However, if you are working hard and not getting the results you deserve, read on!

Here’s one of the secrets behind every successful, commercial blog I have ever studied:

You can’t do everything yourself!

Every successful business has key people, who’s expertise can be called upon whenever they are needed.  Your blog-based business is just the same.

If you try and do everything yourself, the success of your blog will be limited to your expertise in a wide range of specialist areas.  So, you may know all about design, but have just average marketing abilities.  You may know how to get a ton of ‘traffic’ to your blog, but no idea how to turn that traffic into a community, which you can then monetise.  You may even know how to generate income through your blog, but not fully understand how profitable your blog-based business is or how to increase the profitability of it.

The bottom line here, is that your overall success will be limited by your performance in your weakest area.

Think of a relay race team

Think of an Olympic quality relay team, which has one of its four runners replaced my someone that’s never been to a gym, smokes cigarettes and is 30lb over weight.  That team would now finish last every time.  No matter how great the other runners are, that area of weakness will ruin their chances of success.

Yesterday, while I was writing 3 blog posts, my server guy was debugging a problem for me.  It took him 30 minutes.  It would have taken me a full day to locate and resolve that same issue, because I’m an amateur in that area.  Had I fumbled around and tried to fix it myself, you would not be reading this post – I would not have had time to write it.

My specialist areas are marketing and copy writing, so I hire in experts to cover the other areas of running a successful blog.  For example, I use AccountancyExtra for any financial questions or planning issues I have.  Stuart and the team there get a call from me whenever I’m thinking of making a significant financial decision.  End result, I make great decisions and avoid losing money.

I use the Headway wordpress theme on all my blogs and I’m an affiliate.  This one’s also no brainer.  Headway has already saved me a ton of money, because I am able to do 100% of my own blog design, with zero need to touch any code.  Just dragging and dropping – perfect.  Its paid for itself many times over.  In fact, just 2 weeks after placing an affiliate link to Headway on my blogs, I had generated hundreds of dollars in affiliate income.

But Jim, I can’t afford expert help!

I hear that excuse more than any other, whenever I speak with people about developing their business.  It’s as if they really believe that every new business is rolling in money, except theirs.

Here’s the thing: I have worked with well over a thousand small businesses and most of them started off with little or nothing.  However, the businesses that were serious, realised they would need to get expert help if they wanted to succeed, so they found a way to get the help they needed.

Found a way?

Yes!

They cut their spending in other areas and invested that money in developing their businesses.  Some started off with nothing at all, then slowly, as they started to develop their businesses, they invested in the most urgent areas, based on their need.

For example, many bloggers start off with a blog hosted for free at wordpress.com or blogger/blogspot, then realise they need the additional functionality, that comes from a self hosted blog.

So, they invest in a host that offers the best value they can find.  It’s a start!  Now, the added of functionality their self hosted blog opens a ton of valuable, new opportunities.  For instance, they can use plugins that will collect email addresses for a marketing list.  They can also offer java based advertisements.  In short, the only limitation now is their imagination!

But some people just don’t “get it!”

I once spoke with a business owner that spent around £700 a year on Starbucks coffee, but who said she couldn’t afford to invest $80 on a theme for her blog!  She was unaware that there’s a difference between not being prepared to invest in a business and not being able to.

There are trillions of webpages and billions of websites out there.  For your blog to stand out, generate an income and a healthy profit, it needs all the help it can get.  There are a lot of serious people out there, competing hard for the same readers, customers or clients as you.

To be in with a chance, you need to be just as dedicated and invest just as wisely as they do.  That’s how I developed a top 10 blog.

What do you think?

Have you come across people that want the rewards, without the investment required?  What have your experiences been? Please share them with a comment.

Photo: John Spooner

I decided to share this with you, after one of the readers of my marketing blog emailed me earlier with the following question.  Here’s what she asked;
“apart from all the obvious stuff, what’s the best piece of advice you can give to fellow bloggers that want to improve their blog in 2010?”

Here’s my answer: Don’t wait for a post to be perfect before you publish it!

