Have you heard about AppSumo?

If not, you should have.

AppSumo is a great new daily deals site for web geeks! They’re sort of like Groupon for nerdy-awesome online stuff that people like you and me are into, and they have a really cool business model where they bundle up a bunch of great software, business resources, services, books, and courses—and sell them at a deep discount!

If you’re a web developer, designer, or entrepreneur of any type, I highly recommend you keep an eye on what they’re offering.

But for today…

Here’s how you can get $173 worth of absolutely FREE, high-quality business training and tools

I’ve partnered up with AppSumo, and starting today, if you’re a member of the Thrilling Heroics Inner Circle here, you will get completely free, exclusive access to two excellent-quality, premium AppSumo Action Videos that will help you build your own small business, courtesy of Chief Sumo Noah Kagan himself!

The AppSumo team continues to interview highly successful, A-list entrepreneurs and startup founders and produce top-notch classes that distill their experience and knowledge into actionable tutorials!

They even release them for free from time to time (if you want an example of the type of awesome Action Videos we’re talking about here, check out this random guy who made $22 million). But today, you’re getting special access to two high-dollar video series:

Action Video #1: Blogging for Startups

Just by signing up for my exclusive Inner Circle, you’ll get instant complimentary FREE access to this 67-minute video course with Mixergy‘s Andrew Marshall and Hiten Shah, founder of tech company KISSmetrics. They started their blog 10 months ago, and already got A MILLION VISITORS. They even turn part of those million visitors into paying customers… which is essentially free advertising for a small startup company. In this awesome vid, you’ll learn:

• How to launch a successful blog for your startup business
• How to build long-term traffic & quick tips to generate traffic in a week
• How to use cookies to track where your customers are coming from and learn more about them
• How to create customers before you’re ready to sell something
• How Seth Godin can help you increase traffic
• Secrets to getting users to share your posts on Twitter and Facebook
• How to save your advertising money and spend it on your site generating traffic through content
• Many many more confidential tactics…

If you’re into business, you may have heard of this “Lean Startup” concept. Well, Eric Ries is the guy who wrote the book on it! Literally. In this 70-minute video course with Eric Ries—also the author of Startup Lessons Learned and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School—you’ll learn how to use continuous innovation to create fast, light, successful businesses:

• Learn how to start thinking about improving your business on the fundamental level to become more efficient.
• Tips on how to validate and optimize your ideas.
• Learn how Zappos employed the Lean Startup methodology to build a hugely successful business.
• Where to go create launch sites quickly to test out ideas.
• How to be “Just in Time” not “Just in Case”.
• Why its more important to measure what customers do and not what they say.
• Many many more transformational tactics…

This training course is a $49 value, $25 if you were to get AppSumo’s discount… Except that you can’t! It’s gone off the market. But, if you join the TH Inner Circle and share with your friends, you’ll also earn 100% free access to this great bonus.

More Useful Free Resources to Help You Build Your Online Business

When you sign up to join over 6,000 readers here, you’ll get all this and you’ll also get a complimentary copy of my Thrilling Theme for WordPress (normally I charge $25 for it), pleasantly infrequent email updates when there’s useful new articles on Thrilling Heroics, and not to mention my 15-week minicourse designed to help you get started building your own Live-Anywhere Business, complete with case studies and expert video interviews.

Alright, so are you ready? It’s easy—all you have to do is sign up here and start enjoying your free bonuses.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Even if you’re already a Thrilling Heroics subscriber, simply enter your name & email on the form on this page (don’t worry, you won’t get double-subscribed) to get immediate access to Action Video #1 from AppSumo, and your own referral link to share with friends and earn your bonus Action Video #2.

One Last Thing: Earn More Free Rewards!

If you’re reading this on the website right now, you’ll see a little red “Rewards” tab right to the left (if not, click through and visit the site!).

Thrilling Heroics now has its very own loyalty program! From now on, when you visit TH while you’re also logged in to Facebook, you’ll earn rewards points just for 1) visiting every day, 2) leaving comments on any articles here on the site, 3) “Liking” us on Facebook, and 4) sharing articles through any of the social media buttons (i.e, with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, StumbleUpon, etc.).

If you get enough reward points here (and on a couple other cool sites across the web), you can earn some sweet rewards, such as gift cards from Groupon, BestBuy.com, and eBay!

Just one more bonus to thank you for interacting here at Thrilling Heroics, for leaving your feedback, and for being an engaged member of my community. Cheers!

What do you think of these free Action Videos and rewards? Let me know what sorts of videos and bonuses you’d like in the future by leaving a comment down below.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Get $173 Worth of Awesome AppSumo Action Classes to Help You Build Your Business, FREE

“Personal risks include the risk of working with people you don’t respect; the risk of working for a company whose values are inconsistent with your own; the risk of compromising what’s important; the risk of doing something you don’t care about; and the risk of doing something that fails to express—or even contradicts—who you are. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

Komisar’s book is geared towards entrepreneurs. What if you’re not entrepreneurially inclined though—what control do you have over creating a career that makes you happy and fulfilled?

