For all you beginner bloggers (including myself for this blog)
It’s tough when you’re just starting a blog - when your blog is in its infancy - to stay motivated to keep writing posts. It might feel pretty lonely when you first start your blog - it’s like you are blogging without an audience. Once again it comes back to setting your goals and keeping your incentives in mind.

Write and they will come
Don’t stop writing - keep posting. Try to make it fresh and interesting content - content is king. If you stopped now all that time you have put in was wasted. Keep chugging away. Continue to read and follow the blogging tips of those that are already successful - they too had to start at the beginning. Some blogs grow faster than others - it depends a lot on the amount of time you put into it.

Keep promoting
Even if it doesn’t seem to be working - keep leaving quality comments on related blogs and get the word out about your content. Make this part of your routine - it can be hard to get motivated to do the promoting - add it your daily list of blogging tasks and just do it.

It takes time
Rome wasn’t built in a day - or some other catchy cliché. It takes time and effort to grow a blog - especially if you don’t have a high traffic site to promote through. It may seem like you are getting nowhere - stay with it. The first few months can be difficult - stay motivated and remember your end goals and incentives. If you want it you’ve got to put the work in.

So, don’t give up even if you feel like you are blogging without an audience - I’m there with this new blog, but I’m going to keep writing and keep promoting.

Michael Hargis

Popularity: 97% [?]

If you have ever taken an Economics class you probably know that incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. These days ‘modern life’ includes blogging and making money online. So, to keep up your blogging motivation you are going to need incentives. This is not exactly the same as setting goals (sometimes goals and incentives can intertwine). We all understand setting goals - you have something you want to accomplish and you work towards reaching it. Incentives are more like prizes. You’ve worked hard and met your goals - now what do you get out of it? Basically, incentives are the things that motivate you to reach your blogging goals. So, when you are working towards your goals, or especially if you are procrastinating, keep your incentives in mind - it will help motivate you.

Having incentives makes completing those little daunting tasks a little easier. Growing a blog, or making money online, is time consuming and even with all the organization and goal setting techniques out there the best motivation is realizing what you will be getting out of all your hard work. Whether it be making enough money to quit your day job, or making a little extra cash to add to your income - maybe you just want the recognition that the big bloggers get or a chance to network with a great group of people and grow a community around your blog. These are all incentives - they are things that make you work hard to met your goals and become successful.

So, if you are feeling sluggish, or lazy, remember what you want to get out of blogging and use that as motivation to work towards your goals. Use it to get you excited again - pumped up - it helps, I do it.

Michael Hargis

Popularity: 69% [?]

Well, I feel that I have a descent amount of content so far on this blog. So, the next step for me is to start looking for ways to promote the site and drive traffic.

The goal I set for myself last week was to post at least once-a-day Monday through Friday. I accomplished that and now have set new weekly goals. Here they are:

• Keep posting once a day Monday through Friday for this week
• Start promoting the blog to drive traffic here

Just basic goals to keep me motivated and blogging.

I shouldn’t have any problem posting each day - the thing I’m not real confident in is driving traffic. I’ve been doing some research and have found that most people list these few ways to drive traffic to your blog:

• Comment on other blogs with similar topics
• Post in forums with similar topics to your blog
• Write and post articles to article websites
• Social Media
• Create a Squidoo Lens

Traffic Driving Techniques

So, I can find blogs with similar topics as mine and post comments - the idea here is posting helpful comments or thank yous - No Spamming. Pretty much every blog that allows comments has a place where you can put in your website address. Then when your comment displays the name you posted the comment under will be link to your site. The idea is that people might read your comment and click the link to visit your site. You can use a keyword or two as your name if you want - I haven’t decided if I will yet because most comment links are ‘nofollow’ - to please Google. nofollow basically means that when Google crawls a site and sees a link with nofollow it will not count it towards that site’s (the site the link is pointing to) ranking. That’s how I see it anyway.

