Category: Blog

The Zen Concept That Made Me Fall in Love With Blogging Again

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 9 Comments
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Photo by Em Lmt on Unsplash

Two and a half years ago I was just about ready to quit blogging.

First, because I thought there was nothing new to learn. I knew it all, I had reached the top of the mountain, and there was nowhere else to go from there.

Second, because I didn’t get much pleasure out of writing articles anymore. It was not challenging me anymore.

It was a rough time for me, considering that my income was a direct result of my ability to consistently produce new content.

I believe that creativity is directly tied to our ability to interpret work as play, and in order to do so, we must constantly work towards becoming better at our craft.

Since I thought I knew it all, there was no incentive to find ways of improving myself as a blogger.

Accidentally, I shared a couple of blogging tips with my readers. Until then, I had only ever wrote one article about blogging, way back in 2012, an while it was my most popular article ever, I had never thought of it as a topic worth writing about.

Talk about missed opportunities, right?

When I realized that my blogging tips were quite popular with my audience, I decided to launch The Art of Blogging.

It was supposed to be a side-hustle, nothing too wild, just so I could supplement my blogging income.

And the more I researched the topic, the more I understood that, in fact, I knew nothing.

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Would Hemingway Have Been a Successful Blogger?

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 6 Comments
Photo by Damla Özkan on Unsplash

“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.” — Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins

The average age of a Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature is 63.

The youngest writer to ever be awarded this prestigious award was Rudyard Kipling, at the age of 41.

There’s an often overlooked rule of the written word: you can learn how to write a good story only by writing an awful lot of bad stories.

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3 Creative Content Strategies to Grow Your Audience in 2020

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 5 Comments
Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

What is the secret ingredient to success as a blogger? Is it inspiration? Motivation? Is it the ability to treat blogging as an art or as a business? 

The answer is simple. The secret ingredient is strategy.

What are the strategies you deploy to reach your goals, both in terms of audience and engagement and also income?

What is your content strategy? What is your content marketing strategy? What is your networking strategy?

That’s why I decided to share a few creative strategies to help you grow your audience in 2020.

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Are You Serious About Blogging?

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 1 Comment

Quite a simple question, isn’t it?

Do you want at least five thousand new readers in the following six months?

Do you want to be able to create engaging content that gets commented on, shared, and mentioned by others?

Do you want to feel a deep sense of pride and fulfillment every time you check your WordPress Stats?

Well, that’s what The Blogging Bootcamp is for.

A compilation of all the hard-learned lessons of eight years of blogging, two years of working on a one-on-one basis with hundreds of bloggers, and countless failures, setbacks, experiments.

What do you get for your money?

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99 Percent of Bloggers Aren’t Aware of This Simple Rule

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 17 Comments
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

There’s this fascinating story about Pablo Picasso being able to produce a work of art in a few minutes.

There are multiple versions, and for whatever reason, I can’t seem to verify this, but apparently a woman once asked Picasso (who was either at a cafe or in a market) to do a drawing for her.

Picasso did what she asked, and then demanded some ridiculously high amount of money. Let’s say ten thousand dollars.

Of course, the woman protested, “But it only took you a couple of minutes to draw this.”

The old master corrected her, “It took me thirty years to learn how to draw this in a couple of minutes.”

Or so the story goes.

I’d like to use this story as a framework to discuss an often overlooked aspect of content creation.

It’s not just the skill, but also how that skill is perceived by others.

Blogging success is not just about years and years of practice, but about having an audience that’s aware of all those years of practice.

Let’s talk about the concept of social proof and how you can best use it to your advantage.

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How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (as a Blogger)

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 13 Comments
Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

If there’s no thing I’m quite the expert on, that’s alienating a large, engaged audience.

Seriously.

I started my first blog back in April 2012. By November the same year I had over twenty-thousand readers. I was earning about $100 every single day, and my articles were read by close to a thousand people within the first 3–4 hours of posting new content.

Somehow, in my quest to increase my numbers, both in terms of readers and income, I lost friends and alienated a lot of people.

Just take a look at this statistic:

Image courtesy of the author

Here’s how you can do it as well in a couple easy to follow steps.

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The Most Underrated Strategy for Getting More Readers

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 22 Comments
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Do you ever get frustrated by how few people follow your blog on any given day?

Where are all these readers? What are they doing?

Well, mostly they’re interacting with the content of those who took the time to engage with their content first.

That’s it. The secret.

Comment on other people’s articles first.

It is such an underrated networking strategy, and the truth is, leaving a few thoughtful comments each day is better than investing hundreds of dollars a month on advertising. A lot better.

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7 Key Differences Between an Artist of Blogging and an Amateur

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 14 Comments
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Do you sit around waiting for the muse to inspire you? Do you have trouble punching the damn keys? Do you often struggle to stay consistent? Are you looking for that magic trick that will turn you into a blogging superstar?

What about your content? Is it good enough? Why isn’t it great?

Depending on your answers to these questions, you might either be an artist of blogging or an amateur.

But what better way to find out than to go through the seven key differences between an amateur and someone who punches the damn keys like an artist, right?

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7 Unconventional Questions That Will Change the Way You Blog

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 8 Comments

Answering these questions will help you turbocharge your blogging game

As the cliche goes, if you want better answers, you should ask better questions.

The right questions at the right time can help you become aware of your mistakes, adjust your strategy, and begin your journey towards the blogging stratosphere.

No, seriously. The right questions at the right time…

Okay, let’s stop fooling around.

Here’s me asking you 9 questions that just might be the right question at the right time.

And you know that the right question at the right time…

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7 Deceptively Simple Steps to 10X Your Blogging Game

~ Cristian Mihai ~ 3 Comments
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Do you want to be a fantastic blogger? To share articles that have an impact on those who read them? To create a catalog of blog posts that you can be proud of?

Maybe you aren’t sure you have it in you to become a successful blogger. Maybe you think you don’t have the skills, the life experience, or the expertise to share content that significantly changes people’s lives.

Maybe you’re afraid that success as a blogger comes down to luck, or being friendly with the right people, or the ability to clickbait readers, and you’ll only be wasting your precious time and energy.

Well, you’re wrong.

And I’m not telling you this because you are a beautiful, unique snowflake whose particular set of experiences, feelings, and ideas are going to be the stuff history books are made of. No. I’m telling you this because blogging is a process.

You can get better. A lot better. You can level up, learn and develop new skills, and build an engaged audience.

All it takes is seven simple steps.

Continue reading “7 Deceptively Simple Steps to 10X Your Blogging Game” →