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Blog Income Report – January 2015

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Want to know a little secret to making money with your blog that I discovered back in 2008?

The secret is to light a fire under your own butt by putting your ass on the line in front of everyone.

What I’m referring to here is the process of doing monthly blog income reports where you report your blog progress, revealing your statistics and your income.

I did my very first blog income report way back in April 2008 when I decided to focus my energy on growing my blog income.

Prior to April 2008, I had only made around $5 – $10/month from my blogging efforts, but after I started doing regular blog income reports, my blogging income started growing quickly and reached several thousand dollars per month within 6 months.

I discovered that there are a few reasons for this…

Why Doing a Monthly Blog Income Report is a Good Idea

When I started doing a monthly income report, I noticed a few things started to change for me as a Blogger.

#1 – Social Pressure Improves Performance

Firstly, just the fact of knowing that the “whole world” is watching makes it more likely that you’ll make money with your Blog because it activates our Ego’s innate desire to NOT look stupid or like a failure in front of other people.

Meaning, when we know that people are watching and paying attention to our numbers, we perform much better than if nobody is watching.

This is why professional athletes perform at such incredible levels of athleticism when being watched by their fans.

#2 – Whatever You Focus on Improves

Your conscious and subconsciou minds are absolutely amazing at manifesting whatever you are focusing on in your life.

If you FOCUS your mind on improving your blogging stats and increasing your income, then that is what your mind will deliver.

You’ll start to attract people, circumstances, events and resources to help you grow those things you are focusing on.

If you’re not tracking your statistics and your numbers with any real accuracy, they most likely will NOT improve.

So by committing to doing a monthly blog income report, you’re telling your mind what you want it to focus on improving.

#3 – Your Blog Subscribers Follow Your Journey

Another thing I discovered back in 2008 when I was doing my monthly income reports was that my readers were really enjoying following my progress over time.

Each month they started to look forward to getting my income reports and seeing how I’m progressing along.

It can be very inspiring to see someone starting out with small statistics and small numbers and growing them over time.

This is also why I decided to start my Blog Income Report NOW, when my Blog is pretty much brand new.

When Is The Best Time to Start a Blog Income Report?

One of the things that I discovered as a Blogger is that most people out there are too afraid or just unwilling to start doing Blog Income Reports until AFTER their blog is already pretty successful, making $500 or $1,000 or $5,000 per month or more.

It’s pretty EASY to do a Blog income report when you’re already making $5,000/month, because then you have something to brag about.

The challenge with this approach is that it paints an unrealistic picture for the beginner blogger who is just getting started, because they don’t get to see bloggers building up their income from $0 (or less) to their first $1,000 month for example.

All they see is someone who is already successful, which gives them this false impression that all you have to do is start a Blog and 5 minutes later you’ll be making tens of thousands of dollars per month.

It doesn’t work that way.

To build a successful business of ANY kind – online OR offline – takes time!

My primary business, the software company I run, I’ve been building that business full time for over 6 years now!

Blogging is not much different.

Although you can build an online income using a Blog faster than a traditional brick-and-mortar business or even a traditional home based business, it still does take some time.

In a survey done by ProBlogger, he found that over 80% of bloggers make less than $500/month with their Blogs.

A further 7% made between $500 – $999/month from their blogs, 9% made $1000 – $9999 and 4% made over $10,000 / month from their blogs.

Of course, these are numbers reported by his readership, and there’s no way to verify if people answered honestly.  Also, I would venture a guess that those people who made less than $100 with their blogs didn’t ALL respond to the survey as most people tend to not want to share their stats until they are already succeeding, so that 63% might be much higher.

The reason I share this graph is NOT to depress people or to point out that most people don’t make money with their Blogs.

The reason I share these stats is to point out that the MAJORITY of ALL bloggers around the world are trying to figure out how to get to the point where their blog is making at least $500/month.

So, while all those bloggers out there who share their blog income reports AFTER they’re already making $2,000/month or $5,000+/month are a source of inspiration, they can also be a source of frustration for the beginner blogger who isn’t making any money at all.

Whenever I get involved in a business of any type and I see ultra successful people in that line of business, what I always try to figure out is HOW they got to that point, and WHAT they did to get there.

Yes it’s cool to see someone making a million dollars a year with their Blog, but how the HECK did they make their first $100?  or their first $500? or their first $1000?

THAT information can be a lot more useful and inspiring than how someone went from $25,000/month to $35,000/month.

That is why I have decided to share my Blog Income Reports right from the launch of this new Blog.

I hope that by sharing my journey of growing my income from ZERO to wherever this journey takes me, I can help to inspire other beginning bloggers out there.

Why I Started a New Blog

As I’ve mentioned earlier in this post, I’ve been a blogger for almost 9 years now and I’ve ran many different blogs during that time.

I’ve had many different niche-specific blogs that I’ve tested out various strategies with, and I had my main blog which has moved through several different domains over the last 8+ years.

Normally, I would just continue to blog on my main blog, but this time around I decided to do something different.

Prior to the release of the Kalatu Brand Station, I was selected as one of the closed-beta testers of the platform, and after giving it some thought I decided to start a brand new Blog, on a brand new domain, using the Kalatu Brand Station platform.

I did this so that I could have a fresh start on a new domain and just kind of hit the “reset” button on my Blogging career.

See, in truth, although I have been a blogger since 2006, and the majority of my blogging success happened in 2008-2009, in the last 3 years I made the mistake of allowing my Blog to essentially DIE!

I did VERY LITTLE blogging on my Blog in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

In fact, on this new Blog, using the Kalatu Brand Station system, I have written more blog posts in the last 30 days than I did in all of 2014 on my other blogs!

I basically stopped focusing on my Blog from 2012-2014 and so just like with any other business that you neglect and ignore for 3 years, my blogging income dwindled down to nothing.

Now you might be wondering, why would someone who has been blogging for so long let their blog and their blogging income die like that?

