First, they start out timidly, not sure of what they’re doing. They make their first post then leave their first comment.

Second, they begin leaving more comments and when a few people finally start visiting their blog they begin to get a full taste of the wonders of blogging and they love it.

Third, they become addicted. They spend hours online, visiting and commenting until they reach the point of “How do I get more?” This can be more visitors, more money, more success, or more of whatever makes them happy, but they start to look at ways to increase their traffic and get more people to show up on their doorstep.

Building traffic really isn’t a secret, here are 11 very solid ways of accomplishing this goal.

Commenting

If you are commenting on other blogs you will most likely, eventually catch the attention of that blogger and other visitors to the site. There are some exceptions— momblogs in general are more social than other niches. I’ve only met a very small handful of food bloggers or craft bloggers that ever noticed any of their comments let alone responded to them (they tend to be a rather solitary lot).

But if you leave thoughtful comments—which means those that are more than just “Great Post!” or those designed to irritate—you’re likely to get some attention. Though if you leave comments designed to irritate you’ll probably get some attention (the bad kind).

I would suggest making sure you have an avatar (or a tiny photo) to go with your profile so that when you leave comments there is a picture for people to remember you by. It helps, too, if you use a real name rather than trying to use keywords because it’s hard enough to remember names when you meet someone face to face let alone through a comment. Give them something to remember you by, so they get the full taste of how wonderful you are.

Consider registering a profile in several blogging platforms besides the platform you’re using so when you comment on blogs from the other platforms your profile picture will show up with your comments.

Most blogs use Gravatar.com to show a commentators avatar.  Once you upload your photo, simply making a comment with your registered email address will display that photo with your comment.

Carnivals

After commenting the next most effective way to promote your blog would be participating in blog carnivals. What are blog carnivals? They’re events where blogs can submit posts on a particular theme. Carnivals can be hosted at a certain site repeatedly or they can be hosted by guest sites on a rotating basis, it just depends on how the carnival owner decides to run things.

Joining in carnivals builds a little visibility and it gets some valuable links from other sites—both good things. The best way to find the carnivals is to go to www.blogcarnival.com where every carnival you’d ever want is listed by category. Don’t get stuck in one category but only submit posts that really apply and then when the carnival is posted it’s polite to mention the hosting URL with a nice little link.

Contests and Giveaways

Holding contests and giveaways on your blog is a great way to get some attention. Everyone likes to win free stuff and giving things away is a great way to get people to your blog.

Alternately a contest can be a great promotional tool. Since I’ve started this blog I’ve held many contests which have helped to build my traffic. Participants get a link from me when I post the entries, I get a link from the participants when they post their entries on their blogs, everyone wins something. It’s just a great thing for everyone involved and it’s promoted my blog beyond my niche in ways I couldn’t have done on my own.

Business Cards

If you want to spread the word about your blog get some business cards printed up and ready to pass out when you meet people in real life. These don’t have to be expensive designer cards, there are sites such as VistaPrint that will print up free cards with their own promo included on the back of the cards, but get a simple card with your name and URL and blog title on it and don’t be afraid to tell people about your blog and pass them a card when they ask where they can find it.

Blog Conferences

If you can afford to travel then a blog conference is not only a great place to meet other bloggers but it’s a good way to promote your site and make some fun connections—and you never know where connections can lead you.

IzeaFest, Affiliate Summit, and Blogher are all good places to converge, each with their own unique slants and benefits for bloggers. Blog World Expo is for all bloggers and attracts the biggest names in blogging each October. Check out their websites and get to know what they specialize in and consider attending.

Guest Posting

This can be done two ways—either by inviting other bloggers to post on your blog or by pitching ideas to other bloggers to see if they’ll let you take a turn at their blog. Either way it’s a good way to meet a new group of people through the other blog’s readers.

