Forty years ago, Richard Bolles asked job seekers “What color is your parachute?” It turns out that he may not have been speaking metaphorically.

The Dewey Color System offers a free career test based entirely on color preferences – just spend a minute clicking on the colors you like most or least. They claim it is now the world’s most accurate career test.

Compared to the general public, CEOs are three times more likely to choose magenta, three times less likely to choose red, and three and a half times less likely to choose yellow.

What does this mean? According to the Color Career Counselor test, CEOs are more sensitive and private than average, less likely to be dominant or a perfectionist, and more likely to be emotionally unstable.

The makers of this test say it measures 16 personality factors, including independence, anxiety, self-control, extraversion, and tough-mindedness. They also say it may identify things such as overeating tendencies or emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Its supporters say that this simple test is as valid as the much lengthier Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (not a career test, BTW) and Gallup StrengthsFinder, and much harder to influence. Some people have called it eerily accurate, others have likened it to horoscopes.

I gave it a try to see how accurate it was for me. (It asks for an email address at the end, but it’s optional, and you have to skip past one ad). The results were mixed at best.

For my best occupational category, it said:

You’re a CREATOR
Keywords: Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

Check, kind of.

For my second best occupational category, it said:

You’re a SOCIAL MANAGER
Keywords: Tactful, Cooperative, Generous, Understanding, Insightful, Friendly, and Cheerful

Um, no.

And as with any career test I’ve ever seen, the list of suggested occupations is so ridiculously broad as to be useless.

While I wasn’t wowed by my results, I think color preference probably does say something about you. But for now, a good old fashioned verbal test seems more likely to show your true colors.

Photo by tibchris

[Hoping to get your book published? Here is the continuation of yesterday's interview with Ian Coburn.]

Hunter:

What is it that publishers look for in a book? Or for that matter, do they know what they’re looking for?

There was a guy who tried an experiment with Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion. He changed the titles, put the name of Alison Laydee on them, and sent a few chapters to 18 publishers. One of them recognized the books; the other 17 rejected them or didn’t respond.

If Jane Austen isn’t good enough, what’s an aspiring author to do?

Ian:

Well, in all fairness, some of the publishers may have recognized the works and tossed the queries, baffled that an author thought he could pull the wool over their eyes. That being said, most of the queries probably just didn’t get read or were only quickly perused. They came via the route outlined on the publisher’s site or in guides, where they didn’t get past editorial assistants—aka the gatekeepers. Publishers are looking to do as little work as possible, just like the rest of us. The more you can bring to the table, the better. Overall, it seems they want an angle, the bigger the better. This is why people who aren’t authors get deals—prostitutes who sleep with governors, governors who get fired, etc. The media eats up the stories and that gets publishers seeing dollar signs.

Don’t worry about what publishers want. What do readers want? That’s where your focus should be. To get a publisher, then, show publishers you have what readers want.

Hunter:

How much of the marketing responsibility falls on the author versus the publisher? Time you spend marketing is time that you could have spent writing another book. How do you find a balance between promoting what you have and coming up with more?

Ian:

All marketing is you. Repeat; all marketing is you. If you get lucky enough to have your publisher market your work, great; that’s a huge bonus. But go in with the attitude that all marketing is on you because it is. Market smart. I went to the Printer’s Row Book Fair in Chicago a few years ago to market God is a Woman: Dating Disasters. A lot of authors sat behind tables, waiting for visitors to approach them. I handed out bookmarks advertising my book, mingling with the crowd. I gave out hundreds (these people were buying books; they needed free bookmarks!) and saw my sales on Amazon jump up over the following couple weeks. You should always be going after your audience—reaching out to bloggers, handing out free bookmarks to readers, speaking, and so forth, as opposed to waiting for your audience to come to you.

Near and following the release of any book don’t plan on doing any writing. All your time will be spent marketing, as it should be. As long as you are getting results—media interviews, blogger reviews, a flow of reviews on Amazon—you should keep marketing hard. It will taper off and as it does, you can then get back into writing. Eventually, all marketable interest will wane and you can then focus nearly entirely on writing again. I say “nearly” because you should always keep an eye open for marketing opportunities, typically by monitoring journalist and media queries for material. (Get on the “Help a Reporter Out” list, also known as “HARO”; it is a free list of queries from the media that goes out three times a day.)

