How A 34-Year-Old With No Experience In Food Science Convinced Investors To Give Him $30 Million To Make Eggs Obsolete

How A 34-Year-Old With No Experience In Food Science Convinced Investors To Give Him $30 Million To Make Eggs Obsolete
Jay Yarow


Josh Tetrick Headshot

Hampton Creek

Hampton Creek, a startup that's creating plant-based alternatives to eggs, announced $23 million in funding last month.

That brings the total funding to $30 million from investors. Asia's richest man, Li-Ka Shing, is an investor. As is the world's richest man, Bill Gates. It also has investment from Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Khosla Ventures, and the Founders Fund.

Today, the company announced that its egg-free mayo is being sold in Costco in Colorado.

The man behind the company is 34-year-old Josh Tetrick. This is his first big company.

Prior to founding Hampton Creek, he was working for the U.N. in sub-Saharan Africa. He says he felt frustrated by his work because it was slow moving, and at times corrupt.

He was talking about his work with his best friend one day. His friend could hear his frustration. Together, they started talking about what Tetrick could do instead. Eventually, they ended up talking about the egg industry. From there, they landed on the idea of using plants to replace eggs.

Tetrick started reaching out to friends and friends of friends. Eventually he hooked up with some chefs to make a proof of concept. From there, he raised a seed round of funding. Then, he started hiring biochemists and food scientists. In a year and a half he had figured out how to make mayo and cookie dough that didn't need eggs.

When he went to raise $23 million last year, he used the following pitch deck. We got him on the phone to explain the deck, and run through the pitch that landed him millions.

Here's how a first-time entrepreneur got the richest men in the world to open their wallets.
 
Click here to see the Hampton Creek pitch deck »

How To Get Email Addresses From Visitors And Increase Conversion Rate

 

How To Get Email Addresses From Visitors And Increase Conversion Rate

 You’ve worked hard on your blog and learned how to carefully create content that caters to your visitor’s wants and needs.
You’ve planned and targeted your advertising so that you have the best reach possible, and now your blog is getting a ton of traffic.
Despite all of that great blog traffic, nobody is buying your products.
What happened?
How do you convert blog visitors into followers and buyers?

Content May be King, but Information is Supreme
Think about your own web surfing habits.
How many websites does Google bring up when you are searching for a topic? You could be looking at tens of thousands to millions of individual websites. Each one of them tends to blur into the other, after a while.
How do you make sure that you are seen and remembered by your visitors? And, more importantly, how do you turn them into potential customers?
Successful online business owners know that being aware of who visits their website is where the money can be found. If you know who is visiting you and taking advantage of the info found on your blog, you can create products and offers that are tailored to them and their needs.

If you don’t know who your visitors are, you are leaving money on the table.
You need to collect email addresses from them.
This is where you need a traffic game plan.
Why do you spend time and money trying to get people to visit your website?
You drive traffic to your website to find new customers and followers.
There is no point in driving traffic to your website, if you don’t have a way to make sure they will come back.
Here’s the truth:
If you are spending time driving traffic to your blog, without having a clear plan to collect email addresses, you are wasting time and losing money.
When a visitor lands on your blog, what do you want them to do?
Do you tell them?
Most people will gladly do as you ask, but they have to know what you want first. They are blog readers, not mind readers.
You want their information, specifically their email address. The email address is key. Name and email is even better, but without the email the name is useless.
You want them to tell you how to get in touch with them, so that they can be first to hear about your new blog posts, webinars, and special deals.
Marketers spend millions every year trying to gather this data, so that they can make sales projections and advertising campaigns. It can be very expensive to get this information, but incredibly worthwhile.
We’ll tell you how to get it for free.

The Traffic Game Plan

Get Their Email Before They Leave Your Site!
That is your whole game plan, right there. You want to learn how to get email addresses for every person who visits your blog.
Here’s why:

• It’s easier to contact them when you have something valuable to offer. Instead of having to purchase ad space or post anywhere and everywhere, you have an interested list of people who want to hear from you. They have specifically said that you CAN send them updates, sales and special events.

• It builds trust. As you send specially curated information and offers to your list, they will begin to trust you and the items you recommend. They will become customers and recommend you and your products to their family, friends and co-workers.

