FreeYouNow.com

5 Simple Rules Which Helped Me to Blog Daily for Over 6 Months And Still Going

by 6 Comments

I originally started blogging way back in April of 2006.

I remember when I first started my Blog I wanted to build the habit of blogging daily.

I managed to put together a few streaks throughout the years where I blogged for 10 days straight, 20 days straight or even 30 days straight …

… however, I was never able to stick to blogging daily for more than a few months.

Why?

For some crazy reason, SOMETHING always came up!

Meaning, I would be blogging daily for a period of time, and then one day some weird thing would happen like some emergency or some kind of unexpected situation where I wouldn’t get home until 2am in the morning, or I would have to travel somewhere last minute and I would miss one day of blogging.

Once I missed on day of blogging, that was it – my streak was broken and it became WAY easier to not blog for two days in a row…

… and then three days…

… and then my daily blogging habit would pretty much disappear…

And then I would re-start again, and go through the same cycle until I would have that ONE DAY where I would miss one post, and then my streak and habit would be broken.

I did this for almost 9 years of my blogging career, never being able to establish a daily blogging habit.

However as of Dec 30, 2014, just a few days before New Years 2015 I started a new daily blogging habit and have now maintained it for over 6 months without missing a single day.

Here’s how I did it…

Rule #1 – No Blog Post, No Sleep.

I started off by setting a rule for myself.

I can write my blog post at any point in the day, or night.

Knowing my schedule, I knew it wouldn’t be realistic to try to set a specific time during the day when I had to write my post as that would never work for me.

Too many things change in my life, day-to-day, for me to stick to a specific timed schedule.

Instead, I just made the decisions to not allow myself to go to sleep until my blog post for the day is done.

For example, I’m writing this post at 12:34am.  I could be in bed sleeping right now, but I’m not allowed to go to sleep until my post is done.

If I write my blog post after midnight, I set my publish time back to before midnight the day before so that my blog post publish dates are always one day apart.

This way I don’t have two blog posts showing up for one date and zero posts on another date.

I also allow myself to write or create video blog post post on ANY TOPIC and it can be ANY LENGTH, so technically if I wanted to I could write a one sentence blog post and publish that and then I would be allowed to go to sleep. 🙂

By giving myself this option to write any blog post or even to just embed a video as my blog post for the day, it eliminates ALL excuses for not being able write a blog post.

Rule #2 – No “Making Up” Posts

Another thing that tripped me up before was the belief that I could “Make Up” blog posts if I skip them one day.

Meaning, I used to think that I could skip one blog post one day and think to myself “Oh, I’m really tired, I’ll just skip this one post today, but tomorrow I’ll write two blog posts.”

That NEVER works!  It’s not the same thing.

If you skip one blog post, you break your streak and that’s it.  It’s over. 🙂

So this time around I told myself that I’m not allowed to even entertain such thoughts.  I either write a post TODAY or I break my streak.  There’s no “Making Up” crap allowed in my plan.

Rule #3 – No Shiny Object Chasing Allowed

Another thing that tripped me up before was that I would be happily blogging on a daily basis and then I would watch a video, or take some course from some Internet Marketing guru and they would teach some kind of super amazing marketing strategy for making money online which was supposedly better than blogging.

I would then look at that strategy, think about it, and think to myself “Hmm…this DOES sound like it could be more effective than blogging.  Let me put my blogging on hold for a bit and let me test this system out for a few weeks, and see what happens.”

And you know what?  Whatever that new strategy was, I would try it out and it would usually produce some quick results short term but then within 30, 60 or 90 days it would fall apart and I would then have to go back to blogging and start my momentum from scratch.

So this time around, what I told myself is that I would Blog daily and if I encounter any marketing strategies or business systems that are supposedly better and more effective than Blogging, I am totally allowed to try those strategies out and test them – BUT I have to still blog daily anyways. 🙂

This way, if the strategy works great, then that’s awesome, but no matter what I still do my daily blogging.

And if the strategy is a flow, then I don’t have to start all over again as I was still blogging daily even while trying out those other strategies.

Rule #4 – Surround Myself With Blogger Energy

Yet another thing that tripped me up before was when I would blog on a consistent basis for a period of time and then I would start hanging out with people who are NOT into blogging and their opinions and energy would affect my thinking in such a way that I would lose my interest in Blogging.

