Notice how he is providing you good free content. This is the new age of marketing. You get good content and learn about him a little – this really is a big “sell” for one of his products. But if he had just put an ad out, I wouldn’t have referred to it. As he has printed something which “adds” value to you he is doing his marketing through “edutainment”. Something you could learn for one of your own product launches?

Here’s what you’ll discover:

* Why he quit his cushy law firm job and turned to online publishing.
* How he failed miserably.
* How he then succeeded miserably.
* How he learned his lesson the hard way.
* The allure of the global microbrand.
* The rise of the “feeder” business.
* Why small is beautiful (and powerful).
* The 37signals approach to market research.
* Real-life examples of creative entrepreneurs.

Plus, a deeper examination of the 5 critical components of creative entrepreneurship:

* Create (Don’t Compete)
* Lead (Don’t Manage)
* Communicate (Don’t be Shy)
* Automate (Don’t Duplicate)
* Accelerate (Don’t Stand Still)

This report is totally free . . . you don’t even have to provide an email address.

Click here to download the PDF.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

There are 200 million blogs around the world and around 900,000 blog posts made every day. So why should I bother writing? Or more importantly, why should you?

The old school way of getting jobs is broken. Resumes can be copied, cheated, exaggerated or not do you enough justice. Can you really tell everything about your personality within a page or two? Or within an hour or two of an interview?

Everyone’s “weakness” is that they are a “perfectionist”. That 18 % profitability and the 298 % growth rate for your company – most people in your organization are taking credit for that achievement on their resume.

A decent resume used to get you through the door. The fact that you spell checked it. It was in the right format and had the right university degree on it. The resume was looked at for a whole 30 seconds and if you happen to get the HR person on a good day, you got through. The interview typically lasted an hour and within that time the interviewer, who was usually as nervous as you were, had to judge if they would like working with you. An hour can be faked – especially as most people are not trained to be interviewers. You can easily have the canned responses memorized. Or you might actually have been good, but forgot an example of a time when you took initiative or had to deal with a difficult situation or whatever standard question that came up.

The resume was more about testing your ‘creative marketing’ skills. You could be the best computer nerd in the world – but if you didn’t know how to market yourself on your resume, you lost out.

Now the world has become even more competitive. I can apply for the same job from Kabul as I can from San Francisco. Google receives over a million applications every year and have openings for less than 5,000 jobs. How many resumes do you think they actually read?

The resume is soon to be dead.

Your online brand will replace your resume. Good news if you want to “stand out from the crowd”. Bad news if you were able to fake your way through before.

Russell Buckley , blogger at mobhappy , used his blog to talk about the mobile business. Russell gave away free reports, such as the lessons he learned from running a failed startup. He was looking for opportunities, but instead of just sending his resume around, he spent time blogging his thoughts.

Omar Hamoui, the founder of admob, was a reader of his blog and saw that Russell could add a lot of value to his “amazing idea”. Omar asked Russell to join his venture and eventually, Russell became employee number two at AdMob.

So how much did this opportunity lead to for Russell? Three years after joining as employee number two, primarily because of his blog, Admob got bought out for $750 million by Google. Its not quite a billion – but I’m sure Russell won’t need to fly economy class any more.

Omar is obviously a smart entrepreneur. Why go through a resume and an hour long interview with someone – when you can hire someone like Russell, whose material you read and come to trust overtime. Its like interviewing someone over several months. Every blog post, every article is like an interview. As any entrepreneur will tell you, who you hire is the key to your business success – Omar was smart enough to use the new method of recruitment – and you can’t argue with the success his company has had.

More and more people are going to hire through blogs, more business and personal relationships will be started or advanced through blogs (facebook, linkedin, twitter). We don’t have the time to get to know everyone so it saves us time to check out their pictures on facebook or read a few of their blog posts – to figure out who we are dealing with.

You, one of the exclusive few, are reading my blog. This is the same as me spending 5 minutes with you. Except I didn’t have to force myself or make you feel uncomfortable by asking for your time. You are reading at your own free will.

