Hooray for Henri and his guest post!

I started off enthusiastic with blogging, and thought I would be making a living within a year, but that didn’t happen.

However, it taught me five valuable lessons that are now catapulting me toward success and profit faster than ever before.

These lessons are very simple, but the problem is that most people do not apply them into their life or into their online business, much like I didn’t apply them in the beginning.

Oops.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in creating a successful blog or business, but if you keep going and are determined to succeed, you will arrive sooner or later.

With all that said, let’s look at five lessons I learned from 18 months of blogging:

1. Set Goals

First and foremost, set goals and be specific about what you want to accomplish with your online adventure.

The fuzzier you are, the fuzzier your results will be. Think of having your own pirate ship, if you’re going to raid another ship on the coast of Africa, you have to set sail in the right direction.

So get clear on what you want. Do you want to create a full-time income? Or do you just want a popular blog where you can hang out with like-minded people?

Make it specific, measurable, realistic, and set a time for it.

2. Relentless Focus

If you want to succeed fast, you have to have relentless focus. You have to focus on raiding one ship at a time, because if you don’t, you will end up at sea with no ships in sight.

I made this mistake before I started blogging, and I made it again while blogging. Even though I made a full-time living online before I was blogging, I still made the same mistake of going after new shiny things and hoping for a quick fix solution.

It wasn’t until I started focusing on what I wanted and avoiding all distractions that I saw massive progress.

3. Create Products & Services

Another interesting thing that I ran into was that in order for you to make money, you have to create opportunities for your readers to give you money. Pretty simple, right?

I created two products very early on my blog, but then I stopped and to this day I don’t know why. I think it was because I was afraid of failure.

Going through all this has been tough. It has also been fun, and I’ve learned a lot. I am more determined than ever to succeed.

In short, I have to create more things to sell that bring amazing amounts of value to people’s lives.

4. Make Friends

No man or woman is an island. You need to make friends in the online space in order to succeed.

And I’m not talking about networking day in and day out, because that’s not what I have done. In the beginning I avoided networking altogether, because I didn’t like it at all.

But then I reframed my perspective and began thinking about it in terms of making friends and hanging out instead, and that changed everything.

5. Be Passionate

Last, but not least is to be passionate about every aspect of your glorious work. You can have a blog about a topic you love, but if you’re creating products and services that you’re not in love with, you need to reassess what you’re doing.

I learned to constantly focus on what I want to do that intersects with what my readers want from me and what they need help with.

And I learned that creating an online business takes time, because you have to make mistakes in order to learn, but each of those mistakes are merely stepping stones to success.

Henri writes at Wake Up Cloud, where you can get his free course: Find Your Passion in 5 Days or Less. And if you liked this article, you will enjoy one of his top articles: How to Live a Happy Life

photo credit: alkruse24

And now, a splendidly informative guest post by Trever!

If you could spend 20 minutes right now, and then maybe an extra 30 seconds every time you wrote a blog post in order to double the traffic to your website, would you do it?

Most bloggers just don’t seem to “get” Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They seem to see it as either something spammy and shady, or as something arcane and difficult. But I actually think that SEO is easy. And kind of fun!

So let’s talk briefly about how and why SEO will increase your site traffic, and then go into some specific tips on how to optimize your blog, shall we?

Have you ever wondered how Google decides which results show up when you type in a search term?

Why does CNN come up when I search for “news”, but not when I search for “spaghetti recipes”? How does Google “know” that CNN is a website with news stories, and that Recipes.com has, well, recipes?

It’s simple. Until it becomes self-aware and decides to enslave the human race, Google will be a piece of software like any other. It simply follows certain rules to decide which sites to show for which searches. And this is where Search Engine Optimization comes in.

Since we have a general idea of what criteria Google is using to decide which sites to serve up, we can give it what it’s looking for to make sure that our site is at the top of the search results.

I’ll let that sink in for a second.

Ok, are you back with me? Good.

Now it might be obvious why you would want to be at the top of the search results, but just in case it’s not, let me break it down.

Let’s imagine that you are a professional dog trainer. You do consulting, give classes, and you’ve written an e-book called “Dog Training for Complete Morons”. (I wouldn’t recommend that title for your e-book, but let’s pretend.)

You have a blog where you give tips and advice. The blog also helps to generate consulting business for you as well as being a platform for selling your e-book.

Now, you’re going to get a certain amount of traffic from Twitter, blog commenting, and all of the other places that bloggers typically try to drive visits from. But what if, when people typed the term “dog trainers” into Google, your site was one of the first few results?

