Weekend Blog Roundup: Portfolio Careers, Minimalism and Making $$ on Amazon Associates

It’s late on Saturday night, and yes – Im feeling a bit too lazy to write something original, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite blog articles for the week…

WebWorkerDaily spotlights a new phenom in the world of career management: portfolio careers.  The idea is that many today (including yours truly) have a work life that consists of a string of loosely related projects that could be described as a portfolio. The post mentions the upcoming book And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career by Katie Ledger and Barrie Hopson, in which portfolio workers are described as “free-range humans” who are not “penned into an unhappy job-cage.”   Sounds pretty accurate to me.  Check out the full post here.

ProBlogger is a must-read if you are thinking of starting a blog – especially one that makes money. Darren Rowse posted a 3-part series on how to actually make real money with Amazon Associates (no small achievement, that).  He’s made a bundle and he’s sharing some tips… here,  here and here.  I’m guessing that there’s an ebook in the future on this topic and I will buy it.

Zen Habits has a wonderful post about striving for minimalism and a few pointers on how to get closer to it  – with one basic principle:  Omit Needless Things.

At the risk of this turning into a painting-in-a-painting sort of thing – IttyBiz’s Naomi Dunford posted her fav blog posts of the week.  I particularly enjoyed her views on giving things away for free, sales pages  and her copious swearing.  I don’t know if the post is from this week, but I read it this week and that’s all that matters.

Finally, Smashing Magazine posted this nice overview of corporate blog design trends, emphasizing how the design supports the purpose, such as product promotion, reputation management or corporate responsibility.

Enjoy!