Hunter:

Is it best to write the book first and then try to get it published, or get a publisher to accept the book first and then write it? If I recall correctly, Tim Ferriss took the latter approach with The 4-Hour Workweek. The problem with the former is that it puts a lot of faith in “if you build it, they will come.”

Ian:

Again, it really depends on what’s important to you. For me, it’s typically most important to get my ideas on the page. Writing is a release of my ideas that I want to share. It’s most important to me to share the ideas. If I don’t find a publisher who wants to pay me to write my ideas, that’s not good enough in some cases. I can’t just go to the next project. I want people to at least have the chance to get the information, so I start the project as I pitch it. I was halfway through God is a Woman when the publisher picked it up. Only small publishers wanted my latest as I pitched, so I completed it without signing with anyone, hoping to get a big publisher interested at some point. (I didn’t query many big publishers, wanting to hold off until I have a lot of page hits to show them.)

Generally speaking, most nonfiction work isn’t completed past the first few chapters until a publisher is found. Fiction work is almost always done before you start pitching. Is it most important to you to get paid for your work or to complete your work? If you wait for a publisher to pick it up, there is a very good chance your work will never be written. (Some experts purport that completing a nonfiction work ahead of time is the mark of an amateur; however, more and more publishers are asking to see complete works for nonfiction.)

Hunter:

People such as Steve Pavlina, Hugh MacLeod, Jonathan Fields, and Gary Vaynerchuk got their book deals in large part because of their popular websites. Not that they built up their online presence for the purpose of publishing a book down the road, but since they had the traffic, there was much less risk for the publishers.

When does it make sense to build up an online audience first, versus going directly for the book deal without any internet fame?

Ian:

I’m living proof that you don’t need Internet fame to achieve success with a book. Some popular blogs and sites don’t do well as books. Should you write a blog? Build an Internet following with a site? Blogging and writing a book are two very different types of writing. Take me for example. I’m not a good blogger because I tend to have one complete idea. I don’t have all the continually fresh content a blog needs. I’m more, “Here’s what I have to say. Here’s what works. Follow it, make it your own, take what works, discard the rest, and it will work for you. That’s all I got.” This works very well in a book because a book has a start, a middle, and an end. Blogs can often be entered at any point and don’t end. Bloggers often struggle writing books because they need to have an end and content that doesn’t only start a debate but also closes it. Next thing you know, the blogger has a variety of similar ebooks and books because he didn’t complete the thought in the first book. It can get confusing for readers; which one should they read first? Or should they just stick with the blog? I prefer to speak rather than blog, which is why I have a vlog/blog. The site serves mostly to provide applications of what I discuss in my second book as examples of implementation.

It all boils down to sincerity. If your writing is sincere it will find an audience because people want sincerity more than anything today. Sincerity sells. It makes a site, blog, or book popular, if even in just a niche. I wrote God is a Woman because I wanted to share my funny sexual and dating misadventures while giving readers, especially college students, the chance to learn from my mistakes so they could avoid them. I couldn’t go back and fix things in my own life to make unhappy experiences happy but I could share my experiences so others could avoid the same pitfalls and be happy. That’s what made it get noticed even without a popular site or name on the Internet. Sincerity is what made audiences laugh when I was a comedian.

If you’re not a recognized name in your topic, it is best to start a blog or site sharing your work as you create it. It can only help. You can still pitch while creating the site; no harm, no foul.

Hunter:

Ian, thanks for all this information. There’s plenty here that will give people a leg up on their competition.

Any questions for Ian? Ask away!

After ten years as a comedian, where he holds the entertainment industry record of 106 straight weeks touring, Ian Coburn no longer wanted to entertain people; he wanted to help them achieve their goals, just as he had with comedy. “There is no better feeling; no greater sense of accomplishment.” His tangible decision-making process for making good choices is shared in his second book, currently available for free download at www.bestpossiblechoice.com, where you will also find examples of its implementation.

