This is the first in a two part series looking at how to write for your blog and share what I have learned over the last 3 years.

Writing is either something you love doing or hate doing. I think I fall into the latter category, I hate it but I love the creative process of writing and I love it when the words just quickly spill out onto the page.

Sometimes it’s like I’ve connected my mind Via USB cable to the computer and my thoughts just write themselves. Other times the USB has definitely been disconnected and there is an error in the system and it takes me a while to reconnect.

This post will show how I cope with the ups and downs of writing articles for blogs and hopefully give you some advice of how you can cope with writing and become better at it.

Know The Demographics

This may sound a little strange but you have to know the audience you are writing for. You wouldn’t get the comedian Billy Connelly playing to an audience of the women’s guild club. So it is with your blog, you have to know the people you are writing for.

The best way to do this, for me, is to think of a man and the woman who is going to read your blog. Now, describe them and ask the following questions:

What age are they?

What type of job do they have?

What is their income?

Do they have children?

What type of house do they have?

The reason why we do this is to get a picture in our head of the type of articles we should be writing, and we should always keep this in mind with every article we write. I wouldn’t write an article ‘Wordpress For The Advanced User’ if the demographics of my audience were aged 85, retired,and have little or no computer knowledge.

Similarly I wouldn’t write an article ‘Wordpress for beginners’ to an audience of computer geeks.

The reason I imagine a man and a woman, rather than just one person, is that men and women obviously think differently particularly with styles of humour. It is predominantly men who find jokes about farting funny whereas women, generally, don’t. So, we have to look at two sides when we are writing.

This might sound like hard work but believe me when you are practiced you will do these things automatically and it will become second nature to you.

Don’t Be Afraid To Drop Some Readers

You cannot please every reader who comes to your blog so there’s no point in trying. If you want to be contrarian and go against the crowd then do it. You might lose a few readers on the way however the people that do follow you will be loyal.

I made this mistake early on and am only now beginning to write the articles I really want to write and am prepared to lose a few readers who don’t like what I have to say. However, If I had started out this way I believe I would have built a better blog in a lot quicker time and honed the writing to a smaller smaller group of people who were more loyal.

I love reading Naomi Dunford’s Ittybiz because she writes the way she speaks. She curses and swears but does not care, her motto is if you don’t like it don’t read it. She has a great following who are very loyal and she has a great blog and business because of this.

This is true of life. We cannot please everybody, it’s absolutely impossible, so why bother trying. Develop the role of the type of person you want to be and be comfortable in that role. If you are not comfortable then change it. Who says our personalities have to be sticky, they don’t. If you don’t like something about yourself then change it and adapt to your new role.

Write Authentically

Writing authentically should always be your main goal when trying to connect with your readers. If you are not authentic it will definitely show in your writing. This Cannot really be said if you write articles for magazines as there is a certain style you have tow write in, however, if it’s your own blog you want your personality to shine through in your writing.

Using some slang is also not a bad thing to get your point across, but using it all the time would put a lot of readers off unless all your audience is from the same area as yourself and using local slang is permissible. Generally if you are trying to build a large audience you will have a lot of readers from outside your local area.

Be Different

Your posts are not going to stand out if you write another ‘Here is my cute little dog’ post, although that type of post gets a lot of hits for some reason

Being different doesn’t mean to say you have to be totally original, if that were the case there would only be a handful of blogs on the internet.

Blog posts will generally fall into 5 categories:

5 Common Types of Blog Post

I have finished the first draft of ‘The Best of CYT 2009′ and would like to make it available to readers of Change Your Thoughts.

You can sign up to the newsletter to get the ebook which features 96 pages of great self help work from myself and several other great writers such as Ayo Olaniyan, Mr Self Development, Celestine Chua, Francesca Kotomski, Armen Shirvanian, and Douglas Cartwright.

I know you might have signed up already, if you have please sign up again and it will give you a message to advise you have already signed up.  I will send out the second volume to exisiting subscribers.

It would be good to hear your thoughts on the book.

Exciting new project

I believe I have a project which will create a lot of buzz at the beginning of next year and will see me giving up my day job around February/March time and see a lot of publicity for those who help out. I have 100 spots available for this project which will hopefully create a lot of net publicity for the 100 people involved so it will be a definite win/win situation.  More details to come soon.

