Blogging Is Not a Get Rich Quick Scheme

I joined Entrecard a few weeks ago, and thanks to dropping my cards and being dropped on, I’ve been seeing many more blogs than usual. The blogs I am reading regularly now cover a wide range of topics, from parenting, to books, to funny videos. But of all these new blogs I am discovering, A large percentage of them are “Make Money Blogging” Blogs. Another popular category is “Watch Me Make a Million Dollars In One Year Blogging”.

ProBlogger Reality Check

I would like to suggest, that if you are a blogger hoping to make a living from blogging, and especially if you have one of the above mentioned type of blog, that you take a look Darren Rowse’s article A Reality Check about Blogging for Money over at ProBlogger.net. If you are not familiar with Darren Rowse and his ProBlogger site, you probably haven’t been blogging for very long. Darren is THE ProBlogger, the one who made the whole idea of blogging for a living a reality. His site is full of information that every blogger should read. In short, he knows what he is talking about.

In his Reality Check post, Darren Rowse points out that he didn’t get to be a ProBlogger overnight. It took YEARS! Years of multiple part time jobs and blogging into the wee hours of the night. Years of studying SEO and figuring out the best way to monetize his blogs (at one point he was posting over 20 times a day!) Even now he blogs 40 to 60 hours per week. And is he making a million dollars a year? Well Darren isn’t saying, but according to the Wall Street Journal he earns over $250,000 per year. Not a bad income, but not even half way to a million dollars.

Now does this mean you should quit blogging and give it all up? Certainly not. It just means that, while there are some bloggers who rocket to success in a very short time, for most bloggers it is a long hard haul until you are making enough to cover your hosting costs!

A Blog Business is Just Like Any Other Business

The trick to being successful and profitable in a reasonable amount of time, is to look at your blogging business just like any other business. Especially at first, you shouldn’t be worrying about how to fit another widget onto your website, or how to trick people into clicking on your adsense ads. Your first concern should be to deliver a quality product that people will want to buy, (or in this case, read). Pick a topic that people are interested in, and learn how to write well. Spend some time on your posts and deliver information that people will find useful. Find some way to differentiate your blog from all the rest. Is it your writing style, your point of view?

Market Your Blog

Once you have a quality product, work hard on marketing and finding readers. This is when you worry about keyword optimization and SEO. Become active in some social sites, post in forums, comment on blogs you like. But don’t ever, ever spam.

Learn From Other Bloggers

I know that when I see someone in my niche who is doing really well, my first feeling is jealousy and I want to find fault in their blog. But I know the smart thing to do is to study what they are doing well, and see how I can use that knowledge to improve my writing or the look of my site.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Know that your blog is like a baby. At first it is going to need your time, attention and money to grow and thrive. Then gradually, it will become self supporting, it will still need lots of time and attention, but hopefully it will be paying its own way. And then the day will come, when your blog is making you money. For most of the off line businesses I have consulted with, this process, from totally dependent baby to profitable business is about 3 years. It is interesting to note, that Darren says “the average age of blogs in the Technorati Top 100 was over 3 years.”

You Can Be the Exception to the Rule

Create a quality product, market it well, and then hope for more than a little luck. Just maybe, your blog will be the next big thing, the exception to the rule, and you will become the millionaire blogger!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here is something I found today at KatalinaMau.com. I thought it was a great idea for Valentine’s Day. So if you would like some free backlinks, comment on this post! Here is the original. Everything is just the same here.

I have been trying to think of a way to thank all my readers this Valentine’s Day, and to let you know how much I appreciate you. It just wouldn’t be practical to send chocolates, or flowers, or cards. I could send e-cards but that might be a little spammy. So I thought and thought and then I thought some more. I wanted to make sure whatever it was went to my readers, and not those who were just passing through. That’s why this paragraph is a little long and wordy!

So I finally came up with an idea, it’s not much, but it fits my budget! I am giving away links, to everyone who wants one. Here is how it will work. This blog is a do-follow blog and I have Comment Luv installed. That means if you comment on a post you get a link back to your blog plus, comment luv adds a link back to your last post. And of course they are all do-follow links.