• It builds your business. If you want to make money online, you need to create a laser-focused list. The larger your list, the more people that you can sell to.
A large email list also provides gravitas to your business and makes you more appealing for connecting with other businesses. It will provide you with more opportunities for promotion to other people’s lists and ultimately grow your business.
But in order to do that, you’ll have to have a traffic game plan that navigates your visitors to a page where they can give you their email address.

Why is it so important to get email addresses in addition to social media followers?
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great for gaining and growing your audience and for getting traffic. It’s just as important to have those followers, for social proof of your success and popularity, but an email address gives you a targeted way to reach them with special offers and items that need quick action.
You are also able to contact your email list anytime you wish, and can be certain that it won’t be lost in the social media chatter.

But how do I get email addresses from casual visitors?
Sounds too easy, right?
How do you convince people to give you their email address? Most people only give them out if absolutely necessary, since they don’t want their inbox to be flooded with spam and emails about things they don’t care about.
First and foremost, tell them exactly how you will use the information. If you will send them weekly emails and special announcements, tell them. If you will send things out daily, and lend your list to others, you must let them know that as well.
Surprise spam after signing up for an email list is a trust killer. It’s made me unsubscribe from people who were offering good information, but couldn’t trust them to do what they said they were going to do.
If they can’t trust you with their email address, how can they trust you with their money?
Once you have determined and stated how you will use their information, then you can sweeten the pot with a special offer.

Here is how to get email addresses:
• Offer a free gift in exchange for signing up for your email list. You can learn how to set up killer lead gen forms or use a pop-up on your website. Keep in mind that there are many different items that you can offer as a freebie.
However, you need to make sure that the item has a real value to your visitor. If they see how you can help them, they are more likely to reach out to you when it’s time to make a purchase. Here are a few popular items:
• A special report or whitepaper on a certain segment of your business, such as “The Top 5 Ways That >blank< Do Wrong…” Keep the title pithy and intriguing, and make sure that the report offers real, solid information and is not just a sales pitch.
• A video lecture of you teaching on your subject. Make the video short and informative.
• An interview with a top expert in your field. If you are writing blogs, you are most likely interviewing people for content. Record both audio and video, and repurpose them as bonuses and gifts.

• A download that will help your visitor do their business. A slide template, images that they can use, or recipes are just a few items that could be offered.

• Access to an online resource. Setting up a private Facebook group or membership site that offers information and fellowship is a great gift. Just keep it truly helpful and draw people to you through your great advice and information.

• Run a Contest. Tools like Contest Domination make it easy to run contests and share content with your audience and their friends. With the right prize, you can build excitement around your brand and build your list quickly and easily.
Announcing the winner during a live webinar or Google Hangout guarantees you an audience and further establishes you as an expert in your field. You can lead people to your landing page, where they can sign up for your free gift and mailing list.

• Do a Joint Venture. Joint venture webinars and promotions are great ways to introduce yourself and your brand to other lists. There are countless resources on JV’s, but basically you build relationships with other businesses, and you both agree to send an email to your lists, introducing the other person and their products.
This is another area where having a large list is a must. It makes you a far more attractive partner to potential joint ventures. This is for businesses that are further along.
The most important part is to make sure you are using a process that fits your brand and your customer. Remember, whatever you choose to offer your visitor, you must make it easy for them to understand the offer and to take advantage of it, speak to their needs.
A confused visitor will not opt-in and they will not buy from you.
You must tell them where to go and what to do.
And for that, you need a landing page.
Want to learn more about creating your traffic game plan, landing pages and get access to special tools to help you build traffic and increase sales using your blog?
Check out this informative video that blows it wide open.

Your Turn
Share a comment or question about this article below.

