Believe it or not, being successful as a blogger does not mean blogging is somehow easy. Sometimes it can be fun, while other times it can feel like a daunting chore.
The truth is that we often focus obsessively on failure, but don’t realize that success has its own cons as well.
Curious to know how it feels to be a successful blogger? Read on. Continue reading “A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of a Successful Blog”
Visions have their own gravity pull.
What you think, you become. It’s not magic. It’s just psychology. It’s using the reticular activating system. If you want it so much that you think about it all day long, then you just might get it.
Yes, dreams are powerful. We are visual creatures. In a way, everything else is abstract. Vague. Uninspiring. Continue reading “[Blogging Mindset] Dream Big”
Imagine this, if you will.
An old woman, near the end of her life. Shivering in a fleabag apartment without heat in the winter. Walking four miles each way to the food bank, to carry home unmarked cans of mystery meat. Not even a cat to keep her company, because cat food is expensive.
Then one day she dies, and the neighbors find $2.7 million wadded up in her mattress.
It’s a natural human impulse to hold on to what we have. We figure we can handle whatever discomforts we might be facing now, and who knows how bad it could get down the line? So we hoard, saving up our riches for some mythical later time.
What does this have to do with writing?
Everyone who writes faces this at some point. We come up with a powerful idea, something we think will capture a lot of attention. This is the kind of content we know we need to grow our blog and our business.
So of course we can’t waste it on our measly 300 subscribers (or 100, or 12). We scribble our great idea on a Post-it so we remember to write it up when we hit some magic number of subscribers–500 or 1000 or 10,000.
The Post-it gets dusty. We never hit that magic number. Because we took our best content ideas and stuffed them into a mattress. We didn’t think our small audience was good enough for amazing content, so we never got a larger audience. Continue reading “Are You a Hoarder (of Ideas)?”
Personally, I like the term creative bankruptcy more, but no matter how we’d name it, not being able to do something you love, that normally works like a dream, is incredibly frustrating.
This is your passion we’re talking about, not some boring, mindless chore that must be done.
And then, if you’re a professional blogger or author, you’ve got deadlines, you’ve got to earn a living.
And if words have abandoned you, who are you going to be? You’re a writer, right? Writers write, right?
So who are you if you can’t write?
A nobody?
Deep inside, you know that’s nonsense.
Once a writer, always a writer. There’s no going back. Like being pulled from the Matrix.
But try telling yourself that late at night when all you managed to write for the day would fit comfortably inside a Tweet.
Now, there are many different types of creative block, and plenty of ways to tackle them and get back to writing.
But your time is limited, so we need to address this issue in a little less than a thousand words, so here are three critically important things for you to remember about being creatively blocked.
Continue reading “Struggling with Writer’s Block? Here are 3 Simple Steps to Beat it”
Do you want to become a better blogger? Silly question, eh.
In that case, I’ve got some great news. The best way to become a better blogger is to blog. And to keep blogging.
If this blogging thing is difficult and frustrating, then you must force yourself to do it, and do it, and do it, until you get better at it.
As bloggers, we have to produce words daily – even when we don’t feel like it. Even replying to comments or e-mails is a good way to enhance one’s creativity.
Then there are a number of thing we can do to become better at this blogging thing. Quite a few of them… Continue reading “50 Ways to Become a Better Blogger”
Stop lying. To yourself. To others. In the comments section of your blog. On other people’s blogs. In your about page. Stop lying.
“I don’t care if people read my stuff or not.”
“I blog for me, myself, and I.”
Lies.
If that were true, you’d be writing in a notepad. Or several. Hiding them away under your bed or in a closet. But you’re on the world wide web for a reason, and that reason is to be read.
But no one reads your blogs, so you have to lie. And I’d use that terrible, terrible cliche that the road to hell is paved with lies and good intentions and adverbs, but the truth is that lies are the bricks that help build hell here on earth. A kind of hell that you have to live with for the rest of your life.
So, yeah, stop lying to yourself.
The first step in solving any problem is recognizing you have one.
You have no readers. So what? I didn’t have any readers when I first started blogging.
But you have to admit that you are writing in the hopes of someone reading your words.
We all do.
And it’s okay.
There’s something you need to know, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.
Your blog is putting me to sleep.
I gave it about three seconds of my attention…
Nothing grabbed my eye. No headline inspired me to read. No images drew me in.
And here’s the thing: it was easy for me to rid myself of your insipid writing, your bland blog. Closed my Internet Browser and that was it.
It doesn’t have to be that way. A few tweaks here, a little more effort there, and your website will stop me in my tracks.
Here’s four ways not to be boring for you to try out this week. This will not be boring… Continue reading “How Not to be Boring (as a Blogger)”
A lot of folks approach the art of blogging as if it’s just about information. It’s about knowing who your readers are and helping them achieve their goals and dreams. It’s about offering them the information they need to go from point A to point B.
Well… did you ever have a teacher who was just awful? Boring? Made you hate whatever it was he was teaching?
Yup. Being a blogger(a good one at least) is not just about being a teacher…
Your content has to be entertaining.
If you don’t learn to entertain while you inform, your readers will find a blogger who can. Continue reading “Blogging is NOT Just About Information”
Be honest. You spend a lot more time on your WordPress Dashboard than you should. And most of that time is spent wondering why those stats are so low, why aren’t readers flocking to your blog, and why aren’t people liking, commenting, and sharing your content.
The truth is that the art of blogging is hard drudgery, but what should you do when your time and energy don’t seem to pay off?
Should you just keep punching those keys and hope for the best?
You need a proper strategy, not wishful thinking.
When your blog isn’t doing as well as you’d like, take a step back and analyze what you’ve done so far.
If you are in need of a plan that will help you win more readers, you first need to understand one reader. Just one.
Let’s start with getting to know this reader. Continue reading “No Readers? Here’s a Simple Way to go from 0 to Hero”
Magicians are skilled manipulators of perception. They can make people think something is moving when it isn’t or see things that aren’t there. Diverting attention this way and that, they can hide cards and rabbits or make objects appear from thin air.
Blogging is a little bit like that, depending on who writes it. Diverting attention with a little smoke and mirrors often draws readers inwards towards a certain conclusion or believing in what the author wants them to.
Now, don’t get me wrong – blogging isn’t evil. Not at all. But brilliant blogging is a bit like magic. Maybe a bit more than we’d like to admit.
Which means it’s tricky. Here are seven magic tricks of blogging. Continue reading “The Seven Magic Tricks of Blogging”
