Beginner Blogger

Forget about trying to make money online, putting in banner ads, google AdSense and what have you and trying to make a quick buck. It’s the wrong way to go about it. Make relationships and build trust. I want to tell you a story I had recently that involved a fine wine shop and a $100 voucher.

Usually I buy my wine from the large liquor warehouse down the road. It’s close and the cheapest so why go anywhere else? The $100 voucher I had however, could only be used at the ‘Fine Wine’ shop which was a lot further away and prices aren’t always the cheapest. But I had no choice in the matter I had $100 voucher to use there so there I went!

Make Yourself Known – Help Out

So I walked into the the small wine shop, there was wine EVERYWHERE. Very well organised. It wasn’t long until someone came up to me and was happy to help if I had any questions. He wasn’t in my face or anything, just a simple ‘can I help you with anything’. I told him that I didn’t know a great deal about wine and was looking for a summery type of red (it’s summer here in Australia). To cut a long story short, he was just really helpful, taught me a few things about wine I didn’t know about, introduced me to rare wines that were very affordable and even took the price down on the grand total as I had amounted to $102 or something like that, so he took it down to $100 neat which my voucher covered. Just a small act like that and the fact that he was really helpful meant so much to me. He now has me as a return visitor in me.

I compare this to the liquor warehouse chains where there is no customer service like we experienced at the small wine shop. It’s like being in a store filled with robot workers. No-one goes out of their way to help, the people at the counters are in a zombie-like state. There just isn’t any personality or engagement. The only reason you go there is because it’s cheap. But buying ‘cheap’ isn’t exactly a nice feeling either.

The Best Part

The best part about this story is where it originated. The wine voucher was a gift from my work mates. The gift came from the relationship that had been built from my time of working there. They knew I was into wine because I’d told them through the many conversations we’d all had in the past. Usually the birthday person would just get a credit voucher that they could use anywhere with no personality behind it. But the fact that they bought me the wine voucher shows that my relationship with my former colleagues had value.

How Can We Apply This To Our Sites

When you get people coming into your site (or wine store) – make them as welcome as possible. Sure enough they’ve probably come from a reliable source (my work mates recommended the Fine Wine shop) for a specific purpose (to buy wine). Make sure your content (wine) is fantastic. Use your expertise to help new readers (customers) as much as possible (wine selection, teaching about various types of wines). Give them more than they will expect (learned about new wines, slashed prices, customer care). Engage with them afterwards (business card).

Deliver care and engagement to your visitors and the people you have just met online. Give them a reason to trust you. I feel so much better now buying wine from the Fine Wine shop than the local liquor warehouse even though the Fine Wine shop is a bit further away and a bit more expensive.

So don’t be too warped worrying about making money through your blog.  Worry about making relationships online and care for people enough that they’ll go out of their way to come back to you. Give them kindness, helpfulness, genuineness, value and trust and you’re in for a great ride.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I saw a great post on Mike’s Life, SteitBlog and Lifenotion about setting goals for 2010. While I am more a month by month person and think that a year is way too long to set solid goals for I thought I’d chip in and do some goals for this Beginner Blogger site.

These are very rough figures but I would be over the moon if just some of these happened. I’m also sure some of these figures will be adjusted as the year goes on so they’re more realistic.

Beginner Blogger 2010 Goals

• Top 50,000 Alexa Ranking – (though it doesn’t really mean anything to me, just shows progression based on traffic)
• Page Rank 4+ (though it doesn’t really mean anything to me just shows progression in the eyes of google)
• 1000+ visits per day
• Launch several small quality ebooks to give away for free
• Launch 1-2 paid ebooks
• 300+ blog posts either on the blog or as guest posts elsewhere
• 2+ guest posts a month
• Complete Redesign
• Create SEO strategy (my current SEO traffic is awful)
• Create structured email course
• Launch a product/package that is not just an ebook
• 1500+ RSS subscribers
• 1000+ Email subscribers
• 500+ Facebook fans
• 10,000+ Twitter followers
• Perform online presentations
• Read 20+ quality books like Trust Agents
• Video interviews, more skype chats – get over the fear of the phone/voice conversations and be confident in that area
• Outsource someone as an experiment and gain experience working with someone
• Attend a blogging related conference
• Meet some of the amazing people I’ve met online in the ‘real world’
• Perhaps partner with someone
• Do something ground-breaking, never seen/done before in the blogging world. Think outside the box.
• Be a ‘construction worker’ and live up to my 3 words this year of Focus, Busy and Engage
• Be able to say at the end of the year I can continue doing this for 2011

As you know I’ve left my full time job to pursue a career online. So that last goal is so very much important to me. I love what I’ve been doing so far and I’d love to continue with it for many years to come. I want to gain all the experience I can get and most of all be able to successfully help you with your blogging problems.

