9 Ways to Better Protect Your Blog

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9 Ways to Better Protect Your Blog

When I think of the amount of time that I’ve invested into my blog and its resources I’m absolutely staggered by the thought of losing any part of it. So I’ve taken certain steps to protect myself, as well as my blog.

Everyone’s blog is at a different level, but regardless of which one you look at, we all have one thing in common: we’ve poured our hearts and souls into them. Here are a few things you can do in order to protect them.

Back up your website

Image used with persmission

You’ve heard that advice before, and if you’ve ever had a catastrophic loss of data that took your website offline for a few hours, or—worse—a few days, I’m sure you’ve remembered it.

Backing up your website is protection from server crashes or hacker attacks, but the only way they are fully effective is if you do them religiously. Determine how often you are going to back up your data, and then simply schedule some time to do it. It takes no more than the click of a mouse usually, but can save you a ton of heartache and grief down the road.

As someone who has experienced a hacker attack, I can tell you it’s not only important to keep the last few copies of your blog, but also a known clean copy in case your backups become corrupted. Often, a website owner may not find out about a virus on his site until he’s already completed several backups. If those are all he has, he’ll be no better off than if he didn’t have any at all.

The majority of hosting companies have cPanel installed for their users. If yours does, simply log in to your control panel, and scroll down to the backup icon. Once you click it, you’ll be taken to the Backup and Restore page, where you can then click on the Download or Generate a Full Backup button. This will provide you with a full backup of the website, emails, and databases, as well as any “custom” email setups you’ve configured such as forwarding. Once the backup has finished you’ll receive an email notification and can then download the backup file to your home or office computer for safe-keeping.

It’s important to note that if you ever do run into a crisis, and do not have a current backup, most hosting providers will generate a copy from their end for a nominal fee. These backups are usually only performed weekly so you could end up a week out of date with your site’s data.

Back up your resources

Backing up your website is only half the battle. Most of us have a ton of resources sitting on our hard drives in the form of ebooks, video courses, guest posts, graphics, podcasts, competition analysis data, as well as programs we use to promote ourselves, build our social networks, or track our keyword rankings, and so much more. I’d recommend creating one master folder that contains all the individual files, so that it can be easily zipped up, labeled and stored on a separate drive or CD.

If you’ve ever downloaded materials off of the Internet you know that files are compressed for both sending and storage. Two of the most popular programs are Winrar, and Winzip. With these, you can simply right-click on the file or folder you’re looking to compress for backup, and choose Add to archive. You’ll then end up with a compressed version of all your important files and programs.

Back up your list

“The money is in the list” is another phrase I’m sure you’re aware of and many internet marketers would assert that it is their most valuable asset, yet very few people bother to back it up. Having your list under a third party’s control leaves you with no recourse should the unthinkable happen, and your list end up being lost forever.

For more information, see Are you protecting your blog’s most valuable asset?

Install protective measures

Using anti-virus measures should be a no-brainer these days, but in case you’ve missed the message, there are literally hundreds of thousands of different viruses out there, and these nasty bugs can not only crash your system, they can also steal passwords, banking information, and much more. Protecting your computer system will ensure that you’re still online tomorrow to make that post, and promote your blog.

Here’s a list of antivirus solutions listed in my personal order of preference.

• Eset Nod32
• Symantec (Norton)
• AVG (great free solution)
• Kaspersky
• McAfee/li>

I’ve used each one of these at one time or another, and they each do a commendable job of keeping you and your computer protected the majority of the time. However, it is worth noting that no antivirus program will protect you from every virus 100% of the time.

Protecting your system is only half the battle. It’s important to also protect your blog from attack. There are several methods you can choose to use to keep the bad guys out. Here are just a few to look into.

