Terry Didcott

Who Unleashed that Blogger?

Posted on April 10, 2008
Category: Blogging | 6 Comments

After scaring the living daylights out of everyone in my last post about Freedom Writers and Sedentary Lifestyle, I thought I’d calm the waters a little with an out and out plug for my good friend Vic Franqui’s blog:

Its called Blogger Unleashed but I reckon he’d probably prefer me to anchor it as Make Money!

So why am I plugging Vic’s blog?

To get an entry into his competition of course, what else? Ha!

Ok, I’m an honest bloke, so that’s the truth… bet you thought I was going to say “Only joking!”

Well, it’s part of the truth anyway. The other part is that if you haven’t already heard about it then get your nose out of the John Chows and Yaro’s and get on over to Blogger Unleashed, because Vic’s running a very interesting and must-enter competition.

The prize? Never mind what the prize is, it’s only gravy.

The long and the short of it is Vic’s got 100 places on a sort of “blogging for money” mentoring gig that he’s kind enough to do in order to help people out. The first 100 takers who blog about Blogger Unleashed or write a Squidoo page or Hub page or whatever get on the program. That includes the following must-haves that he’ll provide:

Your own blog with a cool theme and OpenAds ready to go, plus his experience and tutorship on setting the blog up to make money. You have to provide the niche (not “make money” or “blogging”) and of course write the content and do the promoting, but Vic’ll tell you how to do it.

The “winner” of this contest, by the way if you’re interested is the one who, by 1st September 2008 has attracted the most organic traffic as measured by Google Analytics.

I put “winner” in quotes, because any one of the 100 who get on this little program are all winners, because Vic will show them how to make money with a blog, tell them where they are going wrong and make constant comparisons with the other 99 - so that everybody does it right.

Oh, there is a small prize for the one with the most SE traffic - but you probably won’t be all that interested in that.

Well, its like a week in some crappy place called Vegas plus a few dollars or so (ok, $500 to be exact) spending money to go to some boring Expo with a load of other money making Internet bozos. Not very appealing, so you won’t really want to win the prize… Mmm…

But with this little beauty it really is not about the winning, but the taking part. Because by taking part, every on of those 100 people have probably the best shot they’ll ever get of really making money from a blog.

Not like all the horseshit that the A-Listers feed their readers, but a real shot at doing it right!

So am I entering for this contest?

Nah, I think I’ll go over to JC’s for some more horseshit…

Yeah, right…. LMAO!!!

Terry Didcott

Freedom Writers and Sedentary Lifestyle

Posted on April 5, 2008
Category: Writing | 3 Comments

As freedom writer’s posts go, this is quite a rapid turnaround for me after my last post Site Building, considering my work rate. But I came across this topic of freedom writers and sedentary lifestyle and it interested me enough to write my own take on it.

It appears that freedom writers and sedentary lifestyle they lead can have devastating effects on their health. More so if the freedom writers in question do not do any form of exercise to counteract the hours spent sitting in the chair!

This is no idle rambling so often produced by said freedom writer, either! It’s actually quite a disturbing thought. Here are some of the not so palatable facts:

In the US about 300,000 deaths occur every year due to inactivity and poor dietary habits
60% of American adults do not engage in recommended amounts of exercise
Less affluent individuals tend to be less active than affluent individuals
Disabled people are less likely than people with no disabilities to engage in moderate physical activity
Women in the US tend to be more sedentary than men
By the age of 75, approximately 50% of women and 33% of men do no physical activity
Less active adults are at greater risk of dying of heart disease and developing chronic ailments such as colon cancer, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes
Nearly 60 million Americans have a form of heart or blood vessel disease

That’s not very pleasant reading!

It has become common knowledge that it is so important to get regular exercise, on a daily basis in order to stave off health problems that can arise from doing too little or no exercise at all. Yet so many people ignore the warnings and carry on doing as little as possible regardless of the consequences.

That, unfortunately also includes many writers and sedentary lifestyles that literally “come with the job.”

Well, I’m not going to preach about what you and I should be doing to avoid the health problems that can occur due to belonging to the writers and sedentary lifestyle group! We already know and no amount of ear bashing will change anything.

The only person who can make that change in my case is, after all, only me.

Lucky for me then that I have two dogs that I walk twice a day and add to that the fact that I live in a very hilly area, so it means walking up and down some pretty steep hills! That is good exercise as it makes me work a lot harder than simply strolling along a flat road. And dogs don’t know the meaning of the word “stroll”either! They want to run everywhere and so its a tug of war all the way.

Exercise should be fun and I can’t think of anything more rewarding than walking the dogs. So despite falling into the category of writers and sedentary lifestyle, I’m getting some exercise daily, but I often wonder if its enough. Better than some.

That’s about it for this freedom writers and sedentary lifestyle post. I hope you’re all getting your daily dose of increased heart rate and limb movement!

Terry Didcott

Site Building

Posted on April 3, 2008
Category: freedom writers | 1 Comment

Ok, that last Happy Easter post wasn’t one of my best literary masterpieces, but it shows that life for freedom writers can be fun too! The post previous to that was Freedom Writers Block, which delved into the problems all writers face at one time or another.

Now back to the serious stuff.

I don’t get much of a chance to write in any of my blogs as regularly as I’d like, simply due to the fact that I now have so many of the bloody things and they are all screaming for attention all the time! Freedom writers have to strike a balance between the more important ones, like this one and the less important ones. All the while, I’m busy creating new websites to expand my online presence and occupy more and more niches in order to make money - which of course is the prime directive when you spend as much time online as I do!

This blog isn’t exactly one of my big money makers, by the way - its more a place to hold all the parts of my growing online empire together and to limber up my literary voice from time to time just to make sure all the joints are supple and the mechanics are well oiled!

So what’s with all the site building, you might ask?

Well, sitting still with a few sites might be fine for some people, but for me - I just can’t stand still or I’ll stagnate. Building ever more websites is something I enjoy doing as part of the creation process. It also ensures that I keep up to date with what’s making money online and what’s not; what I should be working on and what can be left to stew in its own juices for a while with minimal maintenance.

This isn’t going to be one of my freedom writers “How to make money online” primer posts, as I think most of that has already been said by other infinitely more qualified people than me - I just follow the advice and teachings of the “real” online money makers and pass on what I learn as well as anything that I figure out for myself that is valid. You’ve probably already met some of these quiet (except maybe Vic) unassuming yet potent money making forces for good, like Griz, Court and Vic - between them you’ll gain just about all the information you’ll ever need to know in order to make money online successfully.

I would throw in a timely warning to avoid the self styled A-listers, who will spin you a good yarn about how they make money online and then thrust their hand out in readiness to take your money for the privilege of learning how they do it - by taking money off people like you. If you believe what they tell you that blogging will make you money, you are already lost!

However, I’m not even going to try to convince anyone that they ought to fall in behind this person or that blogger, or that guru or not. I’m not a guru nor am I a particularly selfless mentor, so it’s not for me to tell you who you should follow - but I will tell you this:

There are many sheep but few shepherds.

Aim to be a shepherd, the pay and conditions are better!

I’ll leave you with that though until next time…

Terry Didcott