured the web to find the best business networking sites that offer not only a useful service, but backlinks as well

• Directory Listings – Not all directories are great… but there are a handful that are

• Wikis – while the links on sites like Wikipedia, Wikihow, and eHow are often ‘nofollow,’ the exposure can be dramatic

• Forums – helping others to solve their problems on blogs and forums can go a long way. I interviewed a wonderful entrepreneur, Chris Hanisco, aka, The Dippy Chick, who was found by the news media because of her active presence on a popular enterprenuer’s forum.

• Email Marketing – reaching out to current clients and people who have expressed interest in our products and services to get the word out

• Twitter – Thank you Angie (one of SEO Content Solution’s awesome writers and an online writing coach) for Tweeting about the new press release site!

• Friends – Give friends and contacts to review your site and, if they like it, to give it a Stumble or recommend it to their contacts. Offer an incentive to review your site and invite them to link to it in their upcoming posts. For example, if you would like to review and link to Online PR News, I will gladly offer you a free SEO press release upgrade. Just send me an email with a link to your post and the title of your press release and I’ll pay for the upgrade
  

Are you spending too much time on any one particular blog, social media site, or other resource when you could be diversifying? It’s GREAT to have a few that you focus on more than others, but you could be holding yourself back by not tapping into all of the many options out there.

Factor #3: Strategic Keyword Planning

As an SEO copywriter and online marketer, one of the very first things I ask a client about is their keywords. Establishing the keywords you need to bring traffic to want is one of the most critical factors of a strong search engine ranking.

I’ve used a lot of keyword tools, but my favorite by far is Google’s keyword selector tool. With this, you can see how many people are searching, the level of competition, and be introduced to related keyword phrases that you may not have considered.

Keywords are essential in everything from writing title tags, to writing your on page content, to titling articles, to the anchor text you’ll use in your published resources. You’ll want to keep your list of keywords handy and use them consistently in all of your publications.

Factor #4: Treat Others With Genuine Compassion and Fierce Loyalty

Business is an ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, one organism depends on the other organisms in the ecosystem to survive and flourish. This is a lesson I learned well when hitchhiking across the country and during the days that I lived in a tent. If you want to survive, you have GOT to be fiercely loyal to your pack, to share when you have something to share, and to create relationships of unconditional trust.

Being genuinely kind, helpful, and reliable to others without necessarily expecting anything in return goes a long way. The ethic of reciprocity may be cliché… “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – but so true.

Topics: Marketing | 33 Comments »

There was a time when I was so broke that I actually ate donuts out of a trash bin behind a store that my boyfriend and I found while walking back to our squat (homeless camp) at the beach. Not joking. To my credit, they were double bagged in a clear garbage bag. (Though this may sound wretched, it was actually glorious! When we arrived at the squat with this beautiful bag of donuts, our neighbors were absolutely thrilled and the score was cause for celebration!)

Although my dumpster-diving squatting days were ‘physically’ the lowest I’ve ever been, they weren’t the most difficult times to overcome. The reason is that I was in a positive mental state at that time. I believed that anything was possible and therefore, it was quite easy to move on once I decided I was ready. It was the times that I was mentally and emotionally buried and beaten that were pure hell… a pit I thought I might never escape from.

I get a lot of email from people who say that they are feeling this way. I know what it feels like to be so afraid to lose what little you have, yet so dissatisfied with your life at the same time. It’s a hellish existence.

I don’t know how it is for others, but there is something about being truly down and depressed that made me even less receptive to want to take action to change. Any advice just seemed hollow, and to somehow mock my personal hell. Struggling out of a truly dark pit in life feels like I imagine it feels to try and escape from quicksand. The more you try to get out, the more you’re pulled down. It’s just easier to sit there and do nothing and stagnate in it.

My goal with this post is to share some of ways that I overcame the challenges of feeling so down and out that I was nearly demobilized. I still use many of these tactics today to keep myself in the a forward-moving mindset.

Take Aggressive Action To Remove All Negativity From Your Life

When we ourselves are in a negative state of being, it seems we surround ourselves with negative people and negative things. I made an aggressive stand to remove all of these things from my life. This included:

• Strict information diet – I turned OFF cable - no more news shows with hours of coverage of horrible things, no more Forensic Files. These are the things I was drawn to when feeling down. I spent the time I once spent doing those things plowing through my goals, reading things with a positive focus, or doing brain puzzles to keep my mind occupied.

