There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc� experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a �guru� (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of�well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from �scratch�, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far as you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/go.php?offer=lindagc&pid=1

Have you seen this? Gideon and Yaro taught me about this fun and free 30 second slide show service! With Animoto we can create simple slide show presentations with music that we can stream right from our own blog! If we want a longer video we pay only $30/yr for an unlimited pass! It’s quick! It’s easy!
I just uploaded pictures from my computer, chose from their music selection and they put it together in no time! If you’re working on branding yourself as an expert in your field or simply having fun scrapbooking this is perfect! Click on the box on the right: “Your Image, Your music, Never the same” and get started! Have a blast!

If the slide show isn’t showing up on your computer Animoto says the usual culprit is Flash that needs to be installed – it’s an Adobe free software, you can get it here. If that’s not the problem, it might be that Javascript has been turned off in your browser or possibly you have another piece of software on your computer such as a firewall or anti-virus program that could be causing the issue. If you’re dying to watch this silly little show, you can go to YouTube and watch it here.

Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes it makes you cry. I was learning and growing, overcoming my faults, and working through “pain bodies” as Eckhart Toole taught. It seemed to me that life is like onions. Every time I would recognize a fault that I had developed, change my thinking process, work through it, overcome my weakness and develop a new, better habit, there would be another layer! Every day, with each step that I was taking, my world seemed better! It was an exciting time! Through the years, every time I’d overcome a weakness, I’d feel great, but I’d see there was something, another different bad habit to work on. I was getting closer and closer to God. I had wonderful, loving feelings about myself, and everyone around me, but there was still more layers!

It seemed that the layers were never ending! One day, in exasperation, I asked God if there wasn’t something better in the middle?! I needed to know that there was something that I was made of, that wasn’t just Ick! It wasn’t until I asked God, that I found out. I spent time in meditation and prayer, with thought and focus on my value, and I saw what was in the middle! I saw what was inside of me! And what is inside of everyone!

The answer came to me in a beautiful vision, it was almost like a dream, but I was completely awake. I saw those layers, it was not layers of an onion, they were more like the layers of a green, leafy plant – these leaves are symbolic of our experiences. Experiences that are caused by us, or upon us by others, either way, they were experiences to be learned from. We will have these experiences every day, it is the stuff life is made of.

In the center of all these experiences, these green leaves, was a wonderful jewel! It was, a beautiful, sparkling, translucent and reflective Diamond! The cut of the diamond is beautifully unique, calculated to optimize fire and brilliance. I saw the crystal, clear color of the diamond! During the struggles, (the layers of leaves), dealing with other’s imperfections, and dealing with my own, this diamond is always there, it’s within me, within us. It’s within everyone, no matter how coated with the leaves of experiences we are. As we learn from our experiences, we will be polished and shined. It is our experiences that make us into what we are! No matter if we recognize it or not, we are, now and always, Diamonds in the Rough!

Encouragement: Building Confidence and Feelings of Worth
1. Encouragement is the process of focusing on your children’s assets and strengths in order to build their self-confidence and feelings of worth.
2. Focus on what is good about the child or the situation. See the positive!
3. Accept your children as they are. Don’t make your love and acceptance dependent on their behavior.
4. Have faith in your children so they can come to believe in themselves.
5. Let your children know their worth. Recognize improvement and effort, not just accomplishment.
6. Respect your children. It will lay the foundation of their self-respect.
7. Praise is reserved for things well done. It implies a sprit of competition. Encouragement is given for effort or improvement. It implies a spirit of cooperation.
8. The most powerful forces in human relationships are expectations. We can influence a person’s behavior by changing our expectations of the person.
9. Lack of faith in children helps them to anticipate failure.
10. Standards that are too high invite failure and discouragement.
11. Avoid subtle encouragement of competition between brothers and sisters.
12. Avoid using discouraging words and actions.
13. Avoid tacking qualifiers to your words of encouragement. Don’t “give with one hand and take away with the other.”
Systematic Training for Effective Parenting by Don C. Dinkmeyer Sr., Gary D. McKay, Don C. Dinkmeyer Jr.

Fall in love with yourself, not in a conceited or proud way, but with the adoration that every person on this earth deserves.

We are taught from a young age that it’s vain and wrong to love ourselves, but in reality we are the ultimate and unconditional source of LOVE ITSELF.
The closer we get to unconditionally loving ourselves – the more wonderful our lives will be.

