I recently received a cool plaque from Izea for my participation as a speaker at IzeaFest! It spurred me to write a post on my first time representing UBD on stage. Enjoy!

I’ve heard that some people would rather die than endure a public speaking engagement. I can identify with that…

Early in 2008, UBD was asked to attend a new conference by the name of IzeaFest. We of course accepted and made plans to exhibit and be a part of the Extreme Blog Makeover panel. I ended up taking the challenge of speaking on behalf of the company, which led to pretty extreme stress, anxiety, and in the end an overwhelmingly satisfying feeling of accomplishment. Kind of an emotional roller coaster you could say.

The goal of this post is to give you insight into what it’s like to take on a public speaking engagement for the first time, and how not to lose your mind in the process.

Initial Reaction and Run-Up Time

When I accepted, I felt a tinge of fear and anxiety. Although I had several months to prepare, I still felt “under the gun.” All kinds of fun stuff ran through my head in regards to how I could miserably fail and tarnish the UBD brand while destroying my own in the process.

Alternatively, I could see the bright light at the end of the tunnel. I had confidence in myself as an expert, and knew that with preparation I could handle the pressure and come out on top.

Here are a few things to consider doing and remembering during the run-up to your engagement:

- Don’t panic.
- You’re the expert.
- Brainstorm, and write down broad ideas that you’d like to delve deeply into.
- People are coming to see YOU.

Preparation

This was rather interesting for me because I had neither spoken publicly before and the nitty-gritty details of the panel had remained a bit of a mystery until the day of the event.

What I did know is that I had about 2 weeks to work on a design for Boating in Beautiful British Columbia. Designing was the easy part, getting the slides and my content up to speed was my hurdle.

I tried to get into the mind of who I thought the audience at the conference would be. Most people that would be interested in what I had to say would be relatively new to blogging, or wouldn’t have a ton of experience on the subject. This was great, because some of the “blog design 101″ is the most crucial and useful information to know. No worries, now! Just need to practice…

How much you prepare for your actual speech is up to you. Rehearse the content and slide transitions until you feel comfortable and won’t be surprised by the content that is up on the screen.

Here are a few things to consider when developing your presentation content:

- Provide advice and content that is useful to your audience (something they could walk out of the room and get going on right away).
- Be confident in your material.
- Make sure the content on your slides is easy to see, and easy to understand. Use macro ideas to help you delve deeper into the concept.

D-Day and Aftermath

I had neither spoken publicly before and the nitty-gritty details of the panel had remained a bit of a mystery until the day of the event. All I knew was that I had to show up a bit before 3PM!

It was at this time that I felt the pinnacle of fear. It wasn’t so bad early in the day, but as the time drew nearer I realized that D-Day had approached and I was about to go into verbal battle with the masses… Maybe it wasn’t that serious, but I was as nervous as I’d ever been.

After all of this run-up and anticipation, it actually went pretty smoothly. I didn’t really choke up at all or get off-point.

My main criticism of myself has to be the abundant “uh” and “um” and “you know” fillers. That being said, for my first PS event it wasn’t too shabby!

As extreme as the nervousness and fear, the relief and feeling of accomplishment afterwards was overwhelming. I felt a huge burden lift from my shoulders, and was ready to go out and have a beer immediately afterwards!

In Conclusion

Getting out there to represent yourself and/or your company can help cement your brand and gain thought leadership in the community you serve.

Hopefully you can take some of my advice and apply it to your own public speaking endevour!

So, as the title inquires, how fast is your internet connection?

Bandwidth is everything.

If I can’t connect and move files, thoughts, money, etc. around quickly I begin to lose my marbles. Have you ever lost a cell phone and gone without it for a day or two? I have that similar feeling when my internet goes down for 30 seconds…

I strongly recommend testing your internet bandwidth for a few reasons:

• You’ll get to see if you’re getting what you’re paying for.
• If your speed is slow, you can consider upgrading to a better service package from your provider.
• If your speed is fast, you can brag to all of your friends and colleagues.
• You can rank your connection against the rest of the world’s population.

