Brilliantly Better – The Ebook

Last Friday I launched – in soft mode – my latest ebook, Brilliantly Better. During the last 48 hours anyone interested in getting it had the chance to buy it at a discounted price, 9.99 USD. As of now, the price of the ebook is at the normal level, meaning 16.99 USD.

Also, a few other things have been completed, adding the final touches to the launch. First, I finished a promo movie. I’m really proud about how it came out, more about that in the next paragraphs. Second, a brand new website has been put in place, and that would be, obviously, Brilliantly Better.

The Brilliantly Better Movie

This is my first attempt ever at making a movie. I don’t know anything abut this so I asked a very good friend to help me out. He’s one of the best guys I know at this thing, with thousands of hours of work on the field, and dozens of commercials already aired. His name is Sega and you can find more about what he does by clicking on that link.

We spent the last Saturday shooting in my living room, experimenting with various lenses and gear and settings and props. I never thought that getting a few minutes of valuable filmed material can be that hard. But it was also incredibly fun. We both enjoyed our time and we did that not because we had to, but because we liked it. Huge difference. Meaning we had a blast

I should also mention that the music and the sound on the movie were also supervised by Sega (I’m the one talking, though, obviously). I should also note that we shoot it with my Canon 450D, with two types of lenses, and the music was made on my iPad, using Garage Band. The editing was completed on Sega’s laptop, on Adobe Premiere. The total number of hours spent on this was around 20.

One of the things that really helped us out was the fact that we have a lot of common beliefs. During the last 3 years Sega has been on his own quest too, traveling through India and Asia. Also, he started to write a novel about his spiritual adventures, the book (in Romanian) should be published soon. Also, we’re both fussy and expensive. But, as you can see, we deliver.

As for the movie, you can see it at the end of this post. If you like it, share it. Also, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

What Should You Expect From The Ebook

I’m sure you already clicked on the first link and you read everything on the Brilliantly Better website. I’m writing this for the 1.34% of you who didn’t.

You will get more 70 articles, 500 pages, each and every one of them carefully selected out of more than 700.000 words I’ve written on my blog since I started it, 3 years ago. It’s just the best of what I wrote so far.

And I won’t say a word more than that, because you should really be at the ebook site now. And because I deeply hate those ridiculously long and shallow sales pages, that way of promoting stuff I did just doesn’t click with me.

Enjoy Brilliantly Better – The Ebook!

“Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity” Reviews

As promised, I am back with a few words about my latest ebook’s reviews. I initially planned to do this the other week, but some of the folks who wrote reviews told me they had a little bit of a hectic schedule and their reviews will be a little late. I wouldn’t want to let anyone out, so I waited.

Why am I posting this? First of all, as a sign of appreciation to anybody who took the time to read my latest ebook and post his own opinions. Second, because it really opens my eyes as how the ebook was perceived. Contrarily to what you may think, the reviews were quite different. For some readers, the motivational part sounded stronger, while for others, the tutorial in the end seemed more enjoyable. All in all, just browsing through these reviews will give you a very interesting bird-eye view of not only what’s in the ebook, but also about each of these bloggers expectations, values and, to put it in a simpler word, preferences.

Without further ado, let’s start.

Lyman Reed of LymanReed.com

Lyman is a personal development blogger for as long as I can remember. He’s also one of the most authentic guys I ever met online. Two highlights about his review: first, he gave away one copy for free to one of his readers (meaning he paid for that copy but the reader got it for free) and second, he started with a very funny joke (some of you may know it already):

Riddle me this, my friend:

Three frogs are sitting on a log.

One frog decides to jump.

How many frogs are still on the log?

.
.
.

Three.

If you’ve heard that little story before, then you know that it’s normally used to disparage people who don’t act quickly enough… who are always making a decision but never taking any action on those decisions.

Read his entire review here. If you want to know more about Lyman, he recently guest posted on my blog, you can find his article here.

Eric of EdenJournal.com

One thing you may not know about Eric (apart from the fact that he’s running a very cool blog, of course) is that he helped me a lot with proof-reading my ebook. He actually sent me back a PDF with annotations to help me spot that stupid grammar (and sometimes not only grammar) mistakes I did in my own text. So, here’s a short excerpt from Eric’s review:

As I started reading Assess-Decide-Do, Natural Productivity, I felt a little lost.  It’s like I was starting a new fiction novel, and I had to get to know the characters. [...] In addition to the new concepts he slides in some great advice, which I really enjoyed.  Things like, “If the decision will not change something in your reality, it’s not a decision, it’s still an assessment.”

For the rest of it (which also includes a table of contents and a very exact description of what you get) go read the entire review here.

Ruben Berenguel from MostlyMaths.net

Ruben is a programmer and he writes at his blog about topics including programming, linux and productivity (he will soon be featured on this very blog with a very interesting guest post, so keep an eye on your feed reader for this guy). What was interesting about Ruben’s review was the fact that he found the first two parts of the ebook almost “boring”. The light seemed to come from the third section, which, as I already said, is a very detailed manual for the iPhone / iPad app I created in order to implement the framework on day to day basis. Here’s a short excerpt from Ruben’s review:

Personally, I found the first two sections a little fluffy, and the third section brilliantly clear. I asked Dragos about that, and he said that some people were completely in reverse, saying the first two chapters were eye opening and the third, boring. We guess it has something to do with analytical/emotional type of thinkers. I am pretty analytical, in case you wonder.

If you want to know more, read the whole review here.

Steven Aitchison of SteveAitchison.co.uk

Steven is an old blogging friend (and, to be honest, we’ve been through so many challenges and we exchanged so many messages that I consider him a real friend, which is somehow weird because we never met in real life ). His review, also detailed, is the only one featuring a description of mine as being “swine”, which, to your surprise, may be sometimes pretty accurate. Joking of course, and so did Steven, but I thought to mention this here, just in case you need an extra incentive to read Steven’s review. And here’s a short excerpt from it too:

I am of the strong belief that life begins and ends with a decision, if we can’t decide what to do in life we will stagnate.  However the beauty in the guide is that it gives you the steps before and after the decision, which makes the decision and after effects of the decision so much easier.

For the whole cookie, go read his review here.

Sid Savara of SidSavara.com

I remember that my first serious encounter with Sid was a “let’s agree to disagree” situation. I can’t even remember what was the source of our disagreement, but I do remember that fact that we were both able to overcome it and maintain a healthy virtual friendship. In case you’re wondering, Sid’s review will win the prize for “the review with the bigger number of quotes from the ebook” so in case you’re looking for some ebook juice, go read it. My favorite part from Sid’s review:

An argument can be made for every phase being the most important, but for me, I think the key really is deciding.  As I’ve discussed in a previous article on metawork, I know all too well how to overanalyze and “overassess” a situation, and once I get going I can finish tasks relatively quickly.

The rest of the review is here.

