Top 5 Lessons From a Part Time Blogger

It’s already been three months since I first started blogging and I’ve learned quite a bit. I currently work full time as an engineer and I blog part time on the side. I’ve made a few mistakes since I started blogging and have put together my top 5 lessons from being a part time blogger.

The reason I put this together is because I’ve had a few friends ask me about blogging and how to get started. I also know that these friends already have a full plate and will probably need to blog part time, just like me. I figured that the best way for my friends (or anyone) to get started quickly is by learning from someone who has made some mistakes. So let’s stop wasting time, here we go!

Lesson #1: Focus Pocus

My focus was in the wrong place. I was so focused on my full time job that my blog became something of the past. The thoughts about my full time job became my most dominant thoughts. I even started to have these weird dreams about my full time job. This is where things started to shift. Since I was no longer actively thinking about blogging I started to loose my focus. It’s not an easy thing to start blogging part time and also remain engaged in some full time work. There’s an art to actively working projects part time and still keeping your focus. In my case, I had been unconsciously re-directing my thinking without even realizing it. Let me explain.

As my focus changed unconsciously, things started to change at work. The phones rang more often, emails were coming in more frequently and I was just busier than usual. This is the sort of stuff that comes up when I get busy.

At first I didn’t think much of it until a few days later. I was still getting those extra phone calls and frequent emails, the office was busy. Soon phone calls were turning into annoyances and emails were irritating to say the least. Let’s just say that I wasn’t having a good time.

At the end of the day I’d come home feeling frustrated and exhausted. I wasn’t having fun anymore and when it came to writing my blog, I didn’t feel motivated. My ideas and creativity weren’t flowing like they used to. I tried several things. I tried to get some extra sleep, but even with a good 8 hours of snooze time, I still felt brutle.

It was when I was reading, Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, written by Lynn Grabhorn, that things started to come together. If you haven’t read it yet, you may want to check it out. It’s on the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is a funny thing. I thought I really understood how it worked but then again maybe it was time for a refresher.

Here’s a refresher on the Law of Attraction from Lynn’s popular book:

  1. Identify what you don’t want
  2. Identify what you do want
  3. Get into the feeling place of what you do want
  4. You expect, listen, and allow it to happen

In Lynn’s book, Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, she describes in detail how most people think about their don’t wants.

Here are some examples,

  • I don’t want to be sick when I’m old.
  • I don’t want my car to break down.
  • I don’t want so many taxes.
  • I don’t want to make a mistake.

Lynn says that when you focus on what you don’t want – you actually get more of what you don’t want into your life. When you say, I don’t want to be ripped off, what you are actually attracting is, I want to be ripped off. This is because your brain doesn’t understand negatives. It’s the same if you say to yourself, I don’t want anymore debt, then what you are actually attracting is – I want more debt.

This is what I was doing. When I was at work and got a phone call, I immediately went to the place, I don’t want anymore phone calls. I was actually attracting phone calls that I didn’t want. It’s a paradox really. I didn’t even recognize that I was doing it until I read Lynn’s book. I realized that what I didn’t want (which was more phone calls) was actually what I was attracting. Then I would keep thinking about what I didn’t want and would attract even more of those phone calls. I became engulfed in a loop of negative energy which wasn’t helping me.

When I got clear on what I was doing, I realized it was just a matter of refocusing on what I really wanted (Lynn’s Step 2) and then things would come together. What I really wanted and still want is to write and create. What I really want to do is build a globally recognized blog. What I really want is to inspire millions of other people to work towards their personal growth and to do what they love.

That did the trick. A few hours of consciously thinking about what I did want put everything back into perspective, boosted my energy levels and got me refocused on writing the good stuff. My brain started to flow ideas again. I felt like everything was back to normal. If you are going to write a blog then be prepared to put the effort forth to really focus and feel what you write about. Remember why it’s important to you and use the Law of Attraction.

If you want more information on the Law of Attraction, then check out Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, by Lynn Grabhorn. Remember, stop focusing on what you don’t want and start focusing on what you do want! Nuff said.

Lesson #2: Foggy Theme

I started blogging without defining a niche or theme from the very beginning. I jumped into blogging without any real long term plan.

Instead of the classic, Ready>Aim>Fire

I used the opposite approach, Fire>Aim>Ready

This is how I learned how to swim when I was in grade 4. Most of my classmates had jumped into the deep end well ahead of me. I was near to the last one. I remember thinking, This is crazy, and I might drown if I jump into the water. I was afraid of the unknown. Eventually I jumped in and never looked back. I even learned how to swim good thing I did.

When I started my blog I did the same thing. I signed up and wrote my first post within a week. I emailed it out to a bunch of friends and went from there. After the first few articles I received some really good feedback so I decided to take it more seriously. At first I hadn’t really developed a theme or niche. This ended up being a bit of a problem but it worked out in the end. I was lucky enough to build a theme from the articles that I wrote. The articles were all geared towards personal growth. I guess I got lucky, I’m not sure.

The lesson that I learned is that it’s good to have balance between taking action and planning your attack. Some of my friends think that my take action approach is a good one because I don’t let the whole fear thing sneak up on me. Others say that there is a time and place for taking action. I agree. Bottom line is you need to have a balanced approach. Develop a theme that you are passionate about. Once you’ve got a theme, be ready to act and post your first blog.