Last month I wrote an article on focus and how I intended to reach 10,000 subscribers by December 31st 2009. That was when I had around 3480 subscribers. As you can see the subscriber numbers have gone up to around 4200 which is an increase of around 700 in a little over 1 month. This is terrific considering I was previously adding 100 subscribers per month. However I need to get around 1500 subscribers per month from now until the end of the year to reach that goal.

Why focus on subscriber count?

It’s not really the subscriber count per se, it the fact that the subscriber count is measurable and it adds an element of social proof. At the moment I am converting at around 1 – 1.5%, so for every 100 visitors I am getting between 1-1.5 subscribers, which is around 15-25 subscribers per day as I receive on average 2000 visitors per day. The key is not on the visitor numbers the key is to get new visitors to the site, people who have never read Change Your thoughts before. A lot of subscribers come back and read Change your Thoughts but the more new people that come the more subscribers there should be.

The key to winning new readers

I attended a blogging bootcamp run by Leo Babauta of zenhabits.net which gave me a lot of ideas to make the site a better place for readers to visit. One of the key things was to write guest posts for blogs in the same niche as me.

I have now written and published 6 guest and freelance posts at

Zenhabits

Lifesnips

Dumblittleman

Lifehack.org

The post from zenhabits brought in an extra 6000 visitors and an extra 270-350 subscribers which was fantastic. The other sites have not brought much traffic however has got my face and name out there in my field. So I will be popping up all over the place and hopefully this will help to reach my goal.

The key to get readers to return

The design

Making the design as reader friendly as possible was one of the keys at Change Your Thoughts and I duly changed it a few weeks ago and received a lot of positive comments about it. I am still tweaking and when I see something I think is useful from another blog I will add it to the CYT blog.

Making the content as useful as possible.

I have always tried to do this and I think the content has always been of a high standard by myself and all my guest authors who have done great with helping CYT and obviously helping themselves in the process.

I have added Ask The Coach which myself and Ayo Olaniyan run, I am still not sure about this but will keep it for now.

Videos – I tried this and then abandoned it as I didn’t feel it was working, I may revisit this if I work on my presentation skills.

Sunday Siesta – Will be kept for the moment as I feel it is good practice to read and learn from other blogs.

Book reviews - I have not done many of these yet but will look at this and see if i can use it.

Writing every day – My original strategy was to publish one post every day. Although I write every day I have decided against publishing every day as I feel it can be overwhelming for readers and subscribers and can actually harm the subscriber numbers. In light of this I will be publishing once every two days.

Advertising

The advertising I had on the other theme was overkill and I have now cut back on them drastically. I have also removed Google ads to give the reader a better experience. I will still advertise text links and one image ad for $350 per month which works out at $5.83 per thousand views, the click through rate on the ad I have just now is around 0.6 – 0.8%, which is good since the ad is well below the fold. The new ad will be placed higher up the fold and hopefully command a better click through rate. So in all I will be earning around $500 – $700 per month from advertising on CYT.

Keeping in touch with the readers

One of my goals is to reply to every reader who leaves a comment on CYT. This is something I didn’t make a habit of before and will concentrate on this for the future.

I will also be offering more to the readers who sign up via email. This was one of my goals in the past but I didn’t do anything with it, now I see it as a way of giving readers a better experience.

You will have seen a lot of guest bloggers at CYT recently but to keep readers of CYT, I have decided to offer 1 guest post slot per week.

New writing

I currently have penned two ebooks as part of the CYT guide series: CYT Guide to Lucid Dreaming and CYT Guide to making true friends. I will be writing more ebooks in the future as a way of boosting my income and hopefully become a professional blogger (How long have I been saying that ).

Your ideas

I am always open to new ideas and it was reader feedback that prompted me to give CYT a facelift. What do you do in your blogging practice that, you feel, gives your readers a better experience.

For the last few years I have been writing for CYT and building a small business creating binaural beats and working on lots of other little projects. I have come to realize, only recently, that I am still un-focused when it comes to my internet life.

