Resources

Web design for different skillsets & varying levels of competency

• Kx's Web Design 101
• Kx's Web Design Intermediate
• Kx's Web Design Advanced

So there you go!

Please do comment or email me; I'd really like that.

If you'd like to add to this resource so that we can all benefit, please tag links in Delicious with both "for:inspirewithhope" + "web-design-101". I'll add useful links to the relevant places in Delicious. (Delicious is an online bookmarking tool that allows you to easily share bookmarks with other people, especially other people who are also on Delicious. It's free & there are lots of Firefox add-ons and other tools for it – do ask if you have any questions).

If you'd like to read more about web design, including excellent web design resources on Twitter, do read what is web design? It includes most of the rest of the content that was originally in this article. (I edited Web Design 101 on 10 February because it was too long).

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I recently read a brilliant article, which stated, "The creative myth leads people to waste time waiting for lightning instead of working hard and relentlessly."

Eureka!

How many times have you heard "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" or variations on that theme?

Motivation waxes & wanes, but – as I keep realising – you have to persevere whether you feel motivated or not. Sometimes I'm full of creative energy & sometimes I'm just not; I have to carry on regardless. Well, I say I keep realising it; I'm wondering if this time I've actually learnt the lesson or if it'll be coming round again in my future… I am trying. :)

There are some things I do that help me keep my creative energy, I find them especially useful to implement just as I feel it starting to slip away:

• Making lists of my achievements
• Checking my motivations
• Getting inspiration from other people
• Writing down ideas as soon as I get them
• Logging off

Making lists of my achievements

How I do it: I make a list each month using Ta-da List (it's free & simple). I update it many times each day. I find I forget what I've done if I don't write it down, which leads to despondency. Plus, this way I have a record I can look at when my self-confidence is flagging. Hurrah for Aide-mémoires of My Awesomeness!

Examples of stuff I put on the list

• Solicited feedback from Chiz [on my websites]
• Started using Google Webmaster Tools for [my websites] BP, IWH, KB & MMM
• Decided not to go to Inferno [club night] & cancelled dancing with Helen C – need rest
• KB: Updated [website]: Added quotations from others about me
• Newly created Incompetent Chef [blog] – from Idea to Implementation – wrote about guacamole http://incompetentchef.tumblr.com

Checking my motivations

Sometimes I feel resistance to doing something because I don't really want to do it. I worried that this might be the case with regards to blogging – in which case, it would have been a good idea to stop, there's no point in posting without passion. I did a lot of thinking about it & every time I came to the conclusion that I definitely don't want to give it up. I made a list of my reasons & that was useful. It's helpful because it gives me direction too – if I'm not sure what to do next I can have a look at my reasons & let that guide me to the next action.

Work out why you started blogging, work out why you stopped, work out why you've not started again. Work out if you still want to blog & why / why not; perhaps the reasons you don't want to blog are not inherent to blogging: Maybe a change of platform or someone to help you with site administration would fix things. I find meditating & journalling helpful for working things out. Write stuff down!

Reasons I blog

• I have something to say that I want to share with other people to help them
• I'm vain & full of self-importance; I want people to read stuff I've written
• I want feedback on my thoughts
• I read something & want to respond to it – I start writing a comment & then realise it's ridiculously long (from little comments great articles grow!)
• I want to become (more of) an authority on entrepreneurship; blogging helps me direct my learning

Getting inspiration from other people

Hang out with life-affirming people who have high levels of energy, motivation, positivity, bounce, creativity etc. Socialise with inspirational friends. Read awesome blogs. Listen to inspirational songs.

Awesome blogs: My personal favourites

• Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog
• Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success From Copyblogger
• Trizle: Rock Business

Writing down ideas as soon as I get them

Carry a little notebook for those snippets of entries that come to you. I have a journal that goes nearly everywhere with me. It applies online too – bookmark & tag when you run across things that inspire or speak to you. I use Delicious & Google Reader; there are so many great tools out there.

In addition, I find it really helpful to write things unrelated to my blog. I write other blogs about feminism, sexuality, vegan cooking for beginners… I have a few personal blogs in which I write the usual self-absorbed rambling & whining. I write poetry, I write short stories & flash fiction, I write complaints to businesses, I write thank you cards, I write lists of so many things… It's all good practice. Even though I write all these things, and have been a writer for longer than I can remember, I still felt trepidation upon returning to Inspire With Hope. I dread to think how much worse it would have been if I hadn't been writing all this time. If you don't write much; start now. (The comment section of this entry would be a good place to begin… :))

Logging off

Eliminate distractions – I like to believe that I'm self-disciplined enough to stop checking email, LiveJournal & Twitter all the time (and I'm working on that!), but I'm not. Log out of IM. Go offline. Remove the temptations – sign out, close the tabs, disconnect.