One variation on this theme is to do a blog swap with another blogger. You take a turn at their blog while they take a turn at yours which conserves your writing efforts while still accomplishing the goal. You might both write on the same topic or do a “point/counterpoint” debate on an issue you both find pertinent but whatever you do don’t just look at bloggers who are bigger than you are, it’s more important to find people who have similar audiences and who have quality sites regardless of their traffic.

Email Signatures

Everyone has email accounts so why not put those accounts to work for your blog? Include your blog’s URL in your email signature—and don’t forget email accounts not associated with your blog. Let people whom you correspond with know about your blog and how to find it, it’s simple, it’s painless and it gets your site out there just a little bit more.

Local Media

This is helpful if you have a smaller community offline. Living in New York City or Seattle or Houston is going to make it difficult to gain the attention of your local radio station or paper but if you can contact them with an idea for a piece they could use—say a segment for their morning programming that gives ideas for cutting household costs, making money online, or organizing life with children—then they might give you a chance. If you have a unique opportunity give your local paper a call and see if they’re interested in free coverage of the event.

Use the unique opportunities blogging presents to help the offline media and you can create some valuable connections.

Newsletters

Use a service such as Aweber to create a free newsletter for your site, so that you can connect with your readers weekly or monthly outside of your blog. Use it to promote your blogging by listing upcoming posts or events, guest bloggers or exciting changes. Problogger has a variety of articles about newsletters and how to create them that I’d recommend if this is something in which you’re interested.

Write an eBook

Not only can writing a book be a good exercise for your writing skills it can be a great way to promote your blog as well as your career as a writer. You can sell and ebook through a site such as Amazon or you can give it away for free but regardless of whether you make money, it will be something to show your visitors that you’re a serious writer, that you have the ability to produce a book and (if it does well) that you can produce something that is successful and useful.

Good Content

The number one way to build traffic is to produce the best content you can conjure up. Consistent, quality content is what will bring people back to your blog and is what will get them to email your posts to their friends and tell others about this great new blog they’ve discovered. Have good content and participate in the community and you’re guaranteed to at least have a decent flow of visitors who will appreciate what you have to say.

In what other ways do you promote your blog?

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Books, are the best resources for better familiarizing yourself with your niche, and how to build a bigger following.  There are just as many books that cover topics like marketing, blogging, social media, advertising, etc. as there are people to read them it seems, but here a few of the best books you can read that give some of the best advice on building and marketing a very successful blog.

Problogger

Whether you’re just starting out or have been blogging for years, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net and Chris Garrett of Chrisg.com show you how to turn your passion for blogging into extra revenue. This practical guide to creating and marketing a blog with the potential for generating a six-figure income shows you how to choose subject matter that works for you, handle technical issues, and evaluate your blogs success so that you can use your blog to generate income indirectly.

Get Your Copy of “Problogger” Here

Twitter Power

In Twitter Power, Internet marketing and Web innovation expert Joel Comm shows businesses and marketers how to integrate Twitter into their existing marketing strategies to build a loyal following among Twitter members, expand awareness for their product or service, and even handle negative publicity due to angry or disappointed consumers.

Get Your Copy of “Twitter Power” Here

The Adsense Code

Hidden on the Internet, scattered among billions of Web pages, are the clues to an incredible secret. For those who know the secret, the result is untold wealth. Each month, a small group of people – an elite club who have uncovered the mysteries of The AdSense Code- put their knowledge to use and receive checks for tens of thousands of dollars from Google. And untold numbers of additional site owners are regularly generating supplemental income via AdSense while they play, sleep and eat. The AdSense Code is concise and very focused on the objective of revealing the proven online strategies to creating passive income with Google AdSense. The AdSense Code reveals hands-on solutions to many of the concerns and challenges faced by content publishers in their quest to attract targeted traffic, improve content relevance and increase responsiveness to AdSense ads – using easy and legitimate techniques that have worked for those who know the secrets. Google AdSense expert, Joel Comm, provides you with the keys you need to “crack” The AdSense Code and unlock the secrets to making money online.

