This week’s featured postcard comes to us from Emma in Sydney, Australia.

Here’s what it’s all about.

See more postcards from readers here.

Send your own in to this address:

World Domination HQ
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd #639
Portland, OR 97214
USA

###

I made it back from my recent trip to Asia and the South Pacific. Next up, the two remaining countries in Latin America—Guatemala and Nicaragua—then over to the Ukraine and Cyprus. After that, a big trip to Africa… and so on.

I’ve always said that I’m not a real travel writer – see Rolf Potts or Robert Kaplan for two of those – and lately I attempt it even less. I do some destination pieces for magazines, I put photos on Flickr, and from time to time I’ll post my trip reports here, but mostly I think I’ve evolved to where I spend more of my time doing what I’m good at.

That said, a bunch of people have asked for updates on how the quest to visit every country in the world is going. It’s still going! Here’s my attempt at providing a decent answer.

***

My 32nd birthday is next month, which means I’ll officially have three years left to make it to the final 65 countries before my self-imposed deadline. It’s possible but difficult, especially since the list of remaining countries is fairly intimidating.

Some days I think as long as I approach it logically and consistently, I won’t have any major problems. Other days I think about places like Chad, Iran, and Uzbekistan, and then I start to worry. At any rate, I’ve settled in—this is just what I do. I head out, I hop around, I focus on visiting new places, and so on.

Even with the focus on visiting new places, I inevitably go back to many of the same ones over and over. I’ve now been to Hong Kong at least 15 times, which is probably my most visited transit city. Other frequent stops, by way of airport code, include BKK, LHR, FRA, JNB, AKL, NRT, and YVR. Each of these places (and more) are like second homes to me now.

In Which I Learn to Give Intelligent Answers

“What have you learned?” is the question I hear almost every week in one interview or another. Sometimes it’s an earnest question; other times it’s asked in a cynical way—like “How could you possibly learn something about each place from only visiting for a short time?”

Well. The way I think about travel is that it is not so much about packing something away into a learning box, like a teapot or pack of matches from every country. Oh! There’s my Namibia box. And over there! It’s my Romania box. That’s not how it works, at least not for me. It’s about being open to possibility wherever you go. It’s about walking around without an agenda, allowing yourself to laugh at things you might not laugh at elsewhere.

Also, I believe there’s something noble about a quest for its own sake. Like mountain climbing, for example. I certainly don’t return as the world’s expert on Samoa after a three-day visit, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. The people who wonder about motivations may not have yet found something they really love that’s worth doing strictly for the sake of doing it. I hope they do—meanwhile, I’m having fun.

Yes, Fun

Someone else asked if travel is “still fun” for me. This is another question that is hard to answer in a sound bite. Travel is fun, except when it’s not, and that’s perfectly fine. My theory is, if you think travel is supposed to be 100% fun all the time, I’m not sure how much you’ve actually traveled. Sometimes it’s not fun at all, and that’s OK. Most things that are worth doing aren’t always that easy, so you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

In my case, I’m interested in radically experiencing life, and travel is one important part of that. If other people are writing in about feeling the life draining out of them while doing a bullshit job every day, the least I can do is enjoy what’s happening with me around the world.

The advice for doing something really big is the same no matter the task: you’d better know in your heart why you want to do it, and you’d better have enough internal motivation to keep going when times are tough. Between that mindset and trying to make everything fun and wonderful all the time, I’d take that mindset.

On to Practical Concerns

My two-year secret passport has turned into only an 18-month passport. I forgot that many countries won’t let you in without at least six months of life left on the passport, even if you’ll be long gone before the six months comes around. Now when they scan it at immigration, the computer beeps and the immigration person gets confused. Since the whole reason I got a second passport was to make travel easier, this is frustrating.

I used to take a round-the-world trip and visit five new countries. That’s something you can do when you haven’t been to 125 of them. Now, I go a long way for two or three countries, and the days are coming when I’ll take major trips just to make it to one new place. I’ll also need to get more strategic and stop making mistakes, like neglecting to realize I should have visited Tuvalu when in Fiji last month. Now I’ll need to go back—and Fiji is a nice enough place to go back to, but it’s also a long way away for me.