So this time around, I joined Empower Network – which is a community of like-minded bloggers, and every single day I plug into training, hangouts, audios and facebook wall updates from people in Empower Network who are also blogging and making money as bloggers.

By plugging myself into this type of energy, I stay inspired to keep blogging on a daily basis.

Someone once told me that if you’re an eagle, but you surround yourself with turkeys and you hang out with turkeys, pretty soon you’ll start to believe you’re a turkey and they’ll eventually convince you that you can’t fly!

So instead of being an eagle, surrounded by turkeys, I put a lot of energy and time into making sure I surround myself with other eagles who are making money as bloggers. 🙂

Rule #5 – No Excuses

For over 8 years I kept making up excuses for not blogging daily.

I can tell you though that every single excuse that I had seemed like a 100% legitimate “reason” for me not being able to blog that day… NONE of them seemed like excuses.

This time around I just told myself “no excuses”… NONE!

Not even the ones that seem “legitimate”…

… and you know what… in the past 6 months I’ve had about 50 situations come up which I could have EASILY used as a “legitimate excuse” (there’s no such thing) for not blogging that day.

Life gets in the way.  Stuff comes up.

But I don’t allow myself any excuses…not even the so called “legitimate” ones. 🙂

What’s cool about this rule is that once you make the decision not to allow yourself to have any excuses, your mind stops making so many excuses because it knows it’s a futile process of making them up.

The interesting thing too is that I hear other people who want to blog daily making excuses every single day.

Something always comes up.

The only decision you have to make is whether you’re willing to blog daily DESPITE things coming up every day, or will you allow those things to stop you?

What’s REALLY funny to me now is that it’s so clear to me how all my past excuses were all just a bunch of BS.  None of them were “legitimate”.

I mean, in the past when I would skip a day from blogging, because supposedly I didn’t have time to write a blog post, I still somehow found time to respond to emails, and post things on facebook, but somehow I didn’t have time to blog? No, that makes no sense.

I see it all the time today as well.  People tell me they don’t have time to Blog, but throughout the day they post 15 facebook wall updates, and 5 new pictures onto Instagram. 🙂

Blogging daily is not for everyone…

… but if you DO want to build an online business and you want to use the daily blogging strategy that has worked for so many ultra-successful bloggers, you MUST DECIDE to not allow yourself to accept ANY excuse your mind throws at you, regardless how “legitimate” the excuse is.

Summary

This is it.

These 5 simple rules I created for myself have been my secret strategy for being able to blog every single day for over 6 months now.

I created them, and I stick with them, and so far it’s been working out great for me.

What about you?

Are you blogging daily?

Would you like to be?

Leave your answers in the comments below.

Blog Income Report – June 2015

by 5 Comments

I’m a few days late, but here is yet another Blog Income Report – this time for the month of June 2015.

If you’d like to learn how I make money blogging, click here to learn more.

Blog Content Report – June 2015

Here is a recap of all the blog posts I wrote this month:

Again this month I’ve maintained my pace of writing one post per day for a total of 30 posts in the month of June.

Blog Traffic Report – June 2015

 

In the month of June I had a huge increase in my traffic as compared to previous months due to one of my blog posts going viral.

The traffic spike you see on June 9th skyrocketed my traffic for a few days as the post was shared around the Internet.

My other stats look low but they’re not.  They just look low as the graph’s scale changed with the traffic spike that shot my session numbers up to 2,000 visitors in one day.

 

As you can see in the number above I had over 200% more users in June as compared to May, primarily due to this traffic spike, but of course all my other blog posts also contributed to the number as well.

Here are my traffic stats for June 2015:

  • Total Users: 5,719
  • Total Sessions: 6,525
  • Total Pageviews: 8,278
  • Avg Session Duration: 42 seconds

Now let’s take a look at where my traffic has been coming from.

Blog Traffic Sources Report – June 2015

My blog traffic distribution changed this month with both Direct and Referral traffic going up significantly compared to the other channels.

  • Direct Traffic – 2,319 – 35.5%
  • Social Traffic – 1,325 sessions – 20.3%
  • Referral Traffic – 2,463 sessions – 37.7%
  • Organic Search Traffic – 425 sessions – 6.5%

And here is a 6 month chart of my monthly traffic since I’ve started using the Kalatu Blogging Platform:

Now for the fun part. 🙂

Blog Income Report – June 2015

Okay, so let’s get to the actual blog income report part of this post.