Writing a book is one thing. Getting it published is another. And people who pull off the former beautifully often flop at the latter.

For those of you who’d love to see your literary masterpiece get the widespread distribution it deserves, how can you maximize your chances? Let’s ask someone who’s done it.

You may have seen comedian-turned-author Ian Coburn in the comment section on my blog. His first book, God is a Woman: Dating Disasters is available in bookstores and on Amazon. His second book, Choice – The Meaning of Life: How to Have More and Better Choices in Business, Relationships, Government and Life, is temporarily available for free online.

Over the next two posts, Ian will tell us about his adventures in publishing, and the advice he has for aspiring authors.

Ian:

First, I just wanna thank you for taking the interest in interviewing me about publishing; I’m flattered and happy to offer any insight I can. Hopefully it will prove helpful.

Hunter:

When God is a Woman: Dating Disasters came out, you got hit with a sudden wave of fame. What was that like?

Ian:

Unexpected. In many ways. I didn’t have a blog until after I wrote the book and it seemed like only I, my family, and two friends knew about it . . . none of whom actually read it. Yet, suddenly, a month into the book’s official release, I started getting emails asking dating questions from as far away as Norway and South Africa—I live in Chicago—and it jumped in sales on Amazon. I didn’t even know there was an Amazon.co.uk and when I checked it out, I was surprised to see the book selling there well, too.

How the hell did people hear about it? Sure, I was working hard to write articles for sites and doing interviews, but a lot of ‘em hadn’t even come out yet. And things kept growing. I discovered that in addition to my own efforts to spread the word, bloggers and these people called “pick-up artists” (pua’s)—whom I had never heard of before—were blogging and writing about it. They compared it to other books and liked it a lot because it was different than anything else out there. At the same time, women loved it because they got to read about a guy making an ass of himself as well as gain insight into the male mind. What woman doesn’t want those things? (Lifetime actually hired me to answer women’s questions on their site for a year under a column entitled “Ask A Guy” after they checked out the book; another surprise.) I became what I affectionately call “Internet Friends” with some of these people and because I answered each and every email eventually, I got even more word of mouth. The review on Legal Pub especially comes to mind; again, someone I had never heard of previously. I also owe a lot to reviews on Amazon, where it got good word of mouth, too.

It was also very different. I was a comedian from basically 18-30. I was used to getting responses in laughter and applause. I met fans after the shows in-person, immediately. I had only face-to-face encounters and lots of ‘em. Suddenly I was getting emails and nothing face-to-face. It’s weird for a people-person like me to realize that the Internet was this huge social dynamic. You can learn about and contact people you might otherwise never have met. Prior to releasing the book, I had never used the Internet for social purposes beyond emailing the various sports teams I captain weekly game times. Other people were using it to date, get jobs, make friends, find roommates, plan trips . . . Wow, did I have a lot to learn! Mostly, the wave was flattering and fulfilling, as people thanked me for writing a book that helped them while making them laugh.

Hunter:

These days, there are more publishing options than there were in the past.

For your first book, you went with a small publisher and got it into bookstores. For your second book, you currently have it freely available online with a suggested $10 donation. My first novel is freely available online and supported by ads. Tim Brownson and John Strelecky sell their book on their website, and reinvest 90% of the proceeds in printing copies for those who can’t afford them. And companies such as CreateSpace and Lulu let anyone self-publish their book.

How does someone decide which method Is best for them?

Ian:

Ha! As you know, I am big on answering what I call the Basic Life Concept Questions, BLC’s for short. The questions are:

What do you need? What’s important to you? What are your responsibilities? What are your limitations? What I love about the BLC’s is that you’re not limited to just applying them to your whole life; you can also apply them to any aspect of your life. Redecorating your kitchen? What do you need in your kitchen? What’s important to you in your kitchen? I apply them to all my big projects, including my books. I advise other authors to do the same.