Mostly I just keep planning and traveling. Can I get to Cape Verde on a TAP Portugal award while I’m in Europe later this month? Yes, indeed I can. Can I get the visa sorted in time? Yes, I think so. Et voila—Cape Verde is now on the list of planned stops, right after the Ukraine and Cyprus.

***

I started writing these notes from Malé, where I arrived from Singapore. The Maldives is a fun place (see it before it sinks!) where most hotels cost $800 a night. I found a place for $150 and was thrilled—what a deal! Everything is relative.

At 1:00 a.m. I made it in and did some of my online work from the hotel. Then I slept seven hours, which managed to feel like twelve hours after a few days of little sleep. In the morning I went to the rooftop cafe and drank my coffee while looking out at the island. I’m in the Maldives! I wrote in my journal. This is where people save for years to go on holiday. Who gets to drop in to a place like this just for the sake of dropping in? My life is crazy good. I love it.

The next night I had the interminable eight-hour, attempt-to-sleep-on-metal-chairs delay. Shake it off, I said to myself when I was finally back in Singapore. You can catch up on sleep in exactly three years and one month. Until then, you’ve got 65 countries left. No slacking!

So I’m home now, and I leave again next weekend, then I come home, then I leave again. It’s like going to the office, except the scenery changes. All in a day’s work, yes?

###

Image: Caveman

From time to time, it’s good to have a conversation with yourself—maybe even an interview. This is how you do it.

First, sit yourself down wherever you like to sit. Get coffee or your drink of choice. Turn off the distractions and take it seriously. (Wouldn’t you take another interview seriously?)

Then you open the conversation like this:

Dear self, you are x years old. What do you have to show for it? Are you living the dream?

As you look back on your life, what are you most proud of, what do you regret, and how do you feel about each of those things? Here are a few follow-ups:

• What’s next, self?
• Why do you do the things you do every day?
• What do you really believe in? (What do you know to be true?)
• Where do you find your security?
• What bothers you, and what are you doing about it?
• What worries you?
• If you had one year left to live, how would you spend it?

***

Of course, when you interview yourself, you can customize the interview however you see fit. The point is to make sure you know why you’re doing what you do, and if you should make any changes. Simple, except when it’s not.

Here’s wishing you all a great Monday. Over here, I’m working full-time on a single project this week. Rare for me, I know, but once in a while I manage to take the time to focus. It’s kind of like asking questions of yourself: hard but good.

Are you satisfied with your answers?

###

Image: DH

Greetings from Portland, where spring has arrived outside my window…. at least for today.

***

This is the Sunday Store Update, where I share some brief news about the business side of AONC.

We recently came to the end of the inaugural $100 Business Forum group, and I thought I’d report back to everyone to let you know how it works. This video shows the interface of where we’ve all been spending 20 minutes a day for the past month:

[In an unplanned scene, my assistant Libby jumps on my head about halfway through.]

***

As I say in the video, I’ve really enjoyed spending time with all of the participants. They have made the group much better than it would be with just Pam and me.

We’re going to have two new groups, one in May and one in June. Due to the popular demand from the first group, we’re also going to have a “Stage II” group called Marketplace. This group will primarily be for $100 Business alumni, and it will be available for our February, April, and May groups.

For the May and June spaces, I’ll offer them first to the waiting list (send me a message to join) and then to anyone else. I don’t think we’ll have a problem filling them right away, so please only join the waiting list if you really want to register.

Anyway, nothing’s for sale today—mostly I wanted to report back to everyone who was interested in the project, as well as people who have signed up for April and have been patiently waiting for their group to begin. We’re almost there.

***

In other news: I’ll look forward to meeting many AONC readers in Austin, Texas this Saturday night during the great SXSW. After that, I head out on a big trip to Cyprus, the Ukraine, Cape Verde, and beyond.

While I’m traveling I’ll be working more on the Empire Building Kit, the other business project I mentioned recently. I had hoped to launch that up as early as next week, but it’s not ready yet. I’ve set a hard deadline of early April, so it won’t be much longer.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a great week.

###

This week’s featured postcard comes to us from Randall in Maine, via St. Louis, Senegal.

Here’s what it’s all about.

See more postcards from readers here.

Send your own in to this address:

World Domination HQ
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd #639
Portland, OR 97214
USA

###

Last fall I wrote about a special promotion where you could earn an enormous Frequent Flyer bonus by buying a large quantity of useless stickers.