In the grand scheme of things the few hundred people that read my posts every week is not phenominal – but imagine if every week a few hundred people looked at your resume – wouldn’t that lead you to some opportunities?  For Russell, just one of the thousands of readers made it all worthwhile. Same as if you start blogging – just one client or employer could make it all worthwhile. You don’t have to worry about being number one of the 200 million blogs – you just have to cater to the readers in your little niche.

The new economy will be run by “free agents”. How can you distinguish one consultant from another? You might be shocked to hear this, but not every McKinsey/BCG/Accenture consultant is a genius. Most are ordinary people that have a huge marketing engine behind the brand. The future will be about the individual free agents and you will have to do your own marketing through producing your own content.

The world will become full of micro brands. Not all of us will become the McKinseys, IBMs or Accenture’s of the world but to a handful of our readers we will become a brand. It will be less important what degree you have or what grades you got – the content you produce will be more important. Do you really care if I have an MBA or not? Or got straight “A’s” at school? No, you care if the content is relevant for you, can you learn something from it? How does it help you?

When you go to buy products form an unknown company – you will read about the people behind it – do their values align with yours? The resume may be dead, but for those that are willing to work for it – a whole new world of possibilities will open up.

The internet will create mini-celebrities. In the old days, we could only follow Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as CNN and the BBC determined which CEOs were worth following. But now you can be your own Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. You can have your own product launches and PR stories. Just as some people think Steve Jobs is “cooler” than Bill Gates – so they go for Apple products, your small business will also have to come up with an image. Buying is about emotions – and if you let people know about the personalities behind the business (Richard Branson – Virgin, Jeff Bezos – Amazon, Jack Welsh – GE), the business is likely to sell more. Just as Britney Spears has a PR team behind her, you will also have to do your own PR to sell your own records or paintings.  Or for that matter – yourself for the job.

Your success can be linked to the followers you have online. Just as Richard Branson figured out that if he does some crazy stunts, he gets some free publicity for his company, so will many other entrepreneurs. Instead of just dealing with large media companies though, niches on YouTube and facebook will occur.

So does it matter if just a few people are reading your blog? For Russell, it led to a job that made him a millionaire. For you it could also lead to something you want to do in life. Write about things that genuinely interest you – unlike a resume or an hour long job interview – it will be harder for you to fake your enthusiasm for MS Excel or PowerPoint.

The new economy will allow you to be you. The old way of having a different persona in your “corporate” day life and being a different person in your personal life will disappear. The “truer” you will appear. Companies will hire “mini-brands” rather than “robots” that are hard to differentiate from one another.

Perhaps you should take a minute’s silence for your old resume, and prepare for the birth of your online brand.

There are just a few tickets left on www.poweronlinedubai.com.

You can subscribe to my blog – I won’t sell the info and you can unsubscribe at anytime – http://bit.ly/2JQWrB

Remember, in Dubai on 20/21 November you can come to www.poweronlinedubai.com to learn how to make a better income for yourself.  You know the internet is not going to go away so you might as well come and learn how to make an income from it.  I have just made my first $1,000 through facebook this week.

There are not too many people making a living online in the region so speakers from Australia, Europe and North America are flying in to teach what they know just for the weekend. Success leaves clues. Why learn from your own mistakes when you could learn from someone else?

The poor amongst you will think “where is the catch” – the entrepreneurial will want to come and meet like minded people and keep an open mind to learning about new ways to make an income.  There are just a few tickets left on www.poweronlinedubai.com.

If you don’t like the event you can get a 100 % refund. How many rock concerts offer a refund if you don’t like the music?

You can subscribe to my blog – http://bit.ly/2JQWrB

In case you can’t see the videos below, here is a link to the first one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAGTYVYV48&feature=related

Imagine that the unnatural physical borders that were decided before you were born and have cost millions of people their lives and their freedom to travel were also put up on facebook.

Perhaps the world leaders could learn something from facebook instead?

As a country that was founded in 2004 it already has more ‘citizens’ than the United States. In April 2009 it had 200 million active users, by July 2009 it had 250 million and by September 2009 over 300 million active users had ‘immigrated’ to facebook. Which other country has that type of growth?

