What is the worst thing that can happen if you ask someone a yes/no question? They say no or they ignore you. That is all. No massive riots occur outside of your home, you’re still alive, and everything in the Universe is still operating normally.

Overcoming the fear of rejection is undoubtedly one of the hardest, but one of the most important things you will ever do. Despite the fact it is so important many people don’t even try to battle the fear of “no”. Instead, they make excuse after excuse to not ask someone something. They let it run their lives, which is plain stupid.

Here are some tips to help you overcome the fear of rejection:

The Worst Outcome Is Nothing - The worst things that can possibly happen if you ask someone a yes/no question is they say no, or they ignore you. And do you know what? That outcome is nothing. There are much worse things in this world than “no”.

Rejection Adds Strength - The more you get rejected the stronger you get. Why do you think there are marketers that don’t have a problem going around asking for links and reviews like it’s no big deal? They learned early on not to fear rejection, and they realized each “no” is a learning experience.

Get The Right Mindset - There are 6.5 billion people on this planet. Odds are someone is going to say yes. While it might be depressing to go around thinking “only one person out of 6,500,000,000 is going to say yes”, thinking “someone WILL say yes” is much better. Getting the right mindset is half the battle. Be optimistic - not pessimistic.

What Will Happen If They Say Yes? - I tend to believe that it is in our nature to always assume the worse. “What if she says no?”, “what if they don’t want to link to it?”, “what if I don’t get the job?”, are all perfect examples of that. Well, have you ever thought about what would happen if they said yes? Maybe that “yes” will be exactly what you need to succeed? Why not take a chance and ask the question?

You’ll Never Know Unless You Ask - You’ll never ever know the answer unless you ask the question. This may seem obvious - but to many people it is not. If you want to know something then ask, it isn’t hard to do.

Don’t Overthink It! - Perhaps the most crucial tip I can give you is to not overthink the situation too much. Thought is what makes us human - but at the same time thought is what holds us back. Overthinking the situation will always lead to fear of rejection. Just ask - there is nothing to worry about - you’re not going to all of this sudden die if the person says no. If they say no, life will go on as normal, and you can use it as a learning experience.

If you want to see an example of overthinking the situation, here is a rough draft of an e-mail I got a while back:

I liked your blog and linked to it from mine. If you like my blog could you link to it too? Linking to each others blog gets you better search rankings and will help us. Thanks bye

All they had to say was “I thought you might like this article I wrote” or “You might be interested in my blog…”. There was no reason to go on and on about search rankings and junk - most bloggers are busy people and don’t have the time to read long e-mails.

About two weeks ago I wrote a post about blocking Google Image Search from getting your images.

Just in case anyone out there is curious - image theft/bandwidth leeching has dropped pretty much 100% since blocking it. This chart represents the number of new bandwidth leechers each day (as reported by Thiefinder):

And guess what, the site is still growing. If that doesn’t convince you how pointless Google Image Search is I don’t know what will. It’s a bit like submitting your blog to 5,000 RSS directories - it hurts more than it helps. All it does is result in theft, theft, and more theft.

What Would Google Look Like If It Was Optimized For Google?

So true, so true…

Do You Disclose Affiliate Links?

To be honest I am SHOCKED at the number of people who say they redirect their links and such. Personally I think anyone who tries to hide the fact they are getting paid is scum, absolute scum. I think it is also bit foolish to not disclose the links (unless it is obvious, like an ad), but I don’t mind that as much as purposely hiding them. Money changes everything - including people’s opinions about products.

The Virtues Of Posting Less Often

Mohsin has pretty much convinced me posting less often is better - and I want to try my best to do it. Problem is now I am doing weekly blog reviews in addition to the regular content here, so I’ll probably still be posting daily.

A Secret to Profitable Blogging - Trending Up Over the Long Haul

Darren talks about treating blogging as a long term thing and to not expect huge, immediate results. It takes a long time to go from nothing to something.

PC Magazine Top 100 Favorite Blogs

Nusuni Dot Com didn’t make it on there, oh well. Maybe next year?

Being Stupid And Litigious Is No Way To Go Through Life

A classic case of copyright misconception and how NOT to handle legal issues. Extortion, anyone?

Judge to Porn-Peddling Spammers: You’ve Got Jail

Some spammers have finally been sentenced to jail for five years for sending spam mail. Two down, 5000 more to go.

One thing that you probably haven’t thought about is how much energy your blogging activities can use and how your computer may be in pain from those long nights of writing. Here are 5 ways you can help maintain your computer and make it use less energy:

1. Unplug Electronics When You Are Going Away For A While - If you are going away on vacation, unplug things like computers, TVs, air conditioners, etc. They still draw quite a bit of power even when turned off. If you use a surge protector this is easy, just turn it off or unplug it. This also keeps your electronics from getting fried if your house gets struck by lightning while you are away.