So what are your goals? If you’ve made a similar 2010 goals post make sure you include it here with a link back to your site. I think it’s great to set goals so you can look back on later and see where you’ve come from.

Let’s all achieve our goals for 2010!

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy:

Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – Dec 09-Jan 10

Pilot Post

The Art of Jugglign a Job and a Blog

Popularity: 5% [?]

Stemming from yet another thought provoking blog post by Jordan Cooper he got me thinking about blog commenting and that feeling of being obligated to blog on someone else’s blog if they were to comment on my blog.

Don’t Feel Like You Have To Reciprocate

First of all – I never expect you to come to my site nor comment on my posts when I comment on your blog. Sure, I’d love for you to come over and check my blog out and check out some posts that you like the sound of. But I don’t want you to comment on my posts unless you genuinely want to. If you enjoy giving value, adding to the conversation or really enjoyed my post and want to thank me, then go for it. But NEVER feel like you HAVE to.

I’ll apoligise in advance and want to give warning to everyone that has commented here on this blog. I don’t want to feel obligated to comment your blog posts just because you commented here. I’d say I would visit your blog 9/10 times if you comment here but that doesn’t mean I will automatically comment on your blog.

Strive for Quality Engagement

I value quality engagement on my blog, email, twitter, facebook etc. Don’t we all? There’s way too much noise out there on the internet. You don’t read every blog post in your RSS feed, do you? You don’t read every single tweet on your home feed on twitter, do you?

Just because someone was nice enough to comment on your blog, and even if it was a really great comment, their site may be total crap or something not related to your niche or subject matter that you simply can’t comment on. There’s a wise saying that ‘if you have nothing to say, say nothing’.

If you’re feeling obligated to comment but don’t have something you feel you could really add or want to say – you can always vote (as long as you think it’s worthy of a vote, don’t vote ‘just because’)

So in this case comment if you feel like it. Just let it flow naturally Quality is what we should strive for.

Bottom line is that I do not EXPECT you to comment on my blog if I comment on yours nor do I hope you EXPECT me to do the same back. Only do so if it’s WORTHY of a comment/vote. Not – just ’cause

I think reciprocation is a great thing and I do participate in helping others out if they help me too (I like to think I give more than I receive). Definitely! But only if what I’m doing or what you’re doing is of VALUE.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this

This blog post has been in the backburner for some time. I’ve just been reading Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents which sums this post up beautifully.

“Is it wrong to think that what you do for someone will be (eventually) reciprocated? No. Is it wrong to expect it? You betcha.”

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy:

How To Deal With An Information Overload and Take Action

How To Keep Yourself Under Pressure and Perform With Your Blog?

OMFG Just Stick To Your Goals!!

Why Being PERFECT Is Hurting You And Your Blog

Popularity: 7% [?]

A new month, a new year, a new decade, a new chapter. Welcome to 2010!

As you know I left my day job at the end of November so I’ve been able to spend a lot more time on Beginner Blogger. As a result my stats his month have been fantastic! Best month by far and even beat the pants off my great month of October.

The great thing is I still feel like I can work even harder so therefore my goals for January are much more challenging than previous month. I’m up for the challenge, are you?

Let the numbers begin!

Remember green is good (means I did greater than last month) red is bad

Twitter stats for December

Tweets – 639 +359 more than last month (total 1765)
Followers – 495 +407 more than last month (total 2180)
Mentions – 460 +270 more than last month (total 1071)

I used twitter a lot more this month spending a great deal of time interacting with my followers and continuing to pump out the tips, questions and links I feel will be of value to you guys. The trick now is to manage the time I’m spending using social media so it’s effective, valuable and also isn’t considered wasting time.

