I have just finished reading Git off the Porch! and embrace your destiny by Willie Crawford. I finished it in just a few hours, the book was very easy to read, and it was a great and inspiring story.

The book is first and foremost a book about the life of Willie Crawford, and that’s also the reason I bought it. Willie Crawford is a famous Internet marketer. He is earning a six figure income, and he has been doing that for years. The most interesting part about his success is that he and his family was very poor, once he even had to wear his grandmother’s shoes to school. He didn’t get trapped by the poverty mentality though, and the book is the story about how he ended up to be really successful.

There are especially two parts of the book that I really thought was excellent, and both parts provided me with something to think about. Willie Crawford writes in details about them.

Know when it’s good enough

I have a friend, he is a painter, he never makes any sales, even though he is the best painter I have ever witnessed. His paintings are stunning. The reasons he never makes any sales, is because he never finishes his paintings. He wants them to be perfect, therefore, he keep working on them for months and years.

Know when your work is good enough for your audience. It will never be perfect, if you are waiting for it to be perfect, you’ll end up like my friend the painter.

Leverage: a successful essential

It comes a time when you realize that you don’t have the time or energy to do all that you want or need to do. You come to realize that you have to outsource some of your work. I am doing it, and “all” successful people are doing it. They are leveraging their time by hiring others to do the things they aren’t suited to do themselves. For instance, I never do any graphical stuff, it would take a lot of my time and the results would be poor, no matter how much time I used. I am using Elance.com to find graphic artists and writers.

You should read this book

Git off the porch! is not only an inspirational book, but it’s also a book with many great tips for Internet marketers. It’s fairly cheap, easy to read, and I am sure that it will help you expand your life.

I have been a member of Ready Made Review Sites since the day Anthony Hull and Jason Gazaway launched it in February. The reason I joined was that I had been looking for something similar for quite some time. I spend my time blogging, I haven’t created my own products (yet) and I haven’t done much advertising (like Pay Per Click). The money I have been earning so far has been from ads on my blogs and reviews that I have been writing and publishing on my blog.

I have come to realize that writing reviews for products is one of the easiest ways to earn money online.

And, since I don’t have much time to create my own products, I would prefer to get professional written reviews for some of the top Internet marketing products every single month.

I have been very satisfied with Ready Made Review Sites, and I am still very satisfied. Everything about this membership site is plain awesome. The price is fairly high, but the product you get, is close to perfect.

The current review sites I have launched from my membership at Ready Made Review Sites are:

Blogging Product Reviews
Search Engine Optimization Product Reviews
Membership Product Reviews

You get this each month when you join join Ready Made Review Sites:

1.  Plug-n-Play Affiliate Review Site

Each professional affiliate review site contains:
- Top 3 Clickbank Affiliate Products
- 3 Professionally Written Product Reviews
- Custom Unique Header
- Professionally Designed “Review” Site
- The site is constructed using HTML/PHP and can be edited if you need to.
- Optimized for Search Engines
- Privacy Policy and Contact page
- Integrated Affiliate Link Cloaker Script

2. Plug-n-Play Clickbank “Top 20″ Products Page

Each site also includes a page listing 20 top clickbank internet marketing products, your affiliate link is included on all the products.

3. 10 Professionally Written “Marketing” Articles

Professionally written articles by an experienced Internet Marketing author and each article is apx. 500 words

4. Autoresponder Series 7 emails

Just copy and paste the 7-day email series into AWeber or Getresponse. Each email is professionally written and about the topic of the month.

5. 5 PPC Ads + Keywords List

You’ll get 5 pre-written ads and lots of keywords you can use to promote your affiliate review site each month using Google Adwords, the Yahoo Publisher Network, MSN or other similar search engines.

6. List of Topic Related Blogs

One of the best free method of generating traffic is to post comments on related blogs. Included in the membership is a long list of topic related blogs.

The total monthly value of all the six components, according to the sales page, is $1177.

What impresses me the most is that it takes only a few minutes to launch the new “ready made” review site.

All I have to do each month is to complete four simple steps, my guess is that it takes me about 15 minutes:

1. Download my affiliate review site from the members area
2. Add my Clickbank affiliate ID and a few other variables such as page title/domain name etc
3. Upload the affiliate review website to my hosting account
4. Use my provided marketing materials to market my site and start earning commissions

I am very satisfied with this membership, and I think that if you are looking for an “easy” method to earn commission, you should give Ready Made Review Sites a try. They have an 8 week money-back guarantee, so, even if you don’t make a dime, you can test it for 8 weeks and get your money back.

I am using DreamHost to host my blogs, and I have been using them for a long time. I have also tested a few other web hosts, but DreamHost is by far the company I am most satisfied with.

