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: 96% [?]

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% [?]

First off, I really enjoy following Zac Johnson on his blog Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate. It’s definitely worth the read if you are looking for information about affiliate marketing - from where to start to what techniques and affiliate programs you should use. Zac has done a great job sharing his knowledge with his readers.

So, yesterday Zac Johnson wrote a post called Your Job Sucks? Six Reasons to Be Your Own Boss Now! Wouldn’t that be great - I know there a lot of people who are doing it. But is it the right time for you to make the jump? Here are a few reasons why you should hold off on being your own boss.

1. Current Economy - Jobs are being cut right and left - businesses are going under and the economy is hurting. If you quit your job now and your work at home ventures fail - you may never get your old job back. This, of course, depends on your profession. It’s just something to think about - you need a back up plan in case being your own boss doesn’t work out.
2. Your Current Income - I’m not talking about what you are currently making at your job - I’m talking about your current money stream outside of your job. The income you are making now from your online ventures, or whatever you plan on doing once you quit your job. If you are thinking you can just quit your job and start making enough money to support yourself, and maybe a family, right away - you are probably wrong. You should have at least a couple months of income saved up to support you while you get your own business ventures running. Or better yet, they should be running while you are working and making enough money to allow you to quit.
3. It’s all on YOU - So, maybe you don’t have to mess with a jerk boss or annoying coworkers, but if you screw things up when working for yourself it’s all your fault. You can’t say, ‘I was just doing what my boss told me.’ There is no one to blame but yourself. Are you ready for everything to fall on your shoulders? Maybe that’s exactly what you want or need to get you motivated.
4. Benefits - one of the nicer parts of having a full-time job. At most companies, health care, dental, vision, 401K, stock options are taken care of for you. Things like these are great benefits of having a job in a company. This might be one of the hardest things to let go when quitting your job. It can be worked out though - your spouse might be able to put you on their insurance, you can get your own health insurance (can get pretty expensive), you will need to take the time to manage your own money and get in touch with accountants and setup your own retirement fund. It can be done - it’s just another thing to think hard about before you go on your own.
5. Taxes - Don’t forget about taxes. When you’re on your own it’s up to you, or your accountant that you hire, to take care of these things - they can get confusing.

This isn’t a give up and stay in the workforce post - it’s a be realistic about your future post. If your goal is to work from home and be your own boss then staying focused, motivated, and working hard can get you there. Just be realistic about it - or it could turn out to be a very negative turn of events in your life.

I know my goal is to work for myself and a lot of the reasons I want to work for myself are mentioned in Zac’s post - he makes some great points. I also know that I will need to be absolutely sure I can financially support myself when I make the jump from the 9 to 5 to working my own hours for myself. If you read Zac’s post Your Job Sucks? Six Reasons to Be Your Own Boss Now!, which I suggest you do, make sure to read the last paragraph of text. And don’t give up if being your own boss is your goal - stay motivated and work hard and it will happen.

Michael Hargis

Popularity: 71% [?]

Aren’t the holiday times great. You get to see family and friends, eat a lot of good food, and maybe receive a gift or two. All great things, right? Of course, but the holiday times are also extremely busy, and stressful, for most people. There’s the cooking, the cleaning, entertaining, Christmas shopping, and more.
With all this going on when do you find time to work on you personal projects? You can’t just push them all to the side and forget about them for a couple weeks or months. You still need to find some time for yourself and keep growing you sites, blogs, or whatever you are working on.
So, how do you create more time for your projects? It’s all about time management. You have to be efficient with the time you have and motivated to use it well.