• Removing all negative people from my life – I isolated myself not only from negative people, but also from those who weren’t filled with a positive outlook on life by moving and changing my phone number.

• Getting rid of clutter – “Stuff” can carry a lot of memories. I got rid of everything that I didn’t absolutely love and didn’t serve a purpose. If it had negative memories attached to it, I got rid of it even if it did serve a purpose.

Examine Your Life in “Slices”

A lot of what makes us afraid is what we think “might” happen. Worrying about things that might happen can bring about terrible anxiety. I would ask myself, “What is so bad about TODAY?” Sometimes, when there were daily struggles, I would ask myself “Is anything wrong this exact MOMENT?” When I examined a small sliver of time in this way, I often found that nothing was really all that terrible. At any given moment I was alive, not in pain, in a safe environment, etc.

Get Your Brain Chemistry, Health, And Inner Demons Under Control

Getting your health and your demons under control might be one of the most difficult things to motivate yourself to do… until the ball gets rolling. By health and demons, I mean chemical imbalances, physical deficiencies and aliments, addictions, and past traumas.

Brain chemistry is a powerful thing. Having any type of chemical imbalance, no matter how small, can make life much more difficult than it needs to be. I used to believe that I could use ‘mind over matter’ to overcome anything. I thought that anti-depressants and other types of medication were for people who were too lazy or too unmotivated to change. But now I think differently. At some point I realized that we are so fortunate to live in a time and place where there are ways to balance your brain chemistry and affordable ways to access these things. I thought… if I CAN regulate my brain chemistry… why won’t I? Why am I choosing to make things more difficult for myself?

Even not having the proper levels of vitamins in our bodies can drag us down. If you’re eating poorly, isn’t it worth it to eat better and take vitamin supplements if it will make you perform better? Eating crappy food is an addictive habit – I know because I can easily become that way! Eating food that is good for you sucks – until you get used to it – then it feels great.

Many people suffer from addictions that they know damn well are hindering their life and their progress. Some people are hung up on things from the past that, until they are confronted, will not allow them the freedom to move forward. Hoping to get ahead without addressing either of these things is like swimming upstream in a downstream current.

Tackling these things might mean seeing a doctor, seeing a nutritionist, or joining a support group, depending on your views and your situation. If you’re like me, and probably like most people, you will fight yourself to take action against these deep-rooted things. But refusing to take action is essentially making a conscious decision NOT to get where you want to be in life.

Vigilantly Forge Ahead With Goals – Even If It Seems Like You’re Not Getting Anywhere

One thing that I’ve learned over the years of owning my own business is that many things you try won’t work and that results come from an accumulation of efforts. You may not see the effect of something small you do today, but doing a few small things today adds up tremendously over time. If you only took 2 meaningful actions per day toward your big goal, in a year’s time, you would have accomplished 730 steps toward progress. Not all 730 will have worked. In fact, maybe only 1% of those things (7) had a major impact that moved you closer to your goal. But if you had only taken 50 actions in that same year…well, 1% of 50 doesn’t even amount to 1.

It can make you feel like huge loser to continue to chip away at goals and try things with no results – if you let it. Or, you can think that the more things you try that DON’T work, the higher the odds are that at least a small percentage of them will. Sometimes, it only takes one big break.

That may mean trying lots of different business models (for example several different revenue generation streams) or mean trying to promote your own business trying lots of strategies. It depends on what you’re goals are.

I’ve spent plenty of time doing things that didn’t really amount to anything. But a small fraction of those things really took off and that’s what made all the difference.

Thank You’s And New Stuff

We just launched our first Wordpress Widget! It’s called “Online Now” and if you’ve read to this point, you’re probably looking at it in the sidebar. It gives a count of how many visitors are on your site now, how many have been online collectively throughout the day, and the countries where the last 5 visitors were viewing from. Get the Online Now Wordpress Widget here, free ~
I’d also like to extend a big thank you to Elizabeth Ashe of Internet Marketing Strategy Diva for taking the time to do an interview with me for her podcast listeners about SEO copywriting. Thanks Elizabeth!