Well, firstly one reason is because I was focusing my energy on increasing my income outside of my blog.  See, blogging has NEVER really been a full time thing for me.  I have always ran other businesses and Blogging has always just been something I do on a part-time basis for fun!

I’ve been a six-figure income earner for many years now, but I’ve never put a concentrated effort into building a six or seven figure income from blogging, which is what I intend to do now.

Secondly, I have to admit that I bought into the short-sighted thinking that most people in our industry have had for the last few years, thinking that blogging might be dead.

It wasn’t until all the research I did last year, and the leaders that I plugged into with Empower Network and the statistics that they shared with me there, that I realized that Blogging is NOT dead, and in fact it is more powerful than EVER before!

So at the start of this year I decided to start over, with a new blog, on a new domain, and to build it up again just like I did before.

And, my intention is to share my blog income and stats as I build up my blog from scratch, so that my readers can learn from my journey as well.

So, now that I’ve explained what I’m doing and why, here is my blog income and stats report for January 2015.

Blog Content Report – January 2015

In January I wrote 31 blog posts in 31 days.

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

I started the month off by doing the 21 Day Blogging Challenge because I wanted to develop the habit of daily blogging.

After the first 21 days were completed, I had pretty much established the habit of daily blogging, so I just continued to write one new blog post per day.

If you want to jump-start your blogging career, I highly recommend doing the 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

Blog Traffic Report – January 2015

I’m a huge believer in tracking your blogging stats.

In this first month of running this new blog, here are some of my stats for the month:

  • Total Users: 1,222
  • Total Sessions: 2,205
  • Total Pageviews: 3,172
  • Avg Session Duration: 1 minute 23 seconds

Blog Traffic Sources Report

As far as where my traffic came from, here are my blog traffic source stats for January 2015:

  • Direct Traffic – 1,526 sessions – 69%
  • Social Traffic – 458 sessions – 21%
  • Referral Traffic – 122 sessions – 5.5%
  • Organic Search Traffic – 99 sessions – 4.5%

As this report clearly shows, the majority of my traffic came from direct traffic, which mostly represents me sending out an email blast to my email list using Aweber.

Unfortunately, my once active email list of approximately 10,000 subscribers has gone very stale after I more or less neglected my Blog from 2012 to the end of 2014.

So, only a small percentage of my email subscribers actually still even open my emails as most of them have forgotten who I am, or the email address they registered with years ago is not something they check anymore.

I’ve had to start rebuilding the TRUST I once had with my list, by focusing on creating the most valuable content that I can on my Blog.

And even though my list has mostly gone stale,  I was still able to generate over 1,500 visitor sessions to my Blog by emailing my list.

My next biggest traffic source was social media, which is mostly coming from Facebook and then the rest of my traffic came from direct referrals and a little bit of organic search.

The interesting statistic that I’ll be keeping an eye on is the Organic Search traffic, which I expect to become a much larger source of traffic for me over time.

Considering that this is pretty much a brand new blog, on a brand new domain I just registered a little bit over a 1 month ago, the fact that I’ve already gotten almost 100 user sessions from organic traffic is pretty impressive though.

Blog Income Report – January 2015

Now as far as my actual income and expenses for the month of January, before I share my numbers I just want to mention two things real quick.

Firstly, I’m still working on putting together a much more accurate system of tracking all of my numbers so these numbers I’m reporting here are not going to be 100% accurate and they have not been audited by my accountant or anything like that.

These are just my numbers that I’ve started tracking in a spreadsheet.

They should be pretty accurate, but there are certain income streams that I may have missed.

There might also be some small expenses that I forgot to include as well.

If I do find anything missing, I’ll come back and edit this post to improve accuracy and I’m hoping that my spreadsheet becomes more and more accurate as more time goes by.

I just haven’t had time to go through all my bank statements, and my visa statements to make sure I didn’t forget about something.

Secondly, because I’m sharing income stats here, to comply with FTC regulations I want to advise you to check out my income disclaimer and please be aware that nothing I say on my Blog should be misconstrued as any sort of guarantee that you’ll make money online just because I make money online.  My results are NOT typical because I am not a typical person, and chances are that neither are you!

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

Total Gross Income – $369.46

Total Expenses – $603.44

Net Income: -$299.98

As you can see, my net income for the month of January was in the negatives.

How often do you see bloggers out there putting out a Blog Income Report BEFORE they start making good money?  Not very often. 🙂

Most bloggers will ONLY start reporting their blog income reports AFTER they’re already making good money, and as I mentioned above, I believe that this creates a false sense of expectation for most new bloggers.

I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve seen a new blogger start blogging and if they don’t start making money in their first week or two, they think that they’re a failure!

That is why I have decided to be totally transparent on my Blog and show people what it REALLY takes to build a business online.

As you can see, in my first months as a blogger on this new blog I had a loss of $299.98 dollars.

Do I see this as “failure”?

Absolutely not!

Here’s why…

The truth is that in ANY kind of business that you start, you have to be willing to invest time, energy AND money in order to make money.

Trying to build an income without investing ANY money into any training or tools is a waste of your time.

Investing in the right TOOLS and the right TRAINING can significantly improve your chances of making money online, especially as a Blogger.

But you have to realize that the tools that you invest in may take some time to start producing an exponential result in your income.

For example, last month I invested $178.60 into Facebook traffic.

With that I generated 1,016 clicks to my eBook landing page, and 244 new subscribers to my email list.

That’s an average of just 18 cents per click, and 73 cents per email opt-in to my email list.

These are HIGHLY TARGETED leads and not just generic traffic either, so they represent my exact target market for this Blog.

That investment is represented in my expenses for this month, but the INCOME that I will generate from that traffic in the future is NOT yet represented.

Does that make sense?  Those people who are on that email list, will continue to receive my daily blog posts, and I will help them as much as I possibly can by providing value to them with my content.

Over time, some of those people may choose to join my team at Empower Network or to purchase other products using my affiliate links.