Ian Peatey of QuantumLearning.pl

Ian is a real life friend, we met a few times in Bucharest. During the last few weeks he restarted his blogging routine at quantumlearning.pl and for that I am really happy, Ian is a wonderful writer (and, for me, the number one source for learning and implementing things about non-violent communication). My favorite part of his review:

Because Dragos isn’t a regular guy he doesn’t get a regular review. It’s a Lite Review:

You will like the book if you:

• like his site
• want to know how he’s so damn productive
• want a method to help you get productive yourself
• want to know how he’s so damn laid back AND productive at the same time.

Go read the rest of the review here.

ProductivityBits.com

This review came a little bit unexpected. In the pre-launch post I announced that I would give away a few copies of the ebook for free, if there will be a review following up (not a positive one, just a review). Here’s a short excerpt from ProductivityBits.com review:

1. I like that the framework proposed in this book is flexible enough that it can be integrated to any work style that anyone prefers.
2. I like the fact that the principles I learned in this book do not only apply to work in general but also to any other aspects of life.

For the rest of it, go here.

Abubakar Jamil of AbubakarJamil.com

Last, but definitely not least, my blogging friend Abubakar Jamil gave me one of the most interesting approaches on my own ebook.

There are only two kinds of books in the world. There are books that people write and then there are books that make people write them. I call the later—organic books.

Never realized that he was right, the ebook actually wrote itself. Go read the rest of the review here.

***

It goes without saying that I strongly advise you to subscribe to the blogs above. Each and every one of them will teach you something valuable, while entertaining you at the same time. I have a strong connection with many of the blog owners above and I support their activities 100%.

Well, those were the reviews on the blogs, but there were also countless mentions on social media, twitter and Facebook. I want to tell to each and every one of the people who helped me spread the word a big “THANK YOU”! And I mean it.

Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity

More than a year ago, I was traveling to Thailand. It was my first trip to South-East Asia. I clearly remember the colors, the smells, the images and the overall excitement mixed with curiosity. I had an incredible time during that trip. I don’t know if it was the visual shock or the cultural difference, the jetlag or my raw food diet (at that time) fact is, at some point during that trip, I had a sort of a revelation. It came in the form of three words: Assess – Decide – Do.

During the trip, those words repeatedly came into my mind until I realized they were my unconscious response to a lot of questions. How do you get up in the morning? How do I get to that place I want to visit? How do I get to the airport? How do I manage to write the blog posts I planned to write on this trip? All those questions stacked up somewhere in a darker corner of my mind, until they got a sudden and unexpected response. Assess, Decide, Do. While my conscious mind was busy absorbing all the fresh experiences, my unconscious mind had to come up with an answer to all those questions.

During that trip, I started to follow that short sequence of activities more and more, hour after hour, each and every day. I started to calm down and assess what I want to do, then decide if, when and where I want to do that, and then do it. I practically started to slice up my reaction to outside stimuli following this pattern. First assess, then decide, then do. Somehow, it seemed to work. The events were flowing down easily, I was focusing exactly on what I wanted to focus, while still maintaining a high degree of awareness. As I told you, I still remember the colors, the smells and even the noises.

After I got home, I put those words apart. There were things that needed to be done, bills to pay, meetings to attend to and so on. But somehow, the words kept popping out in my head. And somehow, I started to apply that sequence to other parts of my life. I started with work. In a matter of days, I started to experience a smooth flow and a surprising increase in my productivity. I said surprising because I’m not a lazy person. And then tried to apply it in my personal life. And then in my relationships. The more I practiced it, the better I became at. Eventually, I took this to a whole new and bigger level. After a few months of trials and errors, I was sure that I was into something really good. And by lack of any other name, I named this a “life management framework”.

What’s This Ebook About?

After I realized that I finally discovered something, I started to write about it. There were a few articles on the blog, all of them very well received. I started to incorporate feedback from my readers in it and also started to share these ideas with my friends. Basically, everybody who was exposed to the ideas seemed to “click” with the approach. At some point, when all the structure of the framework was clear, I started to build an app for it. Exactly, an iPhone app. There must be an app for everything, right?

During the app building process, I applied the same framework rules: I assessed, I decided than I did what seemed to be necessary to move the app forward. It took me roughly 30 days to build that app, without any prior knowledge of Objective C. It took me roughly 30 days to build that app, without any prior knowledge of Objective C. (No, this was not a mistake, I deliberately wrote that twice. Just to get it right.)

Now, the app is in the AppStore for more than 2 months, the latest version syncs your data with Dropbox, there is also an iPad version and so on. It may look like I started a business on this idea and to a certain degree, that’s right. But this perception of business will have to stop at the level of employees, though, because I don’t have any. I did everything by myself. Everything. The app, the blog, the promotion. Everything. Oh, and in the process, I had to handle the reconnection with my 13 year old son, I had to take care of my 4 year old daughter and also manage the separation details from my ex-wife. Just in case you’re thinking I had nothing else to do than to write on the blog, on the ebook or write Objective C code.

And still, every morning when I look in the mirror I see a healthy man, doing what he loves to do and enjoying a life of balance and fulfillment. This is what this ebook is about.

Let’s Get Practical Here

Now, if you made it till here, you must need some real life data, not some motivational stories. You’re right. I have what you need.

The ebook is structured in 3 levels: the conceptual one, the practical exercises and the tutorial for the iPhone/iPad app.

You start by learning from a very high perspective what Assess, Decide, Do means, how your being is acting on each realm and how you can identify your life imbalances using only the 3 aforementioned realms This will sound more like what I write on my blog on a regular basis. Many chapters are sharing large parts with the articles already published.

Then, in the second part, you take the framework to a real life ride. You start to apply it to relationships, to personal crisis management or to strategies for dealing with interruptions. This is the practical stuff. Once you have the concepts clear, you start to apply them to various areas of your day to day life.

And finally, in the 3rd part, you actually see, screenshot by screenshot, how to use iAdd for iPhone. This is the “tutorial” part of the ebook. I felt like a practical section was not enough. I needed something very “in your face”. Step by step. That’s what the third part is.

That’s it. This is the ebook.

I said it before, I will say it again: I suck at writing long, boring and deceiving sales pages. I simply can’t afford to insult your intelligence with all kind of cheap incentives, when I know that you know better than me if you need this ebook.

What Others Are Saying About It

As you may already know, the ebook was on pre-order for 48 hours on my blog. Since I wanted to have some feed-back, I kindly asked some of the people who read it to give me some impressions. These are real people, with real blogs and real lives. And, to my surprise (well, not quite ) they gave me feedback for both the ebook and the app.

Ian Peatey – QuantumLearning.pl

You will like the book if you:

• want to know how Dragos is so damn productive
• want a method to help you get productive yourself
• want to know how Dragos is so damn laid back AND productive at the same time.

You will be wasting your money if you:

• hate Dragos and wish him to live in poverty for the rest of his days
• are perfectly content with both your productivity and level of laid-back-ness.

