Category: Blogging (Page 9 of 26)

Stupid Little Things That Keep Me Motivated

May 27, 2014 / Justin Matthews / 9 Comments

I got up the other day and put on one of my newer shirts. It is a nice grey polo style shirt. It also has my company logo on it. I turned into a small child when that arrived. I was so excited.

Of course I ordered it myself but that is beside the point. I have a shirt with my company name on it. I ordered business cards with my name on it. I also got a pen in the mail that I didn’t order with my company name on it.

These are all little and seemingly petty things but they really motivate me. They are something besides a computer screen that legitimizes my business. It doesn’t matter that I have made or ordered most of them, at some point IBM and Microsoft did something similar.

I will be that big someday but for right now, I have to start somewhere. These little things keep me motivated to make my business work. They make me want to work harder, and better. They make me want to be worthy of a brand. I want to get to a point where my brand is important to people and I have to order more things with my name on them. I am excited.

I have a slew of things coming for the next couple of months that I hope will pay the mortgage for a while. I have e-books and affiliate books that I am working on and I am also working on a full rewrite of my wife’s website.

In about a month, the new Brenda’s Quilt Shop website will be live and filled with table runners and quilts. Something to keep in mind, they make great Christmas gifts. I will be asking for feedback on some of the sales copy for these and offering prizes….stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. My blog is growing in a fantastic way and if you are reading this, you are a part of that. Thank you!

Please join the conversation below!

-Justin

You can always check out the ebook I have right now,

I have put this story together in a lovely little e-book that will be available at my Store for $2.99!

PS tomorrow, part 2 of The Man With The Hazy Suit on Fiction Saturday!

Punching Heavy Bags and Blog Posts

May 27, 2014 / Justin Matthews / 4 Comments

It has been a while since I have punched a heavy bag with any real intent. The last one was at my Dad’s house before I was married 12 years ago. This weekend I went and bought a heavy bag. I hung it up in the basement and proceeded to punch the crap out of it.

Apart from being very satisfying and realizing that my technique is poor right now, I was thinking how those few minutes with the bag equate to blogging. So here goes.

1. There is nothing more satisfying than landing a good hard punch, straight on and powerful. If you throw it right, you can feel the power coming from your legs up through your back, shoulder and arm. Pavel Tsatsouline says that a kettlebell snatch is the closest thing to throwing a punch. I am not sure about that yet, but I know that I can punch harder since starting with the kettlebells.

Like an actual punch, there is nothing more satisfying than a blog post that hits right in your target market and blows people away. There is power in words that can move mountains. There is however the question of how to judge effectiveness. A punch is immediate, and gives instant feedback. It is either good or not. A post must wait for page views and comments.

2. You can also hit a glancing blow on the bag that just causes it to spin and has not real power to it. There are post like that, they are there, you know they have been written, but they are weak. If your whole site is like that it will fail. There has to be a learning curve, a few great posts, a few bad posts, then a bunch of knockouts.

3. If you hit wrong, you can do damage. If you don’t learn and continue to hit wrong, you can do permanent damage. This is much the same with your posts. I’m not saying you cant be wrong, or that you will not be wrong. The point is, if you are wrong, admit it or don’t but learn from it and change. If you keep posting bad posts (aka wrong technique) and you don’t change it you can have your blog fizzle out and be only a statistic.

4 Good technique is the only thing that will help you. With boxing, kettlebells or writing, good technique will keep you safe and show results. With writing, and blogging, good technique will keep you afloat and will keep readers coming.

I hope that I am using that good technique. Yesterday I posted late because of other things. It was interesting to note that as soon as that post notification was sent out via twitter I checked the post and went to my daily count. In less than 20 seconds there were 16 visitors online at the same time. That tells me my goals are coming and my blog is growing.

Dont forget to check out my Pre-Writing Challenge page! We start Friday!

Thanks for reading this far. There will be no quiz today.

Justin

My Blog Is Calling And I Must Go!

May 27, 2014 / Justin Matthews / 5 Comments

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about the mountains. How the mountains were calling me and John Muir. During the course of that post I said that my blog is calling and I must go, paraphrasing John Muir of course. I had said that it would be a great t-shirt. It still would be.

Today I wanted to write about commitments. I know there are posts all over Blogistan about how to divide your time and do everything that you want to. This is only partially about that. We all have our commitments to our families, wives, husbands, kids etc. We have work commitments. We have housework commitments. There are church and community commitments. And, if we want a piece of this wonderful internet pie, there are commitments to our websites and blogs.

My blog is my second mistress. My laptop is my first mistress and I dearly love the internet. It is hard to budget the time to sit down and write and read blogs and comment on blogs and take care of the kids and cook dinner and do laundry and mop the floor, and entertain the wife, and on and on and on. So where do you dig out the time to write?

The answer is wherever you can. Forgo TV for a night, or a couple of hours. Forgo watching the kids go to sleep. Go to bed a bit later or get up earlier. Ben over at 6aliens.com and James at the infopreneur both talk about this. Carve out the time for your blog and your website. There is a lot of time devoted to growing your blog and sometimes the web design gets pushed back. Hard to read, cluttered sites do not bring back traffic. Work on your site as well.

Tell your friends, “I can’t. My Blog is calling and I must go.” Tell your wife (only once in a while), “My Blog is calling and I must go.” (Flowers smooth that over if you do it too much). You can tell your kids the same thing, once in a while.

The hard part is figuring out when it is actually beneficial to just shut the laptop and let your blog call. Devote everything you possibly can to your site so that it will make you money. Throw everything you can at it so that you can have more time with your family when it is keeping its own head up. It will still call to you, but not as loud.

When you are at that point, you can take off and go on fabulous vacations because you will be one of the pros like David Risley, or Darren Rowse, or John Chow even. Your blog will still be calling, you will still go, but you can go from around the world. John Chow likes to have all of his stuff online so he can access it from anywhere. WordPress is like that as well.

My blog is calling and I must go, for I want to be a Pro. I need the cash.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below:

-Justin