FreeYouNow.com

One is Better Than Zero

by 2 Comments

I saw an awesome video today from Gary Vaynerchuk that really resonated with me.  It’s very short and to the point.

The attitude he expresses in this video is so important and especially relevant to Bloggers.

Check it out here and then read on further below…

Gary’s talking about doing interviews with people who you would think he has outgrown as a brand, and who his publicists think he’s crazy for even spending his time with.

He has been on Conan and Ellen and so many shows with HUGE audiences, but there’s something that Gary realizes…

… it’s one of those little “secrets” to success…

… and that is that it doesn’t matter if the content you produce – whether it be interviews, videos, blog posts or whatever – is seen by 100,000 viewers or 10 viewers.

Because when you look at these stats, like on Facebook or YouTube or on your Blog, the NUMBERS that you see are NOT NUMBERS – THEY’RE PEOPLE!

Human beings.

I’ve had some of my blog posts blow up and get 25,000+ visitors in one day.

I’ve also written blog posts that took hours to complete and then only got 50 or 100 visitors, zero shares and no comments.

The thing is though that those 50 or 100 visitors are human beings – people!

And sometimes with just one blog post, or video, you can LITERALLY change someone’s life forever.

And you may not even know about it, because not everyone who reads your content or watches your videos is going to message you and let you know how you changed their life.

I’ve met people on trips I’ve went on who I didn’t even realize were long-term readers of my blog, who told me in person that something I had written years prior to us meeting had a profound effect on their life.

In today’s world, where we have the ability to connect with millions, even billions of people using the Internet, and where big numbers like 50,000 views or 1 million views, or 10,000 followers seem like measures of success, we have to realize that it’s not just about the numbers.

It’s about one human being connecting with another human being.

It’s YOU reading this right now in YOUR present moment, and ME writing it right now in MY present moment.

A one to one connection.

A chance to change a life.

And what I like about Gary’s video is that he talks about the power of understanding that doing that ONE interview, regardless of who it is and how big their audiences is, is better than doing ZERO interviews.

The same thing can be said about Blog posts.

Writing ONE Blog post, is better than writing ZERO blog posts.

I’m currently participating in the 21 Day Blogging Challenge, and our goal is to write one Blog post per day for 21 days.

Want to know a little secret though?

I don’t even look at it that way.  I don’t think about writing one blog post per day for 21 days or even 7 days in a row…. all I ever think about is writing ONE BLOG POST…That’s it.

Only once I’m finished writing that ONE post, and I publish it and send it out… only then I think about writing ONE MORE blog post.

That’s all I ever do…just focus on ONE.

P.s. If you’d like to see what it feels like to be a Blogger, and publish your FIRST Blog post, I highly recommend checking out the Kalatu Brand Station.  It can help you get your first blog post written and published today.  Not only does it completely eliminate any technology barriers to setting up a world-class blog, it also coaches you on exactly what to do in order to write your first blog post today.

Blog Income Report – January 2015

by 1 Comment

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

by 1 Comment

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.

How to Make Money Blogging in 2015 and Beyond

by 4 Comments

In my 8+ years as a blogger I’ve seen so many people with great intention get excited about starting their own Blog, hoping that it will become successful and maybe even eventually start earning them some money.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of them end up giving up and quitting within just a few weeks.

Why?

Why do so many people, with such great intentions, fail to build a successful blog?

I believe that the reason behind this is that most people don’t have access to a proper PLAN for how to build a successful blog…

… so today I decided to shoot a video where I reveal the EXACT system I’m using right now – today – to build my blog.

This is the most up-to-date information, with 8+ years of blogging experience behind it, with me having tested DOZENS and DOZENS of different strategies, systems, tools and processes for building a successful Blog.

In this video, I hold nothing back.

I reveal EVERYTHING.

This is the exact business plan I am using today to build my Blog.

I give this away to you, free of charge.

You can take this, copy it, and be successful with it.

Enjoy:

Here are the tools I reveal in the video:

Kalatu – http://tmmlink.me/kalatu

Aweber – http://tmmlink.me/aweber

AWProTools – http://tmmlink.me/awpt

LeadPages – http://tmmlink.me/leadpages

 

 

Best Way to Get MLM Leads

by Leave a Comment

After being in several different MLM / Network Marketing companies and getting stuck after burning through my warm market, I started looking online for the best way to get MLM leads.

In the old days, way back in 1997, the first MLM company I worked for taught several offline lead generation strategies such as:

  • Wondering around shopping malls and plazas and talking to random strangers
  • Hanging out in the self-help section of a book store and pouncing on anyone there
  • Getting dressed up, going to hotels and riding elevators and handing out business cards
  • Going to different retail stores, striking up conversations with clerks and pitching them your MLM
  • etc.

