App Recon includes helpful “Get a Great App Idea” reports based on data analysis of the App Store. The site also has app business strategy articles.

So check out App Recon.  I hope you’ll find it useful and would also love to hear from you about how the site can become even better!

-Bob

The post Get a great app idea appeared first on Taming Life.

In all fairness, I didn’t invent this concept out of thin air, rather was greatly inspired by concepts presented in Steve Blank’s Startup Owner’s Manual, the Minimum Viable Product discussed by Eric Reis and best practices of niche site building.

The Test Driven Business process in a nutshell

The following is a quick overview of this process:

1. Identify what you believe to be a market need. This will serve as the seed for a new site or a new product. The idea can be generated randomly or come by using something like the Recursive Challenge creative technique.
2. Develop one or more hypotheses. A hypothesis is a beliefs about a need or problem hold related to the market you are targeting. An example of a very simple hypothesis is ‘my market likes to learn about 1957 Chevys.
3. Develop one or more tests that would validate the previously mentioned hypotheses. Write out a sentence that describes how you would verify that your hypotheses is correct. Continuing the above example: ‘If I write a create a web page on 1957 Chevys I should see a decent amount of traffic coming to that page within a month’
4. Wait. Now you need to wait for the test to execute. Most times this means that you temporarily put the current project on hold and move onto another project. The waiting period is required because you need to give the market some time to show if your hypothesis is correct or not based on the test you set up. Depending on the test this could be anywhere from a day to a few months.
5. Analyze. Analyze the data of the test results. If the test failed, you know you’re hypothesis was incorrect and your view of your market must change. If the test passed, you know that your hypothesis was correct. For web pages and even many software products the analysis phase will involve using a tool like Google Analytics. It could also involve survey results or other mechanisms that help you understand market needs and wants.
6. Monetize. At this point, the information recently gathered may tell you that it’s possible to monetize. However, attempt this if and only if you can do it without changing the value of current product offering. Note: The addition of a monetization aspect actually can be considered a new hypothesis and test that is added for the next iteration (in other words ‘I think the market would like to purchase X, therefore I’ll put bright green button on my page).
7. Start over with step 2. Iterate through all steps starting at #2, continually adding new tests/features based on data gathered up to that point.

Meticulous tracking of data is critical

Ideas behind the process

The core driver of Test Driven Business is to zero in on market needs quickly. It also recognizes that in business, your idea is only a hypotheses unless you have data to back the idea up.

Driving everything is the need to make sure you are in-line with the market

The driving force of all of this is to ensure that one is gradually becoming more and more in-line with market needs. In the language of Mark Andreesen this is ‘Product-Market Fit’: The state at which a product perfectly meets a market need.

Initially it’s about maximizing market interest. Worry about monetization later.

Once the market needs are being met monetization become much easier. For instance, once a website starts generating a large amount of traffic based on the free content and features it contains, the ways to monetize become apparent.

New features are just a form of hypothesis-driven tests

One interesting concept is that the addition of features to a product is actually a type of test. When you add a new feature to an existing product, add an article to your site or create an entirely new solution for the market to consume you’re basically doing so because you have a hypothesis about the market. You’re basically saying ‘I think the market has a specific need.’

Remember your ideas are just hypotheses

Something most people don’t realize is that their ideas about the market can’t be trusted proven until they have data to back them up is just that – a logical guess with how things are going to go. They only really will know if a product is solving a need if people start using it. Thus, the product itself was a test. A test of the hypothesis.

Initially you may not know where the business is headed more than a week out and that’s ok

Because of the nature of this process it’s to be expected to not understand well where the business is going more than a couple weeks out. That’s ok because it’s an admission that the market is the one that’s in charge. Over time as more and more tests have been executed and data gathered, the path will become clearer since bigger bets can be made (in other words it’s much easier to commit to creating a product taking 3 months after you understand a lot about the market compared to when you are just starting.)

Iterate enough and you’ll achieve Product-Market Fit

At the core of all this is to just keep changing course, adapting, and expanding depending on what the market is telling you. Eventually your offering will match the market exactly and at that point your business will take off.

The post Test Driven Business appeared first on Taming Life.

I’m not much of a person who likes writing book reviews that just step you through what’s in a book.  Instead I prefer to describe the major concepts that have actually impacted me.

