Think that buying The Secret was a ripoff? Check out this massive, multi-billion dollar scam:

While fringe sources pointed out ethanol’s economic problems years ago, the mainstream has finally figured it out. A very good article was recently published at Rolling Stone — Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles. I recommend you read it. With a Presidential election coming up the truth needs to be known.

The energy policy of the United States is not just an issue for US citizens. Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone writes — “Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World.” In January The Washington Post published an article about the impact corn prices are having on Mexico’s poor. (President Bush wants US ethanol consumption increased 5x.)

Does any one other than corn farmers think this is a good idea?

From Mashable this week — “The reports indicate that a beta version of this tool, code-named “Gatineau,” is scheduled for this summer, and will enable users to filter web traffic by age and gender demographics. This specific data will be coming from users’ Windows Live profiles, and will remain unconnected with users’ personal information such as name or email address. Nevertheless, some privacy issues could come into play, regarding the manner in which demographic data is acquired and utilized for statistical purposes.”

It is only speculation, but judging by my experiences with Microsoft Adcenter, this is probably going to be an obnoxious pain to use. (I really don’t need my speakers to beep when I get an error message on a web site.)

Last July I wrote a post about how to maximize your work productivity. I have made various comments and additions to this both here on Web Publishing Blog and on various forums. A year later, I think it is time for an update.

Understand what productivity really means. Working hard all day verse 30 minutes is not a sole qualifier of “better.” As Timothy Ferris pointed out in The Four Hour Workweek almost all of us are wasting time doing things others can do better and cheaper. You must measure your work output by profit and performance, not by hours put in.

Tip #1 — Work around, and eliminate “stopping points.”

If a programmer is slow to produce a finished application, a project should not grind to a halt. Linear business plans can mislead you in to taking things one step at a time when steps 4,5, & 6 should be done now.

For experienced guys this is rarely an issue. For newbies, “stopping points” are a massive and horrendously destructive problem. Example: two months from sparking an idea the newbie is still working on a logo and design while the experienced guy is already pulling in solid profits.

Tip #2 — Track goals with lists.

That 5 point hand written list laying right next to your list often will be finished quicker than the 20 things to do on your pocket PC. Another alternative is a dry-erase white board. The downside is that you lose your history of what you did and what you passed over (Of course, there are even solutions that record dry erase “data”)

Tip #3 — Eliminate Distractions.

Distractions can be work related or recreational. Reading affiliate marketing blogs is technically work, but spending 4 hours a day doing so turns it in to a distraction. The same can go for e-mail or voice mail. Making yourself difficult to reach is not always a bad thing.

Find yourself wasting hours every day on blogs, forums, and Digg? Load up your Windows hosts file (assuming your not on Mac or Linux) and block the URLs that are draining your time away. If you still have to have your daily fix you can log in from your laptop or other PC later; this way you won’t pop over to Digg in the middle of an important task and spend the next hour there when you should have been working.

Tip #4 — Automate and Delegate.

You can not do it all yourself. Human capital is dirt cheap. If you are hesitant to hire your first employee, justify it by hiring someone to exclusively do the tasks you hate.

There should be no such thing as a repetitive task. Often a program can be written quicker than it takes you to do simple redundant tasks by hand. Some online marketers brag about achieve 7 figure revenues by hand. They are simply working twice as hard for half the profits.

Tip #5 — Measure everything important, automatically.

My parents had the nasty habit of writing down the car mileage and cost of gas every time after filling up a the gas station. Besides doing absolutely nothing with the information, it was a waste of time — because the knowledge was not actionable.

Measuring things that matter is critical if you want to scale your business. Measurement is step one of optimizing. Optimizing is why some business grow dramatically while others wither and die. The reason is simple — the optimizers are doing exactly the things which truly result in growth. The alternative? Read lots of books and magazines and speculate what is causing your problems. This is less than ideal choice.

Have you discovered anything which has dramatically increased your productivity and performance? I’d like to hear it.

I have warned my readers about this multiple times.. an increasing number of domain name registrars are now more interested in you losing your domain names than keeping them.

Here is another interesting article, this time a press release from a company that runs the DomainSponsor parking program. They have launched a new product targeted to “hosting companies, registrars, registries, and ISPs.”

via Oversee.net “…Jothan Frakes will represent Oversee’s DomainSponsor in a HostingCon workshop, Turning Customer Abandonment and Loss Into a New Source of Revenue. The workshop is designed to communicate the value of a largely untapped revenue stream for hosting companies, registrars, registries, and ISPs. The panel will examine specifically how hosting companies can turn “under construction” and error pages into new revenue.”

Coming soon: your domain registrar and/or web host monetizing your traffic.

Markus pointed this out at his blog — The Times Online reports, “Price comparison site has set the top end of its flotation price at £1bn, making chief Simon Nixon worth some £627m …the founder of moneysupermarket.com, is set to reap up to £126.6 million when the price comparison site floats on the London Stock Exchange later this month, valued at between £841 million and £1 billion.” In USD thats about 1.27 billion dollars.

It might not be all great, Forbes reports “the company did not specify how much debt it has.”

I scaled my blog posting back quite a bit in June. This was intentional. Less work for me, more focused posts for my readers. All of us should be working more on our projects and spending less time reading and browsing.

To kick off July I have decided to take a blogging holiday. It is mid-summer and there is plenty to do with both work and recreation. One of the goals I set was to increase my physical activity. Spending too much time at your desk? Get outside and make up for all that time you worked during the winter.

Happily I can report that the purpose of this blog has been served. That decreases my motivation for blogging but does not kill the compulsion to share news and ideas with the world.

The high returns and flexible lifestyle of internet entrepreneurs is highly coveted. The future of WebPublishingBlog should be more focused posts for those within the internet publishing industry.

You may have noticed more “linkbait” posts recently. Sometimes it is nice to move off topic, but the goal is not to reach the mass market. My mind is made up, my preference is to target posts on those of us who are successful. You already have the six (or seven+) figure income, now what?

My primary businesses revolve around taking the dumbed down approach to reaching an audience. Thats not an insult, people need simplification in their lives. This blog lets me reach a higher level and flex the detailed writing part of my mind. (Ironically I despised all English, Grammer, and Literature classes throughout my school years.)

When will I post again? Not sure. I’d like to hold off for at least two weeks. In the meantime, there are things to be done!