…And that's how I wrote this post.

Now I'm off to read some comics, because treats, rewards & relaxation are also important aspects of being & staying motivated.

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I'm really not sure what to write, all I know is that I'm not willing to let go of Inspire With Hope yet.

Since I last wrote, I…

• Moved out of my parents' house!
• Gained full-time employment doing Web Stuff (since 15 October 2007)
• Became vegan (around 13th November 2007)
• Connected with lots of vegans & made really good friends via groups like The London Vegan Meetup Group
• Updated Bright Portfolio
• Updated my LinkedIn profile
• Attended BiCon, London BiFest & Polyday
• Attended Bristol Vegan Fayre, London Vegan Festival & Christmas Without Cruelty
• Became a Lush enthusiast
• Danced!

The single most awesome thing I did this year was moving out of my parents' house. I really wondered if I had it in me to ever leave. I did! I've done *so much*, met so many wonderful people & deepened so many of my relationships in so many ways because I'm not there. I'm still really excited about all this seven months later.

So, what happened to my Web Stuff…?

Web Stuff, including Inspire With Hope, has been on the backburner for a long time whilst I sorted out my living & loving situations. I think I'm at a point where I can invest time & energy in it again (we'll soon find out… :)), so I'm working that out.

I've updated Kathleen Bright (dotcom)

I've got fresh stuff about to go up on Bright Portfolio too.

Squeebounce!

What about Inspire With Hope?

• In amongst the randomness, I sometimes muse on Inspire With Hope in my Twitter microblog. Subscribe.
• You can see a list of my ideas for Inspire With Hope – do feel free to suggest things to me too; just leave a comment. Thank you! Subscribe.
• Keeping you up to date on Inspire With Hope: If there are problems with updating inspirewithhope.com, this is where I'll let you know about that. Subscribe.

Some important things for entrepreneurship

• Creating independent streams of income – using enterpreneurship to increase wealth
• Challenging kyriarchy: Social enterprise & ethical business – using enterpreneurship to change the world
• Life balance (aka work-life balance)

I'll be seeing how it goes with updating Inspire With Hope; I'm really excited to be back, so it looks hopeful.

With thanks to Chisel for helping me write some of this post. :)

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In October 2006, I had to take a break from Make More Mistakes because I didn't have time to continue with it. I promised to return to it in January 2007.

January 2006, Make More Mistakes is back! With a funky new design and a brand new entry on Being tempted to quit my education early.

It's a very personal entry about my struggles with my postgraduate programme and the uncertainty of success. However, it is also a very hopeful entry in which I discuss different methods of tackling doubt and getting back on the right track, as well as the many important lessons I've learnt so far. Here's an excerpt:

The requirement to tell my parents if I were dropping out and the fact this might have made moving out more urgent has really helped me to bring ‘Making my Escape' to the forefront of my mind. It's now more pressing: I'm getting on with it instead of procrastinating. [...]

In addition, thinking about quitting has highlighted the importance of finding alternative sources of income. So I'm working really hard on that too: Ideas & Potential Solutions for my Fiscal Challenge. (Please do send me suggestions; I really appreciate your help).

Make More Mistakes: Being tempted to quit my education early

Time-management and other challenges

Writing and managing so many sites (three, shortly rising to four) is very challenging. Maybe that'll be the subject of another entry! In the meantime, I'm continuing with decluttering and working on spring cleaning All Things Bright too. So, as usual, do send me suggestions.

Currently, the biggest practical challenge is trying to make myself get enough sleep. Must stay healthy!

Thank you, my lovely readers!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to my readers and commenters. I really appreciate you and it's always lovely to hear from you. I'd love to know how you find All Things Bright, but mystery or not, I'm really pleased to have you here!

Thank you!

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I mentioned this to a friend who said, "Favourite blog posts are good, because they'll boost your Google Pagerank. All those famous blogs with pingbacks to your site." Heh, not quite was thinking (well, okay, who am I kidding?! Of course that's part of it). My main motivation is to share these brilliant resources because I'm always raving about them. I'm also interested to make a note of my favourites so I can see if/how that changes over time. I'm also including links to my top three favourite posts from each of them to give you a taster.