Get Your Copy of “The Adsense Code” Here

Click Here To Order

While the general public is familiar with the larger Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon, very few are aware that small business is thriving online like never before, especially in the realm of information products. Click Here creates an entertaining and instructive narrative that provides an in-depth look at the unintentionally underground movement known as Infoproduct marketing, and the people who have profited and succeeded in the industry.

Get Your Copy of “Click Here To Order” Here

These books all compliment each other.  Meaning you can read each one to get a better understanding of one particular piece of the puzzle.  Each one covers a different topic, and when all read together, they help to solve the problem and answer the question of how you can become just as successful a blogger as anyone else.

Do you have a book that fits nicely into becoming more successful online?  If so, send me a copy.  If I like it, you will see it as one of my book recommendations on this blog.

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Your determination to do so.

You have to be willing to take criticism, failure, stumbling blocks, and so much more for what it is.  Learn from them, work hard to overcome, and keep driving forward.

The harsh reality is that most bloggers who try to be successful will fail.  Because they aren’t really trying hard enough.

When your articles are written in broken English that’s difficult to understand, you need to work harder to fix it.  When you feel frustrated because no one is visiting your blog and you spam everyone with the same link over and over again, leading to an even bigger loss of readers, you need to step back, take a breath, and remember why you’re here.  Not for yourself, but for others.  And you should always feel humbled and thankful that others want to read your writing.

Today is day 27 in our series “Building A More Successful Blog in 30Days“, and I want you to focus on acting the part of a successful blogger.

If you act the part of someone you want to become, then you’ll eventually become that person.

If You Say So

“I’m not ‘big’ enough to do that yet…” – A phrase I hear so often, usually in response to advertising, product reviews, conferences, etc.

Yet, no matter how often I hear the words, I never really get used to them and I still find myself wanting to shake the person’s shoulders, hoping some sort of sense would magically float in through their ears.

The truth is that until you believe in yourself, you can’t expect others to believe in you. So, if you say you aren’t good enough or ‘big’ enough of a blogger to do something, people will just take your word for it. And, why shouldn’t they?

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

I’m sure you’ve heard this saying before, and in a way this can totally be related to blogging as well. Please don’t misunderstand me, though. I am not telling you to lie or be deceitful and I’m certainly not telling you to get too cocky for your own good. What I am telling you is that perception is key – whether you are online or offline, it’s still the same.

Think about it. Take a look at the next stranger who walks by. What do they look like? How do they talk? What do they say? What overall feelings or thoughts do you have about that person based on nothing more than your observations?

Furthermore, if you were to choose between a well-groomed business person and someone in a ratty t-shirt with paint-splattered jeans and an awful body odor to do business with, who would you most likely choose (based solely on observations and first impressions)?

Figure Out Where You Want To Go

Whether you simply want to sell your product or become the next blogging billionaire, you need to figure out where it is you want to go before you can begin planning the trip. So, write it down. Choose your goals and write down exactly what they – what you – look like.

Dress For Success – Choosing Your Image

The image you choose to portray to your readers says a lot about you.  If you constantly talk about how you wish you could be as successful as another guy, then you’ll achieve it.  It’s when you start putting forth that image of success that you start becoming that image you’re portraying.

Every little detail matters.  The way you dress, what your blog looks like, whether you have a 1-800 number for your business, or whether you have an email address that says, sexybitch18@yahoo.com, or something more professional using your actual name.

Think before you do.  You’ll find you make fewer detrimental mistakes.

Talk The Talk

Stop putting a shining light on everything negative that happens.  Start being positive, and start patting yourself on the back.  There’s an old saying that says, “Sometimes you have to brag on yourself, because others won’t.”  This is true, unless you’re extremely famous and you give something to your readers.  Others do things for a reason, and most of the time that reason benefits themselves.

Check your grammar and spelling.  Double check if you know you make mistakes a lot.  Your writing is what everyone sees every day.  It is what distinguishes the difference between an expert and a novice.  If you want to be known as the expert, then you’ll have to write like one.