Isn’t immigration out of control on facebook? Shouldn’t the ‘leaders’ of facebook do something to keep those damn immigrants out? They might take our jobs!

John Lennon imagined a place with nothing to kill or die for – and maybe facebook is it.

Please forward this post and/or subscribe. To learn more about the internet come to Dubai on 20/21 Nov visit www.poweronlinedubai.com.

I would like to recommend a book to you. If you like reading about psychology and how to persuade people – then check out Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.

In case you didn’t click above, here is the link again:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006124189X?ie=UTF8&tag=amianz-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006124189X

If you clicked through the above link you would have been taken through to Amazon.com’s page for the book.

If you look closely within the url you will see it says “tag=amianz-20″ (roughly halfway through the url address).

The “tag=amianz-20″ tells Amazon that you clicked through from my website. “amianz-20″ was the “affiliate code” they have assigned to me.

If you end up buying the book, they will pay me a percentage – from 3 to 15 % of the book price. So, for this book, which sells for approximately $12, they would pay me approximately 50 cents. If you ended up buying more products at the same time than I would also make a commission for those as well. 

This may not sound too exciting. If its only 50 cents a book than you will need to help sell thousands of books, before you make a decent living. But don’t forget you could also help them to sell iPods, cameras, computers, televisions or other items that sell for a lot more money.  Then the commissions would be a lot more interesting.

The real secret to Amazon’s marketing success was the affiliate scheme – they have over 100,000 affiliates that send them traffic. Amazon wins as they don’t pay for the marketing costs, unless a customer buys. The affiliate wins as the more successful they are, the more they make. And the customer wins, as they receive free content because there is an incentive for the content creator to drive traffic to their site.

Why I got excited about online marketing

There is an event in Dubai on 20th and 21th November. People that are actually making a fulltime living on the internet will be flying in from Australia, Europe and North America to show how they make money online. You can learn more about the event at www.poweronlinedubai.com.

If you clicked through you would see that the event is priced at $397. If you actually buy a ticket, I make a $200 commission – or over 50 % of the ticket price.

Now, it gets interesting doesn’t it? Now – its much more tempting to start marketing online.  I would have recommended this event anyway to my friends – the ones interested in getting out of the rat race.  But with the incentive, I start thinking more ‘creatively’ about marketing for the event.  In order to start making money, I don’t need to invest thousands of dollars in product development – I simply go create content – in my case, by writing, but it could have been video or an audio podcast.  I update my facebook and twitter statuses to let people know about the event.

If you visit www.clickbank.com you can see that you can make upto 75% selling digital products.  Remember, it doesn’t cost the creator of an ebook or downloadable software any more money if they sold an extra copy – so often times they are giving away 75 % in commissions through to affiliates as they want to attract marketers to help them sell.  Same for an event – if an extra person attends lectures on learning about the web, the teachers are only too happy.  Plus at the event they will probably try to “upsell” you various products so they want more visitors to the event.  So thats why they are incentivising me heavily (its not just me, anyone can become an affiliate!).

The url that I am given to market so that Unlimited Power Online knows that the customers came from me is actually http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?af=1022337 but as you can see it doesn’t look clean and people are less likely to click through. They trust it less. So what I have done is to spend $10 on a domain name “www.PowerOnlineDubai.com” and simply have it forward to the above address.   This technique, which I learnt from Ernesto’s coaching, is called a “naked url”.  I could go and promote this url anywhere – on radio, TV or newspapers.

Remember, as the consumer, you are always paying the same price – its just either Amazon/PowerOnlineDubai gives me a commission or they keep it themselves – you don’t lose anything.  They actually want to give away commissions as then they know I will work harder for them – if I’m not making any money than I will stop promoting their products.

How books will become free

People work on incentives. When you realise that you can make a living from creating knowledge than you are more likely to do it. For instance, you can get a free ebook from my coach – the “amazingly useful websites“.  The book is here:  http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?Clk=3317037. All you do is to visit and enter your email address.