A few tips to help manage your time when doing Holiday tasks:

Shopping

• Have a game plan - If you are going on a shopping trip, whether it’s to the mall or a string of stores and shops, having a plan can save you a ton of time. Start off with a list of gifts you need to purchase. Listing out what you need to get can speed things up drastically. Plus, if you don’t have a list you risk forgetting something - then you’ll have to go back to the mall again. Another part of planning your shopping excursion is knowing what stores you need to visit. This saves you from going into a store you don’t need to be in. Which saves you time and keeps you from browsing too much.
• Shopping online - (my personal favorite) Going to mall you have to deal the crowds, the stupid people (you know it’s true), standing in line to checkout, and not to mention what you want might not be in stock. Shopping online can save you time and you don’t have to deal with afore mentioned problems. Of course, you have to stay focused and not off browsing tons of sites. You also have to keep in mind that your purchases will have to be shipped to you - so plan ahead for that.

Cooking
I don’t know much about cooking but some simple motivational and organizational techniques can be applied to keep things moving…

• Get all ingredients together ahead of time
• Have recipes ready and organized
• Know how long each item takes to cook or prepare
• Think about you cooking space and how much you be able to cook at once

Family Time

• I say splurge on this. enjoy every min you can with your friends and family at gatherings.
  maybe try to meet with people in groups and not as much individually.

Holiday times and family are important, but so are your goals. Don’t forget about your projects, blogs, sites, etc. this holiday season. Keeping yourself motivated and managing your time will greatly improve your potential for successfully growing your blog even through the holiday season.

Popularity: 39% [?]

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% [?]

There are a lot of things to worry about these days. We live ‘oblivious’ to a lot of the issues. I put that word in quotes because I think a lot of us fake being oblivious to certain issues. We don’t really play dumb, but we kind of just turn our back and don’t pay attention to some things. Probably because we don’t need another worry in our life. We have plenty of things to stress and worry about in our own ‘normal’ lives without adding all the new stress the news brings us each day. Sometimes you can’t avoid it though. Other things you think hard about when you hear about them, but then shut them out later.

Is this a good or bad thing? Who am i to say? It’s sad that most of us are constantly worrying about things like employment, money, the price of gas and food, our safety, etc., when we should be enjoying life. It’s a hard thing to do though, putting away your worries and just enjoying life. Sure, it happens once in a while - on vacation, a weekend off of work, relaxing with friends or family, but not nearly as much as it should.

So, I bring up a problem. Do I have a solution? Isn’t it really just considered whining if you talk about a problem but offer no solution? Maybe we all need to reassess the way we live our lives and what is important to us. It’s hard not to lust for the big money, the fancy house, and a nice car. If you’ve got the funds to purchase those things without adding extra financial worries to your life then that’s great. But the first thing on your list should be happiness - for you and your family. That can be a tough one - do nice things really make you happy? It’s a question you have to ask yourself. Really there is no way for me to answer the problems I have just talked about - you have to find the answer for yourself as I for myself. What’s important to you matters - not what I think is important.

Michael Hargis

Popularity: 48% [?]

I hate traffic. It usually takes me about 50 minutes to get to work every morning but not today. Today was the first regular workday (Monday - Friday) with snow on the ground, and I guess everyone was scared. The thing is it was just flurries. There was barely any snow actually on the ground and roads were fine. I’m on Interstate highways pretty much the whole way to work. People just suck at driving - haha. But seriously there are way to many bad drivers out there.

Traffic was slow the whole way to work. I guess I can’t be mad a people for being ’safe’, but like I said the roads were not bad at all. So, I wouldn’t have cared if it was just a 5 to 10 mph decrease in speed the whole way - but someone caused a wreak. I was nowhere near it, but it brought traffic down to a crawl - I’m talking 6 minutes to go 1 mile crawl (I timed it). So, creeping along it got me thinking, and I’m sure you are wondering what does your 1 hour 50 minute drive to work have to do with the price of tea in China.

Motivation
A goal of mine is to at some point to quit my ‘day job.’ I would like to earn enough income from Internet ventures and freelancing to work at home. A lot of people are making good money online - through blogging, affiliate marketing, freelancing, etc. I’m not looking to become rich - I just want the added freedom that comes from working from home. I don’t want to have to spend my days in an office, or cubicle. I don’t want to be required to be at a job from 9 to 5. I don’t want to have to deal with traffic. Freedom from the 9 to 5 - the normal workday schedule - that’s what I want.