Before I start talking numbers though, just a quick income disclaimer.  My results are not typical, not guaranteed in any way, and you should check out my income disclaimer if that sort of thing floats your boat.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, here are my stats:

Total Gross Income – $3,341.66

Total Expenses – $943.11

Net Income: $2,398.55

Alright, now that we’ve gotten the stats and numbers out of the way, let’s dive into what’s actually been happening in more detail.

Affiliate Income

Once again my affiliate income increased again this month jumping from $598 in May to $732 in June with the biggest portion of that coming from my income from Empower Network.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, seeing this number going up is the most exciting part of my income for me because it represents my Empower Network’s team growth which is my main long term goal for this blog.

Don’t get me wrong, I love consulting income as well, which makes up the majority of my income, but 1-on-1 consulting work can never be as scalable as leveraged income from something like Empower Network.

I’m really excited to keep seeing growth in this are of my monthly income.

If you’d like to learn more about Empower Network and how I make money with it, click on this link here to learn more.

Mentoring / Consulting Income

Not much has changed with my consulting income this month.

I still haven’t decided whether or not I want to take on any more consulting clients in the future as I want to primarily focus my time and energy on growing my Empower Network team.

Expenses

My expenses this month did go up slightly with a few domain renewals I had to get done and some consulting services I invested in, but outside of that they’ve been pretty stable.

My Blogging Goals for June

Here were some of my main goals for June:

  • Complete another month of daily blogging – Check!
  • Keep my diet & fitness plan on track – Check!
  • Launch a new team membership site for my Empower Network Team – Check!
  • Continue to grow my Empower Network team – Check!
  • Take on at least 5 mentoring students within my Empower Network Team – Check!

Summary

To summarize, my blogging income continues to slowly grow at a steady pace and I’m really looking forward to seeing my Empower Network income starting to grow at a more exponential rate as I mentor and teach my team-mates how to make money with their blogs as well.

If you’d like to join my Empower Network team and get mentored by me on how to make money by blogging, click here to learn more.

 

How to Make Money Online Without Quitting Your Job

by 3 Comments

Are you looking for a way to make money online without quitting your job?

I know a lot of business systems out there try to encourage everyone to quit their jobs and to focus 100% on just building that business.

That may work for people who have some savings set aside or who have very few responsibilities or expenses.

However, for the majority of people, the added stress of quitting your job may prove to be too much when trying to start a new business.

How I Quit My Job and Struggled For 2 Years

Back in 1997/1998 I joined a network marketing company which just happened to be in the financial sector and in order to be able to make money with this company I had to get licensed as an insurance agent and mutual fund sales rep.

Unfortunately, at that time the laws here in British Columbia were such that they required anyone who wants to qualify for such licenses to be FULL TIME in the industry in order to do so.

So even though I had a stable job, I was forced to quit my job in order to pursue my new business full time.

I went from making a full time income, to making NO income overnight, and I tried to build my business with no savings, no income coming in and no customers (can’t sign on customers until you have a license).

At first I thought that this would work out really well as I now had a LOT of time to focus 100% on my business without the distraction of having to have a job.

However, as time went by I started to realize that building up my income may take a lot longer than I thought.

First of all, since my business required me to see clients in the evenings or on weekends when people themselves were home from work, the extra time I had from not having a job during the hours of 9 am – 5 pm Mon-Fri, didn’t really amount to any benefit anyways since I couldn’t really see clients during those times.

So if the laws didn’t restrict it, I could have easily had a day job which could have helped to pay my bills while I built my business.

Slowly I started developing a client base and started making some money, but it wasn’t anywhere near the amount I needed to cover my monthly expenses so I just kept getting further and further into debt.

After two years of trying to struggle with building a business from scratch, with no money and no savings and living off of credit cards I decided to do leave the financial services industry because of it’s ridiculous regulations.

How I Smartened Up and Got a Job Again

I got a job in the technology sector and was able to get rid of my financial stress by paying off my debts and actually having some money from my job to invest in the various businesses I started, which helped me to grow them much faster than when I was broke.

Over the years I have had quite a few people ask me if I think it’s a good idea for someone to just quit their job and focus on their new business full time right off the bat.

Everyone’s situation is different, but generally speaking I usually tell people that I do not believe it’s a good idea.

Personally I have found that it is much better to build a second income stream from an online business without having to quit your job.

Only once your second income starts generating at least 50% – 90% of your job income do I think you should consider quitting your full time job.