Forums can help drive traffic by adding your blog’s url to your profile and in your signature. In most forums they will allow you to have a link or two in your signature - which shows up at the bottom of every post you make in the forum. Once again, these links are probably nofollow - but the idea is the same as above exposure. You should try and post helpful information or intelligent questions. Don’t just go in and start posting junk to get your signature on a bunch of pages. People will notice that and will react negatively. If you post useful questions or responses you will get noticed in a positive way. Also, if you have a helpful post on your blog that might answer a question you might be able to point people in the forum to your site - it just depends on the forum rules.

Writing articles is another suggestion a lot of people make when it comes to promoting your blog, or site. The important thing to remember here is that you are not writing articles about your blog. You want to base your articles on a topic from your blog. The promotion technique here is that article submission sites let you post a link or two in a designated area at the end of the article. So, someone reads your article and they see your link at the bottom. Also, people are allowed to publish these articles on their websites but they have to keep the author information and the links intact - another chance for exposure.

Social media - digg, stumbleupon, del.iciou.us, and the all those other ones can help you attract attention to your blog. Getting your content on these sites can be difficult - you can submitted yourself if you want but I don’t know if I will do that. Still, if it has a place in your profile to put a link to your blog you might as well. Then, if you start making friends - or getting followers - they may visit your site. Plus, you are networking with other people which is always important.

Creating a Squidoo lens (page) is somewhat similar to the article method. If don’t know what Squidoo is check it out here: Squidoo. Apparently it has become a popular way to promote and the pages rank well in the search engines.

I’m going to start out with the first 3 for this week. My goal is to comment on at least 3 blogs a day and make 3 forum post a day. I’ll need to do some research and find a few blogs and forums to comment on - I’m sure that won’t be too hard. Then I’ll get started. I know this might be hard for me - I’m pretty conscious on what I post on other sites and forums. I don’t want to post worthless crap or sound stupid - which is why I am starting with only 3 a day for each. As far as articles go, I will write and submit 2 this week. I haven’t decided which sites and I’ll have to do some research to find out if I can submit to multiple article sites.

This next phase of my blog should be interesting. It’s something I’m not all that comfortable with but I need to do it in order to grow my blog - got to stay motivated.

Michael Hargis

Popularity: 100% [?]

Ever played beer pong? Some background. You play beer pong in teams of 2 - one team of 2 versus another team of 2. Each team stands at opposite ends of a table (or designated throwing line). The goal - throw a ping-pong ball into a cup filled with liquid across the table. There are 2 ping-pong balls - each team member gets one shot. If you make the ping-pong ball in one of the cups that cup is removed and the other team is required to drink (either the liquid in the cup or from their drink cup/can). Usually the liquid in the cup is beer gasp! Though, some people play with water and have a separate beer drinking cup or can - this is for cleanliness reasons. Of course, there are many different rules to go along with the game - like same-cupping and rearranging - but those aren’t of importance at this time.

So, you now some background on the game of beer pong, but how is this related to motivation or focusing. Let’s relate it to blogging (or any project really).

In beer pong, if you win you stay at the table. The more games you play the less sober you are going to get. The less sober you get the harder it is to focus. You need to be able to focus on the cup in order to put the ping-pong ball in the cup. You start the game with a clear head ready to take on the task at hand. You have focus, you want to make cups and win the game. The more you play the more the beer disrupts your focus. It becomes harder to concentrate on the cups - if you want to make a cup you need to be able to focus on that cup. Blurry vision and loss of balance can come into play.

When starting a new blog, like when you start a game of beer pong, you have a fresh / sober outlook. You are excited to start and easily motivated by the thought of success and other things. You have, hopefully, set your goals and have a clear vision of what you want to get out of this new project. Updating your blog is easy in the beginning. You have fresh ideas that you can’t wait to share with everyone. Your blog has that new toy feel. As time goes on it gets harder to keep up the high level of excitement. Your vision, or goal can become blurry. It gets harder to focus on posting and promoting your site. Motivation starts to lack and things can come to a stand still.

This happens all the time. A new blog hits the Internet and a few months later it’s sitting there - dead. The motivation and focus ran out. If you don’t want your site to end up like this, if you want your blog to be successful, you have to keep focused. You are in control of your blogs’ future. Stay motivated and keep it alive. It takes time to really grow a blog - longer than a few months - so you have to be willing to stick it out and stay focused.

Popularity: 45% [?]