Albeit those aren’t the best of reasons to check your speed, if you’re a nerd like me, you’ll be testing your bandwidth daily.

The Test

There are several test providers (speakeasy.net, cnet, speedtest.net, etc.) and they all do a relatively good job of metering your speed. I personally enjoy speedtest.net because of the cool flash interface. Bells and whistles are always a big factor for me when choosing products and services.

I’ll briefly explain speedtest.net to you, being as that is my recommended test provider.

• Simply go to their page, and the flash program will load.
• Next, choose the pyramid that is highlighted in yellow. This is your recommended test server.
• Sit back and monitor your bandwidth!
• Gloat to your friends and family about how fast your connection is. Alternatively, wallow in shame at how inferior your interweb connection is.

That’s it, really. Now go out there and analyze that data, you nerd. ^_^

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!!

If you work in photoshop at all, you’re more than likely familiar with “layers.” Designs can sometimes consist of 100+ layers, all of which contain different elements.

More often than not, other people’s .psd files that I work on haven’t been organized in the slightest. This often leads me to a sharp pain in my forehead and several profane verbs and nouns.

“But wait!”, you say. “You can control+click on anything and the layer will auto-select.” My response…

Here’s a side-by-side of two .psd’s upon opening photoshop:

As you can see, the file on the left has been organized into family groups and each layer has been named. By keeping the groups detailed as pictured it makes changing elements much less tedious for yourself and those who may be using the file in the future. It’s just good manners to organize.

On the right you see a list of non-grouped, unnamed layers . If you can imagine this list of layers extending to ten times this length… each and every one as ambiguous as the next… it becomes incredible tedious and almost like a puzzle game to make the file workable.

In summation:

• Group families of layers.
• Name every layer.
• It makes everyone’s time working with the file much easier.

I know, it’s a tough concept to follow.

Is grouping important to you? I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts.

Finally, a few months ago I finally sat down and began working on my personal blog design which was in need of desperate help. There’s something wrong when you’re a blog designer who uses a free theme for your personal blog… Anyways, I spent an entire weekend working on this design, and it turned out very well. Most of the designs I produce are spec’ed out by our clients, so having free-reign was great.

99% of blogs have white or light backgrounds and dark text (for obvious reasons) but I decided against that. I really enjoy the look and feel of dark backgrounds, so I readily employed the look on this design. Initially, it was just the solid grey of the mid-section, but Nate Whitehill came up with the idea of having a concrete texture to give it a bit of an “urban” feel. Aside from that, colors just kind of flowed and I think I accomplished a good, clean feel for the blog.

Placing pictures at the beginning of posts is a very popular choice, and something I employed on my previous design. For this design, though, I decided to fix the picture element and use custom fields so that it fixes the image into place without me having to edit it within the post. The picture does a good job of visually separating the posts, which is something a lot of blogs have trouble with. Also, I wanted to make each element its own “island. This results in an easy-to-navigate layout with strong visual separation.

Magazine themes are all the rage, nowadays. Landing pages with videos, hordes of posts, ads, etc. are the “normal” for premium design. I wanted to veer away from that for a few reasons:

• I don’t have too many readers yet, so no need for advertising.
• I haven’t written too many posts, so no need for clever content navigation.
• I don’t plan on doing regular podcasts or vlogging.
• I just like the plain layout.

Now, that being said, I do have a few cool things going on here. First of which is the dom-tab element which features my favorite posts, recent comments, and popular posts. Dom-tabs are a great way to consolidate sidebar elements! Sometimes scrolling down for links or content can be a pain in the butt… or maybe I’m just e-lazy.

I’ve also truncated my posts, so you can navigate 3-per-page. Down at the bottom you’ll notice the page navigation tabs. I prefer this style of nav over the traditional “recent posts” element. Can’t say if there is any real benefit, I just like the look. ^_-

The last little bit that I customized was the social bookmarking at the end of posts. Nothing special… but it looks cool. I was getting tired of seeing the Share This or Add This buttons, albeit they do have awesome functionality.