Secrets To Starting A Blog That Makes Money

Secrets To Starting A Blog That Makes Money

We’ve all heard stories of people making big bucks through blogging.
Cake Wrecks, People of Walmart, Digital Photography School, the Art of Manliness, and Grumpy Cat are just a few of the most popular blogs that bring in 5 and 6 figure incomes for their creators.
Starting a blog that makes money from scratch seems easy, right?
Write about something you enjoy, and then let the money pour in? It’s not quite that simple. In order to monetize your blog, you have to focus your mindset and your efforts.
What all of those blogs have in common is a niche audience. They chose the audience BEFORE they started the blog.
They focus on one particular subject, and ONLY one, and create engaging and informative content for that audience. It seems easy enough, but 90% of bloggers get that wrong.
If you can’t tell me in less than 10 seconds who your audience is and what their needs are, you don’t know your audience well enough.
If you don’t know your audience, you won’t be able to attract the right people to your blog and make money.
If you don’t attract the right people, you won’t sell anything.
Are you able to effectively and concisely answer the following three questions? Once you’ve answered these, you will be primed and ready to learn how to make a six figure income from your blog.
1) Do You Have a Narrow, Well-defined Niche?
Most blogs don’t make money because they try to appeal to everyone, and end up appealing to no one.
Knowing where to start a blog is just as important as longer-term planning. The very first key to starting a blog that makes money is to treat that blog like a business.
Take your business and specialize it.
By focusing on and appealing to a very narrow audience, there is a chance for deeper money-making relationships. Branch out when you’ve got money in the bank.
Every successful company started out with a narrow niche. Facebook, for example, started with the college market. The service rapidly grew because people loved the inter connectivity, but it began on the very small scale.
“The key to success is to be a one-trick pony, but you have to do that trick very, very well.”
When you are starting a blog that makes money, you have to specialize.
You have to repeatedly and consistently provide information that your audience really wants.
Specialization makes it easier to create content and discover your audience.
Let’s say that you want to write about gardening…
Gardening is a huge niche, you can talk about gardening tools, when to plant, flower types, herbs, vegetables, commercial industries, and anything else having to do with plants. Unless you quickly learn how to outsource and scale your content production, you’re going to be overwhelmed.
Narrow the focus..
Instead of the general field of gardening, think about the more specialized aspects that you can bring to the table.
Maybe you have a tiny apartment and have transformed it into a food production facility. This blog might look at irrigation and other challenges that you face when growing a garden in a tiny space.
From there, you have access to an audience who’s just like you. They might live in apartments or just tiny houses. They’d be interested to know what plants that you could grow in a tiny place. You might talk with them about microgreens or odd surfaces that are just perfect for gardening You might choose to create a book or an easy step by step kit that helps them grow indoors.
By focusing your attention, you will gain more readers and more satisfied followers along with potential buyers.
2) Do You Know Exactly Who Your Target Market Is?
So you have a niche for your blog, but do you know who your target is?
Who is this person? Are they male or female? What kind of jobs do they have? What do they value? What is their most urgent pain point- the thing that gives them the most trouble and keeps them from chasing their dreams?
Go deep and get detailed as you sketch this person out. Give them a name if it helps you to see them more clearly. Research and understand what motivates them.
If you truly know your audience, you will be able to give them what they want and what they need. An audience that knows they can trust you will purchase from you.
3) Do You Write Relevant Content that Attracts Your Target Market?
Super-niche blog topic? Done. Deep and full understanding of your audience and their needs and wants? Got that.
Perfect. Now, let’s move on to content creation.
If your content isn’t valuable to your readers, it shouldn’t be on your blog.
That’s it. Plain and simple.
But not really. Your content has to also:
• Establish you as an authority in your niche
• Attract your reader’s attention and invest them in your blog
• Prepare them to purchase your products
So, how do you make this magic content?
There are certain types of content that do all of the above, and do it effectively.
• Result Oriented Stories: Everyone loves to hear about people’s lives changing for the better. Share with your tribe the real, concrete ways that you, your product or your service has improved someone’s life, performance, health or finances.
This does two things for your audience: builds trust and develops social proof.
• Controversy: There’s always something going on, that people are looking for more data and more opinions on. Within your niche, take a stand on those issues.
Not only will your content get attention, but you will gain status as an expert, simply for giving an opinion. There are a lot of opinions out there about how to start a blog that makes money, and some people think my ways are completely wrong. I think that they’re wrong, as I’m making quite a comfortable living off this blog.
• Research Articles: People are overloaded with information. There are so many different voices, telling so many different things, and so many different places to hear details and figures that may or may not matter.
If you can help them sort through the clutter with a clearly written and fairly balanced article, your readers will trust your judgment and your recommendations when it comes time to make a purchase.
• Topical Content: Tie your blog’s niche to things that are happening in society at large. News stories, movies and TV, celebrities, current events and internet memes are just a few items that you can relate to your content.
Why should you do this?
Current readers will enjoy the content and share it with friends and family, adding social media buzz to your blog. In addition, it will rank higher on search engines and bring new traffic.
Make sure, though, that the timely news content won’t offend large groups of people. It might cause publicity problems to, say, make light of natural disasters and war.
4) Do You Promote YOUR Content to Bring Traffic to YOUR Blogs?
Great content doesn’t read itself, and potential followers can’t read your blog if they can’t find it. This is one of the key stumbling blocks between starting a blog and starting a blog that makes money.
You need to promote your content to get as many people as possible to your page. The more people who see your page, the more potential buyers you have for your products and services.
All too often, bloggers will work so hard on their content and then just post it, assuming that people will just be drawn by the quality of it. The world doesn’t work that way.
To generate the kind of traffic you want, you need to learn how to promote your blog.
“But, I don’t have a lot of money for advertising!”
I gotcha..
Here are FIVE low-cost ways to promote your content online:
• Social Media: Your followers are already on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Instagram and Pinterest. Let them know that you have new content to read and share with friends, family and colleagues.
Not into the idea of spending all day posting updates? Use HootSuite to plan posts in advance, or hire a virtual assistant to take care of those details for you.
• Bookmarking Sites: Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon reach millions of people every day, who are looking for specific topics. Submit your posts and you can reach a whole new and different crowd with every submission.
WordPress users can take advantage of plugins, like Only Wire and Add To Any, that automatically send new content to multiple bookmarking sites the very instant that it’s published.
• Email: You have carefully cultivated an email list of people who want to hear from YOU! Why not oblige them by sending out an email with new articles and requests for feedback, topics to write about, and names of people they would like for you to interview. You don’t need to send out anything fancy, just something simple on a regular basis.
• Forum and Blog Commenting: You are an expert, so take your knowledge out into the field. Visit blogs related to your niche and leave informative comments on articles, with a link back to your post. Make sure you say something worthwhile, otherwise people may dismiss you as a spammer.
• RSS Feed Syndication: RSS directories take content from all over the internet and make it available in one easy to access place for readers. Submit your blog feed to hundreds of RSS directories, and instantly gain new visitors.
When you focus on your niche and really pay attention to their needs, you can create a six figure income just from blogging!
Your Turn:
Is there anything that I’ve missed? Do you have some easy ways of promotion that I’ve not talked about? Tell me in the comments!