• Antivirus plugin for WordPress. This monitors your website for changes to the code, and alerts you with an email letting you know when they’re found.
• Exploit plugins, which scan your WordPress blog for known exploits and alert you.
• Change the default login page. Everyone knows they can usually find the admin page of a WordPress blog by simply adding /wp-admin after the domain. By changing its location, you can effectively thwart would-be hackers.
• Make sure file permissions aren’t set to 777 if you can help it. You can change permission settings once you’ve logged in to your site via an FTP client. If you are unsure how, contact your hosting provider and they can direct you, or most likely simply switch them for you. It literally takes a second! See a more detailed set of instructions here.
• Use brute force protection so that if the wrong password is entered in too many times the person’s IP address is locked out for a pre-set duration.
• Keep up to date with the latest WordPress version. WordPress is great for letting you know when there is an update to any of your plugins, make sure to heed the alerts and update as soon as possible.
• Use complex passwords, and limit access to consultants you can trust. A strong password will include upper and lower case numbers and letters as well as a special character mixed in. I’d hate to be the one trying to guess #4Rrtx37EE
• Actively monitor your log files to see if anyone is trying to access your site. Hosting panels provide analytics and log files. By checking these from time to time, you can spot unnatural activity and take action to protect yourself!

These are just a few measures you can look into implementing on your blog, but obviously the more secure you can make it, the better.

Find a good web designer

I’m sure many of you have the skill and talent to recode your website from scratch, but there are also many like myself who are at risk of ruining everything each time they try and manipulate the code within their site. While this doesn’t stop me from constantly tweaking and enhancing my blog in order to continually improve it, it does mean that I keep a designer’s phone number on speed dial just in case.

Protect your brand

It’s a simple matter to setup a few Google Alerts to inform you whenever someone mentions your name, your company name, or the name of your blog. These alerts get conveniently delivered to your inbox where you can take a look to see what is being said about you, and can then respond almost instantly while the effect will be maximized.

If you head over to Google Alerts while you’re logged in with your Gmail ID (you will need to have a Google ID, but don’t worry, they’re free and easy to set up), you can enter the terms you’d like to be notified about, and Google will start keeping an eye out for those terms while it’s going about its daily business. Once a website is published or updated with that term, you’ll be sent a notification letting you know.

Protect your content

Unfortunately plagiarism is one of the threats we face as bloggers. Unscrupulous individuals scrape content and reuse it on their own thin sights in order to try and outrank sites such as yours. Fortunately Google does a fairly decent job of choosing the original work and ranking it accordingly. Placing a copyright notice at the bottom of your pages is the first step, but you should also actively scan for stolen articles using sites like Copyscape.com.

Find a blogging buddy

This is just someone you trust who can take care of posting for you while you are away, perhaps on holidays, or an unforeseen absence of another sort. Just as you’d have a neighbor look in on your house, it’s a good idea to have someone you can trust to look in on your blog.

Make a blogging will

Your blog is an asset, and should be treated that way. Even if it’s just a case of creating a document instructing your wife who to contact in case of the need to sell it, or perhaps a full-fledged document that details how everything works, and how to continue running things in case you yourself are unable to do so.

While this might be a morbid thought for some, the thought of losing all the work you’ve invested after a few missed hosting bills is even more unbearable for many. Darren recently wrote a detailed post on the subject.

Getting yourself into a few healthy habits such as the ones listed above can save you time, stress, and money. The peace of mind that will likely result from these actions will more than make up for any inconveniences you incur implementing them.

What tips can you add from your own experience protecting your blog? Share them in the comments.

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Posted in: Blogger Tutorials,Tips and Tricks

Why Bloggers Should Also Be Freelance Writers

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Why Bloggers Should Also Be Freelance Writers

Blogging can feel like a long, hard road—especially when you’re starting out. You haven’t hit 100 subscribers, let alone 1,000, and it feels like you’re writing into a vacuum.

And even when you’re a little way down that blogging road, it can still be tough. You might be spending two or three hours a day on blogging—writing content, answering comments, building up friendships on Twitter and Facebook. Chances are, you’re not making much money from it, though.

I’m not going to suggest that you give up. I’m not going to suggest that you work harder, either, pouring more and more hours into your blog.

Instead, I’m going to suggest something which you might never have considered before: becoming a freelance writer as well as being a blogger.

This might sound like a huge step. But really, you just need two key things:

• the ability to write well
• some contacts who’re willing to pay you.

These might well be challenges—but they’re not insurmountable hurdles.

Prerequisite #1: Being able to write

You certainly don’t have to be a budding Shakespeare in order to write a competent, professional blog post—but you do need a strong grasp of grammar, and the ability to write engagingly.

There are certainly a few sites out there which will pay you for sloppy, lazy content—but the rate of pay will be abysmal. If you’re going to write for a good, reputable blog, your writing needs to be solid. That doesn’t mean flawless (even professional authors have copy-editors) but you should know:

• how to construct an engaging blog post, with a gripping introduction, clear message, and strong conclusion
• how to format your posts for easy readability, using subheadings, short paragraphs, bold text, and bullet pointed lists
• how to adapt your writing style for different purposes—some blogs will want a much more casual approach than others.