Lyman Reed – LymanReed.com (iTunes feedback)

iAdd is an excellent app if you want to get out of the “add things to a list and then cross them off” world of productivity. It incorporates much from the GTD world (such as Contexts), but really shines in the area where GTD leaves off – where we assess what’s important to us and make decisions based on what we want to do.

The app is based on Dragos Roua’s Assess-Decide-Do framework – without an understanding of this framework, it could easily be mistaken for just another to do list with what seem like some extra useless steps. I strongly suggest that the user takes the time to learn the framework (links are in the app) to get the most from it.

It’s now my go-to iPhone app for productivity, especially when it comes to using the Assess realm for idea collection. It may even have convinced me that purchasing an iPad would be worth it – unless of course Dragos is planning on creating a version for Windows.  Or even better, a Google Chrome extension (hint, hint…)

Eric – EdenJournal.com

Assess Decide Do is a revolutionary way of approaching Life Management.  It’s more than managing productivity, it’s a framework to underlie day to day decision management.  Assess Decide Do clearly organizes the pre-decision, the decision, and the post decision (or doing.)   Decision making can be a challenge, but Dragos makes it easier by creating a process that allows for all the information gathering to happen first, and then the decision follows a simple go/no-go format.  I have struggled with many forms of organization, and I despise task lists.  Assess Decide Do is a great alternative to the task list, and is really a much more comprehensive solution to organize my life.  It really is a Life Management Framework.

Ruben Berenguel MostlyMaths.net

When I read about the ADD framework in Dragos’ blog, or about the iADD application, I wasn’t impressed. Maybe it was not the correct time, or I just didn’t get it at the moment. Then, I was offered to review the ebook, and reading chapter 3 opened my eyes. I definitely needed to buy that app: it was my workflow. Said and done, I bought it a few hours ago and can’t stop thinking about how much attention to usefulness Dragos put in it. If you have found other to-do apps useless, this is for you.

Pat Flynn – SmartPassiveIncome.com (iTunes feedback)

I agree with one of the other commenters. This really helps take the GTD mindset to a whole new productivity level. Understanding which tasks are most important to us is key, and I’m really glad I have an app to help me with this now, because I often lose my way throughout the day. Thank you!

***

The ebook is only 27 USD and you can buy it by clicking here.

I do hope it will give you at least a fraction of the benefits I had from creating it.

Pre-order Now Natural Productivity – 48 Hours Until Official Launch

Today I’m extremely happy to announce that my latest ebook, called “Assess – Decide – Do: Natural productivity” will be available on this very blog starting Friday, September 17, from 7 AM.. Which is exactly in 48 hours. This is one of my oldest projects and it’s the kind of stuff that grows organically, without too much noise, but with the unmissable feeling of a strong, solid foundation.

Now I have a confession to make. I suck at sales pages. I just do. You know the type of sales pages I’m talking about, a long sausage filled up with cheap incentives and literally breathing the underlying assumption that you, the one who’s supposed to buy that product, are an absolute idiot, responding like a Pavlovian dog to all kind of “verified” buying techniques. I just can’t write those types of sales pages.

What I can do though, is to give you all the information you need, so you can make your own decision. Here are some things you will learn from this ebook.

• What is a life management framework.
• What’s the difference between traditional productivity and natural productivity.
• How to transform a deadline into a liveline.
• How to incorporate procrastination on your own working routine, rather than fight it.
• How to identify the root of your life imbalances, using the 3 stages Assess, Decide and Do.
• How to eliminate the guilt of “not doing enough” while still doing more than you think you can do.
• How to create your own life management framework, based on what you will read. Because you are unique and you need an unique way of managing your life.

In the last part of the ebook, after you have incorporated the base concepts, you will have something to work with, literally in your hands, and that is a tutorial for my iPhone / iPad app inspired by Assess – Decide – Do, iAdd [iTunes link]. iAdd is a 100% compatible implementation of the framework (you will learn in the ebook how can you subclass the main framework and add your own techniques to it) and it was built applying the very concepts described in the ebook, in only 30 days, without any prior knowledge of Objective C.

The ebook contains more than 160 pages written and reviewed during the last year. Its main structure is also split into 3, going from top to the bottom, from abstract to concrete, from concept to implementation. It’s by far the most comprehensive and complete product I’ve built since I start blogging, 2 years ago. And I mean it.

As for the price, I hesitated a lot until I decided to set it at 27 USD. Ebooks in this range are usually selling at 47 USD and up, but I decided to lower the entry point. I do believe the concepts in this ebook are useful, I really do. And so I want to make it available to as many people as possible. Talking about the price, I do have something special for you.

The Special Offer

I’m not going to write a long sausage of cheap selling crap, but I do have a special offer for you. Yes, for you, the long time reader of this blog, the one who stayed behind the lines, never commenting, but always consuming the content, and sometimes sending me a short email like “thanks, Dragos, that helped”. I know you’re out there and this one is for you. You helped me get through this and I want to let you know that I’m listening and I want to give something back.

Until Friday, September 17th, 7 AM, Bucharest time, you can get the ebook at 20 USD, instead of the normal price of 27 USD. That’s 25% off. That’s the least I can do. So, just click on the link below and write down the following code in the shopping cart:

buy now with PayPal

promo code: WakeUpEarly

No spaces, no commas, just three words into one. Your package will be discounted. Please be aware that this discount will expire on Friday, at 7 AM Bucharest time. After that, the promo code won’t work anymore and you could only get the ebook at its normal price.

Wait, There’s More

For the first 30 buyers, I have prepared a promo code for the iAdd app, which will let you have it, basically, for free. A promo code in the AppStore is just like a 100% discount code: you get the app at no cost. So, you will have the full package: the ebook (at a discounted price) and the app to actually implement the entire workflow.

I would have very much loved to give you more promo codes, but there’s a limit of 50 made by apple, and the first 20 went off like crazy (in fact, I had to turn down a few requests, specifically to keep this batch for you). So, if you bought the ebook, come back here and leave a comment. Use the email address you used to buy the book so I can check out the sale. I will send you at the same email address the promo code. Please be aware that those promo codes are available for the US iTunes store only (that’s a limitation imposed by Apple).

Again, please understand that I cannot give more than 30 codes, but if you move rather quickly, you can make it to the first 30. Oh, here’s how quick can you move, you don’t even need to scroll up, just click here (I copied the link for your convenience )

buy now with PayPal

That’s it. The clock it ticking.

Free Ebook – How To Build Reputation With Your Blog

As promised, here is the ebook based on my last series “How To Build Reputation With Your Blog“. I enjoyed writing this series and I thought putting them all together would be a nice thing to do. Not to mention the fact that some of you specifically asked to hurry up with the compilation of the ebook, which I gladly did. It contains all the articles in the series, plus a short bonus. Some of you may already know it, if you’re reading my blog constantly, some of you may not. So I’ll leave it open, if you’re curious, go ahead and download it, it’s completely FREE:

How To Build Reputation With Your Blog (1100)

Free as in free beer, if you know what I mean.