Walk The Walk

Probably the most important piece of advice that I give you is that successful people do.  They are thinkers, always coming up with creative ways to sell, market, and connect.  But they do more than simply come up with great ideas.

Successful people act on those ideas.  They act on them immediately instead of waiting around using excuses why it can’t be done yet.

The most important factor in whether you’ll be successful or not is if you’re the person who will act immediately upon your great ideas, and give the effort it takes to keep going when it gets hard.

You’re not a child anymore, your parents won’t do it all for you.  Take the initiative, work hard, always strive for more, and never give up.  You will succeed.

You hold the key to your success.  All you have to do is use it!

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If you’ve missed any days, feel free to start from day 1 and work your way through.  I will still be monitoring any comments left for each article, so if you have any questions along the way, please do not hesitate to ask.

1. Set Goals To Build A Successful Blog
2. The Anatomy Of An About Me Page
3. Not All Goals Are Created Equal
4. Guest Blogging Your Way To Success
5. Participate In Forums For A More Successful Blog
6. 7 Blogging Mistakes You Should Avoid
7. Build Your Traffic By Commenting On Blogs
8. How To Write Better Blog Posts
9. The 5 Habits Of Highly Successful Bloggers
10. Handling Negative Comments On Your Blog
11. How To Grow Your Business With Twitter
12. Top 5 PPC Landing Page Mistakes
13. Building Traffic With Contests & Giveaways
14. The Art Of A Successful Giveaway
15. How To Increase RSS Subscribers
16. 2 Ways To Strengthen Your Blogging Community
17. How To Get RSS Readers To Visit Your Blog
18. Branding Your Blog For Success – Part 1
19. Branding Your Blog For Success – Part 2
20. 7 Ways To Make Money Online
21. 7 Blog Posts That Will Make Your Blog More Successful
22. Increase Blog Traffic By Giving Some Link Love
23. How To Better Manage Your Time
24. 4 Ways To Build A Newsletter Subscriber List
25. Power Marketing By Building A Blogging Team
26. Even Successful Bloggers Need A Break

Which article in the series has worked the best for you?  Is there any specific topic you’re interested in learning more about?  If you have any ideas that you know will help build a more successful blog, please leave a comment.  You could possibly see your idea as an article in this series.  I will also take guest posts for any of these last 4 days if any of you are interested.

I’m contemplating making this series into a book, so all guest post authors will get credit for their articles.

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Coming up with topics to write about is easy for me.  It’s not easy for everyone, but it’s easy for me because I love what I write about.  But coming up with an outstanding article of real substance that follows the exact same topic for 30 days can really cause frustration and many late nights of trying to decide what I would write about the following day.

So today, on our 26th day of the series “Building A More Successful Blog in 30 Days,” I want you to close your computer, and do something else that will get your mind off of blogging, networking, etc.

Read a book, go outside, spend time with your family.  Whatever you decide, just make sure it’s away from a computer.

You’ve been working hard on your blog, and you need a break.  So take it!

I’m taking my break by spending time playing Disc Golf in the park all day at a church picnic.

What are you doing for your break?  Make a post about your break and provide a link here when you get back from your day vacation.

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Today we focus on building a team of other bloggers that you all can leverage to make your blogs more successful.

As a blogger the easiest things to do are create content, monetize your blog, review products, etc., but all of these are good for absolutely nothing if no one knows of you.  If no one is reading your blog, your work will all be done in vain.

Building Your Roadmap

In order to let people know that your blog exists and that it has great information the reader may be interested in, you must effectively market your blog in some way.

In order to be successful, you have to be everywhere.

Think of marketing as the roadmap to your blog.

How many places have you ever traveled and had to use a roadmap to find it?  Probably quite a few.  Your blog is no different.

To help you build that roadmap, you want to leverage as many other bloggers as possible.  We’ve covered ways of doing this like commenting on other blogs, joining social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and even giving some link love to specific bloggers you want to notice you.

