I’ve read a lot of blogging success stories in my four-year blogging history. Sadly, they’ve always been about other people, rather than me. And, when I do see them, although they are real, I get a sense that the owner didn’t have to work as hard as I have. I see people getting big on Digg yet my domain is banned for no reason or linked to by Seth Godin and getting ‘famous’ overnight. I don’t want to sound bitter, but it just seemed like success was happening to everyone else.

Once I had this realisation, I decided that if I wasn’t going to get featured on Digg or Delicious for my new site, I would work on:

And what happened? In one year I managed to build my blog to just over 4,000 subscribers. Sure, it isn’t the success story that everyone else raves about, but it’s realistic and it is attainable. Or maybe I’m being hard on myself, because I don’t see that many blogs reaching these numbers either.

Some of you might be completely confused by that statement and to others it will make perfect sense; let me explain. When I look at my own stats, I can see that it took me 5 months to reach 500 subscribers (which isn’t a bad rate of growth at all). Can you guess how many it took to reach 1,000? Just two.

You see, when I first started out, I was a complete nobody in my niche. I was fairly known in the internet marketing industry but totally unheard of when it came to personal development. Because of that, I had to establish a brand. I went with a logo people would remember, a unique design, and a desire to focus on content that simply helped people be who they want to be. Everything I would write would have the focus of helping people get what they want out of life.

From there I started commenting on other blogs, being active in Twitter and writing the best articles I could. I worked hard, but within a few months I was at the 500 subscriber mark. Once you get to this stage, things start getting much, much easier because when you’re trying to promote content that has no audience, you have to find people who might want to read it and show up where they are. Once you have an audience and write great content, they’re going to start sharing it for you.

If you’re struggling to get your first few hundred subscribers then don’t worry, as they’re far harder to get than the next few hundred. With the 5 months left in the year I managed to grow my site by another 3,000 subscribers. How’s that for exponential growth.

I have been one of the most active guest posters on the internet in the last few months and for one simple reason: guest posting works. It gets you out there in front of a new audience and just as importantly, an audience that understands blogs and what they are all about. If someone subscribers to another blog in your niche, there’s a good chance they will subscribe to yours if you’re writing great content. One thing I have noticed some people do is “piggyback” off a certain blog and try to write there as often as possible.

This is usually for big blogs which can help you get a lot of traffic and subscribers quite quickly, but things will soon die down. If someone has seen you guest post on a site 5 times and still haven’t subscribed, they probably won’t when you write your 6th article. There are a few benefits to varying your guest posting which include:

As a blogger, I’m quite sad about the rise of Twitter in a way. Instead of the hundreds of backlinks a good blog post could get a few years ago, it will now get hundreds of tweets. Sure the tweets can bring you traffic, but they are not going to help your post move up the ranks in search engines. Even as a way for collaboration, people are focusing on twitter communication rather than working with people via their blogs. Usually these writers are coming from the scarcity mindset and if they link to other bloggers they’re going to lose readers and help their “competitor” grow.

First of all, if you think of other bloggers in your niche as competitors then you have a totally backwards mindset. Secondly, I’m here to tell you that collaborating with other bloggers in my niche has been one of the best things I have done. To begin with, I created a list of the top Personal Development Blogs. This ranks all of the blogs by their statistics and of course helps my site visitors find other amazing blogs to read. This page has been linked to by hundreds of websites and it has helped put me in touch with tons of other bloggers.

On top of that, I also ran a series called the Personal Development face-off. I had the idea thanks to Daniel Scocco doing this in the blogging niche and thought that the content generated here would be excellent. Even though I was featuring two other bloggers on my site every week, hundreds of people emailed me to say how much they loved the series. This positioned me as someone who was at the top of my industry because I had all of these top bloggers taking time out to work with me and because I was sharing the best content in the niche.

Don’t be afraid of promoting other bloggers. These days, I try to promote great content on other sites as much as possible. It will come back your way.