It’s my second free ebook released so far and I would like to tell you what you can do with it (since it’s marked as free). Basically, you can do whatever you want: put it as a free download on your site, send it by email to your friends, frame it and put it on your desktop, dip it into chocolate and eat it while pretending you’re dieting. So, pretty much everything. As long as you’re following these 3 simple rules:

1. don’t charge for it
2. don’t modify its content in any way
3. don’t take credit for it

Otherwise, feel free to spread it along.

At the end of the ebook, I also announced a course based on this series. It will start mid-October and if you’re interested, you should contact me as soon as possible. Most likely, there will be a limited number of spots. Contact details are at the end of the ebook also.

I really think this upcoming reputation building course will be a challenge. I’ve had live workshops and they all went extremely well, but this online course will be something completely new. I’m still pondering if it should spread for 3 months or more. And I’m pondering a lot of other stuff about it, as I feel I have only scratched the surface with this ebook. And keep in mind the ebook has no less than 74 pages.

So, if you’re serious about blogging, go ahead and download this free ebook. If you have any comments, It could be just the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

How To Network Awesomely – A Book Review

Colin Wright, the author of Network Awesomely, the book I’m going to talk about today, could be easily substituted to my blog post about being a digital nomad. I mean, the guy lives in a different country every two months, blog about his experiences in some of the most remote corners of the world while still maintaining his brains in one piece. If you still don’t believe me, go check out his guest post on my blog.

Now, what’s the thing with this ebook? Why is this important enough to talk about it today? In one simple sentence: because it’s packed with value. And if you want to know more than one simple sentence, relax and sit down, I’ll tell you all about the 4 points this ebook won from my part.

A Networking Ebook Written By Many Authors

The first thing that will really hit you when you’ll read this ebook is that it’s written not by a single author, not by two authors but by more than 20 well established bloggers. Exactly, you will find more than one opinion, from one guy. Which is kinda makes sense since we’re talking about an ebook on networking. Which reminds me that I’m one of those 20 bloggers in the ebook, with a short fragment of what I’ve learned from more than 10 years of doing business (and I’m the shy type, if you’re wondering). There are a lot of other well established bloggers and I will randomly select only 3 names (don’t want to upset anyone) just to give an idea: Johnny B. Truant, Diggy from UpgradeReality.com and Oscar del Ben from Freestyle Mind. That’s the first big point that the ebook wins from yours truly.

Simple, Workable Advice

The second point the ebook wins is on the content layer: a part the content provided by those more than 20 bloggers, what Colin writes is not rocket science. It’s simple, workable advice that can be applied from the next second. If you’re wondering, Colin was also on the “bad with people” side, but he managed to get over it. Don’t expect diagrams or flip charts on this ebook, it’s all about direct interaction and simple things.

Appealing Design

I confess that I was a little bit shocked when I first read the ebook. Because it didn’t look like an ebook at all. It looked like a nice magazine. And then I realized that since Colin is a big advocate of lifestyle design, the ebook should have taken the form of a lifestyle magazine too. So, be prepared for a little bit of visual challenge, on the “nice and appealing” side of the word “challenge”. And that would be the point number 3, of course.

Affordable

I won’t say more. The ebook is 20$ and for a package filled with so much valuable info, from so many sources, I really think Colin did the best he could to come with an affordable price. So, if you’re into the networking game, or just want to go over your social shyness, go grab the ebook now. You can thank me later. By the way, that was the 4th point.

The First Year Of Blogging – Money

Welcome to my third article from the series about my first year of blogging as business. In today’s post I’ll talk about money. How I made money, a little bit about how I intend to make money from now on and why. If you came here directly you may want to read the first 2 articles here:

The First Year Of Blogging -  Writing
The First Year Of Blogging – Promotion

How Much I Made In The First Year Of Blogging

The exact answer is: 3378.34 USD. That comes down to around 280 USD  month. Technically, I only started to work on this from January, so that will make even more for the monthly income, but let’s split by 12 months. One thing I would like to tell you upfront is that I host on a dedicated server. Not because of the needed resources, during the first year the blog really didn’t eat more than 5-10% of the whole server, but because I was used to. Having an online business for more than 10 years can leave some marks. So, if you make a little bit of a calculus you’ll realize that the income I had from the blog was just enough to afford a more than decent hosting.

I am totally happy with these numbers, although one may object that being happy with such low numbers is totally against “make money online fast by blogging” trend. And he would be totally right. I am against that trend. I find it shallow and frustrating. Shallow because any money made fast is a little bit tasteless, and frustrating because there really isn’t such a thing like making money fast.

I am happy first of all because I identified a working model. A model that went really well in terms of stability and predictability. Finding some working patterns is a really valuable thing when you enter a new business.. I remember than back when I started my online business it took me several years until I found some stable revenue sources. This time it took only one year. The income is not big, but what’s precious is the model. I can apply this model from now on, pressing or releasing some buttons and I know what to expect. Finding a working model is even more precious when I take into account that during this time I had to experiment several writing and promoting styles until I finally found, in the last few months, a strategy for a stable, ascending traffic.

Lesson: finding a working model for your blog monetization is more important than shooting chaotically to every new opportunity, hoping that sometime, with a little bit of luck, you’ll shoot big. I found it much better to follow the results of my monetizing activities over a period of at least six months and then draw some conclusions.

Benefits: having a constant flow of money is a key point in starting a new business. Even if it’s small, it adds up. In the first year, I actually didn’t pay for my hosting and I also had the opportunity to spend some cash in order to test some new promoting techniques.

Blog Income Distribution

The main income sources were affiliate deals and selling my own content. The last one accounts only for the last week of the whole year, when I launched my first paid ebook, so it’s actually pretty new. But from my initial results I think I know what to expect.

There were only 2 affiliate deals on the website, and I chose them to be pretty vague, not very niched. One is a software selling deal with Mariner, a well known and respected Mac software producer, and the other one is with the very much hyped Thesis theme for WordPress. No personal development product, no other complicated stuff. The Mariner deal is going on with an exclusive promo code each month and as for Thesis I just have a vanilla, not customized, affiliate deal.

Picking those deals was not an easy task. Took me a little while because I was on a pretty tight criteria set. The products had to be good, appealing for my niche, respected and easy to manage. I ended up with a software producer and with a premium blogging theme. In the process, I had to discard several other products, because they were either too expensive for my audience (yet), either too narrow (like very specific software tools).

Having only 2 affiliate deals was pretty good for the content, I didn’t have to jam the post flow with unnecessary advertisement material, although, allegedly, this material could have been beneficial to my readers. I preferred to have a clean flow of personal development posts and only one monthly post about the Mariner exclusive promo code.