The Link between Pirated Software and Cyber security Breaches ,Unlicensed Software Usage Pakistan,

"The Link between Pirated Software and Cyber security Breaches"

How Malware in Pirated Software Is Costing the World Billions
A joint study by IDC and the National University of Singapore of the prevalence of malicious code, also known as malware, in pirated software and in new PCs purchased through traditional PC resellers.

How to Configure Synergy on Linux to Share Keyboard and Mouse with Multiple Systems

by Sanjay Kumar on March 19, 2014

Synergy is an open source network utility which can be used to share one keyboard and mouse with multiple systems.
Synergy utility works on client-server model.
The system whose keyboard and mouse you want to share, runs the synergy server service (synergys), and all the other systems runs the synergy client service (synergyc) to connect to server.
Synergy is a platform independent utility. Compiled version of synergy is available for various platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android and Apple iOS. You can download source code and compiled version from here.
Use the appropriate package management command to install Synergy on your system as shown below. For Windows, you can directly download executable and install it.

# For Mac OSX :
sudo port install synergy

# For Fedora, CentOs and RHEL :
sudo yum install synergy

# For Ubuntu, LinuxMint and Debian :
sudo apt-get install synergy

Example Synergy Configuration Setup

In my case, I have three systems mac-dev (OSX Maverick 10.9.1), nix-dev (Ubuntu), fed-dev (Fedora 20) which is connected in local network.

