Excellent blog post (with a killer slideshare embedded) on Windmill Networking.  This was written by Kristi Hines: Composing a Successful Blog Post

I’ve been blogging for about 7 years, almost daily (less weekends and holidays), and have seen the rise and “fall” of blogging.  The “fall” came when a lot of the conversation went social… comments happened on Facebook or Twitter… this was supposed to be the death of blogging.

Blogging is far from dead or irrelevant.

There are a number of reasons to blog.  I have told tens of thousands of people that blogging is a critical part of an online strategy.  But it is hard.  It takes long-term commitment.  But it is a crucial part of my strategy.

ONE reason is because I can refer back to great blog posts from years ago.  I can’t refer back to tweets (not easy to find), or Facebook or LinkedIn wall posts, Group Discussions, etc.  I love being able to have an easy-to-access archive that I can refer back to.  I’ve tapped into this by creating the Favorite Friday series on JibberJobber, which kind of brings old posts to my current audience.

Anyway, blog!  And read Kristi’s post.

I am cleaning up my old email and came across this page, which is pretty relevant to me right now since I’m getting really close to releasing 51 Alternatives to a Real Job (and have already taken pre-orders).

Rob Kelly’s Thrive book page.  I love it.

If you want to start a gig just to “pay the bills” and be able to quit your day job, go for it.

I think you can do it.

If you don’t think your gig can become huge, read this post, written by James Altucher: How To Go From $0 To $1,000,000 In Two Years

That is an awesome story.

This is a really interesting post on how to get more business.

For years I’ve been asked if JibberJobber has an affiliate program (aka, a referral fee for people who refer JibberJobber to their network).  The answer is NO.  While affiliate programs were very popular five to ten years ago.

I started with an affiliate program but found it was just not appropriate for our model.  One reason is that most people who asked would refer less than 50 people a year, and the percentage that would actually signup, use it, and then upgrade (for $9.95/month) was very low.  It wasn’t worth it for anyone.

Kent is a professional service provider (executive coach).  If I refer one person to him, that could be worth hundreds and easily thousands.  There is a lot more money to share in that scenario.

But Kent’s post, Why I don’t want a referral fee, goes to another level.

Let’s say you give me a referral and I give you $100.  How was that?  Are you fulfilled?

If you are giving a referral so you can increase your income, $100 isn’t very much.  If you consistently get $100 a day that is interesting, but if you get $100 a year, it is barely fun money.

Kent’s blog post starts out “My business is built on referrals.”  Why, then, doesn’t he pay for referrals?

Another line says: “a (referral) fee would deter me from giving referrals to you.”

WHY?

Read his post to find out what’s more valuable than a referral fee.

I LOVE Tim’s blog posts like this… it’s like a formula to go from zero to “successful.”  While you  may not be positioned to write a book, or pitch it, or get an advance, you can learn a lot from this long guest post.

With that, I’ll let you go over there now.  It’s a long post, but it’s worth it. I need to print all of the posts like this on Tim’s blog and study them!

How a First-Time Author Got a 7-Figure Book Deal

I just read an interview by Liz, who I know and have interacted with a number of times.  Liz is one of those special ladies you wish you could work with in your life.  She’s awesome.

The interview is great, and it shows some of the reality of being an entrepreneur.  Here’s one of my favorite sentences:

“As an entrepreneur, one day you think you own the world and the next day you’re losing your house.”

Can you imagine building something awesome, only to have something catastrophic yank it away.

Liz is still in control, and she will always be awesome.

I got an email from Joan Stewart about the Social Media Image Maker and thought “I use snagit from techsmith… they are the bomb.”

Yes, they are the bomb.  If I get a new computer it’s one of the first apps to go on the computer.

But the Social Media Image Maker is different.  Totally useful and awesome.  Here’s Joan’s post about it.

It helps you create the perfectly cropped image for many social sites you might be on.

I’ve heard the Email is Dead argument a bit from young people.

They say that email is for old folks… GenX and beyond.  My heavens, they don’t want to be bothered with having to check their email.