True story, as odd as it sounds. It was one of the best travel hacking opportunities I’ve been a part of yet.

As I result of the promotion, I woke up yesterday to an influx of new miles in my US Air account. How many? Well, I had already earned about 280,000 a few months ago… but this morning the new deposit read: 808,185 miles.

Here’s the proof.

(My favorite part of that screenshot is where it shows my US Air flight history: “0 miles and 0 segments.” Yep, I’m not a big fan of US Air as an actual airline—but as a mileage holder, I love them.)

The Miles Are Raining In!

The best thing is I’m not the only one planning a bunch of trips with new miles. So far I’ve heard success stories from about two dozen readers who also took part. One of the first notes I received came from Lorraine (originally from Calgary, now in Thailand):

Thanks to your post about the promotion with US Air and following your lead, I now have ONE MILLION miles in my US Air account!! WOW, WOW, WOW! Can hardly wait to start planning.

Then I received this note from Farsh (another Canadian — you guys are active travelers):

Duuuuuuuude! US airways, MILES posted! I received a total of 351,000. Looking to go location independent this year sometime. I’m planning to take a year off and travel, I would leave from either US or Europe and visit… Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Nepal, India, Tajikistan, Turkey, Syria, Tanzania, Malta, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, and the UK

Another note from Ty (not sure where he is from) arrived a few minutes later reporting 324,810 miles.

To try and get on top of all the reports, yesterday I sent out a message asking for everyone to report in with their totals. Long story short, I’m still reading through all the replies. So far, Greg got 250k miles. Bob got 600k. Chris (another Chris) got 210k.

Megan got 39,000. Mike got 51,000. Sherah also got 51,000 for a ticket from South Africa to Uganda. And so on—lots of folks, lots of miles, lots of free travel.

Even using a highly conservative mileage valuation, it’s clear that our own small group has generated more than $100,000 in free flights just from the people who have written in thus far. And since most of us are smart and use the miles to book flights that would normally be more expensive, the real value is likely much higher.

Whatever it is, I’m just glad it worked out. Fun times. Happy travels, everyone.

A Note on Risk

I hope you’ll forgive me for a brief soapbox moment. When I wrote about the deal last fall, I received a lot of emails from excited people, but I also received a lot of emails from skeptics. Someone even told me I was encouraging readers to throw away their money.

“Is this guaranteed?” several other people asked. Sorry, no. Nothing with travel hacking is ever guaranteed! I don’t think the airlines are going to guarantee to sell millions of miles for a fraction of their value; that’s why it’s a hack.

The people who attacked the deal and said it would never work were right—it didn’t work for them because they didn’t try it. Meanwhile, Lorraine in Thailand has one million miles, Farsh from Alberta is going around the world in Business Class, Sherah is going to Uganda, and so on.

As a matter of fact, nothing in life is really guaranteed either. Lots of people said they liked Tsilli’s profile because it focused on how a risk-averse person could carefully and gradually take a big leap. I liked that too, but the point is: eventually she took the leap.

Anyway, that’s the soapbox. Most importantly, congratulations to everyone who is mileage rich! Let’s have a party in Japan, or New Zealand, or somewhere. (I’ll actually be using my miles to get to places like Belarus and Madagascar, but it’s all good. Have fun in Japan.)

Everyone else, this deal is over now—but the next time a good thing comes along, don’t think too hard about it.

###

Image: GT

It’s a new month, and time for a new profile. My friend Tsilli Pines recently quit her job to go full-time with the side business she’s been building for the past three years.

Yay! Congratulations to her.

And when we were talking, she told me how she had worked at the job for eight years, and has spent the past three years carefully building her business to the point where she could take a big leap.

Entrepreneurs are often thought of as embracing risk—but I think this is a bit overrated. In Tsilli’s words: “I’m very conservative about making decisions. I probably could have quit the job last year, but I wanted to wait until I was absolutely sure.”

I thought this was fascinating, so I asked her to tell me more. You can read her answers in our interview below.

***

One month ago you left your job of eight years to strike out on your own. How does it feel? 

It feels like freedom!

However, I had a great job working with great people, so leaving was bittersweet. I learned much of what I know and became the designer that I am working with Fine Design Group, and they gave me a lot of room to grow in the years I worked at the studio. 

