Tim Ferriss | Dorm Room Biz

Apr

April Fool’s Day Around the Blogosphere

Written by Chris on April 4, 2008 – 4:20 pm -

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I always find it great to read the posts that come out on April 1st, April Fool’s Day. There are some pretty good posts that high profile bloggers and writers put together that really convince people that they are true.

So, today, I wanted to post some of the ones that have come across my feed reader in the last 48 hours (have to account for the time zone differences).

Tim Ferriss of the 4 Hour Work Week, “The Grand Illusion: The Real Tim Ferriss Speaks” This was probably the first April Fool’s post that I read this year. Tim claimed that his blog for the last full year had been written completley by two virtual assistants that he outsourced from the Far East. His post made the claim that all he did with his blog was contribute a couple post ideas, some pictures, and some videos. He couldn’t even wait 24 hours before exposing the post, following it up only a few hour laters with his post wishing everyone a Happy Japanese April Fool’s Day. His post reached 140 comments and more than 280 diggs.
Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, “ProBlogger Launches PayPerTweet” Darren’s post was the second one to come to my attention and it came through, surprise surprise, Twitter. His post talks about how he has come up with the idea and launched a service called PayPerTweet, close to PayPerPost. The concept is that people get paid by advertisers or whoever to tweet about news or about a post, or to retweet what someone else said. Darren even provided some hints within the post that pointed to it not being a real service and even included the email address 142008@problogger.net as the contact address. Darren also did a follow up post “TweetBait, April Fools and Jokes on a Blog.” Darren explains that he was offered $20 to tweet about a website. He denied, but after talking with a friend, decided it would be a good prank to launch on the site. Darren’s original post brought in 100+ comments, 18 serious enquiries, a bunch of blog posts, and many tweets.
John Chow of John Chow dot Com, “John Chow Cola - The Official Blogger Drink” John had a pretty good post last year when he announced his “Last Blog Post” and said he sold TTZ Media for a lot of money. Anyway, as far as I remember, last year’s post got mixed responses - some believing it and some noticing right away that it was April Fool’s. This year’s post I must say - it is a little out there. I would fall for him stopping the blogging game and traveling over him becoming part of the Coca-Cola brand. Oh he still pulled down 140+ comments with the post.
Jeremy of Shoemoney.com, “Make 1,000.00 in 1 hour” I also caught this one through Twitter but was hesitant to check it out figuring that it would be a nice April Fool’s post. Anyway, I wanted to see what it was about so clicked through to it. Having a video posted up attracted more people to actually check it out I believe. Shoemoney took the great approach of the different radio and tv commercials that you see that are advertising something and then the static pops in and you are upset because you missed the phone number, address, or other important information. Some of the people commenting even asked him to upload the video to try to remove the static from it. I found his approach to the post to be the funniest out of the ones that I came across. Shoemoney got 120+ comments on the post, from people being pissed that he would do such a thing to people asking for him to reupload the video, to people wanting to know more.

Did you guys post an April Fool’s post on your blog? Did you encounter any other sites that had good posts to help celebrate the day? Comment with a link and I will expand on the list!

Tags: april fools day, darren rowse, John Chow, problogger, shoemoney, tim ferriss
Posted in Blogging, Rants / Random | No Comments »

Mar

The Four Hour Work Week – A must read for students in general!

Written by Chris on March 18, 2008 – 12:00 pm -

I know I had mentioned a while back in a post about my winter reading list that I was going to be reading The Four Hour Work Week (4HWW) by Tim Ferriss soon and would be posting a review of the book when finished. Well, I am not fully finished the book, however, I did want to put up a quick note letting you all know that the review is coming. The book is very detailed and an intense read for anyone that is interested in reorganizing their life and making major changes, so I want to be able to put together a review that is comprehensive enough to cover some of the major topics and point out some of the best information in the book. This will take some time!

Over the past week while cruising through the Caribbean, drinking beer, talking with the bartenders, enjoying the sun and different paces of life, and of course getting some sun burn, I found the opportunity to read through about half the book. If we had more time on the boat then I would have made it further – sorry but I had to experience the island excursions during my time as well.

Anyway, the book is a must read for student entrepreneurs and students in general! If you are looking for ideas on how to automate your life, work less, outsource your routine tasks, and evaluate what you really want out our your professional and personal lives, please get your hands on a copy today.

Keep an eye out for a full review of the 4HWW coming soon, hopefully within the next couple weeks. I intend to continue reading the book as much as possible over the next week to finish it up.

In the mean time, I do have a post coming up about how I am changing my thoughts on time management based off of some suggestions in the book, so look for that soon.

To be sure you know when the full book review gets posted and different posts about how I am putting into place the books tips, be sure to subscribe to the Dorm Room Biz RSS Feed!