I firmly believe that writing is a skill. It comes more easily to some of us than to others, but everyone can learn and improve. (Reading the posts here on ProBlogger is a great start.)

Prerequisite #2: Contacts who can pay you

You might not have many contacts yet, but if you’re thinking about freelancing, you’ll want to start getting to know editors of big blogs and websites. Sure, plenty of jobs are advertised but most higher-paid positions never get publically advertised.

If you feel a bit intimidated by the idea of networking with editors and blog owners, take the pressure off. Believe it or not, big bloggers are human too! I’ve met several of my blogging heroes—like Darren Rowse and Daniel Scocco—and they’re lovely, friendly, normal people.

A great way to strike up contact is by using Twitter or Facebook to send a friendly message letting an editor know how much you enjoyed a recent post. Don’t be smarmy or fake about this—focus on blogs which you personally love.

My first few blogging jobs all came from sending in guest posts. A well-written, targeted guest post is a great way to get an editor’s attention. It proves that you can write, and that you know their audience. (And even if you don’t land a paying job as a result, you’ll still get some traffic to your own blog, plus great exposure.)

You’ve probably got your hands pretty full with just your own blog. You might think it’s not worth taking the time to improve your writing ability, or to build up your contacts.

But here’s why you might want to think again.

You’ll make money (fast)

Of course, money isn’t everything, but if you’re in the problogging game, chances are that you’d like to see some financial reward for your hard slog. Problem is, you can’t attract big advertisers and you don’t have any products to sell yet.

If you write a piece as a freelancer—whether that’s for a blog, a magazine, or a newspaper—then you get paid. For a typical freelance blog post, you’ll receive around $40–$60.

Doesn’t that sound a lot more efficient than watching the pennies trickle into your AdSense account?

The money from your freelance writing might let you quit your day job, so you can put more time into your own blog or other projects (that’s how it worked for me). Or, if you keep your freelancing as a job on the side, it’ll at least let you afford hosting, premium themes, and training materials for your own blog.

You’ll build your blogging network

When you’re Joe Newbie in the blogosphere, you’re probably used to big bloggers ignoring you. It’s not personal—they just don’t have the time to reply to every single comment and tweet.

But when you’re a freelance writer, your editor will definitely know your name. In fact, they’ll probably get to know you while you’re building up your freelancing contacts—perhaps you’ll have been a regular commenter on their blog, or you’ll have sent them a couple of guest posts, before landing that paid gig.

Plus, when you’re regularly having work published on large blogs or websites, other big bloggers will start paying attention to you, too. Instead of trying to get attention to your own blog, you’ll be able to leverage an existing audience—quite possibly one of tens of thousands of readers. And you’ll be getting paid to do it.

Even if you only freelance for a few months, you’ll have made contacts which you can maintain throughout your blogging career.

You’ll get audience feedback

When you publish a post on your own blog, how many comments do you get?

It’s probably not as many as you’d like. Maybe most of your posts seem to sink like pebbles dropped into an ocean—no-one ever sees them, and they don’t make any ripples.

If you write for a blog that’s big enough to pay writers, you’ll get feedback. That might be:

• comments from readers who loved the post
• comments from readers who hated the post—this can be tough to take, but it can also teach you what doesn’t go down so well
• tweets about your post, or Facebook “likes” for it
• indirect feedback from the editor—if bits of your post were edited, try to work out why the changes were made
• direct feedback from the editor—they may tell you to do more of the same, or they may ask for something different next time
• emails from readers—there’s nothing better than a heartfelt message from someone who was really touched by your writing.

As a writer, you need to get feedback on your work: this is how you know what’s going well, and what’s in need of improvement.

You can write about anything you want

This might seem like an odd reason to freelance—but it’s one of the reasons I love it: you get to write on a whole range of topics, and you can often choose exactly what you write about.

If you find it hard to stick with one interest—perhaps your own blog is suffering because you post about several diverse topics—then freelance writing will give you an outlet. You might be writing one post every week or every month, so you won’t run out of things to say.