I think of a blog as being pretty-much organic.  Your blog is constantly changing, as new posts are added, new comments are added and (if required) whenever you update a blog post.  Now, back in the old days, we published things on paper and once they were sent, that was it. You lost control over what you had written. It was in someone else’s hands.  So, when we published information on paper, it had to be as close as possible to perfect, before we distributed it.

However, when publishing content via a blog, it’s super easy to update and amend your work “on the fly.”  In other words my friend, you have no need to wait for everything to be perfect before you publish a post.  If the worst comes to the worst, you can always amend an error later (if it really needs it.)  In my experience, you will seldom need to do this.

Here’s the thing though: The REAL magic of not waiting for everything to be perfect, is that it will encourage you to write more naturally, in your own unique voice AND it will allow you to write more often too.  This makes your blog more human and individual.

I blog almost every day on Jims Marketing Blog, but if I was waiting for every post to be perfect, that would be impossible for me to do.  Apart from anything else, if I can’t finish a blog post in 30 minutes, I would not have the time to post most days!  So many people only blog occasionally, because it can take them several hours (or more) to get a post perfect. As Hemingway famously said; the best way to remove writers block, is to write for the waste paper bin.  In other words, remove the barrier of perfectionism and let your imagination come alive!

So, why not give it a try?

Why not try a few posts, where you give yourself a time limit of 30 or 45 minutes and if the blog makes sense to you, publish it! Take a look at the feedback (your analytics as well as comments) and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Here’s quick question for you

How long do you usually spend writing a blog post?  Please take a moment to share your feedback.

Photo credit: ChanChan222

Here’s why.

The primary benefits of blogging daily?

I’m no SEO expert, but I do know that search engines like to see regularly updated content.  It’s a way for them to identify a site as being actively managed and thus, can help you attract more search engine traffic.

By default, blogs that are more regularly updated will also have more content, meaning there’s more for the search engines to index and more for people to find.  In addition, people are more likely to revisit a blog (or subscribe to the RSS feed), if there’s a strong possibility that it has been updated.

So, there are some really good reasons to offer very regularly updated content.

However, there’s a BIG caveat here: This fresh, daily content needs to be of a standard that makes it worth reading and sharing!

It’s easy to write regular posts in order that will keep the search bots happy, it’s far harder to write something every day that’s actually high quality and worth reading.  If you want people to contribute to your blog’s community, see you as an expert or buy from your blog, you will need to engage them.

Do you really need to post something every day to have a successful blog?

The short answer here is no! I own and write 2 blogs in addition to this one and none of them are posted to daily.  However, based on what I want to achieve, I would consider all 3 of them to be successful.

My marketing blog is just over a year old and is often only updated just once or twice a week.  However, it’s ranked in the highly respected AdAge Power 150 list and is listed by technorati.com, as one of the world’s top 100 small business blogs. It’s also attracted the attention of the top people in marketing, including Seth Godin.

That blog also has a large, targeted readership and has attracted thousands of comments in it’s first year. One post alone has almost 700 comments!  It currently has almost 16,000 links pointing to it from around the web.  For those of you who blog for business, you might like to know that it has generated over £100,000 (so far) for my marketing business in the past 14 months.

I also write a tech news blog, which is updated even less often!  However, it’s been listed as a news resource by just about every major technology site on the web, including; The BBC, CNN, CNET, RWW, TWiT and (literally) dozens more.  It’s readers include the best known people in technology news and just about all of them have commented or contributed to the blog.  It also has a Twitter account, with over 18,000 followers.

When should you blog?

I have a rule with my blogs, which is simple and has worked extremely well for me:

I only blog when I genuinely believe I have something worth sharing AND the time to write about it.

The regularity of our blogging is going to be governed by many different factors; which is why I think it’s incorrect to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.  You need to do what’s right for YOU and your blogging goals.

For example, some people have lifestyles or jobs that make it very easy to find time to blog.  Others have far less time.  Some people, like myself, are professional writers and find it easy to get our thoughts written down. Other people can spend hours writing a single post.  Some people blog about topics, which require a lot of research. That again means their posts take a lot more time to compose.

Of course, we can all improve our writing skills and get great content out there more often.  A blogger, who posts great content 8 times a month will develop their blog faster and more successfully, than if he or she posted equally good content half as often.

What do you think?