When that happens, I will make money from those commissions.

Some of the other tools you see listed there as well, such as AWeber, or Kalatu Brand Station or LeadPages, those are all tools that I am paying for right now, but I haven’t fully maximized the income from those tools.

Also, for the most part, the cost for most of these tools does NOT go up when I use them more.  Meaning most of these costs are fixed, but my income is not.

For example, the Kalatu Brand Station costs me $25/month regardless whether I’m making $0 from my Blog or $1 Million from my Blog.  The costs is fixed at just $25.

Cool eh?

So over time, you’ll see that as my income goes up, my profits will also go up because the majority of my expenses will remain fixed.

Also, as a Blogger who has already made money blogging in the past, I wasn’t shy with my expenses this month.

Meaning, I already know which tools and training I need to invest in, and I already know that I’ll make more money from my blog than my expenses, so I wasn’t afraid to invest in my business.

Not everyone who starts blogging will need to invest in all of these tools right off the bat.

For example, most people can get started with just the Kalatu Brand Station and the Empower Network Affiliate Program for under $50/month all-inclusive, and start generating an income with just those two things.

I could have done that as well, but because I want to grow my blog quickly, I’m making the investment in these additional tools and some traffic, and if that means that for the first while my net income goes into the negatives a bit, I’m totally 100% comfortable with that.

I track my income and my stats, but I don’t WORRY about having to spend money before I make money.

Even if I had to invest $10k or $20k into my online business before I started to see net profits, I wouldn’t worry about that at all.

This is how REAL entrepreneurship works.

My Blogging Goals for January

Here were some of my main goals for January:

  • Launch a new Blog with a new domain on Kalatu Brand Station – Check!
  • Participate in the 21 Day Blogging Challenge – Check!
  • Build the habit of daily blogging – Check!
  • Re-establish relationship with my email subscribers – Check!
  • Create a Flow-chart / Blogging Business Plan for my Blog – Check!
  • Setup a Facebook Traffic Generation Campaign for My eBook – Check!
  • Create a Tracking Sheet for My Income / Expenses – Check!

Overall it’s been an amazingly successful first month of getting back to Blogging for me.

I’m especially really excited about the fact that I’ve been able to develop the habit of daily blogging, as that really is 80% of the success formula for making money as a blogger.

Without building a habit of blogging on a consistent basis, it’s not very likely that you’ll make money as a blogger.

That’s why the 21 Day Blogging Challenge is such an awesome place to get started as a Blogger, regardless whether you’re brand new or if you’ve been inconsistently blogging for years.

If you enjoyed this report and would like to see me continue to produce more of these each month, let me know below by leaving a comment and/or sharing this post with others bloggers.

7 Secrets of Blogging Daily

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In yesterday’s post I shared the exact strategy I use and recommend for how to make money blogging in 2015 and beyond.

One of the key parts of that strategy revolves around building the habit of daily blogging as shown here in this snippet for the flow chart I laid out yesterday.

Blogging on a daily basis is probably one of the most challenging parts of building a successful blog.

It’s not hard to write a few blog posts here and there, whenever we feel like it, but to develop the habit of blogging daily is a totally different thing.

In this post I’ll share some tips and strategies that I’ve recently started utilizing to help me stick to a daily blogging schedule for 33 days now.

Each one of these strategies can help you to be more consistent with your blogging.

#1 – Join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge

When I decided that I wanted to develop the habit of daily blogging, one of the first things I did was to join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

The 21 Day Blogging Challenge is a challenge put on my Empower Network that helps bloggers around the world develop the habit of daily blogging.

Psychologists have said that it takes a person at least 21 days to develop a habit, so the idea behind the challenge is to encourage you to make a commitment to blog every day for 21 days.

Anyone can participate in the challenge – regardless whether you’re using the Kalatu Brand Station to blog or your own WordPress site or any other blogging platform out there.

It’s free to join and once you join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge, you’ll be granted access to a private group of bloggers who are participating in the challenge and offered daily encouragement, and motivation to continue on your journey.

Each day you simply write one blog post and then you share it in the community page on facebook.

At the end of the challenge, there are some small prizes you can get access to and some training resources that can help you to build an even more successful blog.

I did my first 21 Day Blogging Challenge at the end of December, and have continued to blog ever since.

There is actually a brand new group starting tomorrow – February 2nd – so if you’d like to join, simply click on this link to get free access – 21 Day Blogging Challenge

#2 – Find a Blogging Style That You Enjoy and Can Stick to Daily

Each person has a different personality type and a unique style of communicating.

Some people, like myself, are most comfortable communicating in written word when it comes to Blogging.

I do also like to use videos from time to time, but I find creating videos too time consuming to be able to do it on a daily basis.

The main reason for this is that I prefer to make long videos and not the short 30second to 3 minute videos that some people enjoy making.

So for me, I have chosen to use test-based blog posts with pictures as my primary style of writing posts.

However, other people prefer to make videos.  Writing a post such as this one might be too time consuming for them.

My friend and team member – Chris Landry – he prefers to shoot short videos for his blog posts, instead of writing text.

That’s HIS style of Blogging, and that’s awesome!

Some people prefer to make audio podcasts, where they just speak into a voice recorder and record their blog posts that way.

And of course some people prefer to mix things up and do all three.

The point here is don’t try to be something you’re not!

If you’re reading my blog post and the idea of writing so many words makes you want to throw up, then TEXT based blog posts are probably not your thing!  That’s fine!

You can use video and/or audio blogging as your preferred method and keep the text to a minimum.

Nothing wrong with that.

Just realize that your style might be different from mine or anyone else.

#3 – Make Money an Incentive

One of the biggest incentives besides sharing your passion and wisdom with other people can be to make money with your Blog.

I’m not just talking about building a full time business with a Blog, but making ANY amount of money can be a HUGE motivator.

When I first started Blogging, I installed Google Adsense on my Blog I think the very first week.