One of the reasons why I believe this is because the financial stress of quitting your job and having NO money at all coming in, will usually far outweigh any benefits associated with having more time to run your business without a full time job.

Meaning, I think you can be more successful investing 20-30 hours/week after work and on weekends into your business, stress free since your job pays your bills, than to have 60-70 hours/week available for your business but to be spending 90% of that time worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills.

The truth is that most business, especially when you’re just starting out MAY require you to invest some money into them, and any profits that you generate from your business may need to be re-invested back into the business to help it grow.

If you quit your job, and try to live entirely off of the earnings from your business, you’re essentially stunting and slowing down the growth of your business.

Best Way to Make Money Online Without Quitting Your Job

If you’re going to keep your job, and build your business in the evening and weekend, you WILL need to treat the way you build your business a bit differently.

Because your full time job will be taking up 40 hours out of your week which you could be spending on your business, you’ll want to invest in some time saving systems to ensure the remaining time you DO have set aside to build your business is utilized wisely.

Meaning, you have to stop thinking that you’re going to do everything yourself, and start investing in proper training, proper tools and a proper system for making money online.

The best system for making money online which gives you the tools, the training and the entire system required to start making money online is Empower Network.

It has a proven track record and it will save you a tonne of time and energy.

More importantly, it will allow you to start building an online business making money online, without having to quit your job!

Then, once you build up that income to a level you’re satisfied with, and you set aside some savings, then you can decide if you want to keep your job and just keep saving the extra money you’re making, or whether you want to then quit your job when you’re ready.

To me this is a much less stressful, and more fun way of building an online business, especially if you have responsibilities and bills to pay.

To learn more about the Empower Network system and to join my team, click here to watch a free video.

 

P.s. I’m currently accepting 5 more mentoring students for my “Boss Maker Mentoring Group” where I personally coach people to get to the point where they’re making $3k – $5k/m with Empower Network so they can decide what they want to do with their jobs at that point and the move forward to the next level.  If you join my Empower Network team now you can get access to this group ( a $5,000 value ) absolutely free at no additional cost.

(Note – My group is for serious people only, who are ready to build a serious income online.  Results are dependent on your individual efforts.  See our income disclosure if you’d like.)

What Are Rich People Like?

by 1 Comment

When you think about a typical “rich person” in your mind, what images and qualities pop up?

From your perspective, is the typical rich person a nice person or are they mean?

What motivates them?

What are their deepest desires?

What are they like?

What do they like to do in their spare time?

Are they male or female?

How old are they?

What kind of clothes do they wear?

What kind of car do they drive?

Where do they live?

What kind of diet do they follow?

Are they fit?

Are they fun?

Are they honest?

Do they have integrity?

What are their friends like?

What’s their net worth?

What do they do for a living?

When you ask yourself these types of questions about “rich people” where do you think these answers are coming from?

Do you personally know a lot of rich people and so are your answers coming from personal experience?

Or is your opinion of what rich people are like based on what you read on the Internet?

Or is it based on what your parents  and friends told you growing up?

Or is it based on what you’ve seen in movies?

When we think about the typical “rich person”, we all have a different idea and image in our minds of what that person looks like, how they behave and who they are.

For the majority of us, we have been programmed by society, by movies, by our parents, teachers and friends, and by the mass media to have a certain image of “rich people”.

When you see someone driving a really nice car, do you think to yourself “Wow!  This person must have a lot of integrity and must have done something wonderful to make their money so that they can afford a car like this!”, or do you think to yourself “Drug dealer!” 🙂

Where does that type of programming come from?

If you want to make a six or seven figure income online or more, do you realize that achieving this goal would put you in the income bracket where a lot of people would consider you a “rich person”?

How do you think people would feel about you if YOU were driving a $250,000 car?

How would your friends feel about you if you were making more money in a month than they do in a year?

For most people who grew up poor or middle-class, we’ve been programmed to NOT like people who are rich.

One of the challenges of becoming financially successful (ie. RICH) is to overcome some of this programming.

We have to re-condition our thinking around who we believe rich people are, and we have to start believing that rich people have the same desirable qualities you would want to have, instead of seeing them as someone like Ebenezer Scrooge!

Be honest with yourself… when you close your eyes and try to imagine a “rich person” what pops up?

If the image of a “rich person” that you see in your mind is something undesirable, maybe that is why you’re not rich yet?

Maybe you’re afraid that if you become rich, you’ll become the person you see in your mind.

Something to think about.