The whole UBD team went, and it was a great opportunity to meet a lot of folks in the blogging world and expose the UBD brand. We networked with a slew of elite bloggers, business owners and managers, and new clients. On top of that, we were able to listen to some great speakers and learn cutting edge techniques for success. Blog World was a total win for UBD.

This year, we’ll be attending another convention in addition to Blog World…

From what it looks like, these guys know how to have a good time!

Headed by Ted Murphy, Izea is a social media powerhouse. They are well known within the industry and offer great products and services to bloggers. Check out a full list of their blogging services.

This conference is going to be all about making bloggers more successful. UBD seems like a natural fit to attend because our goal has always been to help serious bloggers take their game to the next level.

I’ll be there, speaking on the blog design makeover panel. My goal is to help attendees avoid the banality of mainstream blog design! Overshadowing my wimpy online presence, speakers by the likes of John Chow, Shoemoney, Neil Patel, Merlin Mann, and many other ridiculously qualified individuals.

All in all, this should be an awesome conference. Oh ya… I forgot to mention…

The day after the conference, everyone will be heading to Universal Studios Orlando! Like I said, Ted Murphy and clan know how to have fun. Hope you see you all there!!

Short-Term

This part of the story starts out very slowly for most. Being a new blogger is tough.This is just something that you will have to come to terms with. With small amounts of traffic and not many connections, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle.

If you are thinking that you can make a solid income from your blog within 6 months, you have fallen prey to fanciful thinking. DISCLAIMER: It has been done, but don’t bet your blog on it.

There are a lot of people that choose to make the fast dollar and decide to employ CPC accounts and private advertising right out of the gate. Would I recommend it? No, to be honest. Unless you are receiving hundreds of visitors daily, avoid cpc advertising. John Chow is making less than 1k/month with adsense from his blog, so I wouldn’t recommend that you attempt to support yourself from a single advertising income stream.

The main short-term goal of anyone who is looking to make money online and runs a personal blog should be to build you brand NOW, to reap the benefits LATER. Your brand needs to be nurtured and grown to be effective when you would like to harvest your market influence. Don’t confuse yourself by setting a short-term goal of blog income.

Credibility Counts

In fact, as I’ve said in the past, credibility counts. When you’re starting your blogging journey, it’s less important to earn profit than it is to build a loyal readership. Period.

What kind of brand are you projecting, when you are new to the blogosphere and you’re already trying to push products and advertising on people? Where is the fine line between a useful, credible blog and an advertising landing page? Longevity, quality content, loyal readers… they will draw the line for you.

Long-Term

This is the strong argument as to why the penniless hours spent initially on your blog are very worth it. If you have set yourself up a strong brand that has widespread authority within your niche… you’re “sittin’ pretty” to say the least.

BRANDING, BRANDING, BRANDING! This phrase should be ringing in your head when you are setting long term profiteering goals. How will my brand (short-term goal) affect my ability to monetize my blog (long-term goal)?

Imagine you are six months and 1000 RSS subscribers into the future. Ask yourself these questions:

• At this point, can I decree to my readership that this product or advertisement that I am peddling is within my world-view and brand?
• What kind of products and services can I provide to my readers/advocates?
• How can I leverage all of this penniless time and branding in my favor?

As the floodgates of profiteering open at this point, how you best take hold of the opportunity rides solely on your ability to bring your brand, your readers, and a great product or advertising opportunity together.

Best of luck and may you persevere. ^_^

In general, these static activities are going to have little-to-no benefit to you directly generating profits. You will be going nowhere in a hurry with most of these activities, so lets take a look at the good stuff. Profiting tasks may include:

When you are profitable, you are doing what you set out to do as an entrepreneur; make money. The more time you spend being profitable, you will be able to spend less time working hard, and your profits will hopefully soar. So I have to ask you, how are you spending your time?

It has been a personal goal of mine to increase my profitable time to the point that it encompasses most of my work days. Well it has come to fruition, to say the least. I have been extremely busy ever since the launch of Unique Blog Designs.

Unfortunately, my blog has fallen into the static time category lately. I am not monetizing my blog yet because I don’t want to seem disingenuous by spamming you with ads, so therefore it is a branding tool that can at most be used to promote UBD.

Excuses, excuses… so what’s the point of this post?

I can’t reiterate enough how important it is to maximize your profitable time. There are so many distractions to choose from, and if you aren’t careful in how you choose to allocate your time you will fall victim to dry income streams.