If I remember correctly, at the end of the month of sporadic blogging, I think I made around $3 – $5 with my Blog.

That is NOT big money at all.

It’s almost completely insignificant, right?

WRONG!

There’s something magical about making money from blogging.

Even if it’s just a few dollars here and there which flow into your pocket and pay for a coffee, it can be a LOT of fun to get paid for blogging.

Over time, my Adsense earnings started to add up, and eventually I would receive cheques in the mail for over a hundred dollars which was pretty exciting to me at that time.

It can be a LOT of fun to get a cheque for over $100, just for blogging about your passions.

If you’re using the Kalatu Branding Station, then a monetization strategy is already built-in for you from the get-go, but if you’re using some other blogging system then find a way to monetize your Blog.

It can be a lot of fun and as many successful bloggers have proven, those seemingly small amounts can start to add up very quickly and you could potentially start earning a significant income from your Blog!

#4 – Reading Other People’s Blogs

I have found that reading other people’s blog posts can be really helpful for maintaining consistency.

There’s something about seeing another person writing on a daily basis that helps you with your belief that it IS in fact possible to write a blog post every day.

This is yet another reason why the 21 Day Blogging Challenge can be so helpful.

When you join the challenge, you’ll be given access to a private group for all the participants and you will be able to see all of the blog posts that are written every day by the participants.

When you see 100, 200, 500 or more people blogging on a daily basis, there’s just something that happens in your mind where your excuses that it’s not possible melt away.

Also, by reading other people’s Blog posts, you’ll get ideas for what to write about yourself as well.

You might read someone’s Blog post and not really agree with their opinion – great, so write a Blog post sharing YOUR opinion on the subject.

You might read someone’s Blog post and realize that they just skimmed the surface of the topic – great, so write a Blog post that goes into more depth on the subject.

You might read someone’s Blog post and realize that what they have written could be summarized in a 3 minute video instead – great, so shoot a quick 3 minute video on the subject.

Or you might read multiple people’s Blog posts on a similar topic and decide to combine all the best information from all of those blog posts, along with your own experience and opinions into one single blog post that has it all.

It’s just like how some of the most successful authors out there are also prolific readers of books, if you want to develop your skills as a blogger, it can be very helpful to start reading blogs.

#5 – Have an Accountability Buddy or Two

Another very useful thing to have is an accountability buddy.

Someone who is also committed to blogging daily and who you can share your blog posts with, get inspiration, motivation and ideas from.

Sometimes you might be having one of those days where you just hit writer’s blog and have no clue what to Blog about, and your accountability buddy can help you out with some ideas.

Even just having an accountability buddy that reads each post you write, and leaves a short comment and you do the same for them, can be of huge help.

There’s something about being accountable to another human being, who we don’t want to let down, that can help us to stick to our desire to become a successful blogger.

If you don’t know anyone like this, you can join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge and you’ll get access to a group of several hundred bloggers who have made the commitment to blog daily.

I’m sure you’ll be able to find at least one or two people in there that you could introduce yourself to and become accountability buddies with.

#6 – Track Your Stats!

If there is one thing that I have heard more times than I can remember from people who started blogs and were about to give up on blogging because of feeling discouraged, it would be this statement:

“Paul, I don’t know…this blogging thing is not working… I’ve written a bunch of posts, and NOBODY is even looking at my site…I haven’t gotten any comments on any of my stuff, nobody is reading anything.”

You have no idea how many times I’ve heard this.

Look, the fact is that when you invest time and energy into writing a blog post, or creating a video, one of the DEEPEST DESIRES that we all have is for other people to consume our content.

If NOBODY is reading your stuff, you’ll stop Blogging!

One of the reasons that people are SO ADDICTED to Facebook is because of the “LIKE” Button and the comment sections.

When people post a picture of themselves or their kid or their dog or cat, they sit there and wait for someone to hit that “LIKE” button.

When they see someone “LIKING” their content, they feel good.

When they don’t, they feel like crap.

It’s the same thing with YouTube.

If you upload a video to YouTube, and you come back 24 hours later and hit refresh and you see that your video views is 0 people or 1 view (yourself), you WILL feel discouraged.

There’s a deep desire that we all have for our content to be consumed.

When that content is not consumed, we feel like failures!

The challenge with BLOGGING is that what most people THINK that they should be tracking is comments.

Meaning, they write a Blog post, and then a day later they come back and see how many comments were left on that post.

If they see a bunch of comments, they think the post is successful.

If they see zero comments, they think it’s a failure!

The truth is, however, that just because you’re not getting comments, it doesn’t meant that people are not consuming your content and it doesn’t mean that they’re not enjoying it!

Look, the reality of the situation is that 95-99% of people who will ever visit your blog and consume your content and get value from it, will NOT leave a comment!

Based on my blogging career for 8+ years I can say that my stats show that over 99% of my visitors NEVER leave a comment.

There’s NOTHING wrong with that.  I’ve spoken to MANY of my readers over the years and I asked them if they liked this or that post, and they said yes they enjoyed it.

When I ask them why they didn’t leave a comment then, they said “I don’t know..I had nothing else to add” or “I’m not sure, I loved the post, but just didn’t want to leave a comment.”

This is NORMAL!

This is why it’s so important to track your blogging stats, and NOT comments as your measure of success.

I highly recommend that everyone installs Google Analytics on their Blog and track their stats on a regular basis so that they can see how many people are visiting their site.

For example, here are my analytics for the the past month or so since I started blogging daily.

As you can see, I am getting traffic on a daily basis, more on some days than others, but it’s pretty consistent.

If you look through my Blog archives, however, you’ll see that not every post has comments on it!

Some posts have many comments, and other posts don’t have any comments.

I don’t use comments as a measure of success / failure though, because I learned a long time ago that it’s not a reliable measure.

If you’re a Kalatu Brand Station user, setting up Google Analytics can be done very easily as built-in integration for Google Analytics is part of Kalatu, however if you’re using some other blogging platform then make sure you find a way to get analytics installed.

