If  you don’t know this about me David Risley was the 1st Pro Blogger that I started reading regularly.  David has one of if not the best blogging site going right now.  I have always been impressed with David’s content and blogging style. David always over delivers and is still very active with his blogging and his community.

David is about to launch his Blog Master Club again and now your chance to checkout all the free stuff that David gives away to help draw people in to his launch for the Blog Master Club.

Two things you must check out.

Six Figure Blogger BluePrint

This is a 47-page document where David explains what goes into making a six-figure income as a blogger. In it, he discusses things like:

- The 3 vital questions to help you pick a profitable market for your blog
- The exact layout of your six figure, traffic sucking empire.
- The exact reasons why most bloggers fail to make money (and how you can avoid it).

And this report is not fluff. This thing is STUFFED with advice. It truly is a Blueprint.

The ‘Wealth Gap’ Video

David is a pro-blogger who has been making a six-figure income at it since 2004. He knows his stuff, and he doesn’t beat around the bush as to how to do it.

In this video, he talks about things like…

- Why do SOME people make good money while many others don’t?
- Do marketers make more money because they are scammers?
- How can you turn your blog into a funnel which generates an income?
- What is the blunt, honest truth about the business of blogging? (or any business for that matter)

I think you’ll like it.

No opt-in is required to view the video.

Every year at the beginning of the year here and see a lot of people talking about goals.  My advice to you is talk is cheap.  Setting your goal or goals is the easy part making it happen it a different story.  One thing to keep in mind if you want to accomplish goals this year is to set smart goals.

Set smart goals and realistic goals

You need to take a look at where your at and where you want to get to.  You then need to figure out the steps or time effort and money to get you their.  Anything is possible with the right amount of time effort and money but most of us don’t have unlimited resources.

Why it is good to push yourself don’t see a goal to do a million dollar launch this year if you know have the resources or skills to make that happen.  Better yet if you have never even done a launch don’t think your 1st one will be a million dollar one.  A better goal would be to just launch your first product.  I have a goal to launch my 1st product this quarter and really the goal is to just launch it.  If I make money great but so much goes in to launching a product if you do it right I just want to get the experience of launching my own product for the 1st time.

Once you decide on you goal or goals you need to figure out all the steps and people you need to help you accomplish your goals.  One good ideal it to come up with a goal statement make it public.  Those that talk about their goals have greater success.  You might even find that others will come and help you especially in the blogging world.  People tend to like to help others (another goal of mine).  You also need to make sure that your goals are measurable goals their really isn’t any point in setting a goal if you can measure it.

Do I need to have formal goals?

NO, don’t waste time just open notepad or a take a piece of paper out.  Just be sure to write down your goals and keep them some where where you will look at them regularly.  You can even write a blog post about them or keep a page for them and then cross them off.  Then every week or month look at them and figure out what your doing to work toward them.  Maybe you will focus on one of them each month.  It all depends on how lofty they are.

My Goals

I pretty much look at my goals every month.  This year I have a couple of themes.  Run my blog like a business and be more consistent.  This is a snip from part of my business plan that I will share still in draft but this is what I am looking at so far for 2010.  I can drill down in to each of these and maybe I will in another post but here you go.

My Goals for 2010

- Be more consistent

- 20 blog post per month for 1st 2 months of the year (challenge)

- Run Contests and Enter other Contest
Monthly Comment Contest – THE MONEY CULT

- Guest Post

- Reduce Alex Rank to 100k by year end

- Exercise 15 minutes a day period!

- Create 3 products or services

xx –tee-shirt

xx –Membership site

xx – Workshops

xx – Small Business Website Setup and SEO consultation

- Build 5 Kick Ass Websites for others

- Learn to make graphics

- Give out more link luv

-Affiliate marketing Plan for each month

-Update side bars every month

Some of you know I been running the Blog Engage Weekly word challenge(Goal start guest post on a regular basis).  I decided to give some double link luv this week.  Another goal of my give out more link luv.

You still have today or early tomorrow to reply to the weekly word challenge with your Blogging Goal post to get credit on the Friday Wrap up.

Some other great articles about Blogging Goals

from the Blog Engage weekly word challenge.

SEOMKT Setting realistic blogging goals for 2010.

FMSSEO Achieving your blogging goals for 2010.

The Star Celeb My Blogging Goals for 2010

Win-With-1 Blogging Goals 2010 and Beyond

Ms. Ileane’s Blog Blogging Goals Helping New Bloggers In

Tycoon Blogger Blog Goal Setting

LetUpdate Blog in New Year 2010

Announcement

One of the things I want to do more of this year is hand out link luv and run some contest.  Starting this month I going to be having a monthly comment contest.  So today I announce the best blogging monthly comment contest.  This contest will run for all of 2010.

I will tweak the rules as I need to but for now here is how this is going to work.

What is up for grabs (List of of prizes)

Top Prize

(2) 125×125 ad space on sidebar below the Monthly contest banner

1st one will be for the most comments
2nd one picked from hat must leave 5 comments to be in the hat.

