eSoup

How To Get Free Professional Photos For Your Blog Posts & Website

A photos speaks a thousand words... (What does this one say to you? It's telling me that I should have dessert tonight.)

Yes, if at all possible, I love to include photos with my blog posts. I think it catches a reader's attention, and it helps set the tone for the post.

Okay, so where do you get photos to put in your blog posts?

Some people just do Google searches and look for images there, but that's kind of dangerous. If you make the blunder of posting a photo that is copyrighted...watch out! There is an increasing number of people taking legal action for copyright infringement of photos.

A second popular option is Flickr.com. I've used that site a lot, and it has worked fine for the most part.

For a long time Flickr was the only place I would look, but then I found Fotolia.com and very quickly became spoiled for any other photo site!

I never realized it before because I didn't really know that there were any other options, but now that I've been using Fotolia for a while (mainly using it for posts I do for my clients' blogs) I'm realizing that in the past I made finding photos for blog posts harder than it needed to be.

How To Get Your Blog (or Yourself) Featured In Newspapers

Within just a few months of starting eSoup back in 2006 I was fortunate enough to be featured in an article by Boston Globe career columnist Penelope Trunk, which ended up being published in The Boston Globe and syndicated in several other newspapers. Here’s how that media windfall came about:

Penelope and I came into contact with each other through our blogs– I had written a post responding to one of her posts and linked back to her, then she came to check out my blog, saw what I did for a living, thought it sounded like a cool job, and found a way to include me in one of her articles.

That article led to me being interviewed for this article by Emily Shartin, which led to a few other interviews, the most recent of which came out just a couple weeks ago.

My first media blitz was the result of being in the right place at the right time, plus having a blog that established me as a credible resource. The other times the journalist contacted me either through being referred or through finding a relevant post on my blog while doing internet research for a story.

As someone who just started blogging a couple years ago (and before that I didn't even know what a blog was!), I am astounded at how having a blog has made it really easy to reach journalists without even trying.

Actually when you look at the numbers, it's shouldn't be that hard to believe--over 75% of journalists refer to blogs when doing research for stories.

I really think that if you have a blog and if you write on timely topics, it's just a matter of time before a journalist calls you up or emails you asking for your expert opinion.

How can you get ready? How can you inspire journalist to want to talk to you? How do you give a good interview?

If I could give just a few pieces of advice for getting mentioned in mainstream print, they would be:

How Artists Do The Web Differently

I know that most of us are on the web because this is where our work is, but for a lot of us there is an artistic element to our online aspirations that gets stifled when we follow the herd who tells us all the stuff we should be doing and worrying about technology-wise.

This is why Robert Bruce turned me upside down (in a good way) with his guest post on Problogger called 27 Thoughts On Blogging For The Artist.

He doesn't pull any punches, and his points just made me think and acknowledge--are my activities/ways of approaching the internet leading me closer to or away from what it means to be an artist?

My faves of Robert's thoughts on Art and the Web:

6. If you’re spending more time on Twitter than on your novel/painting/film/poem/play/sculpture, you’re dead.

7. The creation of great art has nothing to do with Community.

9. If you’re the real thing, you’ll be around in 30 years, still working. Most of these services and sites you now admire will not.

13. Aim for Greatness, not the front page of Digg.

15. Though tempting, you’ll never crush your own mediocrity working only four hours a week.

Reuters Interview: Thou Shalt Unplug

I'd like to give a big thank you to Jill Serjeant, journalist for Reuters International Newswire, who interviewed me a few weeks ago and included me in her article about the new movement that is sweeping the tech world--the Secular Sabbath.

A little excerpt:

"Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realized she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages.    

For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.

Both women are part of a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are deciding to wrest back control of their lives by daring to switch off -- if only for a day."

Read the rest of the article...

HowTo Create A Work Schedule That Feels Like A Vacation

  Young spring love 
  Originally uploaded by mormoralice.

The NY Times has come out with a downer of an article siting a few web workers who died due to lifestyle related health complications.

It was implied that the desk potato lifestyle of these folks contributed to their premature demises, but I know of many, many, many virtual workers who have healthy, well-balanced  lifestyles that anyone would be jealous of.

Being healthy is something we are all challenged with, no matter what our jobs are, but we web workers are strategically positioned to create lifestyles that promote an extremely high quality of life. We can work the hours that we want to, we can arrange our day around what we enjoy most, and we are entirely in charge of how we organize our lives so that we have time for playing outdoors, spending quality time with family, and having diverse interests (outside of the computer).

Let's focus on the positive folks, and harken back to last year's Springtime Workday Remix. At this very time last year I told y'all about a seasonal change in schedule that I came up with that made it so that I felt like I was on a continuous vacation. Let's review:

Painless Social Networking For Newbies: Twitter 101

  twitter_03 
  Originally uploaded by netwalker100

I know, I know--there are too many "must-do" things online, too many social platforms that all your friends are waxing poetic about, and for those of us that are not tech heads, it can be more than a little overwhelming (and actually kind of intimidating).

