An Offline Tactic for Online Business

It's funny how many good ideas are all around us, if you keep your eyes open. I was recently doing some work on the house, taking care of some summertime projects and such. While looking around on the Lowe's website (that's a hardware store for those of you not in the US), I noticed they had a really cool content idea that could be used in plenty of other businesses too. Here's what I found.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Blog Carnival Basics - Why Not Using This Strategy is a Competitive Weakness

I recently posted an article about getting the most from your blog carnival submissions and I was surprised to find out through many of the comments that quite a few folks hadn't heard of blog carnivals. That being the case, here's a little primer on what blog carnivals are and how you can use them to get traffic and backlinks to your blog. Read more

Popularity: 8% [?]

What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?

I was re-reading a book I picked up a few years ago and thought I'd share it with you here. The title of the book is "Who Moved My Cheese". It's a bit difficult to explain briefly, but it's basically about dealing with change in life. It's a much better book than that description makes it sound and I highly suggest you pick up a copy. It's pretty short and even has large print, so you can get through it in a couple of sittings at most.

As the story unfolds, one of the characters realizes that he's really just plagued by fear of the changes going on around him, to the point of being paralyzed and doing nothing. Then he asks himself the question that I used as the title for this blog post. So with that in mind…

What Would YOU Do If You Weren't Afraid?

I think all of us entrepreneurs have fears crop up from time to time. I even spoke to a very successful family friend with her own consulting business of 20+ years who said she still has doubts from time to time. So certainly, those of us on the front end of this journey have fears and doubts sometimes.

But that question is a pretty compelling one to think about. If you've been learning about online business for a little while, you probably know most of what you need to know to be successful. There may be some technical skills you could get better at, better copywriting or other things. But for the most part, there's not all that much to understand. And quite honestly, you'll never know it all…it's a continuous learning process. So most of the time, lack of success can probably be boiled down to fear.

You might not even think you're afraid. I know because that's how I am. Instead, the fear may be masking itself as confusion, too many choices, not enough time, or some other excuse. But if you think about it, most of those are just forms of fear - fear that you'll choose the wrong market, the wrong product, that no one will buy it, that it'll take too long to make and so on.

But put all that aside and just ask yourself what you would do if you weren't afraid.

You'd probably go ahead and create that product, put those videos on YouTube, start that blog and get your articles posted, start promoting your affiliate program, or whatever else is eating at you…right? Especially if you already saw those things working for someone else.

If you're tring to figure out what to do (or what to do next), thinking through the answer to this question might be a worthwhile exercise to go through.

I also suggest getting a copy of this book. It's on my list of books to go back through at least once a year. There are a lot of great little lessons packed in to a fun and easy-to-read story.

Popularity: 7% [?]