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My Mindset Hack Which Solidified My Commitment to Blogging Long Term

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As someone who has been blogging for over 9 years now, one of the things that has fascinated me for a long time is trying to understand the seemingly endless motivation I and many others have for blogging.

I know I didn’t start out having this motivation when I first started blogging.

It’s a mindset that I cultivated inside my mind which now allows me to blog consistently for long periods of time, without giving up, while so many other people quit.

So what is this mindset?

What set of beliefs do I have inside my mind which allow me to continue blogging and to be committed to it for so long?

After searching for an answer to this for quite some time, I think one of the PRIMARY beliefs and mindsets that I have related to my blogs is one of LEGACY.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

When I speak with most people who are starting a Blog, their mindset and thinking focuses mostly on what blogging can do for them today, tomorrow or the next day.

Meaning, their thinking is very short term and they think about Blogging in terms of “If I invest my time and energy writing this blog post, what do I get out of it now?”

Nothing wrong with that line of thinking, and I think that was as well…

…however, there’s also another mindset that I have about Blogging that goes far beyond that.

When I write my Blog posts, I also think about how my Blog post might be able to help someone today, tomorrow, a week, a month, a year or even 500 years from now.

I believe that we’ve reached a point in our civilization where everything we publicly publish on the Internet gets recorded and stored forever.

Therefore, when I write a Blog post I see it as a complete possibility that someone even 500 years from now may be reading a Blog post I write today or a video that I produce, no different from how today we read the works of authors who wrote things hundreds of years ago.

In fact, since my spiritual beliefs are that who we really are is an everlasting Soul and because I believe in re-incarnation, it’s entirely possible that perhaps one day I may be drawn to read my own Blog posts in another incarnation!

At the very least I can see the possibility of at least some of the content that I produce on my Blog outliving me and having a positive impact on someone even after I’m no longer here.

Just the same way that a person like Bruce Lee left his legacy of films, interviews, philosophies and his martial art – Jeet Kune Do – for generations to consume and be inspired by, I believe every one of us has the ability to create content as Bloggers or Video Bloggers and leave our own legacy with it.

For me Blogging is a passion and it’s a way I generate income for myself and my family, but it’s also something I look at as a way to leave a piece of myself as a legacy for future generations.

I find it inspiring to visualize someone today, or a month from now, or 1 year from now or 50 years from now or 100 years from now reading one of my Blog posts, or watching one of my videos and getting value from it.

I think it is because I have essentially programmed my mind to believe THAT scenario as an entirely realistic possibility, that I find the motivation to keep Blogging while so many other people quit.

The reason being is that the way I look at it is even if I write a Blog post today, and it doesn’t generate any income for me today or tomorrow or it doesn’t get a lot of comments or responses, or even if Google doesn’t rank it well in their search engine – it doesn’t really matter, because I know that if I put positive intention and energy into it, my Blog post WILL help someone somewhere at some point in time.

If not today, maybe tomorrow, or the next day, or 500 years from now.

I have that faith because I’ve conditioned my mind to believe that, and that belief helps me to continue to Blog and to ENJOY the process of Blogging. 🙂

What about you?

Have you found something that inspired you to continue Blogging long term?

If so, what is it?

3 Reasons Blogging is Better For Lightworkers Than Posting on Facebook

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One of the more common reasons that people say that they don’t want to start a Blog is because they say they don’t have the time.

We all have busy schedules and lives, and I totally understand the time commitment required to blog on a regular basis.

However, I often find that the very people who say that they don’t have time to Blog, are constantly posting and sharing pictures, videos, and writing multiple-paragraph posts on Facebook.

This is especially true for Lightworkers – people who have a desire to positively impact our planet.

Most Lightworkers I meet have a message inside them, and they desire to share that message with as many people as possible to impact their lives in a positive way.

A Blog is an awesome outlet for that with many benefits.

Most Lightworkers who don’t have a Blog though, will often put in a lot of time posting positive things on Facebook and sharing them with people.

They feel that deep desire to share and help people, and they try to use Facebook as a platform for that.

Here’s why that is NOT a good idea, and why starting a Blog is MUCH better.

#1 – Blog Posts Can Grab Attention Better

The truth is that when someone posts a paragraph or multiple-paragraphs of text on Facebook as their status update, trying to share a positive message with people, most people will simply ignore and scroll right past that status update.

People on Facebook are more and more becoming conditioned to just keep scrolling and scrolling and to quickly look at pictures, or perhaps a video that grabs their attention, but any amount of text beyond a few words usually gets ignored.

If you take your message and convert it into a Blog post (just like this one), and you share that blog post on Facebook, there is a much higher chance that someone on Facebook will actually read it because you can write a headline which grabs someone’s attention and include a picture as well.