#7 – Blog About What YOU Want to Blog About

Another common trap I have seen many bloggers fall into is listening to some so-called “guru” or “expert” who tells them that they MUST pick a highly targeted NICHE for their Blog and to write NOTHING but highly targeted content on that Blog.

A lot of this stems from old search engine optimization techniques that used to work, where you would register a domain and build a website that’s very targeted to one keyword or one niche market, and if your website didn’t deviate from that single focus, then Google would reward you with more traffic.

This is an old, outdated strategy and it doesn’t work anymore.

I have seen so many people being so concerned about picking a single topic for their blog and being deathly afraid of writing a blog post on any other topic than what their site is about.

You don’t have to worry about this!

There’s nothing wrong with blogging about whatever topic you want, regardless what your main blog topic is.

I’ve tried building niche blogs where all I write about is one single topic and nothing but that, and I’ve also built a blog that has many different topics, and you know what I discovered?

People read my blog for ME, not my TOPIC…

They might originally be attracted to my blog because I write a post or a series of posts on a specific topic that they’re interested in, but if a week later I write a blog post on a totally different topic, they don’t care!

The most important thing is to just blog daily… and WHAT you blog about is NOT that important.

Most of my blog posts tend to be related to making money online, blogging, personal development and marketing, but that’s not because I specifically sit there and force myself to only write on that topic.

The reason I write about those topics more often than not is because that is what I *WANT* to write about on that day because that’s what’s interesting to me.

But if tomorrow I had the desire to write about a really cool new dog-training technique that I just discovered and tested out with my dogs, then that’s what I’ll write about.

Or I might decide to start writing about weight loss strategies, or producing music!

Don’t worry so much about what you’re blogging about, just GET BLOGGING!

Over time, as you blog more and more, you’ll develop a loyal audience that will most likely be interested in 90% of the stuff you blog about anyways, and when you do write about the 10% that they don’t really care about, they’ll just skip those posts, but other people might find THOSE posts the most valuable to them.

Blogging is about creating a connection and a relationship between two human beings – YOU as the Blogger and YOUR READERS.

YOU are not a TOPIC…you’re a human being.  You have multiple interests.

When you get together with your friends or family, you talk about different things, right?

So why would it be a problem to blog about different things on a Blog?

It’s not…

Blog about what you’re passionate about blogging that day.  Period.  End of story.

The most important thing it to just blog. 🙂

I hope you enjoyed this article and I hope that you decide to join us in the 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

There’s a new one starting tomorrow – February 2nd, but if you’re reading this after that date, just sign-up for the challenge anyways as we have new ones starting on a regular basis.

Why 2015 is Going to Be Your Best Year Yet

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I believe that 2015 is going to be the best year we’ve ever had in our lives.

I don’t know if it’s because the numbers are lining up from a numerology perspective, or if it’s some kind of planetary alignment or some sort of tipping point in the energy field of consciousness, but the first four weeks of this already feel totally different than any other year.

I can totally feel it, but I know I’m not the only one.

I’m seeing people all around me making decisions to make positive changes in their lives, and those decisions are coming about much more easily than ever before.

I’m seeing people starting to produce incredible results in their lives, in whatever area they are focusing on right now, and those results seem to be manifesting much more quickly, with less effort and with more ease.

It seems like things are speeding up, and at the same time coming into much better alignment.

Situations that come up in our lives that previously used to stress us out and frustrate us, are dealt with and released much more easily this year.

Have you noticed?

A friend of mine decided to focus on losing some weight, and has lost 20 lbs in 49 days and has told me it’s been a MUCH easier process for him than ever before.

My wife and I participated in a 21 Day Blogging Challenge from the beginning of this year, and we found it SO much easier to be able to Blog daily for some reason.

Even when the blogging challenge concluded a week ago I just kept right on Blogging on a daily basis and it’s been pretty easy.

There’s another 21 Day Blogging Challenge starting next week and I’m really looking forward to doing it again.

Other areas of my life, where I’ve faced challenges, are seemingly getting resolved much more easily now.

I’ve also noticed so many other people finally taking the leaps of faith that they need to take to take their lives to the next level.

Achieving certain results seems to be easier since 2015 started.

People have been telling me that for some reason they’re doing the same things that they have been doing for years, but for some reason NOW those things are producing much better results.

The Future Doesn’t Equal The Past

There is one key mental shift that Tony Robbins described in one of his books, that he said changed his entire life.

He was at a point in his life where he was depressed and struggling, and a friend of his came over to visit him because he was concerned for his well being.

Then, shortly after a conversation they had Tony had this seemingly insignificant thought enter his mind.  It was a belief that just popped into his mind.

The belief was “The Future Doesn’t Equal the Past”.

It may seem insignificant, but that one simple thought… a small shift in his thinking changed EVERYTHING for him.

He realized that no matter what has happened to him in the past, and what things he tried over and over and over again, the fact that he was unable to produce certain results in his life in the past didn’t mean that he would not be able to produce those results in the future.

Have you ever tried to produce a certain result in your life, such as for example trying to start your own business, or to make money online, or to lose weight or to get into a great relationship with someone?

Have you found yourself failing over and over and over again?

If so, realize right now, in this moment, that what you’re referring to is THE PAST!

It is NOT the present moment or the future.

YOUR PAST DOES NOT EQUAL YOUR FUTURE!

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve fallen, how many times you’ve failed, how many times you’ve tried something…

2015 is a fresh start.

It’s a new year.

It’s a better year.

It’s the best year ever in the history of the human race.

EVERYTHING is different now.

You CAN succeed, as long as you make the decision to stop giving your power away to the PAST.

The past doesn’t matter.

The past is an illusion.

It doesn’t even exist.

Only the present moment exists.

You are so much more powerful than you realize.

