So I have two options – adapt and change my approach to make it fun again or throw in the towel. Considering I have made a tremendous amount of progress in the three months that I have been doing this, I would hate to give up and lose the momentum that I’ve gained. But what is it that I’m actually shooting for here? I’ve spent the last few days re-evaluating why I am blogging in the first place…

Monetization – I’m certainly not blogging as a direct tool to generate income. Don’t get me wrong – there are some bloggers who make a lot of money blogging. It has become quite apparent, though, that the people who are able to successfully monetize their blogs (as in, income generation being their primary focus) live and breath their blog or have been at it so long that they have a bit of a head-start if you know what I mean.

They develop insane amounts of high-quality content on a consistent basis over a very long period of time and then spend the rest of their time immersed in a cycle of tweaking, testing, studying, learning, applying, promotion, etc. To be honest, I am not a point in my life where I have the time, discipline, or desire to do the things that are necessary to develop a highly monetized blog. I’m not saying I will not ever get there or that it wouldn’t be nice, but monetization is certainly not the top priority for me at this point.

Connection – Blogging was really fun for me in the beginning. A lot of it had to do with the novelty of having the first website that was entirely mine (I’ve had other sites that I’ve developed but were tied into past employment positions). But while that was fun, what was exciting was the CONNECTION aspect of it all. I started writing about some things that were on my mind and people started digging it. That was pretty cool. But what was even more exciting was getting introduced to other like-minded people and reading THEIR blogs. There were other individuals that not only took their own leaps of faith to go after what they wanted in life…but they also were giving me ideas on how I could take my “experiment” to an all new level. New opportunities and ideas seemed to open up to me and, more than anything, it was THAT aspect of blogging that completely appealed to me.

But somehow, I began to get caught up in becoming a “blogger.” I started to analyze stats incessantly and became a traffic whore. I began leaving comments on every blog that I could just to get traffic back. I stopped reading blogs that I actually liked and instead focused on blogs that could “help” me drive traffic. My content shifted from what was on my mind to trying to develop content that I thought would read or “spread” well. I started losing my own authenticity. I stopped getting involved with the conversations that I enjoyed and instead started promoting other blogs in the hopes that they would, in turn, promote me. Twitter stopped becoming a way to connect with others and became strictly a promotional tool.

And then I started stressing over post schedules, lengths of posts, keyword optimization, design, and all the other crap that goes into blogging. These things are obviously important if you want to get your name and your words out there…but I was becoming a slave to them and this is what was taking the fun out of it all. Plus, all of those efforts seemed to add very little to actually improving my readership and traffic. Most of my readers and traffic come from efforts and posts that I actually feel inspired to write. Go figure…

Listen, I know all of you who are reading this are probably saying, “dude, you’ve only been at this for three months. How can you possibly be burned out already?” Or maybe it’s, “suck it up, bro – if you want to blog, this is the shit you have to do.”

All I can say is that if “blogging” is always going to be like this than I will walk away now and not look back. It’s not worth it to me. I would rather spend my time actually living my life and making real connections with real people than being handcuffed to my computer fretting over stats, traffic, and reader counts. I would rather spend my energy developing new income streams than stressing over whether or not I can get two posts up by Thursday just because I somehow began to believe it was “necessary.”

So with that said, I am going to conduct a little experiment for the rest of this month. I am going to make this blogging thing fun again or scrap it all together. I am going to refocus on connecting rather than stressing over stats and traffic. To do this, I am going to break a few self-imposed “blogging” rules. Namely:

• No Post Schedule: I’ll post something when I have something to say. It may be once every two weeks or it may even be every day. I’m not going to stress about it. When I write or post a video, I want to be excited about it. Some of my posts may be short…some of them may be 3000 words. Who knows? I’m just not going to force content. We all have feed readers anyway so if you don’t want to read my stuff because I have a weird posting schedule, cool. No worries. But if you don’t mind sporadic posting times, than I’d love for you to stick with me.

• No Stats: I am not going to check my Google Analytics or Feedburner stats. I am also turning off my Alexa Sparky toolbar option. Obviously, forward progress requires some evaluation and tweaking of strategy but checking my stats every day isn’t going to change whether or not you read my stuff this month. Instead, I’m going to gauge my “success” for the month via my overall interaction and conversations with people. Worthwhile connections and exciting opportunities and ideas were what drew me to blogging in the first place so that’s where I am going to put my energy.