If you are a blogger, how often do you publish new posts?  Have you noticed any trends, when you increase or decrease the regularity of your posts? I’d love to read about your feedback and experiences.

I’m talking about: Thank you.

It’s amazing how powerful a simple thank you can be.  By showing your appreciation to someone, you can; make their day, boost their self-esteem and help turn an average day for them into something special.

Whilst it’s possible to utilise this for business development, by thanking clients and prospective clients, I am not going to cover that here. Instead, I would like to focus exclusively on the amazing power of these two simple words, to enrich another human-beings life.

Let me explain.  When we thank someone for something they have done for us; either face to face, on the phone, by email, letter, tweet or blog comment – we have the power to do something incredible. We have the power to improve their quality of life, either by a tiny amount or massive amount.  This is the polar opposite of the kind of fake gratitude, which some people use as a way to make personal or commercial gains.

We each have numerous opportunities to thank someone each day and in my experience, each time I make someone feel good, it makes me feel good too.  If you were being harsh, you might call that an ulterior motive.  However, everything we do is driven by a motive and if this simple expression of gratitude makes others and ourselves feel better, then why not do it?

Blog comments, Friendfeed, forums, Twitter, Facebook, text messages etc, are prime examples of messages that are usually written quickly and sent instantly.  Anyone who has used these tools will, at some time, have experienced the kind of confusion I am referring to here.

Twitter confusion

For example: I had a message sent to one of my Twitter accounts this week, which simply said something like; “Well done!”  I asked the person who sent it, what she was congratulating me for; as nothing I had been discussing that day merited congratulations.  She said she was replying to a general tweet I had sent out, 3 days earlier!

As Twitter does not provide threaded comments, there was no way I could possibly have known what she was referring to; unless I went back over the past three days worth of my tweets.  Even then, it would have been guess work.

In the bad old days, we would have had to take out a pen and paper or stuff some paper into a typewriter before we could write to someone.  Written communications back then took a lot longer; but they gave us stacks more thinking time.

Now, it seems many people see something appear instantly on a screen in front of them, then feel compelled to respond instantly too.  Write that tweet fast, hit send fast – job done!

They used to say that to be an effective writer we needed to write with clarity.  Whilst this is still true, I think that today, there’s another discipline we need to add to our communications arsenal: to pause for a moment before we hit that send button.

Someone sent me a link to a tweet yesterday.  The tweet went something like this;

“I wonder how many articles and posts I can write before 6 o’clock?”

This gave that person about 2 hours to write ‘a number’ of blog posts and articles.

Whilst some blog posts and articles do come quicker than others, to deliberately set off with the mindset of speed over quality, is unlikely to help us create something worth reading.

Content is judged by it’s value – not how fast it is written. Once that article or post is out there with our name on it, it represents us – It showcases our thoughts and insights.  In a day or a week or a year; no one will care that we managed to crack that post out in just 5 minutes!

Don’t confuse luck with ‘chance’

• Luck can be created deliberately using a simple formula.
• Chance is random, like guessing the correct lottery numbers, and cannot.

It’s true – you make your own luck

Thankfully, the old saying really is true; you make your own luck.  There is nothing random or mysterious about ‘being in the right place at the right time.’  Everything happens for a reason, something scientists refer to as cause and effect.

For example, I was once referred to as lucky, when I told someone how I made a 400% profit on a property I bought.  However, the financial return I luckily made on that deal was the result of deliberate planning  – Not luck.  The property had been on the market for 3 months when I first heard about it and had been advertised to thousands of people in the local press and via the Internet!  None of these people invested in the house, but I did. I took an informed decision, based on lots of homework and feedback from experts, and then backed that decision up with action.

There was nothing random or mysterious about it. I identified a superb opportunity, took action and made my own good luck. It was just a matter of strategy.

If an opportunity comes your way when you are prepared for it (and you then take action), you will generate what other people refer to as good luck.  However, if an opportunity comes your way and you have not prepared for it – you will probably not even recognise it!  Equally, if an opportunity comes your way and you are prepared for it, BUT you fail to take action, you will stay unlucky. This lack of action is always the result of fear, (I will explain this in more detail in a moment.)

Why are most people so unlucky then?