After installation, you need to define a configuration file to run synergy.
Configuration file has information about how these systems are connected in X,Y Plane. The synergy configuration file has the following sections:

1. screens
2. links
3. aliases
4. options

The default syntax of all sections is shown below. Just replace the name to one of the above section name.

section: name
arguments
end

Screens Section

Screens section will specify how many systems are going to connect through synergy service.
In screens section, either you can use either ip address or hostname of the systems.
Following is my configuration file for screens section. Here I’ve used two hostname and one ip-address (for fed-dev system).

section: screens
10.112.10.27:
nix-dev:
mac-dev:
end

Links Section

Links section will specify how these systems are going to connect in X,Y Plane.
There are four options such as left, right, down and up to connect screens to each other. Before writing link section, keep the system on which you want to run synergy server service ( it means you want to use keyboard and mouse of the system in all systems which are connected across local network.
In my setup, I want to use nix-dev systems keyboard and mouse in mac-dev, and fed-dev. So, I kept nix-dev in center and mac-dev of left of nix-dev and fed-dev is right of the nix-dev. In links section, you can write any screen first or last, it doesn’t matter.

section: links
nix-dev:
left = mac-dev
right = 10.112.10.27
mac-dev:
right = nix-dev
10.112.10.27:
left=nix-dev
end

Aliases Section

In aliases section, you could write alias for domain name to use short name in screens and links sections.

section: aliases
nix-dev:
nix-dev.thegeekstuff.com
mac-dev:
mac-dev.thegeekstuff.com
end

Options Section

In options section, there are list of arguments which can be use to modify uses of synergy service in configuration. You can get full list of options from synergy website.

section: options
keystroke(alt+left) = switchInDirection(left)
end

Start Synergy Service

For minimum configuration, you need atleast two options such as screens and links.
In the system which has keyboard and mouse, you need to start synergy server service as shown below, which will wait for all client to connect according to configuration file.

synergys -f -c mysynergy.conf

-f flags : To run synergy server service in foreground, by default it runs in the background
-c flags : to pass configuration file to synergy server service
For other connected systems, start synergy client service with server hostname or server ip address on which synergy server service is running as shown below.

synergyc -f nix-dev

or

synergyc -f 10.112.10.26

-f flags : to run synergy server service in foreground

Debugging Synergy Issues

The following “failed to connect to server” is a common synergy service error message.

WARNING: failed to connect to server:
NOTE: connecting to ’nix-dev’: 10.112.10.26:24800

In most case, the above error message is because of the firewall not allowing the client to talk to the server. Modify the iptables rules accordingly to allow port 24800.
If you have’ve installed different version of synergy client and server, you might get the following message. In this case, make sure to install the same version on both server and all the clients.

WARNING: failed to connect to server: incompatible client 1.4
NOTE: connecting to ’nix-dev’: 10.112.10.26:24800

Linux provides several powerful administrative tools and utilities which will help you to manage your systems effectively. If you don’t know what these tools are and how to use them, you could be spending lot of time trying to perform even the basic administrative tasks. The focus of this course is to help you understand system administration tools, which will help you to become an effective Linux system administrator.
Get the Linux Sysadmin Course Now!

How to Use the Super Fast i3 Tiling Window Manager on Linux

How to Use the Super Fast i3 Tiling Window Manager on Linux

How to work faster and smarter on Linux with the super fast i3 tiling window manager. 

I've been a fan of tiling window managers ever since Windows 3.1. I know, Windows 3.1 wasn't very good for much actual work, but it did stacking and tiling windows rather nicely. The i3 tiling window manager is a nice modern tiling window manager for GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems. It supports tiling, stacking, tabs, virtual desktops, and multiple monitors. You can do almost everything from the keyboard, or mix up keyboard and mouse.

Figure 1: The i3 tiling window manager desktop.

You can download source tarballs or snag the latest code from the i3 git repository, but the easiest method is to install it from your distro repositories. On Debian/Ubuntu you have the i3 metapackage, and the individual i3-wm (window manager), i3-wm-dbg (debugging symbols), i3lock (screenlocker), and i3status (system status bar) packages. The i3 metapackage includes everything except i3-wm-dbg. The full-meal deal is a little over 2 megabytes, so you might as well go for it. In Figure 1 you can see that I have two virtual desktops, the status bar, and three windows arranged nicely. They're not perfectly tiled because I rearranged them a bit: i3 is not dogmatic about tiling geometry and lets you have it your way.

