NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Archives for August 2011

Book In Two Weeks – Day Whatever

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Alright…..so sometime last night I finally finished all 7 chapters of the Book in Two Weeks!

You can see all chapters collected on my desktop:

Honestly it wasn’t THHAAAT hard, it’s just that I have lots of other stuff going on at the same time (who doesn’t), so I think I’m a day or two behind.

Who cares.

Time to move on.

The next agenda-item is to write the Index for the book.  This shouldn’t be too hard since it’s ONLY SEVEN CHAPTERS :-)

The next step might take a bit of extra work though.  I noticed a lot of the pictures in the book are weird sizes…and I might have to go back and re-edit a lot of them so they’re visible to the readers.

I’m also not entirely sure about how the pictures will affect the page spacing (I think Lulu.com has some cool tools to fix that problem).

Anywhozit….we’re a few days behind schedule, but it’s been two weeks and I HAVE indeed written a book (even though it’s just on my computer for now)!

NevBlog.com on NewYork Radio

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I was on the radio somewhere in New York!

Chris Gaddis scheduled me to be on his MONEY TRAIN radio show a while ago….and on August 17th we had the call.

These radio interviews are usually pretty fun :-)

You can download it here (right-click + save link as):
https://www.nevblog.com/audio/neville-nevblog.mp3

On this recording, the audio from my end turned out pretty horrendous…..but if you crank up the speakers you can hear me ok.

Book In Two Weeks – Day 8

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I believe I’m ONE day behind the original schedule for this….but so far I’m up to speed to get this book published in two weeks.

I’m done with 4 chapters (and will be writing the 5th one today).

Just a quick update…..I appreciate all the emails I’ve been getting about this :-)

As for those of you “who just can never seem to get around to writing my book”

…..maybe you’re just a big lazy-ass ;-)

Book In Two Weeks – Day 5

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I’m a day behind…..but I got the 2nd chapter written.

This chapter was all about the Selling Notes Experiment.

I’ve noticed I have NOT been copy/pasting these experiments into book format.  In fact, pretty much 90% of each is completely re-written.

This is a little more work than I anticipated, but it will make a much better book than just lazily copy/pasting blog posts!

Book In Two Weeks – Day 4

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Today’s portion of work involves:

“Writing Chapter 1”

I decided chapter 1 of the book will be based off this experiment I did in April 2005:

Bottled Water Experiment

I’m in Houston visiting my family for the weekend….so I planted myself on the living room couch for about 2 1/2 hours and re-wrote the experiment out.

6 more chapters to go!

Book In Two Weeks – Day 3

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Day three of the “Book In Two Weeks Experiment” involves:

Finding out what format to write in (PDF or Word) to get it printed correctly.

Once again, I’m pretty lazy, so I just asked a friend who’s already written a book and self-published it and had a good experience.

He used a service called OffTheBookShelf.com.

He used them instead of others because they’re kind of a one-stop shop.  So if I upload my “7 Ways I Made Money” book (or whatever I end up calling it)…..I’ll get from them:

  • An ISBN number for the book.
  • Their “distribution engine” automatically puts the book up for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Kindle and a bunch of other online book stores.
  • You can order PHYSICAL copies of the book from them.
  • You can order DIGITAL copies of the book from them.
  • They’ll convert your .DOC digital version of the book into a .PDF (good, because I’m not writing a whole book in PDF!)

SO I just have to write the book in .doc format…..however I wanted to run a quick test to see how a sample conversion would go (I don’t wanna have to re-format the whole thing after the conversion).;

I copied a blog post into Word (from this post) and then converted it to PDF from a free online conversion tool:
https://www.freepdfconvert.com/

….to see what would happen:

….the conversion went perfectly!

So today’s question has been answered:

The entire book will be written in Microsoft Word.

The writing begins tomorrow!

Book In Two Weeks – Day 2

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Day 2 of the “Writing A Book In Two Weeks Experiment” was stated as:

“Start putting Facebook ads out like 4HWW style to split test names (optional step)”

This was an optional step…and I’m NOT going to split test what title is better because:

1.) I’m lazy <—-probably the main reason.
-and-
2.) I don’t care if the title is for this experiment because I don’t care about selling any copies of this book.

So this means I get a day off from this experiment…woohoO!  #nohomework

Book In Two Weeks – Day 1

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Gonna write a book in two weeks……which means at the end of the month I’ll have a book sent to the printers and I’ll be a (self) published author!

….if you don’t count the Homeless Experiment that I posted on Amazon.

Every journey starts with a single step (or some crap like that….) so here goes:

The first step is coming up with a title or concept for the book. I already know the book will be based off experiments on this blog….and most of those experiments are based somehow on money.

I also know the book will have 7 chapters (I only have time to write one chapter a day for about a week).

So the book will be a short collection of 7 different ways I’ve made money.  I originally wanted to keep the book somewhat “Timeless” …..but this would eliminate any mention of internet businesses I’ve created.

The possible experiments to include in the book are:

I’ll pick 7 of those and run with it.

I presume the “point” of the book will be to “expand the mind” of someone looking to make extra money.  Often people are stuck at “Get a job”…..and have no other ideas.  I think this will open people’s minds to business ideas…..much like my Behind The Scenes product opened people’s minds to the fact starting an online business is NOT as complicated as one thinks.