Plus, writing about lots of different topics is a great way to stay fresh and to continually hone your writing skills. You might end up researching an area that you knew very little about—or writing for an audience of people who have a very different background from yours. Getting out of your writing comfort zone is an essential part of your growth.

I know that the problogging dream is to have your own huge, successful blog with hundreds of thousands of readers, a line of products, some great advertisers and lots of affiliate income. The truth is, though, that it takes an awful lot of time and hard work to get to that stage. So while you’re working your way up, why not give freelance writing a try?

Have you done freelance writing? Share your experiences in the comments—I’d love to hear about them.

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Posted in: Blogger Tutorials,Make Money Online,Tips and Tricks

Behind the Scenes of Our New Ebook Launch at FeelGooder

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Behind the Scenes of Our New Ebook Launch at FeelGooder

It’s been six months since I launched my latest blog—FeelGooder—and today it’s entering a new phase, so I thought it might be time for a bit of an update.

You might remember back in November we launched FeelGooder and I outlined some of the backstory here on ProBlogger. The blog was a slightly new approach to me for a number of reasons—partly because of the wide niche (it covers everything from health, to relationships, to finance, to social good), but also because I decided to launch without any kind of advertising, and with the intent of monetization without ads.

It was an ambitious task and something of an experiment, but I was excited by the prospect.

Over the last six months, the focus on FeelGooder has really been to build up an archive of content (and a team of authors), and to build up a core readership. We’ve done both, although the going has been a little slower than I’d hoped, mainly because of the juggling I and my team are now doing across multiple websites.

However today we’re moving into a new phase and are launching an ebook: 7 Ways to FeelBetter.

You can read more about it on its sales page, but in short, it’s a week-long challenge for readers to work through. We think it will lift their spirits, help them to feel better about their lives, and hopefully help them to develop some life-changing habits.

I’m very excited about the reaction we’ve been receiving from those who have already reviewed it, and love the way it looks (we’re getting a lot of positive feedback on its design).

A new approach (for me) to launching products

One of the things I’m excited about in this particular ebook launch is that we’re experimenting with a slightly different launch process. Here’s how it looks:

1. We’re giving the first 500 copies away for free.
2. We’re then offering the next 500 copies at 50% off ($4.99).
3. Then we’ll be selling it at its normal price of $9.99.

UPDATE: due to limitations with e-junkie allowing only 100 free copies to be given away per day I’ve had to put the price up to 1 cent for the first 500 buyers.

This is a bit of a departure from my normal launch process, and is one I’m excited to see the results of. You can check out how it’s going over at FeelGooder today, because as this post goes live, we’re starting the giveaway part of the launch.

One of the main reasons I’m taking this approach is that, with a smaller audience on FeelGooder than here on ProBlogger or dPS, I suspect it’ll be a little harder to get momentum going with a new product.

The aim with this giveaway is to get what we think is a great product in front of as many people as possible. My hope then is that with it “out there,” we’ll have some opportunities to grow the momentum as people begin to use it.

One of the ways that we’ll do this is through a push via social media—particularly Twitter. We’re encouraging those who participate in the challenge to use a common hashtag to document what they’re doing with the challenge.

Time will tell how it goes, but I wanted to keep ProBlogger readers up to date as to what we’re experimenting with on FeelGooder.

P.S. Want to give some copies away on your blog?

If your niche relates to that of FeelGooder (life tips, health, relationships, fitness, finance, social good, etc.), any tweets, blog posts or linkups to this great little ebook would be greatly appreciated.

We’re also open to doing a handful of giveaways on related blogs—feel free to contact me via the contact form here on ProBlogger if you think your readership might be interested. Do include a link to your blog and any details of your audience (size, demographics, etc.) with your email.

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Posted in: Blogger Tutorials,Tips and Tricks

June is ’31 Days to Build a Better Blog’ Challenge at SITSgirls – Join them Today

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June is ’31 Days to Build a Better Blog’ Challenge at SITSgirls – Join them Today

If you’ve been blogging for a while now but feel ‘stuck’ – there’s a group of bloggers about to take the ‘31 Days to Build a Better Blog‘ challenge that you really should consider joining.

The Group is SITSGirls – a blogging community with over 8000 women bloggers – and for the 2nd time they’re running #31DBBB. Last time around was amazing – by my count over 400 bloggers joined that challenge and the impact that I witnessed was pretty profound.

