I’ve just added a new page to the blog.

http://www.aaronbrandon.com/books/

On that page, you can view a number of books I’ve read which have helped expand my knowledge in business, marketing, copywriting, and in several other areas.

Enjoy!

- Aaron Brandon

Are you just part of the flock?  Or are you an outcast? 

If you’ve read A New Toy on James blog, this won’t be the first post you’ve read this week mentioning birds.

I just finished the first part of a new book which tells the story about a certain bird, an outcast, who doesn’t enjoy hanging around with the normal flock.  Most of his friends have a routine of flying around fishing boats fighting for scraps of food to eat.  That’s about all they enjoy doing.

But Jonathan (the bird character in the book) would much rather follow his heart and do what he likes to do.  He likes flying fast and high, improving his flying skills, and could care less about being unwanted by the rest of the flock.

Imagine being unwanted just because you’d rather follow your heart.  As you read the book, you’ll feel his pain pass as he finds new friends, and begins living a much more abundant and healthier life.

This book has got to be the easiest book I’ve read in a while.  Well, besides some of the books I’ve recently read to my nephew.  It’s “a story for people who follow their hearts and make their own rules”.

The book is called Jonathan Livingston Seagull By Richard Bach.  It’s not new.  It was first published in 1970 (before my time) but this edition of the book was published in 2006.  It includes a lot of seagull photography which would be more appropriate for a child.

I will probably be giving this away to one of my customers as a gift.  But if you do come across it, it’s a good book to pick up.

- Aaron Brandon

I just finished reading an entry on another blog about finding ideas and turning them into products. I have no idea how it could help anyone at all. Most of my blog readers already know at least one way to do market research: Choose a market (narrowed down to a single keyword), Get a number for the amount of traffic, Find out if people paying for ads.

However, following the wrong advice can be disastrous.

Here’s the wrong way… I found this on another blog:

1. Go to your favorite search tool. Any of them are fine. Type ‘How To’.

2. Take that list and read it. Do any of the highly searched ‘How To’ markets look appealing to you?

3. Take that topic and create a book on that topic.

(There was more, but it only got worse!)

Hmm ok. Here’s what could happen if followed:

John Doe, a full time worker at Wall Mart hates his job and wants to create an internet business. He decides to follow some advice from a blog he’s been checking out on a regular basis.

He follows the steps above from another blog to the tee.

John has been a big fan of elephants, ever since he was a kid.

He goes to Google, his favorite search engine, and types in “how to” and finds a website that lists a topic that appeals to him: “how to eat an elephant”.

He was quite disgusted with the “market” he chose. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to eat his favorite animal. But John couldn’t find any better “how to” topics which related to elephants on the page he found.

John takes the topic and writes a book on it and follows the rest of the advice given to him on the blog.

3 months later, John realizes he had followed a path to failure. Nobody seemed to want to know how to eat an elephant. In fact, the only information he was able to write in his book was “one bite at a time”.

John decided an internet business must not be for him. He decided to keep his job at Wall Mart.

- Aaron Brandon

What if you made a different choice? What if you took that other path?

Those are questions I have pondered about once in a while.

Let me explain. Each time you take a different path in your life, it’s like a new file folder. Whatever path you take that follows is like a sub folder. Each new decision you make continues this way (whether it’s right or wrong). But, you can’t skip back. There’s no traveling back into the past. There are several different paths you can take to earn your freedom, if that’s your goal. There are also several paths that can ruin your life in a pretty dramatic way.

Here’s one example of a decision I made a few years ago. It’s one decision I made which has led to my success in this business.

I was browsing an internet message board for ways I could drive traffic to a site of mine. (I wonder how much time I really wasted doing that.) I found a post which was unlike the other topics. This one was written like a how-to article. It was actually helpful, compared to so many other junk posts which rarely had any helpful advice. I can’t remember the exact topic of the post, but I enjoyed it so much, I e-mailed the author and thanked him for sharing such solid advice. In return, he sent me a link to one of his online courses. That course inspired me to take action.

To this day, I’m still following other courses made by that author. My actions had a large effect on my life. That first course was the statistical copywriting course. I don’t want to give others the impression that I became more successful because I was hanging out on a forum. My advice is, once you do find real solid information that can take you to the next level, jump on it. Take action.