Glen is the author of ViperChill, a blog on Viral Marketing. He aims to help people create remarkable websites that others just naturally want to talk about.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

3 Lessons I Learned Building 4,000 Subscribers in 12 Months

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So J and I are heading to Las Vegas for a much needed vacation starting Monday! J’s never been and I’ve only been once before, long ago for Blogworld Expo my first year with b5media. I spent most of my time on that trip with my head up a web server’s ass so I’m looking forward to returning on “me time”.

It is off season, and getting on into November, so hopefully there’s still a little warmth left in the days. I won’t be impressed if I arrive to something like the picture on the right. I think that was December of last year so we’re cutting it pretty close

We’re going to take in a show or two and check out a number of higher end restaurants. Recently our addiction to the food network has reached new heights, and with a push at home to cook as much as possible from scratch, this trip should provide plenty of inspiration!

What’s your favorite thing to do in Las Vegas (gambling is not an answer!) Got any favorite destinations, things to do and see? Anything exciting away from the strip people might not normally think to do? Would love to hear from you.

If you knew that your blog was vulnerable to hacking or some similar security breach, would you take the time to secure it?

I ask, because I want to warn you about a greater, yet almost unknown threat to your blog’s growth and success.

That threat is stress and as today is National Stress Awareness day in the U.K, I would like to share with you why I believe how you respond to stress is perhaps the most critical factor in determining the future success of your blog.

We’re all gathered here because we share a common goal. To grow our blogs to be more successful. And what’s at the core of a successful blog, is a Blogger that has developed a high level of skills at;

Put more bluntly, a Blogger with 100 Readers and averaging 3 comments a week is at an entirely different level of skill and capacity than one with 1 million Readers and 3,000 comments a week. The difference isn’t just luck. If you have the skills and capacity of a successful blogger than success is only a matter of time.

However, in the case of most of us, success is a journey of mastering these skills. That doesn’t mean we are less worthy, less capable or have any less potential, only that we need to develop new skills that we haven’t yet developed. Isn’t this why we read Problogger?

And as any journey involves uncertainty, risks and hazards, so too does our journey to success. In order to grow our blog, we have to grow our skills to a higher level. In the course of this, it is natural that you will experience stress because you are stretching beyond your comfort zone and developing new or refining existing skills.

In fact if you don’t experience stress on a regular basis, then you either don’t care enough about what you are doing or you aren’t coming close to your potential.

Let me give you a new way of looking at stress, that will be more useful in aiding your evolution as a Blogger.

Stress is like the river between two lands. On one side is your current situation. On the other, is the end result that you dream of. If you refuse the risk of getting to the other side, success will forever evade you and you will have to resign yourself to this being as good as it gets. But if you are successful in your attempts, you get to live your dream.

Therefore the key to your success (and that of your blog) is going to be entirely determined by how you respond to stressful challenges.

Every stressful situation is actually an indicator of where you need to upgrade your skills in order to be more successful. You only feel stress because the road to your goal is blocked. And when you are capable of overcoming the block, the stress will dissolve. And you are closer to reaching your goal.

Let me try to make this clearer with some concrete examples. Say your stress seems to be about dealing with negative comments or wondering if your next post will be popular.

Sometimes negative comments or unpopular posts are helpful because they guide us back when we get off-course.

Mostly though, negative comments are just someone who isn’t really our audience reading or someone misunderstanding. Equally unpopular posts are often those too simple or too complicated for our Reader’s level of understanding so that they don’t see the relevance in it.

These only really bother us, when they hit upon something we doubt in ourselves.

What it’s really about is gaining the clarity to know what your purpose is and who the right audience is for you. When you gain conviction and clarity in what you believe and what you are doing, it is like standing a flag in the ground and so the Reader’s that are right for you will gather around it.

If instead, you are all the time only seeking praise and approval from everyone, then there is nothing solid, consistent or certain about your blog and so ultimately it will never gather a sizeable core of die hard fans. Only drive by Readers who scan a post and never look back.

