Some off you knew I had booked a short trip away, others didn’t. My trip to Iceland was great fun and I will definitely be visiting Iceland again soon!
Day 1 – Arrival, Tourist Board and Booked Trips, Caruso
Our stay began with a really slow bus ride to our 1930’s Hotel. The Hotel Borg is staffed with very attentive and conscientious people who each speak at least 7 languages.
Day 2 – Whale Watching, Afternoon Shopping, Café du Paris, The Real Italian Food Restaurant
To start our trip of adventures we decided to go out into the North Atlantic ocean to see wales, dolphins and puffins.
Day 3 – Halleif tour guide: 8 glaciers, snowmobiled over one, golden falls, oldest parliament, 9:00 -6:30 Caruso’s again
On Saturday we decided to to hire a tour guide to show us around Iceland, this is the car he turned up in!
We were heading to a glacier around a 3 hour drive away, on route we stopped and saw the oldest parliament buildings in the world. When driving there, there was almost nothing but lava rocks and mountains.When we returned to the car there was a dog walking around, it appears that for the first hour the driver had his dog in a cage in the boot. Being a dog lover we invited the dog to come sit with us for the whole day!
When we arrived at the Glacier we got kitted up and started making our way to the top of it on our Snowmobiles, I managed to get up to 57 k/hour which was very fast for the conditions. Here is a picture of me when we got to the top of the Glacier
Here is a picture of me on my Snowmobile, rock on!
On the way back we stopped for lunch and to see Golden Falls:
Day 4 – Hot Water Spring 1 ½ Hour Hike Straight Up, Quad Bikes, Great Restaurant
In the morning we had planned a 1 ½ hour hike straight up in to the mountains, when we got to there we found a hot water spring which we could go in and bathe. We spent around a hour in it as it was hotter than having a bath! It was great!
On the way back I was speaking to the driver about how we had a few hours to spare and what did he recommend. He suggested quad-biking, which sounded fun to me. He rang up his friends to organise this trip for us and we where taken privately around mountains and lava rock on some fast quad bikes. I managed to get 82k/h on my quad bike on the way back which I was very impressed with. The friend I was with didn’t drive so fast so I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted but our guide said I could go off and do some jumps and just said “Be Careful”, this is something they would definitely not of been allowed in the UK or America due to safety.
Here is a picture of at half way:
Day 5 – Departure, Blue Lagoon
We decided that we would relax before our flight back to the UK, we decided to go to a spa which beats all other spa’s! Guests enjoy bathing and relaxing in Blue Lagoon geothermal seawater, known for its positive effects on the skin. A visit to the spa promotes harmony between body, mind and spirit, and enables one to soak away the stresses of modern life. The spa’s guests rekindle their relationship with nature, soak up the scenic beauty and enjoy breathing the clean, fresh air.
Tomorrow I will be doing a write up on 7 things that Iceland taught me about being a better entrepreneur.
Written by Michael on July 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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In Yaro’s video post about Conversion Blogging, he talked about the importance of setting up an email or newsletter list to maximize blogging profits.
With the rise of RSS, the newsletter list has kinda taken a backseat. However, if done correctly, the blog newsletter could be one of your most profitable streams of income. Like RSS, a newsletter allows you to keep in constant contact with your readership. Unlike the RSS, you can use the newsletter to send more than just your blog posts. In Yaro’s video example, he used his newsletter list to make over $6,000 from a promotion with John Reese. That’s not bad for just one mail out! Now you see why you need a newsletter list? Here’s how to build one.
Aweber - The List Server of Choice
The first thing you need to do is set up an account with Aweber. They are the newsletter service provider of choice for bloggers and email marketers. I’ve been using Aweber to handle my newsletter lists and have nothing but good things to say about them. Their pricing and feature set is among the best in the business.
Depending on how many subscribers you have, prices start at $19 per month and goes up from there. The service is extremely easy to use and offers a lot of customization. For example, I only ask for the name and email of my readers, but you can add as many custom fields as you like to get more demographic information. Aweber allows you to create an unlimited number of list and auto responders.
My favorite function of Aweber is the Blog Broadcast feature. This feature lets Aweber take the contents of your RSS feed and automatically turn it into a newsletter. If you’ve ever received an email newsletter from me summarizing my last 15 blog posts, that was created using Aweber’s Blog Broadcast. Here’s the real kicker. Aweber Blog Broadcast counts towards your FeedBurner counter. If you already have an Aweber account with a few thousand subscribers, turning on Blog Broadcast will add those subscribers to your FeedBruner RSS chicklet. 
Make It Easy for Readers to Subscribe
Now that you’ve set up your Aweber account, the next step is to get readers to subscribe. The easiest way to do that is to prominently display your newsletter sign up box.
Subscribe to my newsletter and get my ebook on making money online FREE!
You can put it in the body of your post like I did in this example but the best way is to add it to a highly visible part of your blog. My newsletter sign up box is at the most visible part of my blog for a reason. I want readers to subscribe! Aweber provides simple copy and paste HTML codes to insert the sign up box into your blog.
Offer an Incentive to Subscribe
You can greatly increase your subscription rate by offering a free incentive. In my case, I use my eBook, Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com. Readers can download the book for free by signing up to my newsletter. You don’t need a 54 page eBook like my one in order to get people to subscribes. I’ve seen blogs used “special reports” that are less than 10 pages to get people to sign up. If you really want to be lazy, you can offer a Private Label Rights (PLR) ebook. However, I wouldn’t recommend that.
You can also use the OptIn Comments Wordpress Plugin. This plugin emails new readers who made a comment on your blog to say thank you and ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. If they hit the confirm link, the plugin adds them to your Aweber list. The plugin cost $97 (John chow dot Com readers can get it for $57) but it’s well worth it. OptIn comment is adding an average of 30 to 40 new sign ups per day for me.
Another thing you can try is to offer a newsletter only contest. Give away a nice prize but say the winner will be announced in the newsletter. The only way for readers to find out if they won or not is by subscribing.
Monetizing The Newsletter
At this time, my newsletter is not monetized. Right now, I’m working on building the subscription base. However, when the time comes, there are many ways the newsletter can make money for you. For bloggers like Yaro, the newsletter accounts for a significant part of their blogging income.
I estimate that if I go balls to the wall and monetize my newsletter, I can add another $5,000 per month to total blog revenue. However, it’s not time to monetize the newsletter yet. By not making money from it now, I’ll be able to make a lot more from it later. The newsletter is part of my strategy to push past the $40K per month barrier.
If your blog doesn’t have a newsletter, it’s time to get one.
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Written by John Chow on July 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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