I have to admit that I was absolutely HORRIBLE at these types of prospecting methods.

I am NOT your typical sales-type personality.

I’m more introverted and shy, and about the LAST thing in the world that I want to do is walk around malls talking to strangers!

This is why the first MLM I joined back in 1997 didn’t work out very well for me.

Once I worked through my warm market, and any referrals that I could get, I was STUCK.

So when I got back into the MLM scene in around 2008 / 2009, I started looking into ways to generate leads online.

Best Way to Generate MLM Leads Online

I have to say that when I first started looking at different ways to generate leads online, it didn’t go very well.

I found a bunch of different companies selling “hot leads” for the MLM industry, but I didn’t see any success with those either.

I tried doing online and offline advertising using banner ads, radio ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, classified ads, and more!

None of it produced a lot of success…

… in fact, about the only people that I was able to get to join the MLM I was promoting were people who have been readers of my Blog.

As a Blogger since 2006, I have built up a following of regular blog readers who I’ve provided a TONNE of value to through my blog posts, my videos and my coaching/mentoring services.

Interestingly enough, any time I would join an MLM company and I would blog about it, I would usually have a few dozen people join the MLM I was promoting.

Besides my family and friends, ALL of the people that I signed up were people who read my Blog!

The funny thing was that I didn’t even realize this point until in 2014 a mentor of mine shared with me one of his secrets for having ultra success in the MLM industry.

That secret was that he didn’t sponsor people from radio ads, or paid traffic sources, or magazines ads, or by walking around the mall talking to strangers.

He sponsored THOUSANDS of people in his MLM career using his BLOG!

When he shared this with me, I was blown away, as I never even considered a Blog to be a tool that I could use to generate MLM leads.

But once he mentioned this to me, I went back through all the different people that I sponsored in the various MLMs that I’ve been a part of and sure enough, virtually ALL of the people that I signed up came from my BLOG!

Blogging Your Way to MLM Success

After further researching into this and learning about it, I realized that there are several reasons which make Blogging an ultra effective strategy for generating MLM leads.

#1 – Blogging = Attraction Marketing

The beautiful thing about Blogging is that every single blog post that you write and publish, is like a little magnet that ATTRACTS the right types of people to your business.

The people who are attracted to my Blog posts share very similar interests, energy and vibration with me.

Meaning, they’re people just like me!

They might not have achieved the same level of income or success in life yet, but they’re people who I would most likely be great friends with if I met them in person.

That’s how Blogging works.  It attracts the right people to you!

And probably even more importantly, it repels people who are NOT the right people away from me.

For example, people who are very negative or ultra skeptical or who hate the MLM industry or who think that everything is a scam… well, those types of people are NOT going to be attracted to my Blog.

So I don’t even have to waste my time dealing with them.

My Blog only attracts positive, open minded people who have a dream and who are ready to take things to the next level.

#2 – Blogging Builds Value and a Rapport With Your Leads

When people first arrive at my Blog, they don’t know me.

They don’t know who I am, what I’m all about, and how I can help them.

Very quickly though, those questions get answered.

By reading my Blog posts and getting access to the various resources that I share on my Blog, people very quickly learn all about me, who I am, and how I can help them.

This leads to the development of trust and rapport with my prospects long before I even speak to them on the phone or via email or chat.

The beauty of this is that by having a Blog, it automatically “warms up” your leads and prospects because they start to see that you’re a genuine person and when you provide them with so much value, they begin to trust and like you more and more.

#3 – Blogging Attracts Leads 24/7 Regardless What You’re Doing

Once you setup a Blog and start publishing some content, that content will get indexed by the search engines and each blog post acts like a little piece of online real-estate that generates leads for you.

Once I publish a post, it doesn’t matter if I’m awake or asleep or on vacation… my Blog is working for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non-stop.

It’s connecting me with the right people, and it’s helping them out with the value that I share on my Blog.

Also, unlike other methods of generating leads such us buying them, or buying advertising, your Blog doesn’t stop working for me when my advertising budget runs out.

It’s like a machine that never sleeps and never takes a break.

Meaning, I can still combine my Blog with paid advertising methods such as buying leads or doing radio ads or classified ads or Facebook ads or any other paid advertising methods…

… but the difference is that if for example I run a paid ad for 5 days, and then run out of advertising budget for a period of time, my Blog is still up and running 24/7.

This way I can still generate leads even if I don’t have a big advertising budget to invest into generating leads.