Below is the daily clicks graph from hootsuite showing how many clicks I got from links I published on twitter. Note that it drops off at the bottom. That’s because I’ve gone back to using bit.ly links as people were complaining that they didn’t like the ow.ly bar that HootSuite uses.

I do not care about the actual number of followers that displays on my twitter. I would be happy if the number didn’t even show up. What’s important to me is the engagement and value I can bring to others through twitter. If that means going out of my way to find people I can help and follow them so they follow me back then that’s what I’ll do. Helping bloggers blog and developing strong relationships is what I’m about. Think of the number of twitter followers like the sand grains when sifting for gold. The gold is what I’m after. Or the nugget

Twitter Statistical Goals for January:

• 2500+ followers (in total)
  
• 150+ valuable twitter tips and links to resources that will help you
  
• 500+ Mentions (@ replies)

Facebook stats for December

Fans – 45 +31 facebook fans made than last month (total 74)

I had a goal of getting a total of 50 facebook fans this month. I reached the goal about half way through the month so that was really great. I did a bit of promotion on twitter and put up the facebook fan page box on the sidebar of the blog. It goes to show that a little bit of promotion really works, the trick is to promote at the right times and make sure you’re still giving away free valuable content so readers won’t get annoyed with self-promotion. Remember: Give more than you receive

Below is a graph of people becoming a fan over time. That big spike I believe was when I suggested to my facebook friends on my standard facebook account to join my fan page – a very handy tool that facebook has.

Facebook Statistical Goals for January:

• 100+ FB fans in total
  

Blog stats for December

Posts – 10 +8 more blog posts made than last month (total 36)
Comments – 154 +134 more comments made than last month (total 252 – excluding myself, pingbacks and spam)

The amount of comments I received this month was incredible! This is probably the stand-out stat for the month for me. Just imagine if I had published more blog posts.

Blog Statistical Goals for January:

• 20+ Posts
• 200+ Comments

RSS stats for December

Subscribers –  17 +7 more subscribers subscribed than last month total 45

I reached my goal of 40 RSS subscribers which was great. A little promotion on twitter that was it. I learnt the other day that if someone just visits the feed and doesn’t actually subscribe it will count as a stat but doesn’t count as an on-going subscriber stat if they don’t subscribe. So what I’m thinking happened is that I put a link to the Beginner Blogger RSS feed on twitter which got a big spike in traffic to my feed, but not everyone subscribed they just visited the link. Hence the spike up and back down.

RSS Statistical Goals for January:

• 75+ RSS Subscribers (total)
  

Google Analytics stats for December

Visitors – 1560 +922
Unique Visitors – 853 +487
Visitors not from Brisbane (my home town) – 1334 +800 (Because my IP address changes and I check my site constantly on different computers I wanted a way to check my stats that didn’t include my visits)
Visitors not from Brisbane and time spent on site higher than 0 seconds – 586 +400 (I wanted to see how many visitors came to my site that spent greater than 0 seconds on my site – i.e. the page fully loaded and they spent some time on the site. I’m not sure if this is entirely accurate)

Massive increase of pageviews and average time spent on site.

Google Analytics Statistical Goals for January:
•    2000+ Visits

Email Subscriber stats for December

Subscribers –  12 +7 more email subscribers added than last month (total 26)

I ran a Christmas Competition and giveaway on Christmas Day that ran for a few days. The prizes weren’t huge but the reception was great. Congratulations to Ileane on winning!

If you don’t want to miss out on the next competition make sure you’ve signed up to the newsletter. You’ll be added into the draw

Sign up to Beginner Blogger Newsletter

Email Statistical Goals for January:

• 40+ subscribers (total)
  