Systems

• If you look around you, you’ll realize that life is made up of a series of interdependent systems of varying complexity.
• Even though complex, an insane number of interdependent systems you interact with daily just ‘work’.
• If you know how to harness the power of systems you can not only save time but make yourself much more personally effective.
• Instead of just participating in the activities of your life, look ‘above it’ and play the role of an outside observer to see the systems at play.

Procedures

• Just about every activity you do in life can be considered a part of a ‘procedure’, which can be quantified as a simple list of instructions.
• Track, analyze, and optimize your procedures should be your mantra going forward.
• Treat procedure maintenance as first class tasks, not overhead. It pays off 100 fold over time.
• Make procedures simple enough so someone ‘off the street’ could do parts of your job and life with no prior training.
• Optimized procedures naturally lend themselves to delegation.

Your role

• Over time delegation of procedures will allow you to remove yourself from day to day tasks, giving you time to do more of what you want.
• By continually creating and optimizing procedures you move from fire fighter to fire preventer.

I created a Twitter/WordPress automation tool using the lessons learned

Even though this book is primarily targeted to leaders of small business I think the lessons can apply beautifully to the solopreneur. In today’s world of outsourcing and automation the ability to quantify parts of your life is amazingly powerful.

For a first experiment, I decided to analyze how I generate the Taming 10 article. The Taming 10 is a weekly article I publish on Fridays and is composed of the best links I’ve collected over the past week.

• To start, I wrote down each step that I perform and came up with about 30, much to my surprise.
• I then identified how things could be optimized
• I then overhauled a tool that I had been using to help me create the post.

Net Result: The process has dropped from 30 steps to 10 and something that used to take me 45 minutes each week now takes me two minutes!  That exercise along made me a believer in the Work the System process.  Note: In an upcoming article I’ll be discussing exactly what I did during this optimization process.

Overall Recommendation

Work the System is a definite buy. It’s an important book to get if you’re an entrepreneur or anyone looking to make your life more efficient by multiplying your efforts through outsourcing and automation.

The post Lessons from the book ‘Work the System’ appeared first on Taming Life.

The following are the best business and productivity web articles I’ve come across in the past week. I try to find the stories that won’t waste your time and have the potential to positively impact your business.

1. Control the virtual assistant swarm thru mass creation of Mechanical Turk tasks

2. How to hit content scrapers where it hurts

3. Why every business needs product discovery

4. From app store newbie to $35,000+ in profit

5. A 12-step formula for creating and selling your first information product

6. Content considerations are essential to an effective niche site strategy

7. How to create an epic product launch

8. 5 simple habits that can dramatically improve your productivity

9. Seven traffic techniques for bloggers

10. Case study which source of web traffic converts the best?

The post The Taming 10: The week’s best links for entrepreneurs appeared first on Taming Life.

As the Internet matures, the businesses that make money will evolve to be of higher and higher quality. This means that cheapie niche site content will become less and less of an option going forward.

For long-term viability, content strategy is at least as important as keyword research and SEO

A standard part of niche site building traditionally involves keyword research and search engine optimization. Keyword research is important because it gives you an idea of market need and competition. SEO is important because it allows your site to be more easily found by the search engines.

However, both of these tactics are directly tied to catering to a specific version of a search engine. These metrics may or may not assist one in addressing market needs.

Because of this, relying solely on these metrics is short sighted.

The weakness of using keyword research and SEO alone

A viable business requires at least the following four items:

1. A market need
2. A valuable solution to that need
3. A way to monetize the solution
4. A way to market the solution

Keyword research coupled with SEO really tackle only parts one and four while part three is examined a bit in the form of Cost Per Click metrics. These tactics completely neglect part two – creating a valuable solution that meets the needs of the market.

Many of the popular marketing techniques found on the Internet today just require a minimal number of low quality pages to be put up on a site and they consider ‘the need met.’  Based on my observations and comments from many others, a lot of the content created in the quickie niche sites isn’t very good making these sites just one Google update away from disaster

Market forces will require search algorithms to radically improve. This will punish poor content and sites gaming the system

I can guarantee you that Google’s algorithms will get much better over time. It’s in their core business interest to make that happen. They’re in the advertising business and their advertising effectiveness directly relates to how good their search engine is or at a minimum how good it’s perceived to be.

Because of this, Google is constantly looking for ways to improve results. They’ll do this by trying to outfox people using highly targeted keyword sites with poor content as well as sites using advanced traffic generation techniques employing phony backlink networks.

On top of all of this there’s Bing. Don’t laugh – they may not be a threat right now but in the online world the balance of power can shift surprisingly fast, especially when you have billions like Microsoft. At a minimum they are helping to keep Google on it’s toes which means a bit more pressure to keep improving the search engine.

Google isn’t nearly as good as you think – either that or the web has a long way to go

One interesting thing that I’ve noticed now that I’ve actually taken the time to dig into sites is how many non-authority sites are dominating a lot of the top ten search results.

On numerous occasions I’ve found single page articles in the top ten. Many times I’ll see them even in the top three – articles from more general sites like Yahoo Answers, eHow, or even CNN.

It’s amazing to me that this is the best of what the web has to offer on all sorts of different subjects. I can think of a couple explanations for this:

Possible explanation 1: There aren’t nearly as many authority sites out there as you’d think

I have no evidence that there aren’t really good sites just being hidden from Google but my hunch is that if you have an authority site, it probably is in Google somewhere.

Again, since I’m not seeing a lot of authority sites in my own searches this is potentially good news because it means that those of us trying to get a niche-authority site going may have an easier time of it than conventional wisdom may suggest.

Possible explanation 2: Individual pages are much more important than overall site authority

This is the explanation that worries me a bit if true. It’s possible that Google just knows that at the end of the day people searching on the Net tend to have specific questions that can be answered in a page or less.

Many times this could actually be the case, however my counter to that would be that why are the ‘best’ pages that are coming up on a given subject just happen to be on more general sites? Why would CNN just happen to have the best page with information on sleep tips?

My answer is that it wouldn’t. This seems to be more due to a flaw in Google’s algorithm than anything real. Google gives CNN a lot of weight because of all of their news related items so even specific pages answering questions that have nothing to do with CNN’s core competency still get ranked.

That’s artificial and in my opinion we’re seeing that because Google hasn’t figured out a way to do it better yet. I believe is that if you put up a niche authority site with some really good content you’ll end up crushing pages piggybacking on the authority of a more general site.

So what does this mean for niche site strategies?

I think the ‘good old days’ of doing mass keyword research alone then plopping down some SEO-optimized junk content are coming to a close. The way to adapt is to treat your niche site like a real business. Make sure that it’s creating serious value for the market just like quality offline business do.

That’s not to say that keyword research and SEO techniques don’t have their place. However, content needs to be the centerpiece of your strategy, not an afterthought if you want to make it in the long run.

In a future article I’ll tie together the concepts from this article with some of the ‘core truths’ that I believe I discovered since my previous article.

The post Content considerations are essential to an effective niche site strategy appeared first on Taming Life.

I try to find the stories that won’t waste your time and have the potential to positively impact your business.  

1. The Importance of Naming and Why Neglecting It Can Screw Your Digital Career

2. 5 Ways Your Competitors Can Help You Get More Sales

3. What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day

4. Really interesting proposal for an alternative to blogging. ‘Email Blogging’

5. Niche sites are out. Niche-authority sites are in.

6. How To Price Your eBook And Maximize Your Potential

7. The 8 Core Excuses Standing Between You And Your Dreams

8. How to Sell Affiliate Products on PInterest

9. ‘If This Then That’ Cool service that automates your online life

10. The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

The post The Taming 10: The week’s best links for entrepreneurs appeared first on Taming Life.

This shift not only makes sense because of my personal sensibilities, but I think it makes sense from a long-term business perspective also.

Ranking and keyword research

My newest/latest beliefs always shape my latest strategy and lately I’ve been struggling with the concept of ‘Google ranking’. It’s a statistical truth that if you aren’t in the top 10 results for a given keyword then chances are you are barely going to get any traffic.

Now the question then becomes, how do you rank? I think there is a lot of validity in the standard keyword research techniques – however..

But it’s not enough

I think this is a good starting point, but I believe that that a bit too much can be made of keyword research being your primary or only technique.

The reasons why I think that one needs to broaden out is quite simply that Google is getting better daily. Simple and advanced backlinking strategies, and in-site SEO techniques which have been used to rank can either by nullified or even hurt your ranking when Google algorithms change – see the Penguin and Panda updates for examples of this happening in the past.

Google is in the business of search. The better their search algorithm the better it is for their business. Google knows about a lot of the ranking techniques being used by the Internet marketing community and knows that these techniques are often in direct opposition to their goal of serving up what they believe is the most valuable content.

Because of this, I think that many techniques used to game the search engines will become less and less effective as time goes on.

It comes back to content

One thing has perplexed me with those that make hundreds or even thousands of sites. Where do they get the content? I think it’s theoretically possible to generate good content when you have hundreds of sites but it would take an army of really good virtual assistants.

Since most people don’t have a ton of great virtual assistants who can write and research well it’s my belief that a lot of content sitting out there on thousands of niche sites isn’t that strong from a value perspective.

In fact, my last few months of research has confirmed this fact. It’s not uncommon for an individual to target a niche by keyword research alone, and then develop quick articles by summarizing Amazon reviews or taking other articles they find and using an article spinner.

Don’t shy away from niches with a bit of competition – add a competitor content stage to your process

A site may have a lot of backlinks and ‘Google authority’ but when push comes to shove I those sites may not have a long term future unless people go back in and really make them valuable.

Because of this, I think there may actually be more opportunities out there that people don’t realize. My recommendation to those of you who are using keyword research tools is to accept a bit more competition than your normally would – don’t reject a candidate keyword simply because there are no PageRank 0’s in there. Take the time to check out the top 10 ranking sites for their content. It’s possible you’ll see sites that have pretty crummy articles that aren’t adding a lot of value to their niche.

My theory is if you go in there and write some killer content for that niche, sooner or later you’ll be ranked – either through natural and created backlinking of your own or future improvements to the Google search algorithm.

The latest iteration of my niche-authority site strategy

The latest iteration of my niche-authority strategy in a nutshell:

1. Find a topic. Find a topic that you are either interested in, knowledgeable of or you feel that you can dig into and learn about if you had to. Additionally, and more importantly, the keyword needs to be related to a fear, problem or passion. Fears, problems and passions imply strong emotions and emotions cause people to act which is good from a business sense. Note: I borrowed these three particular words in the strategy from Glen Allsopp of viperchill.com - they’ve worked for him in the past and they make logical sense to me.
2. Filter candidates using keyword research. My process is more complicated than the following but at a high level There are lots of interpretations as to what this means and how to do it, but I start with a product like Long Tail Pro (affiliate), do exact keyword match and look for low competition based on a volume filter, CPC filter and various competition filters.
3. Filter candidates using competitor content research. Now that you have several keyword phrases that look good from a numbers perspective, check out the top ten sites for quality of content. What are they bringing to the game? Are they ranking because they’ve been playing backlinking games? Could you kick their ass on content alone? If so, you may be able to take on a site with a decent PageRank who is gaming the system.
4. Determine ways to monetize the candidates. What are the ways to monetize? Assuming had chosen a niches rooted in a fear, passion or problem what types of things can help people address that issue? Could advertising entice them? If so AdSense or direct advertising could be an option. Is there a product that could help them? If so, affiliate marketing or creation of your own products could be good options.
5. Determine content strategy of each candidate. Determine what your rough content strategy will be. Can you easily write about the customer hot button issue?  If you aren’t very familiar with the topic do a bit of reading into it and get a feel for how much work it would require for you to become a knowledge authority in the area. This step is important because it ensures you’re going to be able to create enough good content to dominate the niche. Pat Flynn had a great tip – go to Wordtracker, put in your niche keywords and it will spit out a list of top questions in that niche. The answer to each question becomes an article candidate.
6. Pick a niche from the list of candidates. Pick a niche based on steps 2-5 above. Remember to get something that is low-ish competition from a keyword perspective, who has some serious gaps in content competition, where the are ways to monetize and who you could build up
7. Put up a site. Ironically the most technical part of this process is the easiest.
8. Write good articles. Don’t just write a handful of articles. Write killer articles are directly addressing a customer need. You should have a pretty good idea on the types of articles to write right from the get go if you’ve followed step 5.
9. Perform some backlinking techniques. In an ideal world I’ve love to say that if one creates an amazing site that Google will instantly know all and reward you. However, I realize that Google is an imperfect beast so as of right now you’ll have to get involved in some above-board backlinking. For an amazing post on backlinking check out Pat Flynn’s The Backlinking Strategy that Works.

Putting more focus on content research and generation means slower progress but is worth it

Because I’m now putting as much stress on content research and filtering before diving into actual niche building, I’m probably only going to be able to put out one site a month – maybe every two months. It should be worth it though because I think sites with higher quality content opens up a lot more possibilities down the road and are much more tolerant of Google algorithm changes.

Update: Since writing this article I’ve done a lot of experimentation with different techniques and sites. App Recon, My latest site,  helps people who are interested in creating apps find ideas that have the potential to really sell.

It uses some of the ideas about finding a topic for web sites, combines them with other business best practices then applies those techniques to the Apple App Store. I’ll be regularly updating the site with not only articles but an interactive web app that helps people find great, marketable app ideas.

The post Niche sites are out. Niche-authority sites are in. appeared first on Taming Life.

1. Is Dropshipping the Right Model for Your Startup?

2. 20 Warning Signs That Your Ebook Will Fail

3. Link-building Tips and Tools for Bloggers Post-Panda/Penguin

4. 5 Reasons Blogging Might Not Be For You

5. 10 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew About Them

6. 4 Mental Exercises Olympic Athletes Use To Gain That Extra Edge

7. 5 Reasons to Start a Niche Blog, and 3 Niches to Consider

8. How You Can Compete and Win Against Established Writers

9. Why Design Matters

10. Expanding My Online Business Strategy Into Niche Site Building

Ok, I didn’t find this one – it’s Taming Life post I wrote that details how/why I’m getting into niche site building.

The post The Taming 10: The week’s best links for entrepreneurs appeared first on Taming Life.

I’ve heard Pat Flynn talk a lot about his security guard site and know a ton of other people out there have had great success with them so I figure niche sites would be a good idea.

Taming Life alone wasn’t enough

Up until this point, I’ve been focusing solely on Taming Life and have enjoyed writing articles. Where it fits into my long term strategy has been changing almost weekly, but as of right now I view it as a general platform that I can use to share information with other people who are in the same boat as myself. Specifically, people who are presently in the corporate world but who would love to branch out and become their own bosses through the creation of various income stream systems.

A while ago I knew that at some future point niche sites would be part of my strategy, but just ‘not now’. Well, I recently determined that I really need to get something other than this blog going so I decided to take the leap.

It’s about theorizing, testing, learning and pivoting

One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that it’s hard if not impossible to tell what direction you’ll end up going with an online endeavor until you’ve just put a lot of time and sweat into it.

Even In my efforts over just the last few months, my strategy has been changed, tweaked and altered numerous times.

The general pattern that I’ve encountered over and over is

1. I have a theory or idea about how things work and what I want to do
2. Execute based on that theory
3. Find out I made a bad assumption or there was more to the story than initially believed. Absorb information and adjust.
4. Repeat

You only ever know theories, not reality. Theories get better with testing though

One thing I learned the hard way is that to remember that I start step 1 with just a theory, not reality. I’ve been caught on several occasions thinking that I’ve figured out some golden strategy for making money or driving traffic only to be disappointed later when I discover some caveat making the theory fall apart.

After enough  of these cycles of theorize – test – fail – learn, I found myself getting a bit frustrated. It was at this point that I knew that I was viewing things the wrong way.

It’s not failing. It’s just finding out theory is untrue and adjusting

Firstly, I always have to keep in mind that anything untested can’t be trusted and the more I test the more I’ll know. Remember that any time a new piece of information can come in and make a theory invalid. For that reason, I always have to remind myself that theories are only worth counting on once they’ve been tested.

Secondly, thinking that a theory that’s been tested and didn’t hold up is a failure is a really really bad way of looking at things. The whole theorize – test – adjust cycle is just part of the game. It’s not even optional. If you’re going to succeed you’ve got to quit thinking about failed theories as failures, but rather new discoveries of reality that can be used to build new and hopefully better theories to base your strategy on.

The discovery process is where the fun is at

That being said, it’s also very exciting because you never know what’s around the corner. A theory today that seems rock solid may crumble when it hits the real world. That’s ok though – I think the process of theorizing and testing is actually really exciting because it almost seems like in order to succeed you’ve got to learn to learn through hard experience.

My current process for picking a niche

So now that I’ve discussed theories and testing in great (and some may say overly verbose) detail, I’ll tell you how I’m approaching things right now, based on a lot of test-pivot cycles.