Of course if I DO have some money to invest into advertising, I can do that, and generate leads and then use my Blog to “warm them up” to me by providing them with a lot of value.

It’s awesome!

Isn’t Blogging Complicated?

If blogging is so awesome, then why aren’t more people in the MLM industry embracing it as a method for generating leads?

Well, firstly, one of the main reasons is because they don’t know about this strategy.

Until recently, nobody has known how powerful Blogging can be for generating a virtually unlimited stream of MLM leads.

A lot of the people who have figured this out have been keeping this strategy more or less a secret too, as it’s so effective.

That is why those people who decide to get started with Blogging now, will be rewarded.

Of course, the opportunity isn’t going to be around forever.

Once all the top leaders in the industry catch on to how powerful Blogging is as a method for generating MLM leads, everyone will be doing it, and then it might be too late.

Also, chances are that your competitors are catching wind of this as well.

Especially with the new Kalatu Brand Station that has just been released.

The whole MLM industry is about to go through a rapid change in the way people generate MLM leads and sponsor people.

Just like the cell phone revolutionized the way we communicate with people, the Kalatu Brand Station will revolutionize the way we generate leads in the MLM industry.

Another reason why it’s a great idea to get started with Blogging today is because your MLM leads and prospects and team mates will look up to you and see you as a leader that is connected with the latest, up to date, state-of-the art marketing strategies in the MLM industry.

They won’t have to go elsewhere for this type of information, because YOU will be the leader that connects them with this new technology, instead of trying to teach them outdated, offline techniques that are becoming completely obsolete.

This of course can have a very positive effect on your retention rates!

Instead constantly trying to sponsor new people and seeing them quitting on you a few months later because they don’t know how to generate leads outside of their warm market either, NOW your team mates will stick around long term and also start using the Kalatu Brand Station to generate leads for themselves!

But again, you might be asking yourself – isn’t blogging complicated?

Well, it can be!

As someone who has been a blogger since 2006, I have seen THOUSANDS of people try to get started with blogging only to get frustrated, confused and then to inevitably quit!

Why?

Because until now, there has never been a simple, systematized method for learning how to Blog in a way that’s going to position you as a brand, as a leader, and to help you generate MLM leads.

Introducing Kalatu Brand Station

The Kalatu Brand Station completely eliminates the guesswork out of Blogging for the purpose of building your brand and generating MLM leads for your business.

Kalatu is built on the world’s most powerful blogging system – WordPress – but unlike traditional WordPress systems out there, it completely simplifies the entire technology behind becoming a Blogger.

You no longer have to learn anything about hosting WordPress, or installing code, or messing around with FTP servers or any of that stuff that overwhelms most people.

With Kalatu, you can go from zero to having a fully operational Blog in MINUTES!

It’s very simple.

Not only that, but Kalatu also comes with the state-of the art LevelUp Sequence:

Kalatu LevelUp Sequence

So what is the LevelUp Sequence?

Well, it’s a proprietary system that was developed by the Kalatu team, which takes a person from start to finish and shows them exactly what they need to do – step-by-step – in order to become a successful blogger.

All other blogging systems out there give you some of the tools and then leave it up to you to try to figure everything else out.

Most people get confused, frustrated and just don’t know what they’re supposed to do.

That is why in the past virtually 99% of all people who started blogging ended up GIVING UP before they achieved any success.

If you tried starting a Blog in the past, and it didn’t work for you, don’t blame yourself!

It wasn’t you!  It was the technology and the training that just wasn’t available at that time… but it is now.

With the Kalatu LevelUp Sequence that won’t happen.

The system grabs you by the hand and shows you EXACTLY what you need to do in order to succeed.

It’s awesome!

You’ve got to check this thing out.

It’s absolutely amazing.

Trust me, you want to be one of the first people in your MLM to know about this, especially if you are planning on building a team.

Because no matter what, your team WILL hear about this eventually and they WILL ask you about it…

… and the last thing you want is to look stupid in front of your team, right?

Instead, you’re much better off taking a look at Kalatu now, learning what it’s about and how it works, and utilizing it to start generating leads for your MLM.

This way, not only will you look like a genius in front of your team-mates, you’ll also be helping others in the industry as well!

The statistics show that there are over 50,000 people per month in the USA alone who are looking to join an MLM – right now!

And a LOT of those people are looking on the Internet for information about which company to join!

By setting up a Kalatu Brand Station for yourself, you’ll be able to capitalize on that massive market and to help those people find the best MLM for them.

I highly recommend learning more about Kalatu by clicking here.

P.s. If you take the Kalatu platform and the LevelUp Sequence training system for a spin today you will receive a special bonus.  Just click here to learn more.