My First Book!

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Open Book

Today marks a momentous day.  I’ve written and published my first ebook on the Amazon Kindle! Publishing an eBook is one of the steps in the evolution of a blog that is a keystone moment.

In years past it was a difficult matter to get published.  Of course, this was in the dark ages before the coming of the internet.  Now we are living in a cultural revolution where the ability to publish is brought to the masses.

Publishing an ebook now is a simple matter of signing up with amazon and uploading your book to their store.  Anyone with an Amazon account can publish an ebook to the kindle and make it available for purchase.  Making the process of putting your book up for sale a simple matter.  Now the hard part is simply writing the book.

I will save the technical process of actually uploading your book to Amazon Kindle and making it available for sale for another post.  Today, I want to tell you a little about my book

Writing an Ebook:  The Blogger’s Way

Years ago, I had tried my hand at writing a few short stories and toyed with the idea of writing novels.  Life ultimately took me in a different direction as it often will.  Now, I am happily married and in a profession that allows me to be creative in other ways.  However, the curiosity of writing never left me.

This led me down the path of blogging.  As a blogger, I practice a different style of writing.  We write an article day by day in shorter formats.  This allows many of us to publish to our blogs around our own schedule.  Still, this is different than writing a book.

Many of you may feel that the task of sitting down and writing a book is a daunting one.  It certainly is a task that is much more time consuming than writing a blog post.

Of course, as a blogger, this task can be made much simpler because we already have a wealth of starting material.

As a blogger, you can go through your old posts and compile them together into one large publication.  This may take a bit of editing, but you can put together a respectable ebook in a much shorter amount of time.

So, I set aside a day and went through my old posts to put together a beginner’s guide to blogging.  I added some new material and rewrote some of my posts.  I put it all together in a logical order.

In the end, I had a respectable 43 page ebook to guide any beginner through the process of starting and maintaining a blog.  Then I created a cover for the book and… Voila!

New Bloggers Handbook

So, here’s a description of my ebook on Amazon:

Product Description

This book is a beginner’s handbook on how to start a blog and make money online. It is a starting point for those who are interested in started a blog and wish to learn the process and ideas behind beginning a blog and making money online. This book contains examples and stories for the beginning blogger to take as lessons towards getting the most value out of their new blogging experience.

This book will help a new blogger:

Create and maintain their blog
Learn about blogging as a medium of expression
Learn How to Find a Niche
Learn some methods to create compelling content for their blog
Learn some methods for earning extra money from their blog
Learn how to promote their blog online
Learn how Social Networking can help them connect with others

Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Starting Your Blog: Technicalities
Chapter 2. Picking a Topic
Chapter 3. Creating Content
Chapter 4. Promoting Your Blog
Chapter 5. Monetizing Your Blog
Conclusion

You can currently find my book on the amazon store here.

Bonus for the Readers

Now, you can go over to Amazon and support me by purchasing my book over there.  But stick around a bit.  As the author of this ebook, I maintain the full rights to do whatever I want with the book.  I’ve currently priced the book over at Amazon at $3.99.  However, I want to share my book with my blog followers for much less.  I’m going to give my book to you for a tweet or a like!

So, just click this button and share to get the book:

If you enjoy the read, please take a moment to leave a review on amazon.

Now, there is an additional benefit if you enjoy the book.  If you have an amazon associate account, you can also promote the book and get an affiliate commission from amazon!  So, there is the product number for the book:  B004URRX2M

Just look it up and get some affiliate sales!

Thank You For Sharing!

My Job Board Improved the Economy!

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Get A Job

Last month the US economy had it’s best increase in the jobs market in years.  According to the labor department there was an increase of 216,000 jobs across nearly all sectors.  The unemployment rate went down to 8.8%, which is the lowest rate since before the recession began.  And I’m taking credit for it all!

In all seriousness, a job board creates tons of opportunities for people around the world to work from home and contribute to the economy.  Users of my job board have been searching and applying for jobs all month.  Many of you have found success on my job board.  Ok, so I can’t take credit for all 216,000 jobs in the US.  And I guessss if you want to split hairs, I probably didn’t single handedly lower the unemployment rate to 8.8%…  But I did contribute!  And that still makes me proud.