Installation and First Tweaks

Install i3, then log out. When you log back in change your session to i3. On its first run it walks you through a simple configuration wizard. First you must decide if you want the wizard to create a ~/i3/config file. Say yes. Then choose your mod (modifier) key, either the Win or Alt key. If you choose the Alt key you're going to conflict with a lot of application keybindings and commands, so choose Win. This is really the Super_L key, but on many keyboards it bears the Windows logo. (Liberate your keyboard! Buy Tux keyboard stickers!)
Now you should be gazing upon a mostly blank screen. You should see a little tiny 1 in the bottom left corner, which is the first virtual desktop, and the system status bar along the bottom right. The background image is whatever has been set for your X11 root window. I'm running Kubuntu, so my base background image is the one set by the KDE4 theme. i3 does not touch the X11 root window, so you need an external app to set a background image. feh is a nice little app for this. Install feh, and then open ~/i3/config and configure a background image by adding a line like this anywhere in the file:

exec --no-startup-id feh --bg-scale /path/to/picture

--no-startup-id disables the startup notification so you don't have an hourglass in your way for 60 seconds. --bg-scale makes your image fill the screen, and does not preserve the aspect ratio. See man feh for other background image settings.
How do you do all this? $mod+Return opens your default X 
terminal. $mod+d opens the system menu, dmenu (figure 2). Start typing the application name, for example kate or gedit to bring up a graphical text editor, and when it's highlighted in blue press the Return key to open it. dmenu shows you all the command names that include the string you're typing. It only finds commands that are in your $PATH. If you change your mind press the Esc key to close it. You can't do anything else while dmenu is open.

Figure 2: The i3 system menu, dmenu.

For most ~/i3/config changes, press $mod+Shift+c to reload the file and activate changes. If that doesn't work then $mod+Shift+r restarts i3, preserving your layout and open applications. To load your new background image you need to log out of i3 and log back in. $mod+Shift+e exits i3, and then you log back in the usual way with your Linux login manager.

Set Default X terminal

If $mod+Return doesn't open the correct X terminal, then change this line in ~/i3/config:

# start a terminal
bindsym $mod+Return exec i3-sensible-terminal

Replace i3-sensible-terminal with your chosen terminal, for example konsole or gnome-terminal, and reload ~/i3/config.

Basic Layout Management

Every time you open an application it fills the available space. Apps are either lined up side-by-side, or stacked on top of each other. To duplicate figure 1, open an application in an empty desktop. Then open a second app. Then make the second app the active window by hovering the cursor over it. There are also multiple keyboard combinations for selecting the focus window, such as $mod+arrow key. Press $mod+v, then open your third app. $mod+v stacks, and $mod+h lines them up side-by-side.
Use your app menus to close them, or $mod+Shift+q closes the window with focus.
You can move your windows around with $mod+Shift+arrow key. Resize them by dragging a border with the cursor, or enter resize mode with $mod+r, and then resize the window with focus with the arrow keys. Leave resize mode by pressing the Esc key.
$mod+f toggles fullscreen. $mod+Shift+n moves the window with focus to desktop n. $mod+Shift+spacebar toggles a floating screen. This removes it from the tiles, and you can drag it around and resize it like in a non-tiling window manager.
$mod+e toggles horizontal and vertical layout, $mod+s stacks open windows, and $mod+w tabs them.
Open a second virtual desktop with $mod+2. i3 closes virtual desktops automatically when you close all the applications on them. $mod+n navigates to an existing virtual desktop, or creates a new one. You don't have to number them sequentially, but can use any numbers you want.

