Recently, thanks to a free, hosted blogging platform, I was able to profit $4,000 on a home flip.  The “blogosphere” can open up entirely new worlds to InfoPreneurs who learn to exploit it like mad men (& women, of course).

In this example, the seller of a property (who lived over 200 miles away) found me through my blog.  We struck a deal, I found a buyer, and profits were borne from a stupid, free blog.  Get your name out there in your niche.  Good things can happen!

If you like, please Retweet, Dig or Stumble.  Making it Happen!

Brandon Yeager

Mars

I always want to create something incredible, something that blows people away – in the most beautiful sense possible. Like a creative blast that illuminates a stellar night.

More often than not, I fail miserably.

Back in the days, I would have kicked myself in the nuts for that failure, but not anymore.

Because nowadays, I check on my favorite mavericks, and I remember what made them successful in the first place.

You know what it is, but you’re not doing it.

Why some people produce awesome stuff

How come some people write that kick-ass blog post, while other drown in their own oblivion ?

Talent ? Maybe. But I think it’s something else, something every single human spirit can do, nooo, MUST do.

Tim Burton, one of my super-dupa favorite directors, is famous for many awe-some movies. If you look at his biography, you’ll be amazed by how many projects he couldn’t get off the ground.

For every cool movie he created, he worked on three that never saw the green light.

Valuable lesson.

Everytime someone arrives with a kick-ass idea, one that blows you a-w-a-y, it’s not because he’s been touched by the spirit of genius. No, this poor person worked day and sweat, and probably came up with THOUSANDS of bad and worthless ideas. You didn’t see them – they’re forever hidden in the depths of oblivion. You only see that one idea that reaches the surface.

So how do YOU come up with great stuff ? Will your next work be mind-blowing ?

Probably not.

But your 20th 30th or 40th try will be.

Make it a conscious effort to create something imperfect everyday:

Set your intention (create something remarkable )
And immediately start working. Don’t worry – it won’t be remarkable. Just make the work as best as you can. Learn from it.

Finish, and start the next work, while keeping your intention (create something remarkable)
Learn from your mistakes, rinse and repeat.

Ship ship ship, and adjust your attitude with every new work, while keeping your focus on creating amazing stuff.

I promise you – sooner or later, you will find your gem, and you will expand your consciouss a whole lever further in the process. Your creativity reached a new level, and the next amazing work will be easier to do.

Happy failing !

And what do you think ?

Mars Dorian is a child of the internet and in mad love with creative branding. If you want to create a kick-ass brand, make your blog stand out and simply rock the online galaxy with your essence,  go check out his website marsdorian.com and grab his RSS feed today !

OK if you’re using a self hosted WordPress you may have come up against a problem when uploading a fairly large file. I hit this very problem recently when trying to upload some exclusive videos for my email members (sign up to get instant FREE access), every time I tried to upload my new video I would get the error message of;

File Too Large Max File Size 8m

Now this is a massive problem, not only for hosting your own videos but could potentially cause problems if you want to restore a farily large backup. After a lot of searching and mistakes I finally managed to find out how to increase my file size;

1, Log into your CPanel of your host provider (GoDaddy, HostGator etc)

2, Go to the root directory of your domain in your file manager.

3, Open the WP-Admin folder in your directory.

4, Scroll Down in the WP-Admin folder till you find a file called php.ini

5, Now the next part is not scary at all, click the php file and you should have an option to open with code editor.

6, Once the code editor has opened the php file you need to find the text that says; Memory Limit;

7, It will have an 8m or something equally low as a default, you can increase this amount to what ever you want as long as you stay within your host providers boundaries. 200MB will be more than enough for most things.

8, Click save and try to upload your file again.

9, This was all I had to do, every host provider cpanel is different, but one thing to make sure is make sure your php file is in the same folder as your media upload file, which in my case it was.

Now you can upload bigger files, easy.

What does everyone think?

