This post is about Little Things.
In staying true to its theme, it’s a little post.
Building a successful blog (or business or non-profit) doesn’t happen by doing Big Things. It happens by doing hundreds of Little Things that lead to Big Results.
I’m convinced that the #1 issue that people face with building a blog (or any creative endeavor, really) is The Resistance.
It’s not a lack of time, it’s not a lack of knowledge, and it’s not a lack of skill.
It’s The Resistance.
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Here’s how Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, describes it:
Resistance comes as a voice in our heads. The voice tells us not to work today and it gives us a reason. Our daughter’s dance recital starts at seven; this headache is killing us; the boss wants us to organize the Penske file.
Sound familiar? I know it does for me. I’m fighting that voice right now.
“You’re in Chicago, Bjork. You can write the post when you get back home…”
“It’s New Year’s Eve…”
“You’re heading out in an hour. It’s not worth it to start now. You’ll have a good chunk of time on the car ride home, you can do it then…”
Blogs are a lot like bands…
A blog takes years to build up followers, a band takes years to build up fans.
A blog needs to continually publish new posts, a band needs to continually record new songs.
A blog has viral posts and trending recipes, a band has hit songs and top albums.
There aren’t many things I’d rather be doing than accounting.
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Okay, well… actually…
…now that I think of it there are quite a few things I’d rather be doing than accounting.
Things like:
Are you with me or are you with me?
Here’s the deal though: if you’re working to build your blog into a business then you need to treat it like one. That means doing a good job with your accounting.
While I don’t like spending time in Excel or QuickBooks, I do like knowing that our books are in order and that we’re keeping track of our income and expenses.
So how do anti-spreadsheet people like Lindsay and I manage to keep our books in order?
We do it by using a system I call Zen Accounting for Bloggers.
It's a simple system that we developed over the past few years. This system allows us to keep really clean books while spending less than 30 minutes a week on taxes/accounting/bookkeeping.
And today I’d like to share that simple system with you.
Are you looking for a certain company's takedown notice form?
You’ve come to the right place.
Does my word not convince you? I bet this ninja karate chopping a computer will.
Convinced now?
Good.
🙂
Before we look through the list I want to talk about what a takedown notice is and when I think you should use them.
Quick tip: Want to watch a video instead of read the post? You can scroll to the bottom of this post to check out the "video recap" from our YouTube channel.
Trying to build a blog without good applications is like trying to build a house without good tools. You can do it, but it will take a lot longer.
Have you ever searched for a password you wrote down on a piece of paper and put “somewhere safe” (but you’re not quite sure where that is)? Have you ever tried to communicate a design concept over email using written text? Have you ever written the same sentence over and over in different emails to different people?
All of those things are examples of ways that we try and build our virtual house (i.e. blog) using crummy tools.
If you’re looking to build an awesome blog then you need awesome applications for your virtual toolbelt. The following seven apps are the first "tools" that I'd suggest you purchase (or download for free).
Note: Some of these apps are specific to Mac OS. If there’s an alternative option for Windows then I include it at the end of the description.
Three months ago I wrote a post called How to Increase Your Conversion Rates with A/B Testing. In the post I promised to put together quarterly updates to let everyone know how the A/B testing is going.
My hope with these quarterly updates is to:
You can take the things we’ve learned about increasing conversions and apply them to your sales pages without having to do any A/B testing on your own (but I still think you should do A/B testing if you have the time).
Today is a big day at Food Blogger Pro Headquarters (otherwise known as the Ostrom’s basement).
Food Blogger Pro is launching our first tool for food bloggers. We couldn’t be more excited!
We’re calling it the Nutrition Label Generator.
Any guesses as to what it does?
Yep! You got it. It generates nutrition facts labels.
We have three goals with the Nutrition Label Generator.
We want this to be a tool that is:
Before I explain the three goals I want to quickly show you how to use the tool, explain why we're developing software tools, and discuss our software philosophy at FBP.
I always get giddy when I talk about affiliate marketing.
It’s just so darn cool.
You know what I mean?
You don’t?
Okay…fine then. I guess I'll have to convince you.
And I'll do so by telling you about how the best type of affiliate marketing can help you increase the income you’re earning from your food blog (and I know you think that is pretty darn cool).
I want to make sure we’re all on the same page before we jump into my main point for this post, so I’d like to take a moment to share a thrilling short story entitled “A Very Basic Example of Affiliate Marketing.”
There are four ways to increase income from your blog.
Increase traffic.
Increase advertisements.
Increase prices.
Increase conversion rates.
We’re going to be discussing #4 today.