Topics: Freelancer Tips | 63 Comments »

For the last few years, I’ve been really freakin’ irritated with myself for not living up to my full potential. Know the feeling? Perhaps the worst part about achieving ‘some’ level of success is that once I had something to lose, I was hesitant to gamble it all – especially after having experienced the hell of rock bottom.

But eventually, the dull, nagging torture of knowing that I was purposefully limiting myself because I was ‘comfortable’ became more unbearable than the risk of hitting rock bottom again. And that’s when the blogging stopped a few months ago. That’s when I pushed in all my chips and gambled my entire business, my work, my clients – everything – in the hope of coming up even better than before. And it paid off.

My freelance business was great – it paid my bills and allowed me to lead a comfortable life. But I felt more like my own employee than an entrepreneur, which is my true passion. Several conversations with time management coach Dave Navarro gave me the opportunity to voice what I knew needed to be done for quite some time…

If I truly wanted to follow my dreams, I was going to need to make some major changes. I needed to stop tiptoeing around this buzzing hive of fears and passions and anxieties and emotions that had been brewing within myself. I was going to have to purposefully shake things up, and face whatever came out of it.

There’s Never a ‘Right’ Time

In order to grow, I needed to expand my team. I wanted someone who was just as vested in the success of the business as I was – a 50/50 business partner. I also needed to build a writing team and stop doing all of the work myself. That meant that where I was earning 100% of profits, I would now be earning 25%. That meant that my income was going to instantly be cut by 75% and we would need to get four times as much business just so that I could get back to ground zero.

I was not really in the financial position to ‘logically’ do this – so financial stability is not really an excuse to avoid action. I’m a single mom and the only income earner. I had only a small amount of savings – just barely enough to scrape by for a month. But I decided to practice what I preach here on this blog – to take stand and stop existing and start living an amazing life. To go on a quest to hunt down and expose my deep dark challenges the only way truly possible – to TAKE ACTION.

I was not really in the emotional position to do this either. My ex-husband and I were breaking up AGAIN. He had come back at some point and we tried to ‘work it out.’ That became volatile fast and he left – but that was for the best. I met new people, made new friends enjoyed the human side of life that I’d been purposefully avoiding by burying myself in work.

Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you wish for. Happiness is something you design. ~Jim Rohn

(Thanks to Timothy Carter for posting this quote on Twitter at the exact moment I was finishing this paragraph on taking action to create your own happiness.)

The Rocky Road of Business Growth

If you’re a lover of life and a dreamer and you refuse to go down easy, if you refuse to settle for less than you know you can achieve, then there will be rocky times. Because you’ve GOT to take risks to get the rewards. And sometimes those risks pay off and sometimes they don’t. And even when you win the war, you may lose some of the battles along the way but that can’t get you down.

There were days when I would stand out on my porch looking out at the mountains thinking… what have I done? I’m doing more work and making less money… I’m not doing the creative work I envisioned…. Where is this going? What am I going to do with my life? Everything that was once comfortable is now foreign… This sucks….

I don’t know who I am anymore…

What got me through these days was having the best business partner I could ever ask for. Maybe you feel like I once did – until I had this revelation, I never considered having a 50/50 business partner for a myriad of reasons – but none of them logical. Life is a rocky, rocky road, and having someone that I trust and respect and genuinely LOVE to work with who is just as vested in our success and has the same goals has made all the difference in the world. Thank you Tara!

When we started our journey we had a long-term vision and a short-term plan. The long-term vision was our PASSION. The short-term plan was our vehicle to achieving the vision. What’s interesting is that the short-term plan has changed gears many times. In fact, our short-term plan of attack is nothing at all like we intended it to be in the first place. We reevaluated it constantly – and shifted gears based on instinct and constant weekly reflection.

I believe that it is a result of this constant reflection and willingness to adapt as necessary that we reached our first goal of quadrupling our gross profits in just 3 and a half months.

Lesson Learned: Don’t be afraid when things don’t turn out just as you thought they would. Just roll with the punches and correct your balance as necessary. It’s silly to continue doing something that isn’t working.