For my first book, it was important for me to have control over content to “keep it real” and to see it on bookstore shelves. I wanted to see my name on a book at Barnes & Noble and other stores. That was big. (Not many people realize it but few books actually get shelved. What you see at a bookstore is only a small percentage of the number of books actually published.) For my latest book, it was no longer important for me to see the book on bookstore shelves. It is important for me to get a big publisher, though, because I had to focus too much on publishing issues with my first book. For example, each week I sent B&N and Borders a letter updating my media appearances and reviews. This is why they finally shelved the book. I shouldn’t have had to do that. It’s also important for me to get the information in the book out to as many people as possible; I am eager to help others achieve their goals and the tangible system I teach is a great vehicle for achieving your goals. So I put the book online as a free ebook, asking for donations, to help spread the word and build an audience; hence, I am in the position to reach people and garner interest from a big publisher.

One thing that drives me nutso, especially in fields like the arts or publishing, is that experts always assume that every artist or author or comedian or musician or whoever has the same priorities and are in the same position to go after them; thus, their advice tends to be narrow and incomplete. You’ll be much better off if you identify what your specific priorities are, and what position you’re in to go after them, from the start, before you think about publishing. Then go after the appropriate publisher.

Hunter:

If someone wants to go with a traditional publisher, how do they find and approach them?

Ian:

All right, against all better judgment, I’m going to share a huge secret with you. It goes against better judgment because I know there are people reading this who are thinking, “I am a great writer. I should be treated like a great writer by all,” and because of this attitude they do everything half-past. These people always piss in the pond for the rest of us. So I’ll preempt my answer by telling everyone out there reading this not to send anything to any agent or publisher, using the approach I’m about to share, until you’ve had a professional editor check your work over. I don’t mean your friends; I don’t mean bloggers; I don’t mean an English teacher you know. I mean a professional editor. Or, alternatively, until you have a foundation.

When I say foundation, I mean you’ve already been published by someone big, or have a successful book, or have published numerous articles for which you’ve been paid, or have a large blog following, or are an A-list talent, and such. (If you are a prostitute who slept with a president or an infamous drug dealer, that is not enough. You still need an editor to reach out using this method; however, a big publisher will probably contact you before you even think about writing a book.) If an editor says your work isn’t ready, follow the traditional advice you get in Writer’s Market and other such places. I mean it. If you just start following what I’m about to share, sending in outlines you wrote on napkins while drunk with your friends, your delusional butt is going to ruin this approach for everyone. You’ll literally kill it.

Forget all the advice you get outside being professional and polished. All you need to know is this: In the back of almost every book authors write “Acknowledgements.” They name their agent. They name their editors and publishers. Google those names to see where these people are currently working. Still at Crown? HarperCollins? With the same agency? If you can find the email pattern at a publisher, like HarperCollins, email the person. As long as you have credibility, they will respond and typically request what you offer to send them. If you can’t determine their email, send them a letter addressed specifically to them at the publisher or agency for which they work. Again, as long as you have credibility, you will hear from them.

I’ve gotten key personnel at publishing houses across the board (small to huge) to read my pitches using this method and they have all responded with feedback, including the much welcomed constructive criticism. Which reminds me, if you don’t want to receive criticism, another sign you are not ready to consider publishing, don’t use this method. You’ll piss off whoever you contact when you reply to their feedback by telling them they don’t know what they’re talking about, arguing for your content, etc.

Hunter:

What are some common mistakes that first time authors make, or red flags that they should watch out for?

Ian:

Oops, I kind of answered this in the previous question. (I tend to do that a lot.) Lack of humility. Thinking you’re the bomb keeps you from finding tools to measure your ability. How do you know you’re stuff is good? Really?

My first manuscript was a fiction, sci-fi thriller called IP. My friends told me it rocked, except for one who told me it was “painful;” he couldn’t finish it no matter how hard he tried. I entered it into a couple contests to gauge my ability. I didn’t place. I left it on the shelf for a while and re-read it months later. My friend was right; it was painful. The manuscript sucked.

When I started to write screenplays, I entered contests for feedback and to measure my ability. I had no idea whether or not my stuff was good because it was a new medium for me. The feedback let me know I was on the right track. I won a contest and that got me a lot of attention, landing me my first manager.