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This is a really quick fix if you find your commentluv link doesn’t show when you comment. Now this will hopefully solve any issues you have if your website latest link isn’t showing up, but it’s a seriously quick fix. Below is a screen grab of the traditional problem, commentluv box is ticked and my domain name is in the website field, but no link;

This will be a pretty common occurrence for those who comment on sites that have the commentluv plugin installed, but there link doesn’t show despite the box being ticked.

All you have to do to fix the problem in the majority of cases is add the http:// before your domain name, so it’s as it is in your browser.

Now you can see that adding the http:// before my website name allows commentluv to show my link easily. One thing I have found is to un-tick commentluv box and re-tick it after I have added the http://

As I said this should fix the no link issue in the majority of cases.

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This is a quick how to, type post on how to change the links you leave when using CommentLuv, now this has various advantages but first let’s just address what commentluv is for those who haven’t used it yet. Commentluv is probably the most important website plugin in use today. It allows your visitors who comment on your site to leave a link back to their latest post or article, very clean and encourages more comments on your site, see screen grab below;

So now you know what CommentLuv is, now the important bit, why change your link you leave behind? There are various reasons and situations I do this, I talk about this in the 20/7 rule coming out soon, but the essentials are;

• Guest Posts

When I guest post on a site or a site has done a case study of this site and they use the commentluv plugin I will comment just as often as I do on this site to maximise my exposure, now you could use the same commentluv link on every post, but if you reply say 20+ times on that post you are limiting your post title advertising by only leaving one link instead of mixing it up.

• Net

By mixing your links up you are casting a wider net, some people won’t be interested in the title of some of your posts it’s just a simple fact, so if you change your links round you will have a better chance of actually appealing to more people. The other thing about using different links in the same place or different places around the internet is you can heavily promote a post or article even if it’s not your latest., for example if you are running a post in which you hope to get more sign ups etc then choosing the different link will allow you to keep promoting that one post whilst updating your site with fresh content.

• How

OK first things first register with commentluv, it’s free and gives you a lot of options including help when you get bad ju juj warning, more on this to come. OK so once you have registered go to your site or another site that has commentluv plugin enabled and click the tick box to show your commentluv link to be displayed, see below;

This is the single biggest mistake of people not leaving a commentluv link behind, sometimes it is already ticked and when the comment is submitted the link doesn’t appear, to avoid this un-tick it then tick it again before submitting your comment. Now if this doesn’t work the chances are the site you’re visiting hasn’t got commentluv configured properly.

Once the commentluv box is ticked, it should show your last post, again register with commentluv to actually speed the process up, more on this below. With the box ticked you will see the last post appear, now to change that link, click the little down arrow (which can easily be missed) to display more options and it will look like the screen grab below;

All you have to do now is choose the feed you want to use out of the last ten options, which for this site is roughly the last 4 or 5 days worth of content, which is seriously handy. Just click which link you want to appear and it will then look like this;

So there you have it, really easy and a powerful tool to drive traffic to your site by using different links. The cache notice at the bottom of the ten link options shows when it will be refreshed, registering speeds up this refresh which is basically a method used by CommentLuv to ease the pressure on their servers.

What does everyone think?

Helpful?

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OK this is a really quick how to type post on how to add videos to wordpress, but first I just want to talk about why adding videos to your site is so important. This is social media and while some love the written post, some love even obsessed with online video and that’s why you need to pay attention.

Adding video to your site is a seriously smart move, it can massively help create another angle to your site and content, now I’m not saying you should go totally video but by incorporating both written and video content you really are becoming the complete package.

So was this helpful?

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I was sat in Starbucks this morning and whilst writing some plans for this site and the book I took a few minutes to look around the shop. Being in the middle of London it naturally had a diverse mixture of people and it got me thinking about the different type of person that visits this site and how I can cater for all their needs.

I know there are tons of different personalities that visit this site and it’s going to be almost impossible to cater for them all, but you can have a bloody good go, so here’s how I try and make sure there is food for all types of people;

• Bookworm

You know the type I’m talking about, whilst I was sitting in Starbucks I noticed two people reading books in the comfy chairs totally engrossed in their book occasionally taking time out to drink their coffee before it goes cold. Now how do you recognise the bookworm visitors on your site and how do you cater for them?