Lesson: it’s very important to correctly identify the right products for your niche and to have a well balanced portfolio of deals.

Benefits: learning how people react to different types of messages and products was no doubt the main benefit. Some deals where better than others at certain time intervals, so keeping the eggs in different baskets helped me not to run on thin ice.

What I Did To Earn This Money

First of all, I had to identify the products. But I already talked about it in the blog distribution part, so I’ll skip it to the next step.

Which is negotiating your own terms. Couldn’t do that with Thesis, but did it Mariner products. After a few emails I offered to do a 45 days long promotion on my blog, with their products, just to test the audience. They agreed and the promotion went really well. After that, I shoot for a year long promotion with a slightly better commission on my part. They agreed also pretty fast, so that was it.

The next part was to actually create the supporting content. I wrote a post for each month of the year, announcing each promo code for that month. In the first several months I experimented a little with several writing styles and approaches, but I was able to find a clear and understandable message pretty fast. The next months I actually used the same copy, knowing that almost my entire audience was already aware of the year long promotion.

After setting up the core foundation with those announcing monthly posts, I thought to share some of my experiences with the software I was promoting, especially MacJournal. One of these posts was about my blogging setup, a custom implementation of a GTD flow for blogging. The post, which was a complete description of what I actually use for my daily blogging activities was one of the most popular posts in my blog at that time. There were also other two posts related to MacJournal, one about habit creation and the other one about how to write an ebook. Both were pretty trafficked and this created a constant flow of new visitors to the Mariner promotion.

The next thing was to test some traffic generation with, of course, Twitter. I tweeted some incentives for these promo codes and had pretty good results. I also used a display advertising area on top of the two columns of my theme, with various banner ideas. Almost all banners had a click-through rate more than 2.5%. This is pretty much everything I did for the Mariner promotion.

For Thesis, I did a little bit different. First of all, I did a simple thesis hook tutorial, complete with freely downloadable source code and instructions. The post got featured on several sites and on some high-profile Twitter users timeline, which bring in a little bit of traffic and also generated some conversions. After that, I created a separate page in which I described why I paid for my theme and why any decent blogger who aims to create valuable content instead of spending time tweaking themes should pay too. Every once in a while I see this page featured on some Thesis related community. Which, of course, was good for traffic and conversions.

And one final touch was to integrate this deals with my publishing framework. Thesis hooks to the rescue, again. I created a small zone after each post, just before the similar posts block, in which I announced that the blog post was written on a MacJurnal setup and broadcast with Thesis.. So every time somebody finished to read on of my articles, he was also exposed to my affiliate deals. The insertion point was not intrusive and the message was not aggressive. Blending in as much as possible with the overall blog content seemed to be the best affiliate deals strategy.

Lesson: creating an affiliate strategy is a matter of blending your general blog goals with your income generation strategy. As for the ebook, I still learn how to promote it, but one thing is clear: selling your own products is much better than affiliate deals.

Benefits: I created solid partnerships without scaring away my audience and without sacrificing the main blog theme. Also, I learned tremendously about how you could create useful content that pays. Money, that is.

Blogging Money Goals

During the last few months my traffic doubled. So, a decent goal would be to double my income too for the next year. But, for some reason, I think this goal would be hugely underrated. I know I can aim for much more. I don’t want to put any pressure on that by setting a fixed goal, but I will certainly aim for something in between 2000 and 4000 dollars per month.

From now on I intend to expand my affiliate deals, up to 5-6 in the next year. So, if you’re in the personal development niche, have some high quality products and you are interesting in using a new distribution channel, by all means, send me the products for reviewing. I’m not making any guarantee statement, so don’t expect to sign in for just everything you send. Some stuff will be more close to me, while some stuff will just be out of my vibe, without being necessarily low quality. But you can be sure that once I’m committed to work together you can expect full support from my part.

Another thing would be display advertising. I chose to have a limited amount of banners and a somehow strict control over what passes on, so expect me to be fussy about it. But there will be some display advertising on this site for sure.

Another thing I’ll be doing is to put on the market another ebook. I don’t think this will happen in the next 3-4 months, as I will be quite busy promoting the first one. I’m still in the process of learning here so I’m trying to give myself plenty of time. Meanwhile, if you want to become an affiliate for my ebook, just go ahead and sign up. You’ll have a 50%, no question asked, on each sale you create.

***

So, that was pretty much all about my money experience during the first year of blogging as a business. Not what you expected? Sorry to disappoint you. No huge numbers here, nu “fast cash”, no get rich quick schemes. I do like to live in a real world, where I can make real money, not in a fool’s digital paradise which promises you millions of dollars in the first year of blogging.

I’ll rather shoot for that in the second or third.

The First Year Of Blogging – Writing

Welcome to the first post of this series about my first year of blogging as a business. Today will talk about writing, which is the cornerstone of your blogging. You couldn’t really have a blog without constantly creating quality content. This is why writing is one of the most time consuming blogging activities. But is also one of the most rewarding, if you do it right.

Posting Speed

The most important question, and also one of the most subtle factors in shaping your audience is: how often should I post? This is what I call posting speed.

When I started to blog in October last year, I set up a 15 posts / month posting speed. Seemed reasonable enough for my niche, which is personal development, and also comfortable for myself in terms of assigned time. That comes down to one post every other day. During the first few months, I was almost constantly over this speed, with around 18-20 posts per month.

But after the first 6 months something changed. I was comfortable with writing 15 posts per month so I thought it would be time to expand a little. To go for more. The increase my posting speed. And that took me by surprise. I decided to go for an experiment called massive guest posting. I will go into details about it a little later, but for now suffice to say it was implying writing an extra 7 posts in May. I was able to write those 7 posts, but I wasn’t able to keep up the speed in my own blog. So I ended May with only 8 posts in my blog and 7 guest posts at other blogs. Surprisingly enough, traffic wasn’t affected.

After May, I decided it’s time to slow down on my guest posts and get back to my regular routine. And so I did, until July, when I decided to write 2 more guest posts. This time everything went well, so I waited another month and in September I did another 2 guest posts. Those guest posts were smoothly inserted in my posting speed.

If I draw a line, my posting speed was constant during the first year. I wrote at least 15 posts each month. That makes more than 180 posts in a year, almost all of them over 1200 words each. Which is a lot. This adds up and creates a solid foundation. Something you can build upon.

If you’re going to have more visitors, at some point they’ll want to read more of you. And you don’t want to have just a dozen of beautiful posts and then nothing. Or at least I don’t want that. I do have something to say and I also created the discipline to say it.

First lesson: start slow when trying to increase posting speed. Don’t try to grow faster than you can. Expanding too much without careful planning will most likely break your current posting speed.