Being humble kept me from sending IP to publishers and screenplays to producers before I had properly measured both them and my abilities. When writers aren’t humble they ignore all feedback and don’t bother with having their stuff measured. Remember, it’s much easier to open doors that are unlocked than it is to open ones that have been slammed in your face or to cross bridges that you burned by being premature. It’s great—and a necessity—to be enthusiastic and tenacious; just don’t be cocky.

Watch out for publishers or agents who want money from you in any way, shape or form. If you choose to publish via a POD publisher, don’t go with any that charge you more than cost for your book. You will need to send free copies to tons of places for reviews and possible media attention. Why should you pay 30% less than retail, well over cost, for those copies? A POD who charges authors extra money doesn’t believe in their authors or their products. They aren’t truly interested in selling your book to people; they’re interested in selling it to you!

[Come back tomorrow for the rest of the publishing interview...what publishers are looking for, marketing, selling a book before writing it, and leveraging internet fame.]

This is gonna be a really short review, because some things just don’t need a hard sell.

1. Skellie wrote an ebook called the Blog Business Funnel. People love everything she writes, and this ebook is no exception.

2. It’s about how to build a freelancing business from work that comes to you through your blog. Mind you, it has to be a relevant blog – you can’t get banner design work by blogging about underwater basket weaving. But if you already have a blog that’s related to what you’d like to freelance in, you’ve got a big head start.

3. If you’re a freelancer who doesn’t have enough work, or if you have a blog that’s not making money, you should take a look at this. It only took Skellie 11 months to go from zero to $8,000 a month in her freelance writing/copywriting/consulting business, and she was even a full-time student at the time.

If you haven’t thought about freelancing before, this might be a great option for you. Skellie makes a good point in the opening of her ebook – instead of working your butt off in search of the elusive 4-hour workweek, you could be making good money and enjoying flow moments right now – using the skills you already have.

What kinds of skills are we talking about? Writing, drawing, programming, designing, and photography are common examples. If you have a skill that people will pay for, you can turn it into a freelancing business. And if you use a blog to funnel traffic to your portfolio and services pages, it can become a pretty darn profitable one.

Others have done it. Why not you?

What does physics have to do with making money online? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Our scientific understanding has advanced greatly over the centuries. But while our knowledge has brought plenty of complications, in a way it has also made things simpler. We can now explain the workings of the universe with just four fundamental forces:

- Gravity
- Electromagnetism
- Strong nuclear force
- Weak nuclear force

The number of fundamental forces has come down over time. For example, electricity, magnetism, chemical bonds, friction, etc., once thought to be separate forces, are now known to just be different aspects of an electromagnetic field.

If we’ve now reduced physics to four fundamental forces, might we someday get it down to just one? This is the search for a unified field theory.

Physicists disagree about whether one is possible. There have been proposals for how to combine electromagnetism with the weak force, but incorporating the strong force is problematic, and gravity really throws a wrench in the works.

There have been different unification theories, but so far they’ve all had holes. Maybe there really are four fundamental forces that can’t be put under a bigger umbrella.

Making money online

Much has been written about how to make money online, but when you look at the big picture, what are the principles at work? How many truly different ways are there to make money online? Does it all come down to just one?

People say that to make money online, you need to write for people, not search engines. Well, no, you don’t. Nor do you have to solve an urgent problem, or be authentic, or target a lucrative niche, or any of the other things that people say you have to do.

Yes, these are all good ideas, but each one has plenty of counterexamples. For any “must do” principle, there are success stories from people who violated it.

Why is this? Because there’s not just one way to do things. Here are four fundamental forces, if you will, for making money online:

- Being cool
- Being spammy
- Satisfying a want
- Satisfying a need

Maybe there are more, but these are the ones that came to mind. They appear to be independent, in that while you can certainly combine them, you can also succeed with one while ignoring the others. But are they really independent, or is there a larger force that unifies them?

Let’s first look at them separately.

Being cool

“Cool” here includes likeable, funny, entertaining, etc. People in this category make money by leveraging their personality.