Or maybe, most of your stress comes from having too much to do and too little time to do it in.

In this case, your success depends upon you resolving this conflict. Which ultimately means identifying the critical core tasks, finding more efficient ways to get them done and being capable of doing all that needs to be done.

Typically people see stress as an irritation that interrupts them. And so almost all stress management materials are focused on stress relief. Go for a walk, exercise, breathe deeply etc. These are all tactical ways to deal with stress. Which is perfect if you are stuck in the swampland of stress and need to get some perspective. But tactical stress management, in itself will never lead to growth and development.

What if your stress is caused by the problem above, of too much to do and too little time to do it in. Well feeling stressed about it, is only going to make things worse and so you’ll end up running around like a headless chicken and getting nowhere.

Relieving the feeling of stress will be helpful, as it can enable you to look at the situation more clearly.

But the only way of resolving the situation, once and for all, and so growing your blog, is by getting clearer about what should be done and becoming more productive.

So as a Blogger looking to evolve you are really needing to develop your skills at strategic stress management.

Say you are struggling for ideas to write original posts. Tactical stress management would try to dull the pain or ease your emotional discomfort about the situation.

Yet the fact that you have a problem bothering you, indicates a deeper problem that it is critical to your success. So changing the way you feel is only part of the problem.

Strategic stress management focuses on identifying what caused the problem and why. In addressing the root core of the problem, you not only overcome the emotional discomfort, but you become a stronger and more evolved person. Which in the case of your blogging leads to a more successful blog.

We are as successful as our limits allow us to be. And so as we remove our limitations, we become more successful. Stress is an early warning indicator of a problem, or problems, that will limit you, or your blog, from growing.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why Stress Can Kill Your Success Or Help Your Blog Succeed Wildly

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So, Sunday night, I sent him a text telling him that it wasn’t going to work. I didn’t hear back from him, and assumed it was over. He hasn’t been at the gym for several weeks, so I figured his soccer was taking the place of weights, and I’d probably never see him again.

Yesterday, he sent me a text asking if we could be just friends. This is where I get confused. We never saw each other, and had a relationship based on 10 to 20 text messages a day, only during working hours. What kind of friendship was supposed to be salvaged? I responded that we’re still on good terms, and yes, we could be friends. Assuming he meant that if we run into each other at the gym, that we would be casual about it all.

I got a text from him about 20 minutes ago (around 7:30am) saying “good morning”. Where’s he going here? Are we going to be text buddies for the rest of our lives?

Recently I’ve found myself a belated fan of this relatively obscure show (well in Canada anyway). I’ve known about it for years but it never made it to my PVR list until recently. The charm of the show is wrapped up in the 3 charismatic presenters and the absolutely outrageous litany of hare-brained challenges, races and outright spectacle they’ve been responsible for since hitting the airwaves in Jeremy Clarkson’s re-envisioned, resurrection of the long running BBC show in 2002.

I’d become quickly attached to the 3 personalities during the occasional times I happened to trip over it on the weekends, but with it playing nightly on BBC Canada currently, this is a great chance to get it on the PVR and really catch up. Imagine my surprise then when I find out tonight co-host Richard Hammond had been involved in a horrific crash during a speed test segment for the show back in 2006. A coma, brain injuries,  a long road to recovery later and Richard did make a full recovery, returning to the show in record time considering the nature of his crash.

Well as all enterprising individuals with a good story to tell eventually do; he wrote a book about it called On The Edge: My Story.  I’m told it’s quite compelling and will be making it onto my night stand in short order. Honestly if you find cars interesting at all, you owe it to yourself to track this program down on your dial and get to know these guys. Check the vid below for Richard’s return appearance, complete with footage of the amazing crash.

I ask the question because while at lunch with a few bloggers recently the topic came up and I discovered that the answers to the question varied quite a lot.