Only your Ego mind can put shackles on you by tricking you into thinking that you are weak and incapable of greatness by pointing fingers to your past, pleading and trying to convince you to “Look!  You’ve failed in the past, so that must mean you’ll fail in the future!  Don’t even bother trying.  You’ll never succeed.”

Don’t listen to it.

It’s just scared.

It’s afraid of trying.  It’s afraid to take any kind of risk.  It just wants you to play safe because it thinks that is what will make you happy.

But it’s a lie.  Playing it safe is NOT going to make you happy.

Going after your DREAMS is what will make you happy.

The journey towards the progressive realization of worthwhile dreams IS happiness.

NOT hiding in a cave, scared of your own shadow, trying to play small.

Whatever your Dreams are, YOU can do it!

You CAN achieve them.

I believe in you.

And 2015 is the year that everything changes for you!

I’ll end with this great quote from the great Zig Zilgar:

“You were Designed for Accomplishment, Engineered for Success and Endowed with the Seeds of Greatness.” – Zig Ziglar

P.s. If you’d like to participate in the 21 Day Blogging Challeng and to learn how to turn your passion in life into money by blogging, click here to learn more.

3 Fatal Mistakes New Bloggers Make And How to Avoid Them

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Over the past 9 years as a Blogger, I’ve had many people come to me for advice on how to build a successful blog.

I’ve seen some people build blogs years ago that they continue to run to this day.

The majority of people, however, give up on their dreams of building a successful blog within just a few weeks or months.

From my observations, the people who don’t make it as bloggers all exhibit some or all of these fatal symptoms that kill their blogs.

#1 – Ridiculously Unrealistic Expectations

A reasonable, mature adult understands that if they wanted to become a doctor, they would have to go to post-secondary school for 6-12 years and spend $100,000 – $500,000 on their education.

And then once they finish school, they would be able to open up a practice, and most likely spend the next 3-10 years paying off that debt.

And then once they’ve been a doctor for about a decade or so, they would expect to start making a solid six-figure or higher income especially if they decided to specialize and become a surgeon or something like that.

That same person understands that if they wanted to become a police officer, or a firefighter, or a lawyer, or an accountant, or an architect, they would also have to dedicate a certain amount of time and energy to learning a skill and then to practice getting better at that skill before expecting to be making a good, solid income from that vocation.

For some weird reason, those same seemingly mature adults have this weird, totally unrealistic expectation that making money online somehow happens overnight, with virtually no investment of time or energy required from them to make a six or seven figure income online.

If you want to build a successful blog that eventually generates an income stream for you and you want to make money online, you’re going to have to realize that it is NOT going to happen overnight.

You are going to have to invest some time, some energy and some money into learning the right things, from the right people to help you become successful.

Compared to a formal education such as the one required to become a doctor or a lawyer though, learning to make money online is nowhere near as intense and definitely nowhere near as expensive.

I’ve had people call me about a week after they’ve started a blog, having written one or two blog posts, and they’re wondering why they haven’t made tens of thousands of dollars from their blog yet.

If you do the right things, and you follow the right system, and you have the right mentoring, making money online can happen pretty quickly, but if you have to mentally prepare yourself to KEEP GOING, KEEP LEARNING and KEEP INVESTING in yourself, in your business and your education if you’re going to make it in this business.

If you’re going to give up after 2 days, you’re being a wuss and wussies don’t make money online.

#2 – Not Understanding the Power of Small Wins

As a new blogger, or a new Internet marketer, you’re always one small win from winning big.

Here’s what I mean by this…

… when I started blogging, there actually weren’t a lot of people out there blogging yet, and the industry hadn’t really established itself in such a big way as it has now.

Because of this, there were very few bloggers out there who had created any HUGE success for themselves.  I could count them on one hand.

The benefit I had when I was starting out during this time was that I didn’t really have a lot of big hot-shots to compare myself to, so instead I just focused on comparing my success on any given day or week or month, to my PREVIOUS successes.

For example, I still remember when I sat there wondering how long it would take to get my first 10 subscribers.

It actually took a while.  But when I finally got my 10th subscriber I remember being so excited!

Then I set a goal to hit 20 subscribers, and once I hit that, I again celebrated and was very excited.

I kept increasing my target by very small increments and I kept seeing these small “wins” that kept me going.

Then, I started focusing on seeing how long it would take to get my first real COMMENT from someone other than my wife, or my friends or family…. like a REAL STRANGER that I didn’t know coming to my Blog and leaving a comment.

When I got my comment I celebrated as well!

These small tiny wins is what kept me going in the beginning and kept me motivated.

There were many small milestones that I set for myself, long before I even started putting focus on getting my Blog to make money.

Of course today it’s much easier to make money with a Blog as so many things have been systematized, tested and perfected by companies like Empower Network – but even today I would recommend that new bloggers set small milestones for their blogs which can give them the small “wins” that will help to boost their confidence even before they start making money from their blogs.

#3 – Allowing Small Loses to Kill Their Confidence

On the other side of the same coin, most people also totally underestimate how big of an effect small loses can have on your confidence as a new blogger.

I’ve seen people start blogs and begin to gain some momentum for a few weeks and then they get ONE negative comment on one of their blog posts where some idiot leaves some idiotic half-baked opinion on what the person wrote, and the emotional rejection and hurt that the blogger feels completely knocks them out of the game.

Of course if you ask them about it, they’ll never admit it.  They pretend like it’s no big deal, and that it didn’t hurt them, but all of a sudden you no longer see them writing any more blog posts – EVER!

Trust me, I’ve been there.

I’ve written blog posts which I’ve poured my heart and soul into and I’ve had morons come to my Blog and post nasty comments, being total pricks.

It hurts when that happens, especially if you’re brand new to blogging.

There’s no shame in admitting that those things suck and that they hurt your feelings.

So how do we overcome this?

Firstly, one of the things that I learned from one of my mentors is that IF you become a successful blogger, you WILL have some people who will not like you and they’ll leave stupid comments on your blog posts.