Configuration Hacks

Look in your ~/i3/config file to see your keybindings, and the Default Keybindings section of the user manual shows you the i3 defaults. You can easily create keyboard shortcuts to launch applications, like this:

bindsym $mod+F1 exec firefox

I like to bind PulseAudio volume controls to the keyboard. I have multiple soundcards, so first I have to locate the correct one. You need some audio playing for this to work:

$ pactl list sinks | grep -A2 -B2 -i running
Sink #1
 State: RUNNING
 Name: alsa_output.usb-M_Audio_MobilePre-00-MobilePre.analog-stereo
 Description: M-Audio MobilePre Analog Stereo

These lines in ~/i3/config let me control up and down volume with the Pageup/Pagedown keys, and toggle mute with the Home key:

bindsym $mod+Next exec pactl set-sink-volume 1 -- -10%
bindsym $mod+Prior exec pactl set-sink-volume 1 -- +10%
bindsym $mod+Home exec pactl set-sink-mute 1 -- toggle

Keynames are not always consistent on keyboards, so you can find the correct keynames with the xev command. Run it with no options, and then press keys to see their names and keycodes. That's how I learned to use Next and Prior for Pagedown and Pageup:

$ xev
[...]
KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x2c00001,
    root 0xa0, subw 0x0, time 24296185, (651,87), root:(1615,816),
    state 0x0, keycode 112 (keysym 0xff55, Prior), same_screen YES
[...]
KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x3a00001,
    root 0xa0, subw 0x0, time 25458177, (247,105), root:(1211,834),
    state 0x0, keycode 117 (keysym 0xff56, Next), same_screen YES,

i3 is wonderfully configurable. See man xev, man pactl, and the excellent and thorough i3 documentation to learn more about the myriad ways to customize i3 and make it super-fast and efficient.

How To Transform And Promote Your Blog Like A Superstar

How To Transform And Promote Your Blog Like A Superstar

When you create a professional blog (or business blog), you kick the door open to one of the best ways to make money online.
Pro bloggers know that a blog which has been correctly set up and maintained can provide a passive income for years to come.
With a professional blog, you can quit your day job and support yourself and your family, all the while wearing bunny slippers to work.
People who use my free 60 minute consulting service ask me this question all the time:

How do I transform my amateur blog into a business blog?
A professional blog makes money and an amateur blog doesn’t. Not only does the successful professional blog have these three qualities, but that blogger has also learned how to promote that blog to the right people.
The key to learning how to make money blogging rests in treating your blog like a business. And, if you want to turn your amateur blog into a pro business blog making a six figure income here are the qualities that your blog needs to have:

Your First Step: Sell Something
Professional blogs make serious money by having a product, service, or advertising in place. In other words, they have established at least one income stream on the blog itself.
Most professional blogs, including some of the high end news sites, have at least one income stream in place.
These income streams are:
• Advertising Network
• Products Created By The Blogger
• Affiliate Products Not Created by the Blogger
• A service or application
Advertising networks are great for those who already have traffic coming into the site. This is one of the reasons that you need to learn how to promote your site.
The heavy hitting news sites usually use advertising as their method of choice because the level of work that they have to do is simple. Once the ad blocks have been set up, all they have to do is attract more people to the site.

Advertising or Affiliates? What’s the Best Way to Make Money Blogging?
When you first start out with taking your blog to the professional level, there’s a serious chance that you won’t have the traffic to make the advertising on your site worthwhile.
Don’t get me wrong, set it up on your site (and remember not to make it too spammy), but don’t count on it to bring you thousands and thousands of dollars.
For the real money, you want to take the time to learn how to promote affiliate products. The time investment is more than merely setting up ad blocks on your site, but the return can be 10-100x more than what you would make through advertising alone.
One of those top-notch affiliate products that I promote, for example, is James Martell’s 5 Secrets To Affiliate Marketing which not only teaches you how to promote his products, but how to promote any product and make the mega bucks.

