Some people can do anything. I mean anything. In Japan they are called heta yoko suki. Jack-of-all-trades might be a good translation.

Wil.by is one of those people. He can do anything. That is, with the skill of his personal illustrator, (as opposed to a personal trainer who might make Wil.by exercise more) Benjamin, Wil.by can even do the Bharat Natyam.

Knowing I was going to speak on blogging in Thailand I asked Benjamin to create some images and slide backgrounds to go with my powerpoint presentation.

He did.

And here is Wil.by, demonstrating how to do the Bharat Natyam…with a Buddha and an elephant…both very prominent characters in the Thai culture.

I am very happy having a personal illustrator and I wonder out loud….do you?

One of the benefits…of many…is that I am able to create my own library of original images that I can place in my blog posts to individualize each blog post by changing the caption as appropriate.

Every blogger needs a library of images that are theirs and theirs alone. And when their blog grows, their brand will grow as well.

In time, others doing image search will stumble upon your images instead of you borrowing theirs….and that’s a good thing!

And who knows what kind of situation the blogger will eventually find themselves in?

I don’t even like soccer. I get the appeal of the sport. Someone once told me, “Put a ball in front of kid and watch what s/he does.” They kick it.

Soccer or football the most popular sport on the planet. Still I don’t care for it. But the Japan – US World Cup Final match captured my attention, too.

It was a match that was impossible for me, a blogger, to lose. I was going to be completely happy no matter who won. Really.

I am American. Made in America. 100% American parts.

Wil.by blogging about Japan - US World Cup Final

Both of my boys, Benjamin and Micah, however, were made in Japan with Japanese and American parts. I spent nearly 20 years in Japan and learned to love many things about the country. Not everything, of course. But then there are some things about America that aren’t all peaches and cream either.

I wanted the Americans to win. I have a patriotic streak as strong or maybe stronger than most. I gave Uncle Sam almost 5 years of service because I love my country.

I wanted the Japanese to win. They hadn’t beaten the Americans in 27 tries. They were smaller. Their country has been taking a beating in many ways…earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear disasters and the economy. Those little girls had a chance to give a nation a lift…and they did, they are. How cool is that!?

I love scrappy people. I love tenacious people. I love when little people beat big people just because they try harder.

It is this kind of person who can find success in the blogosphere as well.

Head down – write, write, write. Stay with it – write, write, write. And sometimes the small-time blogger can out rank the big time blogs if they write, write, write. I know it works. It worked for me.

Congratulations, Japan! Well fought America!

They laughed at me (and some even rolled their eyes) when I grabbed the microphone at a CEO roundtable event at the recent Asian Publishing Convention.

A group of 30+ CEOs from various publishing houses and platforms were bemoaning the fact that they could not make good use of the Internet to draw attention to their magazines and newspapers.

At one point the moderator said something like “I guess we all agree that the internet is not a good option for us. There is no way to monetize it. There is no way to get a viable presence online.”

Wil.by teaching blogging in Thailand

Up to that point, I had observed silently. But then I couldn’t take it anymore.

“My websites make money. I know how to build a presence online! I don’t know what any of you write about but I can pretty much guarantee you that I can get visitors to your sites. After all, I have had more than 1 million visitors EACH to 10 different and unrelated sites of my own. Count ‘em. 10 different sites.”

Stunned silence. A bit of shock perhaps.

All those stodgy old men in 3-piece or outdated suits and women dressed sharply in business suits weren’t quite sure what to do with this guy in shorts and a t-shirt with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread on it much less with how to respond to what I had just said.

The ‘debate’ had been pretty lopsided up until then. Paper print will be around for a while longer and online print is not really an option.

General Patton said, “If everyone in the room is thinking the same thing, then someone isn’t thinking.”

Well, I was thinking. And I was thinking I didn’t like what everyone else was thinking.

I do Meetups. I do workshops. I do speaking. I have an info-product coming out in the next few days that will tell you or anyone with a will the way to build an online presence…legitimately.

Since I made my presentation on blogging (attended by ALL those CEOs and a bunch of others) I have since been approached about visiting Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, India and Malaysia to teach people in those countries how to get online and how to get noticed.  Hmmm…

But for now, I am just happy to be back home in the U.S. Or at least I think I am home.

Rob Fulton of the Denver School of Music and Francis Wolff of Avoir Toutes Les Filles Que Tu Veux (I think this is French for Bill is cool and really knows blogging and SEO) and I are sitting in a room together in Mountain View, CA, the very heart of Silicon Valley, minutes from Google HQ and just miles from Facebook and Yahoo.

We are talking blogging and good SEO principles.