But why not build a small team of bloggers and double, triple, or even quardruple your marketing efforts with absolutely no extra work?

10 Benefits of Building A Blog Team

These benefits come from a great post written by Eric Hamm & Sean Platt at Problogger.

1. You can get feedback on posts, prior to pressing publish. Writing without a sounding board can be difficult. Writing without a sounding board when we’re about to publish our thought for world consumption can be terrifying. Having someone with whom to send our words for perusal can make all the difference in how we feel about our work. Sometimes, feedback is as simple as a good job! or a quickly corrected comma. Other times a slow down! or a what exactly are you trying to say? might be more in order. Good or bad, a buddy can help lead us in the right direction
2. You can have someone to vent to, who understands your situation. Blogging is difficult. No one understands this essential truth better than another blogger. Most of us suffer common setbacks. Simply knowing that someone else is feeling, or has felt, something similar, can be all we need to know our feelings are only fleeting.
3. You can work on projects together. Collaboration is one of the great joys of blogging. Cooperation comes in many forms, and often by surprise, but pooling minds on a joint project offers pleasure like little else. Swapping ideas through email or instant message is immediate and often amusing. Inspiration will surely abound, and take you to wonderful places you were never even planning to go.
4. You can share link love. It’s well established that links are the currency of the net. They strengthen our rating with analytic aggregators such as Technorati and Alexa, while erecting new roads for readers to reach our words. Having a buddy that we can count on to help generate links is like having a friend post flyers to our show on telephone poles across the city.
5. You can share each others posts through social media and with other bloggers. Social media plays an enormous role in helping drive blogs toward success, and can sometimes be the difference between breaking out and blowing up. When it comes to outlets such as Twitter and StumbleUpon, every blogger brings a different audience. Even with audience overlap, a post spread by your blogging team will extend to a different audience than your own.
6. You can share communities. Each post develops our community further. Every blog has its own set of readers and subscribers who drop in to say hello. Commitment is a natural byproduct of community. A buddy blogger can ask his audience to give your work a chance. A portion of the audience will be happy to comply, and that chance could make all the difference.
7. You can help each other stay motivated as you share encouragement. The peaks and valleys of daily blogging lend themselves well to the buddy system. Just as one buddy sees a lull in subscribers, the other may be experiencing a peak. That peak could be a prompt for encouragement. Your buddy is part of your team. Success for one means success for all. All it takes is the proper mindset; choose to celebrate successes, and supersede all difficulty.
8. You can guest post for each other. Guest posts are an excellent way to build your name brand, while continuing to refine your craft. Landing a guest post, especially in the beginning, can be difficult. With a blogging team, it’s as simple as trading baseball cards.
9. You can share each others talents. People are different, and bring separate skill sets to the table. Some people tend to be more creative, while others might display a stronger technical side. Fate seems to have an odd way of laying opposites together, and often you will find that the talents of your blogging buddy, or buddies, will nicely compliment your own.
10. You’ll have twice the blogging power at your disposal. Getting started blogging is hard, gaining momentum even more so. Having twice the reach, or at least twice the intent, can be the difference between barely eking by, and soaring through the stratosphere.

Real World Examples

I have done everything that I’ve suggested you do in our Building A More Successful Blog in 30 Days series, and this is no different.

I’ve actually expanded upon simply building a single blogging team, and now have two blogging teams which has helped to expand all of our blogs and outreach unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

My Secret StumbleUpon Group

The very first blogging team I became a member of was actually started by me.  It’s my Secret StumbleUpon Group.

The idea actually came to me from a post written many months ago at Problogger.  The focus was on the idea that StumbleUpon can bring massive amounts of traffic to your blog if you work it the right way.

This group was built solely so that other bloggers and I could submit each others newest posts to stumbleupon.  And I can’t say that I’ve been dissapointed with the results.  Because of my StumbleUpon group, the majority of my visitors have come from StumbleUpon.

This group is actually what has helped launch my blog into success so fast.  I went from being an absolute no one to a very successful blog in just one month.