Your Second Step: Lead Capture
Everybody who visits your site is considered a lead for your products and services. The people who are enjoying your work are, by extension, more likely to purchase your products and services. One of the best ways that you can sell to those people is through a newsletter.
Give them great information that is jam-packed with your wisdom, and they will be eager to purchase products from you. When the professionals say that the money is in the list, they are not kidding.
To capture your visitors’ information, you need two things:
• A way to capture your followers’ email addresses
• A way to send email to those followers once they give you information.
The best lead capturing system that I’ve found (and I’ve been through a lot of them) is Leadpages. With it, you can easily set up professional landing pages and lead capturing offers in a matter of minutes.
I am able to manage the leads that I get from Leadpages with GetResponse. One of the reasons that an amateur blog will stay amateur (read: not making money from blogging) is that they haven’t mastered the pro secret of automating lead capturing.
You want to watch the free videos I made on how to create 6 figures blogging which cover 3 insider secrets to turning pro with your blog, there is a lot of valuable information in it.

Your Third Step: Connect It Together
I’m assuming that you’re transforming your current blog into a pro blog instead of starting your blog from scratch. A lot of the pro bloggers don’t talk about this, but one of the big differences between an amateur blog and a pro blog is the number of connections between the current posts and previous posts, and between your posts and all your offers.
A friend of mine once described this as the Wikipedia approach. It’s difficult to reach the end of a Wikipedia article without clicking on something else along the way.
Each blog post and article is like a piece of the puzzle that further entices readers into trusting you. In a lot of amateur blogs, readers are generally treated to a lot of ‘single serving’ posts that don’t fit into the greater whole.
When you decide to run your blog like a business, read all of the posts that you have up on your site. This will help you out with a few things:
• Make connections from one blog post to the next
• Tighten the writing on your blog posts
• Help you make the decision on which ones stay and which ones go
One thing that will immensely help your new readers is to have a ‘start here’ document. This document gives an outline of the types of things that they should expect on your site and gives links to some of the pillar content that you’ve created.
These three steps cover the basics in turning your amateur blog into a professional one. I’ve written out more detailed information about how to make money blogging in the Profit Blogging Blueprint. That book is packed with valuable information on how to monetize and make money with your blog.
There are three steps to transforming your amateur blog into a professional one: sell something, capture leads, and connect it all together.
When I discovered how to make a six-figure income blogging, I discovered another piece to the puzzle. To make the serious money, not only do you have to know how to set it up, but you have to know how to promote your blog. You have to talk about it with your friends, your neighbors, and your target audience.

How to Promote Your Blog: The Foundation
When you run a professional blog, every piece of content that you write, whether it be a blog post, a video, or a paid product, should enrich the readers of your blog. When you make the decision to transform your amateur blog into a professional blog you make the decision to stop writing all about you.

The ONE Secret about Promoting Your Blog You Need to Know
No matter what audience that you’re catering to, the sound of their own voice is the most pleasant sound that they can hear. Your audience wants to be validated. Your audience wants to be talked about. Your audience wants to be told that they have great ideas.
I reveal more secrets to cracking the moneyblogging code in this free video series.
Your blog needs to talk less about you and more about your audience’s desires.
How does that play into promoting your blog? If you’ve got a new business blog, one of the best things that you can do is design your articles and your blog posts so that they talk about people within your target demographic.
This might include talking about their blog posts and articles, designing a top ten list, or deciding that you want to do a roundup of some of the best posts that you’ve read.
The reason doing this is that it draws the attention of other people’s audiences. When someone connects with a blogger and reads them regularly, they will want to know what other people are saying about them.
It’s common to see blogger cliques develop over time, as people regularly share ideas with each other.
When you post your newest post that mentions someone, send an email to the person that you mentioned in the post. Just a simple one, saying that you’ve mentioned them. If you’ve linked to their post from yours, they get a notification about it, but it’s courtesy to let others know.
If the people whom you’ve mentioned like what you have to offer, they will talk about you in their posts – at least to say that you had mentioned them.
If you’ve created content that caters to your audience, mentions your audience by name, and validates the concerns of your audience, that content is now tailor-made to be talked about on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media outlets.
So, it’s time to talk about the people that you know, the blogs that you read, and all of the good things that other people are doing.
This technique opens the doors for your blog, paving the way for great connections and the explosion of your follower counts.
 
Your Turn
What is your biggest frustration when it comes to making money with your blog ? Getting traffic alone doesn’t make you money, there are other important components like lead capturing and creating a high converting income funnel which will really turn your amateur blog to a profitable professional blog.
I’d like to hear from you, please leave your questions and feedbacks in the comment section below.