Then I hit my stride as a designer and started thinking about what I’m meant to do in the long term. I found myself yearning for total authorship. So while the client work I was doing in the studio was challenging and fun, I wondered what I could do if I were my own client.

Tell us a little about your business. What’s a ketubah? Who are your customers, and how do they find out about you?

A ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract. It was traditionally used as a legal document and is now regarded more broadly as a statement of commitment, ritual object, and work of art.

There is a long history of the ketubah being interpreted as an illuminated manuscript, but there aren’t many takes on the form from the perspective of modern design. My clients are design-minded folks who have a hard time finding something that fits with their style but want to include this tradition in their wedding. Most of the pieces I make are for Jewish or interfaith couples (where one person is Jewish and the other is from another tradition), but I’ve also made Quaker wedding certificates, which are similar documents.

Many people find me online—this is a product people search for pretty specifically. Now that I have been doing this for several years, I’m also getting referral business from happy clients. I try to take really good care of people, so it’s the highest compliment when someone recommends me.

How did you build the business on the side while working full-time?

I built the business really slowly and organically and fit it between the cracks. Two years before I launched my website, I met the owner of a Judaica shop in California, who encouraged me to try out my designs through her store. I worked up two prototypes and the day after I dropped them off, I had my first order.

For those first two years, I only had a handful of clients, because it was all I could handle while getting my head around the process. I learned the ropes by putting one foot in front of the next, getting guidance from the Judaica shop and a few rabbis, and making lots of mistakes.

After that initial period of incubation I felt confident that I had the basics under control: how to work with different texts and what the rules were around them, how to make the pieces, how to package and ship them. But I had never worked directly with any clients because I had the shop handling the first steps of the process. It was a wholesale relationship and I wanted to create a direct relationship with my clients.

I requested a chunk of time off from my job—a combination of vacation I had built up and unpaid time—so that I could focus on taking things to the next level. I got a month off and in that time, I developed a few more designs, designed and coded a website, figured out how I would take direct payment, researched ways to improve my process, and started doing PR to get the word out. 

Knowing that people were increasingly looking for their ketubah online, and being a web designer by trade, I focused on how to make myself most visible online. I decided early on that besides having an easy-to-use website that was optimized for search engines, blogs would be the best way to raise awareness about my work. I already followed a lot of design and wedding blogs because I was interested in their content, so I wrote a very simple email introducing myself politely, with a few images of my work. The response was wonderful and I immediately became visible.

Tip from Tsilli: For folks who are looking to market their work online, I highly recommend Grace Bonney’s generous notes about how to approach the press and most especially this round-up from design bloggers about they like to be approached. In fact, the entire Biz Ladies series is a huge help.

Having an online business makes it easier to do on the side. I determined a reasonable process for fulfilling orders, and then I built a minimum turnaround time around that. Having limited time forced me to think about how to do the work most efficiently. I batched my email responses and did the work that could be done in bursts in the evenings and early mornings. The more involved work of actually producing the pieces was done on the weekends when I had entire days to get into the flow.

But I won’t lie: the beginning was insane. I was basically working two jobs, and my husband was helping me build the infrastructure—also on the side, since he has his own day job. He continues to support the project to this day. I couldn’t have done it without him.

It got to the point last year where there weren’t enough hours in the day, and I could only be reactive in fulfilling orders, rather than proactive in my business planning. It was clear that something had to give. But after four years of growing slowly, I finally felt confident that I had a viable business, and that allowed me to leave my day job.

When did you first think about quitting the day job—was it something you planned from the beginning of the startup, or was it after things began to grow? 

I am a very cautious person and entrepreneurship always seemed risky to me. For many years, I focused on finding the best possible job working for other people in order to avoid that perceived risk. I found the perfect job, but after putting in a good chunk of years, I started to wonder what was next for me.

I always knew I wanted to create something of my own and was drawn to the dream of being a working artist rather than a commercial designer. But I didn’t really see how the money side would work. 

As I’ve grown my own practice, I’ve become increasingly entrepreneurial about it, and the small successes have encouraged me to push ahead. I now see the larger picture and realize that there are so many directions I can take things. This was harder to see when I started out. The path has appeared beneath my feet.

Did anything go wrong in the early development of the business? (If so, what did you learn?)

Oh, so many things have gone wrong. Luckily, they have all been fixable. Packages have gone missing, equipment has failed, mistakes have slipped past both me and my clients, all kinds of things! But with determination and a positive attitude, nothing has been insurmountable.