Once someone reads the headline and sees the picture you posted with your Blog post, if they are interested in reading it, they will click through to you Blog and read the actual article ON your Blog where they are much less likely to get distracted by Facebook.

This means that the hard work you put into sharing your positive message is much more likely to be seen by your Facebook friends, simply by taking the content you were already going to be creating for Facebook and making a Blog post out of it.

#2 – Facebook Posts Have a VERY Short Lifespan

When you write a post on Facebook, not only is a very tiny percentage of your audience actually exposed to it, but also that message has a VERY short lifespan.

A Facebook message is usually posted, and shows up in some of your friend’s timelines, and sometimes just a few minutes later it disappears forever.

Of course people can go to your Facebook profile page and scroll through your posts to try to find an older post you posted, but very few people actually do that.

The majority of people on Facebook can barely keep up with their own Facebook wall, so they’ll usually never bother trying to dig through your posts to see if they find something interesting.

The truth is that once you post something on Facebook, it has a very short and limited lifespan, and then that message is gone.

Contrast that with writing a Blog post.

Once you write and publish a Blog post, which only takes a few extra minutes as compared to posting the same content on Facebook, that Blog post can live on the Internet forever!

For example, this Blog post and the hundreds of posts I’ve written on this Blog are indexed into the Google search engine and can potentially be found by people at any time, any day, anywhere in the world.

I have people visiting my Blog and reading Blog posts that I had written months or years ago.

Every Blog post that I write has the potential to positively influence someone at any time, anywhere in the world.

In fact, since there are a lot of Internet archives sites which store public date from the Internet, it’s entirely possible that people might still be reading my Blog posts hundreds of years from now.

Imagine writing a positive Blog posts and having your great, great, great, great grandchildren reading it a few hundred years from now.

How cool would it be if YOU could read stuff that was written a few hundred years ago by one of your ancestors?

That’s entirely possible with Blogging today, but I really doubt anything you write on Facebook will survive that long since it’s hard to even find something that was posted on Facebook a few days ago!

#3 – Blog Post are Indexed by Google and Searchable Beyond Your Friends List

When you write a Blog post, Google will index your Blog post and it’s possible for people all around the planet to find your content.

So if you share something positive, it’s possible for ANYONE on the planet to benefit from that message.

When you post a post on Facebook, only a small group of people are exposed that message for a short period of time and then it disappears.

As a Lightworker, any time and energy you put into sharing a positive message in a Blog post can help an exponentially higher number of people than posting the same message on Facebook.

As an example, here’s a map of the world showing which countries in the world have had people visit my Blog.

Any country in blue has had some visitors to my Blog.  As you can see, besides a few countries I’ve had visitors from almost every country on the planet!

And this is just since the beginning of this year.

Your content simply won’t get that kind of exposure from your Facebook post updates unless you have a massive Fan page setup with tens of thousands of followers.

 

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There are just a few of the reasons why Blogging is so much better than posting to your Facebook wall.

I’m not saying that every Facebook update post is worthy of a Blog post, but from what I’ve seen from people who are Lightworkers, a LOT of the stuff that they write on their wall could easily be turned into a Blog post with just a little bit more effort and produce a LOT more benefit for the world AND to the person writing the content.

If you’d like to get started as a Blogger using the ultra-easy and highly-effective blogging platform – Kalatu – click here to get started.

Be Present Where Your Target Market Is

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I often hear people talk about two pillars of building a successful blog being consistency and value.

Meaning, the advice to bloggers most often is to create valuable content and to do it on a consistent basis – ideally daily.

Although those two pillars of blogging are important, there is another aspect to blogging that a lot of people ignore – being present where your target market is.

Let me give you an example.

A few days ago I bought a new car.

I still have my old car which has a blown transmission / differential.

The going rate for a car like mine in working condition is about $3,000 – $6,000.

Now, since my transmission is blow I’ve been wanting to get rid of it for much cheaper, like around $500 – $1000 or so.

I talked to few different friends I know who I thought might be interested in the car and was willing to sell it to them for ultra cheap – like $500.

After a few days of talking with different people, I still had nobody interested in buying the car.

I KNOW the car is worth more than $500 but I just want to get rid of it, and that is why I was willing to sell it for that cheap to one of my friends.

Nobody wanted it though.

I had something of value, but I was presenting that value to people who weren’t interested in it – and got nowhere.

So this evening I decided to put the car up for sale on Craig’s list, as I know that is where the target market for buying a car like this hangs out always searching for good deals on cars.

So I posted an ad out for the car for $900 and within about 6 or 7 minutes of posting the ad, my cell phone blew up with text messages and phone calls.