2. Optimize Your Computer’s Energy Settings - Most OSes these days let you set when to shut off your monitor, when to goto sleep, hibernation, etc. If you often walk out of your office for more than a few minutes, simply set your monitor to shut off after 5 or so minutes. Do not, however, set your computer or hard drive to sleep too quickly. Making a hard drive turn on and off all the time causes it die much quicker than it should, so I’d recommend setting your hard drive to shut off/put your computer to sleep after 15 to 20 minutes.

3. Don’t Have Peripherals Turned On Unless You Need Them - There is usually very little reason to leave external drives, speakers, and other peripherals on all the time (and if you go long periods of time without them, unplug them as well). A few watts here and there saves quite a bit of energy.

4. Clean Out Your Computer - You don’t have to be an electronics expert to clean out your computer. Simply undo some screws, pop it open, and check for dust buildup on any fans, and the heatsink on your processor. This will help prolong the life of your computer and it will reduce heat buildup. Just don’t use water, if you must use a liquid use Rubbing Alcohol.

5. Ditch That CRT! - Unless you really can’t afford a flat screen monitor, there is no reason to use a CRT monitor anymore. They heat up more, use more electricity, cause eye strain (I can’t even use the things without getting a horrible migraine), and they are bulkier than flat screen monitors. You don’t have to get super expensive high end monitors either, most consumers will not notice a big difference between high end monitors and the cheaper ones. Many times the panels are made by the same manufacturer (a bit like drug companies, many of them make the brand-name and generic drugs using the same materials and same machinery in the same factory).

To finish the Back To The Basics series with a bang I’ve decided to do something a bit different and discuss some slightly off-topic (but related) topics all on this single post. So, here we go:

Blogging Is Cheaper Than Starbucks

Whoever says blogging is an expensive hobby has no clue what they are talking about. Here’s a breakdown of my bills for the past year of blogging:

Web Hosting (aff-link) - $119.4
Domain - $10
Advertising- $20 (I experimented with this mostly)
——————————————
Total - $149.4

Now if a poor starving 18 year old developer can afford that surely everyone else can (oh and by the way, please donate! I really am broke). I can see how some single mother raising a family of 3 on minimum wage might not be able to afford it, but for everyone else there’s no reason to call it an expensive hobby.

Stop buying that $4 coffee at Starbucks and you’ll have no problem getting an extra $10/month.

And if you really don’t have an extra $100/year, then you can always use a free blog hosting service like Blogger.

Be Ethical With Your Blog’s Monetization

A thing I tried repeating over and over in this series is this - be ethical. Don’t hide affiliate links, don’t lie about getting paid to say something, let your readers know what is going on! It is incredibly scummy to go around hiding links behind redirects, and it is scummy to claim you are not getting paid for a review when you are.

You Don’t Have To Be A Good Writer

I don’t consider myself a good writer at all. Back in school I barely passed grammar and English class by one or two points. Simply put - I suck at writing. Despite that this blog is always getting more and more popular. You don’t have to be a good writer to become a popular blogger.

MySpace bloggers - or as I like to call them: the “HAHA LOLZARS SHEZ HOTZ BOOYA” crowd - are a perfect example of that. Even the popular MySpace users write like 2 year olds.

Respond To As Many People As You Can

If someone replies to one of your posts or comments, take a second and reply to them. It lets them know you care, and believe me it’ll make you feel better as well (and it does help to improve growth quite a bit). Of course if you get to the point of getting 5k hits a day and 50 comments/day this advice is pretty useless (and if you get to that point, don’t forget to link here ).

Be Careful What You Say

Defamation lawsuits are very real and are becoming more common due to the explosion of user-generated content online. Be careful what you say.

Defamation occurs when you say a serious lie about someone else. Saying something like “He’s a stupid fool” isn’t defamation, but “He’s a lying raping crack-head” is (unless the person actually is, in which case get them some help, pronto!). Just be careful, alright?

Make Your Blog Personal

Even if you are running a corporate blog, your blog should be personal. Blogs that are nothing more than “do this and this and you’ll get money” are quite boring and have low readership rates because of that. Ever read any of Google’s blogs? Each blogger has their own writing style, so they don’t sound like robots in every post.

Relax

And perhaps my final chunk of advice would be relax. I had to learn to become patient to blog - you may have to as well. It isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme - it is something that takes months and years to get good at.

There is still one more post left in the series. Remember to come back tomorrow!