The main reason so many people miss out on the opportunities that surround them every moment of every day, is that they fail in at least one of the following four key luck factors. To attract what most people believe to be good luck, you need to use all four luck factors. I have outlined these for you below:

Luck factor one: Recognise opportunities

Most people simply don’t recognise a great opportunity when it comes along! They assume that an opportunity is something that has a big, bright sign above it and some kind of no-lose guarantee. I have never seen a genuine opportunity that looked anything like that; but it is still what most people are looking for.

That’s why conmen have filled the Internet with get rich quick schemes, which ‘guarantee’ you massive wealth if you just buy into their ‘wonder product’. Conmen know that people are looking for an easy way to make lots of money, with little if any risk. If the conman’s message claims to fulfil this need for money-for-nothing, their scam will attract legions of victims.  According to John C Dvorak, police found around $2BILLION in the hands of one group of international Internet conmen last year!

Many genuine opportunities come disguised as a problem.  For example, a secretary who kept making typing errors decided to do something about it; so she mixed a flower and water based solution together that could be painted, with a tiny brush, over her typing errors. In the process, she created typing correction fluid that started a multimillion industry.

Luck factor two: Be prepared

In order to generate luck, you need to be prepared when opportunity comes knocking.  In the example of my property investment, I had already researched the marketplace and knew what I could afford to pay. I took expert advice and studied the locations that were most likely to improve over the coming years.

As a result, I was able to minimise my risk to a point where I was extremely confident that this property represented a genuine, great opportunity.

Luck factor three: Take action

One of the best-known success stories in recent years is a perfect example of why action is essential in the ‘good luck’ process. When Simon Woodroffe created the internationally acclaimed ‘Yo! Sushi’ restaurant chain, he did so after acting on an idea that came to him from a friend; a person who had the vision to see a successful sushi restaurant but who did not act on it!

The success that came from Simon’s venture made lots of restaurateurs ask themselves why THEY didn’t open a chain of suchi restaurants or bars. They could have, but just like the chap who had the original multimillion pound ‘Yo! Sushi’ idea, they did not.  You simply cannot ‘get lucky’ in business if you fail to take action.

Just about everyone agrees that the biggest cause of all failure in life is the inability to take action; yet people will do anything to avoid it. That’s why I developed my Motivation Master Class audio program.  I’ve seen countless examples where people have missed out on great opportunities, through their decision not to take action.

Luck factor four: Do not focus on fear – focus on outcomes

There are two distinct types of people.

The first group are fear-focused

These unlucky people look at every opportunity or deal based almost exclusively on what might go wrong.  As a result, they fear doing anything different to what they are already comfortable with (even if it’s not working for them). For example, businesses in this group are always easy to spot, because they quickly reach a plateau or levelling point and then remain stuck there, until the owner retires broke and in many cases broken too! Fear-focused people like to complain about their lack of success, yet refuse to take the actions required to improve their situation. They keep repeating the same mistakes, because they are ‘comfortable’ screwing things up for themselves!

‘Fear-focused’ people live their lives focusing on what they want to avoid; loss, lack, pain, unhappiness, rejection etc. In doing this, they have set into play their very own self-fulfilling prophecy; because as we all know, we attract what we think about. Fear attracts bad luck like a magnet! Just as plants need the sun and the rain to grow and thrive, bad luck needs fear.

The second group of people are ‘outcome focused.’

These lucky minority of people do their research and if everything stacks up, they take action. Do they get it right every time? NO – BUT THEY DON’T HAVE TO!

You only have to benefit from one great idea or opportunity to transform your entire future, so if they get it wrong occasionally, their successes massively overcompensate. Because they research everything before taking action, these people make very few mistakes and they minimise their risk at every turn; so any losses are minimal. They are risk reduction specialists.

People in this group are often wrongly called risk takers.  The reality is that they are the total opposite, they are risk minimisers!

Summing up luck

To attract the kind of great opportunities that will have others amazed at your extreme good luck, you need to adhere to the four luck factors mentioned above. By doing this, you can transform your fortunes (literally) and far, far faster than you ever imagined possible.

Are you lucky?

For example, have you ever heard the famous saying; “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!”