Our long-term vision has remained constant. Today we have the means to begin taking action on that vision. Literally, just TODAY we pulled the trigger on the first step in our long-term vision plan.

Is Your Refusal to Give Up Control Holding You Back?

Though I don’t necessarily consider myself a serious control freak, the fear of giving up control was more powerful than the potential of earning more money doing something I would enjoy more. By “control” I mean:

• Control of a predictable routine
• Control of predictable problems
• Control of a predictable income
• Control of feeling in control

Even though I wasn’t entirely satisfied with all of these things I was controlling, the fear of losing these things held me back from making a necessary change that was begging to be made for far too long. It turns out that the things I thought I controlled were controlling me. They were keeping me from moving on. By letting go of those things, and making some calculated but uncertain risks, I am happier, wealthier, and more excited about the future than ever before.

Are there things that you know need to be done in order to begin the journey toward living up to your full potential? If you’re not doing these things… why?

Topics: Business Development | 55 Comments »

The insatiable drive to achieve higher levels of success is perhaps human nature at it’s finest - and the reason why we have progressed as far as we have, as fast as we have. However, the natural urge to push ahead challenges another powerful natural instinct - to remain safe and comfortable. Oftentimes, we must battle one of our own instincts in order to satisfy another.

Photo by Lu Barcelos

We all have our dark, personal challenges - the challenges that we are most afraid to admit or to face. These deep, dark inner struggles can prevent us from ever achieving our vision of success if we let them. Not believing that these exist or that you have them is easier than believing it — when we refuse to accept it, we can go through life believing we are doing “everything we can” and wondering why some people “get all the luck.”

I imagine that many of you reading this “know” this one a cognitive level, yet you may still be denying it on a very primal level.

I know this is true for me. I constantly battle with first identifying and then knocking out these deep seeded fears that challenge my ability to achieve my vision of success.

The problem with our deepest challenges, is that they are often so latent that we don’t even know they exist and therefore we don’t know how to tackle them.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been pushing beyond my comfort zone. It has been exciting, uncomfortable, and exhilarating all at the same time. In this post, I’ll share some techniques I have used recently and in the past to hunt down and tackle my innermost fears and challenges:

Note: None of these suggestions will be of any value whatsoever without ACTION. All require pulling the damn trigger, and making the tough choices to go after what you want with vigilance.

Bring More Silence Into Your Life

When I first left my job, I cut off most forms of information from my life. I had no television, stopped listening to music on the radio, ditched my cell phone, and moved far away from anyone I knew. This lasted for about 2 years. I’ve mentioned this before, but I never mentioned why.

I wanted to create a silence so that I could better hear my own thoughts. Without any way to drown these thoughts with pointless noise, I was forced to deal with them in the silence of my own mind. It is much easier to find your own challenges without the constant drone of television, radio, or long chit-chatty phone conversations to take your mind off of the problem.

I’m not suggesting that this is the right path for everyone, but instead to become comfortable with silence. Try spending an hour or more in silence every day. If we allow ourselves to be constantly fed information, then we never have the time to discover our own.

Force Accountability Upon Yourself

Right now there are things you are avoiding that you KNOW damn well will get you closer to your goal. Yet you’re not doing them. I know this because I do the same thing. You’re probably avoiding them because just below the surface lurks a big nasty fear that you don’t want to face. Other people have achieved these things. These things are not impossible. These are things that only seem impossible to you right now because of your current way of thinking about the situation.

If you’ve set goals for certain things and regularly blown them off, it may be time to bring in someone else to hold you accountable. For example, I know that I will regularly blow off working out if I don’t have someone to hold me accountable. After years of blowing it off, I hired a personal trainer to keep me in line. If I don’t go, I disappoint Nik and he charges me for the time of his that I wasted. It hurts my pride and it hurts my checkbook if I don’t go, so I go.

Publicly challenging myself to make $20,000 in passive income this year is another way I’ve held myself accountable. I don’t want to look like an a$$, and that has kept me plugging away on this project that I’ve wanted to slack off on plenty of times. The reason for wanting to slack wasn’t out of laziness, it’s because the entire process has forced me to combat another deep dark fear that lurks in the very core of my being. If I wouldn’t have forced accountability upon myself, I would have probably found an excuse about why I never completed the project.