Take a look at how my job board did perform this month:

Job Board Stats

So, overall I had 784 visits to my job board alone.  These are just the people who arrived and visited the job board.  The more significant number to me is the number of total clicks.  796.

That tells me that there were at least 796 jobs that were interesting enough for these people to take a closer look.  Now, I know that not all of these turned into applications, but a few of them did.  And a few of those turned into hirings.  I take a lot of pride in knowing that in some small way, I helped someone find a job.

In general, I am seeing that every month I do get a few more people using my job board as the word gets out.  I’m glad to see a service provided on this blog that is giving such great value.

I don’t know if everyone knows all the features of the job board here at Riches Corner, so let me give a few tips to help you out with your job search.Jobsearchtools

Did You Know?

1.  Did you know that the job board here is actually a search engine?

Absolutely!  Donanza is actually the largest search engine for work at home and freelance jobs.  Over at the top right of the board you can see a search bar.  So if you have a particular skill set such as web development or iphone apps.  You can plug in your key words and narrow your search just for those results.

2.  Did you know that you can filter your job search by price?

Often times I see people remark about the competition undercutting them on prices.  If you have been in the industry for some time, your experience level likely justifies a commensurate rate.  Take a look to the left side of the job board.  You will see a filter.  You can adjust the filter to set a minimum amount of pay to filter out the lower paying jobs.  Make your job search more efficient!

3.  Did you know that the job board has access to jobs from over 300 websites including elance, freelancer, odesk and more!

If you have been jumping around from site to site to research your next freelance job opportunity, you can save yourself time coming right to our job board.  Powered by Donanza, the job board has a backfill of jobs from hundreds of websites displayed right here.  Take a look at how others describe the wealth of jobs available on the job board:

It does however have 70,000 projects available right now, with 30,000 new projects added each week, or about 4,000 a day. There are 12 main categories with more than 400 sub-categories. The most active in terms of user-interest are (in the following order): Writing, Web Development, Graphic Design, Virtual Admin. Support, Translation, Marketing, SEO, and Programming.  (6/24/09 Techcrunch)

4.  Did you know that you can subscribe to the job board?

If you follow me on twitter you’ll notice that I tweet out the latest job postings on the hour.  However, even if you are not following me on twitter, you can get updates from my job board.  If you take a look at the top of the board, just above the job postings m job board has options to subscribe directly by rss, email as well as by twitter.  So, you can take the job subscriptions into your own hands and get updates any way you wish.

5.  Did you know that your job postings get top priority and propagates out to all job boards powered by Donanza?

If you are an employer looking to hire, you can post directly on my job board.  Of course this will allow you to have access to all the job seekers viewing my job board each month as well as having your posting tweeted out to my thousands of twitter followers.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Your job posting goes straight to the top of the job board and is the first thing that a job seeker will see on the board.  Not only that but every single job board powered by Donanza across the internet will list your job posting as well.  You are posting to the entire backfill network when you list your posting here.

If you wish to try out listing a project contact me for a personalized promotional code

Final Thoughts

Find a Job ButtonThis is just a short list of some of the features of my job board.  I encourage all of you to explore it’s features.  You can take a look at the linked articles I have on the right side that gives tips on how to effectively apply for jobs and improve your chances.  You can try out different searches.  I’ve made available all of the categories of work at home jobs available on the network.

As a disclaimer, I will note that the job board is an affiliate program.  I do receive a small amount when someone applies for a job as well as if someone is hired.  This is paid by the original company that listed the posting.  You don’t have to pay anything at all to search and apply for a job. In reality, this is a small amount compared to the enjoyment I get simply from knowing that I may have helped someone find a job.  The real value of the job board is knowing that I helped someone.

Also, if you like the features of my job board, you can also add a Donanza Job Board to your own blog.  You can sign up for a free job board here.

 

A Life Lesson From a Volunteer Firefighter

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Sometimes it’s the small things in life and blogging that are important too.  Mark Bezos tells this story during his TED talk about a life lesson learned during a call to a fire.

He reminds us that acts of heroism and kindness are all around us whether the acts are large or small.

Even here in the blogosphere, sometimes we look for large numbers.  We get caught up in the billions of people that are available to us on the internet, and we get caught up trying to score the big bucks and the huge traffic.

We need to keep in mind that there are no small acts.  Keep up what we do for our passion and practice even the smallest acts of heroism in life and on your blog.