Why can’t people get on the texting bandwagon?  Life would be so much better and more efficient, right?  LOL (if you are old, that is text language for laughing out loud, which means it’s funny)

I don’t think email is going to die anytime soon.  I think those young kids who think email is for the birds will get on email when they get a real job.

When their boss sends them an email (and not a text), guess what?  They’ll check email.

It will become important to them.

When a prospect or customer communicates with them via email, guess what will all the sudden become important, and not-dead-anytime-soon?

Yup.  Email.

For an excellent post on this, check out what Dave Girouard has to say: In Defense of Email

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen… I actually finished the unabridged Les Mis in January… but I saw the new movie right after Christmas (I was about 250 pages away from finishing the book).

To be honest, I didn’t like the movie because there was so much missing!  I know everyone on Facebook loved it but oh well.  What can you do in 2+ hours (compared to a 1,400 page book), right?

Here’s the funny stuff:

Les Miserables review by Sam Richardson….Went to the movies with my wife.  We saw this obscure movie I had never heard of, some French foreign film.  They must have been giving away free tickets because the lines were out the door.  Anyway, the moview starts and Wolverine is singing his guts out.  Then Catwoman starts crying and singing, and it’s all very moving.  The only problem was, the girl next to me, who had apparently read the book or something, starts singing along.  It was very distracting.  So Wolverine is on the run from the Gladiator because Catwoman had a baby at Borat’s house, but now she wants Wolverine to care for her.  Time Skip. A bunch of kids get shot, and in the end everyone dies.  Four stars.

ROFL.

I do a lot of webinars, teleseminars and video recordings.  Here are some tips on how I prepare.

• Go potty.  You don’t want to be on a 1 hour call and have your bladder screaming at you.  Maybe you *can* hold it, but do you want to concentrate, answer questions, and sound awesome while having that distraction?
• Have water.  I have a big cup of water, full.  I’ve done a few calls and didn’t get my cup filled… never a good idea.  A coughing fit doesn’t sound very well…
• Have the right headset.  I use GoToWebinar and Skype mostly (I use all kinds of systems but those are my favorites), and 99+% of the time I use VOIP, which means a headset, not a phone line.  The most important part of my headset?  The inline mute button, which allows me to to mute by pushing a button that is about 2 feet down the cord.  And, the “right” headset doesn’t mean expensive.  My favorites are about $30.
• Write down the phone number on a piece of paper. If your internet goes down, and your smart phone loses service, you want to be able to pick up a landline and call in… but you need that number!  I write down the number, the code to get in, and even the number of the host/hostess.
• Have a backup computer/laptop?  I have been doing this for over a year.  Look, my webinars are worth a lot of money to me.  Whether it is thousands of dollars, or potential to make sales or share my brand, if someone schedules their time on my call, I want to make sure my main computer isn’t the cause of an early termination. I have a laptop and headset set up so that if my PC crashes, within 5 seconds I’m up on the backup laptop.  The alternative (which has happened too many times) is my PC restarts and it takes seven to ten minutes to get back to the call.  Those seven minutes are KILLER.
• Write down the talking points.  I speak on different things, and most presentations are different from the others (even if it is the same topic).  I always write down the talking points to make sure I talk about every point the audience thinks I’m going to talk about.  No matter how smart you are, your brain will go in a lot of different directions, especially if the audience can ask questions during the call.  Write down your points and respect your audience by talking about the stuff you said you were going to talk about.
• Respect TIME.  I typically start within 60 seconds of the time I said I would, and I do what I can to end on time.  Don’t go longer, don’t do part and tell people you’ll do another part later.  Respect the audience and watch the clock.
• Be ready for the unexpected.  If someone else is co-presenting and their line dies, what do you do?  Can you talk through it?  What if you get the hiccups?  What about a bloody nose?  What if there is unusual and loud noise by your office?  I’ve had these and more… you need to be ready and able to ignore, or talk through, the unexpected.  FOCUS on your audience and your presentation.
• ???

What would you add to this list?  How do you prepare, or what have you seen other presenters do that is awesome?