First benefit: keeping a stable posting speed is crucial. Although your traffic won’t be hurt if you screw it one month, it’s compulsory to get back on track as fast as you can. Posting speed is not about the traffic you get, but more about your commitment to your blog (or business). Outside symptoms won’t alert you immediately and it may take several weeks until your traffic will really go down, but you got to have internal mechanisms which will put you back on your best speed ASAP, before this will actually happen.

Guest Posting

Now, about the real guest posting. This first year I had 4 guest posts, as I already told you, grouped in July and September, respectively. Writing guest posts was fun but I have to admit it took longer than my usual posts. Here are some reasons:

1. I tried to fit into the host policy. Some hosts are suggesting that you write a maximum number of words and others are being strict on their topics. Sticking with this guidelines is sometimes cumbersome.
2. I was a little bit nervous, somehow like visiting somebody I didn’t know for the first time. I was very careful with my words, trying to make a good impression. Guest posts went out a little bit too serious because of that.
3. I was a little bit too much of a censor, meaning once I finished a blog post I waited a few days and then read it again. If it sounded ugly, I started to refactor.

Other than that writing guest posts was fun and inspiring and I will certainly do more of that in the next year.

Lesson: guest posts need a different approach then usual posts and requires more energy, focus and time than your own blog posts.

Benefits: I got a few new readers every time I landed my guest posts on a new blog. Met some interesting people and engaged in nice conversations. I also got quality links from quality blogs and that certainly helped my rankings.

Massive Guest Posting

During May I did an experiment. It was called Massive Guest Posting and as far as I know it was an Internet first. Basically, all I did was to publish a post about The 7 Ages Of A Business. But then I thought it would be nice to write a follow-up in which I will write in more details about each age. And then I thought it would be even nicer to have those follow-up posts as guest posts on other blogs. And then, of course, I thought it would be really awesome to have the follow-up posts published at the same time on all 7 hosts.

Easier said than done, of course, but a great idea. I had an immense fun doing it and I have to confess the whole thing was a huge success. You can see how this turned out once you click the link above. Several things emerged out of this:

1. Massive Guest Posting is a fantastic tool for networking. I connected to a lot of quality bloggers and created long lasting relationships.
2. On top of what I wrote about guest posts above, when you create a Massive Guest Post project you have to keep in mind a coherence between all the guest posts. Which can be pretty challenging, knowing that each blog has its own personality, preferred topics and established readers.
3. After a Massive Guest Post you’ll end up with the same benefits as for guest posting, only multiplied by 7 (or the number of blogs you will pitch).

Lesson: there is always room for innovation. This experiment was a first on the Internet and it was a success.

Benefits: a lot of traffic coming from the host blogs, great relationships with the blog owners and many inbound links. Not to mention the ninja writing skills I ended up with after the whole thing was done.

Blog Audit

This is a blogging tool, in the form of a wordpress plugin. I wrote it because I needed something to monitor my progress as a blogger. I still use it constantly and although it’s one of the simplest wordpress plugins out there it proves to be really helpful.

With blog audit you can set up blogging goals in the following areas: posting speed, comments density and pingback volume. Those are actually blog metrics, which will help you assess your current blogging performance. I set up my posting speed, for instance, in blog audit, and I was constantly monitoring it. If you’re meeting your goal, the numbers are colored in green, if you’re under your goal, the numbers are colored in red. I was so happy when my blog audit page started to be greener than a Greenpeace activist. Besides is statistic function, blog audit is also a little bit of a motivator. Don’t know if you’re going to find the “struggle for green” motivating, but for me it surely was. And still is.

Lesson: you need tools if you want performance. The same way you can’t really chop a tree with your bare hands, you can’t expect to become better and better without using tools.

Benefits: I started to have a much better understanding of what’s happening in my blog. I can see how comments density is changing or how the pingback volume is increasing or decreasing. I can adjust my strategy and move forward.

List Posts

I decided to write a special paragraph about list posts here, because there is quite a polarized attitude towards them. On one road, people who are nuts about list posts, thinking they are a by-product of the information age, and on the opposite road people who are hating the guts out of list posts, thinking they are here to make us even dumber than we are.

I won’t chose my road yet. I will just give you the information. I wrote 4 list posts in the last few weeks and all I say is that the traffic was sky-rocketing. And I mean it. All the posts got featured on almost every social media website, from reddit to delicious or hackernews. I ended up with a lot of recurring visitors and subscribers.

If you’re curious about the lists posts, take a look at them here:

100 Ways To Live A Better Life
100 Ways To Improve Your Blog
77 Tips For starting An Online Business
33 Ways To Get And Keep Yourself Motivated

There was a tremendous learning going on, from the early moments of getting on the home page of a major social website, up to several weeks after publishing the blog post. All I can say is that the posts are still retweeted at this moment, although some of them are older than a month.

Lesson: adjust your message to your audience. Keep in mind you’re writing for your readers first and find a way to get into their cone of interest.

Benefits: by far the most sudden traffic surge I ever experienced. Huge number of visitors, increasing subscribers with 50% and a lot of new relationships opportunities (especially on Twitter, where I can actually start a conversation with people who are retweeting my content).

My E-Book: 30 Sentences For A Millionaire Mindset

Writing an ebook was a fantastic experience. It was so fun writing my first one, that sooner than I realized I wake up with more than 4 books already cooking so hopefully by the end of the year I’ll have at least another one out. Writing the book took several weeks and it was a rather difficult process. Writing blog posts is one thing but keeping your focus on something that is 90+ pages long is a totally different deal.

The book is about a millionaire mindset and it’s based on a series of posts I wrote one year ago. It was interesting to see that one year ago I was struggling to write a list post with 30 items (the sentences, that is), broken down into 3 separate blog posts, and now I can write a 100 list post in less than 2 days.

Another huge surprise was that the book really sells and the whole process is actually working. I’m still not shamelessly rich out if it, but I sold copies to people I never heard about. Which is something that amazes me, to be honest. If you want to know more about the book, click on the link above, and keep in mind that you can also join as an affiliate and earn a decent commission out of every sale.

Lesson: you can monetize a blog in a much more direct and profitable way than by using contextual or display advertising. Now I have real proof that writing something valuable actually sells.

Benefits: I will not mention the experience I accumulated by writing an ebook, this is something obvious, I guess, but I will take into account the fact that I actually earn money out of this product. Not only I make money out of it, but I can also help others making money, through an affiliate program.

Writing Roadblock

No, it’s not about writer’s block. I don’t have something like this and never had. You can put me in front of a computer, with nothing around me and I can keep writing for hours. It’s about something related to my market choice. I write in English for an English speaking market. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Romanian and English is my second language. Or, to be honest, it’s my fourth language. I learned French in university and Russian in college. And I never had an English lesson in my life. That’s making English my fourth language.

One of my 2009 goals was to drastically improve my English skills. I’m making progress but not as fast as I want. One of the reasons I chose to have a constant posting speed, a part from keeping the blog afloat, was to practice my English skills more often. Other than writing constantly on my blog and reading other blogs I don’t do much to improve my English. Yet. There are a few months left from 2009, right?