You have no idea how much I've resisted all the "must-do" things that almost everyone is participating in, such as Facebook, Linked In, MySpace, Second Life, Digg, Reddit, Naymz, and about a hundred other social apps that most of us don't really feel like we have the time for and feel totally out of place doing.

I know, I'm with ya. But let me tell you something--if you are working online, if you are marketing online, you pretty much need to start getting involved in some aspect of online social networking. This is what the internet is about these days--community, meeting people, connecting in some informal way, almost effortlessly building friendships and connections with folks around the globe who you thought you'd never be lucky enough to meet.

I know it can be overwhelming to think about the sheer number of social networking outlets available, setting up accounts and profiles, adding friends, and wondering "what exactly am I supposed to be doing on this thing?"

I know because this is me too, but I've learned a very painless, easy way to dip your pinky toe into the social networking waters that your friends, competitors and colleagues are probably already knee-deep in. I promise, this won't hurt a bit--this is the big secret for us non-techy, non-MySpace-y types:

Tick-Tock: Six Figure Blogging starts in 5 days!

I just talked to Andy, and it's such a thrill because Andy and Darren have had such an amazing response to the preview call they did the other day for Six Figure Blogging. (I'm not surprised at all :-))

In case you're wondering what the dealio is on this course, this is an intensive 6 week course showing you step-by-step how you can turn your blog into a profitable business taught by two globally recognized blogging experts (Darren "ProBlogger" Rowse and Andy "Blogwild" Wibbels) . 

This class kicks off in exactly 5 days, so the clock is a tick'n. They don't do this course very often, so if you're the least bit interested, you should listen to the preview call they did a couple days ago and make a decision pronto. (If you go here and put your email in the box, a link to the preview call will be sent to you. You can also take a look at the syllabus)

Y'all, I've taken this course the first time around and it really changed the trajectory of my business. It makes an incredible difference to learn from the pros rather than to try to figure stuff out on your own. In fact, I've downloaded all the classes and still to this day I listen to them on my iPod!

Here's the nitty gritty, you get:

Internet killed the resume star

  internet killed the record store 
  Originally uploaded by adoresubtract_photo

Remember back in the day when job seekers used to labor over their resumes, trying valiantly to impress their prospective employers within the narrow boundaries of a pristine, personality-free, humor-less, vanilla piece of letterhead paper?

Thank goodness those days have come to an end. Seth Godin asks the question-- Why bother having a resume when there are so many more creative and potent ways of showing someone you want to work with what you're made of, who you are, and what brilliance you're capable of?

After all, don't we want to know/show more than just dates of employment and job descriptions? Yawn!

The resume is dead. If you want to truly get that client, that job, that project, you need to step out of the box and market yourself and your abilities in a more creative way.

Torch your resume or anything you have on your website that looks like a resume. Stop being ordinary and get to work on these drop dead impressive personal marketing tactics:

Six Figure Blogging Course Is Back! FREE Preview

Professional blogging is a cutting edge, emerging career possibility, and to those of us who grew up thinking that our job alternatives were doctor, lawyer, accountant, secretary, and fireman, the thought that someone might truthfully wear the job title of "problogger" is kinda space age (and exciting!).

In case you're wondering what the in's and out's are in breaking into this field, you might wanna check out the free preview call for Darren Rowse's and Andy Wibbels' tour de force professional blogging course.

Here are the details:

What: Six Figure Blogging Preview Call

When: Wednesday April 2nd @ 8pm EST

How do I get in on this? Click here and sign up

Cost: FREE

Oh, and btw, I've already taken this course, and can vouch for it. In fact, this is probably my favorite online class I've ever taken. These guys definitely know what they're talking about, and the actual course is broken down into easily digestible pieces. There's tons of practical and priceless info in the course, and even the free preview call is hugely enlightening, so even if you don't take the course, you should definitely go to the free preview call. I'm going to it--hope to see you there!

The top 5 classic problogger myths: EXPOSED!

  Is that a unicorn on your shoulder ...
   Originally uploaded by tartx

You've probably heard mythical tales about folks building sites from scratch, earning enough off the site to quit their day job, and later selling the site for a gazillion dollars or more.

We love those stories, because it sounds like every office renegade's fantasy--work in your pajamas, write from your heart, play around for most the day, rake in embarrassing amounts of cash. Ahhh, that's the life!

The truth is that there is as much myth as fact mixed in with that fantasy.

I've studied problogging, worked with some of the biggest blog rockstars in the business, and have even tried my own hand at it, and one thing I've learned is that behind the myth, behind the fantasies, behind the growing amount of media attention this hot new internet career is garnering, there is a solid, legitimate, long term business opportunity for those willing to invest the significant time, resources, and energy needed to start with nothing and grow a site into a cash cow.

If you've ever had the inkling that you might be able to turn your blog into a business but just aren't sure, you might wanna confront these classic problogging myths first: