2012 is no more. The Mayans were wrong, and thousands of conspiracy theorists the world over are scratching their heads in confusion. We were blown off our campsite (winds up to 160kmph – we were literally blown away!) so had a New Years party in the city this year, and now I have a fridge filled with camping food that desperately needs to get eaten!

This year is going to be one of the biggest and craziest of my life, both in terms of my business and my personal life. This year I make the transition from city girl to country lass. This year I embark on an exciting new publishing challenge (more about that later), and this year I grow my business bigger and brighter than I ever thought possible.

The New Year is a time to reflect on the last year, and to plan for the year ahead. But with family overstaying their welcome at your house, kids home for the holidays, and a gazillion other demands on your time, it can be hard to find a few minutes to sit down and think strategically about business. Before you know it, it will be the end of February and you haven’t started anything for the year yet.

Here’s my solution – a short and very sweet guide to 2013 goal-setting.

Read On…

It’s a lazy, sunny Sunday here in New Zealand. My husband and I have just purchased a 4 acre lifestyle block – eeee! – and it is sucking away every moment of free time we have right now. It’s wonderful to be spending so much time outside, doing physical labour, feeling the satisfaction of dirt under your nails and a sun on your arms. I haven’t had such restful sleep in years! We have a lot of work ahead of us before we can even begin to build our dream home, but we’re excited about building our future in this place.

Since it’s a lazy Sunday, and you might be spending the day thinking about your business and catching up on your Internet reading, I thought I’d link you up to some of my most recent articles for writers and small businesses around the web:

Read On…

Ghost-blogging (or staff blogging, outsourcing or freelance blogging) has been a huge part of my income for at least three years now, ever since my other blogs have gained enough traction that I’m able to show people I have what it takes to produce viral/high traffic posts. Personally, I like the term ghost blogging, because I’m a horror movie nut, but you don’t have to call it that. Since I often get asked by other writers and business owners about the opportunities for ghost blogging, I thought I’d do a little guide for anyone who wanted to either hire a ghost blogger or find this kind of work for themselves.

What Is Ghost Blogging?

Basically, a ghost blogger writes blogs for a company or individual other than themselves. Usually this is because the client wants a blog but is either not a writer themselves, or has no time or energy left to maintain a blog. The ghost blogger takes some of the pressure off by writing and uploading articles, and in many cases managing the content of the blog itself.

Read On…

For years I’ve been an advocate of a regular posting schedule for your blog. I reckon if you set a goal to write a post every day, or every week, and you work hard to stick with it, you become a better blogger. Because you’re forcing yourself to practice everyday – in the same way a guitarist noodles away every night no matter how shite his day at work was or how much he’d rather finish that George R. R. Martin book – you’re going to get better. Right?

Not necessarily. Sometimes you just get pissed off.

Sometimes you don’t have anything to write about. Sometimes you’re terrified of facing that blank page again. Sometimes you think, “Goddammit, if I have to write ANOTHER word about death metal/weddings/cat pictures/personal finances/zombies/tofu recipes/chicken coops today, I am going to stick that chicken coop so far up the universe’s backside it will be raining chickens in Russia.”

How many blogs do you actually read? I mean, really read? Not just add to your reader, skim the titles and think “oh, that sounds mildly interesting, I’ll come back to that”, and never do. How many writers are so awesome they create something new every day or every week that you have to devour, word by glorious word? How many?

Read On…

When I was starting out on my mission to conquer the Internet world via Grymm & Epic, Ali of Aliventures was one of the first people to support this project. That’s how I first found her site and I’ve been learning and loving it ever since.

Ali is a lovely, kind and easy-going writer who started off making a full-time income writing paid blogs for sites like Daily Writing Tips. She now coaches writers, writes and sells ebooks on writing (including the awesome Bloggers’ Guide to Freelancing), creates amazing writing e-courses, and is about to self-publish her first novel about what happens when the world of Geekdom becomes very, very real.

General

Firstly, we just want to know who you are, and what you do. Can you share your journey from mini-Ali to Aliventures?

Sure! As a teenager, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I worked on a really bad sci-fi novel in my mid-teens, holing up in the school library in my lunch-hours. (I wasn’t the most sociable of kids…)

Read On…