Review of December Goals

*120+ Twitter tips SUCCESS
*300 blog comments (yes, Three Hundred blog comments) SUCCESS – I completed this relatively earlier than I expected. It was good fun and made a lot of new connections. I seem to stand up and get really into setting myself challenges like this
*15 blog posts or 1 blog post every 2 days Mixed Bag – While I didn’t get 15 blog posts out on the site published, I have written 15 blog posts to 90% completion.
*2xVideo blog – one featuring me and one tutorial/screen post (or a mixture) SUCCESS – I talked about What the Tweetmeme button does and did a video review for Beyond Blogging. I plan to do more videos so make sure you’ve subscribed in one way or another.
*2-4 emails to subscribers SUCCESS – I sent out an email about the Beyond Blogging Book (aff link) and a Christmas special email both of which are exclusive to the newsletter so make sure you sign up if you want to receive some extra content.
*3 guest blogs FAIL – I wrote one which isn’t live yet. I will strive to write a lot in the near future, especially when I get the redesign of the site up. Oops did I say that too soon
*50 FB fans SUCCESS – I promoted this a bit on twitter and started adding a lot more people on my facebook page and referring them to the Beginner Blogger fan page
*40 RSS subscribers SUCCESS
*20 email subscribers SUCCESS – The Christmas Competition and Giveaway paid dividends for this goal!

Goals For January

* Complete redesign (At least 80% completion – February is the deadline)
* Email redesign (to go with redesign)
* 50+ blog posts written (not necessarily published, they could also be guest posts)
* Spend 30+ hours interacting/commenting with other bloggers and blogs
* 2-4 Emails
* Distribute videos across the net to other video sites
* 180+ Twitter Tips and quality links

Statistical Goals For January (out of my direct control)

* 2500+ Twitter followers (in total)
* 500+ Twitter Mentions (@ replies)
* 100+ FB fans in total
* 200+ Comments
* 2000+ Visits
* 75+ RSS Subscribers (total)
* 40+ Email subscribers (total)

The 50+ blog posts is my personal challenge this month. Last month it was to comment on 300 blog posts which I did successfully.

The redesign is something I have been wanting to do for quite some time but I subscribe to the idea that you shouldn’t mess around with the template too much and focus on the more important tasks like relationship building and creating content. This current design has been around for a while and I’ve never been quite happy with it to be honest so now is time to change it up. I’m excited about the redesign and the direction this blog is heading!

So that’s December stats and January goals for this month! Any questions please let me know in the comments below.

(Fireworks image from Free Design 4 Me)

If you enjoyed this blog post you may also enjoy:

Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – Nov-Dec 09

Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – Oct-Nov 09

Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – Sept-Oct 09

Popularity: 4% [?]

I resigned from full-time employment last week. The desire to work on some personal projects (this site is one of them) create a better lifestyle for myself and to continue my studies and practice in blogging, online marketing and social media outweighed being employed full-time any longer.

Blogs are a solo venture most of the time and with all this time and freedom now within my hands it can sometimes be hard to keep myself under pressure and get things done 100% of the time like most jobs where you work under someone barking instructions at you.

So the question begs – How do you keep yourself under pressure and perform with your blog?

In the corporate 9-5 world there was always pressure applied. It wasn’t intense, but it was there. You have to show up on time and you couldn’t just not do any work. If you did poorly or under-performed based on your expectations you would run the risk of being warned or potentially being fired.

This doesn’t happen when you run a blog. You rule, you’re the boss. So how do you keep yourself under pressure and motivated so you get that feeling of ‘this must get done’?

Here are my top ways of keeping myself under pressure and performing:

1. Setting myself goals

Every month I set myself end of month goals. This lays out a clear plan of exactly what needs to get done for the month. No second guessing, it’s there black and white – I just have to DO it!

2. The fear of being a sloth

I can remember when I was studying at university a few years ago – as soon as holidays came around I would pretty much hibernate till uni started again. Maybe it was a lack of interests or I was partying too much but I never really did anything constructive during the breaks.

I can’t afford to do that now – I’ve given myself a year to make something happen since leaving my job and give myself the lifestyle I desire. If I don’t do ANYTHING during this time I will have just wasted a whole year and have a massive gap in my resume with nothing to prove when, and if, I need to go back in search for another corporate 9-5 job ‘working for the man’.

My body is still in 9-5 mode so I’m still getting up at 6.30am automatically, even without my alarm. I’ve decided I’m going to keep getting up early and not sleep in just because I don’t HAVE to be anywhere. That’s not entirely true though – I have many things I want to get done and sleeping in and wasting the day away isn’t going to help. As soon as I get 7-8 hours sleep I get up and start my working day!