Now I have someone coming tomorrow morning to pickup the car.

I had to pull the ad down as I was inundated with calls and text messages.

That is the power of taking something of value and making it visible to the right target market.

Blogging works the same way.  You can write the most valuable blog post, but if you don’t learn how to properly market your blog posts to your target market, and make them visible and available to people who are looking for that specific type of content, then your blog will remain invisible.

Here’s another example of this principle at work.

My other blog – TabletopGamer.com – has a Facebook fan page where I started posting my blog posts after I re-launched the blog a few months ago.

After re-launching the site, I started creating new content (blog posts and videos) which provide value to that audience.

However, for the past two months my Facebook fan page looked like this:

 

Completely flat lined!

The challenge being that nobody was even seeing my posts.

Even though I had about 700-800 followers on my Fan page, because the page was stagnant for the past few years, Facebook wasn’t showing any of my posts or content to any of them.

I would spend time writing a blog post or creating a video and then I’d post it on my fan page, but Facebook wouldn’t show it to anyone.

So last week I launched a small paid campaign to start showing my content to people on Facebook who are specifically interested in tabletop gaming.

The result?

Almost 1,300 new fan page likes in less than a week and a MASSIVE boost in my user engagement on the page.

A lot of times I’ll be chatting with bloggers who are struggling to get their blogs going and they almost always tend to assume that if they’re not getting traffic, not getting comments or likes or other forms of engagement on their blogs or facebook fan pages, it must mean that their content is not good.

They always question if their blog posts are good enough, or if their videos are good enough.

What most bloggers don’t pay attention to or realize is whether or not their blog posts are actually being SEEN by their target market.

Because if your target market is not even seeing your blog posts, then there’s no way for them to engage with it – RIGHT?!

This is why it’s so important to learn how to properly market and position your blog and it’s content to the RIGHT target market.

You have to learn how to be present where your target audience is hanging out.

When I was trying to sell my car to the wrong target audience, I couldn’t get ANY interest.

The minute I positioned it in front of the right target audience, I almost had to shut down my phone as I was getting inundated with texts and phone calls.

It’s the SAME CAR… the SAME VALUE… the only difference was that I made it available to the right target market.

THAT is what most bloggers who struggle are missing.

They don’t know how to properly market their blogs.

This is why I recommend joining my team with Empower Network, so that you can get access to the tools and training you’ll need to make sure your blog is actually SEEN by your target audience.

Free Car From Blogging – Goal Manifested!

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In January of this year I wrote a blog post where I set a goal to manifest a “free” car from my blog income.

When I set that goal in January, my blogging income at that point in time was at approximately negative $300, meaning my expenses to run my blog were costing me $300 more than I was making from my blog.

However, even though my then current reality was showing me one thing, I believed that I could get my blogging income to the point where I could make enough profit per month from my blog to be able to pay for a monthly payment on a brand new car.

A couple of days ago I realized that goal and I picked up my brand new car, which I’ll be paying for from my blogging income.

Before I continue, I want to offer a disclaimer.  My results are not typical.  In fact, most bloggers who try to make money blogging don’t make any money at all.

Making money in any type of business, online or offline required hard work and persistence as well as access to proper training and mentoring.

That’s why I recommend joining my team with Empower Network to get access to proper training and mentoring.

If you’d like, see our income disclosure by clicking here.

Now that we got the legal stuff out of the way, here are some pictures of my new car!

 

I decided to go for the brand new 2016 Honda HR-V compact SUV.  It offered pretty much every feature I was looking for in a car and a great price!

One of the cool things about the HR-V is what Honda calls “Magic Seats”.

The back seats in the car actually fold up, to open up a space on the floor in the back which is perfect for transporting tall items (think flat screen TV, or a plant), but for my purposes it makes it perfect for my dogs!

I will no longer need to worry about having the dogs sitting up on the back seats and getting them dirty. 🙂

Also with the dogs sitting lower, it’s safer for them, and they won’t be blocking my view in the back.

 

 

Here’s Zoe enjoying herself in the new car.  I can’t wait to start shooting some more “Driving with Paul” videos, and taking the dogs along for the ride! 🙂

 

The car is also fully loaded with pretty much every feature, bell and whistle I could ever ask for.

Full navigation system, touch-screen, amazing audio system, back-up cameras, side-mirror camera, heated seats, sunroof, bluetooth integration, push-button start, all-wheel drive, heated seats, keyless entry, and a LOT more.

I’ve had the car now for a few days and had a chance to drive it around a bit and although I’m still learning how a lot of the features work, so far I absolutely love it!

If you could get a new car paid for from blogging about your passions, what kind of car would you get?