The thing is that he has done a lot of work of researching good sites for you. I help him by telling you about it. You go and download the book – the book has really useful information but it also has loads of affiliate links embedded in it. For instance, he might recommend hosting providers and often they will give him a commission if you buy.  Plus as you have given him your email address he adds you to his mailing list.  If he ends up “upselling” a product to you – he gives me 50 % of what he made from you.  You get a free book, I “look good” to my readers for providing them a good resource and if you ever happen to buy anything both Ernesto and I win.

The old school method of creating ‘edutainment’ meant that you charged people upfront for the book or movie. If they didn’t like it, too bad – they lost their money. The new method of creating knowledge is to give away your best content for free. To use the same method as a free television station – the ones that let you watch the show for free as long as you watch the advertising within it.

This blog post is an example of the new age of marketing.  I spend my time to provide you with relevant knowledge that you have hopefully found useful. A very tiny percentage of you might come to www.poweronlinedubai.com and for each ticket sold through that link I make $200. The more I make, the more I get encouraged to create content.

This is exactly how the world of teaching will change.  Teachers will go out and create good content and give it away on the web.  They will then either make their money through advertsising or from creating their own “brand” and then selling consulting, coaching or tuition to students.

Tips for starting online

Do not spam people with your “sales pitches”. Don’t go on to peoples walls on facebook and start promoting all sorts of products. Or send an email to a large group. This is always a tricky thing – I still ocassionally cross the line between what is “acceptable” and what is moving towards spam. The newbies always make these mistakes.

I do use facebook as a platform to help me get started. For instance, I have linked my wordpress blog so it comes through as a “note” on facebook. I also often use my status on twitter or facebook to simply promote my blog or to encourage people to subscribe to my blog.  Facebook gave me a bigger audiance than starting to build one from scratch (it has taken me a few years to build “friends!”).

To get started simply visit www.wordpress.com and start a free website – it is a lot easier than you think to have your first website. You could start off by joining Amazon’s Affiliate Program.  Find your niche and start attracting traffic. Making a living on the web is not a “overnight” thing but takes a lot of energy and time.  The smartest thing I did was to get an internet marketing coach and start to network with people that were making money online.  This has literally saved me hundreds of hours of work and I’ve already made more money online this month than I have all my previous years combined. 

If you wish to learn a lot more about making money on the internet from some real gurus come to www.poweronlinedubai.com in Dubai on Nov 20/21.  And feel free to forward the link to any of your friends .  I’ll see you at www.poweronlinedubai.com – and if you do end up buying through the link than please let me know and I’d like to treat you to a lunch or dinner (on me!) – we can discuss your business ideas.  Simply send an email to amir@amiranzur.com with your proof of purchase.  To subscribe to my blog visit http://bit.ly/2JQWrB.  See you on the 20th!

Now its about who can make things look pretty while staring at a computer all day.  Emailing it to someone else who will change a few colors and fonts and then approve or disapprove.

Every idea I have has to be PowerPointed – so I stop telling organizations that I work for any new ideas – I don’t want my PowerPointitus to get worse.

I’m dreaming of working with people that want to listen to ideas and simply make them happen.  To skip the stages where my PowerPointitus gets worse. 

To go back to the good old days where you looked someone in the eye while discussing an idea – not at a computer screen with font so small you can’t see.  Or documents so long you can’t stay awake.  I’m wondering how Julius Caesar built the Roman empire without having a copy of Microsoft Office.

If you have the solution for PowerPointitus, please call me urgently – I need to order 14 bottles for myself and another 948 cartons for my colleagues.

You can subscribe to this blog - http://bit.ly/2JQWrB

Once you graduate from high school you are more likely to be in touch with your fellow students than you are with your teacher.  It’s the students that studied with you that might become a business connection, a future date or help you get what you want in your life.  If you simply kissed up to the teacher you might have gotten an “A” in that class, but the future benefits of a good network would have disappeared.

It’s the same with your work.  If you focus on your boss and forget your colleagues, people that report to you, the receptionist, the cleaner, or whoever – you are thinking really short term. 