3. Proving to others I can do this

Maybe it’s a bad trait of mine, but I like proving others wrong when they doubt me. It’s improving but I don’t think many people, especially the older folk (my parents for example) really understand blogging, its potential and power it currently has and will have in the future. It’s already proven that blogs make the best websites in terms of SEO and rank higher in google than say a company website.

Not only that, blogs are being referred to as ‘new media’ where TV, newspapers etc are being referred to as ‘old media’ and blogs will be the main place where everyone will get their news (linking from social media resources like facebook and twitter).

In my situation it’s also hard to let others know what I’m doing. I usually just say ‘online marketing’ just to simplify things but even that gets funny looks. Maybe I should say ‘I’m becoming a teacher and writer’ might sound more impressive.

It doesn’t bother me what others THINK of me, but I look forward to be able to show others what I have done with my time when they have been thinking I’m doing nothing and have been ‘chilling out’. Which isn’t the case at all

4. Not letting readers down

I’ve got a following now, people actually visit my blog and some wonder what’s going on when I haven’t posted for a while. I don’t want to let these people down by not posting for a long period of time. I want to help others, not let them down so this is a big driving force for me.

5. I need to eat

I’ve left work in search for a better lifestyle and to pursue a career online. If I don’t work at it, and work HARD in order to make a bit of money to get by – I won’t be able eat and I will have to go back in search for another full time job which right now I really don’t want to do. I left work to pursue a lifestyle change and an online career and that’s what I’m going to do. No-one is going to stop me!

——————————

I realise a lot of my motivation factors have to do with my current situation of being unemployed now – however, blogging is still a solo mission where you work for yourself. You need to motivate and sometimes get yourself under pressure in order to perform.

So how do you keep yourself under pressure in the blogging world to make sure you get things done?

Are you currently working ‘for the man’?

How much time do you get to spend on your blog?

Write them in the comments below – I would love to know and I’m sure others would too

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy:

OMFG Just Stick To Your Goals!!

Why Being PERFECT Is Hurting You And Your Blog

Batching for Bloggers

Popularity: 10% [?]

Seriously!

It is way too easy to get sidetracked on the internet these days. I’m writing this in the heat of the moment with a bit of passion because I just wasted an hour not achieving my goals. It’s not often I get quite a bit of time to myself so I want to share with you what just happened in as much detail as I can…

Ok so I’ve got a WHOLE Sunday to myself. I had just written out a to do list on a piece of pen and paper, these are my GOALS for today in priority order – heck I’ll even take a picture of it – you’ll notice that none of them are checked off yet and (as I write this) it’s 2:09PM here on a Sunday afternoon.

Ok so what happened: I went into google reader because I know there was a blog post by Darren Rowse that I had starred about backing up your blog (my no1 task on my list). This is something I haven’t done yet for my blog so I think it’s time I started backing my database up otherwise I will probably be a bit upset if I lost it all.

Of course I go into google reader and I find 80+ unread blog posts there just wanting to be read. Instead of going up to search box in my starred items and typing in ‘wordpress backup’ or words to that effect to find the article I’m after, I started going through all my unread items, which led to going to blog posts, which led to clicking off links to other blog posts or websites and so on and so on. I did this for a whole hour!

The internet is called the web for a reason – everything is connected by links in the form of a web (metaphor). You could go to endless websites without even touching your keyboard and just keep clicking on links all day.

Writing this blog post was NOT on my list for today either but it’s on my goals list for the month so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. Vent and achieve a goal! But I’m still upset that I’ve wasted this hour. I really want to achieve my goals.

So please do me a favour – stick to your goals!  I feel if I can avoid the distraction, that is – don’t do anything unless they’re contributing to completing my goals – I feel I can get everything on my list done today.

When is the last time you actually got everything on your to-do list done? I honestly can’t remember. Maybe I make my lists too big?

I’m getting my list done today if it kills me. No more distractions! Email, Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook – all turned OFF!

Here are some more motivating posts for you, don’t read them though – finish your to-do list now!

Why Being PERFECT Is Hurting You And Your Blog

How I Got 1000 TARGETED Twitter Followers In 30 Days

Batching for Bloggers

Popularity: 19% [?]