Forcing myself to take a step back from the blog and refocus my daily goals on UBD has been a monumental step in my entrepreneurial career. The business is BOOMING with clients and we have begun hiring designers and coders to take on the workload. Speaking of hiring…

If you are a competent designer and/or coder that has experience in wordpress, PLEASE shoot me an email.

How are you spending your time?

I have to pose this question again, and I am more interested this time because my readership has grown significantly. Are you standing still? Has static time wasting become habitual, or are you the type of person who is focused on really succeeding and making money online? I hope you are the latter!

We are truly bootstrapping this business as of right now. When you are in this situation, cramming yourself into a room with a bunch of equipment is the best option… at least if you want the best possible margins. Pain before pleasure can sum up the idea behind this setup. Right across the room, you can see a familiar character…

We have four computers in the room, three of which (the macbook pros and macbook) run constantly. The only time I turn on my windows xp machine is when we are testing code in internet explorer… which is no fun.

Although offices aren’t too expensive around here, we see no need to add such a cost.

Aside from showing you our bootstrapped apartment office, there isn’t much to say. How does your office look? Are you in a startup that runs on a tight budget?

Relate

Let’s say that you are a baseball player. You are up to bat in the world-series and it is bottom of the ninth inning. You are down two strikes, and you have to drive in the runner on third to keep your team in the game. You’re nervous, and it is causing you to sweat profusely.

The pitcher winds up and throws a fast-ball right down the middle of the strike zone. You are ready for this and it couldn’t be an easier pitch. You wind up and take a monstrous swing. As you come around on the ball and are inches from hitting one out of the park, the bat takes flight out of your hands and begins to sail 40 feet in the air like a stray javelin.

How could this have happened? Well, batting gloves and gripping devices haven’t been invented yet. Somehow, it hasn’t occured to you that a heavy, wooden bat can easily fly out of your hands when you are sweating like a madman.

Instantly, 50% of the crowd understands the problem… and only a few are willing to take action to do something about it. If only you had something to help you grip the bat, you would have hit the ball and won the game!

You can now relate the fact that a bat slipping out of someone’s hands is a problem, and a direct relation to how sticky the grip surface is. There is the problem… but what is the solution?

Innovate

It has occurred to you that if you had something to help you grip the bat, the game could have gone in a different direction. You go home from the game understanding that something must be done. Someone has to come up with a good solution to the grip issue.

You start to think of things that are sticky that could be applied to the surface of the bat. Glue, tape, etc. could all be useable options. You start to think of things that could even go onto the batter’s hands… maybe some sticky gloves?

Now that you have thought over the problem, and have come up with some great ideas and innovations to improve the performance of a baseball bat, you can start creating your idea.

Create

This is by far the hardest part of the product process. You must now draw upon all of your knowledge and creative abilities to come up with the best solution to this problem. Dig deep into your contacts and resources to find out how realistic your idea is.

Is your idea the type that would require a mound of investment to produce a prototype, or is it something that you can create for yourself? Now that you have your grand solution that could take its market by storm, check a few of these must-haves off of your list:

• Does the product relate to the market’s world-view? If yes, check!
• Seth Godin 101: Is it remarkable? Not just… different? If yes, check!
• Does your product provide value to consumers? If yes, check!
• Would it support a sustainable, scalable, profitable business? If yes, check!

You might want to ask yourself some of these questions as well:

• Would I be the sole principal in the business?
• Am I researched, dedicated, and motivated enough to quit my day-job to spend all of my time on the product?

The creation part of the series is by far the longest and most rewarding. If your product is properly implemented, and brought to market, you will reap the rewards.

When you start new products, make sure that you Relate, Innovate, and Create.

The cast is divided into seven parts on youtube, so here are the links:

• John Reese and ShoeMoney pt.2
• John Reese and ShoeMoney pt.3
• John Reese and ShoeMoney pt.4
• John Reese and ShoeMoney pt.5
• John Reese and ShoeMoney pt.6
• John Reese and ShoeMoney pt.7

You are looking at a little over an hour’s worth of learning. Enjoy!

There has been some buzz going around about the BlogWorld Expo coming up in November. I figured that I would add to it and give you five reasons to show up!

1. Networking

At an expo like BlogWorld, you can expect to find some of the leaders in blogging, some of the stragglers, and a lot of people in-between. This presents great opportunity for anyone looking to network. You will be able to get your face out there and actually talk to people that might be reading your blog, which is a very powerful tool when building long-lasting relationships. You can meet Nate, Josh, and I there, for sure!