So, all this time I spend in traffic jams is motivation to me. If I can motivate myself and set goals, I can cut-out all the wasted and stressful time I spend in traffic. It’s a negative thing in my life that I need to spin to work in a positive way. It’s something I extremely dislike. So, I need a way to avoid it. With going to work I am pretty much guaranteed to be in traffic either on the way there or the way back home. Working from home, making money online, can help me avoid this nuisance - it’s motivation to work harder on producing an online income.

Motivation Challenge
So, here is a challenge for you. Take something that is a negative in your life and flip to be motivation towards a positive outcome or goal. A lot of times motivation is fueled by something we dislike. We want to find a way to make this dislike better. Overweight? Don’t like the way you look? Use that as motivation to change your self-image - exercise and eat healthy. Don’t like your career choice? Use that as motivation to save up money and go back to school to study something that you will enjoy and bring you a better job. Be motivated.

Michael Hargis

Popularity: 34% [?]

A Blogging Tip: Are you trying too hard to come up with good post ideas?

Don’t force it - you just have to relax and the ideas will come. You might think you can just go find a nice quiet place or your favorite reading spot, but that is not always going to work. You’ll get there and all you’ll be thinking about is how you really need to come up with a great idea for a post. Sure this place might work most of the time, but there are some days when you just need to switch it up a bit. Try something different. Forget about the peace and quiet and go to the hustle and bustle. Go to a restaurant, a store, or just a walk down the street. Sit and observe people or find a friend (or stranger) and start up a conversation. Get your mind off writing - or whatever the task is. Fresh air, being around people, or just getting outside can really stimulate the mind and help get the good ideas flowing. Just remember, don’t force it - you will just end up going crazy and writing a bad post (or whatever your project is).

Note: these tips can be used for anything not just blogging and writing…

- Michael Hargis

Popularity: 68% [?]

A Blogging Tip: Having trouble writing those posts? Here is a quick idea…

It seems like every time I sit down and stare at that big blank computer screen I loose all motivation to actually write something. Then procrastination takes over. I start browsing the Internet and tell myself ‘it’s for inspiration.’ I navigate to some of my favorite blogs and start reading their stuff when I should be writing my own. Then I would start to think about how much I really need to write something and how I really want my blog to be successful, but I lack motivation.

I have found a great way around this (for me anyway). I get away from the computer. No, not just to take a break, but to grab my Samsung Blackjack. Yep, that’s right my Blackjack. I open up the notes program and just start typing away - I wrote this post on my Blackjack. Sure typing is a little slower - I’m getting pretty good at it - but for me there just aren’t any distractions when I’m on my Blackjack.

I suggest you get some kind of PDA/Smartphone device with a full QWERTY keyboard - makes it a ton easier to write long posts. My Blackjack only cost me $39.99 (refurb) and then the phone bill stuff which I need a phone anyway, so that doesn’t really count. This may not work for everyone, especially if you are always texting or talking on the phone. Though, if that is the case, you might try using a device that is not also your phone. Give it a try…

- Michael Hargis

Popularity: 75% [?]

A blogging tip: Motivation and writing multiple posts when you are in the mood to write…

If you really enjoy writing then this might not be a problem for you. If you are like me and are a descent writer but some days (or many days - I have plenty of weeks like this) you just really do not want to write about anything, then I have a simple idea that might help you out.

On those rare days that you are really pumped about writing a new post/article, instead of just writing one, write three or four, or even five if you are feeling crazy. Actually just writing two would be great. Then you have at least one backup you can use at anytime. You don’t want to make this a backup quality posts. You want to write something you plan on using. Get the article into the mix when you feel appropriate, but don’t just sit on that same article forever. You’ll forget about it or lose confidence in it. It should be thought of as writing an article or two ahead. Write something that you want to post in the near future, but keep writing new posts and cycle them in when you are ready. Writing ahead will help you on those days when you are sick, sick of writing, or just need to take the day off - it’s all about balance.

- Michael Hargis

Popularity: 70% [?]