This blog has been up for over a month now and I thought I would share my stats with you. This is also a great way for me to share with you the tools I am using to work out how well my blog is going. I want to go through with you my goals for August as well. I use a variety of different methods to track my stats and here they are:

Twitter stats for July

Tweets – 33 (how many messages I posted)
Followers – 62 (how many people see my messages when I post, in their account)
Following – 157 (how many people I see posting messages, in my account)
Direct messages – 21 (how many people have sent me a private message)
Mentions – 13 (how many people have sent me a direct message using the @ tag which is potentially visible to everyone)

Facebook stats for July

Fans – 0 (how many people have joined the fan page beginner blogger)

Blog stats for July

Posts – 7 (how many posts I have made)
Comments – 6 (how many people posted a comment, excluding myself)

RSS stats for July

Subscribers – 3 (how many people have subscribed to my RSS feed, according to feedburner)

Google Analytics stats for July

Visitors – 90 (how many people visited my site)
Unique Visitors – 52 (How new visitors came to my site, this is checked by IP address so is not entirely accurate as IP addresses can change daily on some computers)
Visitors not from Brisbane (my home town) – 62 (Because my IP address changes and I check my site constantly on different computers I wanted a way to check my stats that didn’t include my visits)
Visitors not from Brisbane and time spent on site higher than 0 seconds – 23 (I wanted to see how many visitors came to my site that spent greater than 0 seconds on my site – i.e. the page fully loaded and they spent some time on the site. I’m not sure if this is entirely accurate)

Significant other things I did in July

• Created this blog
• Created email account
• Created twitter account
• Created RSS subscription through feedburner
• Created Facebook fan page
• Experimented with some plugins and widgets in wordpress
• Made some great contacts/future contacts
• Submit site to google (ranked on page 1-2 depending on time of day, have been as high as no1 spot for search term ‘beginner blogger’)

Goals for August

• A new fresh design!
• Add in a video to a blog post
• Experiment with a podcast
• Get better at batching my tasks
• Get a blog post out at least once every 3 days – so at least 10-12 posts this month.
• Find a blogging association/group to join

I have goals I want to achieve in terms of traffic/visitors/twitter followers etc. But because this blog is very new I just want to see how next month pans out before I share with you what my goals are in that respect. That way come the end of August I’ll be about to do a month on month comparison

Popularity: 3% [?]

This is an update from my post a week ago about batching for bloggers. My goal was to batch certain tasks together to create more time to focus on more important activities like creating blog posts and becoming more of an expert in my field. Also to eliminate distraction from achieving these tasks.

The verdict? Quite a fail. However(!) I have learned a valuable thing or two that I would like to share with you in regards to batching tasks. Firstly though lets recap what my goal was and how I actually did.

• Checking my beginnerblogger email – 3xweek I was checking this way too often. Possibly my biggest disappointment. I remember leaving it open and reading emails as they would come in. In fact, I’m almost ashamed to admit it – I kept on hitting the ‘get mail’ button on several occasions. I was procrastinating badly. This is a big no-no. What I should have done is checked it once, gone through all my emails then close the mail program.
• Checking my personal email – 1xday. I did this once a day and more. I have over 1300 emails unread in my personal email, I should just mark all as read. In fact I am going to do this right now! I just cleared 1366 emails which are now marked as ‘read’ in my personal gmail account. That feels so amazingly good. If you’d like to know how to mark all emails in google as read in less than 5minutes – even if you have thousands like I did – shoot me an email at blogme@beginnerblogger.com
• Reading my RSS feeds – 1xweek. This was a success. I have my feeds go through newsgator and you may or may not be aware that they are now merging with google at the end of August so I’ve made the transition and because of that I am starting my subscriptions from scratch.
• Checking facebook – 1xday. I probably did it more than 1xday but I certainly am not checking it every hour or 10 minutes like I used to. I am batching them mainly for viewing at night on the bus ride home from work and then I am all up to date with facebook. I achieved the goal of making one facebook message per day.
• Checking Twitter – 2xday. Twitter is becoming like my facebook obsession. I failed my goal however I feel like I have achieved a lot by being on twitter a lot. I’ve gotten myself quite a following (over 50!) and am making connections with my potential audience which is what I want. I made many updates to twitter. If you haven’t already – please add me to twitter, I would love to hear from you!
• Writing blogs – 2xweek. I really failed this – I wanted to blog a lot more than I did. I had complete writers block over the weekend. I feel though I am making up for it this week. I will improve this.
• Checking Google Analytics – 2xweek. Fail. Fail. Fail. I was checking this about 5 times a day. I just really like stats! There isn’t really much point me checking it either. I need to focus on writing content!
• Checking Feed Burner – 1xweek. I checked it twice. I still need to figure out how it actually works. The stats tracking isn’t as black and white to me as I first thought. If you haven’t already – which I’m pretty sure no-one has please subscribe to my RSS feed.
• Surfing other peoples blogs – 2xweek. I did this. I feel that I don’t need to do this as often really. I don’t want to suffer from an information overload but at the same time I love checking out other peoples blogs. I will click links sent to me on twitter but it doesn’t mean I’m going to subscribe or continue to visit that site.