A lot of the learning process about my internal process revolved around the technical side of things—figuring out the best materials, gear, and process. Often revelations and improvements came out of failures. It’s been a constant learning curve. Tools change, materials are discontinued. So the biggest lessons there were:

Stay nimble. Designing a product means that available materials and tools will change. Keep your eye on the prize and know what you’re trying to do overall, rather than getting hung up on exactly how.

Invest in the right tools. Bootstrapping was critical to the early stages of my business. But I also held out longer than I should have on gear that helps me do my work. 

Stay engaged. Keep trying to understand how your clients experience your product and service, and always work on how to solve more for them. Don’t get complacent.

The things that went wrong externally were often related to factors beyond my control, like shipping mishaps. Any problem that came up was mitigated by taking good care of my clients. I used the following principles to guide me through every situation:

Be clear. If a misunderstanding happens and causes a problem, assume it’s because you weren’t clear, understand why it happened, and adjust all future communication. 

Manage expectations. Be very explicit about how you work, and why. Do exactly what you say you’re going to do, or exceed expectations.

Be generous. Once you’ve set up all the basic rules of engagement, there will be times when something goes wrong, anyway. Go above and beyond what you have to do and make people happy.

The most important thing I got right quickly was knowing what kind of business I was in. It allowed me to say yes to the right things and no to the wrong ones. For example, I decided right away that I was not in the custom design business. This was an important decision because my schedule didn’t allow for it. Just knowing that gave me a framework for what kind of work I could do, which set the stage for everything else. I referred people who wanted a custom design to other artists I respected who did do that kind of work.

What is the greatest thing about your new self-employed life?

The freedom to finally work on all the projects I’ve been scribbling about and thinking about for so long. The ability to take care of other aspects of my life besides work because I am no longer working two jobs. The feeling of total control over my time and my future.

What is your advice to someone who wants to “escape” from traditional work and start something like this?

Find what you love to do, and then do it, even if it doesn’t bring in money at first. Experiment on the side, experiment on the cheap. It’s the single most important concept to grasp if you are looking to build something from scratch.

What worries you?

Everything! I’m a chronic worrier. But there’s a bad way to worry, and a good way. 

The bad way of worrying paralyzes you. You worry you won’t make the money side work, and it seems so overwhelming that you decide not to even try. I used to worry in this way, and did nothing.

The good way of worrying keeps you competitive, keeps you striving. For example, I still worry about making the money side work (especially now that I’ve thrown my weight into my own business completely). I still think, “What if all the work dries up? What if a competitor comes into the market that takes away my market share?” But I worry about it differently now. I worry about it by thinking ahead of the curve, recognizing what my strengths are and what I can do to mitigate that risk.

Now that you have more time to devote to the business, what’s next for New Ketubah and you? Do you plan to hire people or stay small? 

I plan to keep things small, but do big work. I’m energized by the idea of scaling talent, in the model Jonathan Fields describes as Simplicity Driven Entrepreneurship.

I have big plans for this breakout year of mine. Some of them have to do with New Ketubah, and some are new art and design projects. Among other things, DIY Ketubah just launched today! I am giving my most popular ketubah texts away for free as a download and inviting people to share the pieces they produce with it. I want to help accelerate the growth and exploration of this centuries-old tradition by enabling more people to make their own pieces and share their projects to inspire the community as a whole.   

My weekly practice is still ongoing. I regularly post pieces that I make on a rolling basis—these include cards for people I care about, free desktop calendars for anyone to download, and my newest project: visual conversations with other artists.

I’ll also begin offering some of my design work for sale as prints, and will be rolling out a new collection of products that I am making to recast the expressions of Jewish identity I grew up with.

And that’s just the first half of the year! There are some super secret things brewing thereafter, and I hope some of the great people from AONC will join me in the journey.

***

Congratulations to Tsilli!

If you like Tsilli’s work, you can join her newsletter here or follow her on Twitter here. You can also post any follow-up questions for her in this post.

And good luck to everyone else out there who is pursuing a dream of your own. I’ll look forward to hearing about your story one day.

###

Greetings from home base in the great Portland, Oregon. I’ve just returned from my first trip to Asia of 2010.

The February trip was quite intense. First, I went to two faraway island groups: Papua New Guinea and the Maldives.