Lesson #3: Time Warp

I thought blogging would be a small time investment. Boy was I wrong.

When I wrote my first article for Confidence Bound, it took me about 30 minutes to write the entire article including a few edits. I thought it was really cool how the story behind the article just seemed to naturally flow from my hands as I was typing. This initial article took very little effort. I figured that if I could write articles at that sort of speed then I would be able to build my blog in no time. It would be very easy to deliver content to readers. That’s where I went wrong.

The reason why I was able to write that first article so quickly is because it was a story that I had been telling people for about two months. Every time I bumped into someone I would tell them about this amazing experience I had at a personal development seminar. It was a learning experience that I had shared with a lot of different people. I had shared the story so many times that I had burned it into my mind.

Over the past 12 weeks I’ve realized that it’s more likely that I will take about 6-12 hours to write a really good article, depending on the length. On average I write an article with around 1,000 words. This article is closer to 2,100 words. This is where the planning comes in handy. You might want to think about a few dozen topics that you can write about before starting your blog. You need to develop a theme. See lesson #2.

Lesson #4: Who you talking to Willis?

Know your audience. The thing with writing is that you need to know who you’re talking to in order to be effective. I learned to do this over time but it’s always good to bring light to this in the very beginning. I found this really cool process that helps define your target audience. This process is integrated with the Law of Attraction. It can be used to attract your perfect business, your perfect job, relationship or whatever else you want. I found this process while listening to a CD that I picked up from Peak Potentials. It’s called the Strategic Attraction Process and was designed by Jan Brogniez and Stacey Hall.

Here are the steps in a nutshell to attract your perfect business, job or relationship:

  1. What are the characteristics, qualities and attributes of my target audience? (1 page detailed description)
  2. What makes my perfect target audience tick or get excited? (use a declaration)
  3. What do I want my perfect target audience to expect of me?
  4. What do I have to improve to be more attractive?

I found the Strategic Attraction Process very helpful. I used it when defining the characteristics and traits of the people I expect to read my blog.

Lesson #5: Monetize or Not?

When I first started with Blogger.com I wasn’t sure if I was going to monetize my site or not. I had mixed feelings about it at first. I was won over when I had checked out Darren Rowse’s site, ProBlogger.net. Darren’s site is filled with great tips for monetizing your blog.

A quick word on Blogger.com. If you want to quickly get started and monetize your site, you can do it on Blogger. One of the downfalls is that Blogger is currently limited to Google Ads only. When I discovered this I started to look for alternative platforms that would allow me to build my site for long term growth. That’s when I came across WordPress.

WordPress has some great features and has built in flexibility and plug-ins for scalability. It also has a basic statistics package that you will want to have if you’re going to build traffic. The biggest challenge is migrating from Blogger to WordPress. You might want to consider using your chosen blogging platform from the very beginning. This will save you the time from moving your content to the new platform and adjusting to a new interface.

I also realized that monetizing your site should be about building your site. For one thing, I find that the Google Adsense Ads are valuable to readers who are looking for rich content. They actually increase the value of the site by adding valuable rich content links for readers that would not normally be there. Everyone’s got their own reservations about advertising on their site but my personal thought is if it provides readers with a greater experience and adds more value to your content, then you’re doing your readers a great service.

You can read the rest of this article here: 5 More Lessons From a Part Time Blogger

7 Comments

  • douglas meharg

    Reply Reply June 18, 2007

    Perhaps a little long. Iam just learning about this stuff thanks.

  • Darren Stamos

    Reply Reply June 18, 2007

    Stephen,

    I’ve been reading your blog for months now, and I must share with you that it picks me up every time.

    Your Law of Attraction segment of this artcile came at the perfect time. Thank you.

    My observation with myself, and the law of attraction, has to do with consistency, and persistence. If I take my eye off the ball, even for a few days, the law of attraction brings my random, and mostly fearful thoughts to light. This “blackout” turns into a “black hole”, sucking everything I don’t want into my life (usually at the same time). I am consciously thinking my way into what I want right now. I’ve been working on raising the energy of my internal dynamo so these “blackouts” are a thing of the past. Keep up the good work, and thank you for being thorough!

  • Chris Berry

    Reply Reply October 7, 2007

    Stephen,

    Found your blog through the Proctor daily emails. I am enjoying your work and congratulations. You don’t need to hear 1000 different suggestions from 1000 different interested readers I’m sure. So just thank you and I appreciate you will do.

    I would like to see you credit Jerry and Esther Hicks though, because Grabhorn and many other took their inspiration directly from Abraham. The truth is all the Law of Attraction should be read about through the books written in the late 1800s and early 1900s but many won’t. Abraham is a pretty interesting leader.

    Thanks for your work,
    Chris

  • Jenna Doll

    Reply Reply February 23, 2008

    I like your blog very much
    Hope you keep on posting great stuff
    regards, jenna
    ps – I just randomly picked one of your posts to say this

  • Steve

    Reply Reply February 23, 2008

    Hi Jenna – thanks for visiting.

    I’ll do my best to keep contributing valuable content.

  • Kyle

    Reply Reply May 15, 2012

    How do you not get stressed out over trolls?

    For some reason when I make posts I usually attract trolls.

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