Blogging

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Oh No I didn’t! #PIA

Posted September 2nd 2012 by Ben Norman

Well what can I say, it’s been a while and a half since I last wrote anything here, cue a lengthy list of excuses which completely vindicate me on all counts..!

The truth is I don’t really have any, I’ve just been distracted by a whole variety of things with the thought “I should really write a post or two” stuck in my head without actually doing anything about it. What it has drilled home though is how important having a schedule is for me if I really want to make progress with my goals. To show you what I mean I submit a post I wrote in May titled “A plan of action” as piece of evidence 1a.

In summary I basically said that I was worried that writing for this blog was distracting me from my actual goals and that I’m going to take a more relaxed approach going forward. The result? Well I was certainly relaxed! I wrote three subsequent posts within a couple of weeks and haven’t been back since, think I’m safe in classifying that as an absolute shocker.

Fortunately I have managed to make progress with my other internet projects whilst I’ve been PIA (Procrastinating In Action) on this blog but still not as much I hoped. The conclusion? Time to crack out a more rigid schedule again to get things back on track.

I think the trick is to start with a very manageable schedule and slowly add additional items in over time, I shall label this the softly softly catchy monkey approach (yes that’s correct, I have no issue with stealing sayings and bending them for my own uses!).

Over the next couple of days I’m going to put this schedule together which should give me time to play around with it etc. Once I’m happy I’ll post it up here for to make me nice and accountable.

So there you go, my first failed experiment, the casual approach does not work, at least not for me. Do you manage quite happily with a more casual approach, if so how on earth do you do it!? (Can’t have an article without a cheeky interrobang) If not I assume you’re more like me and need some sort of structure, have you actually created one though or has it been on your ever expanding to do list like me? If so there’s your homework, go on I dare you…

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A Plan Of Action

Posted May 12th 2012 by Ben Norman

So I’ve been in a bit of a quandary about what I should do with this site since taking a break to finish off my coursework and study for my final exams. What I’ve come to realise is that regular development and writing for this site is actually distracting me from my main goal, i.e developing and experimenting with way to generate income online.

This is the exact opposite of my aim for the site, to help motivate myself on a daily basis. I’m just back from a celebratory “I’ve finished university” holiday, which gave me time to ponder on how I should change my approach with this blog. I enjoy writing, and love to help people out and share my success/failures but what I’ve come to realise is that I shouldn’t view this blog as a project, but instead more of a hobby.

I didn’t set out to be a professional blogger, generating income from this blog was never my intention as is probably evidenced by the lack of adverts found on this site, but in the back of my mind I still wanted it to be a success traffic wise, I mean who wants to feel like they’re talking to a void! This meant that I started putting more and more attention into how to drive traffic, whether that be through social media, site optimisations, commenting etc which was starting to take up more and more of my time.

From now on this blog is for fun, as well as hopefully to provide that motivation for which it was originally intended. I’m not going to stick to a schedule, or intentionally write about topics I feel would benefit traffic levels or anything else, I’m simply going to talk about what I want, when I want. No this isn’t necessarily the best way to create a successful blog, but it will hopefully make it seem much less artificial and hopefully better for it. Most importantly though it should give me chance to make a real go of my other projects.

I’ve now got three weeks almost entirely free before starting my first job, I’m intending to dedicate a lot of that time to the projects I’m working on so I imagine you’ll probably hear from me before long… or maybe you won’t!

P.S. – One other thing that I’ve decided to try and do is take writing these articles much less seriously. In the past posts have gone through many revisions (I’m a bit of a perfectionist!) before I’m happy enough to hit the publish button. By writing more freely I’ll not only save a vast amount of time but hopefully provide you with a more personal, conversationalist account of what I’ve doing/thinking. I’ll glance over the articles before publishing to try and remove the majority of spelling errors etc but this does leave the potential for some fairly hilarious mistakes… apologies in advance!

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Amazon Affiliate Link Localiser Review

Posted March 14th 2012 by Ben Norman

As I mentioned in my first monthly update I’ve decided to try and post more frequently on this site (hopefully 4 times a week) to try and boost the traffic I’m receiving. I am however nervous that too much attention on this site on my end could distract me from my main goal, i.e. creating successful websites which can generate me a passive income online.

Therefore I’ve decided to base the two additional posts on things I am already doing, but not necessarily writing about. I’m already spending a lot of my time reviewing a variety of products in the making money online niche as part of my weekly routine that I am considering using. Previously the conclusions I’ve drawn have only really benefited myself, obviously it makes sense for me to share the opinions I’ve drawn with you as well as it won’t take me much additional time to write the articles but, as in many cases they are based on numerous hours of research, experimentation or review they should hopefully be of real benefit to you, the reader.

The other weekly posts I’m going to write are a summary of my recommended articles which I’ve read during the week. I currently read an awful lot of posts during the week as I’m sure you do. It’s impossible to keep up with everything online, there’s simply too much of it, plenty of which is average at best. I’m hoping that by recommending articles every week I’ll not only be giving the author some well deserved exposure, but also help to introduce you to some great blogs and website you may not have come across otherwise.

Anyway on to my product for today:

Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer

If you’re a member of the Amazon affiliate link system like me you may be surprised to learn that if you link to a version of Amazon from a specific country and the sale is made on a different country’s version you don’t get the commission. Considering that your website is almost certainly receiving a high proportion of its traffic from differing countries it’s highly likely that you’re missing out on a significant amount of income.
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How Much Is Time Worth?

Posted March 9th 2012 by Ben Norman

Note that this article solely focusses on valuing your time when blogging but the theory applies to all business. I originally intended to use is as a guest post on Problogger, hence the focus, but a similar post on the same topic has recently been featured there so I’ve decided to post it here instead.

Anyone trying to create a successful blog is soon hit by the realisation that time is as precious commodity. Most of us are working full time, have family and social commitments and are also trying to squeeze in as much work on our blogs as possible.

In order to get everything we need done we have to prioritise these activities, which sometimes leads to time normally utilised for our blogs being rescheduled for more pressing matters.

If you’re only blogging as a fun hobby, and have no intention of generating any sizeable income from the web this post probably isn’t for you. However I’m sure most of us (myself included) would love to make a sizeable profit, maybe even enough to make a living, from the internet.

If so the time you set aside for your blog is amongst the most important, and if at all possible shouldn’t be sidelined for other things. Now I realise this is always the case, which means using the time you do get as efficiently as possible is a priority if you want to be successful online.

Here’s where my question comes in – “How much is your time worth?”. Not an easy question to answer by any means but I’ll give it a go:
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Get Noticed on Google With Author Information

Posted February 27th 2012 by Ben Norman

As you probably know this website is pretty new, I’ve not even finished building it properly yet! So you can imagine my surprise when I started getting hits from Google to an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago titled ‘Touch Typing: Is Learning Worth It?‘.

Past experience has taught me that getting noticed on Google isn’t easy, especially for highly contested topics. However, having researched how I was getting these hits I do have one piece of advice that I think may help those of us trying to tap into the massive potential Google offers.
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