Faves

• Steve Pavlina: Personal Development for Smart People
  Not all of his posts are '10 such-and-such' and it was really difficult to pick just three amazing entries to showcase here, because pretty much everything he says is gold dust. Which is why I find myself recommending him to people offline too. Ooh, got to mention 10 reasons to develop your technical skills too. Oh, and visit the new forums.
  • 10 reasons you should never get a job
    "Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don't really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it's all someone else's fault."
  • 10 myths about self-employment
    "Self-employment is much riskier than getting a job… Employees take the biggest risk of all. You learn how risky it is when you unexpectedly hear the words, 'we're letting you go'."
  • 10 ways to become more conscious
    "What does it mean to become more conscious? It is the progressive realisation of conscious mastery over your mind." Here's how to attain it.
• Trizoko
  Much advice for management, general well-being and more. What distinguishes this blog for me, is the style in which it's written. Each post starts off with a popularly-held myth or similar, continues with evidence to show why the myth is false and ends with a one-sentence summary of action to take. Brilliant.
  • How to rock your customer service: "Most businesses think their customer service rocks; but, the reality: they suck, and don't-even-know-it." Another thing I like about this post: Published it on my birthday. I'm recognised as providing the best customer service at work (I even won an award!) How did Andrew know?! :)
  • Why most politicians suck as leaders: "The best politicians are nothing but the most 'charismatic' bastard sitting on his/her ivory tower hawking their ideas like they mean something."
  • 2 rules to stop procrastinating: "Fear drives us to procrastinate by viciously trapping us from taking action." How true this is! I'm still struggling with my fears, but I overcame them enough to write my essays.
• Copyblogger
  Brian is truly brilliant. One thing that distinguishes his posts is how much he draws upon different areas of life, for example, he looks at history to find guidelines for writing for the Web. Ingenious. He's also a very good writer himself, which helps when you're writing about writing… :)
  • Don't take this advice about online marketing!
    "Advice is a tricky thing, especially when dispensed en masse. The answer to most things, if we're being honest, is it depends…" Includes links to some of his other excellent posts. Go, read!
  • Don't sell… teach
    "Using educational copywriting to begin relationships that lead to sales… Tutorial Marketing"
  • Pez Dispensers and Living the Big Lie
    "Origin stories are hugely important… Lying is easy, it's living the lie that's hard… revealing that the story is not true… blows it."

See also:

• Escape From Cubicle Nation
  Pamela Slim is passionate about helping entrepreneurs start businesses. She's really supportive and also does a podcast, which I'm listening to as I write this.
• ProBlogger Blog Tips
  Darren, ProBlogger, has a finger on the pulse of pretty much everything happening in the blogging world, so he's great for news on things like AdSense, Amazon Affiliates etc. Saves tonnes of time for me research all these things directly, then I can just drill down on the stuff that's most relevant to me. Yay!
• SEO
  I prefer Darren's lite SEO posts, which includes the most important SEO information without the extra really advanced stuff you find in SEO blogs. For that, see SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog: 21 tactics to increase blog traffic & SEO BlackHat: One trackback mistake you can't afford to make, which I also enjoy.
• Creating Passionate Users
  Ostensibly, how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory; but that stuff is presented in a really accessible and interesting way. Plus, they talk about other stuff too, like how to get your users to love you.
• Art of Money
  Robert Kiyosaki [aka Rich Dad] appreciator, Jon, shares the ways in which he's stretching his financial mindset. I particularly love this post on Internet Marketing
• Paul Graham
  Brilliant essayist, amongst other things; he's also the author of one of my favourite books, Hackers & Painters
• Publishing 2.0
  What you get when you mix media & technology, which is enabling ordinary people to control, participate in, and become media.

I hope you enjoy these recommendations and find them really useful. In my new capacity on the committee of King's College London Entrepreneurs I'll be sourcing lots of helpful information about entrepreneurship, so do let me know what direction would be most beneficial for you.

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On Thursday, 9th November, the hosting came back, sans content. Ian & I contacted our hosts who restored as much as they could.

On Friday, 10th November, I had the exciting task of restoring the vast majority of my content from scratch: My database (for entries, comments etc), my files (for themes etc) and all my settings (for email etc). This took quite some time. Luckily, as I backup often it wasn't too much of a headache. It was stressful though, because I don't backup enough and I'd never tested my backups.

Over the next couple of days, I'll be making my disaster recovery strategy more apparent. In the meantime, I won't be ranting and raving about my hosts because I haven't got the full story yet (when I've got it; I'll share it). Instead, I'll be doing something altogether more karmic, sharing what I've learnt:

How to take the sting out of hardware failure: My advice and the lessons I've learnt

Backup! Backup! Backup!

Backing up: Some quotations & links to get you started

Deciding what to back up is highly personal. Anything you cannot replace easily should be at the top of your list. Before you get started, make a checklist of files to back up. This will help you determine what to back up, and also give you a reference list in the event you need to retrieve a backed-up file.

Microsoft: How to decide what data to back up

Backup refers to the copying of data so that these additional copies may be restored after a data loss event… to restore a computer to an operational state following a disaster (called disaster recovery) [or] to restore small numbers of files after they have been accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Wikipedia: Backup

"Why Smart People Do Dumb Things" (Like Not Backup Their Hard Disk), by Guy Kawaski. Read this, it's so excellent: It's all gold dust; I couldn't possibly quote it.