Not only would it be a huge boost in traffic, but that traffic would be from people who were specifically looking for dog trainers, and in the mood to whip out their credit cards and hire someone.

Ok, so that’s the why.

Now let’s talk about what you can do right now to improve your SEO.

No one knows exactly how Google’s algorithm works. But people have managed to piece it together pretty well over the last decade.

I see it as a puzzle to solve, where we don’t have the picture on the box to look at, but we do have instructions from others who’ve managed to put it together in the past.

Here’s what you need to do TODAY to better optimize your blog for Google:  (Note that a lot of this is specific to WordPress. If you’re using a different platform, then a lot of the same theory applies, but you’ll just have to check the documentation for specifics. Sorry.)

Decide which keywords you want to rank for

The more search volume a keyword has, the more difficult it’s going to be to rank for it due to the competition.

You can use the Google Keyword Tool to see how many searches there are every month for specific keywords.  You can also use it to get ideas for additional keywords that you may not have thought of.

Example: If you’re a web designer, you might want to work toward ranking for the keywords “freelance web designer” (27,100 searches/month) and “professional webpage design” (4,400 searches/month).

Do your initial “On Page” Optimization

Google wants to see those keywords that you chose in Step 1 on your blog in some specific places. You’re going to put them there right now. After that, we’ll make sure that you have a couple of specific pages that they look for.

• Log into your wp-admin panel
• Update your page meta title, description, and keywords to include the keywords that you want to rank for. If you’re using Thesis, this will be in Thesis → Site Options → Home Page SEO. If you’re using the All-in-One SEO plugin, then you’ll go to Settings → All-in-One SEO. If you’re on a different theme with integrated SEO options, you’re just going to have to dig around a bit.

You want your title and description to remain natural sounding though. For example, on my blog, my long term goal is to rank for the terms “lifestyle design” and “location independence”. Here’s a screenshot of my meta title and description:

Notice that I didn’t actually include my keywords in my “Home Title” because I couldn’t find a way to work them in naturally. As long as you can get them into the other two fields, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t put them into “Home Title”.

• Next – Do you have a sitemap on your blog? Google likes sitemaps. If you don’t, no sweat. It’s nowhere near as scary as it sounds. Download the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.  Then install and activate the plugin like you would any other plugin. Go to the plugin configuration page (In most themes, it’s: wp-admin → settings → XML Sitemap) and click “build initial sitemap”. Boom. Done.
• “The Google” also likes to see a Terms of Service and a Privacy page before they rank a page highly. Just create them as pages (not posts) in WordPress. You can borrow the text for the Terms here and for Privacy here. Both of those have a Creative Commons license. Just be sure to include attribution and to change instances of the company name (Automattic) to your name.

Optimizing Your Blog Posts

At this point, your initial work is done. Now, you just need to spend a few extra seconds optimizing your blog posts each time you write one.

• Try to work your chosen keywords into your blog posts when you can. You don’t have to sound spammy and use them 10 times in each post. For that matter, you don’t even have to use them in every single post.

But whenever you have the opportunity to work them into your post in a natural way, then do it.

• As a bonus, try to bold, italicize, or underline your keywords once in awhile. Just don’t go overboard.
• Finally, you remember how we edited the meta-tags and keywords for the blog as a whole? We want to do that for each post.

These options will be on the same page where you edit your post. They’re in a slightly different spot in every theme, but if you scroll down, you’ll find them.

Here’s how they look in my theme, with the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin installed.

So again, whenever you can work it in naturally, use your keywords in the title and description.  For the keywords sections, you should put in a few words that describe the post, and include your keywords. Unlike the title and description, you don’t have to worry about this sounding natural, and you can put your chosen keywords here in every post that you make.

• Finally, use your keywords for the category and in the tags of your posts once in awhile. There’s no hard and fast rule about how often to do this. But if the keywords that you want to rank for are (like the example we used before) “professional webpage design” and “freelance web designer”, then think about including those phrases in your posts tags and every few posts, and then periodically putting a post into a category with that keyword as it’s name.

That’s it! Seriously. Did you think it would be harder? Sorry to disappoint.

SEO can (and does) get a lot more in depth and involved. But unless you’re trying to rank for a ridiculously competitive keyword like Best Online Casino or Viagra (and if you are, I’d love to see your blog), then you probably don’t need to worry about anything beyond what we just talked about.