If You Go to Work for Someone Else, You Damned Well Better Pick the Right Workplace!

If you’re gonna spend your career working for someone else, do it where the corporate culture is awesome. I’ve been wanting to talk about Tony Hsieh and his company Zappos for this very reason.

A while back I read an article by Inc. Magazine writer Max Chafkin called “Get Happy: How Tony Hsieh uses relentless innovation, stellar service, and a staff of believers to make Zappos.com an e-commerce juggernaut—and one of the most blissed-out businesses in America.”

Hsieh helped found the online shoe retailer in 1999, and it has since grown to over a billion dollars in gross annual sales. They’re so successful in fact, Amazon has just negotiated to acquire them (thankfully Hsieh will continue to run things his way and infuse the company with his awesome management style).

Zappos has been notable in the past few years for their innovative service (absolutely free shipping and returns) and successful use of new media to connect with customers. After sharing a note about how impressed I was with the Inc. article on my Twitter account, I immediately received a personal note from someone on their Zappos_service account with a cheerful offer to set up a tour of the Zappos facilities next time I stop in Las Vegas! (They’ll pick you up at your hotel for a fun, free tour of the company headquarters.)

In my opinion, even more important than their stellar customer service, Tony Hsieh has decided that his business revolves around happiness, which he studies with the dedication of a laboratory researcher. “What would make you happier in your life?” Hsieh asks the writer. He is fond of asking employees, customers, and everyone he meets, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you right now?”

And it shows in the company’s whacky, uninhibited corporate culture. You can follow Tony’s musings on Twitter, job interviews and company meetings often take place over drinks in nearby Vegas bars and hotspots, and every employee is encouraged to be themselves! (What an idea!) It looks like most employees wear their dyed hair, tattoos, piercings, and other unique styles with pride. They have no call scripts and are given the freedom to troubleshoot customer complaints on a case-by-case basis. One of the 10 crowd-sourced core values of the company is to “Create fun and a little weirdness”!

Salaries are modest (starting pay between about $8 to $12), but the real attraction to working for Zappos is the work environment. To weed out the folks who aren’t committed to a fun, weird work culture, each and every new employee is offered $2,000 plus time worked to walk away after their first month of training. For those who stick around, Zappos invests serious bank in their personal development—with classes, business books, public speaking and personal finance courses for example.

All of this is to say: if you are less inclined to work for yourself and more inclined to go to a job like a majority of folks are, ask yourself what’s important to you at work. You’ll spend the majority of your hours at your desk, in your cubicle, or wherever that puts you, so I suggest you find an innovative company that values it’s employees’ happiness and encourages a fun, meaningful, unique workplace culture.

To learn more about Tony Hsieh and how he got his start, also check out this recent interview Jun Loayza did! Tony’s advice to anyone planning their career right now:

“I would say rather than focus on what will make you the most money or be best for your career, figure out what you would be passionate for 10 years and go pursue that. A lot of people work hard at building a career so that one day down the road they think it will bring them happiness. And most of the time, when they finally accomplish their goal, they realize that it doesn’t really end up bringing happiness or fulfillment for the long term.”

Rather than preparing for the template career like everyone else, and saving for years to one day do what you’re really passionate about, just get started doing what you’re really passionate about now!

Feature photo credit: Randy Stewart

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Stay Happy If You Work for Someone Else

For anyone thinking about getting involved in blogging, you’ll hear from some of the biggest names in the blogosphere, like ProBlogger Darren Rowse, 4-Hour Workweek author Tim Ferriss, Chris Brogan, Wendy Piersall and Liz Strauss. And for technology entrepreneurs or business owners who hope to use web 2.0/social media marketing to their advantage, you’ll learn from the success stories of individuals like Garage Technology Ventures‘ Guy Kawasaki (also author of The Art of the Start) and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

Attendees will be able to watch individual videos based on their content area preference or view the conference in its entirety. While the videos are streaming, viewers will be able to chat online with the Network Solutions team […] or participate in a live public chat.

The videos will be streaming live this Wednesday, October 29th, at 1pm EST/10am PST, and I believe they’ll still be available for download after that, but I highly recommend you take the opportunity to hear from some of these big names:

• Tim Ferriss, best-selling author of The Four Hour Work Week
• Guy Kawasaki, Co-Founder of AllTop.com
• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
• Darren Rowse, blogger, ProBlogger
• Chris Brogan, Vice President of Strategy, CrossTech Media
• Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality Not Included
• Wendy Piersall, CEO of Sparkplugging.com
• Brian Solis, author of PR 2.0, CEO of FutureWorks
• Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger, Dell
• Scott Monty, Global Digital and Multimedia Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company
• Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog
• Toby Bloomberg, CEO of Bloomberg Marketing
• Lee Odden, CEO of TopRankMarketing.com
• David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media and Client Strategy, 360i
• Lorelle VanFossen, author of Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging
• Dave Taylor, Head Strategic Marketing Director, Intuitive Systems

Visit solutionsstarsvideo.com on the 29th to watch the conference live, or for more information.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Tune In for a Free Social Media & Internet Strategy Conference This Wednesday!

