Sometimes I used to be a silly blogger.
I’d blame systems.
I’d blame mentors.
I’d blame all outside of myself for my failure.
Human moments, of course.
I forgave myself of this silliness.
Now I see the other side of the coin.
New bloggers and struggling bloggers and even bloggers who have yet to start blogging who see the cause of their failure or confusion as being outside of themselves. A mentor. A system. A strategy. A course.
Guys; in rare instances you find some course or mentor or strategy that genuinely does not resonate with you. But even in these situations, the course or mentor works just fine, thank you.
It works; but you don’t.
It Works But You Don’t
My grammar is off.
The proper phrase: it works but you don’t work.
Most bloggers want success without working.
As my man Gary Vaynerchuk once said, people want to win the race but don’t want to run the marathon.
2 years ago I had lunch with this blog’s owner, the legendary blogger Zac Johnson.
He noted how at the time he wrote 1-2 guest posts daily to place on authority blogs.
He worked persistently. Zac followed a proven strategy.
Doesn’t it make sense that blogging.org – another one of his sites – dominates Google for a hyper competitive “blogging” search? Number 1, page 1, virtually all of the time.
Some lame bloggers say guest posting doesn’t work. It works fine, thank you. But you don’t work at:
- building meaningful friendships with top bloggers by promoting them and commenting genuinely on their blogs
- practicing your writing skills daily
- generously guest posting on a high volume of blogs from your niche
It works. But you don’t.
I Ran with It
After seeing Zac’s success with guest posting I dove into a prolific guest posting campaign myself.
I wrote 2-4 guest posts daily for months.
For the first 3-4 months I did not see much progress but knew that guest posting worked beautifully, and if I’d just persist in having fun and working this channel, things would turn.
Over a 6-12 month stretch after diving into guest posting full bore I saw more search engine traffic while paying little attention to SEO.
Over a 1-2 year period I began creeping up to page 3 on Google for a “blogging” search, despite doing little SEO-wise, while most folks ranking on Page 3 and below focused heavily on SEO.
It works. So I worked the channel to see that yep; guest posting works beautifully.
Follow Your Fun and Work
Stop blaming:
- mentors
- systems
- courses
- strategies
If some technique involves assisting people in genuine fashion it works beautifully.
The strategies that genuinely don’t work are fear-driven approaches based on you trying to get something for nothing. Picture sending mass unsolicited emails to influential bloggers, asking to guest post on their blog without building friendships with them. With this approach, you are trying to get something (a guest post) for nothing (no time spent building a relationship, no online tuition paid, no dues paid, and in most cases, no writing practice, based on the poor quality of these pitch emails….at least the ones I get).
Follow a few smart, capable, heart-centered mentors.
I recommend:
Buy yourself a helpful blogging course for getting started.
Learn how to blog.
Create value.
Build connections by serving people.
The mentors above teach sound, proven heart-centered strategies that *always* work. I know. I have successfully used them myself.
But the time gap between working the approach and seeing fruit from your efforts may be months or even years.
Ride it out guys.
As Steve Pavlina stresses again and again, if you are going to be around months or years from now, doesn’t it make sense to do what works versus doing what doesn’t work?
Video
Enjoy this minute long video from Thailand as I flesh out this concept.