Once I get an idea in my head I chase it, implement the idea and then work on it now and again. I realize I have been doing this with my blog. I have been writing for 3 years in August and have managed to get 3500 subscribers to CYT, roughly 100 subscribers per month. Now, some people might think that is good but it’s really quite bad. I look at my contemporaries like Leo Babauta, he started blogging in 2007 and now has 120,000 subscribers 2 successful ebooks, a publishing deal and writes for numerous blogs and I ask myself what’s the difference between me and Leo?; FOCUS. I remember a conversation Leo and I had a few years ago whilst part of a personal development network. I asked how I could improve my blog and make it better. I received numerous replies but Leo wrote back with a few home truths and basically said I need to write more guest posts, write more for the blog and a few other things. At the time ZenHabits has a few hundred subscribers and I had about 1200, boy I wished I had listened.

Focus on your main tasks

It all comes down to focusing on the things we really want. I want to give up my full time job to do my internet work at home, but I have been saying this for 2 years now and bringing in an extra $1500 per month is not enough for me to give up my full time job. Admittedly when I first started I wasn’t bringing in anything and an extra $1500 per month is great but it’s not enough.

I have a plethora of ideas buzzing around my head at any one time and all of them would help me reach my goal of working full time from home, however I have not focused long enough on any of the ideas to reach my goal.

Decision time

For the past few weeks I have been looking at my internet life and getting rid of all the projects I have started and cut them down to three main projects. They are; My Blog, Binaural-Mind site and my Lucid Dreaming project. I actually had 17 small projects on the go (and I wonder why I was buzzing all the time).

This is a great achievement for me. A few years ago I would have all these ideas and do nothing about them except for analyse them and give reasons why it wouldn’t work. A few months ago I implemented the ideas and just did it. Now, I have cut all the ideas down to 3 projects and focus solely on them. So, you can sort of see the evolution of my focus here and now it’s getting down to the nitty gritty of focusing.

A bold statement

By December 31st 2009 I will have 10,000 subscribers

That’s not a pie in the sky statement and dream I have this is a goal I will achieve by the end of the year. And I know I will do this by focusing my attention more on the blog. That’s 6,500 subscribers in 5 months, so instead of getting 100 subscribers per month I need to get 1300 subscribers per month, a 1200% increase on my current monthly subscriber rate.

How will I achieve this? By writing quality content every day for the blog, a new post will be posted every single day by either myself or a guest poster and new features will be added to the blog such as;

• ‘Ask the coach’ – A joint project with Ayo Olaniyan
• ‘5 minute fix’ – A video section of the blog offering 5 minute personal development tips.
• Book review section – This will review books by personal development bloggers out there and there are some great ones on the way
• ‘Sunday Siesta’ – This has already started and is a great feature on this blog.

I have also started using a tool called DarkRoom. This is a tool for writers is basically it’s a black screen and all you can do is write as there are no distractions, no icons at the bottom of the screen it’s just you, a black screen and green text and I have to say it’s amazing for keeping my concentration focused on my writing.

I will also start guest posting for other bigger blogs out there to get my name known again.

How you can help me out

Well, I’m always looking for guest authors and I have a few lined up already which is great.

You could tweet, stumble and delicious my posts.

In return I will always give you quality advice and help when I can.

Look out 10k here I come

Michael Sliwinski founder of Nozbe and editor of Productive Magazine has just released the first issue of Productive magazine and I have to say it looks fantastic.   There are 17 articles in the first issue and the one headlining the magazine is an Interview with David Allen by Oliver Starr.  The great thing about this professionally produced magazine is that it’s absolutely free to download.

The magazine is in PDF format but looks like a professional magazine and it’s obvious that Michael and his team has put in a lot of time and effort into producing this.  It’s not your normal PDF download.

As I said there are 17 articles on productivity and how you can get more done in your life and the list of blog authors is impressive.

• Alex Shalman Blog
• Black Belt Productivity
• Change your thoughts
• Cranking Widgets
• David Allen Company
• GTD Times
• LifeClever
• Marc and Angel Hack a Life
• Michael Sliwinski on Productivity
• Organize IT
• Positive Sharing
• Productivity 501
• Productivity in Context
• Put Things off
• Simply Get Things Done with Nozbe
• The Happiness Project
• Unclutterer
• Zen Habits

You can head over just now and check it out by clicking this link Productive Magazine by Michael Sliwinski

Blogging has grown up up over the last few years and no longer will you see cute little pictures of cats and dogs, instead you will get serious debate going on about every topic imaginable. I have been reading blogs for a few years and I like the serious blogs, ones that really can change your way of thinking or at least lead you to a new way of thinking. I have chosen a few that have really made me think about different aspects of my life and would like to share just 11 of them here with you. Let me know if you would add any to this list.