This year’s CEO survey showed that 31% of Inc. 500 company CEOs maintain a blog or social network. Here’s what some of them said:

“More effective than any marketing budget for getting our name out there.”
–Todd Cieplinski, Universal Mind

“Within 60 days of launching our blog, it is our top referral source.”
–David Link, ScienceLogic

“The community members are our fourth-highest revenue source.”
–Bryan Howe, MasterPlans

“The blogs are 50 percent of website traffic. Great participation.”
–Parsa Rohani, Neudesic

“Our clients love it, and lots of people in our industry pay attention to it.”
–Michael Biggerstaff, Nxtbook Media

A third of the fastest-growing private companies in the country credit blogs and social media for helping their growth and name recognition. Is your company participating?

If you need help setting up a WordPress blog, check out my freelance consulting & development services available at ThrillingDesign.com

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: A Third of Inc. 500 CEOs Have Blogs! Do You?

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a new social network/instant messaging mashup that’s being referred to as a micro-blogging tool. It allows users to send text updates (called “tweets”) to all their friends—from twitter.com, instant message (via AIM or MSN Messenger, for example), or even from a mobile phone. It’s like posting an instant blog post, but you’re forced to craft your message with a 140-character limit.

The site asks members “What are you doing?” Answers range from the mundane (“eating a burrito”) to the interesting, hilarious, and even useful (well, okay, once in a while). While some use the service merely to updates friends on their whereabouts and activities, many people are using it to promote their blogs, share valuable links, and otherwise brand themselves and their businesses online.

Below: The default Twitter profile page.

(Click image for larger view.)

Most web nerds like myself are saying Twitter will be big (like, Facebook big) over the next few years, but right now it’s still at the early adopter stage, which means it’s dominated by bloggers, web designers, and technologists. For many Twitterfolk, it has become a primary channel of communication over the last year (*read: easier to reach them via Twitter than via email). I’ve been able to get the attention of a few power users in the “Twitterverse” over the last few months, including great folks like Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, and Chris Brogan, and I’ve even had some pretty decent exchanges with them! If you’re in the technology or internet industry and you’re not using Twitter yet, it is a MUST. What are you still reading this for? Run! Go! Right now!

What About Twitter for Business?

For the rest of us, the question is how does one effectively leverage Twitter for business or personal branding? If used properly, it can easily bring more readers into your camp. I’ve already built a pretty decent sized following myself (follow me here), using the service mostly to share helpful tips and links I find across the web and to promote my own writing. One cool function is that you can easily plug your “tweets” in to the sidebar on your own blog or into other social networks and share your updates with friends that aren’t already on Twitter. (See Twitter badges and WordPress plugins.)

Below: My Twitter replies from other users. Yes, you can
add your own crazy backgrounds too!

(Click image for larger view.)

The BBC and CNN are using it to broadcast breaking news. Companies like Whole Foods, Zappos, Dell, Cisco, Comcast, and more are using it to send updates to their customers. If you provide value, you’ll make fast friends. Aside from sharing my links and blog posts, I also use Twitter to search for people with questions about blogging and answer my clients’ questions about WordPress. If you use it wisely, Twitter can give you a platform to show off your expertise, cultivate a reputation as an authority in your field, and build a loyal following.

Here are 5 tips to go from Twitter Newbie to Twitter Ninja:

1. There are several third-party Twitter clients that will run on your desktop much like your instant messenger does, so you don’t have to be logged in at twitter.com, and they give you quick navigation and search tools at your fingertips. First of all, I would recommend that you lookup Twitter clients and find one that suits you. I use Twhirl (see image at right), which makes my experience much more like a chat client that I can easily turn on and off when I want to.
2. Learn how to us the @replies to send messages to other users, and learn how to use a URL-shortening service such as TinyURL or SnipUrl to condense long hyperlinks so you can fit them within your 140-character tweets. (Twhirl and most other Twitter clients have URL-shortening services built-in.)
3. If you’re a blogger or a social media freak like me, hook up your blog’s RSS feed and feeds from your bookmarking services (del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Reader…) to auto-publish to your Twitter account with Twitterfeed.com.
4. Subscribe to keywords if you want to monitor the larger discussion about certain topics across the whole Twitter network. This is how I find a lot of users asking about WordPress, and I just try to answer people’s questions when I can. I’ve made a lot of new friends this way and have even scored last-minute freelance gigs by answering strangers’ questions with helpful advice. (Watch Ed Dale’s awesome tutorial video “Become a Twitter Master with Twhirl” for more about @replies and subscribing to keywords within the Twhirl client!)
5. Once you’re used to how the rules work, check out Lee Odden’s list of Five New Twitter Tools You Should Know to help you find more new people to connect with on Twitter and expand your network.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter and send an @codymckibb to ask your WordPress and blogging-related questions!

Helpful Twitter Articles from Others:

• Why Twitter?
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
• 9 Ways Twitter Made Guy Kawasaki’s Website Better
• Three Ways to Maximize Your Twitter Time for Networking, Marketing and Fun

photo credit: somefool (MatthewM)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Tweet and Grow Rich: 5 Tips to Rock Your Business With Twitter