Does all of that make sense? Do you have any questions? I’d be happy to answer them in the comments!

Trever Clark is the benevolent dictator of the Axis of Awesome, where he blogs about Location Independence and taking on projects of legendary scale. Trever is passionate about more things than he actually has time for, but his perennial obsessions include travel, running, languages, and affiliate marketing.  He recently published an extensive resources page on his blog with more information than you could ever need on working for yourself and being awesome in general.

My sister-in-law has a saying, “shy bairns get nowt”.

For those of you not fluent in the Yorkshire dialect, this translates as ‘shy children get nothing’. In other words, ‘if you don’t ask, you won’t get’.

For the last three and half years, I’ve been blogging regularly over on my site. I’ve never been a daily blogger: I can’t maintain that level of commitment AND have an art practice AND deal with my chronic illness. But I’ve been plugging away.

I’ve always assumed that if I kept blogging long enough, then eventually I’d start to get better known. And that is slowly proving to be the case.

But here’s the other thing that I do.

I ask.

If I see a possibility to make a useful connection with someone, then I’ll contact them. I usually start by saying ‘hi’ on Twitter, retweeting their stuff or commenting on their blog. But if what they’re doing resonates strongly, then I may send an email introducing myself. Even when someone hasn’t offered a specific opportunity, if I can see one, I’ll ask.

Here’s my not-so-secret sauce. I don’t sell to them: I offer content.

So I might say, ‘hey, I think I can help you with that problem you’ve just mentioned’. If what they’re doing would be useful to my readers, then I’ll ask if they want to be profiled on my site. If it’s appropriate, I’ll offer to do an interview, write a guest post or a review. In a few cases, I’ve even suggested that we work together.

What has this got me?

Interviews, testimonials, upcoming business partnerships, affiliate opportunities, exhibitions, guest posts, paid work and an increasing level of exposure.

Do I get turned down?

Of course!

Some people don’t respond to my overtures or feel that we’re not a good fit.

That’s OK. I don’t mind because from my point of view, there is very little investment in sending a quick email to someone. I would be riven with shyness if I had to cold call them but the informality of Twitter or a website contact form make this a far easier thing for me to do. So I just ask.

My tips for just asking

Whenever possible, build a relationship before asking. If they already know who you are, you’re far more likely to be successful in taking that relationship to the next level. And it’s far less intimidating.

Offer them something of value – don’t just ask them to do something for you, tell them what you can do for them. There’s nothing wrong with being aware that someone is a useful connection but always try to give more than you take.

Be aware that even if you’re offering them something, they’re probably also doing you a favour. At the very least, they’re giving you a moment of attention from their busy lives.

Be polite. No one wants to help an asshole.

Be clear and concise. Spellcheck your message, especially if this is your first contact with the person.

Be personal. Don’t use form letters for this – people can tell. Prove you’ve read their site by responding to what they’ve written.

Make your offer and then move on. Don’t nag them: they’ll either say yes or they won’t.

Don’t angst. It’s only an email or a Twitter message. The more emotionally invested you get in each individual ‘ask’, the harder you’ll find this.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Who could you connect with today? What could you offer them? Just ask…

Kirsty Hall is an artist & purveyor of mad obsessive projects who blogs about art and chickens. Kirsty is passionate about the internet and recently started an online business called SOS For Artists (the SOS stands for ‘sorting out shit’). She currently offers bespoke consulting and The Artist’s Eyeball a report card for your website designed to help both you and your visitors get the most from your site. Her free resources page contains plenty of useful information to help you rock the internet.

photo credit: tibchris

Hey everyone, I’ve been playing around with the schedule. So instead of Guest Post Wednesday, this week it’s on Thursday. Which is of course actually Wednesday for most of you reading. Time zones are weird.

Anyway, here’s Evan!

photo credit: Wm Jas

For me it is authenticity that makes my life worthwhile.  When I have the sense that I am bringing myself to a relationship, or putting myself into what I’m doing, this feels good.  I have the sense that the authenticity, this connection with the core of who I am, is doing me good – not just a passing high that passes and leaves me feeling deflated.

The way we authentically express ourselves, how we do our relationships and shape our lives, is different for all of us.  Some of us are more visual and others more action oriented, some of us focus on people while others are transfixed by a well-made object, some are enlivened by the chaotic abundance of life, and yet others appreciate the limpid purity of order.  However, I think that for all of us we have a sense that some things are close to the core of who we are and others just don’t matter as much to us.  Some activities and some parts of our lives matter very much to us, and others not so much.