2. Seminars
Experts in blogging will be presenting on topics that are not only interesting, but potentially profitable. Here is a list of some seminars that will be available:

• Future Business: Online Tactics & Strategies
• Building Your On-line Reputation
• Good to Great: Blogging & Profit Potential
• The Long Tail … Or Not?
• Making a Living Podcasting
• Social Media vs. Corporate Blogging
• How On-line Conversations Change Markets
• Badges, Widgets, Plugins & Gizmos, Oh My!
• The Psychology of Blogging
• Syndicating Your Blog for Profit
• Profiting from Podcasts
• Keeping Your Blog Out of Court
• Maximizing the Benefits of Small Business Blogs
• On Writing Well
• Bloggers for Hire / Hiring Bloggers
• Making Money with Affiliate Programs
• Podcasting as Marketing

3. Market Yourself
If you are branding a product that is aimed at bloggers… talk about target marketing! Events like this could be your opportunity to make a splash and start the ripple effect that could take your brand to the next level of market penetration. You can either rent out a booth or do some door-to-door type selling… I would do the former.

4. The Leading Edge of Blogging
You will be previewed to most corners of the blogospere. There is a real opportunity to get ahead and prepare yourself and your blog for the next evolutions and add-ons to blogging

The BlogWorld exhibit floor will provide an extensive selection of products and services for the experienced and first-time blogger alike. Companies will include publishing platforms, design companies, web/blog/podcast hosting companies, aggregators, add-on services, plug-ins, widgets, computer hardware & software, wireless services, podcasting products, wireless & high speed ISPs, VOIP companies, on-line advertising networks, news readers, RSS/syndication services, search engines, consulting companies, affiliate program partners, new media products and services … and many more.

5. It’s Vegas

If I’m not making a strong enough argument with the blog-related reasons for attending, come to the Expo because it is VEGAS. I have personally never been, but if you’re like me, you’ve been told many times that Vegas is one of the coolest cities to be in! Although I don’t recommend you spend your time gambling and getting tipsy, if you can’t resist, you can always go crazy and have one of those “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” type trips. ^_-

I hope to see you all at BlogWorld. You can sign up through the link(affiliate) on the sidebar.

You must face reality and begin your role as a project manager. Your business must become a well-oiled machine that can plow through a mapped process. Would you ever think of getting on a plane that has no flight-plan, no destination, no gauges or controls? Why on earth would you attempt to start a business without a detailed plan, set of distinct goals, and the right people to take the charge? You wouldn’t do something like that, you’re too smart. You realize that bumps in the road are inevitable. You know that sometimes roads are shut down for repair, and you are forced to take an alternate route.

Most breakdowns inside of a business are due to flawed process and flow. If you don’t have a set system in place to handle the little things, how will you handle, and react, to a real threat to your business? My first piece of advice is to pick up some process mapping software (don’t be afraid to click the link, it’s not affiliate) at iGrafx or you can google it. Begin systematizing your daily tasks, and charting your projects. A quick list of reasons you will want to use this type of software (or if you’re nuts do it by hand):

• You will achieve optimum productivity and proficiency.
• A visual breakdown can make it easier to gain perspective.
• It will enable you to benchmark performance.
• Completed project maps and systems can aide in creating and updating your business plan.

If you are involved in a start-up, make sure that you are organized, planned, and prepared. This is just one more tool to make it all easier, so you can work harder with less effort. A goal of any business should be to maximize efficiency and output.

Do you use any form of process mapping at your business? If so, how well is it working for you?

We have all heard the phrase, “time is money” before . Once again, a cliche blurb not only happens to be true, but an extremely powerful concept in itself. Take a second to analyze your daily routine. Try to look at each individual activity throughout your day as either static, or profiting. Here are some things that you would consider a static activity:

• junk email (any email that isn’t directly related to you making profits)
• junk phone calls
• chatting with friends
• web surfing
• blogging (unless you are marketing and profiting with it)

In general, these static activities are going to have little-to-no benefit to you directly generating profits. You will be going nowhere in a hurry with most of these activities, so lets take a look at the good stuff. Profiting tasks may include:

• developing a new product
• streamlining you and your business financially
• marketing your business
• building profitable relationships

When you are profitable, you are doing what you set out to do as an entrepreneur; make money. The more time you spend being profitable, you will be able to spend less time working hard, and your profits will hopefully soar. So I have to ask you, how are you spending your time?