It was the first large group of bloggers that I saw walking through the eBook together and to see so many tackling the daily challenges together and supporting each other through them just highlighted how much more effective blogging can be when you take a communal approach to it. In addition to just working through the eBook there was lots of support in the forum area as well as on Twitter.

The SitsGirls challenge starts on 1 Juneand participants in the challenge get the eBook at 33% off. If you already have the eBook this is the ideal time to put it into action.

The coordinator of the challenge is Shelley from I’m still Standing – you can read her kick off post here.

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Posted in: Tips and Tricks

Everything’s Already Been Said. Now What?

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Everything’s Already Been Said. Now What?

Over the course of human history, nearly everything has already been written about extensively. Despite this, more people are writing than ever before.

It’s because there will always be more to say.

It is very challenging to write completely original content. Quite often, the best we can do is present known content in a new way or combine it with another idea. There is no limit to the number of ways you can say something, and yet some approaches are vastly superior to others.

Consider the following sentences that carry the same basic message (hint: one of them isn’t any good).

• I want to have good sentences.
• I want to convey information in a manner that is enjoyable to read and accurate to my intent.

Teach an old idea new tricks

A recent 50-word article from the brilliant Seth Godin laid out a single concept: you can’t have success without being willing to fail. I can prove this isn’t new. My second post was titled, “Are You Willing To Fail? It Is The Key To Success,” and you’ll find about 100 more posts like these via a quick Google search.

What Seth did to make his article unique was tie in the concept of innovation. He replaced “success” with “innovation” in the formula, and people loved it. They hadn’t thought about how innovation and failure relate to each other, even though it’s a simple derivation from the failure/success concept.

As soon as you say, “failure is not an option,” you’ve just said, “innovation is not an option.”
—Seth Godin

Overwritten, tired topics can be re-energized with a fresh perspective and choice words. Seth’s post was 90% recycled information, but the 10% of new material changed it as a whole. A nasty analogy is that of adding a few drops of gasoline to a gallon of water—it has a dramatic effect!

One way to say something old in a new way is to leverage yourself. Great writers are cherished for their unique style. Every single person on this planet is unique (an amazing fact of reality). In an effort to write “correctly,” we may miss out on opportunities to be our more interesting selves.

Here’s an example. The personal development niche is one filled with serious writing. Changing lives is serious business! This observation and some incorrect assumptions about how a personal development blogger should write were stifling my creativity. Namely, I wasn’t injecting steroidshumor into my posts like I naturally would.

Imitation = Limitation?

How about imitating the greatest writers? Most articles and books I’ve read recommend this. There are some things that you absolutely should imitate, but be careful about taking it too far. If you’re unique in some way, it could be a mistake to disguise that with imitative writing (unless your unique writing attributes are poor). Blogging is a medium that allows for wild creativity and individuality.

I believe that Steve Pavlina is currently the best in personal development blogging. He “gets it.” However, I’m not going to try to be a clone of him. Steve Pavlina is the best Steve Pavlina out there. I may pick up some great ideas or techniques from him, but I’ll be incorporating them into Stephen Guise’s writing style and ideas.

I want to be the best and most innovative voice in personal development and believe I have that potential. What if I fall way short of that? No problem, I’m willing to fail in order to succeed and innovate! You can’t become the best or anywhere close to it believing that 45th best is your upper limit. Do not put a ceiling on your ambition. Imitate great writers on this point—they don’t believe in ceilings unless it is raining outside.

Your ceiling is too low

When you put a ceiling on your potential before you’re exhausted from trying to reach it, you artificially ruin your chances. Like a nervous fan walking up to Jay Z, you’ll be timid about what you’re saying, thinking that successful people have magical powers. In your posts, maybe you’ll throw in some power words to feign confidence. Unfortunately, when the problem is underlying, it will bleed through to the actual content of your writing. You can’t hide it. You’ll play it safe and lose to those who are going all out … like me!

The answer, as I mentioned before, is to leverage yourself and your voice. Nobody can be you better than you. Darren Rowse can’t. Seth Godin can’t. Steve Pavlina might be able to. Their voices are different (and awesome, to their credit). Bonus: If your unique voice is terrible, you’ll find out sooner by trying really hard.

This has been said before

Oops! I’ve just rehashed a couple of cliches in this post.