Don’t be a fake.  Someone who “kisses up” to people who are “important” and forget the “non-important” people.  It’s a myth that the most important person in your careers success is your boss.

Hedge your bets, what happens if your boss leaves the company – would you now be left stranded?

Your boss might have the job title but her secretary could be the actual decision maker.  You have a long career ahead of you – you never know who is going to be a future client, boss or colleague.

Kiss up to everyone – it’s a better longer term strategy.

You can subscribe to my blog – it’s free and I won’t share your email address with anybody except my mom http://bit.ly/2JQWrB

Why?  Because we all work on incentives.  Everyone is driven by what pays their bills.  As consultants charge out their time – its in their interest to take as long as possible and use as many people as possible.  A simple 5 minute conversation would solve your problem?  Too bad – you will get a 147 page PowerPoint presentation with the perfect font and pictures.

Or a government worker that has to look busy so they create extra processes and procedures for you to go through so they keep themselves in a job.

Clients have to start to become smarter.  Realize that they want things done quicker and simpler.  Pay for simplicity not pretty looking documents that don’t get to the point.

If you employ anyone – figure out their incentives.  If you are paying for time – than expect things to take a bit longer and be more complex than are necessary.  If I was getting paid to write by the word, this post would have been much longer.

Go ahead and subscribe to this blog.  You know you want to.  Anyone who is anyone is doing it.  Just visit http://bit.ly/2JQWrB and enter your email address.  I hate spam too and won’t abuse your email.  You can opt-out at anytime.  To subscribe:  http://bit.ly/2JQWrB

This is also true of your creativity muscles. The more you paint, the better painter you will become. The more you write, the better writer you will become. The more decisions you make, the better decision maker you will become. The more businesses you start, the better businessperson you will become.

If you continuously read about painting, but never actually pick up a paintbrush than your chances of success are minimal. If you continuously study about starting a business but don’t actually start one, than your chances of developing your “business creativity” muscles is minimal.

Its been said that 9 out of 10 businesses fail within a few years. Some see this as a reason not to start one. Others see this as a reason that they should get going sooner, so that they will get there quicker with the one that does make up for the other “failures”.

Reading books on business and never starting one is like staring at a running machine and hoping to get the six-pack. You actually have to get on the machine, even stumble a few times, before your muscles really begin to develop.

To learn more from the best global webpreneurs about how they are making money online visit Dubai on 20/21st Nov: www.poweronlinedubai.com

To subscribe to this blog visit: bit.ly/2JQWrB

The human society is built on competition.  To figure out how happy we should be we compare ourselves with someone else.  You got a big bonus at work – but what did everyone else get?  You got a B on an exam – just peek at your friends results to figure out if you should be happy or upset with this.

Real estate agents have a little trick they use while selling houses.  They never show their best house first to the buyer.  They show a bad house first and then the nicer home second.  If they show their best house first, then the buyer doesn’t know if the house is any good as they need something to compare with.  As they don’t have a benchmark they can’t decide.  Set the benchmark low, and they have a higher chance of a sale.

You could do the same with your life.  Just get friends that earn less than you, weigh more than you or are “dumber” than you.  This means your benchmarks are low and your chances of relative happiness higher.

Do you need someone else to decide to be content – or can you be content by yourself?  If you need relativity – than there will always be a bigger house, faster car, better job title or bigger bonus you could get.  There will always be someone that can run faster or further than you. 

The “rat race” is built on people that need relativity to be happy.  The “rat race” promises you that you work a little harder and you can get that promotion which will let you “beat” the others.  Work that little bit harder now, delay gratification and then you will be happy.  They forgot to mention – when you get to the next level, than you will have to start all over again in order to get to the level after that.    

Or you could simply appreciate where you are – wherever you are – and decide if you want to go to the next level and if so, at what pace. 

Do you need to be relatively happy or just happy?

To subscribe to this blog via email please visit  http://bit.ly/2JQWrB

*note – I can’t recall where I got this study from but the figures are roughly accurate – if you know the reference please let me know!