1. I write down several areas which I’m familiar with and hopefully passionate about
2. Research products that can be sold to that niche. The more expensive the better.
3. Perform research to get longish tail, low volume search keyword phrases. Currently using Long Tail Pro.
4. If keyword shows low competition, add it to a candidate list
5. Assess all candidates, comparing competition, ability to monetize, and traffic.
6. Try to buy an exact name domain name or one that has the exact name in the title
7. Build a site, optimize for search
8. For review sites, add at least 10 pages of quality content. For shopping sites try to see what extra value I can add to enhance the experience. Basis this on niche needs/wants.

How I arrived at the process

This process is really just part of an overall multiple site niche strategy that I’m trying to develop and it seems pretty reasonable. It’s actually the result of several pivots based on some hard learned experience and frustration.

Initially, I wanted to start off finding something that I’m already interested in and passionate about and create a bunch of similarly themed micro-niches based on that idea. In my case, I had planned on coming up with a series of sites on premature babies.

An earlier process failure

A tiny bit of background: My twin boys were born prematurely and because of that, I have a lot of knowledge relevant to parents of premature babies.

So given that, I thought it was only logical that I should choose aspects of ‘preemie parenting’ as the subject of my niche sites. I proceeded to do things ‘right’: I started a fresh Mind Map, and put ‘preemie parent problems’ in the center then broke out numerous problems and frustrations this niche experiences. By the time all was said and done I had over 30 areas I could use for microniche creation.

I purchased a copy of Long Tail Pro (In a future post I may talk about how I decided to go with this product) and started down the road of doing keyword analysis on all the micro-niches.  Ten hours and a lot of frustration later, I decided that it was going to be too hard for me to adhere to my initial strategy.

Almost every single niche I explored were dominated by sites with massive authority – even when analyzing really low volume keyword phrases. Not surprisingly, most of these sites are big medical authorities. In the end, my valuable takeaway from my failed theory is that it may not be a good idea to make ‘go with what you are passionate about’ as a first step.

I need to put market realities ahead of my interests

From a classic business theory standpoint, this actually makes sense. A business is about serving a market better than the competition. Why would the market care about what my own interests and knowledge are? The answer is, it doesn’t.

At that point I decided that I need to switch around my process a bit. Rather than starting with a large multi niche strategy and really breaking it all down only to later do the market analysis, instead start with the keyword analysis and then work backwards.

In other words, Find a micro-niche that I’m at least a bit interested in that’s being underserved, address the needs of the niche and either build other niches horizontally, leveraging one against the other, or go to a completely different micro-niche that’s being underserved.

Niche candidates found, now I need a theme

After pivoting my strategy, I fired up the keyword tool again and fed in all sorts of keyword seeds related to areas that I had at least a tiny bit of knowledge or interest in. Lo and behold, I started finding some keywords that from a research perspective look great. Low competition, high valuation.

So now that I’ve identified a few niches, I’m going to spend this week looking into WordPress themes. I want to find something that looks really good, is really flexible, looks good on computers and mobile devices, and I can install on multiple sites. Cory is really experienced in UI design and WordPress themes in general so I’m going to really hit him up for some tips.

The post Expanding my online business strategy into niche site building appeared first on Taming Life.

1. 4 Easy Ways to Grow Your Personal Brand

Some good tips.

2. Streamline Your SEO Efforts with Expired Domains

Breaks down how you can increase your search engine ranking through the strategic use of expired domains.

3. Why We Buy What We Can Get for Free.

Really nice audio interview of Dr. Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavior Economics. Interview conducted by Derek Halpern.

4. 4 Blogging Habits That Will Get You Nowhere

Avoid doing these things if you have a blog.

5. 3 Fun and Effective Ways of Building Your Unique Selling Proposition

Mars Dorian explains how to set yourself apart with a USP.

6. How Often Should You Blog?

The old rules of thumb for blogging frequency are changing. Don’t just add noise, make a difference!

7. 4 Ways to Leave Your Job

Corbett Bar again lends some really good insight into ways you can leave your job to pursue your side business.

8. If You Build it, They Won’t Give a @#$%

Julian Smith explains why having a great idea doesn’t mean anything. There are new rules of the game.

9. The Blogging Trap

Corbett Barr explains how avoid your blog becoming nothing more than a time sink.

10. The Lotus Blossom Creative Technique

Interesting creative technique that can help you solve sticky business problems.

The post The Taming 10: The week’s best links for entrepreneurs appeared first on Taming Life.