*** Bonus Prizes   ***

Link luv for the following at contest wrap up

(Most Tweeted) Tweet must include @jaredplittle for tracking

(Leave 5 or more comments)

(Best Comment)

Link Luv for the following at on Friday’s weekly wrap up post.

(Any blog post about this contest)
Must comment to this post so I know about it!

Why you should enter

1) Help me out

2) Help out your own blog

3) Contests are a fun way to build some new relationships

Entering Contest are a proven to increase traffic to your blog I am handing out a ton of link love plus this blog uses top 10 commenter plug in so you get on all pages if your in the top ten.

How to Enter

Do any or all of the follow a lot!

Here’s how comment on this blog!
Tweet my post with @jaredplittle
Write a nice blog post telling others about my blog and contest.

That’s is if you want to win a certain prize do the complete the task or action listed beside it..  Make sure to come back and leave at at least 5 comments thought out the month.

Good Luck Everyone!

Jared

Today I am going to talk about the topic of content for The Money Cult.  As part of my re-design and planning process I want to make sure I cover a few things here.  I want to better organize my topics and categories and tags.  I explored this a little bit when I first started but could really come up with a good list so I just start writing and picking and defining them along the way and now I somewhat of a unorganized mess.

It seems that the post that tend to get a lot of attention are interviews and personal ones.  I tend to share some blogging tips also not really sure if that is a good fit for the intent of this blog but I can talk though this and see if I can work it in.  Ideally after I am done with this post I should have a better list of topic’s and categories that I can focus on or make sure I am writing content to fit within that.   I am a big on streamlining processes so I hope to come up with some templates that I can use for posting which should help with creating consistent content faster.

I will first talk about what the purpose of this blog is so lets start with my tag line and some of my statements from my about me page.

A No B.S. Blog about money the tools and people trying to make it..

What’s This Blog About?

The Money Cult’s purpose is to be a bridge between Newbie’s and Guru’s in Internet Marketing.  When I started out I found a lot of crap and lot of good stuff but I really wasn’t sure who to trust.  I post about the good stuff and the good people I come across along my journey.  I also post about my experiences, and progress, case studies and tools I use.  My intent for this site is to provide a ton of value and offer a lot a free stuff so you don’t have to spend any money to learn the fundamentals  of internet marketing.

If you look at my tag line and the paragraph above it seems I should be making sure whatever I am writing fits.  I been pretty on target for the last couple months now that I reread this.  I would like to do more guru reviews and newbie success stories.  I need to make sure I am keeping the balance between my experiences and that stuff.  I think you can really learn a find encouragement from someone that just started and is having some success.  Those stories are the ones I like to tell.  Those stories are the ones I like to read.  If you have one of those stories and would like to share it please contact me and I can help you tell hit here.

What have I been Blogging About?

Now lets take a look thought my archive and see what I publish to date and what type of content I been providing and the response it has received.

If we look at my Categories I have the following Business, Getting Started, Internet Marketing, Personal, Product Reviews, Squidoo free (Needs to go), Tips and Advice.

Now for my Tags I have a larger mess I have a little too much detail here, I used names and details need to make this more generic.

Now I reviewed a few of my favorite blogs and their really doesn’t seem to be any sort of  standard but I will take a look the the ones that from those blogs and the ones here that I think I should keep and come up with my final list for this step of my revamp The Money Cult project.

Blog Posting Frequency

Lastly lets talk about posting frequency.  I know when I don’t post traffic goes down way down.  It seem that 3 times a week is a great goal and keeps a steady flow of traffic coming in.  Once in a while I might have some extra post.  That would mean about 12-16 posts per month.  I have been about to so 10-12 for the last 3 months so should be able to continue that.  Ideally I should or could fine a way to make it easy for others to guess post relevant content this would help cut down of the hours I need to spend on writing.  For some time I also wanted to do some guess post to help get my name out but haven’t made that happen yet.

Open Items

Publish final Categories and Tag list.

I wanted to quickly share with everyone another great contest I came across.  Seem like contests are becoming more and more popular with bloggers.  I think blogging contests are a great idea.  It good to enter and host contests they seem to go over well with readers and can lead to increase traffic and new friends. 

If your setting up a contest target the right type of activity you want you want from your readers.  Seem to be most contest want you to subscribe, comment, tweet and post about it.  Which if you hosting a contest getting people to subscribe and post about it is probably the best thing you can get someone to do.  I going to have to think of a contest for The Money Cult very soon.  Till than check out this contest if you interesting in a chance to win some great prizes then you want to check out NinetyNineWays Blogging Contest winning some prizes.

Here a list of what you can win from NinetyNineWays I think it worth entering he has two prize packages ($401 value and $285 value) plus some bonus prizes durning the month.  So just for subscribing, tweeting, worth checking out little effort to enter so check it out.

I want to give a little credit to David Risley for this one.  Recently David been doing a few post like this where he asks his readers a question to get their thoughts.  I really like this approach as it really encourages readers commenting.  So I am stealing his idea because I like it and part of what I do is take idea’s from other blog that I like and try them on my blog.  This is an open invite to share your blog advice.