This group is amazing, and if you’re interested in joining, you can click here to learn more about it.

The Izea Insiders

Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea, started a group called the Izea Insiders, and held a contest giving readers a chance to be an Izea Insider Crew Leader.

Only 10 contestants were selected.  I, of course, was one of the lucky 10.

This blogging team is focused on helping Izea in many different ways, but it has also given us 10 bloggers the chance to get to know each other better and to leverage each other to help promote specific things we are doing on our own blogs.

This team has given me opportunities that it takes normal bloggers years to get.  I get free tickets to IzeaFest 09, as well as other blog conferences and events paid for.

While my StumbleUpon group has given me more blog traffic, I’ve found the Izea Insider team to be an even bigger blessing for me and my blog.

As an Izea Insider Crew Leader, I’ve named my crew Izea Mafia, and I am giving anyone who is interested in leveraging the power of a blog team the chance to join.

This group will give you opportunities to win great prizes, work together to help promote each other’s blog, the ability to actually start making real money from your blog, and so much more.

If you’re interested in joining my Izea Insider crew, you can click here to find out more information.

There Is No I In Team

A blogging team can help benefit you in so many ways, but always remember that there is no I in Team.  You should always try to help your team more than they help you.  It’s only when everyone in the team has that same goal that your team will be very successful.

Do you have a blog team to build your blog’s success?  If so, how well is it working for you?  Feel free to start your own blogging team and let others know about it by leaving a comment.

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Your Newsletter Subscriber List

Building a newsletter subscriber list is important to building a more successful blog because it gives you something to hold onto.  It gives you real email addresses of real people reading your blog.  People who enjoy reading your blog and have done so on more than one occasion.

This group of people are the best to market to because they’ve already got the motivation to visit your blog and the desire to listen to everything you have to say and do anything you suggest.

It’s also proof to advertisers that they should pay a large sum of money to advertise on your blog.  It’s proof that you have a large audience that will see their ads.

So how do we build this newsletter subscriber list?

I’ll cover 4 simple ways to get you started, but there are literally hundreds more.  Simply put, whatever creative method you can think of, is a great way to build that list.

Create A Free Product

Creating a free product doesn’t have to be rocket science.  You don’t have to invent the next best thing.  You simply have to provide your readers with something they are interested in.  Even if it’s simply information.

Most bloggers write their own ebooks and give them away for free to newsletter subscribers.  While others offer ebooks written by someone else.

You don’t have to be the original creator of the product, but at least make sure you have the original creator’s permission to use their work.

Host A Contest or Giveaway

Another way to build your newsletter subscriber list is to host a contest or giveaway.

Let the entry into that particular contest/giveaway be by subscribing to your newsletter.

You could also tell your readers that the winner of a certain contest or giveaway will be announced in your newsletter and they can only find out who it is if they subscribe.

Yes, the entrant can unsubscribe to your newsletter once the contest is over, but by then you’ve already got their email address, and could still contact them easily should you need to.

However, if they unsubscribe, I do not recommend sending them a newsletter anyway.  Instead, reserve the email for only very important information and on a very limited basis.

Never, ever, under any circumstance, sell your list to a third party. You will lose credibility as a blogger and possibly a large majority of your readers.

Create A Newsletter Only Post

Just because you have a blog, it doesn’t mean every post you ever write should only be in your blog.

You can write posts and submit them to article directories, or to other bloggers as guest posts.  You can also write posts that are for your newsletter only.

Many of your readers will feel like they need to subscribe so they don’t miss out on any new and interesting knowledge you have to share.

Jeremy “Shoemoney” Shoemaker did an awesome job of this with a post he wrote on marketing locally.  His newsletter subscriber list skyrocketed because of his creative method of list building.

Give A Little Teaser

If you know you’re planning a post series a week or two in advance.  Then let your readers know.  Give them a heads up and offer them the opportunity to subscribe to be notified when it begins.