Johnny B. Truant went from making practically nothing online to five figures a month in nine months, once he started being cool. Officially, he sets up websites and such. I’m sure he’s good at it, but the reason people want to buy from him isn’t because he’s better at websites than everyone else. He gets fans because he swears, he tells clients he doesn’t care if they work with him, he blogs about stuff that has nothing to do with what he sells (like why Christmas is gay), and he confesses to crimes he didn’t commit. In short, because he’s cool.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the face behind another personality-driven business. Today he has the whole “crush it” and branding expert thing, but he didn’t have that when everyone first started talking about him. I watched his videos trying to see what he was all about, and he was very entertaining, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he actually does (other than screaming about wine). And then I realized that was it – screaming about wine; i.e., being cool.

Stuff White People Like became an instant hit on humor value alone. Sometimes sites like this get a lot of traffic that can’t be monetized, but Christian Lander reportedly received a $300,000 advance for his book based on the blog.

Being spammy

I don’t necessarily mean actual spam, or doing anything unethical or illegal. I’m just talking about focusing on tactics for converting visitors into cash as opposed to providing value.

The guy known as Grizzly has a number of sites, but I only know one of them. And he was nice enough to spill his money-making secrets for this site in How to Increase Your AdSense CTR.

His blog is about making money online, and filled with content containing relevant keywords. It happens to be very good content, but that doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t make his money from regular readers. He just needs relevant content so Google will send him search traffic.

He deliberately went with a blogspot blog because it’s ugly. When visitors see this ugly blog, they want to get out of there, and 7% of them leave by clicking the huge ad in their face (at the very top, above the post title). I’d guess that most of his other sites use this same approach, but minus the good content.

(Actually, I just checked out his site for the first time in a long while. It now looks much less ugly, and the big AdSense ad is gone. Not sure what happened.)

Satisfying a want

This is the category for professional problem solvers: copywriters, blog consultants, marketing consultants, and so forth. They don’t create stuff first and then try to find people who want to buy it. They start by identifying their ideal customer and getting to know them.

When they understand the problem that is keeping their ideal customer up at night, they’re in a position to give the customer exactly what they want. They show this by listening, establishing trust, telling stories, highlighting benefits over features, giving a call to action, etc.

Satisfying a need

You’ll have a hard time selling something to someone who truly doesn’t want it. However, you don’t need to sell to their wants per se.

Steve Pavlina has done quite well by ignoring what his readers want, and just telling them what they need to hear. He positions himself as an expert with advice to give, a position that would only be weakened by asking for permission. He makes enemies by calling his readers Nazis for eating eggs or selfish for being underpaid teachers, but he also makes tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Is there a unified theory of making money online?

In practice, people don’t necessarily restrict themselves to just one of these. Naomi Dunford is cool in addition to being a problem solver, Grizzly quite possibly parlayed his reputation for AdSense success into an additional income stream, Steve Pavlina asked his workshop attendees for detailed feedback so he could improve, etc.

Still, these methods appear to be different. Is there some higher thing that ties them all together, or are they really independent? Albert Einstein failed to unlock all the secrets of the universe, leaving questions that may never be answered. But maybe we can unlock the secrets of making money online, which would be almost as good.

Photo by Victorrjr

John Hoff is a guy who knows way more about WordPress security than most people could ever hope to. He offers a security upgrade service that I’ve recommended before, but now he has an option for people who want to save money by doing the work themselves.

His new ebook is called WordPress Defender: 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From Attack Anyone Can Do. Do you see the double meaning in that title? John meant:

(30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From Attack) Anyone Can Do

That is, you don’t need to be a techie to implement these steps. You just need some basic skills, such as installing plugins, editing files, etc., and he spells out what you need to do to secure your blog.

But the title could also mean:

30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From (Attack Anyone Can Do)

You see, hacking a blog isn’t all that difficult. The problem is that almost all WordPress installations have the same out-of-the-box security configuration. So when a new vulnerability is discovered in WordPress, a hacker knows that he can exploit it on most blogs. He can even set up a bot to automatically carry out attacks on huge numbers of blogs while he sleeps.