Lesson: if you want to penetrate a new market, be sure to learn its language first.

That’s it for the writing part of my first year of blogging as a business. Would love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments.

Introducing My Ebook – 30 Sentences For A Millionaire Mindset

The time has come: ladies and gents, introducing my first ebook. The name is “30 Sentences For A Millionaire Mindset” and it’s based on a series of posts I wrote almost a year ago on this very blog.

The title is self-explanatory, but what you may not know, is that a millionaire mindset is not always translating into a million dollars in the bank. Or so I strongly think.

A millionaire mindset is a mindset of abundance in all areas. Not only money. A mindset of resourcefullness and efficiency. A mindset of fulfillment and enjoyment. A millionaire mindset is not limited to your available cash and I have to tell you that this somehow twisted approach (defining money without numbers) worked really well for me.

Such a mindset is not a secret. It’s not difficult to attain also. It’s within your reach. It surely was within my reach and I’m not very different from you.

Why Buying It?

I always had a great respect for my readers. I appreciate their time and their contribution here. With that in mind, I won’t insult you with a commercial presentation filled with shallow buying incentives. If you know my blog, if you trust my writing, then you will buy the book, I have no doubt about that. So, for those already eager to get to the goodies, just go ahead, click on the “Buy Now” button and you’ll be taken to PayPal. The price for the whole package (because it’s a package, not just a book) is 27 USD.

But I also understand that you may have other priorities and you may not have time to make the decision. So, just to have a glimpse of what you are receiving I’m giving you for free the foreword and the first 3 chapters. You’ll see what you will actually buy and you can make that decision quick. Whatever the decision, be assured that I value the fact that you are spending time here in this very moment and I’m doing the best I can to provide more value through this channel.

30 Sentences For A Millionaire Mindset (4119)

Keep Things Simple

Before launching launching the book, I gave it to a close circle of friends and fellow bloggers. The initial reaction was a short and honest “a-ha”. It’s not rocket science, they said. Yes, it’s not, I responded.

Rocket science would take you to the moon, which is not at all my intention. My book is intended to keep you grounded and effective. It’s not philosophy, although parts of it are rooted in my own life management framework. It’s not costly also, there is no financial investment you should do upfront (other than the cost of the book, of course). All you have to do is to read one sentence per day, assess the results daily and draw a line after 30 days.

What You Get

The ebook has a simple structure. Each chapter is based on one sentence (hence you will be buying a 30 chapters ebook) and each chapter features the original blog post excerpt followed by an in-depth explanation of the sentence. After each chapter there is a practical zone in which you can apply some simple Assess-Decide-Do techniques in order to better understand and implement the flow of each sentence.

But, while I was working on these practical zones I realized there isn’t much information about ADD (Assess- Decide-Do, my life management framework) in the ebook. So, I decided to write a very short booklet about the core principles of ADD. And that, of course, is the first bonus you get when you buy the ebook. You will better understand concepts like Focus or Flow and how they fit in the big picture.

After the first draft things were starting to shape pretty well. But I confess there was still something floating around and it took me a while to understand what it was. I said in the beginning this ebook is no rocket science. So, it must be something practical. Something really useful. At that point, the idea of an assessment booklet, containing an evaluation form for each chapter came naturally.

So, here you are: an ebook, a crash course in ADD and an evaluation booklet.

How To Read It

If you really want to get the best out of it, you should read the book one chapter per day. It’s not that is difficult to read, on the contrary, the chapters are short and the ADD area is really simple. After each day you could write in the assessment booklet your conclusions. Do it for 30 days. It won’t take more than 20 minutes per day. At most. And then come back to the assessment booklet and see where you were when you started it.

Become An Affiliate

If you want to promote the book, by all means, do it! There is an affiliate program set up at ejunkie, feel free to sign up, and you’ll get a fair 50% share of the pie.

There is also a page on my blog describing what exactly do you get by becoming an affiliate. Giving you the opportunity to make some money out of this is so in line with the main concepts of the book, so to speak . It was just natural to make it available through an affiliate channel.

So, if you think it’s time for you to know more about the millionaire mindset, go ahead and get the started now:

Holiday, New Domain Name, Full Moon and Projects

Starting tomorrow we’ll go on a short holiday. While are still in Romania we thought it would be interesting to have a car trip in Europe, trying to take things easier and see as much as we can. We planned really loosely this trip and even the word “planned” is used in a quite inappropriate context. We just decided it’s time to go, taking advantage of Bianca’s holiday and of the promised good weather. We do have some cities we want to see and a little bit of a plan, but it can be changed anytime. We plan to see Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, a little bit on Austrian Alps and probably some sea side in Croatia. At best, the holiday will be two weeks but we can go back anytime if we don’t like something.

I’m quite happy with this arrangement. Although I had quite a bit of traveling during the first half of the year, it was on my own, without my family. I visited Thailand, Japan and had a short stop in New Zealand too (ok, that was business related, but still). But since the last trip something started to feel somehow inconsistent and I strongly felt the need to be in a warm and welcoming company. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic to travel on your own and feel independent, autonomous but I just had enough of that. I’m not bored, I just need something else.

I do have some scheduled posts for the next week but again, if I will find something interesting to write while I’m still on the trip, I’ll change the order. All in all, expect a little bit of relaxation here. Maybe it was time for it.

New Domain Name

A few days ago I decided to change the domain name from eDragonu.ro to DragosRoua.com. There were a few reasons for that. First of all, it was this gap between what I wrote in the last year and the old domain name. Edragonu was my first nickname on the internet and I had quite a bit of emotional link to it. But what I wrote in the last year was more related to my real persona. It was time to jump from the nickname level to the real life level.

Second, there was this SEO thing that was bothering me from some time. It seems that Google is limiting the searches to a particular TLD by redirecting the searches to the assigned servers. Let me explain: if you have a domain ending in .ro, even the content is in English, Google will assume it’s a Romanian site and it will include it in the Google.ro cluster. Sometimes, some terms were out of it and had quite a good ranking on other search engines, but seemed there were local search engines too, like Google.in or Google.ie. Changing the domain to .com will most likely put the content in the main English clusters.

I know there will be a time penalty until the new domain will be picking up in the search engines index. When I made the change I had an alexa rank of 75.000 which is something way about average. Right now I’m starting from 24.000.000. It’s picking up quite faster though, I think I’ll be back in my old numbers – and even better – anywhere between one and three months. Which is exactly when the holiday will be over and a new season will start.

If you have some bookmarks, feel free to change them to the new domain.

Full Moon

This summer will be really interesting. A few days ago we had a full moon and in the next few weeks will have a solar eclipse (not visible form Romania, only in Asia) and another full moon. These full moons are also mixed with some eclipses. Of course we have full moons every 30 days, but these are specials. There are some interesting astral configurations.