Here’s a Title-Brainstorm:

  • 7 weird ways I made money through college <–I like the best
  • 7 ways I made money without a job
  • 7 stupid ways I’ve made money
  • 7 ways a college student made money
  • 7 rather odd ways I made side-income
  • 7 ways I made side-income without whoring myself out
  • I didn’t want a job so I did this instead to make money
  • 7 random ways I made money without having a job

DAY ONE: Got the title and concept of the book down!  Tomorrow’s step is to figure out what format everything needs to be in to get it printed.

Writing a book in 2 weeks Experiment!

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This is another one of those “There’s-really-no-practical-reason-of-doing-this-other-than-that-I-just-want-to-because-I-think-It’ll-be-cool” experiments.

I have no idea why, but I feel like I can write, format, publish and print a PHYSICAL book for NevBlog within 2 weeks.

Correction, it’s not going to be a full-fledged book….I think it’ll be more of a glorified pamphlet.

I want to see how fast I can make a book out of my blog and get it in-hand printed.

So today I am officially kicking off the “Write a Book In 2 Weeks Experiment”!

I already know the end goal, so here’s what I need to do in the next 14 days:

  1. Come up with concept/title ideas.
  2. Start putting Facebook ads out like 4HWW style to split test names (optional step).
  3. Find out what format to write in (PDF or Word) to get it printed correctly.
  4. Write Chapter 1
  5. Write Chapter 2
  6. Write Chapter 3
  7. Write Chapter 4
  8. Write Chapter 5
  9. Write Chapter 6
  10. Write Chapter 7
  11. Write index
  12. Formatting and editing
  13. Agree on title from Facebook ads click-through-rates
  14. Create book cover – Upload to service for printing like OffTheBookShelf.com or LuLu.com.  Apply for ISBN number.

That’s the rough plan.

Now I’ll soooorrt of be cheating, because each chapter I’m going to write has already been written.  Essentially I’ll be making each chapter out of a blog post.

For example, I might write about the Facebook fan site I made a while back and then sold for a small sum.  That whole saga was already done and documented:

https://www.nevblog.com/facebook-profile-website/

https://www.nevblog.com/why-facebook-sued-me/

https://www.nevblog.com/selling-facebookprofile-com/

…..so one chapter might consist of that story.  It’s already been done, but it’ll still require a lot of formatting and re-doing the photos for the book version.

But if I keep up the one-chapter a day pace I’ll have some extra time to do all the other miscellaneous things that might come up (I’m saving a whole day for formatting errors…..there’s ALWAYS formatting errors).

Anywhoozle, I’ll be starting this tomorrow.  First step will be to come up with the subject of the bamphlet (book / pamphelt).

Random title and subject brainstorms (based off blog posts I already have done):

  • 7 weird ways I made money through college
  • 7 ways I made money without a job
  • 7 stupid ways I’ve made money

Other suggestions are welcome!

Actually Giving A Fuck

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“Success leaves clues” is a fantastically short yet true statement about success.

….and after 28 years I’m starting to notice a trend about all the successful people I admire:

All of them….. Actually give a fuck.

I mean….they TRULY TRULY TRULY give a fuck about something.

I’m talking about people who have been successful for long periods of time.   Not just short bursts.

You know what….let’s just jump into a couple of examples and you’ll see what I mean:

Herb Kelleher of SouthWest Airlines (the only airline in history to stay profitable every year) – I’ve seen him speak 3 times (first |  second |  third), and I gotta say….they guy ACTUALLLLYYY cares about his employees and having as much fun as possible.  It’s allll he talks about the whole time, and you can tell he genuinely cares.  He also is a fun guy himself, and refuses to work at a company that’s not the same way.

Earl Nightingale – He’s the guy who kicked off the whole self-help market….and I’ve never heard of someone so dedicate to the quality of his work as this guy.  I’ve listened to pretty much every piece of content (that still exists) of his….and he never put out something “bad”.  His stuff is also so jam-packed with amazing advice that it leaves other stuff behind.  Sometimes I can’t believe they don’t just play his audio recordings on repeat at schools.

Howard Stern – The guy is literally MANIC on the insistance that his show be FUNNY.  To do that he’s been through massive “1st amendment” legal battles and fights with his own employers and the FCC…..all so he can “say what he wants”.  He’s consistently been the highest paid celebrity over the years because of it….all stemming from his absolute insistance that his silly little radio program “be funny”.

Steve Jobs – Watch every interview with him online (here’s one to start), and notice how god-damn-committed he is to “making the absolute BEST products on the market”.  Apple consistently does this despite people hating them (for not using Flash on iPhone & iPads, getting rid of floppy disk drives, getting rid of physical keyboards on phones etc).  I personally use a MacBook Air now….and I’ve gotta say that everything about it IS IN FACT “just waayyy better” than anything I’ve ever used before…..and it’s that extreme commitment Apple has to making incredible products that produces that feeling in me.

Gary Halbert – He’s the most revered direct response marketer I’ve ever heard of…and I love listening to anything he says….because he’s SO DAMN INSISTENT on getting his point across clearly.  He said something I’ve never forgot, “The number one mistake people make in trying to make money (online or anywhere else)…..is they expect to get a lot of money, without first giving a MASSSSSIIVE amount of value first.”