* As you can see, I’ve completely given up on the philosophy of not swearing in header text.

This is a very, very important post. If you don’t have time to read it right now, save it in your reader or whatever because it’s a big deal.

I got an email with the title of this post as the subject line. Want to get my attention? That’s the way to do it, baby. Here it is, in its entirety:

“Naomi, thanks for doing the series about writing and selling ebooks. It’s very useful and timely for me, as I’m currently writing my first paid ebook, as well as looking for a way to work from home.

Right before you started that series, I was thinking about emailing you to suggest that you write an ebook called “How To Work From Home When You Have No Fucking Talent.” I don’t mean that the readers are useless, just that they don’t have any particularly extraordinary rockstar talent. People who are fabulous copywriters can be you or Brian Clark or James Chartrand, people who are superb graphic and blog designers can be Harrison McLeod, people who are fantastic internet marketers can be Yaro, people who know how to do everything can be Tim Ferriss, etc. But what about more normal people, how can they quit the 9-5? Read More

I was on the phone with a client today. He wanted some help with some internet marketing and information product stuff. Pretty typical questions — paid search, landing pages, conversion rates — nothing too exciting. I helped him, all was well. (It was well enough that he decided to send me more money to do more stuff, which is always a good sign.)

Now, right now, since he’s paying me, I’m his consultant. But if he weren’t paying me, a lot of people would say that in this particular facet of life, I’m his mentor. And I guess they’d be right.

Except this particular client attended Stanford Business School.

I have a feeling, just maybe, there’s something he can teach me, too. Now at the moment we’ve only just met and we might end up hating each other, so it’s not exactly the time to start proposing this sort of mutually beneficial relationship. Besides, right now all he needs is to start making some fucking money already. But later? I’d be kind of a dumbass if I didn’t pick his brain, don’t you think?

This leads me to the topic du jour. Read More

This is a guest post from the ever ass-kicking Dave Navarro of time management and productivity fame. Did you ever notice how all the guest posts on this blog are so much better formatted than mine? Yeah, I did too, and I don’t want to talk about it.

Quick quiz: What do you absolutely need to have if you want your business to pay that mortgage of yours?

• A) A kick-ass website
• B) Clever business cards
• C) A catchy mission statement
• D) Arrogance

If you answered anything but D), you’ve got a hard road ahead of you. Read More

There’s an ancient Scottish saying that I love:

“Build a thousand bridges and they’ll never call you a bridge builder. Fuck one sheep and you’re a sheep fucker for life.”

(Prove it’s not an ancient Scottish saying. Go on, prove it.)

It seems like a large portion of the world has taken it upon themselves to email me and tell me they hate me. I’m used to hate mail, but this has been a special time. I’ve been fortunate enough to receive a whole year’s worth of fuck-you, all in the matter of less than a month. Read More

Well, it’s been quite a week. We’ve covered figuring out if you have a market for your ebook, we’ve covered how to write an ebook, and we’ve covered how to sell the damn thing. So why are we still here? Because you’d be really surprised by all the extra stuff that comes along with it.

You read about people who get book deals talking about how their whole life falls apart in the process of trying to get the whole thing to come together. You wouldn’t think that would transition over to a document of fewer than 100 pages that you’re publishing yourself. Well, maybe you would. I sure as hell didn’t. Read More