Some times bookworm visitors won’t comment, they just want to hoover up all the content they can, bookworm visitors will also look for well written content that actually speaks to them rather than the masses. To be honest these type of visitors are the easiest to please in my opinion, produce content and make it personal, helpful and educational. Motivational pieces work really well too. Bookworms will visit your site and unless you won’t really be able to tell in what quantity they visit, if they do comment however, They will more than likely leave a comment that shows they clearly read the post by referring to parts of it.

• The Italian

Not to socially stereotype, but by and large whenever I have come across Italians whether it be drinking coffee or in the military they are full of passion. Everything they say is verbal gold to me, I love it. I think it’s by far the sexiest language on the planet and I love Italian people because fire is in their DNA.

In the majority of cases you will have people visit your site who are hot heads and extremely passionate about everything, overtly passionate if you like and these types are fairly obvious to spot in your comments area or in your emails etc. They will be the type of reader who will react instantly to what is being said on your site, be more than happy to get involved and in some cases be very quick to cause some waves.

Writing posts that will cause debate and touch on important matters within your market place will give the Italian type readers enough to get stuck into.

• Cool Kid

The cool kids are the ones who are happy to follow the trends of fashion, the ones who clearly are happy to go along with whatever. These types or readers are great fun and usually quite interactive, but you can’t take them for granted. By writing current content that talks about issue in your market place that are happening at the minute or have happened very recently you will keep the cool kids on side. The point to remember about cool kids is they can often be swayed by others opinions so don’t be shocked if you have a reader who comments constantly for a few weeks then stops, it’s more than likely their eye has been drawn elsewhere.

• Heavy Tipper

The heavy tipper type reader is the one who is more than happy to link back to you, spread your content via Twitter or Digg etc and the one who speaks extremely highly of you to other people. Heavy tippers are extremely important to your site because they are doing a lot of your work for you and helping you build your site.

As with all readers you have to look after them furiously, they are building your site with you so make sure you look after them and keep giving to them, keep heavy tippers in mind though because they are gong the extra mile to actually spread your content to their following, this is really important, just as tips are important to a waiter or waitress, you need to return the favour and actually promote their content if and when you can.

I haven’t mentioned the bully as every workplace and website will have a bully visit them,  don’t play up to them though. Bullies will try and infect your site and it’s readers, stand up to them and never let yourself or your readers become a victim.

What does everyone think?

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These days most business and websites thrive if the person or people behind it are relatable, someone people can connect with, someone with a soul. How many times have you gone to bought something or thought about using a service, but decided not to because the person or company behind the whole thing wanted your cash then wanted you out of the way so someone else could come in and pay for something?

I’m not saying you have to be friends with everyone, but being a person that someone can actually talk to even if it’s to feel comfortable enough to ask a question, to me anyway is vital;

• Story

This depends on what type of site you actually have, but in most cases I would say whether you are a one person site or not, integrating your story and personal experience is a fantastic way to really connect with your readers. This can be done by videos, text or podcasts, the main thing to remember is when you do reveal your story then make sure it’s honest and relevant, nothing worse than reading an author go off at a complete tangent without ever getting to the point of the post.

Be careful not to talk about yourself 100% of the time, again this is applicable in most cases, but if your site is about you then by all means talk about your subject but try and include other people too. Including other peoples stories is such a good way to connect with visitors too and it shows you actually do care about other people and it’s not all ”Enough about me, lets talk about me”

• Help

When you help people they remember, now a lot of business people, leading business people constantly say I am way too accessible on this site and interact with the readers of this site too much, I always thank them for their input, but they are wrong. Interaction and helping is what this site was built on, so think about this right now. Every time someone emails you, or leaves a comment on your site asking for advice or help or even if you think you can help them and they haven’t asked for it, then offer out your hand.