Don’t think that you’re not a target because your blog is too small, or it’s not making that much money, or you’re too nice. It’s almost inevitable that you will be targeted at some point. I’ve been hacked at least once, maybe twice, and every now and then someone else will try. Fortunately, John’s system has made me much safer, and I get notifications when someone is trying to hack me.

I get a little more paranoid about hackers each year. Last week, the head security guy where I work gave a presentation about how big the threat is. He thinks that antivirus software is basically useless, because it only protects you from the hackers who aren’t trying very hard.

He told us about companies that sell viruses to people who want to hijack other computers. Many of them offer live support – if you buy a virus from them that gets caught by antivirus software, just call their toll-free number and they guarantee they’ll fix the virus to put the bad guys back in business.

He told us about how the hackers we catch in the U.S. are at the very lowest levels of their organizations. The big guys operate from certain countries in eastern Europe, where they’re safe from prosecution, and free to recruit people to carry out their evil deeds.

In other words, hackers are a very big threat, and one you can’t afford to ignore. John found that out the hard way when his wife’s online jewelry business was completely shut down by a hacker. And millions of other people have learned this lesson after it was too late.

WordPress Defender is 150 pages of solid information about how hackers think and how you can thwart them. It also comes with 14 videos (nearly 2 hours worth) to make things crystal clear and easy to follow along.

Unfortunately, people often make the mistake of waiting to get hacked before they start thinking about security. It’s far better to get prepared now, so you can relax knowing that you’re not an easy target. While nothing is completely secure, the system in this ebook will make your blog far more secure than it is now.

What’s the difference between bloggers who grab and hold readers’ attention, and those who don’t? It often comes down to whether the blogger has studied the art of effective writing.

New bloggers consistently make false assumptions about what works. They learned many rules of formal writing in English class, and they understandably think that they apply to blogging as well. Very often, they don’t. The blogger puts in lots of effort, only to be frustrated and confused when their readers don’t react the way they expected.

Ali Hale has a new ebook out, called The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing. It’s focused purely on the actual writing aspect of blogging, aimed at getting you writing with ease, enjoyment, and results.

Its 82 pages are shockingly comprehensive, and it comes with a whopping six month guarantee, so you have plenty of time to try out all the ideas. If you’re a new blogger, it’s very simple – you should buy it. That’s really all I have to say, so click the link and check it out.

Now, what if you’re a more experienced blogger? Well, as with any ebook about blogging, parts of it will surely cover things you already know. These parts will be a good read anyway, but that alone might not be enough of a reason to buy it.

Why might it be worthwhile then? Because experienced bloggers often get stuck in a rut without knowing it. You might have settled on certain ways early on, and perhaps never revisited them to see if they were working for you.

Maybe your style isn’t quite right for your content, or maybe your headlines aren’t grabbing all the attention they could, or maybe readers are having a hard time following the structure of your posts. These kinds of problems aren’t quick to resolve themselves.

It’s much easier when you learn about what makes writing effective or not. Then you can throw away your assumptions and take a fresh look at where you’re doing things right, and where you can improve.

Even for an experienced blogger, predicting what will work is sometimes difficult. But instead of blindly guessing, it’s better to make decisions based on a solid understanding of the foundations of effectiveness. Give The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing a try, and see what it can do for your blogging results.

Akemi Gaines has released a free ebook, her Lightworker’s Guide to Self-Employment. No email required, just click and read.

A lot of you know Akemi as an Akashic record reader. And my first interview with her (previous link) was one of my most popular posts ever, so apparently a lot of you find her business interesting. Of course, she didn’t just fall into that gig. She had to make the leap from corporate employee to small business owner, a leap she made quite well.

Her ebook covers topics such as myths and reality, paycheck mentality vs. risk management, marketing, business names, fear of success, etc. But what makes it unique is that it’s written for lightworkers, or people who want to make the world a better place instead of just making money at any cost.

Are lightworkers at a disadvantage in the world of business? You might be surprised. Instead of trying to become an aggressive predatory type because you think that’s what you have to do, check out the Lightworker’s Guide to Self-Employment and see how your good side can be a great asset for you in business.

