Richard writes in with a question: “When can a person tell a blog is just about making money with affiliate sales vs. truly helping a person or business? Sometimes they sound really alike.”

This is a great question. Many bloggers–myself included–run promotions for both our own and other products on a regular basis. Some blogs are heavily promotional, with an affiliate link in nearly every post, whereas other bloggers make their money mostly through advertising and only rarely include affiliate links in their posts.

First, let’s look at things from a blogger’s perspective. Then, I’ll give you a few metrics to help you decide which marketers to follow online. (more…)

oDesk review from a real user. Does oDesk work? I wrote about how to outsource around-the-house tasks earlier, but many of you (including, most recently, Christine) wanted more detail on how to outsource jobs that can be done online.

I’ve definitely had success outsourcing jobs online. In this blog post, I’ll show you which tasks I recommend you outsource, how much you can expect to pay, and where to find good workers. When you’ve read this post, you can immediately take action and start taking some work off your own shoulders. (more…)

If you feel like you’re not getting enough done in your business, but complex systems like “Getting Things Done” feel like too much of a production, I completely understand. Here’s my simple to-do system–an alternative to “Getting Things Done”–that I have been using for years. Try it yourself and you just may notice a sea change in your productivity. (more…)

What if you had a secret mind-reading device that grabbed thoughts out of your potential customers’ heads and told you exactly what they would pay for that you could create?

That would be pretty awesome…wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, such a device doesn’t exist (at least as far as I know!) However, you can get pretty close to reading potential customers’ minds with the two methods I describe below…and if you’re anything like most business owners, you’ve probably never tried either one of these. Use both, and you may just be unstoppable… (more…)

Read this post, and in just 10 minutes, you’ll have created your own survey for your customers or readers! Better yet, you will save hundreds of dollars, as you will likely never pay for an online survey tool again…

It used to be, if you wanted to survey your customers or readers, you would have to pony up some hard-earned dollars for a paid online survey tool. In fact, many of these tools carry a monthly fee, and some don’t easily let you export your data–holding you (and your survey results!) hostage. That is no longer the case. (more…)