Now usually I just delete comments that I feel are blatant self-promotion, but on this post I am welcoming it! I’d like it if you would tell me a little bit about who you are, but if you are in a hurry go ahead and make a one word comment, or no comment. You could even include another link to your blog. (Only one please)

Now only a few restrictions. This is a PG-13 blog so if your site is adult, gambling, or adult pharms, than I’m going to have to say sorry, this offer doesn’t apply to you. And if you like my idea, feel free to copy it. Just please be nice and provide a link back to this post.

A Lesson In Prosperity From The Little Parrot

A big Thank You to Angela Baden for bringing us a story of encouragement and not giving up!

A Lesson In Prosperity From The Little Parrot For Business Professionals and Entrepreneurs
By Angela Baden

I first heard the story of the Little Parrot a few years ago. It comes out of Buddhist tradition and is a striking example of the power of determination and the power of the mind to move the universe. As a marketing professional you can harness this same power to build your business and enjoy prosperity. Here it is:

A small and beautiful parrot lived in a great forest with many animals. One day the forest caught fire and went out of control and threatening to engulf the entire forest. The little parrot circled helplessly above the fire until she remembered the river not so far away.

She flew to the river and dipped her wings into it. And then she flew to the forest and shook little drops of water on the flames. They sizzled away to nothing. She flew back to the river and returned again and again and again and again. Just the little drops of water that she could shake from her wings fell and disappeared in the flames. The great deities saw her from above and laughed at the absurdity of what she was doing.

But one of the gods, moved by the compassion and dedication of this little bird, changed himself into a golden eagle and began to weep. And while the little bird alone could not put out the fire, the tears of the eagle fell drowning the fire saving the forest, the animals and the little parrot herself.

This is a cute little story for children, however, it illustrates a lesson for all of us marketing professionals. Whether it is internet marketing, MLM, real estate, insurance, mortgage, or any business you’re operating from home, this lesson could ultimately influence your financial prosperity.

Let us say, for example, that things are not going as well as you hoped. You have made such efforts. You have spent money on advertising and products. You called friends and family and people you do not know to join your enterprise. You harassed co-workers to buy your products. You bought leads that led to only a few sales. You had rejection after rejection.

You listened to your upline, your trainers, and the gurus. You went to conventions watching them parade across the stage. You attended seminars and workshops. You invested lots in books, DVDs, tapes, e-books, all kinds of tools. What have you got to show for it?

You have all but given up. Your family and friends doubt you. They say you can not make any money. You are silly to to do this. It takes too much time and effort. You start to panic! You agree with them. It is impossible! You can not do it!!

What happened to your dream? You promised to make it, no matter what. However, the fire got too hot. The flames scorched your wings. The smoke was too thick. You could not see those who could be helped by you. It is so much easier to fly away. Everyone is laughing at you.The universe must be telling you it is hopeless.

Okay, Little Parrot, you have two choices. Which one will you make? Will you give up and run to safety, never knowing whether you could make it? Or, will you keep going, learning, seeking until you manifest the power within to find the right person, the right direction you need to help you make your dream come true?

I work with people everyday who want to quit after one or two or three rejections, so I relay my own story of taking the bar examination ten times before I passed and became a lawyer. What if I had quit because my circumstances stopped me? I would never have known the thrill of victory. When I left the practice of law, it was on my own terms, not because I allowed myself to be defeated.

You are an entrepreneur. If something is important to you, do not give up, no matter what it looks like. You do not know what the outcome might be, or who might be inspired by your action. Do not make any more excuses. Unleash Your Power!