Darren Rowse of Problogger did this for the series he’s doing now, and it has really helped to build his subscriber list.

You can also give this specific list of people a chance to get your post series via email each day so they don’t have to visit your blog to read the new articles as they’re posted.

Think Creatively

No matter what method you choose to use, even if it’s creating your own.  The newsletter subscriber list you generate will be a major step in making your blog even more successful.

What creative ways do you use to build your newsletter subscriber list?

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If I were to ask you to please tell me how you spent each hour of your day, could you? No really, COULD YOU?

In high school, I had a major revelation. Up until that point, I had never really considered how long it took me to reach certain goals and accomplish specific tasks. Sure, I had written out schedules, but they were always loose and always specific. They seemed good enough, though – I made it to meetings and classes on time and seemed to be rather productive. I thought I was doing good.

Until I wasn’t.

Realization Sets In

It wasn’t until a job with a catering business that I realized every schedule I had made before that point had been almost meaningless – floating numbers and times blocked out on a page. It wasn’t until that job that I realized you can’t schedule your day with goals and tasks you don’t even know how long it will take you to achieve. That’s when it hit me – if I didn’t begin to take my time more seriously, neither would anyone else – and, furthermore I could possibly LOSE valuable time during my day or end up MISSING appointments and deadlines all because I wasn’t scheduling my time correctly.

Make A Schedule

One of the first steps to tracking your time and where it goes is to set up a schedule. You’ve all heard of the “food diaries” that nutritionists have you log your current diet in – and, in a way this is kind of like that. Simply put, you make a slot for every hour of the day – all 24 – and then divide those up by 30 minute increments. (So, there should be 48 blocks.)

Go about your day as you normally would, and log each and every activity – from taking a break, sleeping, preparing food, family time, blogging…whatever! Log it all. Don’t begin your schedule just when you wake up, either. It may seem useless to log hours during which you plan to sleep, but the information will be useful later on.

Do this for 3-5 days. If you’ve never done this before, you’ll be surprised by the results.

Sample:

5:30 AM – Sleep

6:00 AM – Sleep

6:30 AM – Wake up, breakfast

7:00 AM – Run

7:30 AM – (Still running)/Shower

8:00 AM – Work – Write article for magazine

8:30 AM – “

9:00 AM – “

9:30 AM – Watched TV

10:00 AM – TV

Time Yourself

Chances are, with the first exercise, you’re going to recognize a lot of “lost time” – time that you have no clue what you were doing or why you were doing it. Did I really end up watching Lost Reruns for 2 hours? Did I really take a 30 minute shower? Did I really just take 40 minutes to vacuum one room? Some time blocks, you may not even be able to remember (and forgot to fill in) what happened at all.

So, the next step is to time yourself.

Get the timer out and see how long it takes to mow the yard or any other chore. How long does it take you on average to write a blog post? Figure out approximately how long it REALLY takes you to do these things. Not how long you think it SHOULD take you, but how long does it really? This step is key. What good is a schedule if you don’t give yourself enough time or too much?

It’s OKAY if you find that you take much longer than you should in some areas. You can use these times and numbers as goals to beat in the future. The idea is that you will begin to see areas in your life that you can improve, and also get a better idea of tasks that you can stick into slots when you only have a few extra minutes to spare.

Make A New Schedule

This time, the idea is to block out your time as you did in step one BUT rather than logging what you DID, you’ll be planning the next day. Consider your priorities and your goal list and block out the hours in 30 minute increments. Be sure to give yourself enough time to accomplish goals, but not too much time that you’ll not know where it went later.

You’ll be amazed at how much time you REALLY do have. For example, in my sample schedule, I may have felt like I didn’t have enough time during my days and evenings without even realizing the time spent watching TV. Or, maybe I was getting caught up in surfing the internet while I was supposed to be writing and working on my blog – or whatever!