I won’t dive into details here, but these are very special aspects. A lot of violent events took place in the last few weeks and I expect even more to come. I’m not a huge fan, but I can’t but take into account Michael Jackson’s violent death. A few days ago we had an earthquake in Romania, a small one, but we expect replicas. The keyword here is “aggressiveness”. It’s time to release huge energy depots and if you’re not knowing why you’re doing this and try to blame others for your own problems, it will come back in a very strong way. Everything seems to get out of your reach.

This is a time for control and moderation, for clarity and lucidity. Every step made without careful consideration will not only be made in a very aggressive way, but this aggressiveness will come back amplified quite soon, usually to trash something out. There was some turmoil in my neighborhood the other days, involving some big confusions and false problems,  but I’m happy I managed to keep my head clear and let the flood of aggressiveness pass me by. I’ve been there before and I know that any aggressive attack made under these circumstances will come back in a very destructive way.

Projects

In the last few weeks I’ve put together some new projects, a few of them not directly related to this blog. The main one is still related to this blog though, and it will be my first commercial product. I can’t say more at this time but most likely it will be in the form of an ebook. I worked pretty hard during the last 5-6 weeks only to realize that the project will be way bigger than I initially thought. Writing a book is something way more difficult than working on a blog. Regardless of the ebook success – which will, of course, be quite visible – I’m already getting a lot of good vibes only from working on the book.

The other projects are related to the new business I’ve started in New Zealand, and it will be about iPhone programming. There’s no secret that I am a huge fan of iPhone, even before it was launched. Doing some programming for the platform was just a logical step ahead. Learning Objective C can be frustrating at times, but it’s rewarding. I already have several apps outlined and some of them are even in Alpha stage. I expect to have my first apps in the App Store this fall, but then again, time will tell.

One of the iPhone apps will be directly derived from my Assess – Decide – Do series. It will be a productivity application, what we may call right now a task manager, but it will be built upon the Assess – Decide – Do framework.

It was a busy time, as you can see, and what’s ahead is even more challenging.

Which.
Is something.
I love.

How To Write An Ebook Using MacJournal

Writing an ebook could be a lot of fun. Not to mention the fact that by writing something you’re spreading value directly and you can receive a lot of direct compensation. If you chose to sell your ebook chances are that you will make some money. Sometimes a lot of money. And if you chose to give it away for free, it’s a sure bet that you’ll make a lot of new friends. Either way, it’s a win.

But writing an ebook can be sometimes overwhelming. I’m not talking about the actual writing process, choosing the topics, putting the chapters together or the main ebook subject. I’m talking about the invisible scaffold, the physical setup for managing, maintaining and organizing your work. Sometimes you don’t remember what you wrote yesterday, or your ideas are coming too fast and you don’t have the time or the habit to write them down, or you don’t have a place with the last version of ebook and have to compile it every time you distribute it.

In today’s post I’ll share with you my setup for writing an ebook. It’s a system based on my favorite journaling application, and that would be MacJournal, of course. I’ve already wrote some articles about enhancing MacJournal, like power blogging with MacJournal, GTD style, or how to create a habit in 15 days, feel free to check them out before starting to read this one.

Writing An Ebook

I’m not going to talk about how you can chose you ebook subjects, because the options here are endless. You can write an ebook about gardening, an ebook about dating, an ebook about cooking, about programming, about business, about self-improvement (that would be my case, by the way) the sky really is the limit. I am going to talk about what your physical steps are in creating an ebook, what exactly are you going to do, step by step.

For start, your ebook will contain sections, or chapters. The main creation process involve writing those chapters which are forming the main product. Yeap, I know you know that, just saying. You usually have a plan for that, either in form of a list, either as a mind map. You also establish a writing speed and a certain volume of writing each day. This is the main work.

But if you’re writing an ebook, you must already have a blog in which you can talk about that. If you’re writing an ebook and don’t have a blog yet, I highly encourage you to create one ASAP. It’s not very difficult, and it’s good for your writing habits. So, besides from writing your actual ebook, you’ll have also to write some blog posts about it. To announce your ebook to your potential audience, to share progress or to call for opinions.

Apart from that, you will promote your ebook and you’ll do that by writing various pieces of text, most often landing pages for all your promotion channels.

And in the process, you may have some ideas about the ebook, about the blog, about promoting or about anything else. I often found out that committing myself to a medium term project like an ebook opened the door to a bunch of new ideas.

And of course you will do a lot of research also, usually grouped into notes.

So, to keep a long story short, your ebook will consist on:

• chapters
• blog posts (including landing pages)
• ideas
• notes

Introducing MacJournal

MacJournal is a great application for journaling and blogging. With a little bit of hacking it can be a killer application for blogging, as I already wrote. But in its default setup is a little bit too simple for writing an ebook.

When I decided to write some ebooks (and that would be several weeks ago) I turned to another fantastic piece of software from Mariner, StoryMill . StoryMill is a tool for writing fiction material, very close to writing movies scripts, including characters and scenes. It’s not a surprise that Mariner launched something so close to script writing since they are also owning Contour, one of the best tools for writing actual movie scripts. But it was too complicated for an ebook. Great for a novel, but an ebook is usually less than a novel.

So, I decided to make some tweaks to my MacJournal setup and come up with something a little bit more complex than a MacJournal vanilla setup but less complicated than a full blown StoryMill installation. I made use of MacJournal tagging capabilities, entry attributes like status and label, and of course, smart journals. At the end of the post you’ll also be able to download a template containing all the modifications described here.

Writing An Ebook The Smart Way

Well, enough with talking, let’s do some work. Here’s how you can create a setup for writing an ebook similar to the one I use right now.

The Main Journal

First and foremost, I created a new journal in MacJournal and named it after my future ebook. In this post, I’ll use a MacJournal template for an ebook called “7 Things”. It’s an example ebook which contains all that I’ve learned from my daughter, each year. She’s 3 now, so I will have 3 chapters. This journal will hold all the necessary information for my ebook, acting like a main repository.

After that, I established a little routine for writing stuff in this journal. Nothing complicated: each time I add an entry in this journal I tag it using the Inspector window. And this is where the power of this setup actually is, in the tagging area. If the entry is a chapter of my ebook I add a tag “book chapter”. If the entry is an idea, I add to that entry the tag “ideas”. If the entry is just a research note, I tag it “notes”. I think you got the idea. Exactly, when I write some blog post, I tag it “blog”. Tagging your posts is a great habit anyway, regardless of the fact that you’re writing an ebook or not.

Another important habit is to keep a close reference of your entry status. Using the Inspector make sure you assess each time after you finished writing something the status of it. Mac Journal offers 5 statuses for your entries: Unknown, Not Started, Underway, Needs Review and Completed. Most of the time I’m in the “Needs Review” status. When I finished a chapter I assign it the status: “Completed”. You’ll see later why this is important. (more…)