Internet Business Mastery Academy: Our Mid-Term Review

Posted by Tammy in General, Tammy on November 16, 2009 | 4 comments

Back in July, we joined Internet Business Mastery Academy, and gave you a peek at what we got accomplished on Day 1 at The Academy. Since then, we’ve made some good progress toward starting our online businesses. Now we’re on Lesson 7 at the Academy and we’ve had plenty of time to dig in and find our way around, so we wanted to give you a more thorough review of what you’ll find there, what we like about it, and what we’re less than thrilled with.

Read the rest of this entry »

Four Wordpress Themes You Shoudn’t Miss

Posted by Tammy in Blogging, General, Tammy on November 5, 2009 | 30 comments

If you’ve been following along lately, you know that Scott and I are working on establishing our own internet businesses. We’ll both be starting new blogs as part of the business model, and this week we’ve been spending a lot of time looking for that perfect WordPress theme. In this post, we’ll show you our “short list” of themes we’re considering for our business blogs – and we’d love to hear opinions from any of you who have used any of these themes. We’re probably going to be making our final decision this week.

Read the rest of this entry »

Internet Business Mastery Academy: Day 1

Posted by Tammy in Planning, Tammy on July 14, 2009 | 19 comments

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog lately (you ARE keeping up, right?) then you know we were recently begging for an affiliate link from one of you so we could join Internet Business Mastery Academy. Well, MK was the first to jump on that opportunity. She gave us her affiliate link, and we officially joined the Academy on Monday, July 13th. Congrats to MK, who will now be making $33.95 every month off of our membership dues! Look for more opportunities like this in the future. We kinda’ like the idea of rewarding our readers, and this seems like a good way to do that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Web Candy: Internet Business Mastery

Posted by Scott in Scott, Web Candy on June 28, 2009 | 3 comments

A few years ago, I read a book called The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss and it rocked my world. The book was so great that I went out and bought the audio book so I could listen to at work, in my car, while mowing the grass, etc. After consuming the book several times, I began looking for more inspiration similar to The 4-Hour Work Week. Since I’m a big fan of podcasts, I began looking for audio programs that would inform and inspire me like the Ferriss book did. That’s when I discovered Internet Business Mastery, the podcast and companion website.

Listening to the early episodes of the Internet Business Mastery podcast, I was initially excited about finding such a gem that was also very popular. It was clear that these guys, Jeremy Frandsen (a.k.a. Sterling) and Jason Van Orden (a.k.a. Jay), were also inspired by Tim Ferriss and his classic book. But after a few months of listening, my interest began to wane. A lot of their material seemed like it was a retelling of the Ferriss material and at the time,  I believed that Ferriss offered a better delivery. However, those were the early days for this duo. They were very likable guys and it was obvious that they were dedicated to providing the best content that they were capable of delivering. But eventually, my iPod play list moved into a different direction and I put the Internet Business Mastery guys on the back burner.

Fast forward to the present…

Though I wasn’t listening to their podcast regularly, I was still on their mailing list. I couldn’t bare to delete their emails, even if I wasn’t reading them, simply because it seemed like they were on to something good. So one day, not long ago, I skimmed an email and got sucked right back in. I was so intrigued by the content of the email, I decided to throw some recent episodes of their podcast onto my iPod…and I LOVED IT!! Read the rest of this entry »

Review: The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself

Posted by Scott in Scott on April 10, 2009 | no comments

As a Quitter, I’m always on the lookout for resources, websites, books, podcasts and anything that will help me learn more about self-employment opportunities, work-from-home business options—anything that could lead to developing new sources of income and would result in being able to leave behind the work-a-day life I inherited as an American-born person. Some links lead to junk while others lead to gems. And recently, I found a very sparkly gem in the form of an ebook called, The Unconventional Guide for Working for Yourself (UGWY).

A Little World Domination Never Hurt Anyone

Before I tell you about The Unconventional Guide… written by Chris Guillebeau, I want to share with you the story of how I discovered it. Why? Because this is an example of someone who had a product to market and did everything right, which ultimately lead to a sale. If this isn’t proof that he knows how to work for himself, I don’t know what is.

Recently, my wife, Tammy, was reading the IttyBiz blog. IttyBiz is “a place to get tips, advice, motivation, and support for your very small business.” In a post that Tammy found on IttyBiz, Naomi Dunford said:

Once upon a time, maybe in November, my friend Chris Guillebeau wrote a post. Because it wasn’t appropriate for his blog (it’s way too short and it involves giving people the finger and that’s just not how he rolls at Art of Non-Conformity), he sent it to me.

(By the way, if you are one of the nine people on earth who have not read his ebook, you might want to pick it up. It’s called ‘The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself: Creating Personal Freedom through a Very Small Business’.)

That caught Tammy’s attention so she clicked on the link to the Art of Non-Conformity site. Aside from being impressed with the look and content of the site, she clicked a link that, again, caught her attention. Read the rest of this entry »