Given that I pretty much failed my batching task – I did learn a good thing or two.

Probably the most important thing is that when you get your own free time to work on your blog – work on your blog! Don’t waste time constantly checking emails, facebook, twitter etc. Check them all just once if you have to then close them down, put them away. Avoid distractions. I have just come home from work now and am writing this blog post. I checked my beginnerblogger email, personal email and twitter and now have closed them all down – 100% focusing on writing this. It’s only 7.30pm I remember it taking me till about 10pm last week to have written out a blog and the only thing that was stopping my was the above mentioned distractions!

Another thing I learned is that it’s OK to spend as much time as you want with those ‘distraction’ tasks like twitter/facebook etc when it’s not impacting your free time. In my situation I work 9-5, I commute 1 hour to work and 1 hour home. I see this 2 hours as a time for me to do all those things like check email/facebook/twitter etc. Lunch breaks at work for me are also another time I can check these things – I often check out my traffic stats in google analytics in this time also.

Sure, I could utilise my commute time and even do some blogging on the bus but generally I am tired going to work and coming home that checking email/twitter/facebook etc is the perfect time for me to be doing those things. This is just a stepping stone for batching.

I would love to hear what your batching techniques are. Feel free to leave a comment below, shoot me an email, send me a tweet or leave a comment on my new facebook fan page!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Since starting this blog there are many activities I now do that I never did before and some that I have done in the past but are related to my blogging experience. It is quite a long list of activities and thus can take quite a chunk of time out my day.

The following list is the activities I participate in that I think are related to blogging and how much time I spend on each currently.

Activities related to blogging and how much time I spend currently on each

• Checking my beginnerblogger email – 1xday. I check it currently as soon as I get home from work. On and off during the weekends.
• Checking my personal email – 3xday. I check this in the morning when I am walking/waiting/on the bus to work. I don’t make emails then I just read them. I will usually check once again in my lunch time and sometimes more often than that. I will then check again when I get home and the bulk of my emailing will happen then.
• Reading my RSS feeds – 1-2xday. I actually just did a big clean out of all my subscriptions and will start getting new ones in as I enjoy reading my RSS feeds. I generally will check if I have any new ones and read them on the bus to and from work.
• Checking facebook – 1-toomany xday. I check facebook too often. It’s too convenient on my phone. Ok this isn’t 100% related to blogging, but I would love to know a blogger out there that doesn’t have a facebook. I’m currently int he middle of setting up a facebook for beginnerblogger but am having trouble setting a URL for it. But that’s another story.
• Checking Twitter – 1-toomany xday. Ever since I downloaded TweetDeck for iPhone I am checking this many times during the day. At the moment I am just adding people
• Writing blogs – 1-2xweek. This just isn’t enough. I am spending more time doing other things than doing what’s important and that is write content for this blog. This will change.
• Checking Google Analytics – 1-4xday. I just really enjoy looking at my stats! Even though I’m only averaging about 2 visitors a day it’s just exciting to know that people are visiting my site.
• Checking Feed Burner – 5xweek. I don’t check this often, but I check it way more than I should. I think my problem is that I’m not even sure if the feed burner is working properly.
• Surfing other peoples blogs – 3xweek. I should really be checking out more blogs and getting involved with them. I am not doing this at the moment. The main problem is that I haven’t subscribed to anyones RSS – this will be addressed.