Angela Baden is a former practicing attorney, teacher, real estate investor and personal chef, turned internet marketer. She is the founder of DivaBiz Enterprises and Millionaire Health Secrets. She is a student of the Master Key System and a member of The Prosperity Cast Network. She is enthusiastic about having been in the Marketing/Networking Industry for over 4 years. She shares her considerable knowledge with others to help them succeed in life and in business from home. For more information call 206-305-2120 or go to http://www.divabiz.com

Article Source: Angela Baden
A Lesson In Prosperity From The Little Parrot

Sites To See on the World Wide Web

Truely successful people are always learning, and I spend some time every day getting better at the things I love to do. (Like blogging!) Here are a couple of websites I have found that have helped to make me a better blogger.

Bloggeries is a forum I was visiting regularly even  before I found Project Wonderful and Entrecard! My username is Katalina, so if you drop by be sure and look for me and say Hi!  The Bloggeries forum is a daily stop for me. It is very friendly, active forum about, for, and by bloggers.  I find some of my best blogging tips there.  Plus I’ve made a few friends.

BlogAboutYourBlog.com is a site for  good quality bloggers to come together and collaborate on one big project. We have bloggers from all over the world, blogging about a variety of topics. I just found this site recently through Entrecard and it has become a daily read for me.

And I have to mention one of the big boys, John Chow.  Some people really don’t like John Chow’s site, but the truth is there is a lot to be learned there about becoming a successful and profitable blogger.  Make sure to download the free ebook.  Mixed in with all the affiliate links is some very useful information on how to make money with your blog.

Let me know, where do you find your best blogging tips?

Easy Blog Promotion

Three Easy Ways To Promote Your Blog and Get Feedback

Thanks to Ferox for stepping in today! Read more from Ferox at one of her blogs.

Nearly Dr. Ferox
Corollax a Dungeons and Dragons Blog
Rant of Ferox

When you’re starting out in the world of blogging and have your shiny new blog up and running, the thing you crave most is visitors and comments. You want to know that someone out there is reading what you’ve gone to all that effort to write.

Trying to promote a blog can be difficult and time consuming. There is a whole new language of SEO to learn, and the lingo surrounding blog promotion can be daunting. After all, the internet is a big place and there’s an awful lot of stuff in it. Fortunately, there are a few certain ways to get some precious feedback and valuable traffic to your blog, and it’s easy to do!

The first site I’d like to mention is Blog Engage (www.blogengage.com). This website allows you to register and post your blogs for free. You can post an entry for each post you make in your blog, and readers can ‘engage’ the post to increase its ranking. It doesn’t take very long at all; you just need to know your URL and a brief description of the post. You can also read posts from other blogs, searching all posts easily by their popularity and subject.

The second thing I’d like to mention is joining a blog forum and actually asking for feedback. There are always people around who are happy to offer up some of their experiences, and if they like what they see in your blog they are very likely to hang around as regular readers! Bloggeries (www.bloggeries.com) has a blog forum which I have personally used, and found lots of helpful advice, tools and feedback. You can introduce yourself and your blog there very easily, all you have to do is register a forum account to post.

Social networking sites allow users to share their favourite links. If you are a member of a social networking site (eg stumbleupon, facebook etc) then you can post links to your own sites. If you ask your friends to do the same, then your blog could spread around the internet very quickly.

These three simple methods don’t take up much time, and can give you some very fast feedback when establishing a new blog. There are many other methods to promote your blog if you are serious about it, but these will take time and commitment. Building up backlinks, comments and directory submissions make much more time and often yield smaller results compared to the methods mentioned previously.

What is Success?

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson


My Obligatory Entrecard Post

Here it is! My post about Entrecard!

Everywhere I look bloggers are posting about Entrecard. I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun, plus I think it must be in the rules somewhere, else why would everyone be doing it?

For those who don’t know, Entrecard is a site that uses  “online business cards” to help bloggers promote their blogs and gain traffic. If you want to find out more, look in the left sidebar at the top ad box. It should say “Get Yours” or something like that. Click on that and you’ll find out what everyone is talking about. (And no, I don’t get anything if you click, it won’t cost you anything if you click, and you won’t lose your place here if you click. So go ahead, check it out. I’ll be here when you get back!)