Automatic pilot

During those authentic times, when we are in touch with what is precious to us, we have awareness.  Other times we are ‘running on automatic pilot’.  This may be useful – I used to take long bus trips fairly often, during which I’d slip into a kind of hibernation, I didn’t sleep much, I just sort of zoned out; which was a useful way of coping with having to sit in the one seat without much to do for hours at a time.  But I wouldn’t say that during this time I was much in touch with what mattered most to me.  A less extreme example for many people is commuting: realising that they have got to their station on the train or at a stop light in the car, and that they don’t remember much about how they got there.  These are far from the worst experiences of our lives but they aren’t exactly full of life or energy either.

Another kind of ‘automatic pilot’ is habits.  These contribute greatly to our lives – from walking, to knowing how to greet people to routines in preparing food, habits contribute to our lives in many ways.  They allow us to do routine things with little attention so that we can pay attention to what is more important to us.  Habits can serve our awareness and so our authenticity, or they can mean that we respond without thinking – and we can end up living without engaging ourselves much at all.

Pressure

One thing that often throws us into habitual behaviour is being pressured.  Under pressure we tend to get tunnel vision, and respond in ways that we know well – in other words from old habits.  When our lives are in danger this can be important, but when we feel pressured it is usually not that our lives are in danger.  It is more usually that we’ll feel bad about not reaching a deadline.  It is very rare in our normal lives that the pressure we put on ourselves is because our own or someone else’s life (or even health) is endangered.

For those of us who are self-employed it is easy to feel pressured because everything is up to us.  For those of us who work online our work is often unstructured – there is always more that we can do.  These are situations where it is easy to feel pressured.

It does mean though that pressure tends to get in the way of authenticity – of living in touch with and expressing what is at the core of who we are.  And so pressure tends to drain us – even if the work we are doing isn’t physically demanding we can still feel drained.  Handling pressure well is important if we wish to live an authentic life.

How to stay connected with our core under pressure

Acknowledge anger, if it is present.  For me, anger usually is present.  Just acknowledging it can help my breathing and heart-rate.  If I can stay with my feeling of anger for a little I sometimes get ideas about what I would like changed.  (Sometimes these are simple and practical things that I can do – moving the furniture, having a meeting so people communicate and so on – other times they may take more to change – being able to say no, or, leaving a relationship for instance.)

Take time out to breathe and feel your muscles.  Just a few breaths doing this can make a big difference.

This piece of advice comes from Chris Edgar.  Ask yourself something like: “Is my life at risk here?”  This can help to move us out of feeling that what we are doing is so serious.

If you enjoy planning it can help to remind yourself of where you are in your plan and what your priorities are.  This can help us get some perspective.  It may be useful to have an outline of your plan or a list of your top priorities somewhere that you can see them easily.

If you can make a few minutes it may be worth reflecting on why you put yourself under pressure, and usually we contribute something to our feeling of being pressured.  It may be that we feel important, it may be that we are scared of empty time, there are many possible reasons.

These are some of my ideas.  I’d like to here how you handle pressure and anything that works for you in the comments.

Evan’s blog is Living Authentically.  For a weekly tip on how to live authentically (being true to ourselves and real in relationships) you can subscribe to his newsletter.

And if you want to write a guest post for this website, let me know! New voices every week.

Hooray for Guest Post Wednesday and the vibrant and insightful Jill!

photo credit: dotbenjamin

I’ve started a new online venture.  I haven’t had quite enough punishment from the first one yet, y’see.  From sifting through the ashes of my first online experience, I know I need help. So I find this expert, she’s going to help me.  I’m a bit leery of experts, I’ve met a few of them and some of them ain’t so expert.  Sure, their pricing is expert.  But what I got out of the transaction, apart from a slightly lighter wallet, was not so fantastic.

So I start off a little sceptical.  We Skype chat.  We talk on the phone.  We agree on the terms of the service to be delivered, what my outcomes are, the usual.  We agree to meet.  I’m being given 90 mins at a pre-set price.  I’m ok with it, but my guard is still slightly up.  Being burned before will do that to you.

The day of our meeting arrives.  I’ve got my stuff all ready – documents all printed out, mark-ups at the ready, pen poised.  All that’s missing is a chai latte and some witty banter to kick us off.  That dispensed with, my expert starts to talk.