1. Steve Pavlina – A scientific Method for exploring consciousness – One of the best personal development blogs on the net and Steve has certainly change my way of thinking on the topic of “subjective reality”. The posts go back as far as 2004, but starting with this one post could change the way you think about life forever.
2. Tim Ferris – Dr Stewart Friedman on “Time Bind” vs Psychological Interference and more – Another great blog, which I started reading after reading the ‘4 hour workweek’. I think this guy is a genius and someone who thinks outside the box on every aspect of life. This post really made me think about focusing on the task at hand instead of drifting off to another place in my head, you’ll understand when you read it.
3. Richard Dawkins – Imagine no Religion – Richard Dawkins is someone I admire greatly and after reading ‘The God Delusion’ I admired him even more for having the courage and conviction to stand and speak out about what he believed in. In this article he talks about the tribal mind of religions and what it is doing to the world.
4. Bruce Lipton – Biomagnetism and Energy Medicine – Another author who thinks outside the box and has the courage to stand by his convictions. Bruce believes that we can literally change our body and cells by the information we feed them from our thoughts. His book ‘Biology of belief’ is a life changer and a must read. His videos are amazing to watch also, he has so much energy and passion about the subject of biology.
5. Seth Godin – No Middleman, no insulation – Seth is a marketing genius and this one blog post is just one of many that shows his awareness and understanding of the marketing world. Even if you are not into marketing Seth can teach you a thing or two about life and interaction we have with each other and the businesses around us.
6. Yaro Starak – Engagement – The magic ingredient you need for success online today – Yaro is one of my blogging heroes and has some fantastic articles on the business of blogging. This article is all about engaging with your readers and the relationship you have with them, for me it is one of the articles that can change the way you blog for good.
7. Business Week – How top bloggers earn money – this article from Business week really put me onto the power of blogging and how it can change people’s lives. It is a great article and very inspirational for online business owner and bloggers.
8. Christian Thomas kohl – Buddhism and Quantum physics – What is reality? Kohl tries to explain here the differences between the western concept of reality and the Buddhism explanation of reality mixed in with quantum physics. This is a totally fascinating read and one which made me think seriously about life itself.
9. Jill Bolte Taylor – My stroke of insight – A TED lecture by Jill Bolte who suffered a stroke ane observed exactly how the brain started to shut down as it was happening. A thoroughly fascinating lecture.
10. Matthieu Ricard – The Monk in the lab – Matthieu has been studying happiness as an inner state for years and this article shows how inner peace can reflect our lives and how we can change through meditation.
11. Win Wenger – Two guaranteed ways to increase intelligence – I have been reading this website for years, on and off, and the writings always fascinate me and lead me to new ways of thinking about life, intelligence and creativity. In this article win talks about awareness of breath and how we can increase our lung capacity which inevitably affects our ability to communicate more effectively, this is a must read and take a look around the whole website you won’t be dissappointed.

Alex Shalman and I have started a cross blog conversation where we will discuss topics on personal development. I spoke to Alex a few nights ago about possible topics for the conversation and the topic of the ‘Law of Attraction’ came up.

See Alex’s Topic Starter to help you join in the conversation.

Basically Alex asked me if I thought the ‘Law of attraction’ is a gimmick.

First off I would like to say that I can understand why a lot of people are sceptical about the ‘Law of attraction’. I think this is because of the rather cheesy way that the film ‘The secret’ came across and the books by Esther Hicks are a bit ‘out there’. Taking away all the hype and the cheesiness of the films and books out there, the underlying principle that our thoughts literally control and lives and the energy around is something I wholeheartedly believe in and something I practice every single day of my life and something I teach my children.

I don’t think it is a gimmick, but what I do think is the way that it is being marketed just now puts a lot of people off the idea that our thoughts control the energy around us. I believe the energy around us can touch other people a few feet away or a few thousand miles away which is where ‘the attraction’ part comes in.

Alex, do you have any personal stories or any anecdotes where the ‘Law of Attraction’ has worked for you?

