Oh, sweet - it's a NEW COURSE DAY.

Because I'm happeeeeeee....

We're calling this course Natural Lighting for Food Photography and you can find it in the Food Photography module.

This course was really fun to record because I did some things that I've never officially done before to test the quality of our natural light in our house.

What are you giving away for free on your blog?

It’s an important question, because giving things away for free is one the best ways to increase the income you’re earning from your blog.

Giving things away for free in order to increase your income?

Seems a bit backwards, doesn’t it?

Let me explain.

If you’ve been blogging for longer than two days you’ve probably noticed something:

Things change.

This thing works, then it doesn’t. That thing pays really well, now it doesn’t. This thing doesn’t send you much traffic, then it does.

It’s overwhelming to keep up with it all. I know from experience.

I also know that (from experience, again) overwhelm is almost always a negative emotion that breeds inaction, either through giving up (“I’ll do it tomorrow…”) or diving head first into learning but never actually implementing (“I’ll move forward once I understand it a little bit better…”).

It can feel like the sky is falling when you build momentum in a certain direction only to have that momentum squashed by a change in the advertising industry (I’m looking at you, banner ads), a change in your ability to connect with fans (I’m looking at you, Facebook), or a change in an algorithm (I’m looking at you, Google).

But it’s also really important to to remember that there are things that will always stay the same with blogging or building a presence online.

So while it often times feels like the sky is falling when things change, I’ve found that it’s usually just that the sun is setting. We don’t have to worry about whether it’ll rise again tomorrow. It’ll be there. It’s just that it might not look exactly the same way as it did the day before.

There are many things I love in this world.

For example, I love…

• My wife Lindsay
• Coffee
• Minnesota
• This video
• And this video
• Google Apps
• Backup plans

I’d love to talk about all of these things in this post, but I understand that you’re probably here to learn about those last two items: Google Apps and backup plans.

This post is a sequel to the 4 ways you should be backing up your computer and blog that I wrote back in May. If you haven’t read that post yet I’d encourage you to check it out after you’re done reading this.

So let’s talk about those last two items in my list of loves. First, Google Apps.

I worked for four years as "the I.T. guy" at a local non-profit, which means that I saw lots of different computer desktops.

Call me crazy, but I found it really interesting. 

There were two things I noticed when working on computers:

1. People would almost always have a random array of files and folders on their desktop.
2. People would almost always say something along the lines of "please don't judge my messy desktop."

So, while people usually didn't have an organized desktop, they realized that they probably should.

The good news is that it's not that hard! Here's how:

There aren’t many things I’d rather be doing than accounting.

Okay, well… actually…

…now that I think of it there are quite a few things I’d rather be doing than accounting.

Things like:

1. Juggling porcupines
2. Taste testing cardboard
3. Listening to Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini on repeat.

Are you with me or are you with me?

Here’s the deal though: if you’re working to build your blog into a business then you need to treat it like one. That means doing a good job with your accounting.

While I don’t like spending time in Excel or QuickBooks, I do like knowing that our books are in order and that we’re keeping track of our income and expenses.

So how do anti-spreadsheet people like Lindsay and I manage to keep our books in order?

We do it by using a system I call Zen Accounting for Bloggers.

It's a simple system that we developed over the past few years. This system allows us to keep really clean books while spending less than 30 minutes a week on taxes/accounting/bookkeeping.

And today I’d like to share that simple system with you.