Doing the wrong things at the wrong time will lead to quite a bit of failure. So why not focus on one thing, take action, and choose a proven path to follow?

There’s a great book that was written about the choices two people made in life. They were lucky enough to earn the ability to witness all the past choices they made at certain times of their life. The book is called One by Richard Bach. As a matter of fact, I have a couple copies of this book I want to give away.

Here’s how you can claim one of your own. Simply write a comment at the end of this post. I will send a copy of the book to the first two people who leave a comment. If you’re one of those first two, I’ll send you an e-mail asking for your shipping address shortly.

- Aaron Brandon

Are you stuck reading a bunch of success or business books? Did you know you can find very useful knowledge which you can be applied to your business in “out of the ordinary” type books? Here’s an example of one book I’m reading that’s somewhere out of the ordinary…

The book is: ”The Toyota Way – 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer” It’s about the Toyota production system and explains many differences about them, vs. their competitors.

It’s a fascinating book, but how in the world is a book on automobile production going to help me with my business? I sell information, not cars!

The book tends to talk quite a bit about inventory, systems, processes, goals, continuous improvement, and more. Do those few things sound like important parts of a business? They are, very important! I use all of them in this business. In fact, I’ve even found more than one way to make improvements to my intern program. It runs on multiple procedures I use to continuously improve my business.

So what are you reading? I don’t think Harry Potter can help you with your business, but I haven’t read it, so I wouldn’t really know.

Have a great weekend!

- Aaron Brandon

My blog has been pretty quiet lately, so I’ve decided to post an update on what I’ve been up to…in case anyone thinks I’ve suddenly disappeared and wasn’t going to return. Hey, it could happen. 

These last couple weeks I’ve been putting together an internship for my online business. It’s been on my to do list along with a few other things, and decided to get it done. So… likely sometime next week I’ll be able to open it up to the public.

The internship currently includes tasks related to traffic generation, copywriting, and product creation. The three key factors of a successful online business, right?

However, I’ve decided to work on it a little bit longer than anticipated. I’ve decided to put more into the program so it would be much more of an experience. I added a few procedures that are more hands on… the kind of things I do with my own internet business (blogging, product creation… etc.)

I’ve also decided to create an incentive to get interns to complete the program all the way through.

What’s the incentive?

I’ve decided to put together a package of courses and books to help those who know they’re serious about wanting to quit their day jobs and work on their own internet business full time. That was my goal. I did it. I finally quit my job in an awful time/life draining retail position a few months ago and I feel great. I always dreaded having to be at work at X time and having to deal with a bunch of time vampires while at work.

Anyway, the special package (at least for now) includes:

- Glyphius 2007
- MuVar 2007
- The Blogcast Course
- Market Research Vol. 1
- Life Management
- Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter…
- The Attractor Factor By Joe Vitale
- No B.S Time Management for Entrepreneurs By Dan Kennedy
- The Irresistible Offer By Mark Joyner

And maybe a few more I can find laying around here. All of that will be a prize for the first person who completes all the tasks in my intern program when it’s open. I haven’t taken the time to add up the total value, but that’s at least $500 worth of material.

Want to be notified when the intern program opens? I’ll make sure an e-mail is sent to you when I post a new blog entry. All you have to do is sign up to my blog announcement list. You can do that by simply typing in your first name and e-mail address in the top right corner of this page (just under my picture) and hitting the submission button.

P.S. – Is there something you’ve been really wanting to know how to do in an online business? Something relating to traffic, product creation, or copywritng? I would like to hear your questions so I can add a few more tasks to my intern program. You have until Monday to provide me with any questions you have. Just post as many of them as you can as a comment below!

Stay tuned!

- Aaron Brandon

“I am. I am. I am.”
How to Get Everything You Want In Life

That’s the title of the first book I want to give away to one of my blog readers.

This is one of the first self-help books I ever read. It does talk about the “Law of Attraction”. If you think the movie The Secret was the first time the so called “Law Of Attraction” was mentioned, you’re wrong. This book was published in 1999, and the term was even mentioned back then.

Maybe you need a self-help book to motivate you, and to help you find what it is you’re looking to achieve in life. Or, maybe there’s someone you know who could use the book.

If you would like my copy of the book sent to you, simply post a trackback to this post from your blog. If you don’t have a blog…why wouldn’t you have a blog?

I’ll pay the shipping, of course.