10 ways to expedite the process of falling in love with yourself-

1. Praise yourself. Learn to complement everything that you do. See the good that you do and acknowledge it. When you complete a task, you did some things right! Focus on them, feel good about them.

2. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself and stop putting anger and resentment into your mind that will prevent change.

We all make mistakes –remember it’s ok to make mistakes while you’re learning.

3. Support yourself. Ask for help when you need it. Don’t let ego get in the way. People are more than willing to help a person with a positive attitude. It brings joy to the giver as well as the receiver.

4. Stop criticizing yourself. The power of the subconscious is amazing. As we pay attention and become a master observer we’ll realize how deeply rooted our beliefs about ourselves are.

If you were raised in a troubled home you might have become super-responsible.

When you take on that responsibility it’s easy to be critical of yourselves. This responsibility might lead you to think you’re not good enough. You find ways to feel guilty and miserable. The old tapes of being bad, ugly, lazy, or worthless will start to surface.

You must take the time to create and say affirmations to retrain your mind.

5. Take care of your body. Alcohol and drugs are the most popular method of escape. Stuffing food in is another way to hide from emotions.

These indulgences alone do not make a bad person, if these are a part of your life and are your method of escape, you just haven’t found a more positive way of fulfilling your needs. The negative effects of this indulgence far out ways the temporary high of escape and it will add guilt and negative feelings of self.

6. Take nutrition into your own hands. Be aware of what you put into your mouths and how it makes you feel. Food companies and advertisers influence our eating habits. You must get control of your eating.

Many healthy lifestyle diets are popular. Remember what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. Another reason to pay attention – find out which diet works best for you.

Find exercise that you enjoy and do it.

7. Stop scaring yourself. Leave the little kids fear behind, there are no monsters under the bed. Often people fall into sleep dreaming, fearing the worst possibilities – if someone makes a comment at work, or their kids are not making choices that obviously will lead to unhappiness, or if someone doesn’t call it is assumed you’re not worthy of love. It is amazing how when you imagine that something is, it will come to pass.

Meditate, Visualize optimistic outcomes.

8. Be kind to your mind. Remember negative thoughts are affirmations. When the negative thought comes to your mind, take control. Say to yourself, “I’m not going to think about that anymore, I love myself. I am a loveable, kind person.”

Negative thoughts will bring you down. Think thoughts that will build you up, not beat you up. These experiences are learning experiences

A mantra is a sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer or meditation. When you choose a word, or a phrase, and say it regularly it will become part of you. Choose a mantra – maybe ‘Love’ or ‘I love myself.’

9. Don’t pretend to be perfect. No one is perfect. Instead discover creative distinctions that show your individuality and appreciate yourselves for the qualities that make you different from others. Each of you has a unique role to play on this earth.

You can dream big, set goals and work at achieving them. But being perfect puts extreme pressure and prevents you from looking at areas of your lives that need healing.

10. Be patient with yourself. When you feel the love for yourself, recognize your areas of needed growth, and work on them, with no criticism, you will see the world in a new light. Since you don’t criticize others, you won’t worry about others criticizing you. It is amazing how happy you can be.

All you have to do is recognize the love within you.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that our value is dependent on what we’ve done, but it’s not true! When we leave this planet, we can take nothing with us. Nothing except what is in our hearts and minds. We will take with us our capacity to love.

Our very nature is LOVE itself!

Keep all the cleaning products in the bathroom, if you have more than one bathroom, put the cleaners in each room. Use water and a clean washcloth to clean the mirrors, use another clean washcloth to dry it. No window cleaner is necessary. Use a degreaser to clean the tub, toilet and sink. Use the garbage can as a bucket to clean the floor. Fill it with warm water and Lysol or other germ-killing product to clean the floor and toilet. Make a quick but thorough run-through. Mirrors first, then sink, tub, toilet, floor. Finish by dumping the Lysol-water down the toilet, wipe the inside and outside of the garbage pail and have a clean smelling, disinfected bathroom. Almost done. Of course wash your hands and put the two wash cloths in the dirty clothes basket (hang to dry on the edge until dry.)

When I embarked on this journey of life with multiple sclerosis, I didn’t know where I was going. All I knew is what I had learned and what I believed. I first started blogging as a way to get the information out; the knowledge and experience of my 45 years.