What are your thoughts on the subject, leave your comments or follow the conversation on Alex’s blog (RSS feed) and see the responses

I read a lot of personal development posts throughout the week, mainly to keep up to date with fellow bloggers, to get some ideas and to stay up to date with information.

I thought I would share 12 of the best posts I have read this week:

1. 9 things you can do to increase your income – Dumb Little Man

2. Learn the first steps to become an ‘unclutterer’ – Lifehacker.com

3. Simplifying your information intake – Lifehack.org

4. How to speed up highly creative tasks – ScottHYoung.com

5. How to turn rejection into triumph – Lifedev.net

6. Hopeless situations – StevePavlina.com

7. How are you programming yourself everyday – Goal Setting College

8. Beating the morning rush: The 3 minute ‘slow carb’ breakfast – FourHourworkweek.com

9. An interview with Jon of Freelancefolder.com – Blogclout.com

10. 45 Tips for a happier, Simpler and More Productive Life – thenext45years.com

11. 10 Curiously strong ways to declutter your car – alexshalman.com

12. The worlds youngest billionaire – Zacjohnson.com

I have recently finished writing my eBook on making money with Clickbank entitled ‘Your First Clickbank Sale’ and I am very happy with the outcome. The book consists of 3 PDF files and 10 Camtasia videos, which I made within the space of 1 month.

As you know, I have been getting deeper into affiliate marketing for the last few months as a way of bringing in extra income and I am now making around $800 per month from affiliate marketing alone. I will report my stats in a few days.

I wanted to talk about the process of writing the eBook as I thought it was going to be easier than it was.

Picking a topic

This can be one of the most difficult decisions when writing an eBook. If you are writing to make money then you have to choose your topic well, if you are writing for enjoyment and not really bothered about the money side of it then this is not so important.

I choose the topic of ‘Making money from Clickbank’ as I had been making money promoting Clickbank products since November 2007. Therefore, it was something I knew about, was passionate about, and felt other people could benefit from.

Most people write eBooks on something they know about which, I feel, is the best place to start.

Writing an eBook when you don’t know the subject

However you can easily write an eBook on something you know nothing about by collecting quality information from the internet and putting it all in one eBook and package it well with graphics, videos, and bonuses. The purpose of this is to then sell the eBook on to other people.

You might think why would someone pay for a book when it’s available free on the internet, albeit scattered all over the web. Convenience, people will pay for convenience. It’s like saying why would people pay for a ready-made Lasagne meal when they could make it themselves. You can make a lot of money by collecting information and putting it all in one place.

Planning

This is an extremely important part of the writing of your book. I don’t mean plan it meticulously, just a basic plan which can be flexible enough should you think about anything else to add.

To plan an ebook you want to know what questions need to be answered. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. For example when I was writing ‘Your First Clickbank Sale’ I thought about what questions I had when first starting making money from Clickbank. The most obvious question would be; how do I make money? Fair enough, but this has to be broken down into parts; how do I get organised? How do I get in the right frame of mind? What free software will I need? How do I research? How do I create a landing page? And so on. Under those headings will be more questions.

You will quickly come to a question, which cannot be broken down with other questions, for example, what free software will I need? You would list and give information on the free software required. From there you would explain how to use it with videos or by writing; I choose videos, as it is a great way to communicate.

The writing process

The first draft

Once you have your plan and your questions sorted into the order in which you will write, it is time to open up Word and start writing.

The best thing to do is just start writing. You don’t want to make it word perfect just now, that comes later on. For now you want to write as quickly as possible and get the first draft completed.

The second draft

After you have completed your first draft, read over what you have written, preferably aloud, and mark the places where you need to do some additional work.

The second draft will be going through chapter by chapter making it as good as it can be. Remember to check links, spelling, grammar, image size etc.

The third draft

The third draft will come when you have completed everything and you think it is the best it can be. Now it is time to put the book away for a few days and have a total break from it. Don’t worry the world can wait on the information you have.

Waiting a few days allows your mind to switch off from the book and the writing process.

When you have taken a few days break it is time to return to your book and you will see it with fresh eyes and spot any mistakes or know what needs to be added to make it better.

