Ottsworld Travel Experiences » Digital

Building an Empire – One Day at a Time

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:03:02 +0000

When I was a kid I used to have a vivid imagination and would always beg people to play in my imaginary world. I would play library, school teacher, office (my personal favorite); I think I was a natural builder of empires, whether they be books, homework, or filing.

However, recently I’ve had the pleasure of taking my ‘play’ dreams and slowly making them come true one day at a time…I’m building an empire of career breakers,one day at a time.

How does one learn how to build a real empire? They go to the Caesar himself, Chris Guillebeau.

Slowly I’ve been dipping my toe into the online lifestyle/travel guru world and it didn’t take me long to find Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Nonconformity website where he writes about how to not be average in life. Not only does he speak eloquently on the benefits of not conforming, but he’s also a marketing, lifestyle product, launch, and travel guru. I’m not sure that he puts all of that on his business card though!

One fascinating thing about Chris is that he has a goal to travel to every country in the world before he’s 35. I love lofty goals, and I love following his progress on this in his newsletters and blog posts.

So – we’ve established, Chris is a cool guy with a lot of cool ideas, and if you haven’t read any of his work, then you are missing out. You can get a taste for it at his website – The Art of NonConformity – and check out his most popular articles on the bottom right. That will provide enough motivation for the next month at least.

One day at a time!

However I recently signed up for one of his products called the Empire Building Kit (EBK) where he provides you one lesson a day (via email) on how to build your own lifestyle business.

EBK was only available for 24-hours during both of the earlier launches. However, on June 16, 2010, it’s finally going to be released it into the wild, where it will be available on a long-term basis. Chris offers 3 different pricing levels with different benefits; I am doing the Hail Caesar EBK and feel that it is just right for what I was looking for.

A few things EBK Hail Caesar includes:

Case Studies (including $’s earned) of how others have started their own empires (businesses)

Video interviews with some of the leading online lifestyle entrepreneurs (these are my personal favorite)

A launch checklist (I found this very valuable since I knew nothing about launching a product!)

A full year of inspirational, educational, and task oriented emails from Chris

This combo of items has really opened up my mind to the possibilities and steps that I need to take to get Career Breaks into the mainstream!

Plus – he’s even throwing in some extra products for incentive to purchase on June 16th only.

I’m not going to say anymore about the product since Chris does the best job of selling it – check out his website to be wowed.

Build Your Own Empire in 1 Year

The only thing I will say is that on Ottsworld – I only recommend things in which I believe in and use. I wouldn’t be taking the time to write about this if I didn’t believe 100% in it. However in full disclosure – I’m a part of the affiliate program for Chris which means that any sales I refer for EBK, I get a percentage. I’ve given up on most affiliate programs on Ottsworld and no longer offer them on my site as they don’t really yield much – only Smugmug Photography Storage/Website and Empire Building Kit will remain as they are two products that I love and would recommend regardless of any affiliate program.

So if you have entrepreneurial aspirations, are full of great ideas, want to stop ‘working for the man’ – or simply dabble in being your own boss, need some inspiration to keep you on track, or simply want to learn how to create and launch an online business – then check out the Empire Building Kit – Build Your Own Empire in 1 Year

One last thought to leave you with…

Is this what you really want?

Creating an Effective Travel Blog + Contest!

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:54:38 +0000

Setting you up for Blogging Success

I recently realized that I have been without a ‘typical’ job now for longer than I’ve ever held a job at a particular company – 3 ½ years. My typical length at an employer was about 3 years before I would move on and up.

I’ve been traveling and blogging now for 3 ½ years; this is surprising to me considering I started this blog with no plan other than to keep friends and family updated. I often fantasize about what I would do if I knew then what I know now about blogging. I think about how much bigger and better it would be, how it would be optimized for search engines, how I would have gained a huge following and had advertisers knocking at my door. Ah…but sometimes things just happen organically – at the speed they are meant to happen. So I’ve learned that there’s no use in thinking about what I would’ve done differntly if I had known I was going to run this blog for 3 ½ years instead of just 1 year.

In 3 1/2 years, the one thing I’m amazed at is how the Travel Blogging community had grown. Actually – grown really isn’t even a good word as in early 2006 when I started researching for my Around the World trip, there were no blogs and travel websites except for Bootsnall – nothing else really existed. Now if you go out and search on travel blogs or destinations – you are bombarded with stories of people’s travels and how-to’s …and of course my most hated stories that start with 10 best, 7 worst, 5 biggest, etc (ugh – I think we should ban number’s from travel writing). So how do you make your blog and experiences stick out and be seen?

In the midst of all of the travel blog overload where everyone is trying to be heard, my good friend, David Lee of GoBackpacking, has started a new site called Travel Blog Success. The site includes a course and discussion forum about how to build a better travel website.