Now, many of you are here because of Entrecard, so you already know that Entrecard will increase your traffic and get you opportunities to advertise on blogs that may have previously been outside your reach. But what has been really catching my eye lately is all the Entrecard contests there are! I’m sure there are even blogs about Entrecard contests. I’ve seen a post on the Entrecard forum complaining about how many contests there are, so I know they are really popular!  So, just because everyone else is doing it, here is my Entrecard Contest.

My Entrecard Contest

Prizes

  • Best Blog Post -In My Opinion- 200 Entrecredits Plus a 125 X 125 Ad for 1 month.*
  • Best Comment -in my opinion – 100 Entrecredits plus a 125X125 Ad for 1week*
  • 1 Random Drawing for 100 Entrecredits

How to Enter

  • Comment here for one entry. Comment on any other Ninja Success post for 2 entries. You’ll automatically get a do-follow link back to your site, plus I have comment luv. If you don’t know what that is, you’ll have to comment to find out, but I am pretty sure you’ll like it!
  • Add Ninja Success to your BlogRoll*- 5 entries comment here to let me know (and pick up another entry!)
  • Blog about any Ninja Success post and link back to the post.* 25 entries – comment here to let me know!
  • Digg it, Stumble it, anything else that will promote my blog.. 5 to 20 entries depending on what you did.  And of course, comment here to let me know.

Other stuff… All prizes will be awarded… Spam will be ignored and deleted… *Please no adult sites…My decisions are final.

Contest ends March 1st. Winners will be announced here. Now go drop a card on me!

Secrets to Start-Up Success

Do you want to take your business to the next level? But you are not sure how? With Christine Comaford-Lynch‘s Secrets to Start-Up Success Training Kit you can :

Discover Proven Strategies, Tools and Techniques to Launch Your Startup Enterprise or Sky-Rocket Your Established Enterprise by Boosting the Value of Your Company Today

Imagine your business catapulting full-throttle and operating successfully with:

  • a killer business plan
  • your dream team of employees, advisors and board members
  • optimal funding from the right sources, at your ideal terms
  • a proven plan to launch your products and services while avoiding the most common business mistakes

Sound like a dream come true? Perhaps you have something in mind for “someday”, but your plans are on the back burner as you struggle with the endless fires within your company?

It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way!

Gain the Fundamentals and Inspiration for Launching a Successful Business from Someone Who Has Achieved Her Goals by Applying These Techniques

Christine Comaford-Lynch is a serial entrepreneur who has built five of her own businesses, served as a board director or “in-the-trenches advisor” to 36 startups, and has invested in over 200 companies. She has consulted with the White House, 700 of the Fortune 1000 companies, and over 100 small businesses nationwide.

Revered by her peers as one of the rare individuals who has been on both sides of the fence; climbing up the corporate ladder to finding herself as an entrepreneur launching startup after startup, Christine understands failure and sweet success perhaps better that anyone. As a result she found herself in the unique position of respected consultant for a who’s-who roster which led to her most gratifying title today: Founder and CEO of Mighty Ventures, a startup business consultancy that helps entrepreneurs shape their businesses, secure influential advisors and board members, get funded, launch and grow rapidly.

Find out more in the Secrets to Start-Up Success Training Kit .

A lot of us think that certain special things happen only to certain special people. Christine believes that each of us create our own luck; success is absolutely in your mind.

There is a critical foundation you must build before you come close to fulfilling the 3 components of your life. With her signature “F-I-R-E-U-P!”, Christine will guide you to:

  • Embody the mind of a successful entrepreneur
  • Fight your inner critic
  • Turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones
  • Implement the formula PROBLEMS + PAIN = PROFIT
  • Fail forward
  • Practice positive target fixation
  • Find opportunities everywhere
  • See the gap between “financial equity” and “emotional equity”
  • ASK! for outrageous things

Sending you on your way with 4 steps to apply her F-I-R-E-U-P! technique, Christine will give you the confidence, motivation and tools you need to begin thinking with an entrepreneurial mindset today.