Monika Mundell and Gobala Krishnan have just released a new ebook called Freelance Superstar: How To Quit Your Job And Make A Living From Freelance Writing.

While I hadn’t heard of Gobala before, I know that Monika has been making a living purely from freelance writing for quite a while now. I expected that she would have some solid information to share, and she certainly does.

This ebook is very professional and covers many different aspects of freelance writing, from finding a niche to setting rates to promoting yourself to working with clients to managing the many other aspects of your business. Anyone with basic competency in the English language who puts this information to use will be able to start making money very quickly, and with enough effort, making a living from it is possible.

What I find most useful about this ebook is the precise detail on how to find work. It gives an overview of 10 different job sites, along with pros and cons of each. It explains exactly how to apply for jobs, including email templates that you can use to make an effective pitch. And it includes detailed information on setting up a site for your portfolio, including 5 WordPress themes you can use.

My favorite part of Freelance Superstar: “Once you have grabbed the editor with a riveting intro, you can move in for the kill. The pitch is similar to a hunt; you grab hold of the animal with your teeth and refuse to let go until you taste blood or your prey is dead.”

Are you an aspiring freelance writer still looking for that first taste of blood? This ebook gives you everything you need to tear off the flesh of freelance success as it lays there bleeding to death, looking up at you with terror in its eyes and saying with its last breath of life, “You are now a freelance superstar.”

I’m not really into career books, so at first I wasn’t particularly interested in this book called The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great, even though it’s a bestseller. Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have read it if the author Rick Smith hadn’t sent me a copy.

But it’s good, really good. It’s really not about traditional career advice, but more about how ordinary people make a quantum leap from an average life to a great life. One example is the author himself, who went from being fired from a job he didn’t care about to starting World 50, an elite executive networking company.

Other case studies are a door-to-door fax machine saleswoman who started her own clothing line, a shrimp farmer who became a renowned genetics expert, a software designer who became a leading advocate for the homeless, and a guy named Bill Gates who started a company called Microsoft.

The book is about how to make your own leap by following three rules. The first rule is to find your primary color, which represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions.

It’s illustrated with a color chart, with red representing curiosity, green representing execution, and blue representing leadership. Where do these intersect for you?

You can find out your primary color for free at http://www.primarycolorassessment.com. It takes about 15 minutes, and an email address is required, but you can use a fake one if you want since they give you the results right there in the web page. My results are below.

It says:

YOUR PRIMARY COLOR IS:
CANDY APPLE RED – Wildly Curious

Congratulations! Your primary color is that specific area of the spectrum that best represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions. Be sure to check out the So What?! and Now What?! tabs for additional information and resources.

Curiosity is the cornerstone of this color area. You are energized by the new and novel…interested in trying new things and exploring innovative approaches and solutions. Leaders in this cluster are generally most comfortable and effective when leading through vision and ideas. You are decisive, yet are always looking for a better answer and need time to think and explore alternatives.

Fast paced go-go environments can be a negative place for you even though you may be energetic and driven. You are also quality driven and motivated by achieving excellence. If you are a STRONG RED, others may see you as idealistic and perfectionistic – certainly difficult to please – never settling for “just OK.”

I thought “wildly curious” was accurate, but a couple of things jumped out at me. First, 0% for execution? Do I really have that little follow through? The other thing is that these numbers add up to 94%. Did 6% of my soul leak out?

Then I thought that maybe they’re not supposed to add up to 100%, but each one can be 100% for a max total of 300%. And I saw that the inside of the book jacket shows a screenshot with 95% curiosity, 21% execution, and 86% leadership, for a total of 202%.

Now my scores look really low! Oh well, I’m focusing on the color rather than the numbers.

I agree with him that the MBTI isn’t useful for career planning, but then again it’s not meant to be, despite what everyone thinks.

To find your field, you’d want something that measures strengths and passions, like his primary color assessment. One thing I’d like to see is what other people with my primary color have done to make their leap.

I do think he has some good insights about how to live the life you’re supposed to have, and the common elements among ideas that really take off. If you’re looking to make a leap, you’ll love this book.

If you take the primary color assessment, please tell us your color. Any other candy apple reds out there?