In the first 7 days of this blogs life, 20,000 visitors checked it out. Sounds like a pretty nice result doesn't it? I was super happy, but a little disappointed in one specific respect. Only 500 people subscribed. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved and nurtured those 500 subscribers and 500 subscribers in any time frame is not to be sniffed at! My problem was, how can you have 20,000 visitors check out my blog and only 500 of them want to stick around? The cause? I was "Driving" … [Read more...]

Your audience does not want your content. Your audience probably does not want to hear from you at all. If you think that because your website looks great that people will want to visit it ... think again. What do they really want? Your audience and potential customers know who they are and probably have a very good idea of their goals. At the very least they know their immediate needs. They are looking for answers to questions, advice, and resources that help people like them get … [Read more...]

As much as I tell people to seriously reconsider buying too much into the hardcore "Make Money Online" hype, I can not argue against its allure and the fact that, well, people DO make money online. The problem is, there are the usual caveats: It's not fast. It's not easy. You WILL encounter problems and tough challenges. You might not always enjoy it. These are challenges facing Roman who asked me for a blog critique. He has been building a site all about his experience of … [Read more...]

This critique will be useful to you if you believe you are doing all the right things but are still not getting the results you want. I get a lot of clients come to me with similar situations and many are on the verge of giving up due to this frustration. Fact is, you could be doing many things right. The design could be lovely, your content great, and you have products and services that people should want. But still no further towards your goals. What could be going wrong? Onibalusi … [Read more...]

I always tell clients and customers they need to be generous first before taking anything. Sometimes though it can seem challenging keeping up the generosity in the face of bills and expenses. We don't want to go too far the other way either - who wants to be seen as someone who takes, takes and takes? How can we strike the right balance? What do we need to do in order to be generous but still build a profitable business? I Was the Free Guy A few years ago I had a real problem. My … [Read more...]

  BankNerd.ca is a Canadian website all about the banking industry. This is an interesting critique for me having recently moved to Canada and have a whole raft of banking type stuff to set up. As you might see from the screengrab above, the site is about everything banking and aims to monetize mainly with advertising. Now, advertising is the go-to monetization method for bloggers - as with traditional media - but it does mean you have a high traffic bar to reach. That bar is set … [Read more...]

Getting an outside opinion on your blog is always a good idea, but especially at the beginning, and especially when you have a great deal of expertise in comparison to your average target audience member. Why is this? A little thing called "The Beginner's Mind". When we start learning a topic there are all these questions that we need to answer. Once we have moved forward in our understanding we forget these questions, or even worry if we should cover such things for fear of being … [Read more...]

Is finding time to blog something you struggle with? A number of people have asked me how they can find time to blog on top of everything else that I have going on. Writing content is vitally important for your blog. It is your source of direct visitors, plus the meat of what you share in social media, the combination of which is essentially all the marketing many of us do. Your content attracts and maintains a relationship with your subscribers, and it is also what prompts readers to take … [Read more...]

Here is a short interview I recorded with Mark McGuinness from Lateral Action. Edit: Due to problems in the feed and for people playing the audio, I have removed the player and you can download instead - Click here to download or play Mark is a poet, coach and consultant who works with creative people and we talked about his journey from obscurity to being able to work on his own terms, travel and generally enjoy family life. Here is the free ebook Mark mentions, you can download it direct … [Read more...]

Every now and then the "a blog is not a business" meme will come around again. Each time someone will challenge me about it. Look, I agree. A blog is no more a business than a book is a business if you want to be strict about it. But why does it matter? Rather than worry about definitions, let's understand what is really important. Can a blog make enough money to provide an income? Yes. Blogging is the source of my income. Is blogging a route to earning an income long term? Yes. I … [Read more...]