1. “Believe in yourself.”
2. “Reach for the moon, and if you fall short, you might land on a star.” Side note: How did this catch on? The moon is closer to us than any star is….

Those are very common sayings. A possible reason you’re still reading this post is that maybe I’ve found a better or more interesting way to say those things (in just a few more words). Do you think I am audacious to invite comparison of my writing to a couple of the most well-known phrases? Me too, but it’s because I refuse to have a ceiling. I will never rule myself out before the umpire makes the call—and neither should you.

Maybe this post did fall short of those popular sayings and it will be forgotten tomorrow. I accept that as a possibility.

But maybe my perspective of this topic connected with you. Maybe my unique construction of words and ideas had an impact on you. That’s what I hope for. That personal connection is what makes blogging beautiful. That’s why we do it.

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Posted in: Blogger Tutorials,Tips and Tricks

How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World

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How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World

After all, that’s the dream, right?

Forget the mansions and limousines and other trappings of Hollywood-style wealth. Sure, it would be nice, but for the most part, we bloggers are simpler souls with much kinder dreams.

We want to quit our jobs, spend more time with our families, and finally have time to write. We want the freedom to work when we want, where we want. We want our writing to help people, to inspire them, to change them from the inside out.

It’s a modest dream, a dream that deserves to come true, and yet a part of you might be wondering…

Will it?

Do you really have what it takes to be a professional blogger, or are you just being dumb? Is it realistic to make enough money from this to quit your job, or is that just silly? Can you really expect people to fall in love with what you write, or is that just wishful thinking?

Sure, it’s fun to dream about your blog taking off and changing your life, but sometimes you wonder if it’s just that: a dream. This is the real world, and in the real world, dreams don’t really come true.

Right?

Well, let me tell you a little story…

How I quit my job

My van

In April of 2006, I was hit by a car going 85 miles an hour.

I didn’t see him coming, and I don’t remember much about the accident, but I do remember being pulled out of my minivan with my shirt on fire. The front end of the van was torn off, gasoline was everywhere, and my legs were broken in 14 places.

For the next three months, I had nothing to do but endure the pain and think about my life. I thought about my childhood. I thought about my dreams. I thought about my career.

And overall, I decided I didn’t like the way things were going.

So I quit.

I sold everything I owned. I stopped paying most of my bills. I turned in my letter of resignation, worked my two weeks, and then disappeared without saying goodbye.

Hearing about my insanity, a friend called and asked me, “Well, what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe start a blog.”

And so that’s what I did.

For the next three months, I didn’t just tinker around with blogging. I dedicated myself to it. I started work at 8 AM in the morning, and I kept going until 11 PM at night. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t see my friends. From morning till night, I was writing, reading, and connecting with other bloggers. Nothing else.

Within a month, I had On Moneymaking off the ground, and within two months, it was getting 2,000 visitors a day and Performancing nominated it for the best business/money blog of the year. A couple of months after that, Brian Clark asked me to become the Associate Editor of Copyblogger, and so I sold On Moneymaking for five figures and went to work at one of the most popular blogs at the world.

And amazingly, that’s just the beginning of the story.

How I moved to paradise

Have you ever woken up one day and realized you secretly despise everything about where you live?

The weather is horrible. Your neighbors are jerks. You don’t like inviting anyone to your home, because it’s always a wreck, and you’re ashamed of how it looks.

Well, that’s exactly what happened to me in January of 2009. I was sitting in my pathetic apartment, wrapped up in blankets to keep warm, trying to get some work done on the computer, when it struck me how monumentally stupid it was.

I was a full-time blogger, for God’s sakes. I could do my work from anywhere in the world. Why on Earth was I living in this hellhole?

The only problem was I had no idea where I wanted to go, but a couple of weeks later, the telephone rang, and it was an old friend who had retired to Mazatlan, Mexico. As usual, he was calling to gloat about the weather and the food and the general superiority of the Mexican lifestyle, but instead of just suffering through it this time, I stopped him and said, “No, don’t tell me any more. I’m moving there.”

My office

“What? When?” he stammered.

“I don’t know exactly when,” I told him, “but I’m starting right now.”

Two months later, I took a one-week trip to scout it out and look for places to live. When I got back, I started selling all of my stuff, packing the rest of it into storage, and saying goodbye to friends. Almost one year to the day after our phone call, I hopped in the car and drove just shy of 3,000 miles to my new beachfront condo in the finest resort in Mazatlan.