Letting someone else in the field read it

This is the time to let others read the book and make any comments about it, which could make it better. If you are writing about how to train dogs there is no point in sending the book to someone who has no interest in the subject. Find someone who is interested in your topic and ask if they would review your book and make suggestions on how to make it better. A great place for this are forums. You will find a forum on every topic you can think of, so join, get to know the people and then offer your ebook out to the ones you have connected with in the forum.

Producing the eBook

You will now have a Word document ready to produce as an eBook. Now you need to convert the ebook into a downloadable format. Word would be okay for this but a Word document can be changed easily by other readers so I think the best format would be to convert it into a PDF document, which is easily read on every computer in the world.

To convert to PDF just download the free converter from www.pdf995.com/ and convert your Word file to PDF.

Promoting your eBook

If you are going to promote your eBook it might be best to create an eBook cover, like the one I have in the image above. There is a fantastic piece of software from www.3dcovers.com (I am an affiliate of this software) and it produces amazing eBook covers and CD covers.

You will need a website; a basic sales page will suffice with a paypal button to buy. Then start driving traffic to the website with Google Adwords and Yahoo search Advertising

Send a free copy to people you think could do a good job of promoting it and writing a review on it. This will drive more traffic to your site and rank you higher in the Google rankings, eventually.

Now promote you eBook on the forums relating to your eBook topic. In addition, you can write articles and submit them to article directories with your link to the eBook in your signature. Press releases, comments on blogs, banner advertising and eBook directories etc will also help with promoting your book.

Tweak and update

If you want to offer the best value to your readers it is best to update your eBook from time to time. So take care and try and make the eBook even better by going over it every few weeks and see what you can add. You will also get questions relating to your book from readers and this can be valuable to know how to update your book.

Time to start writing

I hope this short guide has been helpful in getting you started. Let me know if you have any questions.

10 Ways to get into the zone of writing

Writing can be a very frustrating endeavour and yet it is an activity, which can produce a whole range of emotions. There are days when I have felt utterly stupid, you know the days when you can’t even spell the word ‘the’ and there are other days when I feel I could write a book as I am totally in the zone.

Whether it be writing an article for a blog or writing a book, the process of writing will drain the brain or set it on fire.

Here are 10 ways to get into the zone of writing and set your brain on fire every time you sit down to write.

How to get in the zone of writing

Most people are different and they have their own ways when it comes to writing. I have found 10 ways, which help me to get in the zone of writing.

1. Always carry a notebook with you wherever you go in order to capture even the silliest ideas for an article, or chapter or paragraph.
2. Get into the habit of writing every day. If the only time you can write is for half an hour per day in the morning then the flow will start to come to you for that half hour.
3. Concentration is obviously a key factor in your ability to get into the zone. If you practice concentration then you will become better at it. Concentrating on anything everyday will help you in your writing. Use the process of writing to improve your concentration. This has the advantage of training your brain whilst developing your writing skills.
4. Write in your head whenever you can. This might sound a bit strange. Before I write an article, I have been thinking about it for a few days and have started the process of writing the article in my head. The heading has already been written, the first few paragraphs have been written and the whole point of the article is clear in my head. I have even got to the stage of writing the keywords in my head and where they will go in the article.
5. Getting into the zone of writing will speed up the process of writing itself. Before you become proficient you can practice speed writing just to get your brain thinking along at a fast pace. If you are thinking and typing very quickly, you are apt to concentrate that bit more, if you concentrate that it more you will speed up your writing, it’s a circle thing.
6. Read! To become a better writer you have to read better writing. To read better writing you may follow a particular style of writing you like and then go with that. When I say read better writing I am not being snobbish and saying you should read ‘The classics’ I am saying read the type of writing you like reading, and read more of it. There is no bad writing if one other person likes the style, so don’t listen to literary critics, read what you want not what you think you should.
7. Practice extending your vocabulary. One word a day will extend your vocabulary by 365 words per year, over 10 years this is an extension of 3650 words. It’s hard to say what the average vocabulary is but estimates vary between 10,000 – 30,000 words. Therefore, if you can increase this by 3650 you will have increased your overall vocabulary by 12 – 36%.
8. Learn correct grammar.
9. Listen to the way other people speak. Language is evolving all the time so don’t feel the need to stick to proper use of language if it doesn’t suit your style.
10. Write, write and write some more. The more you write the better you become the better you become the more you write.