Click here to learn more about Christine Comaford-Lynch‘s Secrets to Start-Up Success Training Kit.

Plan your entrepreneurial dream today with this complete home study system that includes:

Over five hours of Christine Comaford-Lynch’s personal knowledge and business advice, indexed and labeled for simple, repetitive use. Includes discussions on business plans, teams, financing, launching, growing, overcoming obstacles, and more.
Accompanying source material, conveniently tabbed in the binder.
Business Template CD featuring source documents, that can be customized for your venture, your business plan outline, sales pipeline, lead qualification, ROI, and much more.

Click here to learn more about Christine Comaford-Lynch’s Secrets to Start-Up Success Training Kit.

 

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Simple Success System For Daily Results

Simple Success System For Daily Results by AURELIO RAMOS

With so much to do and so little time, how in the word can I manage my time? This is probably the most paradoxical question for many of us. We all have the same 24 hours a day and the same 365 days of the year. Yet, some get so much more done in that time. How do they do it? What is their secret? Well, I know what my “secret” has been, and it has allowed me to have as much time as I want to spend with my lovely wife and my beautiful two year old son. I believe everyone should have this Simple Success System Secret, so I trust you will read on and benefit from using it yourself.

I am breaking it down into very specific questions to guide you through the process. However, before I share those questions I must state a few key components in order for this “secret” to give you maximum results.

First, you MUST write down your responses to the questions I share with you. Having the answers in your mind will NOT do it. It has been proven time and time again that just having the thoughts without writing them down are nowhere nearly as effective as putting them down on paper. There is something almost magical about putting things down on paper, it seems to be the beginning of manifesting something into reality. Think about it, everything that has every come into existence, has in some way or another made it on print, prior to it taking form. Yes, thoughts come first, but it is when those thoughts are put on paper that they really begin to take form. So, WRITE it down.

Second, this Simple Success System is much more effective when done either last thing before going to bed, or the very first thing upon arising. I trust there is some psychological scientific explanation for this. However, the one that made the most sense to me was that it is at these two times that my subconscious is most open and available at these times. Think about it for just a moment, when you go to bed, you give your subconscious mind anywhere between 5-8 hours (or more for us sleepy heads) to sort out what you are wanting to accomplish the next day. That’s a pretty long time and to top it off, it is when you are often most relaxed (allowing for an even more effective mindset). If you do it in the morning, there is that morning fog, where your analytical mind hasn’t kicked in yet, and your subconscious mind is open, available and rested. And if you’ve ever watched “The Secret” you understand that this is where you tell your subconscious mind, “This is what I want my day to look like…” and your subconscious mind will begin to do everything it can to make it so. So, how about telling it exactly what you want your day; to be like. Think of yourself as a script writer, and you are writing a script for your perfect day.

Third, use the following Simple Success System handout along with the prompts below to set yourself up for daily success. Here are your simple instructions:

  • Press here to open up and print your Simple Success System handout.
  • Consider the following questions as you complete your handout:
    Professionally:
    – What are the top 5 highest priority professional action items.
    – What are the top 5 medium priority professional action items.
    – What are the top 5 LOW priority professional action items
    – My most important calls to make today are…
    – My most important emails to address today are…Personally
    – What are the top 5 things I am doing to take care of myself today.
    – What are my top personal relationship action items I am willing to nurture today?
    – What am I willing to do today to “Pay it forward” (or be of service)?
    – What am I grateful for today?
  • Once you’ve completed your list keep it somewhere you can see it consistently throughout the day.

The process itself should take no longer than 10 minutes. However, the “secret” to you getting the results you want is based on the following premises. First, write it down. Second, do this process in the morning upon awakening or just before going to bed. Third, put it somewhere you can see it. Finally, and most importantly, do the highest top priority things FIRST before moving onto anything else. Do this and results are guaranteed.

I trust this is of service to you and you will decide to make the use of these tools a habit. Enjoy creating your next level of success. For additional resources on health, wealth, and growth articles simply visit us at www.bodymindsuccess.com.