by Mark E. Mason on January 28, 2009
I don't know how many of you are paying attention to the calendar, but January has all but come and gone. There are only a few days left in the first month of the year, and it's almost time to order flowers for St. Valentine's Day. Guys, it's very important that you don't forget the flowers. My wife is Superwoman, so she gets the giant flowers every year.
Anyway, earlier this month most of us were all fired up about our goals for the year. A year seems so long, especially when you're trying to set a goal. Because of that, many people recommend that you break your goals into monthly sub-goals. In fact, I try to do that. So my question for you is, did you have a goal for January and will you meet it?
As it happens, I set two kinds of Internet Marketing goals for January. One set of goals is income related, and one set of goals is task related. To be honest with you, I hit the income goal completely by accident and totally missed the task related goal. This is basically a horrible performance on my part. It's "seat of the pants" performance, and that is not a good thing.
All is not lost, however. There are still a few days left in January for me to make some serious progress on my task related goals that will no doubt spill into February. From my point of view, attaining my Internet marketing goals is very similar to sailing a ship across the ocean in stormy weather using only a compass. The winds really blow you around, but that's okay as long as you stay pointed in the right direction and constantly move toward your destination.
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by Mark E. Mason on April 8, 2008
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problem of being a "Jack of All Trades and a Master of None." In that post, I talked about how challenging I found it to work on Internet Marketing (IM) part time. IM can be all-consuming. I complained in that post that I had not actually "finished" anything. That post was written at 32,000 feet over the pacific ocean on the way to Hong Kong and eventually to Singapore. I guess the air in the passenger cabin must have been thin, because in the same post where I was complaing about how busy I was, I also argued that I should buckle down and increase my post frequency. Go figure.
Garry Conn Warns of Blogger's Demise
Last night, Garry Conn brought all of this back into focus for me with his outstanding post entitled "Is Making Money Blogging Killing You?" In his post, Garry argues that blogging for dollars is a cut-throat competiton, and that it can totally consume you. He compares the blogging mindset to six-man chess, and argues that this 24-hour-a-day competitive lifestyle can impact your relationships, your health, and your mental state. I often say "Blogging Ate My Brain." I think that is what Garry is talking about. To make matters worse, I am not making money blogging. I am not trying to build a blogging empire. I have other plans, and the blog (which I love) is just a small part of the revenue strategy. So, why in the world do I want to redouble my blogging efforts? Answer -- I don't.
Really, Garry makes the strongest of two arguments for a reduced post frequency on MasonWorld.com. Garry's argument is that when you are building readership, you need to allow enough time for people to find your post. Based on my experience on this blog, that is at least two days. The other strong argument has to do with my long term business plan for my internet marketing hobby. Long term, I am interested in getting onto the information marketing end of the internet marketing business. Josh Spaulding warned in a post about information products last November that you need to be careful not to spend too much time blogging when your business plan tell you to work on other things. Read the Full Article →