I’m glad I made it, because they are both fairly time-consuming to get to. However, it’s also true that flying to islands can sometimes present challenges. Flight schedules are limited. For PNG I flew six hours from Manila to get there and six hours to Singapore to leave.

I’m not complaining, of course—just observing that I was pretty tired towards the end of the trip. I had a great time seeing friends and recovering in Bangkok before going home again.

***

Each month I look back at what’s happened with AONC in the previous month. If you’ve missed some articles, you can catch up here.

Writing

LIFE – I wrote about the legacy of Malcolm X, Dropping Keys, Happy Birthday to AONC.

WORK – I wrote about Overnight Success (Year Three), The Buzzing Inbox, and The Writer’s Guide to Money and Passion.

TRAVEL – I wrote about Advanced Travel Planning and Tips for Stress-Free Travel.

SITE AND STORE UPDATES – I wrote the World Domination Postcard Project, an Update from Manila about Everything, Case Studies for EBK, Good Work vs. Great Work.

(P.S. Thanks to everyone who has been participating in the comments section on the Monday and Thursday articles. You guys are incredibly smart.)

Travel

I made it to two new countries — Papua New Guinea and the Maldives. Then I went to Bangkok and finally came home through Singapore, Seoul, and Los Angeles.

You can see photos and videos of my trips here. Drop in to take a look if you’re so inclined, and add me as a contact if you’d like.

Small Business

Pam Slim and I are wrapping up the first 28-day group of the $100 Business Forum. It’s been so much fun. I’ve probably learned as much from the participants as I shared with them.

After the April group (completely sold out, sorry) we’re planning on doing the next two groups in May and July. You can join a waiting list here, but because the demand is so high, please only join if you’re really serious about doing it.

Otherwise, I’m gearing up for the launch of the Empire Building Kit. Yes! This will be fun.

Postcards

I came home from my trip and was deluged by a flood of postcards at the mailbox place. So many arrived in the first week that the box was full and they had to keep the rest behind the counter. Then there was an awkward moment when I had to explain what “World Domination HQ” was all about (that’s not my legal business name, unfortunately), but it worked out OK.

You guys are so great. The first batch is now viewable here on Flickr, and I’ll begin posting one of the best ones each week on AONC—keep them coming.

Bangkok Meetup

My big thanks to everyone who came out to the Bangkok meetup! You can see a video of the group here and a fun batch of photos here.

Dwight runs a charity and helped me coordinate the meetup.

I first met Sean Ogle ten months ago in Portland. At the time he was wearing a tie (on the hipster east side of Portland, dressing up is very odd). Now he lives in Bangkok, wears t-shirts every day, and helps out with an online business. He’s also my affiliate manager and he’s also in the upcoming AONC book.

Zoe Westhof, co-author of the Art and Money guide, came down from Chiang Mai.

Then, long-time friend Stephanie came over from Cambodia and did a photo shoot with me at the Ancient City of Thailand, half an hour or so out of Bangkok. You can see her fun photos here.

I’m so grateful to be surrounded by fun people all over the world.

What’s Coming Next

Travel

From the 12th-16th I’ll be in Austin, Texas with the rest of the online world. Naturally I’m throwing a party on Sunday night, March 14th. Details forthcoming, but RSVP here to get on the list.

Then I’ll go on another big trip, the dates and countries of which are not yet set — but I know I’ll have a couple stops each in Central America and Europe.

Small Business

As promised last fall, I’m slowly-and-carefully ramping up my business during the first half of the year. This is because the second half of the year will be spent launching the AONC book and traveling throughout North America to meet readers.

With that in mind, while I’ve been traveling I’m been working on the initial launch of my first high-level business project, also known as the Empire Building Kit, and the goal is to help people build a sustainable lifestyle business ($50k-150k / year) by doing one thing a day for a year.

The plan is to get this going on Tuesday, March 16th, live from Austin. It will be very big and very fun. Well, correction – it will be very fun, but before rolling it out to the entire universe, I’m going to start with a small group of AONC readers. In next week’s update, I’ll explain more about how it will work.

Articles

Every month I write at least eight free articles for AONC and several other articles for blogs, newspapers, and magazines. I hope you enjoy my writing, and I always welcome your feedback.