And you know what?  She asks me questions.  Intelligent, insightful questions that move my thinking along.  Questions that get me thinking about my project, my people, my possibilities in a new and uplifting light.  She gives me space to consider my response.  She allows me to meander hither and yon sometimes – I don’t always know what I want to say and she seems to understand this.

She listens.

How do I know that she’s listening?  Because the next series of questions are built on the answers I just gave.  Because her questions, and her whole way of being, shift and move… around me.  Around what I’m saying and what I’m discovering as we talk.  At one point, we’re discussing a technical hoozitmajig and I’m not agreeing with her suggestion.  I tell her why I don’t want something she says is a good idea.  She knows what I’m talking about.  She concedes the point, although not in a John McEnroe kind of conceding.  It’s gracious.

O.M.G.  She listens.

I walk away from the session and I feel heard.  I feel acknowledged and understood.  Personally, my spirits are lifted.  Professionally, I feel more equipped, more capable, stronger.

What an enormous gift this is.  And so rare.

Who was this extraordinary listener?  You know who it was.

Catherine Caine, I salute you!

About our guest poster: Jill Chivers can’t stop creating stuff.  You can check out her latest online creations (which you can participate in!  They’re for joiners!) by visiting I’m Listening Now and Shop Your Wardrobe.  Or just follow her on Twitter @JillChivers.

Once I’ve stopped blushing about this terribly sweet post, I want to quickly remind you that there’s still two days in the “Get Catherine to Vegas so she can have more embarassing stories to tell” challenge. There are new services and products on offer, some special offers from other wonderful people, AND a donation button with so many prizes that you’ re almost guaranteed to win something nifty.

How do you use listening to improve your work? Tell us in the comments!

Hooray for Guest Post Wednesday and the super-nifty Gareth!

photo credit: the trial

You’re happily riding your Kalamazoo, steadily making progress along the track that is your chosen path, when you go into a tunnel. “No worries” you think “as long as I keep plugging away I’ll reach the other side”. So you keep on pumping away, making steady progress, when you hear a noise. You look up and see a light. “Fantastic, that must be the end of the tunnel”. So you carry on, blissfully unaware of what lies in store. A short while later, you feel an oncoming breeze, and look up, seeing that the light is now much closer. “Awesome, I’m making better progress than I thought possible.” You put your head down to continue, and the train runs you over.

This is what burnout looks like for most of us. We see the signs, but either we ignore them, or we paint them in a less serious light and continue on until it’s too late.

There’s just one problem with this approach. Recovering from burnout is a bugger. Burnout shreds your confidence. It leads to regret, doubt and guilt. So much guilt. Regret that we didn’t heed the signs. Doubt that we’ll ever step back onto the track again. Guilt that we can’t deliver on our promises. Guilt that we’ve let others down. Guilt that we’ve let ourselves down.

But I’m not telling you anything new here. You know all about burnout. You know why it’s important to avoid it, yet you still ignore the signs.

The good news. You may not be doing this deliberately. It could be inattentional blindness, or more simply, you’re not expecting to see the signs, so you don’t notice them. The bad news. This is no consolation when burnout hits.

How do you start seeing, and paying attention to, the signs?

First, you need to be aware of what the signs are. Now everyone has different indicators prior to burnout, but there are a few that are universal. Tasks that are usually simple and effortless start to take longer and require far more concentration. You procrastinate more than usual. You feel lethargic and listless, regardless of the amount of caffeine you consume. Things that are of no consequence start to bother you. These are all signs that the train is approaching.

In addition to these universal signs, there are the more specific ones. For me there are two that are easy to spot. I struggle even more than usual to start blog posts. Normally, I write and delete the opening paragraph for a post 2 or 3 times, but, if the train is coming, that number can go up to double figures. I also move away from games and hobbies that require intelligent thought.

Sometimes, burnout comes on a schedule. I go through a mini-burnout every Wednesday. I always have. Because I know when the train runs, I can easily avoid it by not scheduling anything critical on a Wednesday. Your train will have a different timetable, but it’s likely that it has one. I know one of the other common ones is seasonal, with more frequent trains appearing in the winter months.

However, merely being aware of the signs is not enough. You have to interpret them correctly. Much like the onrushing wind by itself is not enough to deduce that a train is coming, it could just be a breeze, signs appearing singly, are not an indication of approaching burnout. But when you feel the wind, hear the click of the wheels and see the light, it’s time to get off the track.

Getting off the track does require a little planning though. If you post daily, you should try to get a couple of days ahead. If you have a full consulting schedule, you may want to block in some free time to recharge. If you tend to over commit, you need to practice saying “No!”

