and a groundshift in thinking (imho)… why? Because of the “without being independently whealthy”

maybe that also answers the WHY questions

@Alex – Thanks to Corbett for allowing it to be public

@Todd – Aweber can be a bit of a pain (eg. today it took an age to load and I finally gave up and moved on to something else), and the price seems to have gone up since I signed up, but it is still the best out there for bloggers. I have been looking at infusionsoft also but not sure it is worth the hassle of moving my lists over. Let me know how you get on with your subscriptions?

@Georjina – Hope you have some ideas of what TO do also

@Anne – Corbett has put out a guest post call so perhaps that is a way you both can cooperate?

@Corbett – Thanks for letting everyone share

@Christen – You can still be an expert on everything, just give people a hook that they can start with Look at Tim Ferris, he is an expert in languages, dancing, martial arts …

@Soultravelers3 – I had seen a video from you I think but didn’t realize your videos had been so popular, well done!

@alfoxy – There is a difference though, everyone I would recommend starting a throwaway personal blog on wordpress.com or some other non-essential domain just to “break the seal” – that initial doing something, taking action and technical familiarity really helps. For a business or authority blog I usually advise you to be a bit more intentional. In fact the early parts of the authority blogger course exercises normally give people the most intense thinking As always though a decent plan WELL EXECUTED is what makes the difference. Aim to make progress, not perfection. Otherwise you will be stuck in analysis paralysis forever

@Ted – I did get confused with the spelling, and have edited the article twice or more now because I seemed to mix and match, with a very confused spell checker

@Laurie – Yes, and also getting personal shows it is a real person rather than a spam bot behind the site also

@Chris – Thanks for stopping by, I thought you would like it

@Andrew – Thank you, very kind

@Jean – Yeah, I got caught out a couple of times with the spelling. Wasn’t intentional on my part! In fact the article you see was my second go, the first was lost to a database corruption :O

@Jennifer – I am sure the site will only get better

The content is good and the look of the blog is nice. One of my personal annoyances is having to click on a link to read the rest of the post, but that’s just me.

Thanks Chris for this public review. There’s a lot in here I can put to use for my own blog.

Great read Chris…you have a new fan

(Well, that and working hard…. but Corbett doesn’t seem like he’s afraid of hard work.)

I’ll look forward to hearing how Free Pursuits applies some of these great lessons.

To answer your call to action question; FreePursuits looks interesting but doesn’t sufficiently differentiate in content from Tim and Chris G (the other Chris G) fro me to feel compelled to subscribe.

To pose a question back to you, did you deliberately mis-spell freepErsuits instead of freepUrsuits for seo purposes?

We have a somewhat related website ( but we are the only ones with 3 years experience of doing it as we travel the world as a family) and had to learn much of this on our own when we started. How great to get this fab critique by Chris G.!

Tim had not written his book when we started and neither he or Chris had websites yet. ( We are thrilled to be featured in the new edition of 4HWW and want more families to know it is doable). We did not even know anything about websites or blogs when we started. LOL. They’re both great way-showers in two very different ways.

There has been a huge growth of this type of website in the last year, even more in the last 6 months. I suspect this trend will continue. Use that to your advantage.

Another important thing to keep in mind, is the time it takes to do all of this. Know that it will take up even more time as you gain popularity. Factor that in!

I could not agree more with “Show Don’t Tell”. It takes time to do that with quality, but in the end it makes a huge difference on places like Youtube where so many put out videos where only 10 people see them.

Our first video got almost a million views immediately. That surprised us, but we stopped what we were doing in Portugal then & quickly put up more (that were ready, just hadn’t had time to get up). They also went viral. A week well spent. Always go with the flow as sometimes social media seems to have a life of it’s own.

If you are living the dream and traveling most of the time while sharing your experiences, there are some unique challenges that you will run into. Be prepared for that aspect. Note that both Tim and Chris are based in one place and spend most of their time there.

On the move things are different. Don’t forget to factor that into your plan. Even Scoble twittered about problems with internet connection in Barcelona etc.

Finding a niche of readers can be one of the most difficult parts if we like being experts on everything.

Thanks Chris

Thanks everybody for the comments. I hope the public critique is beneficial to your own blogging as well.

As usual you have given so much. Like Alex’s comment I am also in this niche (with a twist)and I really loved the ideas you gave to Corbett and am going to implement them on my blog. The one big thing for me was confirming that I should move or incorporate another blog offsite and let it then drive traffic to my main site. I left a comment on Corbett’s blog as I would love to be able to link up when I have my ‘new’ blog up.
If you have time I would really love to ask your opinion before making my change to my site?

Best wishes
Anne

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this and will be taking some action steps for myself. Most notably, aweber. Heard of this but not used. Might be a great alternative to RSS for my blog. Folks are interested in local events, and local soc networking activity, without reading anymore about how tos and lists.

Thanks for sharing this publicly.