As I write this, I’m sitting on my balcony with my laptop, watching (no kidding) dolphins jumping out in the Pacific. It’s a sunny day, there’s a nice breeze, and I’m thinking about ordering a piña colada from the restaurant downstairs.

Lucky me, right?

Well, what might surprise you is I left out a piece of the story. It’s the part where I have a fatal disease, I can’t move from the neck down, and yet I essentially get paid to help people. Let’s talk about that part next.

How I get paid to change the world

You know what’s funny?

Yours truly

The worst part about having a disease like SMA isn’t how everyone treats you like a charity case. It’s not the frustration, anger, or depression. It’s not even the inability to reach over and pinch a cute girl’s butt when you want to (although that’s pretty bad).

No, the worst part is the freakin’ bills.  The doctors. The medication. The nurses.

I added it all up, and the total cost of keeping me alive in the US was $127,000 a year. That’s not rent. That’s not food. That’s justmedical expenses.

Granted, I didn’t actually have to pay all that. I had private insurance, Medicaid, other government aid programs, but all that support comes at a price: they control you. The government allotted me only $700 a month to live on, and I had to spend every single cent above that on medical expenses, or they would cut me off.

So for years, that’s what I did. If I made $5,000 one month, I set aside $700 for living expenses, and I spent the other $4,300 on medical bills. Nothing was left. Ever.

And eventually, I got sick of it.

I wanted to make money without having to worry about losing my healthcare. I wanted to take care of my family, instead of them always having to take care of me. I wanted to actually live somewherenice, not some ratty little apartment built for folks below the poverty line.

The only problem was, it just wasn’t possible for me in US. No matter how I played with the numbers, I couldn’t make it work. So, I did something crazy:

I quit Medicaid. I moved to Mexico. I stopped worrying about myself at all and started a business based on one simple idea:

Helping people.

I found up-and-coming writers who wanted a mentor, and I trained them. I found businesses who wanted to cash in on social media, and I developed their strategy. I found bloggers who wanted more traffic, and I created a course on how to get it.

In exchange, they paid me what they could. Some folks gave me $50 an hour and others $300 an hour, but I treated them all the same, and I dedicated myself to making their dreams a reality.

The results?

Within two months, I was making so much money so fast PayPal shut down my account under suspicions of fraudulent activity. Today, not only am I making more than enough to take care of myself, but a couple of months ago, I got uppity and bought my father a car.

Do you understand how precious that is? For a guy who can’t move from the neck down to buy his father a car?

And the best part is, I’m not making money doing mindless drudgery. I’m changing people’s lives.

Every day, I get emails from readers who say my posts have changed their thinking. Every day, I get emails from students who say my advice has changed their writing. Every day, I get emails from clients who say my strategies have changed the way they do business.

I can’t really believe it. Normally, a guy like me would be wasting away in a nursing home somewhere, watching television and waiting to die, but here I am speaking into a microphone and essentially getting paid to change the world. If my fingers worked, I’d pinch myself.

And here’s the thing:

I don’t want it for just me. I want it for you too.

The reason I told you this whole story wasn’t just to brag but also to convince you of one incontrovertible point:

YOU CAN DO THIS!

You want to quit your job and become a professional blogger?

You can.

You want to travel around the world, living life to its fullest?

You can.

You want to dedicate your every hour to helping people and making the world a better place?

You can.

Because listen … I know it’s horribly cliché, but if I can quit my job, risk the government carting me off to a nursing home because I can’t afford my own healthcare, convince my poor mother to abandon her career and drive my crippled butt 3,000 miles to a foreign country, and then make enough money to support myself, my mother, my father, and an entire nursing staff using nothing but my voice, then what can you accomplish if you really set your mind to it?

My guess: pretty much anything.

No, it won’t be easy. At some point, I guarantee you’ll want to quit. I guarantee people will treat you like you’re insane. I guarantee you’ll cry yourself to sleep, wondering if you made a horrible mistake.

But never stop believing in yourself. The world is full of naysayers, all of them eager to shout you down at the slightest indication you might transcend mediocrity, but the greatest sin you can commit is to yourself become one of them. Our job isn’t to join that group, but to silence it, to accomplish things so great and unimaginable that its members are too awed to speak.

You can do it.

I believe in you.

So get started.

Right freaking now.

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