At the time, when I was going to sign up for a new web host, I was looking all over for reviews and I talked to many people. Most people had strong opinions when it came to which web host I should go with. I decided to go with one of the top alternatives and that was DreamHost, I haven’t regretted this decision even once.

My guess is that the perfect web host depends on what kind of web host you are looking for.

With DreamHost I get four of the most important things I am looking for in a web host:

1. As close to 100% up time as possible

2. 24-hour technical support

3. WordPress (and many other of the top softwares) included with just a few clicks

4. Low in price (there are cheaper alternatives though)

Their technical support is awesome. I have had only a few questions during the years, and the response was really quick, and they helped me with everything without hardly any delay.

You can follow DreamHost on twitter to get emergency messages, you’ll receive a monthly newsletter for the latest updates and you can subscribe to their blog.

I highly recommend DreamHost.

Yaro Starak is a six-figure blogger, and he is becoming one of the most well-known bloggers around. When I first heard of him, a few years ago, not many people knew what to expect from his endeavours. Today, he is famous all around the globe.

I joined his Blog Mastermind course the day it launched, and my only goal was to learn how to become a better blogger. Before this course, I had read a few books on the topic, and I had been reading the posts from Problogger (Darren Rowse’s blog) and Entrepreneurs Journey (Yaro Starak’s blog). I wouldn’t call myself a beginner, but I had a lot to learn.

The best thing about Blog Mastermind is that it is a very informative course; easy to learn, even for beginners, but with lots of advanced and original ideas.

I believe that the Blog Mastermind course consists of three core elements.

How to blog. Everything from setting up your first blog, how to chose the right domain, the right blogging software, which topic you should be writing about, how to write and how often you should be writing.

How to drive traffic to your blog. Even if you feel that you know everything there is to know about blogging, most of us are looking for methods to drive more traffic and get more visitors to our blogs. Yaro Starak is an expert at this, and during this course, he shares all of his traffic secrets with his members.

How to earn money blogging. A lot of people are looking for ways to earn money working from home. Blogging might be one of the easiest methods. There are several methods of earning money blogging, the Blog Mastermind course have details about them all. The course helps you get started, and it helps you continue your growth when it comes to traffic and when it comes to income.

As a member, you’ll also get access to the discussion forums, where you can ask Yaro and all the members any question you’d like. You can take part of the discussions, and this proved to be really valuable for me.

The only negative part of the course is the fairly high price. The course is a 6 month course, and the price is $97 a month. You will graduate in 6 months. You might want to consider the one time payment option of $497 though, if you do, you’ll get access to all the course material right away. I did the monthly payments, but if I was going to join today, I would have paid for the premium option ($497).

I believe that this course is the most interesting and complete course when it comes to blogging. And if you are serious about blogging, I highly recommend that you join Blog Mastermind.

If you are using twitter, then you should be sending tweets with your latest blog posts. This is an easy way to get a lot of extra traffic to your blog, and it’s an easy way to keep building a targeted relationship.

I have been testing several services regarding updating twitter with my latest blog post, and I have been doing it manually as well. If you are not sure whether you should use an automated tool or not, then ask yourself how many blogs you have, and if you want to automate it.

I think it depends on how many blogs you have. If you have one blog, it won’t take you much time to add a new tweet about your latest blog post.

The reason I found Tweet My Blog, the wordpress plugin created by John Merrick and Soren Jordansen so interesting, was that it was created by two well-known marketers. Another reason why I just had to test it, was that it was completely free.

So, what’s this Tweet My Blog plugin all about?

It pings twitter as soon as you publish a new blog post. It’s fast, and it updates twitter within a minute, and it works great for this.

The extra feature that people are talking about is this one.

Whenever someone clicks on the link for your new blog post, they will open your post and see a stripe at the top with your referral link to Tweet My Blog. It will say something like:

Easily Combine The Power of Twitter & WordPress To Create A Viral Traffic Monster. Click Here For Free Instant Access!

When they click the link, they will be referred by you if they sign up. As they sign up under you, they will be presented with a one time offer, and if they buy it, you’ll get 50% commission. They will also be presented with similar offers in the future, and you will receive 50% commission.

… but there’s more

The last detail of this plugin is a widget. You can put it in your sidebar and all the visitors to your blog will see your latest tweets.

I am not using the widget, but I can see why it can be useful.

I have been reading ProBlogger, the well-known blog of Darren Rowse for a long time. I believe it’s one of the first blogs I ever subscribed to. The reason I subscribed to ProBlogger was because it was, and probably still is, the most important blog when it comes to “how to blog”.