Audience Participation

You can participate in the development of AONC in several ways:

Leave a comment at the bottom of any regular article. Feel free to add to the discussion at any time, and include a link back to your own site if you have one. (Note that the link goes in the “web site” field, not the big text box where you write your comment.)

Join the fun newsletter or add me to your RSS reader.

Follow my real-time updates on Twitter here. I regularly solicit input on the articles published on the site, as well as send out links to other people’s great content. A “Daily Ass-Kicking” is included at no additional charge. You can also become a fan of AONC on Facebook.

Send other feedback. Use my contact form here to say hi or check in about something.

Tell your friends, or tell the world by submitting my articles to StumbleUpon or other social networking sites.

I appreciate the time you spend here. Don’t forget to change the world the way you think it needs to be changed.

-CG

Catch up on Previous Updates Here:

January-February 2010 (Portland)
November-December 2009 (Barcelona)
October 2009 (Portland)
August-September 2009 (Bali)
July 2009 (Kuala Lumpur)
June 2009 (Salt Lake City)
May 2009 (Dominican Republic)
April 2009 (Portland)
March 2009 (Portland)
January-February 2009 (Tokyo)
November-December 2008 (Seattle)
October 2008 (Seattle)
September 2008 (Seattle)
August 2008 (Seattle)
July 2008 (Karachi)
June 2008 (Amsterdam)
May 2008 (Vancouver)
April 2008 (Syria)
March 2008 (Los Angeles)
February 2008 (Seattle)

###

Image by Madison76

I wrote a feature article for Writer’s Digest this month, and it looks like it just hit the newsstands. I also received permission to include the full PDF here if you’re interested:

Changing the Rules for Unconventional Success

You can also read a brief online supplement on their site here.

***

I’ve thought about producing a guide about freelance writing, but the reality is that it’s really tough to make it as a freelancer these days. Until I find a way to stretch it out (no one wants to buy a one-page information product), here is the Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing:

1. Don’t do it the old way. You’ll starve!
2. Find a way to take control of the process. You’ll win!

But if you want more than that, here’s 2,000 words on making a living as a writer, free of charge.

It talks about why I write a newspaper column that no one reads, why I’ll syndicate to almost any outlet, and why I don’t care that CNN doesn’t pay me for the articles they post with my byline. More importantly, it offers guidance for new writers, or those who have been unsuccessful using conventional tactics.

I want to be clear that this piece is for writers who are interested in making some kind of income from their work. There’s nothing wrong with writing for any other reason–I write in a private journal every day, and some of my travel writing is entirely non-commercial.

But I also think it’s perfectly reasonable to want to earn a living as a writer, so that is the group I’m trying to help. For those people, the reality is that it is extremely difficult to support yourself as a successful freelancer by doing things the way they have always been done. That’s why you need to change things up and embrace a new model.

From what I can tell, it seems that some people are arguing about whether the new model is “better” or “worse” than the old one. Alas, this discussion is entirely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if something new is better or worse than something old; what matters is what you need to do to adapt to it.

I believe the phrase that best applies is “It is what it is.”

Therefore, if you want to work as a writer and don’t want to starve, you have to learn a few new tricks. The good news is that if you learn the new tricks, you can actually do quite well. More here.

###

Image: SBGuy

Like other Gmail users everywhere, I’ve been experimenting with Google Buzz over the past few weeks. I’m not sure I love it yet—in fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. It has numerous issues and annoyances.

At this point, it’s definitely not the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Which begs the question: what was so great before sliced bread?)

The thing is, though, it’s Google. And it’s 100% integrated with Gmail, which I use as a base for 100% of my email. Whether you use Gmail as much as I do or not, if you care about reaching people for life or work, you should check it out. If you end up hating it, well, don’t use it. Nothing is mandatory.

The best justification I’ve heard for Google Buzz thus far comes from Thomas Hawk, a great photographer I’ve been following for a while. Thomas says that the reason you should care about Google Buzz is because you want to be where the ball is going, not where it is now.

I totally agree. Even if the service isn’t amazing yet, it has real potential. If you have a blog, a business, a project, you are in the business of building relationships. Google Buzz isn’t the only way to do that, of course, but it’s one easy way. I suspect in the future that Google will improve the service as more and more people adopt it, so you might as well get in on it now.

Anyway, if you want to give it a try, log-in to your Gmail and join me here.

###

Image: TDR