So what I did is I created a milestone for myself where I actually told myself that when I get my first nasty comment, it means that I’m starting to get popular.

Meaning, I re-framed it in my  mind to be a positive thing!  So when I got my first nasty comment, yes it hurt a bit, but at the same time I was really excited because I thought to myself “OMG!  I got my first hater!  This is so cool!  It means my Blog is becoming more popular, and I’m starting to make waves in the industry and as a result I’m pissing off those people who are NOT my target audience.  Awesome!”

Secondly though, the most important thing you MUST embrace as a tool to help you deal with these small “loses” that will inevitably show up in your life as an entrepreneur and as a blogger is to be a part of a community with a support structure in place to support you.

Think of it like this…

… if you were a professional athlete, and you got injured while playing on the field or on the ice or on the court, and you were lying on your back, hurt…. what would happen?

Your SUPPORT TEAM would come to your aid and they would help you!

If you were struggling with your game, or with some aspect of your health, what would happen?

Your coaches and your trainers would step in and help you!

If you were struggling with your mental game, because you were struggling with something in your life, and it was affecting your game, what would you do?

You would go and talk to your coach and get some help, right?

ALL successful people have coaches and mentors that help them.

It’s no different as a blogger.

That is why I love the Empower Network system so much.  It doesn’t just arm you with the Kalatu blogging platform to make sure you have the world’s best, state-of-the-art blogging system at your fingertips.

What Empower Network really brings to the table is COMMUNITY and SUPPORT.

For example, those people who join my Empower Network team have ME and the rest of my team to help them and to support them.  We all help each other succeed.

If someone on the team is struggling, we help them out.  That’s what teams are for.

Bloggers who try to do it all by themselves, without participating in any community, and without getting any coaching and mentoring and help from anyone else, rarely last!

They give up before they ever build any success because it’s not easy to do this all by yourself.

Of course it’s possible, but why would you want to anyways?

Why NOT embrace a community of like-minded, positive bloggers who are also pursuing their blogging dreams and who will encourage you when you’ve suffered a small temporary loss?

How to Boost Your Chances of Blogging Success

Want to significantly boost your chances of becoming a successful blogger?

It’s very simple…just do these 3 things:

  1. Set Realistic Expectations and Have Patience
  2. Set Small, Achievable Milestones For Your Blog and Celebrate Your Successes
  3. Join a Blogging Community and Get a Coach or Mentor So You Have Support When You Have Your Small Loses

These three things may sound very simple, but it’s what I did to grow my blog and every single person that I know who didn’t succeed as a blogger was missing either one or all of these factors.

Is Kalatu Better Than WordPress?

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I’ve been a WordPress Blogger for 9 years now and recently I’ve switched over to the Kalatu Blogging Platform from Empower Network.

In this article I’ll share my first impressions about Kalatu and whether I think it’s better than WordPress.

Firstly, I’ll start off by saying that it’s not really a fair comparison to compare Kalatu vs WordPress since Kalatu IS BUILT ON WordPress.

Meaning, Kalatu is a blogging platform built on top of WordPress, so it takes all the functionality that you already get with WordPress and simply adds additional functionality on top of that.

I think the better way to approach answering this question is to compare what you get with a standard out-of-the-box installation of WordPress, versus what you get with Kalatu.

Kalatu Features

Here are just some of the features that I’ve found pretty useful that you don’t get with a standard WordPress installation.

#1 – The Kalatu 21 Day Blogging Challenge

One of the first features that you’ll notice when you get started with Kalatu is that it has a 21 Day Blogging Challenge system built right into it.

What this does is it encourages you challenge yourself to write one blog post per day for at least 21 days.

The purpose behind this is to help you establish the habit of daily blogging.

Most psychologists say that it takes about 21 days for us to form a habit, so the 21 day blogging system is designed around that concept.

Every day, you are encouraged to write a new blog post and the system actually helps you to write those posts by offering suggestions and blogging templates that you fill out as a starting point.

You can either use the built-in templates, or you can just write your own blog post from scratch.  It’s totally up to you.

#2 – Kalatu Achievements

The next thing that you’ll find included with Kalatu, and tied into the 21 Day Blogging Challenge system is an achievement tracking system.

The Kalatu Achievement System is designed to make blogging fun and allows you to earn and unlock badges for completing various things.

For example, once you complete your first blog post, you’ll earn the “First Post” badge.

As you earn badges, you also move up in levels in the system so that you know that you’re doing the right things as a blogger.

The achievement system is still in it’s early stages with improvements coming soon, but even now it’s a pretty neat little system that rewards you for achieving certain blogging milestones.

#3 – Kalatu Social Media Card

The Kalatu Social Media Card, allows you to connect your Blog with your social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

You simply click on each of the social media sites, and authorize a connection with Kalatu and it does the rest.

It goes in and updates your Kalatu Themes to connect your audience with your various social media sites.

For example, by connecting your YouTube account, the Kalatu YouTube sidebar widget will automatically pull in and display your latest YouTube videos from your channel.

#4 – Kalatu Theme Customizer

Kalatu comes preloaded with five professional looking themes, with more on the way.

The cool thing though is that the Kalatu Theme Customizer also allows you to fully customize each theme to your liking.

For example, if you want to change the font for your theme, you can do so with the click of a few buttons.

If you want to customize the home page header, you can do so with the click of a few buttons.

If you want to add in an opt-in form that will automatically allow your blog visitors to subscribe to your email list, you can do so with the click of a few buttons.

None of the features require any coding, or scripting or pasting in any code.

Everything is done for you, you just have to do a few simple configurations.

You have control over your banner ads, your author box, and your social card settings as well.

Pretty much anything you might want to customize on your theme, you can do it through the theme customizer tool.

 #5 – Kalatu Tutorials

Another cool thing that Kalatu comes with is a set of tutorials for how to use the system.

There are videos and guide books that show you how to setup your Blog, how to map your domain properly, how to configure things and how to use the features that Kalatu comes with.