You can argue that it’s really a blog about how to make money blogging. But that’s not the reason why I subscribed, and the reason why I am still reading Darren’s posts on a daily basis. They are detailed, easy to read, and up to date when it comes to how you should be blogging and how you should be promoting your blog.

Since I have stayed with Darren Rowse for so long, I was eager to buy his ProBlogger book. I expected it to be just as amazing as his blog. He is a professional blogger, earning a six-figure income from blogging, therefore, I expected him to deliver fairly everything I needed to know about blogging in this book.

I should probably mention, before I continue, that Darren Rowse is not the only author behind this book. Chris Garrett, a well-known Internet marketer and professional blogger, is the co-author. I didn’t know much about Chris before reading this book, other than that I have read a few of his guest posts at CopyBlogger and at ProBlogger.

The interesting aspect of this book is that it presents a great overview of how you should start your blogging career, how you should be setting up your blog, how you should be writing, earning strategies, blog promotion and a lot more.

I like the fact that the book can be read by complete newbies, as well as fairly professional bloggers. I think that the introduction was just perfect. It started with Darren’s story of blogging, about how he worked three jobs simultaneously, studied part-time and blogged on the side. It makes you think, and it makes it a good story.

I don’t think that the book is very creative or innovative. It’s more like a 220 page tutorial, including detailed examples, of well-known “secrets” about what works for professional bloggers, and what you should be doing in order to become one.

The books is very inspirational. It’s easy to relate to Darren’s story, and a life as a professional blogger. It feels like it’s fairly easy to follow every single lesson given, and therefore, it seems rather easy to earn money from blogging. The inspirational and authoritative part is excellent.

The chapter I enjoyed the most, was the chapter dedicated to the secrets of successful blogs. I enjoyed the lessons why blogs like CopyBlogger, ProBlogger, TechCrunch, Scobleizer, and the Four-Hour Work Week are successful.

From reading ProBlogger, I think a successful blog, is about being remarkable and writing stories that people find useful.

The contents

1. Blogging for money
2. Niche blogging
3. Setting up your blog
4. Blog writing
5. Blog income and earning strategies
6. Buying and selling blogs
7. Blog networks
8. Blog promotion and marketing
9. Secrets of successful blogs
10. Creating something worthwhile

If you are looking for a way to publish reviews on your blog, then, you should definitely take a closer look at WPReviewEngine. It’s a powerful plugin for wordpress, it makes everything related to writing reviews a lot easier and the results are beautiful.

I am using WPReviewEngine for this blog, so, if you like what you see, it’s all because of this plugin.

Installation

It took me about 10 minutes to install it. I could have installed it in five minutes, but I decided to read the instructions and I ended up with an error. I had to install ioncube loader on my server. I had never heard of the ioncube loader, and I still don’t know what the functions of this file is. I contacted support, and I received an email just a few hours later. I didn’t have time to wait for support, so I decided to google it. It took me about five minutes to find a tutorial and install it. It was no problem at all, even for me, a complete newbie when it comes to installing stuff like this on my server.

It was easy to install WPReviewEngine, it was like any other plugin. And included was two themes as well. The one I am using, and another one.

Support

Support was awesome. I received the email just a few hours later, and I can’t really expect anything else, because I live in Norway. And the time difference makes it hard to expect that I should receive help in just a matter of minutes.

Setting up the blog

It took me about 5 minutes to set up my blog. It was just a few options that I had to take a closer look at, and I had to add the rating categories. It was super easy.

The price

It’s a one time fee of $79.95. I thought about it for a few minutes, and I thought it was fairly expensive for a plugin and a couple of themes. But on the other hand, when I looked at the demo, I saw the power and the beauty of WPReviewEngine. 

At the time I am writing this, you can get an extra 15% off, but the offer will expire sometime soon.

Guarantee

You’ll receive a full 30 day money back guarantee. So, you should be able to use WPReviewEngine for 30 days and, if you are not 100% satisfied, you will get all of your money back.

You’ll receive lifetime support and lifetime updates.

My recommendations

I really like this plugin, it was exactly what I was hoping it to be. It’s easy to use, and the results are awesome. I even enjoy the theme. If you have another theme for your blog, you can still use WPReviewEngine.

The only thing that I don’t like, is that the name of the post is added to the list of the top reviews. For instance, I should have named this post WPReviewEngine Review, but if I do, this will also show up in the list of the top reviews. And I think that this list should only include the name of  the product. 

If you are thinking about writing reviews, I urge you to buy this plugin. So far, I am really satisfied, and it was exactly what I was hoping it to be. The price is a little high though.

What I really enjoy about this plugin, is that all visitors can leave a comment and a rating. All the ratings from visitors, will be added to the overall ratings for each review. So, it’s not  entirely up to me to give the ratings.