A description from the site:
Whether you’re looking to entertain your friends and family on a future trip, or develop a living wage from doing what you love, the resources on this site will help you get started on the road to travel blogging success.
The course consists of 12 weekly lessons. If you chose the premium membership, then you can work through them at your own pace. If you chose the monthly payments option, then you will receive access to a new lesson every 7 days (via e-mail).

If you are wondering why you should listen to Dave – then check this out:

- He earned over $10,000 from travel blogging in 2009, or about $850 per month. But….
- He earned over $1,300 per month in just the last 6 months (Aug 2009 to Jan 2010). A step further and…
- He earned $5,000 in just the last 3 months (Nov 2009 to Jan 2010).
- Go Backpacking will exceed 20,000 unique visits and 45,000 page views in January 2010.
- Both his travel blogs, Go Backpacking and Medellin Living, are finalists in the 2010 Weblog Awards (http://2010.bloggies.com)

Ummm….yes…I’m turning green with envy right now…

Plus he’s a really good guy, super helpful, and passionate about travel. I kinda wish I could hate him…but that’s impossible!

I was actually a part of the Beta Testing for Dave’s project and was felt like I spent the whole time saying “Doh!” (said with the Homer Simpson inflection). I had so wished there would have been something like this out there in 2006 when I started Ottsworld! It had fabulous information for the new blogger on how to get started. Because as with many things, blogging is about good design and planning upfront; then you can really set yourself up for success. Suffice it to say – I did no planning for Ottsworld!

The site is a ‘premium’ site so there is a small fee to join, but I personally think it’s worth it for the Discussion Forum alone where you’ll get to interact with some of the best travel bloggers out there today as well as newbie’s.

Now – here’s the really good news…

Take a career break!

Dave has agreed to let Briefcase to Backpack (my other site that I hope you know about by now!) be the first site to run a contest which gives one lucky person a premium membership to Travel Blog Success!

All you have to do is head over to Briefcase to Backpack, and sign up for the contest. Plus you get an extra entry if you tweet about it – read the instructions to learn more! And while you are there – you can check out our review of Travel Blog Success as well as other super career break articles and stories from ‘Briefcasers’ who became ‘Backpackers’!

Note: Briefcase to Backpack is an affiliate of Travel Blog Success and we earn a commission if you click through our site to purchase. We wouldn’t be an affiliate if we didn’t endorse this product, so we appreciate you supporting us too!

Traveling with History in Your Pocket

Sherry — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:44:09 +0000

History Can Be Hard to Take With You

I know that many of you have heard me rave about podcasts – and yes, I have yet another one to rave about. This one is straight from the classroom…Berkeley University.

There aren’t many things I would do different in my life; however, if I could go back to my 18th year, I would change one thing. I would have paid more attention in my high school history class. Mr. Durham wasn’t the best history teacher in the world – but I honestly didn’t have any passion for the subject a that time either. If I would have had some passion for history, then maybe I would have actually taken an American history class in college – but I didn’t and I opted for history of American Jazz instead.

I am one of the many Americans that knows very little (ok – nothing) about American History. Don’t evern get me started on World History…one thing at a time please. Therefore, before I started on my around the world journey, I decided that I better make up for lost time and try to educate myself a bit on American History. As I was searching around the internet, I found my answer…a History podcast!

They don't take up much space

Berkeley University has successfully moved into the technical age and is offering podcasts of class lectures to the world for free. Now – if I were a parent paying college tuition for my kid to attend Berkeley – I’m not real sure how I would feel about this development. However – as a freeloader – I loved it! I downloaded the complete lectures from American History 7B – Civil War to the Present and I took off for my big trip in September of 2006.

On flights or bus rides, and sometimes on runs – I would listen to the History Podcast as if I were a student again. Professor Jennifer Burns had passion for her subject and a great style of teaching. It amazed me at how much I learned. It made me wonder how much more I could have learned in University if I had just had simply paid more attention and enjoyed my classes.

I highly recomend this podcast for anyone – but specifically for travelers. It will provide you a basis for how the world see Americans, why we were involved in various global conflicts, what our stance was on various issues and why, and most importantly – it helped me understand how the US became who we are today and why we act the way we do globally. Now – I didn’t say that I agreed with it all, but it sure did provide me the context and knowledge I needed when I was frequently asked questions about my own culture, politics, and history from other international travelers.

If you are looking for some entertainment for the road – then consider getting educated while being entertained – I promise you that you won’t be sorry!

You can download the podcasts from the Berkley website and listen to them on your computer at this website.

Or on Jennifer Burns’ website, she has links listed on how to listen to the lectures via itunes.
or you can download them from itunes. Just ltype ‘jennifer burns’ in the itunes search function and you will find it.

Ottsworld Travel Experiences » Digital

Building an Empire – One Day at a Time

Related Posts

Creating an Effective Travel Blog + Contest!

Now – here’s the really good news…

Related Posts

Traveling with History in Your Pocket

Related Posts