It wasn’t long before I found an entire community of happy, giving people doing the same thing; sharing what they know! I’ve developed great friendships from all over the world right in the comfort of my family room!

Soon I realized people were blogging for profit! I had no idea how to do it until I got a hold of this free ebook written by Yaro Starak. Yaro is willing to give his knowledge and skills for free! Take a look at it! Click on the link below and leave your name and email address and you’ll get a copy right away! It’s exciting!

Click here to download the Blog Profits Blueprint

Then leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Encourage conversations with the ones you love. Closed questions hinder dialog – ask more than yes, no questions. Teach your loved ones to express their emotions by setting the example. When you are feeling good or bad, express it by kindly explaining: I feel _____ about _____ because_____. No blame, no criticism, just say it how it is.

You know you’re in Alaska when it warms up to 35 degrees (Farenheit) and you go out in your short sleeves to wash your car.

It Feels like Spring in Alaska! Feb 19, 2010 - 40 degrees at 7:04am, we’ll have 9 hrs 26 minutes of daylight today.

Seasons in Alaska: Winter, Still Winter, Almost Winter, and Construction. Or Winter, Break up, Winter. Just jokes. Really we have 3 seasons: Winter, Breakup and Construction.  Not really.

Winter is the favorite of the snow worshippers – you know, the snow machine fanatics, snow boarders, even the skiers. For them, with the beautiful Alaskan terrain, it doesn’t get any better than this!

Breakup on the other hand, is the pits. On the good side, break up is the thought of spring. Breakup is the messy, dirty precursor to spring. Alaska doesn’t use salt on the roads to aid in driving during the winter months, gravel is used instead. When the snow melts, the paved roads look like dirt roads. The neighborhood streets flood as the snow melts and ice chunks block the city drainage system. Breakup boots are a must-have for children.

Thank goodness we really have spring and summer! Spring in Alaska is like an explosion! The leaves on the trees will bud one day and BAMB! Three days later leaves are seen! It is an exciting time! The days are getting lighter, the sun is warming everything! It’s beautiful! Even the snow worshippers enjoy the spring!

Today it feels and looks like it’s Breakup! The Alaskan ladies are discussing break-up on Facebook. Kellie Carlson Dunlap said, “All right, my Alaska friends, please, please, please stop saying it is breakup. If we don’t say it, maybe this 40 degree weather will hold, but if we all get our hopes up we’re gonna have another couple months of winter. We all know how this works! Besides, after having a REAL Autumn, does it even make sense to think we might have a Spring, too?”

Kellie knows like I do, that this is another example of life’s lessons: The key is to Accept, and not Expect. Accept the spring-like feeling. Enjoy every day of it! Look around, feel the warmth, the energy, see the beauty. Notice it everywhere! Write it in your journal, express it to all your friends and family.

When the temperatures drop again, accept it for what it is, a personal growth opportunity. Learn from it, see the value in it, stay close to God through it. And even with it, enjoy every day.

When we see and feel the good in everything, we’ll enjoy our lives! We don’t have to complain and waste our energy on wishing for things that are not in our control! Instead, think about things that are in our control! Use our creative energy for just that – Creation. Decide to enjoy every day no matter what!

And get a kick out of this~

You Know You’re in Alaska When…
… you know the term “Break Up” has more to do with the weather than a relationship.

… you find -60c degrees a might chilly.

… the trunk of your car doubles as a deep freeze.

… you attend a formal event in your best clothes, your finest jewels and your Sorrels.

… you can play road hockey in ice skates.

… you’ve taken your kids trick or treating in a blizzard.

… you have 10 favorite recipes for moose meat.

…you find driving better in the winter because potholes get filled with snow.

… you know a honey bucket is really a bucket, but it’s not really full of honey. (If you don’t know, don’t ask.)

…you learned to swim indoors.

… you leave your Christmas lights up, year round, because as soon as it gets warm enough to take them down it starts getting dark enough to put them up again.

… you know a “white out” has to do with winter conditions not correcting fluid for typos.

… you know going “outside” involves a whole lot more than opening a door and walking into the yard.

… you know that Bunny Boots aren’t worn by bunnies or made out of bunnies.

… you put your sun visor down at 3:00 a.m.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft it sank – proving once and for all that you can’t have your kayak and heat it, too. 