My Approach

My approach is somewhere in between. I don’t base my choice on which products to promote on price – but rather the quality of the products I’m promoting and their relevancy to my audience.

For me promoting a variety of quality products at different price points seems to work well. I find that in doing so I seem to be able to attract buyers at different price points and levels and the commissions tend to add up to collectively be a worthwhile exercise.

What about you? If you’re promoting affiliate products I’d be interested to hear whether price is one of the factors that you consider when choosing a product to promote?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Does Price Impact Which Affiliate Poducts You Promote?

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In marriage they talk about a seven year itch. It’s the time when people get restless and think about giving up on their relationship.

For bloggers that itch and desire to give up comes sooner. In fact, most bloggers give up on their blogs after only 6 months.

I’ve been writing my blog for 6 months now and I can relate to people quitting at this time. It seems as if you have put a lot of time and effort into your blog, but it’s still to early to reap the rewards of that hard work. It seems as if you’ve made every mistake in the book but you still have so much to learn about blogging.

According to psychologists having grit, or persevering with a project, is more important than intelligence or any other personality trait when it comes to success.

With that in mind, I’d like to tell you why you shouldn’t give up on your blog and how you can find the motivation to carry on.

Why you should carry on blogging after 6 months

How to find the strength to carry on blogging

Look at anything you’ve achieved in your life. It probably didn’t come easily. There may have been times when you wanted to give up. But you’re glad you didn’t. Take heart from that and carry on blogging.

Press on writing and improving your blog for another 6 months and then another 6 months after that. It will be worth it in the end.

Annabel Candy writes Get In the Hot Spot: a blog to inspire and inform people on how to live their dream. If you dream of travel, writing, self-employment, or just being happy then Get In the Hot Spot by email. If you know someone who dreams of change or wants to be more daring with their life, please tell them about it so they can stop day-dreaming and start living their dream.

Annabel has four obsessions: writing, travel, Internet design and helping people follow their dream. Annabel ran a successful Internet marketing company in New Zealand for 10 years before following her dream and goofing off to Central America with her husband and three kids. After 18 incredible months in the jungle the Candy family moved to Australia where Annabel is now doing what she does best: writing  and exploring.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Getting Over the Blogger’s 6 Month Itch

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Naturally, since myself and my fabulous friends do speed dating, I’m inclined to say that the women who attend speed dating are glorious. But, let’s face it, this is a competition. Yes, guys can say “yes” to as many women as they want, but they are going to have favorites. It is always my goal to be the favorite. I usually win.

Girl #1

Not the event I went to last week, but the one I attended a few months back that I never talked about (all through the same company, Fastlife, who have no paid me for any of the praise I have given them this week, just an FYI), there was this one girl. She was everything I am not. She was blonde, dressed like a slut and wore a lot of make up. I hated her on sight. She also strategically placed herself at one end of the room so that when anyone entered, they were immediately drawn to her.

At the end of the evening, after everyone had handed in their report cards, a few of the men were lingering, and my gal pal and I were chatting with them. I asked if any of them had said “yes” to her. The guys started stuttering about how she was pretty, but she had nothing going on upstairs…but they all put her down as a “yes”. She was pretty enough to not have personality matter. None of that would have really bothered me, except one of the guys I mentioned yesterday, Mr Viagara, said that he added her. At that event, I forced myself to say “yes” to at least 3 guys…and trust me, that was really pushing it. I didn’t like any of them. So Mr Viagara made it into my “yes” pile by defaut. Which means that if he put me down as a “yes” I would have gotten his contact info. And I didn’t. Which mean that I am not pretty enough to be marked as “yes” for my looks. And I can’t even impress Mr Viagara.

Luckily, at that event, I got Elite again, so my ego was not in the least bit bruised.