Of course this is on top of all the training that Empower Network has for helping you to become a successful blogger.

#6 – Kalatu Google Analytics Integration

Kalatu also has a very simple system for adding in Google Analytics integration.

All you have to do is take your Google Analytics tracking ID and paste it into the Kalatu Google Analytics integrator and click the save button.

By doing that, Kalatu will automatically incorporate full Google Analytics tracking into all of your themes.

This might not seem like a big deal, but I’ve found that a LOT of people who are not computer programmers find it difficult and confusing to try to get Google Analytics setup on their WordPress Blogs.

Also, with WordPress, if you ever change your theme, you have to re-do your Analytics integration, but with Kalatu it’s all automatic!

Not a huge deal, but it’s a nice feature to have.

#7 Kalatu Widgets

Kalatu Widgets

Kalatu takes a slightly different approach to widgets.

Instead of having 10,000+ different widgets available to you like WordPress does, Kalatu simplifies the whole widget system by only including the most useful and effective widgets that you will need for your blog.

This means that you no longer have to spend hours going through hundreds of different WordPress widgets that all say they do something, only to find yourself disappointed when they fall short of your expectations.

Of course the trade-off is that if you are looking for some highly customized widget for you blog, it may not be available on the Kalatu platform.

However, having said that, the idea behind the Kalatu platform is that they will constantly be expanding their library of widgets with the best widgets available out there.

Meaning, if someone out there creates a really cool WordPress widget that you might have to pay $20 or $50 or $100 for, there’s a chance that Kalatu will also create a widget similar to that one or even better, which you may be able to get for free.

Since Kalatu is going to be a paid platform with tens of thousands of users worldwide, the company has money in their budget to develop these high-end widgets that you might not find in the WordPress widget directory.

Also, as a blogger for 9 years now I have come to realize that even though WordPress technically has this huge marketplace of like 10,000 widgets – in reality I have only used about 10 different widgets in my blogging career.

A LOT of the WordPress widgets out there are crappy, poorly coded, and may even contain malware, viruses and other things that could cause problems for your WordPress blog.

This is why the geniuses behind Kalatu have chosen to not allow external widgets to be installed on the platform – ensuring that whatever widgets you do decide to activate in Kalatu is going to be a high-quality, solid widget that does the job well and doesn’t contain and problems or issues.

I’ve actually had my WordPress site shut down by my hosting company before, due to issues with a WordPress widget I downloaded and installed on my WordPress blog.

It was just some widget that pulled pictures from my Flickr account, but somehow it was poorly written and it overloaded my hosting company’s servers so they shut down my site.

I had to go through all my widgets and deactivate them one by one to find the one that was causing the issue.

In the end I got my site re-activated without any issues, but it took a whole afternoon of troubleshooting to figure what was wrong.

That’s wasted time I should have spent blogging, instead of messing around with my WordPress site.

With Kalatu, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

#8 Kalatu Headline Helper

Yet another cool feature that’s built into Kalatu is a headline helper.

Ever write a blog post and then felt stuck trying to figure out what title to give it?

The Kalatu Headline Helper helps you eliminate that problem.

Essentially you just click on the “Give Me a Headline” button that shows up in your post editor, and you’ll see a pop-up window pop up and ask you what subject you’re blogging about.

You just type in what you’re blogging about and it will give you a headline suggestion.

If you like the suggestion, you click one button and it inserts that into your blog post title.

If you don’t like that suggestion, you just click the “Give me another.” button, and it gives you another suggestion.

You can keep clicking it until you find a suggestion that you like.

#9 – Kalatu Writers Blog Solver

Ever get stuck not knowing what to write about?

Kalatu has a solution for that.

They have a little button that says “Give Me An Idea!” in the post editor, and when you click that button the Kalatu Random Inspirational Idea window pops up and gives you a random suggestion for the type of blog post you could write.

If you like the idea, you go ahead and write about it, and if you don’t like that idea you just click the “Give Me Another Idea” and Kalatu gives you another random idea.

You just keep clicking that button until you like an idea and then you go ahead and write the blog post.

#10 Kalatu Blogging Community and Training

The features I just listed are just SOME of the features and benefits you get with Kalatu that you don’t get with a WordPress installation.

However, there is one other HUGE benefit that you get with Kalatu that WordPress doesn’t offer, and that is the Kalatu Blogging Community and Training.

Kalatu is Empower Network’s new flagship blogging platform which combines some of the newest state-of-the-art blogging technology to help you become a successful blogger.

However, Kalatu itself is just a tool and a tool is only as good as the person using it.

That is why a tool, any tool, by itself is not enough.

That is why the Empower Network blogging community and training system is so powerful.

Empower Network doesn’t just focus on tools and technology, they also focus on YOU the content creator at your blog and they provide you with the training, the support AND the tools you’ll need to be a successful blogger.

In my 9+ years as a blogger I have never seen training on becoming a successful blogger like that which you can get access to with Empower Network.

There’s nothing else out there that even comes close the the track record that Empower Network has for inspiring, training and producing world-class bloggers.

If you want to be a successful blogger in 2015 and beyond, you have to get access to the best training on the planet, and Empower Network provides that.

If you want to be a successful blogger in 2015 and beyond, you also have to be plugged into a blogging community of like-minded people.  You won’t find a better blogging community than the one you’ll find in Empower Network.

Learn From My Journey

If you’ve been thinking about getting into blogging, or you’ve dabbled with blogging in the past but just never reached the level of success that you want from it, you may find my new eBook “Breaking Free in 2015” interesting.

In the eBook I share my journey of how I went from burger flipper to corporate zombie to six-figure Internet marketer.

I share my story and the lessons I’ve learned along the way in hopes to save others from making the same mistakes I made.

I also reveal what I believe to be the best strategy for making money online in 2015 and beyond.

If you’d like to download a free copy of the eBook  click here or on the picture.