Backing up, WordPress-specific guides, including tutorials, plugins etc.

• WordPress Database Backup Plugin, by Skippy
  Quick, easy backups of your database
• WP-Cron Plugin, by Skippy
  Use in conjunction with the above plugin for automatic backups of your database
• WordPress Backup Recommendations, by Kathleen

Seven rules for backing up your data

1. Coverage: Backup ALL your data
2. Frequency: Backup frequently
3. Separation: Take some backups offsite
4. History: Keep some old backups
5. Testing: Test your backups
6. Security: Secure your backups
7. Integrity: Perform integrity checking

See also, The Tao of Backup Excellent, humorous, witty. Highly recommended!

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As part of Bright Resources: free Guide to Technology for Technophobes, I've written a straightforward definition of RSS & web feeds, including the benefits & how to use them.

I've also edited the Wikipedia entries for RSS, web syndication & web feed & to incorporate this information, as what was there before was far too complicated for those new to syndication.

Email me if you have any questions about it at all and I'll do my very best to help.

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"If you want a powerful, publishing platform that gives you an enormous amount of functionality, you won’t do better than Wordpress."

It seems I'm on the right track. Everywhere I turn, I see generalised endorsements of the choices I've made. I chose the right blogging platform, I'm focusing on the right advertisers, it's a good idea to be blogging professionally in the first place.

But that's not what I want. I'm glad I'm going in the right direction and that researching my options is leading me to make reasonable & rewarding choices. However, none of this praise is helping me to improve. I need to be learning what it is I'm doing wrong. The whole premise of one of my blogs – Make More Mistakes – is that one of the very best ways to learn is by doing the wrong thing. It is through failure that one can be successful.

I'm happy about my gradual success, but I want to challenge myself. I want to be optimising & improving. If you stand still, you end up behind.

So, I invite you to tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Next steps – development of All Things Bright

Linkbaiting

There are numerous blogs & articles devoted to the practice of systematically linking to numerous (relevant!) posts, offering three parts praise & one part criticism. I think this is a great practice, so I'll be starting my own regular programme too.

No related posts.

A few days before Erik, I published my experiences with Google AdSense: On 4 August 2006, I stated, "I'm doing a lot of research on different ways of making money online. Many rave about AdSense, but I've found that other programs work better for me. (Which is a shame really, as AdSense is by far the easiest & simplest to set up)."

Furthermore, on 13 August 2006 – before I found Erik's post – I wrote about my objective preferences for alternatives to AdSense, "On the advertising front, I've cut down on AdSense and am focusing on eBay & Amazon UK – as these seem to be more profitable for me."

Marketing genius, Seth Godin (author of Purple Cow & many other books) has also written about his AdSense observations, stating, "the eye is looking for anamolies (sic)". I think banner blindness particularly affects Google ads: Google AdSense is very popular, so visitors are more used to seeing these type of ads and are therefore more likely to ignore them than they are other ads.

Alternatives to Google AdSense

eBay & Amazon are the main contenders. Yahoo! has entered the fray too. However, its emphasis on showing ads only to US visitors means extra work for site owners and has resulted in many of us opting for other alternatives, at least for the present. (I would have liked to test it myself, but being in the UK I'm ineligible to apply).

eBay

According to Michael D. Pollock, eBay Editor Kit is 'too easy' – that's why there's no WordPress plugin. Brilliant. I tried it myself and he's right.

I'm so grateful to Michael for sharing the link to eBay's Editor Kit, as all I knew about was the Commission Junction site (it seems eBay outsource their affiliate programme to a few 'tracking providers') and that one is really quite confusing. In fact, if I weren't so determined, I would have given up on eBay before, purely because of the Commission Junction interface.

Try eBay Affiliates

Amazon Associates

One of the problems I have with Amazon, is how separate Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk are. It's not like with eBay, where '.com' represents international; rather, '.com' means US – being in the UK, that's not helpful for me and yet the US is a big market. Consequently, I have both Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk affiliate accounts – which means I work twice as hard for half the results.

On the plus side, Amazon's affliate program rewards much better than AdSense. In my experience, affiliate programmes reward more highly because in order for the site owner to get paid, visitors must actually spend money. Whereas with pay-per-click advertising, they only need to click, which (theoretically) indicates interest in possibly making a purchase in the future.

Try Amazon Associates

Chitika

Chitika is popular with many bloggers. However, it has some bad press for being complicated to set-up and it also recommends quite high level of traffic as a minimum before applying, which is why I haven't tried it yet.

Try Chitika

Next steps – development of All Things Bright

• Removing some of the AdSense ads and replacing with Amazon & eBay ones.

Have you tried any of these methods? What are your experiences?

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