Have Someone Call You Out on Your Own Lies

The challenges we are most afraid to face - the ones that truly hold us back - are often so much a part of our personality and belief system that they are invisible to us. However, others can see the actions we are doing to cover up these inadequacies. If you really want to know what’s holding you back, maybe it’s time to ask someone the hard questions - the ones you don’t really want the answers to.

Since taking Dave Navarro’s time management challenge, I uncovered a cave of dark challenges - a scene very similar to turning over a railroad tie and finding a horde of wriggling worms and critters scurrying to find darkness again.

My lie was that I was “too busy” to take on the challenges I knew I needed to take in order to get to the next level. I created that lie by filling my time with busywork that wasn’t entirely necessary. Once Dave showed me how to free up my time so that being “too busy” would no longer be a valid excuse, I was left to stare my own deepest inadequacies right in the face.

Over the past month, I’ve been incredibly busy - but I’ve been busy acting on Dave’s advice and therefore creating a plan of action that will get me to the next level. I suspect that the “too busy” lie is one that many people hide behind. If you’re “too busy” then you don’t have time to face all the hard challenges that you already know need to be done.

Topics: Business Development | 52 Comments »

This post offers more of a “mindset” how-to vs. a step by step guide. Every business is different, but I think these concepts are universal.

For years I’ve been doing what I think a lot of entrepreneur’s are guilty of… I’ve been purposefully, and yet largely unknowingly, holding back my business growth. I fell into the trap that all of us fall into at some point or another - my current status was comfortable. Making the necessary changes to grow meant navigating into uncharted waters and forcing myself to change.

But then a few things happened that changed my thinking and helped me to make some dramatic growth steps with my business.

Photo by Ali Ansari

Working With a Coach: Dave Navarro

This point is first because if I hadn’t taken this step, I may not have seen all of these other opportunities. When I called out Dave Navarro to see if he could help me find more time in my day… I got far more than I bargained for. I “knew” cognitively that having a coach was a smart idea since most successful people recommend this, but I didn’t really KNOW how much of an impact it could have on my life and my business.

I’ve learned that if you are really dead serious about taking your business to the next level, you’ve got to bring more people into the picture that are invested in your success. Working as a solo entrepreneur for too long can put you into a place where you are unable to really see all of the opportunities you might be missing. Having a coach on your side that can see things from the 30,000 ft. perspective vs. the ground level where most small businesses and solo entrepreneurs are operating is in my opinion, one of the smartest moves you can make.

Many of the things Dave suggested were things I “knew” but that I was making excuses for not doing. Perhaps the most critical of which was that I needed to outsource a lot of the busywork that was taking time away from doing what I was most effective at. I had thought about this before, but had several excuses:

• It’s easier to just do these things myself rather than training someone else

It does take a bit of time to train someone on your way of doing things… but if you invest that time once, you can free up countless hours in the long run. As a way to counter this, I’m creating written training and screen casted training modules so that I can do the training ONCE, but apply it multiple times.

• Trying to manage someone else will take as much time as doing it myself

If you have good systems in place, managing a team is much easier. I started using Basecamp as a way to manage communications. I highly recommend this for anyone managing multiple projects and/or multiple team members.

• I need to get more business in so that I can ‘afford’ to pay someone else to handle things

This is the biggest lie of all. Filling your time with busywork is a sure way to stop your business growth in its tracks. Until you can free up some of your time, your ability to grow your businesses is severely threatened.

If you are thinking something like “well… that sounds great but [insert excuse]” then you are thinking the exact same way I was in my pre-Navarro days. If you are dead serious about growing your business, I highly recommend finding yourself a coach - even if you can only afford a few short hours a week. Dave Navarro and Akemi Gaines are coaches that work specifically with small businesses.

Action Plan: Figure out exactly how much you need to get by and set a cap for your own earnings - then outsource as many tasks as you can that do not require your core competency. As a freelancer or small business owner, it is tempting to think…”well… if I did the entire project myself I could get x - but if I outsourced I would only get a fraction of x.” That’s not thinking that is indicative of growth.