What’s the biggest mistake you made when you started your blog or online business?

Everyone makes mistakes what is important is that we learn from our mistakes and move on.  Often you learn more from making mistakes vs. getting it right the 1st time.  So with that I want to ask everyone to share some blog advice and what their biggest mistake that they remember or care to share.

I hope that everyone can learn a little from each other here as we share.  So to start thing off I and going to take about mine which is not focusing on the fundementals. 

The key fundemental I overlooked was TRAFFIC. 

When I started I went more down the road of making a product and didn’t even thing about how important traffic or difficult getting traffic would be.  I also bought in to the hype that I was going to make all kinds of money right away and from what I read or heard about driving traffic was easy just do some PPC and some adwords campaigns and the traffic would come. 

Well I gave that a try and nothing.  I then realized I forgot all about one of the key fundamental of the internet TRAFFIC.  I immediately changed my focus on finding out how to drive traffic.  I started to play and experiment with youtube and my blog and many other things like social networking.  Prior I didn’t really post much on my blog but crap.  I even forgot to install google analytics huge mistake.  I was using my hosting stats that doesn’t even compare.  I didn’t even know that I wasn’t getting traffic and what little traffic I was getting I didn’t know where it was coming from or why I was getting it.

Since July I have made a lot of progress with my blog.  I have since doubled my traffic every month.  I found out which actions produce positive results for this site.  I have learned techniques that work I can use and repeat them.  I will continue to build a nice steady stream of traffic for years to come.  I will continue to learn as that is just how this business is and the rules change form time to time.

So with that what is your blog advice? 

What’s the biggest mistake you made when you started your blog or online business? 

I like to make blogging fun.  Please share any of your blog mistakes, blog advice or tips blogging.

In part one of what’s your blog strategy I covered Posting, Commenting, Affiliate Marketing now I going to get to the other stuff I am spending a lot of my time on right now.  In part 2 of what’s your blog strategy I am going to talk about the following. 

Learning and Reading

A lot of pro bloggers suggest you spend just as much time reading as you do writing.   I spend a lot of time reading other blogs probably more then writing.  I also spend a lot of time learning.  I just need to know understand things.  I have always been very good about teaching myself things.  I will be trying to learn anything you need to do to get the job done.  I do a lot of reading and I love to learn I am amazed at just how much their is to learn but I love it.  The best part is their is so much free information it just a matter of weeding thought the crap.  If you don’t like to learn blogging isn’t for you.

SEO and Keyword Research

Well last month I focused on SEO and I accomplished my goal of learning enough to make sure I am not hurting myself.  I still owe everyone part three of my serious on that but I am still trying to figure out what I want to put for keywords as at this time I still am having some trouble trying to find a simple way to explain that.  Right now if I were to post about keywords it would be crap!

However I will say this month I am doing a case study on keywords and how to do research and I will share with everyone the results when I am done but I am hoping that this case study brings in 1000 visitors which it claims to do after 30 days the process makes a lot of sense but it also is a fair amount of work.  But I am going to give it a go as I like the prize increased traffic.

Entering and Running Contest

I like to enter contest cause it helps drive traffic back to my site.  If you look at how the a lot of contest work on blogs a lot of time you will end up with some outside exposure on other sites.  Recently I entered the best wordpress 2009 blog design contest not because I thought I would win or have a shot but for the sole purpose of traffic and guess what it is working.  My traffic has increased since I entered and it is only been going on for a week.  If you haven’t voted their yet check it out and vote for me I could use the support. I would love to crack the top 10.

I also entered a couple contests at makingmoneyonline and Doug is pretty good about posting some link love to contestants whenever they post a link to me in the results I see a nice spike in traffic.  A while back I entered contest on a blog where I had to do a video but ended up with some free coaching which really helped forced me to start doing some video and won me some time with a real guru.  Here’s a link to it it pretty bad but it was my 1st ever video.

I still need to run my 1st contest here I have a great idea but need to pull it all together.  People might be too lazy for it but you never know.  I will be making people do a video sorry you need to not be afraid of the camera if you serious about internet marketing.

Connecting with people: I have never before in my life ever meet so many like minded interesting and motivated people.  I love it and is seems I meet a new cool person everyday.  Extra bonus of running a blog and using social networks.  In addition to meeting new people I really think that the karma gods are watching and the more I help other people the more good things will happen to me.

TIP – START HELPING OTHERS AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR BUSINESS!

This is most of what I am pretty activity doing right now.  Then from time to time you need to look at your web design and also need to start developing your own products to sell and let others sell.

My goal is to get to develop a 10 hour work week for running my blog.  Can you fit all this in to 10 hours a week? 

I let you know when I figure that one out.

I am also missing product development and e-mail marketing.  I need to work more on those but don’t have the time right now but they are in place.  Let me know if you think anything is missing from my blog strategy.  Also anyone out there that is a part-time blogger if you have any advice for fitting it all in please share.