The Problem

The problem I have and what I suspect other bloggers have is that they are doing too many activities/time wasting activities that could be batched together to create more time for the things that are really important – that is blogging!

The Solution

The solution I have – and many thanks to the 4-Hour Work Week book which I have just read – is to batch tasks. I mean really batch them. If you are checking facebook over 10xday, checking email constantly during a day you are spending too much time on these activities when you could be doing more important tasks. If you batch tasks to once a day, that ‘task’ is out of the way and you are then free to do more important tasks like blogging!

My Solution – the week batching trial

My solution is to batch tasks. This is my personal solution and trial I am going to run for one week and I will keep reports on how often I check each. It won’t be easy. The trial will start for me tomorrow being Wednesday 28th July 2009 and I will report back with my results on Tuesday

• Checking my beginnerblogger email – 3xweek. Tomorrow is Wednesday. So I will check my beginnerblogger email on Thursday, Saturday and Monday.
• Checking my personal email – 1xday. I will only check my personal email once a day when coming home.
• Reading my RSS feeds – 1xweek. Because I don’t have many RSS subscriptions I will just check this on Friday. I hope to subscribe to more great RSS feeds so if you have a great blog let me know about it!
• Checking facebook – 1xday. I really want to tackle this. I love hearing what my friends are up to, but I can easily batch this in one day. I also want to post an update of myself once a day. I will do my facebooking update on the bus on the way home.
• Checking Twitter – 2xday. I will check this in the morning on the bus to work and on the way home from work. I will post one update a day at least on twitter.
• Writing blogs – 2xweek. This doesn’t mean I’m just going to post 2 blog posts a week. This means I dedicate 2 solid ’sessions’ of writing blog posts. I will do this Thursday and on the weekend.
• Checking Google Analytics – 2xweek. I really don’t need to check my google analytics stats so often. I don’t get enough traffic as it is. The focus is to create more content and make this blog great! I shouldn’t really check it at all – but I still am curious! So I will check this on Thursday and Tuesday.
• Checking Feed Burner – 1xweek. I will check this over the weekend. I really need to figure it out and make sure this is tracking correctly.
• Surfing other peoples blogs – 2xweek. I want to find some great blogs out there that inspire me. Bookmark them, subscribe to them and learn from them. I will do some surfing on Thursday and on the weekend.

So there you have it. This is my batching plan weekly trial. I hope by doing this I won’t be so disctracted and can really focus on particular activities, rather than many at once!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Ok it’s time to bite the bullet and get my first blog post out there!

I am like many people who have had the idea to start a blog but have never actually done it. This domain www.beginnerblogger.com has been under my jurisdiction if you will, for over two years now. March 2007 to be exact. Back then I vaguely remember blogs being a very big thing, bigger than I had imagined.

I had just discovered how to work with RSS and put all sites I visited regularly into its own reader (I use net news wire on my mac and on my iPhone ). This impressed me greatly – being able to view all the sites I would go to regularly all in its own reader. I could get through a ’surfing session’ within minutes rather than say an hour or two.

Later on I thought, hey I want to start a blog and learn all about blogging myself (well someday). So I thought I was lucky enough to stumble on this URL www.beginnerblogger.com so I bought it.

Until this day I never did anything with the URL. Lately I have had this burning desire to hopefully one day work for myself. Now I’m not saying I’m going to make a living through this blog. It will be used as more of a learning tool for me and hopefully you too to understand what it takes to create a blog, generate traffic and communicate with the traffic that comes in.

I want to learn about SEO, editing blogs, creating themes, getting traffic, communicating with traffic. I want to be honest, open and friendly to the people that read and really connect with people out there from all over the world.

I don’t have the worlds greatest literacy skills (as you can probably tell). I don’t know a great deal about blogging at the time I write this. This is why I’ve created www.beginnerblogger.com. I can’t wait to get my first lot of traffic (that isn’t myself!) and start interacting with you guys.

I really seriously plan to get stuck into this blog and update it regularly. I will have my own goals set up in place to achieve this.

This is the first step from becoming nothing to a beginner blogger!

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