Business Promotion

With my extra time, I took measures to promote my own business more - things that I was too busy to do before freeing up my time. There are many, many ways to promote your business online aside from developing your website and blog. I wrote articles, press releases, created a HubPage, a Squidoo Lens, sent out emails, enhanced my Marketing Kit, promoted my slide show on Slideshare, added some pages to my website, researched new methods of link building.

All of these measures have helped me improve my ranking in the search engines and convert more visitors to customers. I have many more things planned and am thrilled that I am taking measures to free up my time - what was I thinking before?!? The more I’ve put Dave’s advice into practice, the more ridiculous my original excuses seem.

Action Item: Instead of focusing 100% of your efforts on your blog or tweeting on Twitter, write and publish content on multiple sites.

I Heard This Saying: “Are You Playing to Win, Or Playing Not To Lose?”

Whoa. This saying was like a slap in the face. When we achieve a little bit of comfort, we start becoming afraid to lose it, so we stop playing to win and start playing not to lose. We say we want to win, but our actions don’t reflect that. As a result, I’m taking some risks that I was too ‘afraid’ to take before. I’m starting a 50/50 partnership with the wonderful Tara Geissinger, a chick with a self-made mindset and a skill set necessary for creating a business that was playing to win vs. playing not to lose.

Even if you don’t want to partner legally, there is an important psychological event that takes place when your business becomes more than just you. When it’s just you, you can become complacent. There is no one to keep you accountable. If you fail, you’re only hurting yourself. When you partner, there is a much greater responsibility to succeed. If you truly want to succeed and believe you can, why wouldn’t you take this step?

Here were my excuses:

• Partnering with someone means I’ll be sharing 50% of my earnings

True. But if you partner with the right person, you’ll position yourself to bring in more revenue.

• I haven’t found a person I trust to partner with

This is a legitimate excuse. I wouldn’t recommend picking someone out of the blue. Blogging is a great way to meet people. Tara and I casually knew each other before but only started realizing that we had this incredible like-minded kinship after I started blogging. A person’s blog can tell you a lot about them and help you decide if this is someone you want to partner with. Commenting on blogs and sending a blogger ideas for how you could make their business better is a great way to build relationships that could turn into a partnership. Tara originally approached me with ideas - and I’m glad she did.

Action Item: If you are truly committed to ‘winning’ (whatever that means to you) ask yourself at least once during the day - “Are the actions I’m taking indicative of someone who is playing to win, or playing not to lose?” Playing to win typically requires building strategic relationships with others. Keep your eyes open for people you think your skills would be a good match for and contact them with ideas. If you’re a blogger and receive such comments, be open minded to them.

I’ve Been Listening to Steve Chandler Almost Non-Stop

When I read this 78 word blog post on Michael Warner’s Dream Jobs Dialog Blog, I had no idea that it would completely transform my life. I feel like I’ve discovered a gold mine by being introduced to Steve Chandler’s work. How had I never heard of him before? After Reading “17 Lies That Are Holding You Back and the Truth That will Set You Free,” I went to Steve’s site and bought 3 more audios - all equally amazing.

Thanks to Steve’s editor Maurice Bassett, I’ve also received an advance copy of his 10-part audio series “Mindshift” - wow. In all of his work, Steve Chandler talks about how most of us are using our minds ineffectively and thus holding ourselves back from success. Chandler first learned about the power of the mind when doing psychological warfare in the military. He says that in order to change someone’s mind, you must know how the mind operates… and he does.

Action Plan: Get some of Steve’s books and audios! I’d love to hear your a-ha moments after learning from Steve.

What has worked for you?

What actions have you taken recently or in the past that have significantly grown your business? Have you tried anything that didn’t work - oftentimes knowing what didn’t work is just as valuable as knowing what did work! Have you had some a-ha moments that we can all learn from?

Special Thanks

This week I’d like to give a special thanks to Samuel Ryan, the mastermind behind the Wake Up Later blog, for affording me the opportunity to interview on his blog earlier this year. Samuel is “a web designer and developer and admits to having already experienced about a dozen mid-life crises which nearly led him to become a teacher, med student, breakdancer, clarinetist, monk, or nomad. For a great blog that focuses on website building, freelancing, blogging, online entrepreneurship, and free stuff for freelancers, check out Samuel’s blog - Wake Up Later.

Topics: Business Development, Uncategorized | 37 Comments »