Archive for the ‘motivation’ Category
Here are 51 blogging and internet marketing tips that you can use as inspiration for the upcoming year.
Mindset
1. Revisit your goals. Take a moment and rewrite your goals. You may find that they may have changed since the last time you really took a good look at them. If you don’t have any goals, than what are you working towards?
2. Remember where you were. Where was your online business or blog at one year ago? Are you seeing any improvements? If yes, be proud of how far you’ve come along and the fact that you haven’t given up. If you haven’t seen any improvements, why do you think that is?
3. You can always do a little bit more. If you’re up to it, try this 2-step exercise:
- Raise your hand as high as you can.
- Raise your hand even higher.
If you do this exercise, you’ll notice that you can always stretch your hand a little higher, even though you were told to put it as high as you can at first. When I did this exercise as a teenager, it changed how I thought about everything I did after that moment. It made me realize that I can always do a little bit more. Apply this to what you do online.
4. Take action. As I mentioned in my first law of business and success, every business in a state of motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. With that in mind, you can read and get inspired all you want, but nothing will happen unless you take action. Become the external force that is required to get your blog, business and life to exactly where you want it to be.
5. Flaunt your unique. In other words, know what makes you stand out from the crowd, and milk it. In order to succeed, especially online, you can’t blend in and just be another blog or website that talks about X. Your site can still be about X, but you should be one of the only ones that does Y, or Z.
6. No fear. Fear kills progress, and it kills business. When you’re reluctant to take an action or do something new, take a minute and think to yourself, “what’s the worst that can really happen?”. The worst usually isn’t as bad as you might think.
7. Failing is okay. We all want to succeed, but we shouldn’t ever be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process and teaches us valuable lessons along the way. Learn from your mistakes, and improve on your next attempt.
8. Don’t work more, work smarter. When we think of putting in the extra mile to get things done, we often think that means just putting in more hours of work. Instead, think of ways that you can work smarter, which will accomplish the same (or even more), in a considerably less amount of time. It may take a small investment of time in the beginning to figure out how to work smarter, but you’ll make up for that time (and stress) soon enough.
9. Give back. I truly believe in “online karma”. The more you help others and the more you give back, the more success you will find. If your primary motivation is just to make as much money as you can and do things just for yourself, you’re only going to see a limited amount of success, if any.
10. Just freakin’ enjoy what you’re doing! If you enjoy what you’re doing, it doesn’t become work anymore. You’ll accomplish more, and be happier. If you’re not doing something you enjoy, why not?
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I Give You Permission to Succeed, By Pat Flynn
You might be wondering to yourself, “Who are you, to give me permission to succeed?”
“Who are you, to tell me when I can do things?”
“Who are you, to grant me any kind of permission to do anything?”
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I’ll admit it. When I started my online adventures one year ago, I was scared. I had just been laid off from my architecture job, and to top it off I was engaged and getting married a few months later. Just to clarify, I wasn’t scared of getting married, I was scared of not being able to provide for my wife and I after we were married. I feared failing, and letting down not only my family, but myself too.
It’s okay to be scared though. Fear is one of the most primitive human emotions that’s built into us so we can survive. You can’t really get rid of something like that, you can only learn how to deal with it by first understanding why it’s there and then saying to it, “Hey Fear, thanks for the heads up. I know you’re trying to protect me, but I’m all good.”
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In order to understand fundamentally how the world works and how things move and interact with each other, you have to understand Physics. It’s the same thing for business – in order to understand it, you must break it down and try to figure out how each part interacts with each other. Luckily, there are laws for business like there are laws for Physics that can help us understand.
If you’ve been keeping up with my latest posts, I’ve been comparing Newton’s Laws of Motion to some things I’ve learned about doing business online. I’ve had a lot of fun with the first and second laws, and I’m excited to conclude with the third and final law today.
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In my previous post, I presented my First Law of Business and Success, which again was the following:
“Any business in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”
Basically, whatever state your business is in, it’s going to stay that way unless something happens. If you don’t have a business or business isn’t going well, nothing good will happen unless you do something about it and take action. If business is going well, your job is to make sure no negative external forces come by and change things for you. If you didn’t make the connection already, I’m using Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, but relating them to businesses (which include blogs, relationships, your job, whatever). A better title for this 3-part series may be: The Physics of Business. A nice book title if you ask me (dibs).
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I thought this might be a fun way to get you to think about your entrepreneurial journey in another light. I hope you enjoy.
If you ever get stuck and want to give up, or don’t know why what you’re doing isn’t working out like you thought it would, think back to these laws and how they apply to you. Please note that when I say ‘business’, I mean your website, your online or offline store, your blog, your email list, your twitter or subscriber follower count, your love life – ANYTHING. Here is the first Law.
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I started writing on eHow.com in November of 2008, a little over 7 months ago (wow, time flies). I went hardcore for the first month, writing a total of exactly 150 articles, and I just stopped. I planned on writing more as the months went by, but I had a lot of other projects going on, as you already know. So, I just let the articles sit.
I have continued to earn money via my 150 articles each month since November. I’ve even made an effort to include these earnings on my monthly reports, but they seem to get overlooked by the larger earnings from my eBook and Audio Guide. I’d like to highlight just my earnings from eHow from the last 7 months here for you (especially you eHow writers), just to show you what happened. I think it’s pretty interesting data.
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Yesterday, I received an email in my inbox from an SPI reader asking for some help. He said it was cool if I posted our conversation on the blog for others to read, but he wanted to remain anonymous for some reason. I respect his request, so for this post – let’s just call him Joe.
(I’ve condensed and edited the conversation below to get the point across)
Joe: Pat, I need some help. I’ve been a blogger for a couple of years now. I’m a fantastic writer and I believe I have premium content on my blog, but for some reason I’m only making a few dollars a month from my advertisements. I see that just your Adsense Advertisements alone on your monthly reports pull in upwards of $2000 and more. What am I doing wrong? Why Can’t I Make Good Money Online? Any advice? Please be honest. I want to succeed.
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Lately, I’ve posted a lot of “personal” stuff on this blog. I think it’s time to get back into business. Don’t worry though, you’ll see more about our new baby later on and how that will affect our goals and what I’m doing online to meet those goals.
A long time ago, I had a poll which asked: What’s the #1 Thing Holding You Back From Making Big Money Online? Again, here are the results:

The most popular answer: an idea (at 37.5%!)
That’s definitely a stopper. Without an idea, you can’t really do much else. My goal with this post is to give you a thought process you can use so YOU can find that idea. The thought process comes with three simple questions that you should ask yourself. Let’s go through them one-by-one.
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I have a lunch meeting today. You could call it a business meeting, but I know the guys would much rather call it a Mastermind meeting. Sounds fancy, right?
We’re not plotting to take over the world, and it’s not about mind control – it’s essentially a meeting between internet marketers that we all use to learn from each other to help grow our businesses. I’ve been attending these meetings ever since Sterling (our group leader, I guess you could say), moved to San Diego and started it – 6 months ago.
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