Losing a little time while waiting for the burnout train to go past is infinitely preferable to getting run over and needing weeks, if not months of recovery.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Think back to the last time you got hit by the train, or even had a near miss. Remember what you felt like just before the event. What did you have trouble doing, how did you feel? If you can remember more than one incident, you can also look at timelines and see if there is any pattern occurring there.

Once you have some warning signs identified, make a plan. What are you going to do next time the train approaches? Tell me in the comments.

Gareth knows all about burnouts; he fights the Dragon of Mediocrity on a regular basis.

Want to guest post? I’d love to hear from you! Send an email to catherine@beawesomeonline.com today!

All hail Guest Post Wednesday and the excellent Gareth!

photo credit: jurvetson

There is a lot of talk about finding your Right People, or, if you’re trying to impress your mother-in-law*, your target demographic. Why you need to know this is easy to understand: once you have an idea of your Right People, you can cater to them.

But what about your Wrong People? Knowing who they are and how to gently encourage them to find somewhere else can be just as important.

The cost of working for the Wrong People is far higher than you would think. While you’re working for the Wrong People, you aren’t working for the Right People. Now this doesn’t seem to be too big a deal. After all, the Wrong People are paying you the same as the others. What’s the problem?

Working for your Wrong People has costs that cannot be weighed in mere coinage. The Wrong People are energy vampires. You feel as drained after dealing with them for an hour as you do after dealing with your Right People for a solid week. This energy drain translates into huge opportunity losses. As long as you have to deal with the Wrong People, you can’t go looking for your Right People, you don’t have the energy. You can’t create the products, write the content and generally be awesome so that your Right People know when they have found the place for them.

Basically, you get stuck in the position where you have to continue to work for your Wrong People because those are the only people you can find. Doing this is a one way ticket to the padded cell with white canvas long sleeved blazer.

So why? Why do you continue to work for your Wrong People?

You get trapped into working for the Wrong People because you haven’t taken the time to define who the Wrong People are. You need to understand what your Wrong Person likes and dislikes. You need to know the differences between the Wrong People and the Right People. You need to take steps to actively discourage your Wrong People.

Take some time now and figure out who your Wrong People are. Think about what they like and what they don’t like. Then, do some gentle dissuasion.

Gentle dissuasion requires that you look at the differences between your Right People and your Wrong People. Ideally, you’re looking for the things that your Right People like and your Wrong People dislike. Once you have this list, do more. This improves your connection to your Right People, and subtly (or not so subtly) encourages your Wrong People to go somewhere else.

If there aren’t any clear cut differences, there are two approaches you can use. Either you find the things that your Wrong People dislike but won’t have an impact on your Right People. Or find the things your Right People like that won’t have an effect on the Wrong People. The first pushes the Wrong People away, while the second improves your relationship with the Right People, making it harder for the Wrong People to be heard.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Think of one thing you can do now to discourage your Wrong People and implement it. Then, come tell me what you did in the comments.

*I stole that line from Catherine, isn’t it glorious.

All hail Guest Post Wednesday and the ever-wonderful Gareth!

photo credit: Fuzzy Gerdes

Recently, our hostess, the Queen of Awesomesauce, went and did a 14km walk (that’s 9 miles for you anti-metric-ites), and the next day experienced a couple of minor aches and pains which got her thinking about the emotional cost of big work, and why you need to rest afterward.

It’s easy to spot the effect that physical exertion has, you hobble around like an old lady, have to walk down stairs backwards, and generally just creak. It’s not so easy to spot the signs of emotional exertion. These vary from person to person. One person may get ratty while another may become apathetic. Me, I tend towards lethargy, my work ethic goes from slow-and-steady to stopped-and-stationary.

Here are a couple of tricks I’ve learnt during marathon training that may help you out.

1 – You have to build up to it

You don’t just wake up one morning and decide to go run 42.2 km’s. You build up to it over a period of months or years, starting with once round the block and ending with the triumphant crossing of the finish line. You have to do the same with running an awesome website. Posting daily is great, if you can maintain it. Posting daily for a week, then burning out and not posting for 6 weeks is decidedly unawesome. Start by practicing in a nice safe enviroment, something like, 750 words. This is a nice place to get a feel for how much writing you can comfortably do, and it gives you a chance to stretch your comfort zone a little. The other nice thing is you can use it to prewrite blog posts during the practice. That way you get some buffer for the hectic weeks.