Wil.by demonstrating best blogging techniques

This particular meeting is fun for me as Rob and Francis are not coming to the blog world from zero. They know stuff. They know what works, what doesn’t, where time can be best spent and where money will fly if you don’t hang on tight.

They also know quite well that blogs can make a (more…)

I remember now why I don’t have a ‘real’ job. Why I don’t like commuting to and from a work place. Why I love being a professional blogger.

A couple of days ago some knucklehead in a big pickup truck pulled up to a red light. My wife was sitting behind her in her Mini Cooper.

Wilby blogging about BMW and Mini Cooper

It went something like this:

Knucklehead, “This red light is taking too long. Never mind. I’ll just back up, do a K-turn and go back the other way.”

Wife, “Agh!!! Stop. I am behind you!”

MiaMei (my 3-year old), “Mommy!!!”

Gong Gong and Poh Poh (in unison), ” ()&^&*%$^%&#” (That’s what Chinese sounds like when you scream. I think Mia wrote this down as she is learning Chinese from them this summer.

Mini Cooper, “OOOOUUUCCH!!!” Scrunch, scratch, scrape….

Big pickup truck, “Huh?”

So…fast forward to today…I got stuck in morning rush hour traffic while driving to a  BMW – Mini Cooper dealer looking to get a quote.

Bill, “Arrgghh!!! Get out of my way! Delete! Delete!”

See…when blogging, doing research online and such…if things slow down, you just hit the back button on the browser, close out the browser, or go somewhere else.

You can’t do that in real life, on the highway, when stuck in traffic…just hit the delete button or close out the browser…or back up. The pickup truck tried and look that where it got him.

I love walking 15 steps to my home office and blogging.

Tell me again. Why do you blog? And why do you love it?

One of the fun things about blogging for me is the world reach.

I get visitors from everywhere. Most bloggers with some traffic will see visitors from very remote places.

But, what is cool to me about blogging is that visitors don’t just come to me, I go to them in those remote places…. Physically go. Get in an airplane and go. See/meet people in foreign countries go.

Wil.by blogging on Thailand and Japan

I was in India last year at this time. In less than 2 days I will be on a plane to Japan – Narita, Tokyo, then Niigata.

Five or so days after that, back on the plane from Narita to Bangkok, Thailand where I will be speaking at the Asian Publishing Convention. There will be some 300+ print publishers and companies wanting to create an online presence. That is what I know how to do and what I will be speaking on there.

I had been to India before and I have been to Thailand…lived in Japan. So these are return visits. Still, way fun to be going back and renewing friendships and working with folk to change their lives, to change their worlds, to make a difference in the world.

That’s where blogging is taking me in the next couple of weeks.

Where does your blogging take you?

Ripplemakers.tv in collaboration with venue sponsor Community School for Music and Arts (arts4all.org) and co-organized by Layaco Media (layaco.com) and Photograffiti (photograffiti.net), will be holding its first photo exhibit and film festival free of charge in the San Francisco Bay Area on July 8, Friday, 6pm at the Finn Center, 230 San Antonio Circle, Mountain View, CA. 

Wil.by is a Ripplemaker

Main Contact: Carol Gancia, 415.515.1633, carol@layaco.com

I am fortunate to have two terminal degrees. What that really means is I stayed in school long enough that the administrators finally gave me a piece of paper to make me go away…twice.

I tell my blogging classes that a good writer will realize that just about everything has to do with everything.

It is important to be able to make connections between a variety of topics when writing or blogging for money.

It is easy for me, writing about Asia. No matter what happens and where, I can begin with “If that were to happen in (pick a country in Asia), then….

Collect butterflies? If Obama were a butterfly he’d remind me of …because he….

Write about Bible? I think it’d be interesting to compare Silicon Valley companies (where I live) with Bible characters. Google and Goliath. Yahoo and Jehu. And so on…

Wil.by puts on different hats, personas, depending on where he is, who he is speaking to, what he is writing about.

Here are 5 different Wilbys…one for each of five different topics.

Can you guess which is which?

Sports … business … everyday … Bollywood … Asian

Thanks for reading.

Doing the Bharata Natyam

Here’s a sneak peak of Wil.by in Thailand doing the Bharata Natyam.

Wil.by doing the Bharata Natyam

Uh, no. I won’t be doing the Bharata Natyam… I think I won’t be.

I am speaking at Asia’s largest print publishing convention in Bangkok next month.

Yeah, I get around a bit..stopping in Tokyo to meet up with a client on the way too and from as well. Also meeting some friends from when I lived in Japan. But that’s not the point of this post.

Benjamin Belew is the creator of Wil.by and the man who is able to put in character form the situations that I find myself in. He is also the one who dubbed his old man Wilby. And Thai Wilby is the latest.

When I get back from Thailand, I will share the final version. It is really cool.

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Thanks for reading!