• Promotion: I am really thankful for everyone who supports and shares my material. Knowing that something I post resonates with people is a pretty cool feeling. And I love promoting your stuff if it strikes a chord with me. But there are just way too many GREAT blog posts for me to get around to all of them in a given week. We all lead busy lives – I’m trying to balance the development of multiple streams of income while at the same time still leading an active social life so I don’t want to feel obligated to read and promote EVERYTHING that comes across my reader and I certainly don’t expect you to do the same. Trust me, if I read something that I like, I will be the first one to promote the hell out of it. I just may not get to it and I hope everyone understands that.

Okay, enough of the rant. That’s it for now. I don’t mean to come off like this is such a big deal. Worst case scenario, I scrap the blog and keep on trucking without specifically documenting my progress. No biggie.

But I needed to get this off my chest for my own good. Like I said, I want blogging to be fun and exciting. I don’t want it to feel like a chore or a J.O.B. I want it to be exciting and I want it to continue to open doors to opportunities and other like-minded people…but I just can’t abide becoming a slave to it.

Paul

P.S.  If you liked this post please subscribe to the RSS feed using the button below. I would also love to hear from you – drop a comment if this post moved you in any way (or even if it bored you to tears). As always, thanks for following me on this journey…

The Moronic Graduate

Okay, quick story about this picture. This is me on graduation day from the University of Texas (Master’s Sport Management) in 2006. After let’s just say a bit of a rough night (finally stumbled home as the sun was coming up), I shot out of bed at 8:35am realizing that I was supposed to be graduating…in 25 MINUTES! I grabbed my graduation gown which was still in the bag and I was just coherent enough to get it out of said bag when I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to put my arms through the sleeves. Seriously. I slipped my arms through the sleeves only to find them sewn shut at the ends.

So, like any enterprising individual who is so hung over it doesn’t yet hurt, I grabbed the scissors and began to cut open some hand holes. It wasn’t until after I caused a mini-uproar on stage in front of my closest 3,000 friends and their families that I realized the arm slots were already cut…in the SIDES of the gown. Everybody else had nice, flowing sleeves and I looked like I was wearing Larry the Cable Guy’s graduation gown. To this day, my family likes to call me the “dumbest grad school graduate of all-time” (all in good fun, of course). Okay, now back to the review.

It has been a little over a month since my first ever blog post, “I Have Yet to Make a Single Dollar Online and I Just Quit My Job.” Over the course of this last month, I have…moved to a different city (again), moved in with a girl for the first time (it’s okay, she has a ring. It’s not my ring but…just kidding), left a job most people would kill for, and started my own online business with absolutely no past experience or realistic expectations of success. I have also been planning a destination wedding in Jamaica, a co-bachelor party in Vegas, and have been enrolled in two separate mentor / coaching programs. To say the last month has been a whirlwind is a bit of an understatement…

Sometimes, especially in the midst of turbulent change, we get lost in the minutiae of the day-to-day grind without acknowledging our successes and just how far we have really come. Taking a step back to reflect on and gauge my progression has always been a helpful tool for me to (1) acknowledge I am further along than I had given myself credit for (usually) and (2) to re-evaluate, recharge, and re-focus from a different perspective. With that in mind, I wanted to share my first month’s experiences as a full-time blogger with all of you. So, without further ado…here’s the progression of PaulNorwine.com over the last month:

Posts / Videos:
Not including this post today, I have written six articles and have even posted one cheesy 30-second video in the “About Paul” section. My posts have ranged from 122 words (I included a movie clip) to 1775 words (average of 1100) and I have touched on topics ranging from simplifying goal-setting methods and online business strategies to football, heat-seeking missiles, and even guys puking on my garage floor. I used to hate writing…but now it’s almost cathartic and I have come to realize I DO have a voice that I want to share (though you may wish I’d go back to being silent ).

Visitors:
Since my first post on August 10th, I have had 481 visits, 275 unique visitors, and 1282 page views of my blog. Considering I haven’t truly dedicated myself to driving traffic yet, I am relatively excited by these numbers. Last week alone I had 162 visitors (109 of which were unique) with over 371 page views. I have just recently begun to play around with twitter, StumbleUpon, and other traffic driving techniques so I am definitely looking to continue the upward swing.

Comments:
With 80+ comments spread over my first six posts I am definitely feeling the love. I know a ton of people struggle with getting comments in the beginning so I feel pretty blessed that people seem to be resonating with my articles (my first post alone has 30+). I have even started to get a few pingbacks with each of my posts (I didn’t even know what these were a couple of weeks ago). But I also know a lot of this has to do with the comments I have been leaving on others’ blogs. I always strive to provide relevant comments that add value when I write on others’ posts. I will never become “THAT GUY” who just copies and pastes generic comments on every blog he comes across in order to get backlinks to his site…those guys suck – the copy and paste comment method is not only shady, but it’s also easily identifiable and these people will not get very far in the long-run. But I digress, back to the review.