The one thing to be wary of while you’re building up though is self-criticism. If you miss a day, or 2 or 3, it’s fine. You just know that you weren’t ready for that schedule. However, you do know how many days you can go for without a break, and next time, you can try to go 1 better. Soon you’ll be on a such a roll that stopping doesn’t even enter into your head.

2 – Schedule Easy Periods

Training for a marathon is not a quick short term thing. You commit to it and you’re in it for the long haul. This is very much like the path to being awesome online. One of the most important things in a marathon training schedule is the concept of “the easy week” Every 4th week you take it easy. This doesn’t mean doing no training. It means not pushing yourself to go further or faster. The point of this week is to give your body a little chance of recuperating. You should be doing the same with your emotional work. Perhaps you could schedule 1 or 2 fewer coaching sessions or decide to let the product sit for a week. Give yourself some downtime. Don’t get caught into thinking that you should use the time you’ve freed up to write 17 guest posts. Instead take a break, read a book, watch a movie, or just go out and enjoy the sunshine, whatever relaxes you. A little chosen relaxation periodically, sure beats relaxation forced on you by those men in white coats.

3 – Listen to your body

This is critical, and incredibly hard to do. When you’re training, there are clear signs of overwork, you need more sleep, your legs feel heavy, even on a short run, and instead of being energised by exercise, you get lethargic. These signs are there for emotional marathons too, but they’re more subtle, and require a lot more self-awareness to pick up. If you start feeling out of sorts for no particular reason, it’s probably time to take a break. Learn your other warning signs. A little prevention here can prevent a big meltdown later.

4 – Taper

In your training schedule, the last week or two leading up to a marathon are referred to as taper weeks. What you do is gradually back off on your training so that by the time the race comes you’re desperate to run. This doesn’t mean stop all together, but where you were doing 60km in a week, you back it down to 40. They way to use this for your awesome website is easy. if you know you’re coming up to a big launch or a free consulting offer, you might want to scale back your commitments. Perhaps, post a “best of” series, or a beginners guide (especially useful if you’ve been going for a while) or even a couple of five-minute missions. That way, when the work piles on as your deadline looms, you’re fresh and eager for the challenge.

5 – Rest

After the big day, rest is critical. Even if you don’t think you need it, you do. It doesn’t need to be a long rest time, maybe a day or two, (it all depends on the magnitude of the event), but you do need rest. If you don’t rest, you might not notice it immediately, but very soon, something that would normally be a minor niggle, becomes a season ending injury(not something you want to have to go through if you could have prevented it). Far better to push back a few commitments than have to cancel them entirely.

Blogging, like running, gets under your skin very quickly. It becomes a reason to get up in the morning. Being a little sensible about it, means you can keep doing it, and have many successful race days.

Can your mind run long-distance yet? Tell us in the comments!

Gareth uses marathons to train for when he has to run away from the Dragon. An event that happens more often than he’d like.

Hooray for Guest Post Wednesday and Tara!

photo credit: Rosino

You are awesome online. You are rocking it. Your awesomeness is shining through everywhere from your About page to your Twitter stream.

But what about the untested waters of the offline world? Are you awesome there?

Or are you hiding behind your website? Terrified of meeting someone in person, afraid you’ll morph into a salesy slimeball who hands someone their business card and says, “Call me, baby.”?

Going offline can feel like that dream where you show up naked for school.

I am an pj-wearing, home-loving hermit. Most of my business is online. My relationships, my work, my helpfulness: it all happens online. But when I quit my dayjob, I knew that to really grow, I would need to start serving branch out and come out from behind the screen.

Before I did my first craft show, I never talked about my business in person. I told people I worked in HR (my dayjob) and had no idea what to tell them about my online alter ego. What would I say? Without the filter of my website, how could I explain what I did?

In person, I’m just me. No fancy graphics. No carefully crafted pages. No tried-50-times-to-get-this-one-picture first impressions. Just me.

Without the buffer of my website and my carefully chosen words and my perfectly focused pictures, it felt a little naked.

But it can be awesome.

Offline, you see the joy in someone’s eyes as they gasp at your lovingly handmade item.
Offline, you feel that immediate click when someone really gets you.
Offline, clients can sip coffee with you, show you pictures of their family, light up when you zap their problem.

Since that first pre-craft-show jitter I’ve peddled yarn at shows across the country, organized classes for wannabe-knitters and taught hundreds of one-on-one, in-person lessons. I’ve even met some of my online friends for a coffee.  All without losing my clothes or sweating through them.