Once it’s all down on paper and in black and white, you’ll begin to see blocks of time that could be moved around (maybe wake up 30 minutes earlier or watch 30 minutes less of TV?) in order to get more accomplished. You can add in blocks of time that are nothing more than buffer zones and challenge yourself to beat your time goals, rewarding yourself with the extra time as “free time” or using it to accomplish even more.

In Conclusion

Lists and strict schedules aren’t for everyone, and that’s not really the purpose of this exercise, anyhow. The point is to become aware of exactly how you spend your time now verses your priorities and goals and how you work towards those with your current schedule. It’s about being aware.

Your new schedule may need to be tweaked many times before you find something you love, and even then you may choose to simply use it as a loose guide – or you may just fall into a great routine and not need a paper reminder – and, that’s okay too! Heck, you may even decide you liked wasting half of your day better, and that’s fine as well! At least you KNOW now where that time is going and can make the conscious decision on how to spend YOUR time.

Two very effective products that will help better manage your time are:

• My Life Organized – Task Management Software
• Fruitful Time – Activity & Time Monitoring Software

Do you find that you waste more time than you realize?  What are your thoughts on trying this method of better managing your time?  Will you try it?

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For those of you who have been following along in the program, I want to hear from you.  What gains have you experienced with your blog?  Any good results?  Any negative results?

Today we focus on how doing something for other bloggers can help build our blog’s traffic.

It’s called giving some link love.

I Link Love You Man

The biggest form of flattery for any person, young or old, big or small, is showing them you care about their blog just as much as your own.

Most bloggers love it when you write a post and include them in it.  They love it when you add them to your blogroll as well.

It not only gives them some credibility as a blogger, but it gives them traffic as well.  Especially if you have a large reader count.

Any blogger who really matters will appreciate your link love, and will either stop by to comment, check out your blog, or give you some link love back.

I Want Something In Return

Does it really matter if it benefits you?  You don’t always have to do something just because you want something else in return.

In fact, the best bloggers are those that give to others without wanting or needing anything in return.

But let’s say you may be a little stingy and you really want something out of this link love thing.  How does it benefit you?

Getting Your Trackback On

Linking to someone elses blog from yours usually results in something called a trackback.

Trackbacks are located at the bottom of a blog’s comments, and show exerpts from those blogs that have given that specific blog some link love.

The best thing about trackbacks is that they not only alert the owner of the blog that you’ve linked to them, but also the readers of the blog.  Anytime those readers leave a comment or read others’ comments, they will see your trackback.

Incoming Link Love

If the blog you’ve linked to from your blog is run by wordpress then the dashboard will also notify the blog’s owner of your linking to them.

This is really great if you want a specific blogger to notice you.  Some bloggers that get noticed this way have gotten great traffic because that blog owner liked what they read and promoted the post in their own social media profiles and other marketing mediums.

Even if you don’t get anything in return for giving link love, you at least become more highly respected for thinking of others.

Do you give link love to other bloggers?  Has it helped to increase your blog traffic or build your blog community? Feel free to give me some link love.

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These posts were all written prior to this series, but they are some of the most important topics in making your blog more successful, and as such, should be included.

Your challenge for today is to read through these articles and implement them all in your blogging and social media activities.  I promise you’ll see a big difference in the number of visitors you receive as well as the number of new subscribers you’ll gain.

1. How Blogging Is Like A Marriage
2. Create Blog Stickiness With Sneeze Pages
3. Create Blog Interest With Social Media Landing Pages
4. 8 Ways To Make Your Blog Sticky
5. The 3 Types Of Bloggers That Won’t Be Successful
6. Build Your Blog’s Credibility Brick By Brick
7. 2 Ways To Massively Increase Blog Traffic

Most of these posts are about building traffic to your blog which is a key ingredient in becoming successful, but a couple are important for you to better understand and develop a deeper meaning for your blog posts and how they relate to our lives outside of the internet.

Do you have any blog posts that cover building a more successful blog?  If so, post the link in your comment.  Use this as a chance to help your fellow bloggers become more successful.

Also feel free to take this opportunity to create a guest post for our series if you wish.

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