How to Improve Your Blogging Quickly and Drastically

If you’re really serious about improving your blogging skills, try what I just did: publish a post every day for one month. Monday through Friday is fine.

Here are few improvements you’ll be sure to make:

Your writing will get better

Much better, in fact. Having the discipline to write and publish everyday is just like exercise: you eventually get into shape. You start sounding more relaxed and the act of writing doesn’t hurt so much.

The first week is especially tough, I will admit. It’s painful to force yourself to do something that can feel so uncomfortable and strained. Getting past the second week is pretty rough, too. [Read more...]

Do You Struggle with Your Passion to Succeed?

One of the hardest things in the world is to get paid very well for something you absolutely love to do. Wouldn’t you agree?

The quest for success begins with passion. Somewhere along the way we realize there’s a system we need to follow to bring that passion to market.

Getting the passion and the system to run smoothly together is where many people fail. They either abandon their passion and embrace the system (and become a drone), or they cling to their passion so much that the system gets rejected (think starving artist or angry revolutionary). [Read more...]

Will Readers Embrace the Vook?

Vook logo / review of Vook / http://vook.comVook offers an enhanced, alternative reading experience by publishing books combined with videos into desktop and iPhone applications called Vooks.

Sounds simple enough, but what do readers think?

So far I’ve downloaded two Vooks and I’m mostly impressed with what I see. There are a few areas for growth, which I’ll get into. First, the good stuff:

What strikes me about a Vook is its downright remedial simplicity: a story in text complimented with video. We’ve been doing this for years with blogs, but never have we seen it constrained and packaged into linear book format. [Read more...]

Linchpin Book Review: The Pursuit of Indispensable

Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin, gets right to the heart of the matter with this question: Are You Indispensable?

The essence is this: Within each of us is a brilliant and generous artist, but fear and social conditioning stops us from realizing it. Linchpin challenges us to identify and overcome this resistance by pursuing the virtue of being indispensable.

Rather than serving as yet another guidebook on how-to-succeed-in-life-and-business, Linchpin constantly strives to empathize. Seth’s quirky, potent style serves as the catalyst that urges us to rethink our daily slouching and self-distractions.

I found myself relieved to know that I’m not the only one who’s deeply frustrated by: [Read more...]

Can You Afford the Price of Free?

fruitsThe Age of Free has officially arrived, according to Chris Anderson’s new book Free, which went public earlier this week. Now is the time when giving away content across digital mediums turns out to be a cheap  and effective way to attract attention (near-zero costs to reproduce and broadcast + everyone loves free).

A debate has begun over Free, which roughly goes like this: Malcolm Gladwell disagrees with ChrisSeth Godin disagrees with Malcolm, and Chris defends his position against Malcolm. Then everyone else chimes in with their opinions, and so on.

It’s no doubt a worthy argument, but let’s skip it for now. [Read more...]