Read on Lifehacker yesterday that Windows Live Writer makes blogging easier; and since it takes such a tremendous amount of discipline for me to pick up my lazy cyber pen to blog, I figured any help would be much appreciated.

I think it works.

I’m blogging!

Update: To minutes I posted, I realized I forgot to set the categories.

So I came back to Windows Live Writer, opened, the post, and set the categories, all within 30 seconds.

Easy indeed.

Windows bloggers, check it out; it’s free!

The huge time-saver is supposed to come when you add pictures to your post.

I want to prove to myself how easy it it, but I have no picture relevant to this post, so I shall just stick my avatar up here.

Wee, it IS easy!

A couple quick updates.

1) I have a new assistant in our team now! Her name is Pat; she’s a journalist part-time, so I’m sure she writes really well. She’ll be in charge of the content for my niche websites, and I’m really looking forward to see what she can do.

Everyone say “HI” Reggae - Various Artists download LEE PERRY - Arkology album calcium sachet coral to Pat!

2) I bought an Ipod Touch. This deserves a separate mention in a separate blog post. 

Long story short; I LOVE IT.

3) The Marketing Alchemist blog is getting a new look! Keshia is still in the works with the theme, but it should be ready any time soon.

4) And coming to the most important thing; the subject of this post.

I’ve finally hit my first milestone of 2009; $100 a day of pure profits, strictly from the internet!

Well it’s only the first day I’ve managed to do it, but with my systems in place, I’m pretty sure I can carry on doing it consistently from now on.

And then it’s all about scaling from then on.

One of the other things I have in my Must-Do list for 2009 is to really put more effort into making the Marketing Alchemist blog a fabulous resource for my readers.

Now that my first milestone is hit, you can bet I will follow up on my other resolutions, especially since I now have one more assistant to help me out.

How are YOUR goals for 2009 coming along?

Go ahead and drop me a comment!

My thoughts regarding charity and poverty are similar to that of Perry Marshall’s.

The latest issue of his Renaissance Club newsletter struck a cord with me, so I thought I’ll come up here to share some of my thoughts.

He recently got an email from a very angry guy who can’t believe he had the audacity to turn down lunch requests and charge hourly rates instead.

Read about more it here.

He talks more about having the guts to charge for your service or product in your business, because it is your moral obligation to do so.

Here’s an excerpt of the newsletter, which will remain part of my business philosophy for life.

“If you’re going to be charitable in the world, there is no possibility of helping the bottom 10% if you also believe you’re obligated to help the middle 50% and not charge them for it. You must pic your battles and I have picked mine. The reason I can build orphanages in India is I’m building businesses in America and Canada and the UK and Australia and New Zealand and getting paid for it.”

I took his advice some time back, and had the “audacity” to charge $200 for Adwords Coaching instead of dispensing free information in forums.

The result of that coaching is that I gained the most respectful and cooperative client EVER, who told me that “it was okay to slow down on the coaching a little bit” when she learnt that I was having exams.

This is in stark contrast with my responses in Private Messages to people who ask me for help; these people whom I help with almost the same amount of heart and time, either reply with increasingly unresonably requests for my time (with no benefit to me at all), or they simply don’t reply at all.

While I’m certainly happy to spare a few minutes to help out fellow entrepreneurs, it seems like when the advice is free, it is never cherished or respected.

So is it better to waste your time dispensing free information that does NOT get properly utilized..

Or does it make more sense to charge a fee so YOU make a little profit for your time, AND

have the recipient acutally USE

the information and thus benefit as well?

You decide.