Girl #2

This was the Elite only event. The cream of the crop of the dating world. She was sitting right next to me, and during the break, we started chatting…mostly sharing dating war stories. She was slightly older than me, she said she was in her mid-to-late 30’s. Why she wouldn’t narrow her age for me is a mystery. Part of our conversation:

Teacher Bitch: You must be REALLY uncomfortable here

FitDarcie: Why would you say that?

Teacher Bitch: Because the men here must be so much older than you.

FitDarcie (In my most girly, flirty tone): Oh, don’t you worry about me! Older men LOVE me! Fucking jealous bitch.

I may not have said that last sentence, but she definitely made me try harder to get the older guys. Fucking jealous bitch.

All in all though, I talked to most of the girls at all the events I’ve been to, and they mostly seem pretty decent.

There is usually some use of multiple video streams such that many (if not all) of the streams being heard are simultaneously being seen. I really dig it, as it’s an incredibly geeky and educational medium. It promotes the sharing of techniques and showcases skills in a very honest way.

It also doesn’t hurt that Nataly Dawn is adorable, and a bit enigmatic in that she sings with talent and confidence, but the expression on her face betrays apparent surprise at her abilities. “Wait, did I just sing that?”

Check them out on YouTube; they have tons of content. Here’s a good example of one of their original compositions.

12. Don’t play the lottery…you might win. Any unearned wealth, or wealth that is disproportionate to the objective value you provide will destroy you. Lottery winners and Sports/Movie stars share a common bond of disproportionate rates of depression, addiction, and suicide.

The best tip, statistically, is to buy the biggest, heaviest, newest, most airbag-laden vehicle you can afford, and always buckle-up.

“Would this post work better if I split it into two (or more) posts?”

While the answer is usually ‘no’ for me I do semi-regularly get to the end of a blog post and realise that what I’ve actually written is probably better if it is split into parts.

For me the reasons that I split posts this way generally fall into these categories:

The word of warning that I’ll give on splitting posts into parts is that you don’t want to do it for the sake of it and to cut down on your work as a blogger. While it’s a nice feeling to realise a post you’ve written can easily be split in two and that it gives you a day off writing tomorrow – if you cut posts down too much you could also end up with something that just isn’t meaty enough to really be worthwhile posting.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

An Important Question to Ask Before Hitting Publish on Your Next Post

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1) God. To me, this is a no-brainer. A deep, philosophical conversation about the existence of a greater being cannot be had in 7 minutes. This topic should be avoided. Some guy the other night thought otherwise, and we had this conversation:

FitDarcie: So, what do you do?

The Dentist: I am a dentist. I can tell you floss. Are you religious?

FitDarcie: Uhm. Uh, where is your dental practice located? Near here?

The Dentist: If there were a god, he would written it into the 10 commandments that you should floss everyday.

FitDarcie: (Looking for a hint of sarcasm on his face) Oh. Uhm. I don’t think that’s the purpose of the bible.

The Dentist: continues on a tirade about how horrible the bible is for another 6.5 minutes.

2) Porn. Again, I would assume this would be a no-brainer. Getting into details about the size of your porn collection is probably not a good way to start a 7-minute relationship. Where do you have to go from there. However, if you choose this path, when you are done, and the beautiful woman across from you is staring at you stunned and speechless, do not tell her friend that “clearly your friend Darcie is drunk. You should take her home immediately”.

3) Viagara. This is somewhat on the same level as porn. When you tell someone you work in pharmaceutical sales, then talk about your experiences with being slipped Viagra on the first day of your job, and saying that

Some stats:

Here’s a quick screen grab of the different areas (taken a few days back pretty late at night US time so not a lot of people in the forum at the time).

As you can see the topics being discussed are far reaching and in most areas there is a fair bit of discussion. The new(ish) Tutorials area is an area I’d like to see a bit more action in and I’m going to recruit a few experts in different fields of blogging to contribute some tutorials here in the coming months.

We’ve passed the point where most members have had the chance to stop their subscription if they choose to. As mentioned above we’ve had just under 1% of people decide to leave. While I’d love everyone to stay it’s not feasible to expect that the site will suit every need.