Hopefully you’ll be coming back to check out my views on business, tips and tricks with design, wordpress help, and general ramblings.

Thanks for checking out my new blog design. I’ve left up all of my old posts so read back through for some cool tips and ramblings. Feel free to ask questions in the comments area, I’ll do my best to answer everyone.

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!

1. Write 25 Posts - Judging by my democracy poll, most of my readers appreciate frequent posting. 65% of you are posting 5+ days per week, with 42% of you posting 7+ days per week. What a revelation, huh? It’s no secret that consistent, quality posting is a pillar to successful blogging, so this leaves me with a clear goal of providing that to you.
2. Improve the content of my writing - I had some relatively good posts last month, and it definitely aided in strengthening my reader base.

   Writing basic “make money online” articles is a great way to get new readers to stick, but at the same time I don’t want to disillusion my veteran readers by not stepping up the quality. Along with a few make money online gems, I will go into detail this month not only on how to make money, but how to effectively plan and manage the marketing of your idea.

3. Reach 55 RSS Subscribers - The number of readers that are subscribing to my feed has exceeded my expectations to this point. As I write this, I have 35 RSS subscribers. I am very confident that this goal will be reached within the month.

Goal setting can be precarious if you aren’t careful. Sometimes I see people setting goals that are just plain unreasonable, and they end up failing because of poor planning.

It would have been extremely fanciful of me to set goals like writing 50 posts or achieving 150 RSS subscribers. All of my blog’s data shows that I will not be growing that quickly, and I certainly can’t say that I am planning a massive marketing strategy.

Also, two of the three goals that I have set are under my direct control. Improving my content (although it may be subjective) and writing 25 posts will be achievable only by me, not my readers. In this strategy, I have allowed myself to take control, and ensure success. The bar hasn’t been set at an unattainable height, and the only factor that I can’t directly control is how you, my readers, will react to my posting.

Now, it’s not to be said that setting your goals high is foolish. There are many situations in which you can set your bar high and then leap over it, but in this case I don’t see the value. I would like to keep on the trend of steady, loyal subscriber-ship, and growth.

How do you go about logically setting goals? Do you use logic and strategy or are you setting arbitrary goals that leave your success up to chance?

Success
1. Encourage Personal Networking and Link Building - I have spent WAY too much time on MyBlogLog this last month. MyBlogLog is a great networking site that can lead you to hundreds, if not thousands of blogs in your niche. I am calling it a success because I have met a lot of people online this last month, and have improved my traffic directly from networking. As far as link building goes, I didn’t do any link-exchanges or paid links. I can still call it a success because of how many trackbacks that am receiving on my posts though.

Success

2. Improve the Quality of My Posts - Being as this is subjective, I can’t really gauge the success of this from my own opinion. What I can do, though, is use the number of comments on my posts and the direct feedback I’ve gotten to gauge how my readers are responding to the content. I have had several posts climb above ten comments, and one is at 16! For a blog that is as new as mine, reaching those numbers can be considered a success. A few posts this month (Adsense Arbitrage, Wordpress Themes, and Bootstrapping) got some great feedback and a lot of trackbacks.

Success

3. Reach 30 RSS Subscribers - Short and Sweet. I accomplished this on the LAST day. I officially had 30 RSS readers on the 31st of August. Let’s take a look at the RSS graph to see the progression.

Failure

4. Make Improvements to the Design of the Blog - I didn’t take the time to take on any designing for the blog this month. Even though it is a failure here on the blog, the time that would have been used to design my own blog was put to good use elsewhere. Unique Blog Designs launched late last month, and I have been busy doing design work for other bloggers.

All in all, August was a pretty successful month here at the blog. I would like to thank everyone who has subscribed or is just reading the blog, it makes my time worth it to have you all here. I will be setting a new group of goals for the blog tomorrow, so stay tuned.