• Are you looking for a sound list of RSS Directories ? I suggest you RSS – Blog Directories
• Did you know that using twshot button, you can update twitter status with long url?
• Looking for a custom blog design? Why don’t you check Pixel Jig or Brian Gardner?
• My friend Tali Shapiro made it again! Read her last post Guy Kawasaki’s How to Drive Your Competition Crazy – Myths and Legends of the Marketing Business
• Need some money? Submit a t-shirt design, and earn $2500!
• Do you know how to Overcome a Fear of Failure?
• Do you need your own favicon (favorites icon)? Use Favicon Generator online tool to easily create a favicon for your website or blog.
• Read this if you like twittering : Twittering With Thwirl
• Find the keywords you need to succeed online: WordTracker
• Why don’t you make money online selling your photos?

Reading and lifelong learning are essential to your success in blogging and life. If you want to develop good quality content for your blog, you need to keep on learning all the time.

With this purpose in my mind, I decided to share my favorite learning and creativity resources with my fellow readers. You may also refer to How To Get Blogging Ideas When You Are Stuck for more free resources.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

- MIT Open Courseware provides free higher education for everyone

The Free Micro-eMBA(SM)

- Free eMBA

http://www.bized.co.uk/

- A Web site for students and educators in business studies, economics, accounting, leisure, sport & recreation and travel & tourism.

- Ted

http://www.ted.com

Ted is based on a series of annual conferences where the world’s smartest thinkers are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18-20 minutes. Currently the website offers up more than 200 of the best talks from the conferences, all for free.

- 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World

Check out these podcasts from some of the best colleges and universities. Frankly, awesome food for thought!

- 200 Free Online Classes to Learn Anything

Online Education Database collected these 200 free online classes. You don’t need to pay high costs for high quality education anymore.

These are my favorites free learning resources. How about yours? Please share them with me and my fellow readers.

In Part 2 we talked about Who am I stories. Now let’s talk about Why I am Here stories.

Why Are You Here?

Your readers won’t cooperate with you if you don’t provide a plausible explanation of your good intentions early. It is quite natural that before you tell them what is in it for them, they want to know what is in it for you.

If you want your readers to buy a product, subscribe to your RSS feeds, or take your advice, you should bear in mind that at first you should be honest and tell them what you will get out of it.

If you hide selfish goals, you are doing one of the biggest mistakes.

When you focus all your communication on showing your reader what he might gain, you came across as hiding your gain. If your readers think you are lying about what you stand to gain from their cooperation, you will lose their trust.

Trust is everything if you want to build a successful blog or business.

Do Not Fake Selfish Goals

There is no need to fake selfish goals when communicating with your readers. They really don’t mind unless you start cheating them. A good story is best suited to people with genuinely good intentions and clear personal goals.

A Why I am Here story will be enough for your readers to make a distinction between healthy ambition and dishonest exploitation.

If your goals are selfish, people usually don’t mind as long as you are up-front about it, and there is something in it for them. You still need to be careful to frame your goals in a way that makes sense to them.

Conclusion

Unless you are Dalai Lama, do not expect your readers to believe you truly have selfless goals. If you are on a self-denying mission, you need to tell a story and give your readers a good evidence.

If you are to quit your full time job paying $30,000 annually to earn your living from blogging and Internet projects (this is my story!), let your readers see in their eyes and the way you tell your story that the joy of having ultimate freedom in your life is truly the reason why you are asking them to support you.

Last week some of my fellow readers asked me which free web applications I would suggest. Below you can find my favorite free web applications. I am sure they are quite useful for the PC users with limited budget.

Photoshop Express

Did you know that Adobe has created a free entry level version of Photoshop? Photoshop Express can be used for basic photo manipulation.

It is an online application, therefore you need to upload your photos from your computer, or sites like Flickr and Facebook.

ZoneAlarm

Do you feel insecure while surfing the Web? Can’t you afford high-priced firewall software in the market? Then why don’t you try ZoneAlarm ?

This application learns the behaviours of the software on your computer, and if it detects an unusual act of one of your software, the firewall kicks in.

As a rule of thumb please don’t set the firewall too high, otherwise you will have to deal with a lot of pop-up messages.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn allows users to remotely access and control their computer from another location. Imagine you are flying to Sydney from New York for a business meeting with the SEO of your company. SEO asks you about the company presentation. While answering him, you remember that you forget to bring the company presentation with you!!

Never mind. With LogMeIn you can still access your computer and files unless you don’t forget to keep your PC open. Simply amazing!

ADrive

If you want to access your data from anywhere yet you aren’t using remote access software, you can always store that data online. In other words, you can access it from any online PC connected to the Web.

You can pay a visit to ADrive, where users can store a whopping 50 GB of data.

But remember in case ADrive goes out of business, you can lose your valuable data. I suggest you to keep the most important data in your own computer, and use ADrive for storing the rest.

Audacity

Audacity is free open source audio editing software. You can use it for your podcasts. One of the best free software I have ever used.

What are your favorite free web applications ? Please tell me about them.

What do you do if you develop a project that a lot of people are interested in, and you want to be able to create a site that everyone can contribute to?

Yes, the answer is wiki. At Wetpaint you can easily create wiki pages for your blogging or Internet projects and collaborate with your friends.

For those of you who have never heard of wiki before let me tell you more about it.Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.

How To Create a Wiki Page @ Wetpaint

• Click the link to play the tutorial on the opening page for an overview.
• When you’re ready to get started just click the big green GO.
• Just follow the steps, choosing who you want to be able to view and or edit the pages, a project template for the design
• Invite the people you want to participate.

It’s fast and completely free. You don’t have to be a genius to create compelling wiki pages. All you need is some interesting content and a bunch of mates to participate.

Develop Blogging Projects with Your Community @ Wetpaint

Why don’t you develop a blogging project and invite your community or close blogger friends to your wiki at Wetpaint? I am sure you will come up with something interesting in the end. You will build better relationship with your community as well.

I know this, because my secret wiki project is ongoing at Wetpaint. Hopefully I will announce it by July 2008. It is something which will add significant value to blogosphere. Please be patient!