And I learned that going offline can actually be fun, if you keep a few things in mind.

Three tips for being awesome offline

If the thought of meeting a real person, whether at a networking event or a craft show, has you sweating through your awesome shirt, here are some tips to bring your awesomeness offline as painless as possible.

1. Know what you do.

Well, of course you KNOW what you do…but do you have words for it? Can you explain it?

If you feel your tongue tying up just thinking about it, take a look around your website. What does IT say you do? (If it doesn’t say, you should probably hire Catherine to help you with that!)

A lot of business-y people talk about an “elevator speech”, but I’m not into it. When you meet someone, you don’t want to overwhelm them with your awesomeness (and why they should pay you for it), you want to open up a conversation. What could you say about what you do that would naturally lead to a conversation?

Start with an explanation of who you help. Follow it up with how you help them.

Or, if you make something, tell them what you make and who uses it.

Something like “I handmake yarn for yarn-obsessed knitters and crocheters. I also teach the knit-curious. Do you knit? Or know a knitter?”

Or “You know how a lot of crafters wish they could make money from their hobby? Well, I teach crafters business skills that can help them with that dream.”

These conversations-starters always end up with the other person telling me all about their aunt that knits or that their wife has always wanted to sell her underwater-woven baskets. And then I can say, “That’s so cool! I’m always meeting crafters! Would you mind letting her know about me?” as I hand them my business card.

2. Extend an invitation.

Michael Port calls it having an “always-have-something-to-invite-them-to-offer” (I’m not kidding, he uses all those dashes). Havi calls it having multiple circles. I call it giving them something to DO.

The important thing is that this thing you ask them to do with have super-low barriers to entry. It will be free. It will be easy to do. It will be completely free of commitment.

We are NOT trying to sell them something. We’re trying to get them to get to know us (and how we can help them) a little better.

Some examples?

If the conversation at a networking even is going great, don’t just hand them your business card (which, I assure you, will end up in the bottom of their purse coated in cookie crumbs and receipts); hand them an invitation to your free workshop.

If the shopper in your booth looks interested, don’t wait for her to buy something; tell her that signing up for your newsletter will snag her 10% off her purchase today and regular emails full of behind-the-scenes goodness.

This something to do could be:

• attending  a free event – online or in-person (hand them all the details they need!)
• scheduling a coffee date to talk further
• signing up for your newsletter (then you can wow them with your online awesomeness)
• anything else that gets them to connect with you again!

3. Remember: ALL awesomeness is a reflection of your TRUE awesomeness.

That fabulous website or charming Twitter persona? It’s YOU, through and through.
Online and offline, you are reaching your people and attracting clients that appreciate your you-ness. There’s no trick, no magic solution: you just bring that, the true you-ness. And  you will click with the right people.

If you do, you’ll find yourself happily out of your pjs and meeting people.

How do you bring your awesomeness offline? Tell me in the comments!

Tara Swiger is crafting a business , making eco-friendly yarn at Blonde Chicken Boutique and helping people craft their own ideal business, when she’s not busy being awesome online and off.

Hooray for Guest Post Wednesday and the fantabulous Kirsty!

photo credit: rharrison

Want to know why I opened an online shop for my art and then a consulting service just a few weeks later?

I’d been working on changing my money mindset for months. I’d heard that setting up lots of different income streams was a pretty smart thing to do. Plus Catherine had been brow-beating me gently nudging me into consulting.

But none of those are the real reasons.

No, the real reason is that I’d started describing myself as “an artist & purveyor of mad obsessive projects’ and the pedantic part of my brain (which is most of it!) was niggling at me. Every single time I used the phrase, a little voice piped up, “hey, you can’t call yourself a purveyor unless you’re selling something…”

Now, I adore the word ‘purveyor’. It makes me think of Victorian merchants with handlebar moustaches and fabulous old-fashioned adverts a page long.

photo credit: makelessnoise

I didn’t want to take it out of my description. Purveyor worked. It made people laugh. It was memorable, catchy and I loved it.

Clearly the only reasonable solution was to start selling something as quickly as possible.

So I did, even though I wasn’t quite ready for either endeavour.

Words have power. The way we describe ourselves can change our behaviour. What wonderful title can you give yourself that you’ll be forced to live up to? Tell us in the comments!

Kirsty Hall is an artist & purveyor of mad obsessive projects with a free resource page to help artists and other creative people to get online.