Beyond Blogging: The Secrets to Blogging Success

Beyond Blogging: The Secrets to Blogging Success:

As much I enjoy blogging and the encouraging community that comes with it, I have never once sat in deep thought about how I can monetize from this habitual activity. It’s not to say that no one should but this just hasn’t been the case for me. If anything, my photography has been the one to instilled the belief that I can do more with it while blogging being the road to getting me there by networking.

Nevertheless, I still enjoy reading up on how some people have managed to fully establish themselves as online superstars by performing something they would otherwise do for free but instead are making a profit out of it and that’s what this new eBook entitled Beyond Blogging is about.

It’s an eBook that consists of interviews, stories and case studies of 15 A-list bloggers, revealing the strategies and work these people have put into their blogs, effectively making their blogging a solid foundation for profitable business.

I have not personally bought the eBook and still not sure if I would but if I did, the purchase would be driven in wanting to read the case studies of people whose blog I already admire and whose tweets I follow. Of course if money came, I wouldn’t deny it but I’m not personally breaking my heading in trying to make it.

I can think of many more bloggers that should have been included in this list of successful people with John Gruber and Jason Kottke being two of them.

(via Jorge Quinteros)

"Don’t get obsessed with how many friends or fans are following you—the stats are only marginally..."

“Don’t get obsessed with how many friends or fans are following you—the stats are only marginally important. What’s important is the intensity of your community’s engagement and interaction with you. At this point the quality of the conversation is much more revealing than the number of people having it. If your content is making people talk enough so they start to make some noise, I guarantee you’re going to see more people show up to your party.”

- If the content is there, people will come. Gary Vaynerchuk on Crushing It!

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Ian P. Hines on Blog Content

Ian P. Hines on Blog Content:

I’ve shared my personal opinion already about this whole Tumblr Effect that is slowly taking over the blogosphere but Ian nails it on what I think is even more important than just having a blog.

There is nothing inherently wrong with short-form content, except that it cannot be the end-all be-all. Blogs, or tumblelogs, filled only with links, photos, reblogged items, and the like fail to grasp the true potential of blogging: to share who you are as a person with the wider world.

You don’t have to be controversial; you don’t have to be particularly interesting, or thought provoking; you don’t have to be anything at all. What you should do is endeavor to be yourself because your life, inherently, is worth sharing with others.

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Christmas For Me - If you were to ask my grandfather what...

Christmas For Me - If you were to ask my grandfather what Christmas was like back in the days, he would probably begin by narrating how much has changed through the years in comparison to his childhood memories. I’m subjected to his inspiring tales each holiday yet it’s this type of wisdom that brings focus to the fact that this time is about spending moments with the ones you love and the ones who love you.

A lot can happen in a minute let alone a year so reaching the end of the year should be more about counting the number of family members that we still have with us instead of the number of gifts under the tree. Equally, it’s also about showing appreciation for what we have instead of lusting after the things that we want but above all, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate a great gift but it bares more significance when I have the presence of family to share the joy of opening one. I love my family, my friends, my job and the opportunity that this thing called blogging has allowed me to meet some amazing people. I’m thankful for all of that and more.

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"Developing your personal brand is the same thing as living and breathing your résumé every second..."

“Developing your personal brand is the same thing as living and breathing your résumé every second that you’re working. Your latest tweet and comment on Facebook and most recent blog post? That’s your résumé now. That’s how you are going to announce to the world your ideas and opinions and the very things that make you unique.”

- Gary Vaynerchuk on developing yourself by Crushing It!

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Birth of an Avatar - Having seen James Cameron’s Avatar,...

Birth of an Avatar - Having seen James Cameron’s Avatar, Peter Ammentorp couldn’t resist in thinking that he really wanted to have an Avatar of his own. The result is this incredible time-lapse of a couple of hours of fooling around in Photoshop. Amazing work!

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Craig Mod's Photography Rules

Craig Mod's Photography Rules:

Craig Mod sharing his approach on shooting and I personally can’t say I do anything different myself -

• RAW only. JPEG quality is irrelevant because it seems insane to shoot anything but RAW. I’m shooting for documentary and archival purposes, as I think we all should.
• Mainly aperture priority.
• Mostly Auto Focus because things move quickly in real life.
• Everything handheld. Night shots with a tripod.
• No flash. Almost always available light.
• Edit. Edit. Edit. And post-process. I spend tons of time in Lightroom editing and filtering images — trying to find thematic threads — and preforming ‘standard’ darkroom post-processing.

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Passion With Crush It!