Sometimes people won’t take your help or advice and that’s fine, I like to find out how to do it on my own, but sometimes having someone there willing to help is a god send. By publicly offering your help, without agenda and that’s the key to it all, offering help without trying to hit them up for a sale. Don’t get me wrong here, I suppose I have an agenda for helping people, I want people to see me helping everyone in order to build the reputation of this site for being a safe haven for advice and help, so in that respect I do have an agenda, but what I mean is help without trying to charge them for something.

• Dependable

Be the person to turn too, the site or business that is always there without fail on hand to help and always having fresh content or products for your visitors. By always be ready and available people connect with you on a loyalty type of level, this type of loyalty can not be bought or sold, it’s the type of interaction that is truly un-breakable.

Every time they fall or trip, every time they get stuck, or even every time they are bored, be there and be a friend. By being the friend that is always reliable you remove that sheen of corporate efficiency and become personal and personal is where, I believe, success lies.

I fully expect some people to disagree with this and again to say wait until this is a established business and then you will re-think this post, will I? I seriously doubt it, this site was built on the foundations of my content but raised by everyone of you who visits and for that I thank you.

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I’m a big believer in attracting positive energy, if you are a positive person you will attract positive people and so on. The same applies for your business or website, if you write in a negative way you will get negative comments, not necessarily negative about your content or site, but negative about the situation you are talking about.

This isn’t good, negative comments in posts can actually cause a traffic spike, because most people love a good whinge, but ultimately what are you going to do after that spike, release another negative post and cause more negativity?

• Positive

I could have named this bullet ‘negative’ but that would lead it into a negative post. Being positive is where it’s at, there is so much pain and suffering in this world at the moment, people who come to your site should feel one of three things; uplifted, educated, motivated. What ever your market place you have a job to do so make sure every piece of content is positive.

I’ve just filmed a new video for a post in which will come out soon, in which I’m pumped to the max, no not straight out of the gym but buzzing from the adrenaline this site and it’s journey is giving me, that positive attitude and action will motivate others to make them believe they can achieve anything they want to, because it’s all out there you just have to grab it. I didn’t just release a video on the importance of hating everything!

• Traffic Jam

Ever been in a traffic jam? Of course you have I live my life in them these days, but the thing I do and I tell you this works, if you haven’t tried it, don’t laugh just yet give it a go, but yeah the thing I do is to think about a space opening up I can squeeze into instead of thinking how bad the traffic is.

If you think that the traffic is awful and how late you are going to be, then guess what you’re going to hit more traffic, more problems and you will for sure be late.

If, however, You think you will find a spot to get around the traffic or someone will let you in and you will get to your destination on time no problem, then you will. OK sometimes this doesn’t always work out, but without getting all LifeStyle design on you, if the traffic doesn’t clear up at least you will arrive a lot more relaxed having not stressed about the traffic for the last hour.

How do you relate all this to your site? Well a few different ways, if your stressing about finding new readers and traffic then it’s going to come out in your posts, that despair will be evident for all to see. The same goes for comments, if all you leave are negative pessimistic views on every site you visit, your click through traffic and new subscribers will be minimal at best.

Leave informative inspiring or educational comments for the best karma a site could hope for.

• Objective, but Positive

Don’t get me wrong here you don’t have to go all out and be the happy smiling nut everywhere you go, sprinkling fairy dust everywhere you go, you can oppose to things. It has to be done properly though, I’m a real hot head made from fire and it’s something I have to be massively aware of, so I take the time to construct what I am trying to say then make sure it reads and comes across constructively rather than aggressive or negative.

This is a hard thing to do but it’s something that needs to be done. Slamming someone else on a site is bad enough but if you go all out and do it every where you go then your in for a world of hurt. I have seen a lot of people instantly take things I say on the back foot and immediately go on the offensive you can see it straight away and if I can see it, so can everyone else.

Ultimately all this boils down to being your self but having the respect for your readers. As I said earlier, your job is to educate, uplift or motivate not to alienate.

What does everyone think?

photo credit: E R I K / S C H M A H L

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