Subscribers:
I currently have 11 people on my mailing list and about 5-8 feedburner subscribers depending on what day it is. Not as high as I would like but it is still early, after all. And, I didn’t even have feedburner set up until last week so I can’t be too disappointed (but if  you would like to help out then by all means click here to receive my updated posts via email – yes, it’s a shameless plug but what the hell, we’re all friends). I have a few ideas that will hopefully increase my numbers in this regard and they all involve offering the best free stuff I can find so keep an eye out!

SEO / Google Rankings / Alexa Rankings:
It took me a while to figure out (aka, last Wednesday) that I not only needed to learn HOW to use the All-in-One SEO Pack on Wordpress but that I also needed to ACTIVATE the damn plugin. In fact, my pages have yet to be indexed correctly but they ARE starting to return organic results – I’m even getting a little bit of traffic from Google which is surprising considering (1) I only have 6 posts and (2) none of my pages have made it to page one yet (at least not that I am aware of).

But, despite not ranking too high yet, I have seen a dramatic jump in my Alexa ranking. After previously being unranked, last week I made it to the 2.43 millionth “most important” website only to LEAPFROG ALL THE WAY TO…1,896,583. Talk about ballin’! Okay, okay – this is nothing to get excited over but it’s still fun to think I increased my ranking by 500,000+ spots in one week. I have a ways to go to make it into the coveted top 100,000 but my Alexa ranking is something tangible that will always help me to track and evaluate my progression over time.

Alright, I have turned an 800-word post into a post of 1,300+ (what’s new?) so I am going to stop right NOW…or after this:

This exercise of looking back and evaluating my progress has shown that even though it has been crazy month, I have come further along than I had given myself credit for and it motivates me to push ahead even further this next month. I hope you will continue to follow me on my journey and I sincerely appreciate all the support and advice you have showered me with from day one. As always, I would love to hear your feedback – either on this post or my blog in general – so please leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter (paulnorwine). I also urge you (seriously, this time) to subscribe to receive post updates via email. I know that I will only reach my goals if I help enough people reach their own…and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Until next time…

Paul

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” -Rabindranath Tagore

If you are reading this, chances are you are either already running your own online business and are looking to take it to the next level or you haven’t yet started a business but are very much interested in doing so. Either way, we all struggle from time to time trying to figure out exactly how to get the ball rolling. So what’s the absolute FIRST step you need to take to start a successful online business?

Just jump off the cliff and get started…Listen, we all want to improve our current life situations. We all have aspirations and goals, values and dreams. We all have “big ideas” as to where we would like to see ourselves in the future. But most of us continually struggle with actually turning those dreams into reality. Building a successful online business is no different.

Maybe you have an idea that you are excited and passionate about but you don’t have a clue as to where to start. Maybe you have experienced some minor success in adding people to your list but are unclear as to how to monetize that list. Maybe you have studied and learned some great concepts that are sure to take your business to the next level but haven’t yet implemented them because you’re not sure which tips and strategies will be the most conducive to your success. Or maybe you are merely waiting for the “perfect time.” If any of this sounds familiar than you’re not alone; but if you don’t stop procrastinating and don’t get off your ass to do something about your current situation your dreams will be just that for the rest of your life…dreams.

So how do you begin to transform your dreams into reality? How do you go about building a successful online business? It’s as easy as (but a lot safer than) jumping off a cliff. You JUST DO IT! Yes, Nike’s slogan has become a bit played out over the years…but that certainly doesn’t mean the message is not applicable to your current situation. Every successful person, regardless of the industry, will tell whoever is listening that the reason they are more successful than the average Joe is because they TOOK ACTION. They visualized what they wanted and then they got STARTED.

I can already picture some of you saying, “No shit, Paul. Get started?…great advice, asshole. How about you give me something tangible that I can actually apply? How about you lay out exactly what steps I need in order to get started.”

I can’t. I won’t. Everybody’s situation is different. Everybody’s path is different. But the point is, picture exactly what you want and GO GET IT. Make it happen.

Who gives a shit that you don’t know the first thing about developing a loyal list of followers who will eagerly pay you money for information and content that you develop? None of the gurus knew how to either when they got started. BUT THEY GOT STARTED. They visualized the end-game and started to move their feet. Sure, they spent time developing a plan. But, unlike most people, they had the discipline to APPLY what they planned and they learned from their mistakes. They failed time and time again…but they failed FORWARD and kept moving. Each dream, each project started as an idea. And they didn’t KNOW how to make it a reality until they put one foot in front of the other and made it happen.