At first I wasn’t aware of who Gary Vaynerchuk was until one day the Tumblr Staff proudly announced that he had chosen the platform to power his site.

After a couple of weeks of following his story, watching his videos, appreciating his gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV and admiring his approach to personal branding and business, I then fully understood the “why” and “how” behind his much deserved success and popularity.

The moment I heard he had published a book, I could not have purchased it even faster than through the Kindle and I haven’t put it down since then. Crush It! is an inspirational/business type of read that guides you through the steps of what you can do if you have a passion for something and how to go about to monetize the heck out of it.

The real one ingredient you need is to identify that subject you obsessively care about, so that it functions as a catalyst to inspire you to move from doing something you’re probably doing now and absolutely hate. It’s about tackling that “someday” thought that we all have without ignoring our current responsibilities.

Regardless of the profession, the one common response you’ll get when asking someone who in our eyes are absolutely successful is that they have a passion for what they do. Sounds cliché but if every professional athlete, singer or chef has the same to say, it’s because the statement is accentuated with nothing but truth.

I can’t highly recommend this book enough and if you need a little nudge to convince how great it is, I suggest you give his Web 2.0 Expo talk a view. Until then, I leave you with this encouraging passage from the book:

Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world.

You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing—working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.

Does this sound like you? Are you living, or just earning a living? You spend so much time at work, why waste it doing anything other than what you love most? Life is too short for that. You owe it to yourself to make a massive change for the better, and all you have to do is go online and start using the tools waiting for you there.

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Great Articles With You

A while back Emmet Connolly shared his decision of taking all those unread articles from Instapaper that he had accumulated, how he converted them into a PDF, uploaded it to Lulu.com and ordered a single book to have and enjoy at his leisure. A great addition to the coffe table if you will.

Needless to say, he had a genuine interest in the pieces that got printed and I can admit to having collected a slew of well written articles myself from bloggers that I admire and have had the pleasure of interacting with.

Bookmarking or flagging them on an RSS readers seems like an appropriate way to indicate they signify something to you but having them with you at all times represents an even greater respect to content that drips passion and that by reading them it inspires you to instill the same in your writing.

As a Kindle owner, I’m interested in doing any extensive reading on the device since I carry with me at all times anyway, so lately I’ve been transferring my favorite reads to it by using the wonderful RekindleIT service.

RekindleIT is an exciting new way to read any content on the web on your Amazon Kindle.

Using our simple tools, you can instantly send a web page from your web browser or iPhone for reading on your Amazon Kindle. It’s simple, free, and opens up a whole new world of content for the Kindle.

Setup is painless and by using a friendly bookmarklet, the transfer happens wirelessly for a minimal charge or you can do it manually via USB cable. Either way, just make sure to grab the printer-friendly version of an article.

In no particular order, here’s what I consider a mere sample of the many articles that live in my Kindle:

• The Minimalist Photographer Manifesto by Everett Bogue
• The Creator’s Culture by Kyle Baxter
• The Myth of Talent by Michael Mistretta
• Content Please by Shawn Blanc
• Why You Should Weblog by Rands in Repose
• Living Purposefully by Andy Rutledge
• Write Articles, Not Blog Postings by Jakob Nielsen
• 30 Minutes a Day by Jack Cheng

(via Jorge Quinteros)

"The only difference from a hobby photographer and a professional photographer is one of these people..."

“The only difference from a hobby photographer and a professional photographer is one of these people tells his friends at a party that he sometimes picks up a camera, the other tells his friends that he’s available for hire. A professional pushes himself as a professional, without regard to what came before.”

- Everett Bogue on making the leap from amateur photographer to professional. It’s all in the mindset.

(via Jorge Quinteros)

A Taste of Paris Gallery - Paris was certainly not my first...

A Taste of Paris Gallery - Paris was certainly not my first experience outside of the United States, but as Hemingway once said, if you ever have the opportunity to visit or live there, “then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you” and I can’t agree even more.

To say that there is no city like Paris may be a cliche’, but it’s a profoundly true statement nonetheless. I’ve had the fine pleasure of visiting this spectacular city in two occasions with each stay being completely original from the other.

When I get asked about what it was like, I always start off by saying that “If you don’t appreciate art, history, culture and a lot of walking, then don’t even bother making the trip.”

Paris is not a place that can easily or properly be articulated with words by the common traveler but mostly shared through photographs that successfully convey the visual satisfaction and understanding that leaves with you from your stay.

With great pleasure and though the joy of Flickr Galleries, I gathered some of my favorite Paris images from various photographers that for me best exemplify what this city has to offer. (Photograph by Dario Zampiron)

(via Jorge Quinteros)