We did have a few issues with the subscription renewals at the end of the month which caused some confusion but along with a few other growing pains the first month of ProBlogger.com has been well worthwhile and I’m getting a lot of really great feedback from members.

As with all membership sites it is those who are throwing themselves into it most who seem to be getting the most out of it.

Now that we’ve achieved the 2000 member mark and retained that amount of members we’re moving towards ending the introductory price of $1.95 a month. Anyone who has signed up at this price already (and who signs up in the next week) and stays a member is locked in at this level.

However in a week’s time we’ll be putting the price up to $5.95 a month for new members. This gives everyone a chance to get in at the introductory price – so if you’re thinking of joining – now’s the time to get locked in at $1.95.

$5.95 is a price that we still feel is accessible to many but will enable us to make the site sustainable.

You have one week to get in at this price before we raise it – your time starts….. now.

Now that we’re at 2000 members we’re starting to see enough bloggers in different niches to make the collaboration area of the blog more and more useful as there are now little ‘clusters’ of bloggers in different topics.

To help with this collaboration we’ll be adding the ’social groups’ feature in the coming week. This will enable bloggers to group themselves a little more and set up areas to discuss common interests.

I foresee this ’social groups’ feature to be used in a number of ways:

Really the way that these groups can be used is only going to be limited to the imagination of members. I hope that they provide bloggers with the ability to find others like them but also discuss some of the more obscure topics that might not be relevant to everyone.

At first we’ll be choosing the topics for these groups but would like to soon open it up for anyone to start one.

We will also be adding a weekly chat session for members in the coming couple of weeks. This will not go live until after the price rise but will give members the opportunity to interact live with one another on a weekly basis in a chat room – the hope is that we’ll nominate a topic each week to focus the chat around, do a little quick teaching at the start and then open it up for discussion.

Discounts – The 50% off the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog offer has been used by many of our members. Getting $9.98 off the workbook effectively gives those members 5 months free membership.

I’ll be extending this offer indefinitely for ProBlogger.com members and also offering discounts on future ProBlogger resources (expect to see another one released in the next 2-3 months with more to follow).

I’m also talking to a number of blogging related companies about them coming into the forums to offer special discounts on their products to members. More on this in the coming weeks.

Guest Experts – as mentioned above – I want to beef up the ‘tutorials’ area of the forum by bringing in some special guests to provide some teaching around different topics. This will not be a formal curriculum or syllabus but rather regular input from people with experience in different areas of blogging and the opportunity to pick their brains a little.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogger.com Price Rise Coming in 1 Week – Lock in the Intro Price Today

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The wonderful people over at Fastlife have a bit of a rating system that I believe I mentioned in my first post, where, if you get 70% of “dates” say yes to you, you become Elite. Naturally, I am Elite. They host events for Elite only members, and the speed dating I went to last week, was one of those events.

And it was phenomenal.

10 women and 10 men, all of whom had been speed dating before, and all of whom had Elite status. I wanted to go to see if these men were any better than the guys I’d met at the previous events. But I was actually nervous. These were men who were voted as elite by other women, and I was competing for yesses with women who were also voted elite. I would have been devastated if I didn’t make Elite again.

Naturally, I made Elite again. Elite of the Elite. That’s like Super-Elite. Oddly, they don’t have a category for the best of the best. I didn’t actually get to move up a level, move on to provincials, then nationals, then the world cup of dating. Though, I’m sure if they had those other levels, I’d be in for sure.

Anyway, it was refreshing. There were 10 guys at this event, and the worst ones at this event were like the best ones at past events. It was refreshing to have actual conversations in the 7-minute time limit that didn’t make me want to throw something. I asked most of the men and women who were at that event, and all of them agreed that it was the conversation that made the difference between this event and the others.

It renewed my faith that there are decent men out there. I actually said yes to 5 of the men. 5 out of 10.