My mentor, Alex Jeffreys, has beaten me over the head with the statement, “don’t worry about getting it perfect, just get it going.” And I am glad he beats me over the head with this advice. Because sometimes I get too involved with the planning stage. Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I get wrapped up in the HOW to do something as opposed to actually DOING that something. But when I focus on the end-game, when I picture in my mind the exact outcome I desire, and then I actually go out and do something about it, I stop worrying about HOW I am going to do it and I JUST DO IT. Not knowing what I am doing at the time is just a minor obstacle that I have to get through. I don’t stress over the hurdles I know I will have to jump over – I just get off my ass and start moving forward. There is always time to cost-correct or modify and change any errors you make along the way. It’s better to fail forward than to succeed at a standstill.

It’s mind boggling how much I accomplish when I have this mindset of just getting it going. And it’s equally amazing to me to notice how stressed out, worthless, and ineffective I become when I let go of this mindset and get bogged down with the “HOW am I going to do it?”

So let’s do a little exercise. You are going to tell me what you want and I am going to tell you how to get it. Here we go:

YOU: “Paul, I can tell by your blog posts that you are an incredibly wise and sage man. If Buddha and Confucius were to mate and have offspring I think you would be the result. I want to buy a boat but I want to pay cash for it and not use credit. How can I do this?”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

YOU: “But I make minimum wage, work 14 hour days, and have $10,000 in credit card debt. How can I possibly afford a boat you jerk?”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

YOU: “I hate you. You suck donkey-balls.”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

Okay, you get the point. We don’t always need to know exactly how we are going to get where we want to go, we just need to know where we want to end up and then get going. And though I mentioned above that I cannot and will not lay out the exact steps needed to build a successful online business, I will help point you in the right direction.

First, become completely clear about what you want to accomplish. Not just in terms of money but in terms of what that money will afford you. For those of you who read my last post, “Rich Schefren Called Me Out…but I Stepped Up to the Challenge,” you will know how important this part of the process is. If you aren’t clear on what you want (and I mean dead-clear), you will continue to float like a ship that has set sail with no destination. How can you GET what you want if you don’t KNOW what you want?

The method I used to “get clear” was simple. I pictured what my “ideal life” in five years would be like. I pretended I was watching a movie in which I was the main character and the plot was my ideal life in five years. When you do this exercise (at least when I did it), you may think it a little lame. But then I got into it. I started to picture, down to every last detail, exactly what I wanted in five years. From the view and location of my dream home, to my cars, to my golf game, to my relationship with my soon-to-be-wife and kids. Picture it all. And write down what you see. Once you have it down on paper, turn it into a story. It doesn’t have to be a long story. Just long enough and detailed enough that if anyone else were to read it, they would (1) know exactly what you wanted in five years and (2) be intrigued enough to want to read more. Once you have the story, read it at least once a week. Imagine your life in 5 years but view it as an outsider…like it’s someone else’s life. Because, in five years, it WILL be someone else’s life…it will be the new you.

Secondly, if you haven’t already started a blog, do so now. Right now, right this minute. Get it going. It doesn’t have to be perfect. A blog is not the only (or even the best) way to make money online. But it’s a start and gets you headed in the right direction. Everything else will fall into place and you will follow suit. Don’t stress if you don’t know the first thing about setting up a blog. Neither did I…but I made the decision to get a blog up and running and made it happen.

Getting started and taking action for me was seeking out the help of a blogging expert who is a fellow Alex Jeffreys’ student by the name of Matt Wolfe (http://www.matthewwolfe.com/). Not only was he able to get my blog up and running in a matter of days, Matt was able to set it up to my exact design specifications. Now, some of you may think this blog design needs work…and it does. But it was my first go at a blog and Matt Wolfe was able to whip up exactly what I wanted and I can’t thank him enough.

If you need to get your blog up online, or if you need to learn more about the coolest widgets or how to do something specific with your blog, Matt is the guy who can help you. Lucky for us, he has a series of videos (Wordpress Classroom) that explain in great detail how to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING with your wordpress blog. Best of all, as I can attest, the videos are extremely easy to follow and are even short in duration (each video ranges between two and ten minutes). Even if you are a techno-phobe or code-phobe, Matt’s videos do an amazing job of walking you through each process step-by-step and you will have the know-how and tools to blog like the best.

So GO! Get going. It doesn’t need to be perfect…it just needs to get started. Whatever you are looking to do, get off your ass and get moving!

And I would love to know how it goes – drop me a comment if this post has helped you get those feet moving. Or, considering the extreme length of this post, if you started to nod off, drop a comment and let me know how I was able to help you have a great nap Until next time….

Paul

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