Nathan Hangen

Life is a Game of Inches

I know you’ve probably seen this video before, but when I saw it the other day (probably the 10th time I’ve watched it), it still gave me goosebumps. This might be a movie, but there are so many truths inside Pacino’s speech that I wanted to share it here. Life is a game of inches. [...]

How is Your Bookkeeping?

The reason I write this post is because I procrastinated big time when it came to tracking my business income and expenses. Then, when I started making plans to move from a job in the Military to becoming self-employed in Tampa, I realized that if I didn’t start tracking these numbers, I’d have an incredibly difficult time buying a new house or obtaining financing of any kind. I’d also be ignorant of how I spent my business income, which meant that my plan wouldn’t matter and my future would be blowing in the wind.

As a result, I finally got with the program…literally. I started using Outright.com because it is free and totally awesome. In the past few weeks that I’ve been using it, I’ve not only been able to get a grip on the stray expenses that keep me from my goals, but I also have a record that I can use come tax season.

If you need an online bookkeeping solution for your business, give this one a try. Once you have, let me know what you think about it by submitting a comment below.

Balance – The Secret to Blogging Success

Today’s guest post is by Mike CJ, a friend of the Webrepreneur Blog. You can read more about him at the end of the post. Make sure to let him know what you think by submitting a comment below.

Time is one of the biggest issues we bloggers deal with on a daily basis. Even as a full time blogger, there often simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do. And this becomes compounded for those blogging part time around a “normal” job.

For all bloggers, the most important element of our work has to be driving traffic to our blogs. Everything else we do becomes secondary if nobody is actually reading our work or looking at our pages selling products. In my opinion the top traffic drivers are:

1. Consistently writing good content for our blogs
2. Publicizing our blogs online (Twitter, Facebook etc)
3. Commenting on other blogs
4. Guest posting on other blogs
5. Promoting our blogs offline (press, PR, word of mouth)

The trouble is, it’s too easy to fall into the trap of relentlessly pursuing the one or two of the above that you enjoy, or are good at. I love working on Twitter and writing for my own blog, but I don’t really enjoy guest posting or pushing my blog offline. So, when faced with an 8 hour workday, it’s very easy for me to spend the whole day doing the things I enjoy, and not bother with the others. It’s a classic marketing mistake! So how do you avoid it? With planning.

I tend to plan every blogging session at the start of the day. Each one can vary in time, but generally I work in two hour bursts, then take a break. So right at the beginning, I decide how many two hour sessions I’m going to do, and usually I do four. Across the four sessions I’ll plan an equal amount of time for each of the above key activities.
Here’s an example showing today’s plan:

Session One

* Write xxx post (Activity 1)
* Go through RSS reader and comment where appropriate (Activity 3)
* Sort out Clickbank affiliation

Session Two

* Finish guest post (Activity 4)
* Twitter catch up (Activity 2)
* Email catch up

Session Three

* Facebook catch up (Activity 2)
* Write interview with Island Connections mag (Activity 5)
* Write xxx post (Activity 1)

Session Four

* Second RSS read and comment (Activity 3)
* Plan subjects for two more guest posts (Activity 4)
* Twitter catch up (Activity 2)
* Email catch up

Now please don’t use that as a template, it’s just an example for one day. But, the key point is that there is balance – I’m doing a little of everything, and that’s important. You can become a Twitter superstar and focus all your energies in that direction, but you will be missing out on the many (yes many!) people who don’t use Twitter yet. You can become the best and most prolific guest writer in history, but you won’t attract people who aren’t reading the blogs you’re guesting on.

And that bring us back around to the title – Balance is the secret to blogging success. You don’t need to adopt my method, or even my key tasks, but do ensure that you balance out your own key tasks in your day to day work.

Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger. His blog www.mikeslife.org is designed to help new and learning bloggers, with a passion for writing, to achieve a long term sustainable income from blogging.

Chris is Right

Chris Brogan mentioned that he prefers McDonald’s coffee to both Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts…this I do not think he is right about. However, in the rest of the post he argued that branding is more than just communication. In what he referred to as “owning distribution,” Chris made a wonderful point that addressed the need [...]

Become a Brand (Not Just a Niche)

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog yesterday and read a great post about CPM gaps. In this post, he talked about how you can integrate advertising with your site so that it becomes part of the brand. A “hand in hand” effort so to speak. I realized that there are a few companies that do [...]