The suggestion here, is that ‘people are just going to do what they are going to do’ and that they cannot be influenced.  This is 100% untrue, yet it’s repeated by people every day.  They fail to get the outcome they want, so they blame something outside their control.

The right strategy

In reality, if you lead a horse to water AFTER you have taken it for a nice long ride on a warm, sunny day, that horse will willingly drink water – lots and lots of water!  Equally, if you take a horse to water just after you have fed it a really salty snack, the horse will happily drink plenty of water every time.  It’s just a matter of knowing the correct strategy.

The reason so many people end up frustrated by their lack of business or career success, is that they work really hard, doing the wrong things.  As if rowing their boat in the wrong direction will get them where they want to be, so long as they row it hard enough for long enough.

However, when you are heading in the wrong direction, all that hard work is actually taking you further and further away from your target!

Stop!

If you are not getting the results you want in your business or career, the single best thing you can do is STOP!

It’s time to find a better strategy.

Speak with a proven expert; someone who knows exactly what you need to do to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.  They can get you pointing in the right direction, so that all your future hard work is taking you toward the results you want – not further away from them.

Whatever you do, don’t keep repeating the same mistakes hoping that things will magically just get better.  That kind of thinking can drive you nuts!  As Albert Einstein once said; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

PS: If you found this post interesting, remember to subscribe to this blog using the RSS options on the top right of the page!

It’s all about how the power of words can change the way we feel.

Nervous or excited – You choose!

Have you ever noticed that many of the feelings you get when you are nervous are quite similar to the feelings you get when you are excited?  For example, in both cases  you often; can’t eat, can’t sleep and get fidgety etc.  However, one big difference, is that when we are excited, we are far, far more resourceful than when we are nervous.

When we are excited, people sense our excitement.  When we are nervous, people sense our nervousness too, which can make them feel nervous or uncertain about us.

This is not great, if we are hoping to make a positive impression.

From nervous to excited

What she did, was replace the word nervous, with the word excited; when she spoke to herself or other people about whatever had (previously) been making her feel nervous.  So, instead of saying; “I’m really nervous about meeting those prospective clients tomorrow.” She would say; “I’m really excited about meeting those prospective clients tomorrow.”  This positive self-talk changes the way you feel.

In my experience, the more you focus on the feelings associated with being excited about that important meeting / interview / whatever, the better it works.

Give it a try!

I wrote an article once, about a call I received from a BBC radio presenter, who wanted some urgent assistance from me. During the call, she explained that she had just accepted an outstanding career opportunity – to present her very own afternoon program, 5 days a week.  This was great news and well deserved too, as a nicer, more professional person you could not wish to meet.

Her problem was fear

This professional broadcaster, who speaks to masses of people every week as part of a breakfast show team, was in her own words; “absolutely terrified” at the prospect of moving to a new program, where she was to present the show by herself. I suggested we meet and get this problem sorted out.

After a chat with me over some BBC coffee, she was able to transfer that fear into excitement and was really looking forward to this new chapter in her career.

We can’t let fear rule our lives

Even though the broadcaster was “absolutely terrified” about taking this challenging career opportunity, she knew it was the right thing to do, so she took it.  She knew that the fear could be overcome, but that refusing this opportunity might stall her career for years.  Sadly, many people in that kind of position, allow fear to stop them taking the opportunities that come their way.

In a post here last week, 2 successful business owners commented that when they started out in business for the first time, it was frightening; but they knew it was the right thing (for them) to do.  They both left great jobs with high salaries, to step into the unknown.  They took the hard decision, because they believed it was the right thing to do.

Ironically, people who allow fear to govern their choices, end up with a far, far harder life, than those who take the tougher decisions.

Overcoming fear

For me, the secret to overcoming fear came when I discovered that EVERYONE experienced fear – not just me!  As one of my former boxing trainers told me:

A hero and a coward both feel scared when they are confronted with a fearful situation. What makes them a coward or a hero is simply how they react to what they fear.  It’s not the situation, but the response that determines what you do and what your outcome is.

If a fear is legitimate, like the fear of climbing into a lions den, that fear is working for you.  However, if there’s something you fear that is stopping you from achieving the happiness or success you deserve, it’s a good idea to ask yourself, whether that fear is working for you or against you.