Mark Manson
Medellin, AT
Male, 28
I am a professional blogger, internet entrepreneur, and world traveler. I've been to over 40 countries and am currently working on my second book about long-term travel and how to work/live abroad. On my blog I write about self development and creating a unique lifestyle for yourself. Feel free to ask me anything.
This question is so misinformed and ignorant that I'm not even going to justify it with an answer. Taxi Driver is one of the best movies made in the last 50 years. Anyone who disagrees is a communist and/or a terrorist.
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Best ways to get the word out about your blog: 1. Guest posts on other blogs. I recommend emailing other bloggers with an article ALREADY written. Make sure it's good. You basically want to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. Aim for bloggers who are in your league. A big blog that gets 10k hits a day likely gets asked for guest posts daily and is only going to be interested in promoting someone who has a platform to promote them back. Look for blogs of people who are similar but slightly larger than you. So if you get 20 hits a day, look for someone who gets maybe 50 or 100 hits. If you get 100 hits, look for someone who gets 400 hits. Work your way up. 2. Forums. Either pop your blog in your signature and post a lot of good, quality posts. Or find HIGHLY RELEVANT threads and drop a link to your site in your reply. It is very, very, very, very important to make sure you're adding real value when you post on forums, lest you be considered a spammer. The moment people think you're a spammer, no one will take you or your site seriously. 3. Blog comments. See above, although these are a bit easier and people are a lot more lenient about you linking. But again, make sure your comment is great. 4. Interview people. Interview other bloggers and then hope they link to your interview. Same rule applies about finding bloggers of similar but slightly larger size. I get interviewed multiple times a week, and I simply can't be bothered to link my readers to every place I'm interviewed, especially if it was by a tiny site. Don't worry about social media until you've gotten a bit of a following. Until then, it's just a waste of time.
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I think in the early-going my readership influenced me quite a bit. Back when I started I had far fewer readers, so in a way my relationship with my readers was far more intimate. Conversations and feedback from readers inspired me to pursue a lot of various areas of interest that I may not have otherwise: i.e., feminism, self esteem, motivation, etc. These days I would say they influence me less... or at least they influence me less on a person-by-person basis. There are a dozen readers or so who I am in regular contact with, but for the most part, there seems to be an invisible barrier of separation between me and them. I suppose on a macro-level they influence me indirectly by validating my life purpose and ambitions. It's cool to write things you're passionate about and see that 10,000 other people read it and seemed to like it. That has to affect a person I imagine, even if on an unconscious level.
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I do believe in it. Although I don't believe in it in any kind of supernatural or meta-physical way. The law of attraction has been taught in self help for over 100 years and can be easily explained by some basic psychological mechanisms we all have. 1. Confirmation bias - when we believe something, we're more likely to see information that supports our belief rather than what refutes it. 2. Opportunity blindness - we're only capable of seeing the possibilities of what we're immediately focusing on. The example I use for this is that when I quit my day job and started an internet business, I believe it was all or nothing with the internet business. But in fact, not only has my business completely evolved into something else I never could have imagined, but I have encountered dozens of amazing opportunities in the past 4 years that don't relate to my business at all. As humans, there are more variables and possibilities than we can comprehend and so we're not able to see them until we take a step towards them. 3. Hindsight - As Steve Jobs, it's easy to connect the dots when you look backwards. What "feels" serendipitous to us is actually just the single path we happened to choose. One of my interns commented to me recently at how lucky he was to have stumbled across a forum where some people knew me, therefore leading him to getting a job with me and being flown to Colombia to work online. I commented back to him that he always wanted to work online, and that if he hadn't met me, chances are he would have met someone else and encountered other opportunities, just as unique. The total effect of all of this is that when you focus singularly on your goal -- whether it be make money, start a business, find a girlfriend -- you start to 1) naturally only see information that confirms your goal, 2) "stumble" onto new opportunities you were unaware existed as you pursue that goal, 3) in hindsight feel that everything serendipitously came together.
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Professional Poker Player
Are you worried that online poker is rigged?
Swim Instructor
What are the physical traits that make for the "ideal swimmer's body"?
Investment Banker
What's the craziest partying you've ever seen among bankers?
Unfortunately there aren't as many crazy stories as there are facepalm stories. One thing about that job is that people always thought it was glamorous -- that I was going out with these guys and doing crazy party stuff and banging tons of hot girls. It was quite the opposite it. It was more akin to holding therapy sessions in night clubs than anything. And then hour after painstaking hour trying to get a guy over his anxieties or insecurities around women. Just a guy getting a phone number was cause for celebration. With that said, there were some cool nights... Mostly involving bringing girls back to my hotel room. There are some awkward Vegas strip club stories in there too but I don't completely recall all of those nights. But mostly just therapy sessions.
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Lack of internet. Unfortunately in most countries (including the US), landing reliable internet is a crapshoot depending on which hotel or hostel you stay in. In developing countries sometimes you even run into internet problems in apartments and houses. As someone who not only makes a living on the internet, but also needs the internet to keep in touch with my family, friends, plan future travel, pay bills, etc., this drives me crazy to no end. Luckily, wherever you go in the world, there's almost always a Starbucks two blocks away.
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Well, it kind of depends on what the "else" is here, but I would focus on one... or starting a business that relates to the occupation you want to pursue. When you're starting out cold, starting a business requires an insane amount of time and work to get off the ground. If you were splitting that with something else, I don't know if you'd get anywhere.
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